Nobody Knows

“John! John, are you alright?” Abigail said, holding his **** form. He was slumped in her arms, his coat in tatters around him. His leg was bent at an unnatural angle; she had caused damage not even Gamer’s Body could protect him from. Lowering her head to his nose, she was relieved to hear that he was still breathing.

She gently set him down on the floor, rifling through his pockets for any of the potions he had been using so far. Right! Jenny told me he has an inventory thing. But Grace still has some of his potions!

Torn between leaving him unprotected and looking for the person who could help him, she was relieved to see the white-headed girl poke her head through the hole in the wall, “Are you two done fighting?”

“He’s hurt! Real bad! Do you have any of his potions left?” Abigail asked, rushing toward her teammate hopefully.

“I have a mana potion left, but no more healing potions,” the Brit explained, slipping the blue vial out of her pocket.

“That’s no good… what can we do?” Abigail asked, looking at her **** friend. The scratches littering his body slowly oozed blood, and she took the rags of her shirt out of her pants, tying them around his arms and legs on the deepest cuts to help stem the bleeding.

“Wait until Lucille comes back. If she captured the guy who was controlling him, then he can have John open his inventory and take a potion, right?” Grace asked, looking down at his **** form. “None of my stickers are really restorative… though I do have one that stops pain.”

“Right. We just have to wait. Let’s move him to the center house and tie the other guy up again,” Abigail said, carefully lifting John off the ground with her arms under his.

“That’s a pretty good plan. Maybe you should have been the tactical genius all along,” Grace joked, opening the door for her partner. Together they made their way to the protected house, John in tow.

Abigail opened the door to a flood of voices and illusions of uncertain townspeople. She tried to move through the ‘crowd’, but couldn’t see where she was going through their bodies. “Everybody quiet! We took care of your vampire problem, so you can go home! One of the houses was destroyed in the process, but the vampires will never bother you again”

The illusions dispersed almost immediately, more of a courtesy than anything else from the Illusionist, who nodded simply to the girls as they dragged their **** friend into the room. “Leaving that sort of collateral damage, while not exactly uncommon, is definitely frowned upon when taking a contract. It’d come out of your pay, you know.”

Abigail’s **** stare quieted him down, and he went back to drinking his fake ale. The brunette set her friend down gently in one of the chairs before moving to the splayed form of the Charmer.

The fiery girl was much less gentle with him, pushing him roughly into another available chair and tying him to it. “What happened anyway? How did he get you?”

“Well, I was wearing my glasses in here just to make sure he couldn’t get me, but when I wasn’t looking, he leaned forward in his chair and headbutted me, knocking them off. When I looked back to see what happened, he had me. He made me use the last taser sticker on John and drag him over to one of the traps his partner had set up. Just his luck that I had kept one of the health potions. If I hadn’t, he would’ve been screwed,” Grace finished explaining, looking at the **** man. Bending over, she picked up her sunglasses, wiping them down with the inside of her jacket before putting them back in her pocket.

“So, what should we do until Lucille gets back?” Abigail asked, looking from the knocked out prisoner to their **** friend.

“Well… ever played Go Fish before?” Grace asked, taking out a deck of playing cards from her pocket dimension.

“No, but shouldn’t we do something… useful?” Abigail replied as the Brit lowered herself to the floor sitting criss-cross.

“Two people knocked out and all the vampires dead. The most useful thing to do is wait here for the person who actually can do something,” Grace reasoned, dealing Abigail seven cards.

“Well… alright, show me how to play,” Abigail conceded, sitting across from her friend and taking the cards she was dealt.

“Wow, you’re bad at this,” the pyromancer laughed, setting down the playing cards after winning against the Brit for the fourth time. Since her understanding of the game was rudimentary, she didn’t realize that with the cards she had been given the white-haired girl could have won the game easily each time.

Their heads snapped to the door as it slammed open, the elf tossing the **** form of the puppet master into the house. “You two are playing a card game while I’m out there dispatching our enemies?”

“Well, John’s knocked out and the prisoner can’t be trusted. We needed to stay here, and being bored wouldn’t be of any use, so yes,” Grace said, putting her hand down.

“I… can’t find flaw with that argument,” Lucille replied, surprised at the validity of the Brit’s words. “That’s definitely the most injured he’s ever been, and he’s the one with all of the health potions,” the techno-girl continued, looking over John’s battered form. “What’s the plan?”

“Well, I thought we could have that guy puppet John into taking a health potion out of his pocket dimension and drinking it,” Grace explained, steepling her index fingers.

“That’s a risky move. We don’t know the extent of what he can do, and he definitely can’t be trusted. Still…” the elf’s eyes hovered over her partner’s injuries. She took his hand as her eyes focused on his breathing and visible marks, “He’s got it bad, and he’s only going to get worse. You did what you could, but if he doesn’t get some attention within the next hour, we might lose him. He’s got three broken ribs, one of which has scratched but not pierced a lung. Light internal bleeding. Second and third degree burns all over. You really didn’t hold back against him, huh?”

“I kind of lost control,” Abigail responded, lowering her head and scratching the back of her neck. “So… will the puppet guy wake up in time?”

“He will if we splash some water on him. The pot outside still has some. Tie him up with this while I get it,” the Prodigy ordered, tossing Abigail and Grace a bundle of rope that looked identical to John’s Magic Rope. They caught it and set to work, Grace propping him up in the last empty chair before handing the rope to her partner.

“You don’t know how to tie knots?” Abigail chided, tying the man to the chair herself. Standing up to admire her work, she noticed the Brit holding up her shoe for inspection. It had no laces.

“Not even on me shoes, never learned, never had to,” putting her foot down, she stepped to the side as the bossy elf reentered the room, splashing what was left in the vase on the **** puppeteer’s face.

He woke with a start, struggling against his bonds as he looked to the three ladies standing above him. “Well, well. I recognize you as you found me. I recognize you as you were the first I controlled. An absolutely delicious specimen, if inferior for genetic reasons. I do not recognize the pale girl with a bad fashion sense.”

If the Brit wasn’t on the hate-train for the man before, she sure was now. Looking to her partner, she saw a terrifying glare on the brunette’s face.

“You are the lowest of the low. I like to see what’s good about people, but I see nothing in you. If you don’t do exactly what we say, I will like hurting you a lot,” Abigail spat, grasping the man’s chin with a flaming hand. The smell of flesh sizzling filled the room as his skin blackened.

Ripping the time bomb away from their screaming captive, Lucille added, “But you don’t have to get hurt anymore if you do exactly as we say. Are we clear?”

“Yes, yes! Just please don’t let that brutish ape near me,” the man babbled, leaning back in his chair. Surprisingly, the resulting attack didn’t come from the brunette but the Brit, who slammed her fist into his nose.

“Nobody talks about my friends like that! You’re so lucky we need you to be awake, or I would let Abigail go to town on you and not feel guilty about it! You’re worse than your teammate!” Grace snapped, rubbing her hand.

“Alright, first, lay a controlling trap,” Lucille ordered, one hand holding the other two back as the other pointed an arcane pistol at him.

“I need my hands to be free for that!” the man, Eastern European judging by the accent that emerged when he was panicked, complained. The elf walked around behind him, staring down her teammates to keep them off him. She cut the rope around his arms before pressing her pistol to the back of his head. Getting the message, the puppeteer slowly and quietly wove his mana into a trap, the marionette cross appearing in one hand as a coil of string fell onto the ground at his feet. “If anybody puts a limb into that, it will tighten and begin to control them.”

“Good. You two, drag John over,” Lucille motioned with her gun to her blacked out partner, “and you. Any sudden movements, and things are going to get a lot more painful for you.”

“Ja, I get it. What do you want me to do with him?” the man locked onto the two women bringing forth their friend.

“Have him open his pocket dimension and bring out half a dozen health potions.” John was summarily lowered onto the floor, hand falling into the trap.

“No, I don’t think I will,” the Puppeteer declared, looking at his nails to feign boredom. “I’ve bonded with him now. Any further damage to either of us is done to the other.” Two opposite reactions were immediately had.

“You think you’re being clever, but that’s really an incredibly stupid thing to do,” the elf commented, as bored as he pretended to be.

“You what!” Abigail bellowed, firing erupting around her and burning a hole through the roof. She lunged at the man, flames rolling off her as she went in for the kill.