Today's Earth date: June 15, 1992

Our ship leaves in two days. Horcus still hasn't returned, so it's looking like we're going to leave without him.

Everyone in Bata says sailing is perfectly safe. If it wasn't, Bata wouldn't be the trade hub that it is. Like, yeah, that's probably true, but monsters seek us out. They specifically target Heroes, so this isn't some run of the mill import-export thing. Then we have to contend with the Free Continent, which is supposed to be exponentially more dangerous than what we've seen so far.

We've had some close calls and come out okay before, but this feels like a mistake, especially with a party of three.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

Wink-Wing.

That Tunnels & Trolls ability was a hallmark of Wayne's fighting style. When he activated it, he could yank his target toward him. If he pointed his sword, the monsters basically kebobed themselves.

But there in the Gentle Forest, he used it on a child.

Or, a young adult, rather.

"What the shit?!" Barry exclaimed when his back hit Wayne's chest.

"Did you touch it?" Wayne searched Barry all over for signs of glitch sickness. "Barry. Did you touch it?"

"What's it to you?"

Grabbing both of Barry's shoulders and shaking, Wayne said, "Hey. Dumb ass. Answer me. Did. You. Touch. It?"

"No, geez," Barry answered, trying to wrestle himself free of Wayne's grip.

"This is deathly serious, Barry. Glitch sickness will kill you. If we get it treated in time, you'll be lucky to only lose part of a limb."

Barry's eyes widened. "W-What?"

"I won't be mad, so be honest with me." Wayne could totally imagine Barry being the guy in a zombie film who got bit but kept it a secret from the group, so he searched the boy again.

Yes, boy. Barry was a damn child. He wasn't an anything adult.

"I didn't, okay!"

Wayne looked to the bodyguards. They hadn't seen Barry touch anything.

"Thank god," Wayne said, finally exhaling a breath he didn't realize he was holding. "That was too close. Alright, we're leaving."

"What is glitch sickness?" Barry asked.

"Ever do a puzzle?"

"Yes."

"Imagine scrambling pieces of the puzzle and then smashing them until they fit together. Then a little bit later, you scramble more. And then more and more and more. Glitch sickness is like that. It rearranges the way your body is supposed to work, and it just gets worse. I've seen a few people get it, and it's not fun."

"Why is it here?"

Wayne had the same question. This was by far the largest glitch puddle he had ever encountered. Instinctively, he glanced at his HUD map, just in case a MissingNo. monster appeared here like it did in the Dead Zone. He saw only blue dots.

"Come on," Wayne said. "Everyone get your things. The sooner we're away from here, the better."

Barry, for once, listened to direction without complaining about it. The bodyguards were more than happy to hustle him along. They didn't need to be convinced that something was very wrong with the ruins.

They were a few steps from the puddle when a bodyguard raised a hand, the universal signal for everyone to stand still and be quiet.

There was a buzzing. At first, Wayne thought it was another ratman fighter plane, but the sound grew louder far too quickly. The more it did, the more certain he was that the engine making this noise was far bigger and far more sophisticated than anything available in WWII.

But where was it coming from?

It certainly wasn't the sky, but that didn't make any sense.

The noise increased in volume more rapidly.

Where else could it come from?

"Run!" Wayne yelled.

He grabbed Barry and hugged him to his chest. He activated Defense and mentally mashed Blitz.

Behind them, the nose of a passenger airliner burst through the roof of the dwarven structure and filled the Gentle Forest with roiling flames and dense black smoke.

The blast only cost Wayne a few hitpoints, but his superhuman stats couldn't negate the shockwave of an explosion of that magnitude. His ears rang, and he struggled to see because of the smoke.

Where was Barry?

Oh, he was still in his arms. Thank god.

Wayne pulled him away from his chest to check on him. He was in shock from the sudden violence, but he didn't look to be harmed.

The smoke kept Wayne from seeing anything, so he relied on his HUD map instead. He saw three blue dots–not four–in the vicinity. One of the bodyguards was down and the others needed help, but he needed to get Barry to safety before he went back for any of them.

As soon as Wayne's feet touched the ground, he summoned Outlawson as well as Linebacker bot and Running back bot. He pulled a Healing potion from his belt and poured it into Barry's mouth. He coughed and spit up most of it.

"Sorry, buddy. You need to drink it."

Wayne uncapped another and repeated the pour. Barry managed to get it down.

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"What happened?" he asked, his eyes fluttering, struggling to focus.

"Something went wrong. I don't know what. I need to go back for the others, but I need you to do exactly what I tell you."

Barry nodded.

Digmaster opened a 5x5x5 hole in the road. Wayne pushed two more Healing potions into Barry's hands and pushed him into the hole. Then he sat Outlawson directly on top of it and left the football bots to guard.

Wayne had never tested his limits in this kind of oily smoke. Did his number of hitpoints matter if his lungs filled with toxic fumes or was bad air quality something Ice Combat Suit could protect against? Didn't matter. No time.

Orienting himself with his HUD map, Wayne mentally charted the order he would grab the bodyguards. He hadn't tried carrying three people at once before, but he believed he'd be plenty strong enough.

A red dot blinked to life at the center of the chaos. Then another. And another. They poured out of where the glitch puddle would be, if he read his map right. Dozens of health bars labeled simply "zombie" filled his HUD. He dismissed all of them.

The three bodyguard dots became two. One had been mobbed by red dots, eaten by zombies most likely.

Wayne launched himself toward the chaos as mobs closed on the other two. With the black smoke, there was no way they could see to fight.

"Call out!"

The screams of both bodyguards followed immediately after. Wayne used their voice and his HUD to aim himself. He bashed through several mobs on his way to them, triggering the piercing whistle of Personal Foul from Pat Riley Basketball, but he still couldn't see what he was fighting, and he doubted zombies were affected by an aural attack. All he felt was their bodies bouncing off of his. It cost Wayne a few hitpoints to use himself as a weapon, but the loss was negligible.

Working from feel alone, he gathered that the zombies were roughly humanoid shaped with a weight that felt similar to a ratman.

Wayne wrapped an arm around one of the bodyguards and threw him over his shoulder. He bounced into a few walls and tripped over roots, rubble, and rocks, but he soon reached the second.

This guard had managed to get farther away from the glitch puddle than the others, so Wayne needed only one Blitz to get him and the other bodyguard beyond the smoke. The red dots, meanwhile, continued to spread, and a small swarm moved toward Wayne and his rescues.

Three of the monsters burst from the smoke. One was on fire, and the other two were burned and mangled.

Zombies.

Zombies dressed in Earth clothing. One of the monsters wore the remains of a stewardess uniform, and the other had sweatpants, a hoodie, and a single Adidas slide sandal on its foot. The flaming zombie was indistinguishable as anything other than a large man.

Missile.

Missile.

Missile.

After he put down the three nearest zombies, Wayne summoned both Skycats and ordered them to patrol the perimeter of the smoke, taking down any zombie that attempted to wander off into the forest. For a brief moment, Wayne considered using his Fire Extinguisher spell from It Came from the Desert to fight the flames, but that only produced the spray of a single handheld fire extinguisher. A plane crash needed thousands of gallons of specialized liquid chemicals. No way was he putting it out.

By the time Wayne got the bodyguards to Outlawson, one was unconscious from the smoke, and the other was mostly delirious. Wayne forced his last two Healing potions into their mouths and stashed them in the hole with Barry.

This was a terrible rescue effort, Wayne thought to himself. If he had brought the Zeroes, like he knew he should have, Armond could treat the wounded, Fergus could use wind and water magic to at least redirect some of the smoke, and Margo could snipe zombies to her heart's content.

"Can't talk," Wayne began in an all-party Voice message. "Giant glitch puddle in the Gentle Forest, mega explosion, and zombies. Use the Gitna Quick Gate in my inn room, tell them what's happening here, and bring help."

"Roger that," Armond replied. "Everyone, drop Wayne from your message to keep his comms clear and get back to the train!"

Wayne reassessed.

Barry and the bodyguards were alive. Inhaling jet fuel smoke couldn't have been healthy, but that was better than being dead. The zombies were a concern, but if they were all like the few he had put down already, the Skycat duo would be sufficient, both in containing the spread and in ensuring that none of them got to Outlawson.

His first option was to abandon the scene. That would be the fastest way to get the civilians to safety and to medical help, but how many more people would suffer if any of the zombies found their way to a town and started an outbreak?

The second option was to eliminate all of the mobs. There were maybe a hundred of them in total, and many of them were still in the smoke. Wayne had the mana to carpet bomb the scene with Dynamite, but that still wouldn't do anything about the fire. Was the Gentle Forest in danger here?

Wayne wasn't sure. Jet fuel was enough to melt steel beams, so surely it was enough to start a forest fire, or were these trees too green and healthy to be susceptible?

If he could just put out the fire, he could make a more informed decision about what to do next. As it was now, he was operating under radically incomplete information.

But how long was it reasonable to leave survivors stuffed in a hole?

Wayne smiled. He didn't have water, but he had a hell of a lot of dirt.

Blitzing into the sky, Wayne guessed approximately where the center of the wreckage was and emptied 43 units of sand and dirt out of his Digmaster ability. Well after all of this chaos was addressed, Fergus did the math on how much material Wayne dumped on the fire and estimated it was in the realm of 300 tons.

That sounded like a lot, but all it did was reduce the volume of smoke slightly.

Damn it. This was hopeless.

Wayne returned to Outlawson and his bots. He dismissed all of them.

In the survivor pit, Barry was somewhat lucid while the two bodyguards were unconscious. Wayne reached down and pulled each of them out of the hole with one arm.

"I need you to hold on to me like a koala," Wayne said.

"What's a koala?"

"Uhh… Imagine you're a backpack but I'm wearing you weird and have you in the front. Hang on tight."

Barry did as he was told and without argument, which was refreshing. Wayne hoisted a bodyguard onto each shoulder and Blitzed over the canopy.

His strength stat made it feasible to carry this much weight, but the distribution was awkward and his Blitz ability consumed more mana due to the extra weight, a variable Wayne had never considered before, but that didn't matter right now. He had to get the survivors as close to Gitna as he could.

Wayne soon broke free of the forest and was relieved to see a caravan of wagons approaching, likely on their way to Cuan. He landed in front of several very confused merchants and set the survivors on the ground.

"There's undead in the forest! Take these survivors and get back to Gitna as quickly as you can!"

Rather than wait for a response, Wayne raced back to the crash site.

"Armond, there's a merchant caravan with three survivors. They are turning back to Gitna now."

"Got it."

The cluster of zombies had expanded considerably in Wayne's absence. The Skycats could only do so much with so many trees blocking their shots, but they had at least succeeded in mostly containing the outbreak. Wayne did a quick perimeter check and found only three zombies that had shambled well away from the group.

He cut them down and ran through the forest chopping up the others. It was a tedious effort, taking a full thirty minutes to eliminate them all. With that done, he switched his Skycat's to Fire Extinguisher and applied Super to multiply the volume of their output. Wayne did the same for himself and dumped as much as he could on the fire.

The smoke subsided somewhat, but the effort made Wayne feel faint. He activated Burner Max from ESWAT to replenish his mana, but quickly ran that dry as well. All told, he had to rest and recover his mana six more times, resummoning Skycats every round, to get the crash site down to a smolder. At some point in the middle of that effort, Armond informed him that the survivors were stable. Even if they rode hard on horseback, however, the Zeroes wouldn't reach Wayne within 24 hours.

That was fine. He could wait. The zombies were now truly dead, and the fire didn't seem in danger of spreading anymore.

Wayne was more than happy to sit his ass down, staying close to be certain the glitch puddle didn't introduce any new crises to the Gentle Forest.

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