Monsters and Maidens: A Simple Job
Introduction: Meetings and Missions
MISSION COMMENCING
INITIALIZING
LOADING SCENARIO
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The loading screen vanished as the world focused into perfect, lifelike clarity. Before anything else, Bretta Swiftsilver looked at her hand and flexed a part of her mind that only truly worked in the sim. The silver aura flared to life around her fingertips, pulsing with an almost living energy. No matter how many times she did that, it would never grow old. Always, it was the first thing she checked. Before the setting, before the teammates, before the mission, she needed to feel that power come alive at her fingertips.
They spawned on a boat, a long, flat river vessel whose low draft still sometimes scraped the bottom. NPC rowers grunted and pulled with inhuman precision, each stroke propelling the boat further upstream.
NPCs aside, Bretta was not alone. The other girls lined benches along either side of the boat. This was a blind mission, so Bretta had no idea who she’d gotten stuck with. They paid better, but it left her in the dark until she was too late to back out.
All of them were attractive women in their late teens, four in total not counting Bretta herself. Each wore a plain white leotard that did little to hide slender bodies and feminine figures. Their uniforms were all completely identical, save for colored trim around the fringes: red, yellow, blue, violet.
Great, she was stuck shepherding a bunch of newbies. And that’s why you don’t accept blind missions, she reminded herself, no matter how good the payout seems.
Of course the confused little ducklings turned to her just as soon as they got their bearings. Bretta was the only one here not wearing a recruits’ leotard, so obviously she was the only one with half a clue.
Bretta wore a brief white skirt that ended a few inches above her knees, revealing a good bit of her smooth, pale legs, especially whenever he had to run. Up top she wore a flexible silver corset low enough that it shouldn’t have contained her heavy bosom, but always would thanks to bullshit sim magic.
She liked the ensemble. It was stylish, distinctive, and surprisingly easy to fight in. If it showed a lot of skin, then oh well. She had no illusions about what they were hired for.
Fan-fucking-tastic these twerps were expecting her to be some kind of leader. Fine, whatever.
“Great,” she said, “a gaggle of rookies. Please tell me that at least some of you know what you’re doing.“
“I made it through the training mission ok,” the violet one said.
The girl in violet was short, the second smallest in the group. Busty, though, the audience would like that. Darkish skin. Middle eastern, maybe, or just someone with a strong tan. Not that their avatar always meant much. Bretta was pretty sure that green suit over there didn’t actually have matching hair in real life.
“Whoopty-freakin-do,” Bretta told her. “So you’ve managed to beat a few braindead NPCs, congratulations. Everyone does the training sim. Even the rawest screwup gets past it.”
“Um, actually,” green suit began.
Oh, this was going to be good.
“What?”
“I haven’t actually finished mine yet.”
“You’re kidding me. This is a joke, right?”
“I’m being serious,” she said, just a bit petulantly, “My recruiter said there was a spot open, and I’d better take it if I wanted to keep my job. There wasn’t time for training.”
So this was life now? Damn, she must have pissed someone off today.
“Well he’s got one thing right,” Bretta said, “As of right now, you’re all fighting to keep your jobs, and every last one of you is set for failure. More than half of you are going to be done by the time your first contract is up, hell, plenty of newbies don’t even last the first month. So if you don’t want to be out on your asses, then for fuck’s sake, do something to stand out. Win, if you can manage, or at least try to lose prettily.
“Because make no mistake, most of you are here to lose. There’s always more where you came from, and someone out there is already lined up to take your place if you wash out. Besides, you’re newbies. There’s always going to be people who love taking advantage of that.”
“What does that mean?” yellow fringe asked.
Yellow was a pretty black girl whose dark skin made an especially delicious contrast with her bright leotard. Lanky, she had long toned legs and marvelously shaped calves, not to mention breasts even bigger than violet’s.
“What that means,” Bretta said with a sadistic grin, “is that those aren’t NPCs out there. Those are players, and a lot of them paid good money for a chance to pop your in-game cherries.”
She chuckled wryly, only to realized that half the girls were on the verge of tears. Fuck! There was a reason she didn’t do the whole leadership thing.
“All right, look,” she said, “Let’s try this again. We’ll start with introductions, alright? I’m Bretta Swiftsilver, level eleven adventurer. Besides my combat skills, I also specialize in disabling magic.”
They stared at her blankly.
“The rest of you can speak up whenever you like,” she said.
Seriously, did she have to do everything for them?
“Ok, fine,” Red said, “I guess I’ll go first. I’m Ember, and I do fire magic.”
“Fire magic? Seriously? In the middle of a swamp?” she gestured to the muddy riverbank surrounding them. Red—Ember—shrugged.
“It was the first mission that came up.”
“Whatever, moving on.”
“Maisha,” said yellow, “I specialize in buffs and healing.”
Bretta nodded.
“A good choice, always useful.”
Assuming your team wasn’t a complete bunch of fuckups.
“Starblade,” violet said, “I stab people.”
“You don’t earn nicknames until at least level five,” Bretta chided.
“Not a nickname,” she said, “It’s what I registered as.”
“Of course you did,” Bretta sighed.
“I’m Jane,” greenie said, “I do wards and scouting.”
Bretta thwacked her spear handle against the base of her skull. It wasn’t actually possible to get a headache while in the sim, but this team was doing it’s damnedest to give her one.
“Your in-game name, you twit, don’t give out your- Oh for fuck’s sake. That’s what you registered as, isn’t it. Of all the things you could have picked...”
“Jane’s a pretty name,” the girl said defensively.
“Sure it is, whatever,” Bretta said. Guess everyone knew who’d get weeded out first.
“Ok, mission time. Everyone knows what we’re here for, right?”
There was a chorus of nods, but not nearly sure or confident enough for comfort. New plan, assume these idiots skipped the mission briefing.
“Basic recap time. We’re going to take the boat upriver to the bridge. We’ll be waiting for a slaver caravan that is passing through. Most of their slaves are NPCs we don’t have any reason to care about, but not all. Our primary target is a high level sorceress held in one of the wagons. We get in, ambush the caravan, and rescue the prisoner.”
“Hold on,” Ember said, “You said the prisoner’s high level, right? How are we supposed to win if they couldn’t?”
“Glad to see that at least one of you is thinking. Good news, though, the bad guys that captured them aren’t going to be here. All we have to deal with are some low level flunkies.”
“Um, what happens if we lose?” Greenie asked (Bretta refused to call the girl something so prosaic as Jane, even in her own head).
“Then they get carried off to the next camp as slaves until the next rescue mission comes around.”
“Wait, what if we get captured?” Ember said.
“Then you get carried off to the next camp, where you get the privilege of being their personal fuckhole until someone decides to rescue you. But since you’re just a bunch of newbies that no one cares about, you’ll probably be stuck there until your contract’s up.”
“Bullshit”, “What the hell”, “They can’t really do that, right?”
“Girls, did any of you actually read your contracts?” Bretta asked them. “Yeah, they can. They really, truly can. There aren’t a ton of slaving monsters, especially in the low level missions, but they do exist. If they catch and collar you, they get to keep you. So don’t get caught, alright?“
“Oh, and as long as I’m the one delivering all the good news today, I’ve got some more for you. Don’t expect a nice, simple mission. You’re a group of raw recruits, remember? That means you’re being set up to fail, all for the titillation of our beloved audience. Something is going to go wrong. They’ll try to throw in a surprise somewhere.”
“Like what?” Maisha asked.
“The hell if I know,” she said. “If I did, it wouldn’t be a surprise. The important thing is, we stick together. Or failing that, we find each other quick. You’ve all got basic magic affinity, right? So you should have your simple locater spell.”
Three hands went up.
“What the hell, Starblade? Are you for real?”
“Sword skills ain’t cheap,” the other girl shrugged.
“That’s why nobody takes them at level- you know what, fine, I don’t care. What matters is that those of us who didn’t completely fuck up our skill build need to stay grouped up.”
It came sooner than she expected. One minute they were in a nice, flat section of river, and the next they were rounding a bend to find a twisting, unnatural current threatening to capsize the boat.
“Whirlpool!” the NPC captain shouted. The rowers tried to pull away, but the current drew them in too fast to escape. Which was quite a feat, considering that they had been rowing upriver a minute earlier.
Bullshit sim mechanics, Bretta thought to herself.
She tried to organize an orderly escape, but the girls panicked. By the time they were ready to act, it was too late.
Should have just said fuck it and saved myself, Bretta decided as the boat tilted over the whirlpool’s lip. Then the twisting current began tearing the boat apart plank by plank, and that was that.