It wasn’t like the rattle on nature programs. It was like somebody had put a handful of fist-sized rocks in a box made of stone and was shaking it with a lawnmower engine. The woods were quiet for a moment and I took a deep breath. Maybe it…
With a roar that I felt in my bones, the trees parted and a monstrous black shape emerged.
It was a bear.
A bear the size of a van.
There were several screams, and the bear reared up, letting out another hideous roar. It sounded like a cross between that noise bears on TV always make before they attack somebody, and a jet engine throttling up.
Kaa’s head lifted up and the rattle got louder, thundering in our ears after the roar stopped. The bear waved a paw at Kaa, as if trying to make him move out of the way. Samantha started to say something and the bear’s head moved, looking past Kaa at the group of humans.
PARTY CHAT / SAMANTHA: He’s afraid. I’m holding him but if the bear gets too close he’ll either strike or try to run away.
PARTY CHAT / JAMES: Then do that. If the bear gets close enough have him strike and then try to slip into the trees. The bear may follow him and he can probably lose it in the brush.
My higher Intelligence didn’t have any brilliant ideas to get us out of this, but it did make it possible for me to ‘text’ at truly ridiculous speeds.
PARTY CHAT / SAMANTHA: What about the gun?
PARTY CHAT / JAMES: Last resort. Bears are tough. At least the ones in games are.
Though time felt like it had nearly stopped, I had hardly gotten that last message sent when the bear let out another short roar, this one more… challenging… and lumbered forward two awkward steps. I could swear I felt the ground shaking.
The last step brought it into Kaa’s strike radius.
He struck.
COMBAT! Your party is in combat with Adult Black Bear.
COMBAT: Party Member Kaa does 12 damage to Adult Black Bear. Adult Black Bear 838/850 HP. Adult Black Bear is Poisoned! 5 damage every ten seconds for two minutes.
The bear let out an angry cough and dropped onto all fours, trying to crush Kaa. The rattlesnake avoided the bear’s falling paws and headed for the trees at full speed. The bear turned to follow.
Meanwhile, I was doing math in my head. Fast.
If the gun does fifty points at the lowest setting and uses five times the power at the highest setting it should do 250 points at the highest setting but I don’t know because the most damage it ever did was zeroing somebody who had 150 HP but if it does that’s 500 damage which leaves the bear with about three-fifty minus Kaa’s poison which will do another hundred assuming we can stay alive for two minutes so that’s two-fifty left which is about twice what the bobcat had and the strongest Hunter had and oh shit we’re fucked please chase the snake mister bear please please please…
Kaa wasn’t as fast at a regular slither as he was when he struck. The bear leapt after him and caught him by the tail just as he was entering the treeline. An enormous paw swept down and stabbed at the snake with claws the size of my forearm.
“No!” I heard Samantha shout. She ran forward and held up her hand, looking at the bear yanking the snake out of the trees like a robin with a worm.
Suddenly, Kaa grew. Whereas before he’d been a little shorter than the bear’s body, now he was half again as long and thicker and heavier as well.
Why didn't she do that before… I had time to think before Kaa coiled back on himself and bit the startled bear again.
COMBAT: Party Member Kaa does 18 damage to Adult Black Bear. Adult Black Bear 815/850 HP. Adult Black Bear is Poisoned! 8 damage every ten seconds for two minutes.
At the same time, Samantha raised the gun and fired, hitting the bear well toward the rear of its body.
COMBAT: Party Member Samantha does 250 damage to Adult Black Bear. Adult Black Bear 565/850 HP. Adult Black Bear resists Stun!
Crap crap crap okay another two-fifty takes it to two-fifteen plus one-sixty over two minutes takes it to 55 we can do this…
As I was doing my best Dungeon Master imitation internally, the bear let out the loudest roar yet and swiped at Kaa with all its might. The snake was nearly twenty feet long and must have weighed several hundred pounds after Samantha’s growth buff, but it flew toward the woods and crashed into several trees, breaking some of them. It didn’t move again after hitting the ground.
“NO!” This time, the Animal Tamer let out a full-fledged scream and fired again.
The beam went a few inches over the bear’s head.
SHIT SHIT SHIT now we’re at three-oh-five even with the poison we are so fucking fucked…
The bear looked at the snake laying motionless against a huge tree. For a few seconds, it just shook its head as if confused. Then it turned back to the group and let out another roar.
It sounded pissed.
Joe ran to get between the group and the bear. It rose up again. On its back legs it was nearly twenty feet tall. He looked like a child trying to fight King Kong.
“Let me get aggro!” he shouted, and ran forward. The bear tried to come down on him like it had tried to crush Kaa, but he was too fast. The Defender never slowed, running to the side of the bear, swinging his bat as he passed. The bat nailed the bear right in the leg with a thud I could hear thirty feet away.
COMBAT: Party Member Joe does 34 damage to Adult Black Bear. Adult Black Bear 493/850 HP.
The bear’s leg nearly collapsed from the shock of the blow, and it stumbled as it tried to turn to bite our tank. It was far too slow: he was already several feet past it, curving to double back and line up for another strike.
When it had turned completely away from us, I shouted “Mana Bolt!” The bolt flew and nailed the bear right in the ass, which would have been hilarious if I hadn’t been so terrified I could barely stand up.
COMBAT: 20 MP Mana Bolt does 20 Damage to Adult Black Bear. Adult Black Bear 473/850 HP. 230/250 MP.
Joe had doubled back and tried running past the bear again. It hadn’t even noticed the Mana Bolt and was still fixated on him. He ‘had aggro,’ as gamers put it - he was its number one target and it would ignore anything else that didn’t hurt it worse than he had first.
With a gigantic lunge, the bear managed to just tap Joe with the tips of its claws. I couldn’t see if it had hurt him, but as he was running flat out the hit made him stumble and nearly fall.
I let another Mana Bolt fly. I saw Mandy running up behind the bear, screaming. The tip of her whip and my Mana Bolt hit the bear at nearly the same instant.
COMBAT: 20 MP Mana Bolt does 20 Damage to Adult Black Bear. Adult Black Bear 453/850 HP. 210/250 MP.
COMBAT: Party Member Mandy does 15 damage to Adult Black Bear. Adult Black Bear 430/850 HP.
Mandy’s whip didn’t do much damage, but the impact made a sharp crack and the bear half-reared in pain, letting out a sound somewhere between the terrible roar and a moan of agony.
I took another precious second to look around me. Anthony had run to one side of the group and looked like he was preparing to charge the bear with his staff held like a spear. Danielle had run to the other and was waiting for the bear to be distracted so she could hit it with a sneak attack.