Save Scumming

Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Two - Choices

I woke up tangled in sheets and dressed in the bottom half of a maid uniform, but I only had a few minutes to wonder about that and groan as I felt all the soreness hitting me at once before I realized what time it was and rolled out of Jane's bed.

Jane herself was still there, buck-ass naked and snoring into her pillow. I took a moment to stare before I started to look for my clothes.

Today was more training, and as it was, I'd be making it to Edwin's dojo a few minutes late and without breakfast.

Well, without a proper breakfast. I'd definitely eaten well last night and well into the morning. Heh.

Mister Couchtop gave me a reproving look as I flew past him and rushed to my bike while still getting dressed. I got on my bike, realized that I wasn't wearing my boots, then went back to get those. I think I woke Jane up at some point because she groaned in a very satisfying way before trying to cover herself up.

Anyway, I was soon riding across the city at a fair clip over the speed limit. The moment I made it to Edwin's dojo, I realized that he wasn't alone.

There was a man with him. A dude in his early thirties or so, with a black T-shirt that had a small Seraph logo on the breast and jogging pants on. I was on guard almost immediately on seeing him.

What were the chances that he was one of the D-rankers that had been sent to break into my place?

"Edwin," I said in greeting.

"Ah, you're here," he said. "Never did catch your name."

"That's fine," I replied. I wasn't about to say it out loud next to a Seraph plant. What if he connected the dots? Better to keep that to myself, I figured. "Who's your pal?"

"James Carpenter," James Carpenter--apperently--said as he came over and extended a hand. "Pleased to meet you. Edwin said you were here for training?"

"Yeah," I said. "You work at Seraph?"

"Huh? Oh, the shirt? Yeah, I'm part of their D-ranker portal delving teams. We all work with Edwin, at least a little. He's one of the best trainers in the city."

"That's great," I said with a toothy smile. "So, let me get changed, then we can get started?"

I wish I was able to say that I wiped the floor with both, but the reality was that both of them had been D-rankers longer than me, and whatever equality being a ranker brought wasn't applied to my sorry ass after only a few weeks. They had longer reach, more experience, and a bit more muscle to them.

Damned testosterone addled morons basically threw me around for the next hour.

Still, I wasn't here to be lazy. I got back up and got back to it. Edwin would occasionally call a pause and then show me what he or James had done that landed me on the floor. Basically walking me through the step-by-step of the moves he was using so that I could catch up. It was decent practice.

I wasn't sure if I'd be able to remember even half of it, but that was fine. I was improving, and I had the time to improve. The session ended with a fifty minute lesson on fighting someone in armour.

James was nice enough to put on some of his Seraph gear, even if he seemed to think it was a terrible idea. Then we fought and while I was expecting it to be much harder, it turned out to not be that bad.

Sure, several strikes were now useless. Punching him straight on, knees to the chest or crotch, and impacts to the arm did nothing. But most fighting in CQC wasn't about punching outright, it was about grabbing and throwing and getting leverage to punch something important.

Armour didn't change that. If anything, James was a little slower. The armour didn't limit mobility too much, because it wasn't crappily designed, but it was still heavy. The bicep covers in particular caused some issues. He couldn't close his arms in quite as tight, and they very obviously slowed his arm movement down just a little.

Then there was all the grabbable bits.

The armour had a thin metal gorget that stuck out a little. It was basically a handle if I came in from above, one that let me pull him off-balance with relative ease. There was webbing around his waist with pouches for ammunition and gear, and that was just as easy to grab onto, so were some of the straps on the sides.

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Usually, if you went in low and tried to grab someone's leg, you'd have to grab behind the knee, or wrap a hand or arm around the thigh or lower leg. With his knee pads, I could literally just grab onto the pad itself. It wasn't the ideal grabbing spot, but it was an option that wasn't available otherwise.

It wasn't all good. Obviously, having armoured knees and elbows and vambraces meant that James wasn't nearly as afraid for himself when swinging around, and the extra mass was dangerous. Plus, they were hard and pointy. It took eating one hard blow against a forearm for me to come to respect that a swing that came down with a hard edge was dangerous.

The armour made him tanky as hell, but it definitely slowed him down a little.

"Thanks," I said once it was all over.

I'd come out of that fight battered and blue in a few spots, and I think both men were a little worried. But I started using some basic healing magic on myself, and that seemed to calm both of them down. They probably figured I could take the pain and just heal myself later. That wasn't where I was in terms of healing ability, but whatever.

James actually took a minute when it was all over to show me some problems with the armour. The stuff was good. It was about the best you could get off the shelf. But it was still off the shelf, which meant that it had to fit a lot of body types.

The straps around the waist had a tendency to be left a little loose, because putting them back on was more of a pain in the ass than leaving it loose and just squirming into your armour at the start of a shift. Like leaving shoes laced up and just sliding your foot in instead of undoing the laces every time.

There was a section of the gorget that was easy to undo, and the buckles for the thigh armour were on the outside and easy to tug. If you did, the plate over the thigh would wrench to the side, and suddenly you'd have a metal plate in your crotch with every step. It was a common complaint and when they trained together, it was a common way for Seraph troopers to mess with each other.

I was very tempted to pop back to the night of the invasion and try my hand at kicking Seraph's ass.

I was... going to fail, unfortunately.

It sucked, but a couple of day's practice wasn't enough to level the playing field, and while James' tips and tricks were nice, it was still just enough to give me a slight edge. It wasn't enough to level things. Against one or two guys, I was going to lose.

I had been harbouring a slow but growing temptation to find a way to take out the entire Seraph team hitting my apartment without killing them. Go in with hand to hand and beat the shit out of all of them.

James proved that impossible.

Even when I did take him down, if he had started the fight with a gun, he'd have shot my ass long before I could get him down. Seraph troopers carried a handgun strapped to the front or side of their armour. It was within easy reach.

If he was thrown down, he was trained to pull it out and magdump into anyone standing above him. That wasn't counting on the knives they carried either.

No one wanted to turn a fist-fight into a knife fight, but if it came to that, the dudes in full plate armour had one hell of an advantage.

Oh, and there were ten of them, and they were all D-rankers, so that meant magic was on the table.

Yeah, no, against those kinds of odds, I was turbo screwed.

So, back to my first two initial options. I could either run away the night before they arrived, let them kick into an empty room and waste their time while I cowarded.

Or...

I went full-lethal. Turned their push into my apartment into a series of ambushes. Knowing how to maybe take one out in a one-on-one was still good.

In the end, I needed to win this on a psychological level, and that meant looking good for the body cams. When someone at Seraph investigated the massive fuckup, I needed to make it very clear that they'd have to bring a ton more to the table if they wanted to take me out. More than was financially viable.

I could maybe aim to incapacitate a few of them. Killing that many people gave me the ick, but... yeah. I'd have to get better.

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