Lair by Carl Stubblefield (recommended reading TXT) 📕

he wouldn’t burn himself, he scraped the plate as clean as he could then set it aside. It wasn’t much, but his gnawing hunger had abated. He would need to find some more food soon, but he had other pressing concerns.

Finally sated, Gus looked at the plate and wondered how he could use it to build a more functional tool. He checked to see if it was cool and took it to the beach, and used some sand to scrub away the residue from his meal. Once it was relatively clean, he decided to give his new ability a try, since he didn’t have any other things to do.

He focused on creating small perforations in the plate, in an attempt to fashion a machete sized rectangle of the metal. He was expecting this to be a project that would take a couple days, since Wreck-It-Gus had been a slow process with the space-suit fabric. Surprisingly, it was much quicker, despite being metal. His focus points behaved almost like he was melting wax. He burned through his MP bar with only a couple perforations, but he was progressing much more quickly than before, when he was trying to remove the visor from the suit.

He tried the suit again to see if he had just gotten better, but it reacted in the same way it had before. That makes no sense, why is the metal easier to cut?

The more he practiced, the faster he seemed to be, using just enough energy to make a perforation and resting just long enough to maintain his MP before having to wait and recharge. Getting a feel for the timing, he felt himself relax. The waves crashed in the background, and a warm breeze blew occasionally.

Glancing at his watch, he saw that almost an hour had passed without him noticing. The sun was getting low in the sky, but he was encouraged with his progress. After forming the initial set of punctures and resting, he went back and created another set in between the previous perforations. A chime sounded just as he finished the second set.

You have leveled up the skill: Wreck-It-Gus to Level 2!

50 XP awarded

790 XP to level 3

Score! Gus felt the same feeling when he had power leveled in video games. But this was his reality now! And it would only get better, he anticipated. He could definitely get used to being a super. The future felt like it had no limits.

Looking at the alcove next to his camp, Gus found a flat section nearby. He placed the plate against the rocky shelf and, with the base of his palm, hit it sharply. It separated neatly, and he now had a three by eighteen-inch band of metal, a foot for the blade and six inches for a handle. The knife really didn’t have an edge, but the jaggedness of the perforations created a ragged edge that could function as a saw-like tool.

Gus first tried wrapping the end of the knife with blades from the palm frond, but the sharp points readily punctured through when gripped. Pulling his hand away, Gus saw a small red ‘-2 HP’ prompt stream up the right side of his visual display. The cut stitched together before his eyes. Amazing.

Tearing a section of the foam putty from the space suit, he wrapped this around and gave it a try. The putty had enough body to prevent hitting the knife’s core when clenched tightly.

It appeared to be about an hour before sunset, so Gus decided to finish for the day. He moved to the edge of the ridgeline, dragging a small section of the foam putty he had fashioned into a kneeling pad so he could sit in comfort and looked outward toward the sea.

A light warm breeze blew over him as he reflected over the hectic events of the last twenty-four hours. He had times throughout the day where he could feel hints of the physical changes the nanobots were providing, but more than that, he had a sense of accomplishment he could not recall ever feeling.

His father often berated him, and tried all manner of ways to goad him into doing various drills and activities that would supposedly help him. It felt good to feel like he was living life, even in these circumstances, rather than having it dictated to him.

He really had been running on auto-pilot for too long, just trying to stay under the radar and avoid being hassled or asked to do one more thing he couldn’t care less about. An excitement welled up inside with the new possibilities ahead. So much in his life seemed to scream failure. It was amazing now to accomplish so much, without anyone to ‘manage’ him.

A smile crept onto his face as he hugged his knees to his chest and watched the beauty of the sunset, not knowing the last time he had actually sat and watched one. He stayed there in stillness as it first kissed the horizon then slowly sunk smoothly below.

When he started to feel the chill of night, he picked up the foam pad and walked back to the shelter.

Chapter Seven

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

Day 1 9:37 PM

13:15:59 remaining

Gus dreamed of his life as a henchman. The crowded barracks. Long hours. Life as a second-string human. Gus felt a pang of homesickness for his friends, and though he was an introvert, he felt lucky to have found a group of close friends that didn’t drain his batteries too much. It was nice to have a couple guys with the same interests, and to fit in somewhere. A no-judgment zone where he could joke and people actually understood the obscure references he threw out. They had all met in their first job, back in their teens. There were four of them in all, including Gus; Jim, Chuck, and Dave were the others.

Jim was the instigator of a lot of their crazy schemes. Gus’ dream began with the time they had worked late on