“Good.” The Godfeather’s scowl twitched and shifted to a smile. “Someday, and that day may never come, I’ll call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day, accept this bounty as a gift on my daughter’s wedding day.”
Sync almost chuckled. She hadn’t known precisely how this would work, yet it had gone through.
The Godfeather motioned toward the office doors with his flipper. “Now that we have her, she will no longer trouble us.”
The office doors opened with a loud thwack, and Icarus and the other bird men stormed inside. Icarus produced a set of handcuffs and clamped them around Sync’s wrists.
| You have been captured! |
| Certain gameplay features, including your inventory, are restricted until you regain your freedom. |
When nothing else happened, Icarus narrowed his eyes and frowned at her. “You glitch. How did you do that?”
Sync huffed and feigned frustration, straining at her restraints. “Well, I planned on getting the reward and getting out…”
Icarus laughed. “And how’d that work out for you?”
* * *
[Initiating Player Review]
[Icarus – Level 24]
[Game/Class: The Godfeather – Heir of the Don]
[Beginning Report]
“Icarus, what’s goin’ on?” Donnie, the Condor-headed Player asked. “Our base was under attack, but now it’s not? The objective to capture her is gone. Now what?”
The rest of the bird men muttered, squawked, and warbled. Some shrugged, and others bobbed their heads.
“Just give me a minute to think. I need to assess this.” Icarus rubbed his temples with his feathery fingers. “Why the flock are you all standin’ around? Go make yourselves useful. She’s not alone. Anyone else comes in here who isn’t one of us, you give ’em what-for. I’ll figure this out.”
The rest of the Godfeather Players and NPCs muttered, grumbled, and descended the stairs, still carrying their arsenal along with them.
Icarus shut the doors behind them, finally buying himself a moment of quiet.
The Godfeather sat back in his plush chair and sipped his scotch. “Icarus, I’m not accustomed to being made to look like a fool, yet it’s clear I have badly misjudged you. I thought you were competent, but instead, another member of our organization turned in the dame. Frankly, I’m depressed and ashamed.”
Icarus visibly bristled, ruffling his feathers. “Godfeather, I—”
“I regret to admit you were not ready. I placed my hopes in you, and the hopes for the future of this family on your family, but you have proven to only be a disappointment,” the Godfeather continued. “However, I am a generous bird. I will give you one more chance to redeem yourself in my eyes. In order to do so, you must bring me her WHIM.”
Fury burgeoned in Icarus’s chest. He’d heard words like that before, back in the real world.
The Godfeather motioned to Sync and picked up his cigar for a puff, and a notification sprang into Icarus’s HUD:
| Objective: Obtain Player Sync’s WHIM |
| Condition 1: The WHIM must remain operational. |
| Condition 2: You have one hour to complete this objective, or you will fail. |
| Objective Failure: Exile from the Godfeathers
and permanent branding of Godfeather Enemy status |
| Time Limit: 60:00 |
As the clock ticked down to 59:59 and kept going, Icarus corralled his anger. He could fix this. One way or another, he would remain the Heir of the Don, and he had just shy of an hour to make it happen. Plenty of time. More than enough to coax—or coerce—that WHIM from her.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
He glared at Sync, who still leaked glitter from her wounds. While bound, she wouldn’t be able to heal herself.
Time to get to work.
* * *
[Initiating Player Review]
[Sync – Level 20]
[Game/Class: The Godfeather – *~ERROR~*]
[Beginning Report]
Sync winced inwardly at the pain wracking her body. She regretted not healing herself when she’d had the chance, before Icarus came back in. She still had one Health Pack, but now, with her inventory hobbled by her Captured status, she couldn’t access it.
“Impressive. But meaningless,” Icarus taunted. “You’re here, and you’re mine to do with as I please. What boggles my mind is that you have that.” He pointed his feathered forefinger at her WHIM. “You’ve got the console commands, toots. You could have anything in here. Yet you still mostly play by the rules.”
“…Toots? Seriously?” Sync eyed him.
“Out there, it’s the AllVerse, but in this house, it’s 1954.” Icarus raised his voice. “So if I wanna call you ‘toots,’ then that’s what I’m gonna call you.”
Sync shook her head, and it swiveled almost 180 degrees around. No matter how long she had this class, she’d never get used to that. Sync gave an involuntary trilling hoot, then she blinked her golden eyes a few times and cleared her throat. She’d never get used to that, either.
“It’s not safe to use for everything,” she explained. “The more I use it, and the bigger the hack, the more haywire the AllVerse goes. It just makes me a target. Case in point.”
While she spoke, she scanned the office for the Relic. She couldn’t identify it purely by sight, but she reasoned she could at least narrow it down.
Icarus poured some scotch for himself, but the Godfeather didn’t move to stop him. “Where’s your half-naked boy toy, Erik?”
Sync tensed her jaw—if birds had jaws. If not, she tensed her beak. “He ditched me.”
He chuckled at her response, then sipped his scotch.
“Ugh!” He winced and spat it out. “How does he drink that? Why would anyone pay thousands of dollars for this?”
“Someday, you’ll come to appreciate the finer things in life, my boy,” the Godfeather said with a grin.
“I wasn’t talkin’ about you, Godfeather,” Icarus said, his voice calmer. He added, “All due respect.”
The Godfeather just smirked at his protégé.
Sync bit her lip so as not to laugh at him.
Icarus wiped his beak and set the unfinished glass down next to a fist-sized blue-and-gold dodecahedron numbered die on the Godfeather’s desk, still sputtering.
“Somebirdie might need to patch that. It’s gotta be a glitch. No one in their right mind would drink something like that. tastes like someone poured rubbing alcohol onto a campfire.” Icarus refocused on her. He looked her up and down and produced a medkit from his inventory.
Sync looked at it in his hand. Icarus noticed and gave her an unnerving smirk eerily similar to the one the Godfeather had just given him.
“Anyway, I’m amazed Erik hung around that long.” Icarus activated the medkit and leaned forward, closer to her. “Probably left once you became an owl, huh?”
Sync tried to recoil, though it didn’t make sense to avoid a medkit. Still, coming from Icarus, the man—bird—whatever—who had spent the last two AllVerse days trying to kill her, she didn’t trust it.
She stammered, “A-As a matter of fact, he-he—”
“Ah, save your breath. I know from the bounty notifications that he’s in Seaboard City, so I’ll find him. Either way, it means we have lots of time to chat. At least you didn’t completely break the game with your cheap little hacks.”
Icarus reached for her to apply the medkit, and she flinched.
He blinked his dead black eyes at her and tilted his head just like an actual bird. “Is something wrong?”
Sync narrowed her eyes at him. Everything was wrong. Everything about this encounter was wrong. What’s more, Icarus seemed more aware of what was happening in the AllVerse than most.
But before Sync could respond, Icarus applied the medkit to her.
It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t a trap. It did what it was supposed to do and healed her back to full health. Her various bullet wounds stopped leaking sparkles, and her pain subsided.
“There. How’s that?” Icarus said it more like a taunt than out of actual concern.
Sync ignored his attitude. “Can’t you see what’s happening? That the AllVerse isn’t safe, and there’s no way out? You should help me instead of wasting your time in this one-off game.”
“Not a one-off, toots. They made a Godfeather sequel. Pretty good, actually,” Icarus said. “The third one… whatever happened there?”
Sync kept studying him. “Who are you?”
Icarus slid a pair of chairs over. He sat in one and pushed her into the other. His lifeless black eyes glistened from the reflection of the floor-to-ceiling high-rise windows around them, and his voice took on an appreciative tone, albeit slower and unsettling.
“Look at this place. It’s infinite. It’s the great equalizer. It’s control. The people who want out are the ones who no longer have control. In the AllVerse, you can do anything. Be anything. Why would anyone try to leave? I get cut, and sparkles flow from the wound, not blood. I die… I come back.” He turned to look at her again. “What was so great back there, huh? Out there, we’re just human. Here, we can become gods.”
Sync leaned back, every fiber of her being set on edge. Maybe Erik was right about some of these gamers after all. “One has definitely flown over the cuckoo’s nest with you.”
Icarus laughed. “Mmkay. Now that you don’t have people wrapped around your finger. Now that anyone can go to an Avatar Station and become way more attractive and talented than they ever could be back in the real world. You hate it, because you no longer rank among the elite, the privileged few who have everything while the rest of us fight for scraps.”
Sync trembled but shot back, “You’ve lost it. You don’t even know who I am! There’s pain here. Some people don’t come back. We don’t know what happens to them. The world outside is missing billions, and you want to live out your sick power fantasy in a video game? It isn’t real.”
Icarus leveled his haunting gaze on her. “Oh. I see. You prefer the world of struggle, sickness, and failure? Instead of one of infinite opportunity?”
“This was only ever supposed to be an escape, or at best, a resource to improve our lives in the real world. I—” Sync steeled herself. There was no sense arguing with Icarus. She needed to end this nattering and hack a way inside for Erik.
Icarus chuckled and his head spun 180 degrees to look out the windows again. “Heh. You’re one to talk. You were happy enough to entertain a payout, real money in the real world, and instead, you got cold feet. But you were right about one thing.”
Tingling ratcheted up and down her spine. Who is this guy?
“Oh?” Sync fought to remain calm. “What’s that?”
“There is pain here,” he said, almost nonchalantly. His head turned back slowly, looking her up and down, almost scrutinizing her. “It’s not real, but it feels real, and I owe you for stealing my opportunities.”
Then Icarus drew his revolver and shot her in the knee.
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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—!
Occam's Favor
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.
