Monroe

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Bob stood on the hull of his Summoner's Retreat, his friends beside him, watching as the massive colony ship drew closer at what was now a glacial pace.

An hour earlier, a set of doors on the colony ship's hull had slid apart, revealing what was likely a docking bay of some sort. It wasn't large enough for the Summoner's Retreat to enter, but it would serve to provide them access to the ship.

Now that the ship was closer, he could see it in more detail. Of course, he'd had to wrap his mind around the sheer size of the thing first. There had been some people back on Earth who were building a ridiculously large ship, but even that monstrosity was dwarfed by the colony ship.

One of the lessons Bob had learned early in life was that details were important. The ship that was inching nearer might be massive, but more than that, it was old. He was only able to tell that the hull had been repaired many times because of a small section that wasn't marred by welds. What he had initially mistook for intricate designs on the hull were, in fact, tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of welds. Having designed, and built, the Freedom, he'd learned more than a bit about the process of building and repairing ships. If a ship was badly damaged, it was often easier to replace entire sections of the hull, rather than try to patch a dozen holes. The nature of the intricate sprawl of scars indicated that whatever had happened to the colony ship had happened gradually, or else sections would have been replaced. Even if someone was repairing damage every day, the sheer number of welds would suggest that this ship was centuries old.

"Alright, game faces on," Mike announced over the communications channel. "We should be close enough to jump over in a few minutes. We don't know who these people are, but they're obviously scientifically advanced enough to build this thing, so it's probably safe to say that they have weapons. I know we can tank some damage, but we shouldn't discount the possibility that they might have big honkin' space cannons."

"Won't the System let them know we're here to help them?" Amanda asked. "It did with the Urlinad."

"Probably, but the Urlinad were remarkably non-violent," Mike replied. "We don't know if that's the case with these people, and moreover, we don't know if they're even people-shaped. They could be space-faring starfish for all we know, and as a Marine, I can assure you that when in a hostile environment, shooting the strange-looking thing that is moving toward you is an almost instinctual reaction. Which would be us, taking fire."

"I'll have shields and heals ready," Jessica promised.

Kharvic struggled to avoid straightening the lapels of his jacket. Not only were they already straight, but it was entirely possible that whoever was coming over wouldn't even notice.

He was just glad they were Lovaroid's, although they were definitely larger.

"Captain, the alien ship should be within range to extend the boom within a few minutes," Ensign Corrial advised from her console.

Nodding, he rose to his feet and headed out of the bridge, trailed by Ensign Jibruil and Lily. The System message had eased most of their concerns.

Inhabitants of the Hurstall'kalwin.

The System has recognized your plight and directed its agents to relocate you. The following members of the Wayfarer species have been dispatched:

Robert Whitman, The Lord of Blight, The Redeemer

Jessica Wright, The Lady of Light

Amanda Rigosi, The Queen of Night

David Coffman, The Prince of the Moon

Michael Hanson, The Protector

As well as the following member of the Divine Feline Overlord species:

Monroe, Kessen

These agents have the necessary skills to remove you from the Flow.

Knowing that the people soon to arrive aboard the Hurry had actually been sent by the System to save them had raised a lot of spirits, his included.

It also meant he didn't need a platoon of crewmen armed to teeth, which was a relief, because he really couldn't spare them.

At any given moment, there were a dozen incursions happening aboard the Hurry, and the crew, who were capable warriors, were being run ragged attending to them.

"Captain," Ensign Jubrial began, "it appears there is a problem with the boom."

Kharvic came to a stop in the corridor, closing his eyes.

"I thought we tested it earlier today?" He asked as calmly as he was able.

"We did, and it worked," Jubrial replied quickly, proving that he wasn't able to appear as calm as he would have liked. "It's not working now, though, and you know that likely means."

"An incursion," Kharvic spat, shaking his head as he turned to flip open a console that was tucked into one of the support beams that lined the hallway. A faint light scanned his eye, and he quickly sent a message requesting the team nearest the boom to investigate, including a warning that this was likely an incursion.

Lily's ears flattened, and her tail swished sharply. "Not the welcome we were hoping to give our helpers," she hissed quietly.

"No, it is not," Kharvic agreed. "Hopefully we can clear the incursion without delaying deploying the boom for too long. I can't tell what sort of environmental suits they're wearing, as they don't appear to be standardized, but unless they're using some sort of magic, I doubt they have unlimited air."

"There is a 'Create Air' spell," Jubrial interjected. "Most of us have been mapping out potential skill sets, and there are quite a few spells that might just have some significant applications."

Kharvic nodded. He had spent more than a few hours digging through the System interface himself, and some of the implications were astounding. fre𝚎w𝐞bn𝗼v𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝗼𝚖

"Let us hurry," Lily said, flexing her fingers, which in turn deployed her claws. "It would be nice to have the team sent to handle the incursion healed up before we meet our new friends."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Folding the console back into its recess, Kharvic strode down the corridor towards the tube. They could be at the docking port in less than ten minutes.

Bob stared at the open doors. There was a platform and a door on the far side of the space beyond them, although the railing that lined the platform had an opening that seemed to indicate that some sort of walkway would normally be deployed out to their ship.

He was fairly certain that the ship had stopped moving. He knew the Summoner's Retreat had stopped, and either the colony ship had as well, or it was now moving so slowly as to be imperceptible.

"I need some sort of sensor array," he muttered as he continued to eye the distance between the two ships. He guessed that they were thirty feet apart.

He did the triple blink that activated his comm's when his armband was under his armor.

"It looks like this is as much of a welcome mat as we can expect," He said. "I'm guessing these people are human sized, which is going to make that platform a tight fit, and we'd have to crawl through the door. I'm going to fly over, and then I'll open a portal to the room beyond, assuming we can fit."

"We'll be right behind you," Mike replied.

"Be careful, yeah?" Jessica added.

Bob nodded, and deployed his armor's wings. He had switched all of his persistent effect slots to barraged swarms of mosquitoes, working off the assumption that the monsters aboard the colony ship were likely the same tier and level as the ones that had appeared aboard the Summoner's Retreat before he'd put up the shield. Combined with those summoned by his Eternal Servant skill, they formed a living cloak. He wasn't sure how desperate the conditions on the ship would be and he wanted to be prepared to take what Mike liked to call 'decisive action' if needed.

Sadly, that meant he didn't have a slot available for his flight spell. Still, his wings worked, although the mechanics of exactly how was something he intended to investigate later. He suspected that the magical appendages pushed against the energy that saturated this place, as there certainly wasn't any air to push against.

With a single flap, his ashen wings propelled him across the gap between the two vessels.

Kharvic swore as he slammed his shield, donated by a wounded crewwoman, into the side of one of the shoulder high insectoid incursion, knocking it to the floor.

The Dharling next to him pounced, a wrench half as tall as she was raining down blows, cracking the carapace, and then splattering whatever served as it brains out onto the deck.

He stepped back, holding his shield low to protect the Dharling as she retreated back into the defensive line as well.

At level four, he was considered one of the powerhouses aboard the Hurry. He had selected the skills for using armor, a shield, parry, and melee strike. He had been proven correct in his assumption that he could use his shield as a weapon, and that the bonuses provided from his shield skill applied to both melee strike and to parry.

He looked across the line, pleased to see that it was holding.

The cargo bay adjacent to the docking port had indeed suffered from an incursion, but it was one of the rarer types, one that kept creating a steady stream of mindless creatures.

From experience, he knew that these types of incursions lasted between half an hour and an hour, and this one had been ongoing for at least thirty-five minutes.

Lily was behind him, hissing quietly as she used her Anima Blast spell to heal any grievous injuries. As the only healer, she had to triage the wounded, which meant that someone who suffered a near mortal wound would be healed and rushed back to the line while another who was badly injured, but not critically, was left to bear the pain as best they were able until the battle was done.

He could see the controls for the boom, as well as the door, laying mangled on the floor. He hoped that Jubrial could bypass them after the battle was done, as repairs might take some time, and as of twenty-nine minutes ago, their new friends had been waiting patiently to board the Hurry.

Grunting, he slammed his shield into another insectoid, supressing a savage smile as he heard the chitin shatter beneath the blow. He had reinforcements coming, they just had to hold the line for a few more minutes.

He frowned as another Dharling went down on the line, yowling in pain as they were pulled back, the line retracting slightly.

If he had to, he could the door by himself, although it would be risky, with only Lily to heal him. Hopefully, the reinforcements would arrive before it came to that.

Bob knelt as he scrubbed at the porthole in the door. It was, presumably, made of thick glass, but it was covered in so many scratches that the only thing he could really see were shapes moving in what appeared to be a large cargo bay.

Shaking his head, he stood up, and summoned Monroe, sliding his Divine Feline Overlord onto his shoulders.

Despite his progress, Bob was still well aware that Monroe was better with people than he was, and he hoped that by presenting Monroe, the people aboard the ship would be more inclined to cooperate.

It had worked with the Urlinad.

He opened a portal directly in front of the door, the other end opening on the other side of the door. Stepping through, he froze.

He had expected some sort of group organizing a welcome for them, but what he found was an ongoing battle. He recognized the insectoid creatures as monsters, his deduction being proven as one appeared standing on the deck a few feet ahead of him. It immediately rushed toward the semi-circle of defenders that were gathered in a crescent in front of the door on the far side of the large room.

Bob's gaze wandered over the defenders, noting that there were both big and small people fighting. He frowned as he focused on the smaller people. He peered past the horde of insectoid monsters, trying to get a better look. He desperately hoped that those weren't children fighting. If so, the situation was more dire than they'd feared.

As the monsters shifted, he was finally able to get a clear look, and he froze.

Bob was aware that he wasn't exactly a well-adjusted individual. While he'd definitely made progress over the years, the fact of the matter was that he'd been influenced by the System as he'd tiered up again and again. While he'd managed to ensure that he didn't feel the inherent superiority towards lower tier species, he'd also increased the empathy he felt towards others.

That empathy had amplified his feelings about pets. He'd always liked animals more than most people. Animals were honest. In particular, kitty cats represented everything in the world that was good, and soft, and pure. His devotion to Monroe may have colored his perspective a bit, but he was alright with that.

More importantly, it solidified his belief that people who hurt pets were irredeemable monsters. Alongside the general consensus of 'fuck cancer,' the adage of 'judge a person by how they treat their pets' had become one of his core beliefs.

He trusted Monroe to serve as his people barometer. If Monroe liked someone, they were a good person. If he didn't, they were bad.

So, when he saw a pair of monsters pull someone out of the line, jabbing scythe-like arms into their torso, he was upset. However, when a gap in the monsters allowed him to see the fluffy feline ears, the soft fur, the fluffy tail, and most importantly, the pain and fear-filled slitted eyes, he had, as Trebor had once said, a little moment.

Pulling his staff from his inventory, having not wanted to appear armed in front of what he had assumed would be a peaceful delegation, he shifted his shoulders, a signal that Monroe understood, as the mightiest of hunters leapt to the deck, growing in size as he landed.

"NO ONE HURTS A KITTY CAT!" Bob roared as he unleashed both his Eternal Servant and Persistent Effect swarms.

A black cloud erupted from his back, flowing around his wings, as a whining buzz filled the air, and over seven million mosquitoes rushed into the cargo bay like a black cloud comprised of tiny buzzsaws.

Bob had prepared his skills with the assumption that he wouldn't need his swarms to do over two thousand vicious damage per swarm. Tier five, level five monsters had less than three hundred health after all, and vicious damage ignored armor. Barraging each swarm reduced the damage dealt, but increased the number of targets that could be serviced at once. Considering that his path reduced the impairment to his spellcasting value that both Persistent Effect and Barrage inflicted, he was limited by the mana cost of the spells, not the reduction in power.

Still, he had the ability to target seventy creatures at once.

Bob strode forward, Monroe at his side, as the insectoid monsters deflated as they fell to the floor as dedicated corpses, drained of their vital fluids by the cloud of tiny mosquitoes so thick that it was hard to see more than a few feet before they completely obscured the cargo bay.

Bob swung his staff, folding one of the few remaining monsters around it like a fork, picking up a piece of al dente spaghetti. Monroe swiped a paw through another, his massive claws separating the insectoid into three chunks.

Finding himself without another target, Bob recalled his swarms.

As they settled back into the shape of a cloak, he realized that there simply weren't any more targets.

The people they'd come to help stood silently, with shocked expressions, as they took in the glorious majesty of Monroe as he sat primly, licking his paw.