Great Anomaly: Stalker – 4
My body had frozen solid — but honestly, that worked in my favor.
Because it meant I could hold my gaze on Stalker without flinching.
Apart from the strangely warped toes, it looked exactly as I remembered. The enormous, fully erect cock. That ideal figure. The black hair.
And the blue eyes I was only now seeing for the first time.
Blue eyes, like mine.
"Excellent."
I kept staring — and then the faceless man who looked like the SWAT leader, the one who'd announced the team's deployment earlier, clapped me on the shoulder. Tap, tap — as if to say I'd done my part well enough.
'Huh?'
And with the hand that hadn't been pointing at me, he pressed something round into my palm.
"Vibration pager. When it goes off — run."
"No, what the hell—"
One of those round pagers cafes hand out. Between the anti-slip stickers earlier and now this, the faceless ones had a real gift for shattering immersion in the strangest places.
Why would a SWAT team be carrying cafe pagers, of all things...
"And this one's for self-defense. Three rounds — they'll punch through anything. Make them count."
Then he rummaged somewhere inside his chest and handed over a pistol.
I wanted to demand why they couldn't have just given this to me at the police station instead of doing it right in front of Stalker —
'Oh. Right, I can't exactly hide anything, can I?'
It hit me that my outfit was a high-exposure swimsuit with nowhere to conceal so much as a coin. Pointless either way.
"CHARGE!"
Tatata-tang!
While I was still processing my bewilderment, working my way toward acceptance, the SWAT team surged forward at speeds that left afterimages, guns blazing.
The leader and one other trooper charged dead ahead, greatswords drawn, while the rest split three and three to either flank, laying down fire on Stalker.
Ordinarily they'd have shot each other down from those positions, and I flinched for a heartbeat — but strangely, the leader and the trooper behind him never took a single bullet.
Every round punched through Stalker alone.
'It's avoiding the blades.'
Maybe thanks to the mirror-bright floor and the immaculately maintained edges, I caught flickers of blade trajectories for split seconds at a time.
Stalker blocked the bullets one-handed while attacking with the other — but even when shot and forced to regenerate, it always, always evaded the blades.
'It's fought them before... has it?'
A chill crawled up my spine. With that regeneration, letting a blade land would cost Stalker nothing — another kill would be pure profit.
When it fought the firefighters, it had simply tanked their thrown extinguishers to kill faster. But the blades, it dodged. Which meant it had intel on the police SWAT.
"Stalker has information on the police SWAT!"
I shouted on the off chance. They couldn't possibly not know what I knew — but if they truly didn't, it would be a catastrophe.
The standoff held for roughly ten seconds after that, and once even the flankers had worked their way around behind Stalker, its behavior changed.
Pwoo!
Something launched from Stalker's mouth. Whatever it was, it was clearly solid, spreading wide like buckshot. The leader blocked it and shifted stance in an instant, but the trooper covering from behind was screened by the leader's body — blind to it, and too late with the block.
In that sliver of an instant — a tenth of a second at most — Stalker's foot sheared off the trooper's arm.
'Is that... a bullet?'
I examined the ricocheted object. A warhead with a faint yellow sheen. A live round, already fired.
For a moment I flashed on an anime about an alien parasite living in a human head — its final boss had scattered its own ammunition like buckshot. And looking at Stalker's foot, already restored to its original toes, I thought: if it could transform in an instant and regenerate on demand, there was no reason it couldn't do what that thing did.
'Are we actually supposed to be able to win this?'
I'd watched it shred the fire truck, but seeing it this close was a different order of shock. Instantaneous regeneration. Attack arcs that bent impossibly, as if inertia were merely a suggestion. Even an incomprehensible martial art that turned being knocked sliding by bullets into momentum.
The police SWAT was fighting valiantly — but Stalker was something that belonged only in fiction.
'Do the best I can. That's all there is.'
I couldn't follow that fight even if I tried. All I could see was the glint of greatswords and the shallow water scattered across the floor as they blinked between positions. Even the troopers firing at my sides didn't register clearly in my eyes.
'Ignore the gaze. Grab the gun and the pager. Ready to run.'
It was fighting like that, and still some part of it was on me — I could feel its gaze at the back of my head even now. A strange gaze, somehow leisurely. I couldn't see its expression, but it felt like it was smiling at me.
Woooomng!
'Now!'
But I ignored the gaze and ran. The battle was not mine to influence — all I could do was trust the SWAT leader.
The next few seconds of sprinting — it would all be decided in mere seconds. All I could do was run as fast as my legs would carry me, and believe in the police SWAT.
'Bugs.'
It ignored the things clinging to its flanks. It could see them plainly — shooting from that distance to grind down its regeneration, then, once an opening showed, drawing blades to unfold a pincer formation. Utterly predictable.
The Rules always drove an anomaly in with overwhelming technique or a special assigned role, then prepared a matching counter. This time, the role handed to Stalker had been "fire." It had been fun — but that was all it was.
The Rules were novel every time. But the Rules' servants, the faceless ones, were something else again: they always fought only with what they were given. Hand them a hundred and they would deploy that hundred — never the greater exploitation that humans or anomalies showed. Once you adapted, nothing on earth was easier to handle.
"Stalker has information on the police SWAT!"
'Oh?'
The slight change and information offered by the woman — that alone altered the SWAT team's movements. The blades hesitated a fraction, then moved again. Rounds that had been fired at its whole body now concentrated on its feet, the wellspring of its mobility.
Stalker realized it wasn't taking those hits because it had to — it took them because they didn't matter. And since they surely knew its swordwork by now as well, it added syncopation to its rhythm.
'Deliberate? Or blind luck?'
One hundred became one hundred and ten. That alone doubled the difficulty — all eight of them had become one hundred and ten.
Pwoo!
A small change. But no matter how strong an NPC grew, no scripted pattern could defeat a player who had already learned everything — and the mere act of firing the gathered rounds swung the battle sharply.
'That'll be about now.'
For some five seconds, it deliberately bled openings. It let the regeneration-blocking blades land — on its forearm, a part that didn't matter — let the gash run long. And through that wound a bullet 'happened' to slip in, tearing it wider; it slackened the arm just slightly, as though its primary weapon had weakened.
'So it runs after all.'
It had confirmed the handoff of the pager. Presumably that was the signal to run. And the fool out front — even with a supporting subordinate down an arm, he probably believed that were he in Stalker's position, he could buy a few seconds during this window of weakness.
Very funny.
He didn't even know the arm had been targeted deliberately rather than the throat. He didn't even know Stalker still had every intention of ending this standoff whenever it pleased. He judged only from what the surface showed. When the individual meant to be the leader commanding this operation was like this, only a hollow laugh came.
"I'm trusting you!"
'She doesn't know.'
The woman running on the signal stirred something close to pity. That clever woman — had she glimpsed even a fraction of this scene, she would never have run. She couldn't follow the battle, and so she trusted the puppet out front with everything.
'Let's wrap this up.'
Its weight shifted. All its mass poured into one foot while the rest of its body turned light as feathers — a unique martial art of weight control, unrelated to monstrous strength. Thanks to it, Stalker caught the two blades closing in front and the three flying in from each flank — between its fingers, in its teeth, with its toes — and snapped every single one. These ones were only dangerous as blades; the swords themselves were brittle enough to break.
KWANG!
'A flashbang.'
A variable it had excluded because it was hard to employ in ultra-high-speed combat. The instant it went off, Stalker sealed its retinas, restored its hearing, checked its body for damage, and repaired what it found.
By touch alone, it felt the air currents of every trooper drawing fresh greatswords — shattered four of the blades, and crushed the one head that had been moving along a trajectory. Of the remaining four blade trajectories, it evaded two and crushed the heads behind the other two before they could close.
All of it, within less than two seconds.
On the third second its senses finally recovered, and it rolled its eyes to scan the surroundings. Three troopers drawing their last greatswords — ignored. The leader attacking off-beat, and the one-armed trooper — it slipped the leader's strike by twisting its body's axis a fraction, and crushed the trooper's remaining arm.
The leader, exposed for a breath for having attacked. The three troopers finally drawing their greatswords to strike. It ignored them all and bolted for the woman.
Speed favored Stalker. It would arrive before they did, with room to spare. Seize her first, throw her back or take her hostage — the moment it did, Stalker's victory. The police SWAT were time-buying puppets; forget that this woman was the main event, and it would lose sight of the essence entirely.
Tang! Ta-ang!
'Oh?'
The pistol in her hand. It hadn't even bothered keeping track of her, certain she couldn't track it — yet by chance, or by something else entirely, her shot came dead for its head. Startled for a beat, it deflected the bullet with its hand — a tiny opening, though not enough time for the puppets behind to close in.
'What a shame.'
How much more fun it would have been had that judgment been the woman's own, and not the puppet's. Swallowing that regret, it reached to seize her wrist—
Slick.
'Huh...?'
Its grip slid clean off her wrist.
'Soap?'
Looking closer, there was the faintest sheen of something reflective. The resupply point... the fire station, probably? Had they stocked it there against exactly this?
'Hahahahat!'
Too delightful — a smile crept across its face unbidden. It had watched her continuously. Had it been smeared all over, it would have noticed. But she had apparently predicted even that, coating only her arms and legs — the most critical parts if grabbed.
Had she been caught gently, it would have been different. With an imperfect grip, Stalker would have registered the soap and adjusted accordingly. But Stalker took no chances whatsoever — this woman had already produced far too many variables. Precisely because it acknowledged her, it gripped hard — and so, it slipped.
And that fact — that single fact — was delicious to Stalker.
"You can't run!"
Just as the thing before it had begun to seem almost lovable, almost admirable — the puppets that had been creeping up behind arrived on their borrowed time.
'This, too, is a delight!'
But it had decided to enjoy itself. The variable was the woman's own doing — so wasn't it only natural that it, the one who failed to track the variable, should bear the cost?
[Too obvious!]
Ordinarily it wouldn't have deigned to speak to mere puppets. But it was too elated now, too high on the fun — so Stalker addressed them.
The fastest to arrive was, of course, the leader — with three troopers following on his heels. No time to spare attention for such things — and yet attention was forced upon it.
So it gave flesh. Once this ghost story ended, the untreatable wounds would vanish anyway.
It deliberately took the leader's blade in its belly and flexed, trapping the sword in its abdomen. Of the remaining three blades, it caught one in its teeth — the corner of its mouth tore slightly, but the difference in raw strength made it easy. The two blades hammering down at its shoulders it stopped with four fingers of each hand, gripping the flats. Even with monstrous strength, halting a downward shoulder-strike with four fingers alone was no simple feat — but it could bleed off the force, and the moment the tips sank slightly in, it clamped them with its shoulder muscles and shattered them with grip strength.
"FIRE!"
The leader abandoned the greatsword buried in its belly, drew a fresh one, and passed it to one of the troopers left bladeless. Its eyes flicked briefly to the woman's position. Still ten meters. Halfway to go.
It deliberated. And deliberated. Deliberated until its head — overworked for the first time in decades — ached with the complaint of what on earth is wrong with you. Then it reached its conclusion: clearing the puppets before it was far better.
Seizing a sliver of an opening to put mobility toward the woman — as its hands tried to slide out sideways, mid-motion, they karate-chopped a broken trooper's head clean off.
It ignored the two troopers who had somehow drawn pistols and fired — those should have come at it bare-fisted.
It studied the trajectories of the leader and the trooper closing with blades. The leader's blade was a nuisance to parry — so it let its hand be pierced, and caught it. The other, apparently stunned that its attack could be undone so cheaply, tried to alter its trajectory — too late. Stalker kicked it clean away, tearing the body in half.
At the shooters, it flung the bisected trooper's greatsword, and the blade still driven through its own hand, at their throats. Both struck home.
Now the pattern was simple. A veteran like the leader would reach for the only weapon he had left — the sword buried in its belly.
Right. Yes. Move your hands to your belly. I'll tear you apart right there.
Ta-ang!
'Hm?'
A sliver of time — less than a second before the puppet called the SWAT leader was torn apart.
And in that window, the woman covered the muzzle with her own palm and fired at Stalker.
It was an entirely unforeseen act, and it flinched — but the bullet that punched through her hand ricocheted away harmlessly.
'......!!!!!!'
But what came next soared far beyond anything Stalker had anticipated.
The woman swung that hand —
and flung the droplets of her own blood in a line toward the boundary!
In an instant, a torrent of thoughts crossed Stalker's mind. The Rules. The penalty. The consequences of that act. It ran the calculation in that microscopic sliver of time and produced the result:
Blood separated from the body — something that, under any other circumstance, the Rules would never treat as part of one's form — right now, while it was hated by the Rules for breaking them...
there was a very real chance it counted as "body" for ten-odd seconds, or until the red cells inside died.
[No!]
Stalker had granted her a constraint: a body unharmed by external physical force. But the woman had trusted not Stalker's words — she had trusted the SWAT leader's promise that his ordnance could punch through anything — and in truth, the Rules' weapon was stronger than the constraint.
Someone had thought the faceless ones worthless puppets. Someone had seen them as NPCs — but having now changed that view to beings worthy of genuine trust, she made possible something that otherwise never could have been.
And so Stalker lunged toward the unthinkable carnage—
-Not happening!
[Screw you!]
Before it knew it, the leader — blade already drawn from its belly — carved through Stalker's Achilles tendon before he could be beheaded.
Counter-struck by a puppet, Stalker watched the scattering blood-drops and thought:
'With that much... with that much effort, doesn't she deserve to win?'
Unthinkable cunning — firing a gun at her own hand to splatter blood. She had excelled to the point where Stalker would gladly grant it, proudly, if she went around declaring she had beaten it.
But.
'Am I truly the trial that thing deserves?'
An anomaly. A human's trial.
The woman had exceeded her limits every single time. She had shown wit. And Stalker? It had fought with the abilities it simply had. It had not exceeded a limit once — if anything, it had flipped the board with an unfair application of power.
Is this... really a trial?
'I cannot accept it.'
It could not accept itself. The woman who grew without end until she finally cornered Stalker at its limits — and Stalker, her trial, was a being that did not grow?
'Think. Think. THINK.'
Flinging blood-drops the same way? No. Stalker was fire; the blood evaporated the instant it left the body. The water on the floor was equally useless — fire, again. Using the bisected puppet's body parts? Far too heavy; the droplets would cross the line before any interception was possible.
Losing was fine. Losing while doing nothing was not.
It swayed.
But its body, ignorant of its master's will, tipped slowly forward. It only had to hold for a few seconds — yet the body that had always been perfect failed the moment its Achilles tendon, the pillar holding it upright, was gone.
'Wait... the floor?'
Its tipping gaze caught the floor. The mirror-bright, gel-like surface. It had tried shattering it any number of times, but rather than break it only bounced — it had given up in irritation.
If it broke off a piece of that and threw it, it could intercept the droplets.
'...I have to.'
Its hand dropped low. What it needed: friction, and something it could cut before the shock was absorbed. There was no time to transform.
So it would change physically.
Kok. Kok. Kok.
It struck its thumbnail with its right index finger and shattered it. The long thumbnail became a saw blade — a tool to cut the floor, complete. What remained was something to add even a little friction to that slippery surface.
It plucked the nails from every finger of its right hand except the thumb and ground them together in its fist. Powder to raise the friction — complete.
It looked down. The ultra-high-speed battle had sprayed every trace of water in all directions; the waterless stretch of floor was more than enough.
It scattered the powder downward. Drew a circle with its saw-blade thumbnail. Jointless, it kept tracing the circle — and at last, from the floor that had yielded only the tiniest scratch even at full power, it peeled away a thin piece.
'Hah... hah...'
A euphoria past pleasure, verging on madness, washed over it. How long had it been since it last grew?
Even now, in that extremity of the instant, the droplets had not yet touched the line. But barely two meters remained — a razor-thin margin between throwing the floor-piece and it reaching the target.
So, as fast as it could, it threw the cut piece. Not aiming at the swarm of droplets, but at the shockwave of the throw itself. If that shockwave knocked the droplets short of the line — Stalker's victory. If not — the woman's.
'Leaving it to luck has its own flavor of fun.'
But in the instant before it threw — as it tilted its stance slightly to make the throw — its foot touched the hand of the headless leader.
Grabbed.
By a hand clutching on pure spinal reflex, Stalker's balance shook —
and it threw the floor-piece somewhere else entirely.
It was the victory of the puppets Stalker had scorned, all along.