Railguns were pretty simple, truth be told. They worked via a pretty basic principle applied to a logical extreme - guided magnetic propulsion. You built up an electric charge with a ferrous metal, usually a chunk of iron, stick it between some 'rails', which acted as the barrel of the gun, then you let the sucker fly at whatever had the misfortune of being in its path. As a weapon, it had a lot of potential. The strength of the shot was entirely determined by the charge that went into it as well as the structural integrity of the weapon.

Which was why, despite having oodles of potential, railguns weren't widespread. It was a two-part issue - firstly, as the technology currently stood, the power generation for the railgun was completely impractical. To get a single decent shot, you'd need to be lugging around an industrial generator. Too large, too loud, and not as convenient to use as any run-of-the-mill rifle.

Secondly was durability. A lot of electricity went through the guiding barrels of a railgun. Regular old iron didn't have the durability to withstand the necessary power needed to make a metal slug fly. Steel was better, but still not enough. But, then there were factors like conductivity to consider as well as structural integrity. Best case scenario, for the modern day railgun, you got one shot at full throttle. Maybe two if you were feeling lucky.

Why was any of this important?

It wasn't because I was a filthy dirty cheater who had magical technology to cut corners.

"This thing is badass," I said, pouring over the designs as I stood in the final boss room of Jill's game. The railgun was before me, a long rifle that was taller than I was, which was connected to a dozen power cells that were in turn plugged into the wall. Each power cell was twice the size of a barrel drum, capable of powering a skyscraper twice over.

"I'm not arguing that, but I don't see how you're going to lug that thing all the way to the other Hive," Jill moved, standing guard as she left me to my work.

"I could probably shoot them both from here with this thing," I noted as I looked over a terminal that contained the schematics. It was an impressive piece of technology. Utterly impractical at the moment, despite vague promises to the military to put the tech into a vehicle. A nice middle ground until they figured out how to make the power cells smaller, even if they had mostly figured out how to make the railgun survive more than a few shots.

"... you aren't going to, though, right?" Jill asked, trying not to sound worried. I just smiled at her, and she wasn't at all reassured. "Rude. Don't blind fire with this thing - you could hit something important. Like the self destruct button," she warned, her tone vaguely threatening.

"Yeah, yeah. No worries. I won't have to because I'm going to make this mobile," I said, gleaming what I needed from the schematics. Unsurprisingly, Umbrella had cut corners. They created a conductive thermal paste on the inside of the barrel and placed thermal vents, but the thing still overheated after every shot. Even if it spared the barrel from the worst of the heat damage.

"You said that. How exactly?" Jill asked, her shotgun resting comfortably against her shoulder at her post.

"I'm going to take a page out of Umbrella's book and steal their intellectual property," I answered, looking over the power cells now. "Whoever they stole this from was smart. Smart enough that they had to have stolen it." Within each power cell was a miniature version of that doohickey that we saw on the elevator ride down. The power source for the Hives.

The internals were complicated, but their point of inspiration was clear - the flagellar motor. A biological motor that was probably the most efficient mechanism the human race had found, just on the microscopic level. Less practical on a larger scale due to environmental factors, which was something the power cell got around with a cooling system and a suspension fluid within the cells.

Jill snorted a laugh at that while I went to work.

"Sorry Dakka, but I'll put you back together better than ever." I told the old girl, patting her dented chassis before I started taking her apart. She was largely operated by magic, so that was fast and easy. Putting her back together was where things got complicated.

It would have been a colossal and time consuming pain in the butt if I had to redesign her from scratch. The whole 'take one month to create a magical item' rule wasn't just game balance for DnD. Magic was a finicky beast, and layering it as a stable enchantment took time and was a delicate process. Which was why the railgun would be two parts mechanical engineering and one part magic to make the whole thing more efficient.

To that end, the schematics shaved off what probably would have been months of tinkering. Leaving me to simply downsize everything into a mobile package, using magic to cut corners along the way.

First things first was giving Dakka an independent power source other than my magic. In theory, it would vastly increase her operation time beyond the hour she had now. I had to guesstimate a little bit as I recreated the power source that ran these super secret labs - the motor was impressive looking, but ultimately it was just two wheels spinning, one clockwise and the other counterclockwise.

That power would connect to the six power cells that I had implemented, placed along her chassis. In tandem, the power sources would work together to provide the energy necessary for the railgun. For the railgun itself, I mostly dismantled the one that Umbrella had already built. Each power cell was a shot of the fully powered railgun, and instead of twice the size of a barrel drum, I condensed the cells down to about the size of a mini-soda can.

When it was time to fire full throttle, the cells would plunge into the chassis to secure the deeper connection. Bingo presto - the railgun would get its surge of power. Downside was that I would have to wait about thirty seconds for the cells to cool off enough to do another big shot, but it was just my first design. I could buff out the inefficiencies after we saved the world.

But that was just the big shots. With regular shots, with the excess power, I could fire Dakka every two seconds now rather than once every six. Her flamethrower, sadly, remained the same since Dakka converted magic onto fire and I didn't have a recipe for super napalm I could slip into her design. Yet. Though, I did make room for increasing the efficiency of her healing radius later. Green, red, and blue herbs were a thing so it was an avenue worth exploring when I got to take a closer look.

In all, Dakka got some pretty nice upgrades. Nice enough that I felt comfortable going up against those unholy abominations to science.

With a pat on her chassis, I woke up Dakka. "Wakey wakey. How do you feel? Good? I tossed in some redundant plating for your armor. Should help you take a hit if you need to - might slow you down, but we can shed it if you need speed over protection." Dakka looked pretty different by the end of her upgrades.

She still had the spider legs, but jutting out of her chassis was the expandable railgun that was flanked on each side by three power cells. The armor made her a little bulkier and I estimated around a five percent reduction in speed, but it was worth the trade off. I had to protect the power cells first and foremost. Failing to do that could have… explosive results.

She went through a systems check and I glanced up at Jill, who was just staring at me from the door. I cocked an eyebrow, "What?"

"You're actually smart," Jill uttered, earning some stink eye from me.

"I feel like we've already had this conversation. And it's still hurtful the second time," I pointed out, standing up and stretching.

"No, Rude- you… you took apart a railgun, a bunch of power cells, and recreated that generator after seeing it for about three seconds." She said, gesturing around me. I had made something of a mess as I harvested the tech around me for parts to upgrade Dakka. It was something of a make do situation, so I mavericked my way to a functional prototype.

"They're not that complicated once you know the basics. Especially energy generation. When it comes down to it, most energy generation comes down to controlled explosions and boiling water," I said, wiping grease on my pants before pushing my overalls back up.

"No, Rude- thats…" Jill trailed off, looking at me with an almost concerned expression. "You might actually be the smartest person I've ever met."

"... that's a little sad, you know?" I replied, now looking at her with concern. If I was a real Lex Luthor super genius, I could do something like whip up a cure all to the T-Virus, alongside a distribution method, and kill the apocalypse in the cradle before anyone actually died. I even tried to go down the 'a bajillion contingency plans for every potential outcome' and what I ended up with was a bunch of trash that was barely worth the paper I wrote on it, much less the time I sunk in the dead of night trying to imagine scenarios that couldn't be defeated by someone moving a ladder out of place.

Instead, I was running around like a freshly decapitated chicken from one crisis to the next. None of which I had foreseen, and now, worse, I didn't have the hope that Alice would take care of my problems for me.

No matter how you cut it, I was kinda an idiot. Just a little bit. Like I was one-fifth stupid.

"... Okay, when this is done, we're going to have a conversation about what you consider smart," Jill decided, putting a pin in the topic. "For now, are we ready to take those things on?"

"About as ready as we can be," I said after a moment of thought. I would have preferred to have all my spell slots back before we went into what I imagined would be a dual boss fight. Then again, I'd also prefer to not have to fight those things at all. I had three spell slots counting my spell refueling ring, a suped up Dakka, and Jill with her protagonist energy. And, provided that Annette wasn't a mouth breathing lobotomite, she would follow through on the antiviral for the G-Virus.

"Sounds about right," Jill said, sounding like she was as aware of our odds as I was. But, there was nothing else to be done. As much as I would like to ignore the problem, we had to go back to the Hive and grab the server with all of the extremely incriminating information that happened to be stored on it. "Then let's get this over with already."

Yeah, that was probably the best mentality to have. We just had to do it.

On the bright side, on the way back to the other Hive, we got to check out Dakka's new and improved weapon.

So, that was nice.

"Get 'em!" I ordered Dakka as she gracefully crawled along the walls to get a clear line of sight, the railgun moving on the swivel I implemented to give her 360 degree attack range. The railgun fired every two seconds with a deadly hum and flash of light as it's projectiles were launched with pinpoint accuracy. Every shot struck a zombie in the head, popping them like a watermelon. It was actually a little gross, if I'm being completely honest. Just also undeniably effective as the sparse remaining zombies were swept up before either Jill or I had to do a thing.

So far, she was working like a charm. We just had to see if that held when we broke out the big guns.

The trip back to the other Hive was pretty smooth all things considered. A trip made all the more uneventful by Dakka clearing the few remaining obstacles from our path long before we discovered them. For the most part, I only noticed when I got a little influx of XP. However, the trip was a tense one as we prepared ourselves for stepping into the ring with two bioweapons. Two monsters that were designed to kill and only to kill.

Jill had a great game face. Better than mine as I found my foot bouncing as we rode the elevator back up to the first Hive. Nothing had changed in the odd sixish hours we were away, so that was a promising sign. As the elevator doors opened, we were greeted by Annette's voice through the intercom.

"I didn't expect for you to return," Annette admitted freely as we made our final preparations.

"Yeah, well… a promise is a promise. God damn it," I cursed, looking at the door that contained two boss fights. Like… this is how I knew I wasn't a super genius. A super genius wouldn't do something this dumb. "Is that antiviral done? We're going to need it, I'm betting."

"It's done. I… give me a moment," Annette said a few seconds before the drawbridge to the high tech lab began to extend. Jill and I shared a glance before Annette emerged from the lab, wearing what looked like a bandolier over her lab coat with a flair gun in hand. Her expression was uncertain as she waited for the bridge to connect before walking across from it, then speaking with confidence that her expression betrayed that she didn't feel. "I'll join you. This… all of this… I…"

Her lips thinned as she came to a stop, "I apologize for my suspicions." She said, swallowing whatever confession she had been about to make, and that was a giant red flag waving in my face. "I thought you were with Tricell, here for Umbrella's secrets for your own ends. When you went to the servers, that confirmed it for me, but… I doubt that's the case now." She said, her gaze flickering down to Dakka.

Jill's brow furrowed, "Tricell?"

"A 'secret' competitor of Umbrella's, and they have been for some time. There is significant overlap in our research, they frequently attempt to steal our discoveries. This would be a perfect opportunity for them to, and that's why I thought you were with them." Annette explained while I frowned - I knew that Umbrella had a competitor, but I hadn't known the name.

"What's with the air quotes around secret?" I asked, making Annette scoff dismissively.

"They place their logo on every available surface short of tattooing it to their foreheads. Every time they've stolen research or committed an act of corporate espionage, they never left much doubt that it was them who did it." She explained and I sighed.

It seems it wasn't just Umbrella that had been hitting the stupid juice. But that was a problem for another day. Currently, our plate was already full with the two very massive problems we were about to throw hands with.

I turned to the door to find that the bridge was extending and I rolled my shoulders. I started to think of a game plan, but… damn. This was whole kinds of dumb. But, leaving the two super massive monsters alone felt like asking to get bitten in the ass by them later.

"On the lowest floor, there is a disposal area. It's where we put anything that we couldn't recycle due to contamination concerns - they fill it with a powerful acid that we could use. Or, failing that, it won't need to be a fight in such close quarters." Annette volunteered and that sounded absolutely lovely.

"Alright. Let's get it done," I said, trading a nod with Jill before we let Dakka take point. A rough game plan was forming in the back of my mind, but I knew better than to try to detail the bullet points. We were walking into a true clusterfuck when it came right down to it. "I don't suppose you've been keeping an eye on our guests, have you?"

"No. When they realized they were trapped, the Tyrant began to disable cameras," Annette answered.

Well, I hadn't gotten my hopes up, but that was still disappointing to hear. "Figures," I complained under my breath as the doors opened at Dakka's approach. The lobby didn't seem to have changed too much in the past couple of hours, except the smell of dead bodies got a bit worse. I followed Dakka while Jill checked out the elevator shaft that the G-monster tore open when it dropped an elevator on us.

She shook her head, and that was a bit reassuring it wasn't laying an ambush. Just a bit, though, since it meant we had no idea where the two monsters were.

"Easiest way to do it is to make them come to us," Jill ventured.

Yeah… "We can grab the server on the way," I agreed as Dakka made her way to the staircase. The door opened with a downright painful squeal of the hinges, but it seemed nothing took notice of it. Stealing a glance over the railing, I didn't see anything and that was starting to bother me. Just a bit.

With Dakka leading the way, we slowly made our way down the stairs down towards the server room. Nothing seemed to have changed at first, until we opened the door to the floor to find the door to the server room was ripped off the hinges. Jill let out a hiss of breath, already knowing what we were going to see. It was still unpleasant, though.

"Well… shit," I cursed, looking into the server room to find that all of the servers were destroyed. Torn apart like they were made out of playdough and scattered about.

"This must be in its mission parameters - Tyrants- they're not smart. Or aware. They have some rudimentary problem solving, but…" Annette started, a note of panic leaking into her voice. That didn't sound good. "If that's within its mission parameters, then… it's not going to stop until the Hives are destroyed. Anything incriminating would be a priority target."

I sucked in a slow breath, absorbing that bit of bad news without much fuss while Jill narrowed her eyes. "How do you know it was the Tyrant?"

"Because David isn't- he's-" Annette started and stopped, a note of emotion leaking into her voice.

"David?" I echoed, glancing at her. Wait, did she know patient zero? That was a pretty big thing to keep a secret.

However, before I could ask, there was a loud screech of metal followed by a thump that turned my blood to ice. My heart lunched in my chest as all of us immediately looked to where the elevator was down the hall, finding that the busted elevator had been flattened by something dropping down on it.

With that something stepping out of the elevator shaft.

It was Mr. X - though, he looked a bit worse for wear. His hat and trenchcoat were gone, he was missing an arm and a good chunk of his face. Any good cheer from the fact that the two monsters evidently didn't play nice with each other was short lived as jutting from the stump of the ripped off arm at the shoulder was a large eye, with six whip-like tentacles tipped with what looked like jagged white bone framed around it. Instantly, I understood what had happened - the G-Virus had infected Mr. X.

"Run," I started, taking a step back. "Run away!" I shouted, roughly shoving Annette forward as Mr. X started to follow. The whip tendrils lashed out, almost at random and they were fast. With the crack of a whip, I watched as the concrete had a chunk torn out of it, telling me that I wouldn't survive a direct hit, and worse, as soon as the first tendril lashed out, the second and third were already on their way.

"We need to take it to the disposal area!" Jill shouted as Dakka covered the rear. Dakka struck Mr. X in the chest, stalling his advance just enough that I only felt the wind of a whip as it nearly struck me in the back of my head as we fled. "Which way?!"

Annette answered with action, sprinting back towards the staircase, though not before she posted up by the door and aimed the flare gun. She shot it, striking Mr. X in the chest. Steam began to waft up, letting my hopes rise just enough to make it bitterly disappointing that Mr. X pressed on like he was the Juggernaut. There was a note of panic in her expression, making her freeze up until Jill shoved her through the door.

Fucking fuck! "Dakka, full throttle," I ordered, making Dakka plant herself to secure her footing. The power cells glowed an ominous blue as the railgun fully extended. Then, like nuclear fuel rods, the power cells plunged down and the railgun glowed blue for a moment before a beam of blue light erupted from the barrel, electricity crackling as the ground around Dakka buckled with the recoil of the shot.

Mr. X was struck in the chest with explosive force, punching a hole into him - but, because of Dakka's low angle, his head was struck as well. A line was carved out of Mr. X, as well as the wall behind him, and the ceiling. Flesh sizzled and the blackened bits glowed red with heat.

Which made it that much more alarming with thin spider web strands of flesh erupted from the injury, holding the top half together. Each interlocking point bearing an eyeball.

"Okay. That didn't work. Dakka, cheese it!" I said, going back to Plan A, which was running for our lives.

The thirty second counter began now, Dakka rapidly cooling off as she followed after me. Jill was waiting for me, gesturing for me to follow. "We have a problem - big guy won't go down. Just took out his chest and head and he walked it off!"

"It's the G-Virus! The Tyrant has been infected - I doubt that the body is anything more than a protective shell at this point," Annette shouted back at us as she led us through the halls. The sound was punctuated with the door behind us getting ripped off of its hinges and accompanied by the fast but steady thumps of heavy footsteps.

It would seem that Mr. X had figured out how to jog.

Terrifying.

"Then we crack the shell. How do we crack the shell?" Jill asked us both as I glanced over my shoulder to find that Mr. X was catching up frighteningly quickly. With a mental order, I had Dakka target his knee as I counted down the remaining seconds until she could fire again. At exactly thirty seconds, I had her fire regular shots at the appendage in rapid succession. Each one struck like a sledgehammer, a testament to his raw durability. But, the knee was a weak point, even on a juggernaut. By the eighth shot, the knee gave out.

Only instead of coming off like I hoped, that same stringy flesh emerged to reconnect his leg. It wasn't a perfect heal, it was bulbous and unwieldy, giving Mr. X a pronounced limp, but it wasn't enough to stop him. Just slow him down a little.

"The acid. It should dissolve the Tyrant's flesh, making the G-Virus vulnerable to the antiviral." Annette said as I saw that we were getting close to the disposal area.

"Should?" I echoed, not receiving a response. Right. Well, it wasn't like we had any better ideas. We rounded a corner with Annette busting through a door to reveal the disposal area - it wasn't quite the arena where Jill had fought Nemesis in the game, but it had the same general layout - a large concrete basin with acid reservoirs lining the sides for Umbrella to dissolve their science experiments. I did see one instant issue, however.

"Get ready to fill the basin," I said, not breaking my stride until I slid underneath a safety railing and flew straight into the basin itself. I landed with a roll, Dakka right beside me.

Jill slammed into the safety railing, "Rude!"

"Can't make a trap without bait. So, get ready to pull my ass out of the fire, okay?" I said, pointing to the hook and crane that they used to lower stuff into the basin. Jill looked vaguely murderous for a moment before she perked her head in a nod, just in time too because Mr. X slammed through the doors with enough force they were ripped off the hinges.

Dakka greeted him with a shot to the dome, making what was left of his head swivel to me. The large eyebrow at his shoulder blinked, and I think I managed to piss it off because the tendril lashed out, half pulling Mr. X towards the safety railing and tossing him into the basin with me. I gripped my Arcane Firearm with white knuckles, completely abandoning any thought of keeping a card up my sleeve.

I couldn't afford to keep anything in the tank.

I couldn't lie, though - seeing Mr. X rise to his full height, the tendril lashing out in agitation, tearing up chunks of concrete every time they struck? That had my heart trembling. But, I was already neck deep into it, the only way out was through.

Raising my Arcane Firearm, I opened with a fireball that struck the creature dead in the chest, making the thin sinewy flesh writhe. The tendrils began to lash out, but I left them to Dakka. I couldn't react to them in time, but Dakka could. Even better, we could see the source of them. As the whips lashed out, Dakka reacted, firing at the ones that came close.

With the power of her railgun, the tendrils were shot off, leaving the severed halfs to squirm on the ground.

It wasn't much of a relief as more tendrils began to grow from the shoulder, forcing me to step back slowly. I shot another firebolt, and never before had six seconds felt so long. I aimed for the giant eyeball given that looked like hell of a weak point, but Mr. X seemed aware of that as well with the flesh around the eye thickening to protect it from the heat. The fact that it could do that at all was more than a little alarming.

Just not as alarming as the increasingly close misses. Dakka fired quickly as we both fell back to Mr. X's rapid advance, the ground around my feet becoming filled with whip marks while the whistling of air seemed to surround me. Every second, I expected to feel pain. Or just an impact of some kind. Mr. X pressed on, unrelenting in the face of everything.

I was only half aware of it when my back hit the wall, startling me even though I had expected it. Mr. X took another step forward, his whips now striking the wall around me. I threw myself to the side as Annette activated the trap, but even as I did, I was forced to use my Spellwrought tattoo to absorb a blow that would have undoubtedly torn me in half otherwise.

What it did instead was knock me into the wall, driving the air from my lungs, and leaving me gasping. Then coughing, as the fumes of the acid sprayed out of the reservoir that Mr. X now stood before. It washed over him with physical force, as if he was being hit by a firetruck's water hose. From where I stood, I could see flesh slogging off of Mr. X, burning away in the fumes. I didn't have any time to watch, however - if that acid could do that to him, I could only imagine what it would do to me.

Picking myself up, I broke into a dead sprint towards the lowering hook, only for my heart to jump to my throat when Mr. X lashed out at me even as he was steadily being pushed back and dissolved. Reacting on instinct, I fired a shot at the ground and the noxious fumes of the acid were pushed back by a wall of wind.

Wind Wall kept Mr. X at bay, him and the acid- both tried to surmount the fifteen-foot-tall wall of wind that I had placed, connecting it to the drainage pit to the wall. It bought me enough time to jump to the hook, wrapping an arm around it as Jill began to haul me up. Mr. X, or the creature within him, roared in defiance, its body melting away and straining against the powerful acid.

It had abandoned any semblance of a humanoid form, vaguely reminding me of the Thing as it spread itself out to avoid the acid. It was crawling for the walls, trying to escape. Gritting my teeth, I had Dakka fire at the acid reservoirs. A hole punched through them, spraying more acid out and coating the seemingly invincible monster. Enough so that I was able to take aim with my Arcane Firearm.

I fired, burning my last second level spell slot, to cast Shatter at the monster. It was enveloped in a ball of pure noise, sound waves so potent that they tore the flesh to shreds. The creature howled in agony, the eyeball abandoning everything in an attempt to survive. It scurried towards the wall, wading through acid as Annette threw open all of the reservoirs in an attempt to drown it.

It managed to get halfway up the wall, only to be greeted by Jill with the flare gun. She took aim and fired, striking the eye straight in the pupil before the antiviral erupted over it. The eye began to dissolve, falling into the acid with a splash and…

I felt myself hit Level 10. I pushed away the feeling of making my level up choices, knowing that if I let myself relax, I'd slip from the hook. Even still, hitting Level 10 was such a relief, confirming that the creature was dead, that I nearly let go anyway with the tension bleeding out of me.

Jill brought me back over to the ground and I immediately collapsed, rolling onto my back and just breathing as the adrenaline left my veins. Numbly, I patted Dakka's chassis, thankful for her - if it wasn't for her, and those upgrades, then I would have definitely died just now.

Jill approached my prone form, looking over me for a moment, as if to make sure that I was okay. "Rude? I take it back. You're not smart. You're the biggest idiot I've ever met in my life," she said breathlessly, sounding relieved that I was in one piece.

I cracked a smile at that, "Told you so."

She looked away, fighting a smile at my easy acceptance, but she swiftly lost that fight. So, instead, she fought to swallow the chuckles bubbling up her throat, only to lose the fight there too. She couldn't help herself and started laughing, the relief getting to her too.

It was a nice sound. Totally worth risking my life for, I decided, breathing deeply as I savored the sensation of being alive. Something that I took for granted, I realized with hindsight. Yet, I couldn't bring myself to completely let go of the tension in my body.

After all, the day wasn't over yet, and things could always get worse.

...

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