Monroe

'What the Fuck!' Bob raged internally. He was lying on the cold, hard concrete, his ears ringing, and his head aching. It was pitch black, a total absence of light that gave rise to unpleasant memories of his childhood when his mother hadn't paid the power bill, and then locked him in the kitchen closet so she could entertain her clients in her bedroom by candlelight.

Bob raised a hand shakingly to his brow, feeling something wet dripping down his temple, and winced as he felt the edge of a jagged cut. His mind began to catch up to the events.

"That fucking cunt blew up the accelerator," he growled. "And no doubt she's going to blame it on me," he muttered. He tried to calm his breathing. It wasn't working.

He was jolted out of his thoughts as he felt small sharp teeth bite deeply into his calf. "WHAT THE FUCK!" he screamed as he reached down and punched at whatever was biting him. He felt oily coarse fur and then a thin, hairless whip of a tail as he hammered what he now suspected was a rat that had latched onto his lower leg.

Bob reached down with his other hand to brace himself and found his hand scrambling in the dirt over stone, rather than the concrete he expected. 'Fucking great, I got blown into the basement, and there are fucking rats down here,' he thought incongruously as he managed to get a hand on the rat's neck, ripping it off his leg, and by the pain, taking a chunk of flesh with it.

~~~~~~~~~

Bob hated rats. The first encounter he could recall with any clarity had been when he was five years old. He'd been walking home from school and had turned down an alley that lead to his tenement and run directly into the body of a dog. It had likely been a stray of some sort, and its coat was ragged and dirty. It lay on its side, with its belly ripped open and half a dozen large, sleek rats feasting on it. One of the rats had looked up at his approach and appraised him with its beady eyes. "You're not as big as the dog," it seemed to say, "but when we're done here, we'll come for you."

Bob had run away and hadn't stopped until he was back in his apartment. He started to notice that there were always rats in the building. A few years later, he had gone to sleep with a skinned knee from being shoved down on the playground, and woken up to a rat licking at the scab. That had solidified his irrational loathing of rats.

One of the reasons Bob had adopted Monroe was because he had mice in his new apartment, and was worried there would be rats as well. He'd also desperately wanted companionship, and Monroe had fulfilled all his hopes. He was loving, affectionate, and killed mice on a regular basis, leaving them on the kitchen floor as proof of his hunting prowess. He'd even killed two rats in the six years they'd been there.

All this was to say that when Bob heard more movement heading towards him, the combination of his childhood fears, his coworkers' animosity, and years of internalizing his anger caused him to finally snap.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bob hammered the rat's head into the ground, mentally chanting all the while. 'Die!' ~smash~ 'Mother' ~smash~ 'Fucker' ~smash~ 'Die!' ~smash~

@_DS&[email protected]}*&FN#:P*(DS

Something blue occluded his vision, but it wasn't providing any light, so he ignored it as he felt another weight land on his legs, and found another rat to vent his rage on.

He curled his legs under him, crouching and kept slamming rats into the ground, ignoring their bites as he chanted "Die Motherfucker Die," over and over again.

@)(& Error @)!_$

It felt like he was suffocating. He couldn't breathe, but it didn't matter. Over twenty years of raw hatred flowed through him, finally released. He was drowning in his memories.

Error - Non-recorded Entity. Scanning biological entity.

Every time he'd been called Hobob. The years of being shoved down to the ground, tripped in the hallway, shoved into the lockers. Hiding in the closet he called a bedroom, trying to ignore the noise of his mother fucking strangers for money through the paper-thin walls.

Species determined sapient - Species determined to be a human variant.

The shame of being so hungry that he'd dug through the trash for food. The willful ignorance of his teachers and principals and school nurses who all ignored the malnourishment and poorly mended clothing, seeing only his blonde hair and blue eyes.

Scanning sentient mind. Resolving. Language found. Written language determined.

The sting of going to college, having worked hard over the summer to have clothes without holes in them, and finding only more rejection and disdain. It turned out being poor was akin to an invisible odor that couldn't be washed away, and Bob apparently carried that stench. He'd done everything you were supposed to do. He didn't drink or smoke or do drugs. He was quiet and respectful. He worked hard, and he made outstanding grades. He took out minimal loans, and those from the government, working fulltime while maintaining a full class load. He'd both sweated and frozen his ass off on a shipping dock, working the graveyard shift to get through school without taking out ruinous debt.

System initialized. Subject level determined to be 0. Subject accruing injuries.

None of it had mattered. He was utterly alone. He couldn't make friends with his classmates, because he had no spare time outside of class. He couldn't make friends with his co-workers, because they shared no common interests. At least on the shipping dock, he'd gotten along well enough that no one seemed to actively dislike him. His mother hadn't attended his high school graduation and seemingly hadn't noticed when he'd left for college. The only one who cared about him was Monroe.

Mana density is sufficient for rejuvenation. Initializing child protection protocol.

Robert sunk deeper into his rage as a seemingly endless wave of rats rushed forward to provide a target for his hate.

Subject sapience confirmed, initializing system integration. Subject unresponsive to system prompts. Extradimensional entity, Initializing advanced integration protocol.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Stars and stones, why couldn't we be sent to a cozy little farmhouse?" Harv ranted to his companion Elli as they carefully worked their way down into a ravine.

"You know the deal, Harv," Elli responded with a grunt as he caught himself on a sapling when his footing slipped. "They hand out the dungeon tasks as they come in, we just landed one out in the middle of nowhere," he slid a few more feet and found his balance.

"Yeah, but who cares about a dungeon out here," Harv grumbled, "it sits in the range of Holmstead, it'll never circulate enough mana to be a threat."

"Harv," Elli sighed, "the guild registered a massive spike in mana two days ago, centered on this dungeon." He shot his friend a smile as they reached the bottom of the ravine and said, "All we need to do is clear it and look for anything abnormal."

Harv hitched his pack further up his shoulders and strode along the ravine's bottom, stopping once to check his compass. A few minutes later, the pair reached their destination.

It appeared to be an unobtrusive cave, the entrance triangular in shape, wide at the bottom and narrowing at the top, the left side slightly shorter than the right. To the experienced eyes of Harv and Elli, the utter lack of light inside the cave, where at least some of the afternoon sun should have found its way, was a clear indication that this was a dungeon.

The pair gave each other a silent look, took off their packs, and pulled out armor. It took only a few minutes for both of them to shrug on hardened leather breastplates and bracers. Harv defied the apparent laws of space by pulling out a five-foot staff from his three-foot deep backpack. Elli followed suit with a three and a half foot sword. Armed and armored, they shrugged their packs back on and stepped into the darkness.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Die Motherfucker Die, Die Motherfucker Die, Die Motherfucker Die Die Die!"

Harv activated a lamp attached to his belt, and a mote of light rose above his head, illuminating the cave around them. Elli did the same, and soon, two lights revealed the cave.

It looked to be a natural passage and proceeded without any grade for at least the twenty-five feet of light they had to work with. "What do you reckon that is?" Elli whispered quietly to Harv.

"I don't know, but it sounds angry," replied Harv as he walked forward cautiously.

They walked a good fifty feet before the cavern stopped, and presented them with a twenty-foot drop.

"You wondering where the monsters are, Elli?" Harv asked as he pulled a piton, hammer, and rope from his pack.

"It has crossed my mind," Elli responded as he pulled out a chunk of chalk and started dusting his hands. "Normally, we would have been attacked by now, but aside from that roaring..." he trailed off.

"Well, there is nothing for it, based on the mana signature, this should be the only drop-down, and we shouldn't find anything much larger than a wolf in here." Harv dusted his own hands and lowered himself over the edge carefully.

Soon they were both down and edging their way down the tunnel. It had narrowed to about ten feet wide, and ten feet in height, and it curved back and forth while maintaining a steady northward heading.

A few feet down the tunnel, Harv raised his staff and pointed to a small tunnel that led off to the right. Elli nodded and knelt slightly, sword at the ready as he guided his light down to illuminate the passage. Elli looked up at Harv and whispered, "Looks like a rat spawn, although it is empty."

Harv nodded, and they continued down the tunnel, passing several other small tunnels, the roaring voice growing louder and louder. Finally, they came around a corner and stopped, shocked at the sight of the chamber before them.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Bob was in the zone. A rat in each hand, he slammed his fist into the ground as he screamed his hate. "Die Motherfucker Die!" Then, suddenly there was light.

He winced as retinas screamed at the abuse, and his pupils rapidly dilated down. He stopped moving and screaming as the light washed over him, draining his fear, and stilling the flow of his hate.

There were two men standing at the entrance to a hallway, dressed in some sort of renaissance fair costumes. They even had a sword and a staff. More importantly, they had lamps.

He staggered to his feet, his knees protesting, and his legs warning him that cramps were on their way. He peered blearily at them, that damn blue haze still blocking everything with its opaque light.

Advanced integration protocol complete. Sentient mind mapped. No matching sentience matrices. Mirror protocol confirmed.

Mirror protocol engaged.

Excuse me, Bob, I need a moment of your time.

Bob, you need to calm down.

You are clearly having a little moment here...

Mirror protocol paused, subject unresponsive, possible traumatic response caused by memory review.

He glanced down at himself and realized he was covered in chunks of rat viscera. He dropped the two rat carcasses he had been pounding into the ground and tried to brush himself off as he raised his eyes to the strangers striving to make eye contact through the azure light.

Bob took one step forward, then his eyes rolled back, and he fell to the floor.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Stones!" Harv breathed as they saw the man who had been roaring some sort of battle cry dropped a pair of very dead rats and took a staggering step towards them, before falling back to the ground.

Elli stepped forward cautiously. His light reflected from hundreds of tiny shards. He knelt, not taking his eyes off the viscera covered figure, and picked up a shard. He rolled it between his fingers before passing it back to Harv.

"Rat shard, level one," said Harv as he held it between his fingers and inspected it closely. "You don't suppose..." he trailed off.

"That he's been down here for two days, beating rats into the ground with his bare hands?" Elli replied.

"In the dark," Harv added.

"Screaming in a language I've never heard before." Elli finished.

They shared a look. "If this isn't the anomaly the guild detected, I don't know what is," Harv stated firmly. Elli gave him a dry look and a nod.

"So, you want to check him over, or should I?" Elli asked, grimacing at the rancid filth covering the unconscious man.