John opened his eyes with a start, gasping and spluttering as his abdominal muscles contracted violently. Thrown autonomously into a seated position he coughed so hard he thought a lung might shoot out of his mouth. Water flooded from his lungs like a faucet, his eyes and nose streamed as he fought desperately to breathe again.

  As most of the water left him, he found himself bent over on his hands and knees in the sand hacking up what little salty sea water remained in his respiratory system. He felt awful. His chest ached, his body felt cold and he could barely see through the blurry tears which warped his eyes.

  But he was alive, and that was all that mattered.

  After he finally caught his breath and rubbed sandy hands over his face to fix his obscured vision, he took a moment to look around.

  He was situated on a small stretch of beach, a small sign saying Sandy Beach stood behind him. His heart jumped as he realised how lucky he had been. Up and down the coast, as far as the eye could see, were cliff faces and rock formations. Somehow, he’d had the good fortune to wash up on this tiny beach instead of being dashed against the rocks.

  I hope the others were this lucky, he thought, pushing down the impending feeling of doom which pressured his chest.

  Further along the coast The Emperor was splashing about angrily in the water. John could hear the firing of guns but he couldn’t see where they were coming from. Presumably someone was in the midst of trying to kill the massive penguin and it wasn’t best pleased about it.

  The ship was turned completely on its side and now that he had an outside view of the vessel he understood why it hadn’t completely capsized. It looked like, when The Emperor launched its first attack it had pushed their boat onto a shallow rock formation. Roughly half the ship was submerged but the rest was above water, albeit on its side.

  John stood up on shaky legs. He needed to get moving and the best chance of finding other survivors was going to be joining the boss fight.

  Leaving the beach, he headed towards The Emperor.

  ***

  Truffle’s head hurt.

  Dazedly he looked towards the upended life raft and saw bodies strewn across the cliff face they’d landed on. It was a hard landing and his eyes widened as he saw the children laying there. Unmoving.

  “No, you can’t be dead,” he said in a light, broken voice.

  His eyes landed on the little girl with the robot limbs. Her name was Lilia, she’d told him as much on their ride towards the ship. Leaning in delicately, he nudged her body with his snout. “Hey, Lilia, it’s time to wake up.”

  He nudged her again and this time she shrugged him off.

  “I don’t wanna go to school mummy.”

  “Lilia!” He squealed, “you’re ok. Thank the Mistress.”

  The little girl stirred and rolled towards him, opening her eyes in a daze. She seemed alright, though her body was bruised and she had a few cuts. But she was alive.

  “Truffle?” She asked, “where are we?”

  “I don’t know, but we made it out of the water.”

  That was all thanks to the teacup pig’s quick thinking. As soon as time had unfrozen he’d dived into the water and boarded the closest life raft. Using his Pig Squeal power he blasted a sonic boom at the water’s surface and skyrocketed the raft away from the tidal wave. That was the last thing he remembered before waking up on the cliffs. He had no idea what had happened to John and the others but his Boss was a resourceful man and he was sure he'd be just fine.

  I told Boss this power was worth keeping, he thought smugly.

  ***

  John rushed towards the sound of gun fire, a cacophony of war-like sounds drifting towards him on the calm breeze. Up ahead he made out four figures, only one of them was firing at the penguin.

  Agnes, looking mostly unscathed from her suicidal rocket-propelled escape, fired endless streams of rounds at The Emperor. The penguin screeched in an unnaturally deep voice, for a penguin, and thrashed about in the water like a moody teenager.

  Luckily for the old woman, the kaiju was so enormous that it seemed to lack basic agility. It moved slowly as it tried to turn away from the ship and towards the coast.

  As Agnes continued her onslaught, three other figures dived and zigzagged around as they fired at each other. Selina, who had somehow gotten hold of one of those tiny little guns that prostitutes used in the old west, was clinging to Horati-OH’s back and using him as human shield as she manoeuvred herself, firing wildly at The Captain.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  It would have been comical if it wasn’t the worst possible time for infighting. An intrusive thought broke into John’s skull as he approached, imagining the scene before him unfolding to the Benny Hill theme tune.

  “What the hell are you three doing,” he shouted, running up behind The Captain with his own weapons drawn. “You can kill each other later, first we need to deal with that thing!”

  “Screw you cowboy,” Selina called back, firing off another shot from behind her human shield. “Pingu is your problem, I’m only here for revenge.”

  “Revenge?” The Captain shouted incredulously as he fired off a shotgun blast. “That’s my line you harpy. You slept with me and then tried to kill me, what did you want me to do, throw you a parade?”

  “I wanted your card!” She fired back, “and with Horatio’s help I’ll have it!”

  “ENOUGH!” John shouted, rage taking over as he subconsciously drew on his locate weakness skill and fired off three shots, deftly hitting each of their weapons and forcing them out of their hands.

  Skill Unlocked:

  Trick Shooting.

  “If you three don’t quit acting like children I’ll kill you all myself. Now how about you all take a deep fucking breath and come help me and Grandma take down this penguin before we’re all turned into mulch.”

  “Woah dude, calm down,” The Captain said raising his hands in surrender. “We’ll help you, no need to get so pissy about it.”

  “Yeah Cowboy,” Selina added reluctantly. “We’ll help you. I guess I owe you that much for rescuing me. But don’t think this is over.”

  “You can bet on it,” The Captain replied, his voice icy and low. “I have no intention of letting you waltz out of here with Horatio enthralled like that. But it can wait… for now.”

  “Good,” John said, his voice returning to its normal volume and intensity. “Now, I have a plan but it’s a bit of a risky one.”

  ***

  Truffle’s heart lightened as he woke up the last kid, a boy called Charlie who was at the slaughterhouse when he, John, and Grandma had rescued the victims there.

  Somehow, every child on the life raft had survived. The only casualty was a woman who the pig didn’t recognise. She seemed to be uncarded and weaponless and her head was tilted at an odd angle. It appeared that she had died from being too tall. When the life raft landed upside down on the cliff, the full weight of the thing had crushed her head.

  Luckily, Truffle and the kids were all too small for that as they couldn’t even see over the sides of the thing. Still, they were all lucky to be alive.

  “Where are the others?” Charlie asked after he’d wiped the grit from his eyes.

  “I don’t know,” Truffle said, “I guess we’ll have to go find them.”

  There were ten kids sat around the upended life raft all in various states of shock. That wasn’t anything new, many of the children aboard the ship sported thousand-yard stares from whatever sick and twisted crap had happened to them previously in the game. Still, Truffle wanted desperately to help them, and to do that he needed to find John and that Field Marhsall guy.

  “The big penguin looks sad,” Lilia said, pointing her robotic hand seaward.

  Truffle turned around and saw the beast facing the nearby cliff. Nothing was happening, no gunfire, no fighting, no real sound. But, the pig was pretty certain that if the boss penguin was staring that intently at the cliff then there was a good chance that Boss and the others were there.

  Or at least, someone was there.

  “Alright kids,” he said in his most adult voice. “I want everyone to grab the hand of the person in front and behind you. Then follow me! We’re going to find Boss.”

  ***

  “That’s utterly insane!” Selina protested, gesticulating wildly and still placing Horatio in front of her as she spoke to the others. “There’s no way I’m doing that.”

  “I don’t know,” The Captain said thoughtfully. “It’s definitely going to be risky but it might work. And I can’t think of anything better.”

  “I think it’s a lovely plan, deary,” Agnes said. John had managed to pull her away from attacking The Emperor long enough to share the details of his hair-brained scheme. Though it seemed that in that time the penguin had almost completed turning itself around to face them, so it was now or never.

  “I know it’s whacky, but it’s the only plan we’ve got,” John said confidently, looking each of them in the eyes in turn. “Besides, we don’t have any more time for planning, that thing will be facing us in less than a minute and I really don’t want to find out what ridiculous powers it has firsthand.”

  They each met his eyes with a grim determination, or a reluctant scepticism in the case of Selina. John nodded, and the five of them turned around to face the beast, jumping into action.

  Agnes wheeled herself towards the edge of the cliff with John, The Captain, and the enthralled Horati-OH in tow. As a unit they open fired on The Emperor’s left leg.

  The kaiju squealed in pain and fury as a torrent of bullets, shells, and arrows tore into its slippery skin. Blood gushed out as they focused fire on the area which John hoped was the kneecap. He wasn’t certain that penguins actually had knees, but if they had legs then there had to be some kind of bone and joint under there, and that was what they aimed for.

  The Emperor thrashed and flapped its huge flipper towards them. John flicked the cylinder on his revolver and fired off a dragon’s breath just in time. The flipper exploded with flames as the magnesium pellets embedded themselves into the outer layer of its armour-like skin.

  Screeching bloody murder, the penguin pulled back and its attack fell short, ripping a large chunk of stone and earth out of the side of the cliff.

  “How strong is this thing?” The Captain yelled.

  “Don’t let up, we’re almost there!” John replied, steeling his own expression. “Keep firing!”

  It took a ridiculous amount of ammo, mostly coming from Agnes’ gatling guns, to strip away the skin. But pretty soon, amidst the horrifying screeching, the white of bone could be seen underneath the ripped open skin and gushing waterfall of blood.

  “Now!” John shouted and The Captain dropped his shotgun, which disappeared back into his inventory, and produced an RPG.

  He’d told John about that handy little card whilst they’d been putting together the map of potential portal locations. It was a card that allowed him to summon an RPG and fire a single shot once per week. He hoped that as it upgraded and he levelled up, its cooldown time would shorten. In that moment though, it was their best weapon against the kaiju.

  “Get clear!” He shouted and everyone scattered taking particular care to avoid the backdraft as he squeezed the trigger.

  Smoke shot out of the back of the RPG tube as a rocket propelled grenade exploded against The Emperor’s exposed kneecap.

  Bone, blood, and skin blasted away from the penguin as gore rained down and its leg pretty much disappeared as it began to topple.

  “I guess we didn’t need to weaken the skin after all,” The Captain said, as the RPG disappeared from his hands.

  “You can never be too careful with these things,” John replied. “Timber!”

  The group darted to the side of the cliff as the penguin toppled with a crash, its face smashing into the cliff face. Its eyes gleamed angrily as it shot a sideways glance at the group and its eyes began to shine a powerful red colour like it was charging up some kind of X-Men inspired attack.

  “Lazer eyes,” John shouted, “I knew it’d have some kind of ridiculous power. You’re up Selina.”

  “Mark my words John Doe, I will kill you for making me do this.”