Chaotic Escalation (Worm/Chaos Gacha): Chapter 2 (Patreon)

I spotted the Simurgh in the distance and cursed that cosmic bastard a thousand times more.

I shifted into petals and tried to run, but it lasted all of three seconds before I had to cancel it.

A dozen pieces of rubble screeched toward me. Igris moved quickly, blade flashing as he cut the barrage apart and sent debris spinning through the air. I dropped to a snail’s pace because any attempt to leave only brought bigger and bigger waves of rubble crashing down.

I bolted for another cluster of buildings.

Once I was out of sight, I turned into petals again and raced through the streets, weaving between alleys to stay shielded from incoming fire. Igris stayed at my side, sword rising and falling whenever something came at us.

I could barely track the attacks, but I could smell the gas leaking from ruptured stoves and smashed cars he swatted aside.

Flames rolled across the street, turning entire shops into collapsing fire pits. Igris held the line, batting the makeshift artillery away and carving apart anything flung toward me, but none of it got me any closer to escape. I kept stopping and starting, stuck in the same loop.

How do you outrun someone who knows the future?

I forced myself to ignore the explosions and screaming metal around me and search for an idea.

Maybe I could—

A scream cut straight through the thought.

A woman lay collapsed near an overturned truck, her daughter tugging desperately at her arm. Metal sheets from the wreck had crushed the woman’s leg. Her faint sobs told the girl to leave her.

Another explosion rippled down the street. Igris was busy with another salvo of flying cars and gas canisters.

“Igris!” I shouted.

He understood instantly. He dropped from the roof and covered me just long enough for me to break apart into petals again. I reformed beside the wreck and shoved burning debris away with my shoulder. The metal sheets were heavy, but I found a sliver of leverage and dragged the woman free. The girl clung to her mother, refusing to let go, but I kept pulling them toward the only alley that still had a clear path.

A notification blinked across my vision.

[Feat Achieved! From Zero to Hero!]

[+1 Silver Gacha Ticket]

Feats. So that’s how to get more tickets. Noted.

I turned to run back, but stopped as a circular saw blade whirred forward and halted a hair's breadth from my face. I froze. Igris caught it midair with telekinesis, a faint blue aura holding the blade still, literal inches from my skull.

One more second and my head would’ve…

I stumbled back, steadied myself, and pointed toward the alley.

“Run! Take your mom and run as fast as you can!”

The girl stared at me until her mother dragged her along, whispering frantic thanks. I didn’t stay to hear the rest. I took off. Igris was already ahead of me, sword low and shoulders squared, waiting for the next piece of flying death the Simurgh decided to throw our way.

I didn’t hesitate and ripped the ticket. This better be good.

[Aware]

|Rare Trait|

You have an enhanced sense of awareness, far beyond the average. You can easily tell when there is something wrong with your body; it is hard to catch you by surprise, and you can more easily tell what is going on around you.

For a moment, I stumbled as my brain literally evolved. Not improved senses, exactly, more like someone peeled a layer of fog off the world.

A small scratch stung on the back of my heel. Sixteen rebar pieces lay scattered around me. Two half-cut cars rested nearby. My eyes had not changed, but everything carried a hard, clean clarity.

I was still scared, but it was not strangling me anymore.

The new awareness made something painfully obvious. I was an idiot.

I reached into the air toward the pocket I somehow knew existed now. A golden apple pressed into my palm. I shoved it into my mouth and devoured it, a buttery aftertaste lingering for half a heartbeat.

Then everything snapped awake.

My body surged with energy so intense it felt like molten metal had replaced my blood. For a second, I wondered if this was what meth felt like.

Another barrage tore across the street. My eyes tracked every piece of debris with perfect clarity. Igris met it all with blade and force, carving rubble apart and knocking aside anything that might hit me.

I trusted him to hold the line, so I focused on what I had been missing while strangled by tunnel vision.

I could run. I could abandon Canberra and hope The Simurgh didn’t kill me on the way out. But she had already shown exactly what happened when I tried that. She nearly took my head off from ten blocks away.

Flashes of light bloomed across the city. Explosions rippled through the skyline. I could see capes swarming around the Simurgh, trying to harass her. Entire buildings drifted around her like an asteroid field. 

She still nearly killed me in the middle of all that. 

If I ran and she decided to chase me? That would be…

Ha. Fuck. A perfect catch twenty-two. Leaving meant dying. Staying probably meant dying too.

Then time to fucking gamble, I guess.

I broke apart into petals and cut toward the battle.

No rubble barraged us this time. The Simurgh seemed satisfied I was not about to bolt, which meant she was free to focus on whatever nightmare plan she had for the city.

Whatever it was, it was probably going to screw me over as much as everyone else.

So we ran. Closer and closer. The Simurgh’s scream drilled into the back of my skull like a vice, a nightmare timer counting down until I got mindfucked.

The chaos thickened as we approached. People who could not escape had clustered together in a single mass of panic. The Simurgh’s voice hit harder when someone was already emotionally unstable, so maybe that explained the madness. Or maybe people were just people, and this was what they did when the world collapsed.

Chaos everywhere. Screaming. Fists flying. Up ahead, an entire mob shoved against a single bunker entrance, trying to force themselves inside all at once. I could see several corpses on the ground, people were pounded over and bleeding out, or trampled.

Fucking Endbringer bastard.

I moved to help.

“Break it up.”

Igris nodded and tore open the worst fights with speed and power, lifting people out of the crush before they trampled each other. The intimidating appearance of a tall shadow knight was enough to break people out of the panic.

I forced my way through the mess and grabbed whoever I could reach, pushing them into something that resembled a line.

“Stay in a straight line!” I yelled. Most people kept their heads down under the looming shadow of Igris, and order began to crawl back into place.

As the mass of civilians rushed into the bunker, two capes dropped down nearby.

One was a woman in pseudo-knight armor, polished but dented. The other was a guy wearing a bandolier of knives with a thrown-together wild west costume.

“Where’s your armband?” the knight asked.

“I’m new,” I said, still pushing a dazed man toward the entrance.

They exchanged a look.

“I see. Then stay with us. I’m Aurora, and this is Slipknife. We’re running evac and defense. We will get through this,” she said, voice steady even though I could hear the lack of confidence under it. She stepped in and helped funnel the civilians.

“Thanks. You know what’s going on with her?” I pointed toward the battle.

“The Triumvirate is already here running interference. I heard something about a lab, but nothing else.”

“Oh my god, can you stop yapping and move your ass?!” Slipknife snapped, his leg tapping like he was trying to drill through the pavement. “Our timer is almost up, and we gotta leave. Right now.”

“We have barely been here for a couple of minutes. We are nowhere near the yellow zone in time. We can still stay for a few minutes.” She glared and muttered something about villains.

Slipknife didn’t reply. He just bit his nails and muttered under his breath, scanning every shadow like it was about to eat him alive.

I kept my eyes open for another attack while helping the last few stragglers to their feet. We were almost finished ushering people inside when Aurora barked a warning.

“Above!”

My head snapped up. A building and several cars were hurtling toward us.

“Igris, block it!”

He shot upward, metal groaning as his telekinesis bent the incoming mass into a safer arc. Aurora flung a shimmering barrier across the bunker entrance to reinforce it.

“Slipknife, get to–”

I turned to help a pair of civilians who had fallen when something prickled at the corner of my eye. Slipknife stood near the crowd’s edge, shoulders rigid, face drained of emotion.

Then he twitched.

And lunged straight at me without a word.

I dissolved into roses before the blade touched my neck.

“What are you doing?!” Aurora shouted.

Slipknife didn’t answer. His voice cracked in a broken mutter, and his eyes had gone mad.

Shit. He had already been Simurghed.

“Igris, kill–”

A massive crash cut me off. Igris was swatted aside by a truck and sent flying, his body vanishing under a collapsing building.

Slipknife came at me again. I braced to dodge in rose form, but the blade flickered as it nicked me. An ectoplasmic copy split off and sliced clean through one of the petals. Pain flared across my real body. Agony spread across my limbs, and I could see cuts crawling across each petal like fire.

I reformed and fell to the ground, heaps of blood staining the pavement. Lines split open across my arms and torso. Blood gushed out like a fountain, staining the ground red.

I tried to break toward Igris, but Slipknife mirrored every move I made. I didn’t dare turn into petals again. His power was the worst match-up for Petal Form.

I could feel it now. Several gashes streaked my arms and legs. One cut had nicked near my eye. If I had been a normal man, I would already be dead from blood loss. The Golden Apple was the only reason I could still stand, wounds closing almost as soon as they opened.

I tried to duck under him, but he had some kind of mover trick. He stayed on me like a shadow.

His knife hissed past my throat.

We slammed together, grappling in the middle of the street while the Simurgh’s song drilled into my skull. I did everything I could to not let that blade touch me again. If it struck something vital, I wasn’t sure the apple would save me.

Somewhere behind me, Aurora yelled something I couldn’t hear. A notification blinked across my vision.

[Feat Achieved! Aid the Shelter]

[+1 Silver Gacha Ticket]

I ripped the ticket.

[The Fool]

|Rare Familiar|

JoJo - The Fool is a... dog machine native american...? Looking stand that is actually formed out of sand, it can manipulate and shape at will, even being able to change its texture and colour. It can form as a barrier that automatically protects you, imitate people well enough to fool people familiar with them, and much more. The power of The Fool scales with yours due to their natures as a stand.

A wall of sand burst up between me and the knife, shoving Slipknife back. The Fool crouched beside me, shifting from rough sand to a hard metallic surface, its focus fixed entirely on the crazed cape.

Slipknife screamed and lunged again.

We fought through the narrow street. His knives shimmered with that eerie effect, each cut spread through flesh like rot, producing a thousand more. The Fool met each strike, letting damaged sand fall away before pulling itself together again, blocking, redirecting, swallowing blades whenever it had to.

Slipknife only grew more desperate. His eyes twitched with a mix of fear and fanatic intensity.

He charged once more. I broke into roses and kept every petal clear of his reach. The Fool pushed forward to meet him. Slipknife hacked at the sand over and over, but it made no difference.

Sand wrapped his head. I saw the moment he felt it, the pure instinctual fear.

For a moment, a thin thread of hesitation tugged at me. Then I crushed it flat.

“Finish it.”

The Fool tightened its grip. Sand compressed around him, packing tighter and tighter until the sphere had no give left. His movements pushed and scraped against the surface, frantic at first.

But slowly the vibrations softened and eventually went still.

The sand fell away, and I saw the corpse fall to the ground.

A soft chime pulsed in my ears.

[Feat Achieved!]

[Feat Achieved! Dead End Dodger!]

[x1 Gold Ticket]

Dead End Dodger. Figures. Precog Bullshit.

I wiped blood from my jaw and stared toward the distant silhouette hovering over the city. The Simurgh drifted there, quiet and perfect among the chaos, like she had not just tried to have me carved open.

“Still alive, asshole!” I yelled, flipping her off almost deliriously.

Now that awareness had settled in, everything clicked into place. The saw blade with its near-perfect timing. The only reason I survived was Igris’s telekinesis. Slipknife going crazy at the perfect moment. His power was the ideal counter to my rose form. The only reason I lived through that was because of the Golden Apple and The Fool.

I was sure of it now. The Simurgh could predict me.

But she could not predict the Gacha.

[Rolling Gold Gacha Ticket]

[Ridley]

|Epic Familiar|

Metroid - One of the most fearsome pirates in the known universe, Ridley is equal parts cunning and powerful despite portraying himself otherwise. He has incredible physical might that allows him to tear apart metal with ease and a flamebreath that can melt open spaceship hulls. Not only that, he is deceptively fast, being able to outpace most planes in an atmosphere and being able to go fast enough to achieve interstellar travel outside the atmosphere by himself.

A silver and purple dragon materialized before me, towering over the street. His wings unfurled with a leathery crack, each beat stirring dust. A jaw full of needle fangs curled into almost a grin, a whip-like tail cut through the air, and his eyes burned with a predatory fire that promised violence.

I started laughing.

It built fast, bubbling up until it broke into a full cackle ripping out of my throat, sharp and unhinged. I leaped onto Ridley’s back like I had been waiting my whole life for this moment.

“Let’s fucking gamble then.”