The Missile 1
Copyright© 2025 by Zen Master
Chapter 7: RoUS
We were walking towards where I thought the exit was -but maybe just ‘marching towards our doom’- when Cindy asked ‘Has everyone seen ‘The Princess Bride’?” She got some grunts, yeah, we’d all seen it. It was a pretty silly movie, but it was good fun.
“These things aren’t giant rats, they are giant raccoons, but they are still merely ‘Rodents of Unusual Size’.”
We all laughed at that. In “Princess Bride”, the heros have to rescue a princess before she is forced to marry the wrong person. They have several idiotic adventures, and at one point they have to fight some giant rats. Someone who has spent WAY too much time studying in the library instead of being outside in the real world insists that they aren’t giant rats, they are merely ‘Rodents of Unusual Size’.
Someone had to say it, so after a few seconds to let someone else do it I said “Have fun storming the castle!” That line always makes me laugh, and I guess it makes everyone else laugh too.
We didn’t get far before Cindy’s ‘Bless’ spell faded out. We stopped right where we were and formed our defensive circle, and just stood around until the five-minute cooldown period was over and she could ‘Bless’ us again.
Once she had ‘Blessed’ us, Eric said “That spell is really nice. I’ve never Dived with a Healer before, and I can see why Healers are so popular.”
After that we sped it up some. There should only be one fight left, the “Boss” fight against somewhere between 3 and 10 RoUS, and my ‘goal’ sense said our goal was right ahead of us. We wanted to get this done before the ‘Bless’ spell wore off again.
It wasn’t long before we came to a clearing that had a huge tree in the middle. Eric had us all stop, and, yep I was pretty sure that that tree was our ‘goal’. We had to capture that tree to get out of this level.
We all dropped our packs and stood around talking for a couple of minutes, trying to decide what the best plan was. Margie settled that by asking Cindy “How much longer on your ‘Bless’ spell?”
“I’m not sure. Oh, I’ve got 7 Mana so it won’t be much longer.”
Margie suggested “Let’s wait until that expires, then the cooldown, and move in right after we get a new ‘Bless’. I’m already topped off, and Matt should be soon if not yet.”
“Almost. I’ve got 5 of 7 Mana.”
Eric made it official. “That makes a lot of sense. Your fire is really helpful, but I think that Cindy’s ‘Bless’ is the most powerful thing we have. Let’s do that.”
So, we stood around some more. I could definitely tell when the ‘Bless’ ended. It was clear that Matt could, too. Cindy gave him another ‘light Heal’, but she said it wasn’t really doing anything for him except helping with the pain. He needed a real doctor in a real hospital.
While we were waiting Matt said “I’m up to six Mana. I can throw fire twice before I put my staff away.”
Eric ordered him “We’ll do one combined attack on the tree to get their attention, and then when they come out, you do the other in front of them. Maybe the splash will get some. Cindy, ‘Bless’ us when you can. When that’s active again, Margie, you’ve got better aim. Try to hit some if you can.”
That worked well at first. Matt and Margie fire-bombed the tree and six Rodents of Unusual Size dropped out of it. They started scampering towards us -we were well clear of the tree so we could see them coming- and we got ‘ready to receive visitors’ as the gamers say. The smaller kits fell behind so it was really just one for each of us three front-liners with another wave of three right behind them.
I was just about to launch mine into deep left field when Matt screamed “Behind us!”. There was nothing I could do. I had to take the one coming for me first. I didn’t even have time to look around.
He jumped at me and I shifted to hit him “Up-side tha’ hai-ed” and risked a look around. There was a fucking PONY about to jump on Cindy.
I think I screamed “Shit!” I don’t know, I certainly thought it. Forever after that, whenever I was talking about this fight I used a line from one of my parents’ old Bill Cosby albums. “ ... but, it doesn’t matter whether you have clean underwear or not if you get in an accident. That’s what an accident IS. First you say it, and then you do it.”
I’m pretty sure I used my ‘Flight’ spell to meet him in the air. I’m sure the surveillance cameras would show how fast I got there. If the Portal System would let us watch them.
Well, I landed on the pony as the pony landed on Cindy, but he landed with a crushed head and didn’t do anything besides just knock her down and rip up her coveralls.
While I was trying to get up, Matt -he of the bent wing and machete- took on the 1- or 2-foot ‘kit’ that had been coming to me or Cindy. He whiffed when the kit stopped short and then jumped after his machete had gone by, but Margie poked the kit in mid-jump with her staff and knocked it down. Before it was ready to try again, Eric was there and pretty much cut it in half.
By the time I had gotten to my feet, it was all over. Eric had spun around a couple of times and announced “Clear all around! Anyone hurt?”
I helped Cindy get out from under the pony -which had splattered its blood and brains all over her- and stood by while she checked herself out.
Eventually she said “I hurt in a lot of places, but I don’t think anything is broken. How are you?”
Huh. “I’m fine. I landed on a nice soft pony. Which landed on a nice soft Cindy.”
“So, it’s YOUR fault I got smashed into the ground!”
“Well, my Dad says it’s always the man’s fault anyway. Doesn’t matter what really happened, it’s his fault.”
Margie interrupted us with “The exit is open!”
We could leave! After we collected our loot, though.
Cindy asked “Where’s my pack? I have got to wash this off!”
I helped her take her helmet off and poured water over her as she washed her face somewhat clean. There wasn’t much we could do about her helmet or her clothes. I think every one of us had been spattered with RoUS goo at some point or another.
After she was clean enough to put her still-filthy helmet back on, I swapped my mace for a machete and went around making sure all the Rodents of Unusual Size really were dead. The ones I’d hit had crushed skulls, but I still poked them. I figured that, no matter how good they were at playing possum, they had to react when they got stabbed.
I really wanted to cut off the Boss’s head and take it home to get mounted, but it was pretty smashed up. Maybe some of the teeth, or the claws? Those things all looked pretty scary. Besides, I figured that Matt was going to have to do some explaining about how his arm got sliced up on the inside when the outside was perfectly healed.
So, I borrowed Eric’s baby axe and chopped the head and paws off the Boss. Once I had them loose, I tried to save them in my inventory. The head stayed, but the paws went along with one of the fangs. My inventory went from 1/100 to 6/100, listing one machete, four “RoUS paws”, it literally said “RoUS”, and one “Unidentified Tooth”.
Hey, didn’t I used to have TWO machetes? I actually complained about that, explaining the problem until my own teammates started laughing at me.
George said “Dude, you have a machete hanging from your belt!”
Oh. Well, never mind then!
I took the sheath off, saved the machete to my inventory, and put the empty sheath in my pack. NOW my inventory said I had two machetes. Okay, that’s my bad.
We spent some time searching the area before we left. Me, I took a good long look at both stairways. One went up and out. The other went down to the second level. Other than up or down, they looked pretty much the same. Hell, the ‘up’ stairs could BE the stairs we came down for all I could tell. Maybe they moved.
I didn’t think taking the stairs down to Level Two would be a good idea. In fact, I was going to argue strongly against it, if someone suggested it. We weren’t ready. THIS level had almost kicked our asses several times.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but Cindy was talking with Eric and Margie about tonight.
Eric had his own room at the hotel we were staying at. As Team Captain, he was going to host a “survivor’s party” for all team members after we’d all showered and eaten. We were all adults. We had all fought for each other, we had all risked our own skins to protect a teammate who needed help, and we would be treated like adults.