An hour had passed since Sync left, and I was getting impatient. And worried. But mostly impatient.
We hadn’t decided how long I’d wait before I came in after her. We’d just agreed that she’d hack some way inside for me, and then I’d come in and do big-dang-hero stuff to save her… or something.
But it had been long enough. Through our new friend connection, I could see she was alive and still inside the hotel, but something must’ve gone wrong, or she would’ve at least updated me by now.
Silas bobbed on my shoulder, shadowboxing and refining his theme song.
“Ho, ha, Kicker! Karjok kicker, gonna kick you outta town!” As if my concerns had downloaded directly into Silas’s brain, he turned to me and said, “Hmm, it’s been a minute, right? I do hope our lass is unscathed. Feel like we should get in there. Either way, it’s gonna be a riptide, so we might as well just send it. Should I give Hachem the signal?”
I stood a mere block away from the Bada Bing Hotel. Chancellor Hachem and his Karjok militia waited in the sewers that connected directly to the hotel’s plumbing.
“No. Not yet. This was such a moronic half-baked plan,” I grumbled. “Now I’m probably gonna get killed trying to save her. I shouldn’t have let her go. There had to be a better way to do this. If we had just waited—”
I froze midsentence. If I had just waited instead of launching the AllVerse, none of this would have happened.
I shook my head. That’s not on me; no one knew this would happen. The important thing is what we do now.
I checked my WHIM messages for the hundredth time. Either way, we’d be fighting, whether she hacked a way in for us or not.
I’m Erik Shaw. I’m a winner, and I’ll make sure these incels never forget it.
“Flunk this,” I said. “I’m not gonna let a bunch of bird men stand between me and getting outta here. Silas, full send.”
He thrust his tentacles up in the air. “Huzzah!”
A Lucretia Hub outside a bank whirred to life as I walked by.
[Greetings, Player Erik Shaw!]
[Your actions indicate that you intend to initiate a Feud.]
[Would you like me to take you through the Feud Tutorial?]
“No. I mean, yeah, sure, I’ll initiate a Feud, but no tutorial. This isn’t my first rodeo.”
I’d overthrown board rooms, completed hostile takeovers of companies, and bought, bullied, or bribed my way to the top for the past several years. Any conflict that came up, any resistance that tried to take me down, I handled with no mercy. In the real world, at least, I never lost a battle.
I’d had enough of the AllVerse and its lunacy. I’d had enough of bird men, orc men, plebeian backstories, and space octopus quests.
I was done.
“Silas, here.” I extended him the .40 caliber pistol I’d purchased from Frank.
He took it, looked it over and gave me a sly grin. “You don’t happen to have seven more of these, do you?”
“No, but that’s a good idea.”
“Can you get seven more?”
“Maybe next time, bud.”
“I’m gonna hold you to that.”
With Silas clinging to my back, I strode up to the Bada Bing Hotel’s front doors with four NPC bird men guarding it. I drew one of my frag grenades and pulled the pin. It flashed yellow, then red, and I tossed it between the four bird men.
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BOOM!
They barely had time to react before it detonated in a shower of detritus, feathers, and sparkles. It also blew the hotel doors to bits— Fully Destructible Environment?, indeed. I equipped my AR-15 and ran toward the entrance inside.
“Rickshaw Riot!” Silas screamed from my shoulder.
[You have initiated a Feud!]
[All Players and NPCs of The Godfeather and Rickshaw Riot are now feuding.]
[A Feud typically begins with an outright assault on a base of operations or through repeated targeting.
The Feud ends when either faction’s headquarters fails to defend against a raid, or when one faction surrenders, or when one faction is completely defeated by death or capture.]
Yup, I mused. Just like real-life corporate warfare.
Unlike when the Feud between Gordo Rameses and Radon began, Lucretia provided additional details. It must’ve been because I was involved in this Feud, whereas I’d avoided the other one very much intentionally. At least now I knew the official rules and what I had to do to win.
Feud initiated, I charged inside the Bada Bing Hotel and instinctively dropped into a slide through the ensuing cloud of dust in the wake of the frag grenade.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
Bullets rained down on us from overhead, but with all the dust obscuring our entry, none of them hit us… or maybe it was my Luck stat at work.
Amid my slide, I opened fire on the first bird man I saw. About five Godfeather Players had been hanging out in the lobby bar and abruptly flew into action after my grenade.
“Your mother is a sea cow that ran into one too many propellers!” Silas bellowed as he shot at the others with the .40 caliber pistol. He didn’t hit much but provided good covering fire.
I leaped to my feet and utilized my new dodge-roll skill through the spray of bullets until I ended up behind a pillar. With the three-second cooldown between rolls, I had to time it carefully. Silas clung to my shoulder like a pro through it all.
NPC hotel staff and patrons screamed and hurried in random directions or fled the hotel, and I couldn’t help but wonder how long it took them to reset after Sync first came through here.
“Here comes the storm!” Silas roared while firing the pistol indiscriminately. To his credit, he managed to hit one of the Godfeathers.
The elevators dinged, and more hostiles swarmed around, shooting at us with Tommy guns and snub nose revolvers. The pillar I hid behind chipped away as they unloaded on it—that was the other side of the Fully Destructible Environment? coin. A few higher-ranking Godfeathers with wings on their backs soared through the air and fired down at us.
Every time a gun fires, a Godfeather gets his wings…
“Reloading!” Silas yelled, banishing the disjointed thought from my head. He snapped a new magazine into the pistol and fired on our lobby-flocking opponents.
He shot a flying enemy, who spiraled down and landed on his neck. I heard a dull thump-crack above the din of gunfire, eerily reminiscent of a bird hitting a window. His body dissolved into feathers and sparkles, and he left a loot box behind—one I’d never get to in time.
“Ha-ha! That’ll teach you to fowl with the Rickshaw from Riotville!” Silas hollered.
I didn’t know which was less accurate: his attempts at songs and slogans or his aim with the pistol.
I waited for them to reload their Tommy guns, then I dashed out and mag-dumped my AR. I caught a few of them, but I also took a few hits, and red numbers floated in my vision.
| -36 HP |
| -81 HP |
| -11 HP |
I skirted behind another pillar to avoid taking any more damage, and I reloaded my AR-15. Glitter leaked from my wounds, but all in all, I hadn’t lost that much HP, especially given how many rounds the Godfeathers had fired at us. My ballistic vest had absorbed the worst of the bullets, too.
Silas peeked around the pillar. “Oh, look at this buffet shrimp. There’s a skyload of those feathery gits. Whoops. Hold on, mate. You got hit. Again.”
He slapped me upside the head a few times to heal my wounds, and my HP crept upward slowly. Since my recent level-ups, I’d out-leveled the bulk of the ability’s usefulness, but every little bit helped. If I weren’t under attack, Silas could eventually slap me back up to full health, but I doubted the Godfeathers would let me sit here for long enough to allow that.
The Godfeathers ceased fire, but their bird feet clacked on the smooth marble floor, creeping closer.
“Gotta give youse credit. You got some pair of pokey-balls, comin’ in here guns blazin’,” One of them called out to us. “You and your little squid can’t take down an entire fortress. So c’mon out, and we’ll put you outta your misery nice and quick.”
Silas trembled.
I squinted at him. “Are you… scared?”
“Squid? Squid?” he spat the word. “It’s like they’re trying to insult me.”
“Uh… yeah. That’s exactly what they’re doing.”
“If I’m nothing like an octopus, then I’m even less like a squid… whatever the flounder that is!” he growled.
“You do remember when you said their mother was a sea cow, don’t you?” I countered.
“That was in the heat of battle!” Silas protested. “This is in the cool of battle. Completely different!”
All the while, the Godfeathers inched closer, boxing me in.
Rickshaw Riot chapters will be posted every weekday. If you don't want to wait, follow us on Patreon:
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break--Royal Road. They call us the Critical Hitters.
In the desolate desert of the North American Sector, the government harvests the Soul Energy of siblings Eos and Maxima in secret.
When their powers attract the attention of a dangerous criminal organization, their routine lives are shattered. Eos and Maxima must search for freedom and the truth about their past as hostile forces close in.
The answers they seek lie behind one word—!
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A grizzled ex-mech pilot is drawn back into the Everwar, a decades-long conflict raging across Jupiter’s moonscape.
This time he refuses to fight alone, bringing a crew of misfits and a mech powerful enough to rewrite the war itself.
is a can't-miss power-scaling mech series. Read it now!
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Dungeon Crawler Carl Audio Immersion Tunnel for Soundbooth Theater, and he's the lead writer for the Dungeon Crawler Carl Role Playing Game.
