I had investigated every likely Saw candidate in the past while I could. Rex had a public record a mile long for arrests for disorderly content, drinking and driving, and violence. In the film Art Blank had been hooked up to a spinal trap and sent to abduct the pair of them for a trap where they'd both been impaled by spikes, and Morgan, the wife, would bleed out if she didn't pull herself off, and Rex the husband would bleed out if he pulled the spikes out.
It was a very medically impressive trap that would have been a complete failure if any of them had organs in different places from the usual. I had to wonder how many Saw traps had failed because someone had gotten a kidney transplant and their inner organs were slightly off. Kramer wasn't even a doctor!
My organs were massively off. It was pretty disgusting. I could feel the parasite crawling inside me, see little bulges where some tendril poked, feel my inner parts go soft as it ate them. It had to be replacing them with something, because I wasn't feeling as bad as I could. I was fighting back with everything I could.
My plague doctor skill was leveling up more and more as it resisted, but it was much more advanced than me. My plague doctor skill was about at the level of a resident doing several years of work. This was an alien parasite built as a weapon of war by people thousands of years more advanced than humans. It was a losing battle.
By the time I was at the house, it ranked up.
Plague Doctor levels up! Plague Doctor Ranks up to Journeyman. New Perk options available.
Now my skill at medical matters was closer to a new surgeon who knew a few tricks and knew their way around a body. I checked out the new perks.
Toxic bowl. Take any toxic or damaging substance that's been inside you, and create a container to hold it. More advanced substances require more stamina. This can be used to create infection points. 12 points.
Accelerated spawning. You can use your body to spawn monsters much faster. Using stamina, enhance the growth of anything inside you. You suffer less consequences from their growth, and have a chance to mutate them for greater power. 12 points.
Not very useful. I guess accelerated spawning would do something, but I didn't really want to make a super alien spawn inside me. I checked my now upgraded older perks.
Poison maniac C. You have much more resistance to all poisons, with less resistance to rarer poisons, and can identify poisons by touch and taste. By spending stamina you can increase your natural immunity to a poison and learn more about it. 12 points.
Absolute purge C. Choose a disease, status debuff, or poison you have. Exert your will on yourself or another, and reduce symptoms to low levels and lessen any consequences. Using your increasing mastery of fungal parasites you can build more resistant tissue. Can be used quickly for more stamina. 12 points.
The first was very welcome, and I bought it, spending stamina to try and slow down the acid melting into me. Happily, whatever it was counted as a poison. I very slowly started to understand it more.
The first was mixed. I bought it, so that I could better try and clear the plague within me, but I didn't want to rebuild my body with fungal parasites with an alien inside me, because it would just steal my fungal powers.
With my preparations complete, and my new class choice locked for the moment since I had a while, I headed towards Morgan and Rex's house. It was a pretty run down suburban house. It was dark outside, so I had a good chance of ambushing them, especially with my Explosive Stealth skill. I decided to do a little test run of my weapon. Approaching the door, I checked it out.
Reinforced door. 1000 health. 200 armour. This door has been enhanced with steel to be much harder than most doors to kick down recently.
They'd upgraded security recently? Why.
I first checked no one was behind it, and then I pulled the plasma cutter out. I pressed the on button, and it lit up blue, three guiding lasers firing out from the centre. I pointed it at the handle, and triggered it.
A pulse of energy ripped it out and the wood evaporated, in a quiet hiss. With a quiet shove I walked inside.
+1 int for using a hyper advanced science tool to break down a door.
Neat.
That had worked better than I'd expected. I looked over the more detailed combat logs I had.
200 damage done to the lock.
That was more useful than I'd thought. Most things did damage to the substance in general. If you were lucky you could get a critical hit and slice something open, but most of the time you needed to chew through most of a person or object's hitpoints to do enough damage to break them.
This thing just focused damage on a small segment and ignored all armour. It was a pretty good weapon.
Their house was messy. Old fast food wrappers littered the floor and the walls were covered with grease stains. I could hear people pacing around upstairs, and speaking loudly, and smelled… gasoline.
I glanced in the kitchen as I passed it. Dishes everywhere, and a calendar with this week circled repeatedly. They knew? I glanced at the mail. Flipping through it there was a wedding vow renewal ceremony. I mentally hummed to myself Rex and Morgan sitting in a tree, G.
I carefully masked my steps to the paces upstairs. You couldn't truly conceal sound, not with any fluidity, but the secret of Explosive Stealth was using the noise of others or yourself to hide. So long as you were more quiet than them.
When I got upstairs I saw Morgan and Rex pouring gasoline over a couple who were similar in build to them and their I presumed daughter. The couple was gagged and bound to the floor next to their child. Jane, who was Rex and Morgan's daughter, was sitting in the corner shaking back and forth and crying.
"Gordon told us." Rex said, as he covered them with gasoline. "He told us this day would come. We can't let them get us. We need three bodies. You're it."
The man tried to struggle and break free. Morgan went over to him and kicked him. "Don't try to escape."
They were both psychopaths. Gordon and Adam had been preparing a number of the potential targets of Saw for me, just in case I had inhabited their bodies. In the movies we'd just seen a hint of what Morgan was like, but it seemed that when facing a common outside threat, together, they were worse. It was to be expected. Most domestic violence was mutual, and if you were willing to use violence on someone you loved, why not on strangers?
I needed to handle them quickly. I tapped into my Form of Horror perk enhancing my strength and speed by 10 each. 42 strength and 32 dexterity. 42 was a lot. I was near the human limit. I was strong enough to drag a car around. 32 was pretty decent. I'd be a top tier athlete if I put my mind to it.
I was also almost at the peak of Duelist advanced apprentice. I was about as good at fighting as a new blackbelt fighter who'd been to a few tournaments, but who (if I didn't have absurd stats) was just a stepping stone against the real experts. These were not real experts.
I dashed over to Rex, and smashed my fist into his chin. He picked up off the ground a few inches, and then flopped to the floor. Morgan spun around, her messy blonde hair swaying as she got a crazed look in her eyes. I was several steps away from her, and she managed to pull out a pistol and fire a single shot off, missing me by an inch as she
I grabbed the gun, shoved it to the side, and backhanded her to the ground, hitting hard enough to rattle her brain and knock her out as well.
Level up! 10 perk points granted, +1 stat.
Success.
I heard the crackle of a flame. The bullet had smashed into a wall, and a little flame was coming out of the paint. I used my technomancy skill, which gave me weak elemental control, and snuffed out the flame, and shut off my enhanced strength and dexterity from Form of Horror, not wanting to waste my scarce resources.
More was coming from the room over. We didn't have long.
We were trapped in here. I could escape, but I couldn't really drag the gasoline soaked couple out, or even cut my losses and drag Rex and Morgan out since they'd spilled some gasoline on themselves, without risking a boom.
I could try to put out the fire, but my technomancy skill was not especially powerful, and fires could spread quickly.
I shut the door, and looked around.
There was a bed in here, and a window. I ignored the cries of Jane and the other family as I smashed an elbow into the window and shattered the glass. With a quick motion I grabbed the mattress and tossed it outside. I then went for Jane.
"Your parents are psychos, you need to survive. I'm gonna toss you down."
"What… are they dead?"
"No. Call the police after this. You're safe from your parents now."
I then dropped her out of the window onto the mattress. It would hurt, but I could pump a load of stamina into her after if needed, and it was better than burning.
The fire was crackling more strongly now. I guess they'd left some gasoline in the hall.
I quickly picked up the couple and their child, and dropped them down onto the mattress as well.
The door had smoke coming out of it. This house wasn't doing well.
I grabbed Rex and Morgan, tossing both over one shoulder, and tapped my enhanced strength again. Using my utterly monstrous 42 strength, I lowered myself down to the ground, using one hand to climb down to the ground.
I patted the four people who had been dropped down. Jane was sitting dazed on the ground. She had a twisted ankle, but with a pulse of stamina into her and Absolute Purge I cleared that up. The father had a fracture in one arm, which I closed up.
Jane looked up at me, as I held her parents over one shoulder.
"You're Jigsaw, aren't you?"
I smiled down at her. "Yes. I am justice. Your parents are going to be trapped. Spread the word."
She smiled. "I wanted to kill them. They deserve death." She said, fire in her voice.
I knew from statistics that children almost never killed their parents unless they were the victims of extreme violence. Jane clearly was.
"Remember, you don't need to forgive your abusers. Keep that hate deep inside you." I nodded to her, and walked off, bundling the two people into the boot of my car.
+1 wisdom for a morally correct teaching to a child, and freeing her from a fire.
One step closer to saving the world. I better get a reputation rank up from this.
The way the plasma cutter works is it does damage to whatever body part you fire it at only. So, while a tough person or door may have 2000 hitpoints, unless their wrist has 2000 hitpoints, it's getting sliced off.
See you Wednesday.