✅3️⃣ Treating the Babysitter [Camp NaNoWriMo July 2023]

8. First Night

This chapter is dedicated to realliljennie. Thank you for all your support!

"Come on!" Claudia begged, staring at the screen. For just a couple of seconds, her game was in the hands of the random number generator, and it was the third time she had attempted this sequence now. She didn't want to admit that it was a skill issue, but she always seemed to end up depending on luck sooner or later.

"You can do it," Adam said reassuringly. "You've been doing great, it's only a little setback."

And then the animation on the screen finished; numbers of damage flashed up, and Claudia could breathe again as she saw that her character was still standing.

"Should I use the railgun?" she asked. "I won't survive another one of those, but I don't know if we'll need it later."

"I would," Adam answered. "It looks like this guy's stats are pretty high. But you're the serious gamer."

"Not that skilled with JRPGs, though," Claudia laughed, activating first a medical kit and then the railgun from her inventory. "Right, let's see if we can do this."

The battle only lasted for a couple of minutes longer, and when the assassin finally tumbled off a cliff, Claudia put the controller back down on the desk.

"Wow," she said, "That was a tough one." But there wasn't much time to relax, because they were already watching the following cut scene.

"Kind of cheesy," Adam said, a few seconds later. "Hamming up the noir elements a bit. And the villain monologue from grey face, that's a bit much. But, well... it sells the atmosphere."

"Yeah," Claudia nodded. "You know what's odd? For an Aegis game, anyway."

"I don't know," Adam answered, thinking back over all the meetings, plots, and enemies they'd come across so far. "It's been pretty political, but then there was a trace of that in SC:GO, and they already teased there's going to be more of that in Go2."

"We've had criminals extorting the local government over shield maintenance," she said. "Contraband, and two assassination attempts. And now sabotage of the colony's weapons leaving them open to alien attack. But every enemy we've fought so far has been a criminal or soldier. The fear of aliens is woven right through the culture, it dominates the characters' thoughts, but we haven't seen them. At all."

"There was the alien autopsy thing?" he mused. "But that's an alien corpse they want to study, and all the factions arguing over it. "You're right. We were wondering if the enemy would be zombies, lizardmen, or roaches. We never considered humans. Although... maybe we're going to find out that some of the lizards have got disguises to pass for humans. Like Risotto, he looked big enough to have some kind of animatronics under his skin, and you know there's that conspiracy theory that says some of our politicians are lizard people. Maybe they're going to play that straight."

"I hope not," Claudia answered with a laugh. "And the don's name is Rossietto. Did you seriously just call him..."

"It's a joke," he answered, but he could tell Claudia wasn't sure whether he had genuinely misheard the character's name. "But yeah, it's interesting to have people on both sides. Part of me's kind of hoping there turns out to be aliens pulling the strings, because that'll lead to some epic boss battles. But part of me likes that it's more grounded, with these guys so selfish that they'll put humanity at risk of extinction just to turn a profit."

"I don't think the shriekers would do that kind of sneaky stuff. Their worldview has always been so alien we can't understand them. But it would be interesting. Lizards, maybe, we know nothing about them. But I think that would be kind of on the nose, with all the conspiracy theories. Maybe... I don't know. Crab people?"