Viewer Count: 3

Smoke still hung thick in the square, curling like the ghost of a campfire that didn't know it was supposed to be out. The wreckage sizzled in the distance—chunks of Goremaw were still twitching, leaking steam and whatever counted as blood in eldritch anatomy.

Bobby Joe Buckman kicked the truck door open and climbed out one stiff leg at a time. The second foot hit the ground and the left knee buckled instantly.

"Son of a—" he hissed, catching himself against Betsy's side. The leg flared with pain, hot and wet.

He looked down.

Cut clean through his jeans. A long, ugly slice across the thigh, pulsing blood like it had somewhere to be.

[INJURY DETECTED: CRITICAL LACERATION – LEFT LEG][HEALING KIT AVAILABLE – COST: 50 STREAM ENERGY][CURRENT ENERGY: 400]

"Dandy," Bobby muttered. "I get chopped up and the TV screen wants to sell me a first aid kit like it's vending gum."

A soft chime answered him—then Betsy's voice rolled out, all smooth and smoky.

"Just tab 'yes,' sugar. Ain't no bonus points for bleedin' out slow."

He glanced at the HUD—blinking button, big ol' green rectangle with "CONFIRM PURCHASE" on it.

"Feels like I'm buyin' snake oil from a talking microwave."

Still, he tapped it.

[PURCHASE CONFIRMED][ITEM DELIVERED: BASIC HEALING KIT]

A clunk echoed beside him as a metal canister dropped out of the sky and thunked into the mud. It hissed open, revealing a sealed gauze roll, a metal spray canister labeled with a caution rune, and a pressure-clip stim that looked like it belonged in a sci-fi cattle ranch.

Bobby sat on the crumpled front fender and got to work. The spray stung like battery acid but numbed up quick. The stim hissed into his leg with a jolt and a twitch. Bandage wrapped snug, leg already stiffening into something usable.

[WOUND STABILIZED – TEMPORARY DEBUFF: "LIMP AND READY"]

"Real nice," he muttered. "Guess I'm hobblin' hero of the hour now."

From the ruins, figures began to move.

Villagers crept out—slow, cautious, eyes wide. Men and women caked in ash, faces hollowed by terror. Makeshift weapons in hand: pitchforks, pickaxes, a two-by-four with a nail in it. One guy was holding a ladle like it owed him money.

They stared. At Bobby. At the still-glowing corpse he'd turned into roadkill. At Betsy, chrome runes fading but still humming.

Nobody cheered.

They just looked at him like the sky had farted out a god in denim.

"...Hi," Bobby said, pulling a half-crushed cigarette from behind his ear. "Y'all don't got a bar, do ya? 'Cause I got a head full of thunder and a leg full of ouch."

No one spoke. One old man dropped his blade. Another fell to his knees, whispering something about "Anchor-Wielders."

The silence hung thick as oil smoke.

And Bobby, bleeding, bandaged, and buzzed on whatever passed for magic morphine here, lit his cigarette off Betsy's grill and exhaled slow.

"Yup," he said. "Tuesday."

Bobby was halfway through his second cigarette when the HUD flickered.

Not the usual kind—this was glitchy. Twitchy. Like the Echo Layer had the hiccups.

"Uh-oh," Betsy murmured. "That's the nervous kind of blinking. Not the sexy kind."

The floating blue display twitched again, then stabilized just long enough to throw up a new prompt.

[ALERT: FRACTURE ZONE STABILITY – INCOMPLETE][PRIMARY HOSTILE: GOREMAW – NEUTRALIZED][ZONE STATUS: UNRESOLVED][SCANNING FOR REMAINING CONTAMINATION…]

A slow pulse rolled through the ground beneath him. Bobby stiffened. Not pain—something deeper. Like the dirt under his boots was deciding whether or not to breathe.

[…ERROR. RESIDUAL ENERGY DETECTED.][…CALIBRATING.][…CALIBRATING AGAIN.][…OKAY SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE HELL IS THIS.]

Bobby squinted at the message. "That... normal?"

"Only if your idea of normal involves mystical hardware acting like it's reading tea leaves with a concussion," Betsy said, brows furrowing in her dash display. "Something's still stinkin' up the mana feed."

[TRANSLATING FOR USER PROFILE: "BOBBY JOE BUCKMAN"]There's still bad juice leaking underground. It was hiding. Probably real smug about it, too.

"Of course it is," Bobby muttered. He looked out at the crater where Goremaw used to be. "I smash the big ugly with a ten-ton chrome kiss and now the ground's telling me he had a buddy?"

[NEW THREAT DETECTED: SUBSURFACE PRIMORDIAL RESIDUE][ENERGY SIGNATURE: MUTED, UNREGISTERED, INCOMPLETE][WARNING: FRACTURE ZONE WILL DETERIORATE FURTHER WITHOUT SECONDARY PURGE]

"So what you're sayin' is... the hole's still leaking crazy," Bobby said, waving his cigarette toward the sky. "And I get to play mop boy."

The HUD flared again.

[UPDATED OBJECTIVE: INVESTIGATE SOURCE OF REMAINING PRIMORDIAL ENERGY][REWARD: UNKNOWN. MAY INCLUDE NOT DYING.]

He dragged a hand down his face. "I didn't even clock in today. This ain't overtime—it's overkill."

The wind shifted—cool, but not comforting. It carried a low groan from somewhere under the flagstones. Distant. Faint. But wrong.

Betsy's voice dropped. "We didn't finish the job, cowboy. Just slapped a bandage on a burst pipe."

Bobby blew out smoke, stared down at the smoldering wreckage, and muttered, "Knew it. Just like my ex's brother-in-law. Real quiet, but always a bigger problem later."

The ground stopped humming, but the tension in the air didn't. Bobby was about to ask Betsy if this place had anything resembling a recliner when footsteps crunched across gravel behind him.

He didn't turn. He could already smell leadership—leather, ash, and that uniquely bureaucratic brand of determination that said someone was about to ask him to do something for free.

"Anchor-Wielder," came a voice. Female. Calm, clipped. The kind of tone that usually followed with a clipboard and a checklist.

"Lady," Bobby replied, without looking. "If you're here to hand me a medal or a mop, don't."

She stepped into view. Wore a battered half-cape over steel-reinforced armor that had seen better centuries. Scars on her cheek, badge on her belt, and eyes like she'd slept four hours across three wars.

"Captain Hessa," she said formally. "Crowpoint's defense chief."

"Bobby Joe Buckman. Freelance roadkill technician."

Her eyes lingered on him—torn jeans, bandaged leg, faint wisp of smoke curling from his cigarette—and then slid to the massive red machine still humming behind him.

"I've never seen a construct like that," she said. "Is it alive?"

"She's got more personality than most folks I've met," Bobby said.

"Damn right I do," Betsy chimed in, her voice purring through the grill like a flirty V8. "And I don't appreciate being called a construct, honey. I'm a lady."

Hessa didn't flinch at the voice, but her gaze lingered on Betsy a beat longer—less like she was inspecting a machine, more like she was trying to figure out how to classify a ghost with wheels.

"You killed a Primordial," Hessa said, "Alone. That puts you above half the Bound Hunters I've seen."

"Didn't ask to be impressive," Bobby muttered. "Just didn't wanna die lookin' like a chew toy."

She hesitated, "There's still something else. Beneath us. Whatever you killed, it wasn't the only one. We need someone who can finish the job."

Bobby narrowed his eyes. "You got soldiers. Magic folks. Tunnel rats. Why me?"

"Because nothing we've got punches like that." She nodded toward Betsy. "And because—whatever you are—you already did the impossible once. That makes you our best chance."

"I'm a guy with a sore leg and no life insurance." He flicked his cigarette stub into the gore puddle. "I don't do cleanup unless there's a lunch voucher. Or hazard pay."

Right on cue, the HUD flashed again.

[OPTIONAL OBJECTIVE: INVESTIGATE SUBSURFACE PRIMORDIAL][INCENTIVE UNLOCKED: TRUCK UPGRADE PACKAGE – "SEAT SUSPENSION (DELUXE)"][DESCRIPTION: Reduces back pain and swamp-ass across dimensional terrain. Fitted lumbar support included.]

Bobby squinted at it.

Viewer01: BRO HE'S GONNA DO IT FOR THE SEATViewer02: if your ass hurts, you're not a real driverViewer03: nah I respect it, lumbar support is endgame

Betsy chuckled. "Just say yes, big guy. Your spine's been screaming since Kansas."

Bobby folded his arms. "So you want me to crawl into a haunted dirt tunnel full of maybe-worms, maybe-demons... for a butt pillow."

"Technically," Betsy said, "it's an Echo-reinforced gel cushion. Multi-dimensional. Heated. Real nice on the lumbar."

"…Fine," Bobby growled. "But I want a map, a flashlight, and someone who knows which tunnels don't end in acid pits."

Hessa nodded. "I'll assign a local. He's survived more collapse shifts than anyone here. And we'll provide basic supplies."

Bobby cracked his neck, looked toward the charred road leading down into the dark, and sighed.

"Hell," he said, "at least the seat's gonna be comfy."