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The Lus3rs entered the lobby of Alfred, Alfred, and Alfred, where the receptionist who had greeted them the last time must have been on break because there were two signs, one that said “Power Players” with an arrow pointing to the right, and another that said “Everyone Else” with an arrow to the left. Players began to queue up behind the closed doors leading to the combat area. Maxi stood in the power player line, and Daisuke’s eyes ballooned.
Farhad went over to collect her. “What are you doing? That’s only for Tier 6 and above!”
“What are they going to do, bill me?”
“We gotta protect the power players, because they can do the most damage.”
“And there are plenty of people to do that,” Maxi said, nodding to the other yellow shirts, who were now murmuring to themselves and pointing at them.
Yancy broke from the line. “Whatever you two are plotting, I want in.”
Maxi glanced back. The other line forming on the left was sizable now, and there were only about two dozen or so in her line. If the vein on Daisuke’s forehead could bulge any more, it would have popped. Maxi smiled and waved as the door on the right opened and the players flooded inside.
“You better have a good plan,” Farhad said glumly as they were swept up into the corridor.
“Trust me,” Maxi said.
They walked through a hallway until they got to a set of stairs that led to the balconies overlooking the conference room, where the bulbous lawyer waited while licking its lips at all the fresh meat below. Half of the power players took a corridor that led to the left-side balcony. Maxi and her group stayed on the right. There were more people on the floor than there would normally be during the raid. Daisuke directed Flav and Patti to protect the balcony opposite of the one she was on. Asshat.
None of the power players at the top were wearing yellow shirts like her, and she did get some stares from the people around her, but no one commented. The power players were wearing all manner of different armor and weapon combinations. Some had power armor right out of Science Fiction, whereas others wore plate, chain, leather, and everything one would expect from a fantasy game.
In addition to the Sci Fi and Fantasy armor, people were also wearing widely varied clothing, anywhere from strait-laced buttoned-up expensive suits to gutter punk apparel, and everything in between. She bet they were all magical in one way or another. Whenever she had gotten the chance to browse the store, she had seen things like Italian suits of protection or a fancy bag of striking.
While exceptional standard Company yellow shirts didn’t seem all that common and were probably stigmatized by the high Level players because they often cost less money than the equivalent in a more stylish article of clothing, the other players stuffed onto the balcony with her didn’t seem to treat her with anything more than a mild curiosity. Not that it mattered much to her—she wasn’t here for their approval. She was here to win.
After a brief survey of the room, she told her compatriots to follow her. They pushed their way to the front of the balcony, where the more heavily armored were guarding the narrow staircases. The tanks were no doubt wondering why she was in the zone where the boss could attack her directly.
Farhad and Yancy had a wary look and turned to her for some guidance. Maxi explained her plan to assault the lawyer’s head much like she had done the first time she had fought in the raid, but with a twist.
“That’s suicide,” Yancy gulped.
“I know,” Maxi said. “But I have a hunch.”
There wasn’t time to explain further, as the last of the players flooded into the room and the doors shut behind them.
The titanic lawyer chortled. “Your Company is nothing more than a cartel. We will take you down.”
Just like the other times she had been in this room, the bulbous man chopped his arms and his army of minions rushed the line. They shot papers from their briefcases that said “SUBPOENA.” The front line of yellow shirts went down as the papers cut off limbs, embedded in skulls, and sliced through the people below.
The people around her erupted with fire power while the tanks nearest her were slicing through the minions rushing the stairs. To Yancy’s and Farhad’s credit, they were enacting her plan and climbed over the rail just as the first wave of the paper machinegun fire went for their balcony. Whether it was for a lack of something better to do or loyalty to her, she couldn’t tell, but she was glad they did.
She ducked behind the rail as the subpoenas were too wide to go through the bars. Yancy’s eyes turned black, and he pushed Farhad out of the way of the attack. The kid got several papers embedded in his chest. Anticipating a boss attack and taking full damage... the kid had some chops. His body dropped to the floor and was swallowed by the stampede of minions. Farhad, on the other hand, jumped and managed to land on the conference table.
Maxi hopped over the rail next. Farhad was not overwhelmed with minions because they were all concentrated on the stairs leading to the balconies. Strangely enough, the center of the room was the safest place to be for a few moments, and that’s all Farhad needed. He howled, readied a dagger with one hand, and shot his gun with the other at the Jabba-the-Hut-looking man.
The hulking lawyer redirected some minions to engage Farhad. Her compatriot charged the boss, and Jabba fired up his power wheely chair and rolled to meet the man. Farhad fired shots at the guy that mostly bounced off his belly, with the occasional one causing a wound no more threatening than a paper cut.
Maxi shimmied her way down the rail of the balcony to where she thought the pair charging each other would meet. They collided, and Farhad embedded a dagger in Jabba’s belly. The bulbous man belched noxious green gas that took Farhad down as soon as it hit his lungs. Jabba turned to head back to its spot at the head of the table, and as he slithered away, the green gas seemed to have dissipated enough for her to jump.
She hurled herself onto the lawyer’s back, caught hold of his collar, and stapled herself to its back before it could thrash around enough to fling her off. This time she went for as much damage as possible and threw Mind Shard after Mind Shard, with her ethereal self-stabbing and hacking repeatedly into the back of the thing’s head.
Jabba’s arms couldn’t reach her to swat her off. Its paper machinegun attack went wild across the room, taking out friend and foe alike, as it couldn’t get a clear shot on her while he thrashed. The breath weapon needed some time to recharge, so another noxious plume didn’t happen until she was out of Psy points. She pulled her sword and stabbed the thing a couple of times until there was a belch.
The gas hit her, and she died, again.