CHAPTER 45: TEAM-BUILDING WITH MONSTERS

The warehouse district was a graveyard of forgotten ambition.

Rusting husks of buildings clawed at the bruised, purple sky, their broken windows like hollow, staring eyes.

The air was thick with the smell of decay, rain, and the faint, electric tang of a fresh tear in reality.

The D-Rank Gate pulsed in the center of a cavernous, empty warehouse, a shimmering, oil-slick wound in the air.

It looked angry.

"Alright, Team Misfit Toys," Jax’s cheerful voice crackled in their comms. "Let’s go punch some ghouls and get my shiny new toy."

This was their first time in the field as a full, four-person unit.

Chloe was perched in a sniper’s nest she’d established on the roof of an adjacent building, her high-tech rifle and tactical datapad spread out before her.

She was the eye in the sky. The brain.

The rest of them were the fists.

"Jinx, you’re on point," Chloe’s voice directed, crisp and professional. "Jax, crowd control. Michael, you’re the wildcard. Flank them, control the flow, and for the love of God, do not do anything stupid."

"Define stupid," Michael muttered, but he was already moving.

They stepped through the Gate.

The world dissolved into a nauseating swirl of sickly green and gray.

They landed on cracked, crumbling asphalt. They were in a twisted, nightmarish version of a suburban street, complete with broken-down cars and the skeletal remains of picket fences.

A Grave Ghoul nest.

The ghouls were fast. They were hunched, emaciated things that moved on all fours with a jerky, unnatural speed, their long, filthy claws tearing at the ground.

"Contact!" Jinx yelled, her rifle already barking.

BANG!

A ghoul’s head exploded in a shower of black ichor.

The swarm was on them.

The fight was a symphony of calculated chaos.

Jax laughed, a wild, joyful sound, as he tossed a small, silver disk into the middle of an advancing pack.

"Sonic disco ball!" he yelled. "Let’s get this party started!"

The disk erupted in a high-frequency pulse that was silent to them but made the ghouls shriek and clutch their heads, their movements becoming frantic and disoriented.

Jinx used the opening, her shots methodical and deadly, picking them off one by one.

Michael was a phantom on the flank.

He didn’t engage directly. He used his [Void Tether], a whip of black energy lashing out, wrapping around a ghoul’s leg, yanking it off balance, and sending it tumbling into the path of Jinx’s next shot.

They were a machine. A weird, dysfunctional, constantly-bickering machine, but a machine nonetheless.

Chloe’s voice was a calm, steady presence in their ears, guiding their fire, calling out threats before they even appeared.

"Two hostiles approaching from your seven o’clock, Jinx."

"Jax, larger group converging on the west flank. Prepare another sonic device."

It was working.

They were actually winning.

And that’s when it all went wrong.

A ghoul, bigger and faster than the others, burst from the shattered window of a nearby house, ignoring Jax’s sonic pulse completely.

It wasn’t after the front-line fighters.

Its dead, white eyes were fixed on the rooftop where Chloe was providing overwatch.

It scrambled up the side of the building with an unnatural, insect-like speed, its claws finding purchase in the crumbling brickwork.

"Chloe!" Michael yelled, his blood running cold. "Above you!"

Chloe swore, dropping her datapad and grabbing the heavy energy rifle beside her.

She was an analyst, a strategist. Not a front-line soldier.

The ghoul crested the roof, a skeletal, screeching nightmare, and lunged.

Michael didn’t think.

He just acted.

He poured every ounce of his will into a single, desperate command.

[SHADOW STEP!]

The world dissolved.

He appeared on the rooftop, between Chloe and the lunging monster, the displacement so violent it made him dizzy.

There was no time for a tether, no time for a slash.

He just lowered his shoulder and tackled her.

They went down in a clumsy, tangled heap of limbs and tactical gear, his body shielding hers.

The ghoul’s claws sliced through the air where her head had been a second before.

Michael rolled off her, coming up in a crouch, his Reaper’s Fang already in his hand.

The ghoul turned, its dead eyes fixing on him.

But the moment of surprise was all Jinx needed.

From the street below, the crack of her rifle was a final, damning verdict.

BANG!

The ghoul’s head snapped back, a clean hole drilled through its forehead. It shuddered once, then collapsed into a heap of dead meat.

Silence.

Michael stood panting, his heart hammering in his chest.

Chloe was on the ground, pushing herself up on one elbow, her face a mask of shocked disbelief.

Her professional composure was gone.

Her hair was a mess.

There was a smudge of dirt on her cheek.

And her cold, gray eyes were wide with a bewildered, non-analytical alarm.

He had touched her.

He had tackled her.

They were inches apart, the air between them suddenly charged with a strange, awkward, and completely unfamiliar energy.

"I— uh— you were..." he stammered, his brain struggling to form a coherent sentence.

"Your tactical positioning was compromised," he finally managed, falling back on her own clinical language because it was the only thing his terrified brain could think of.

A faint, rosy flush crept up her neck.

"Your intervention was... effective," she said, her voice a little too quiet.

Jinx’s voice crackled in their comms, dripping with a cynical, triumphant amusement.

"You two done playing tackle-the-boss-lady? Because the welcome wagon just showed up."

They looked over the edge of the roof.

The main swarm of ghouls was gone.

But in the center of the street, a new figure had appeared.

It was a Ghoul Alchemist. Taller than the others, its skin a sickly, glowing green, a cluster of bubbling, glass vials fused to its back.

And it wasn’t alone.

It was chanting in a low, guttural language, and as it did, a shimmering, green aura spread out from it, enveloping the five remaining ghouls.

The ghouls began to transform.

Their bodies swelled, their skin hardening into a thick, chitinous armor.

The Ghoul Alchemist wasn’t just a boss.

It was a support class.

And it had just given its minions a massive buff.

"Well, crap," Jax’s voice said over the comms, summing up the situation perfectly.

"This just turned into a raid boss with adds."