Two hundred and one ivory skeletons rushed at the back of the entrance to the Jameson Jockey Jedi base. As Bobby and Gary came round the building, ducking so they weren’t singled out by any of the shooters they saw a quite comical sight. Another group of men as large as the one they were currently keeping hostage were arranged by a castle-esque gatehouse, each man wore a cloak and had some item on their person from the movie franchise their gang was obsessed with.

  For the most part that item was just a sabre themed water bottle or baton, but a few of them had gone all out, dressed as full droids or troopers. As he watched one of the men dressed as a trooper leapt off the top of the wall, trying to land on a skeleton and take it down with him. For a moment the man looked insane, but it somehow worked, if a bit short lasting when five more skeletons jumped on top of the two. Bobby began laughing, but stopped when the two machine guns mounted to the wall beside the gate rotated round and began shearing through the army. That was not a funny sight.

  However the skeletons weren’t deterred by the greeting and opted to mostly ignore all bullets shot at them, after all they could easily survive having a few things damaged or missing with the amount of magic circulating through each one.

  Soon the gate was overrun, skeletons hugging and climbing over each other to trap and incapacitate the humans, beating them with a bony fist wherever they could get a hand through their comrades bodies. Some even resorted to biting, demonstrating a complete lack of any rules of common decency. They would commit a war crime without even blinking—not that they can blink.

  A few of his minions were lost, but they still had over ninety percent their original numbers after completely taking over the gate. Gary produced an industrial pack of zip ties upon the last man being taken down and he began zip tying the mens arms behind their backs, just to make sure they wouldn’t get back up again.

  He was remarkably efficient at this and was done very quickly, so he and Bobby could co-lead the next stage of the operation. Again they funnelled skeletons into the building before entering themselves to explore. Ten minutes later they concluded that the first floor yielded nothing interesting other than a cafeteria with a bunch of surprised men guarding a room full of food who didn’t even try to fight, just surrendering immediately.

  Next they reached a corridor with four rusted elevator doors and a staircase. Gary squinted at the old elevators that were probably not still in use, “Do you think they are above or below us Bobby?”

  “Above us definitely, they wouldn’t be living up to their namesake if they didn’t take the high ground.” Bobby kicked one of the elevators idly and took a hasty step back as one of the doors fell out and plummeted into the darkness before crashing somewhere deep below. “That did take a while to fall though meaning there’s a lot of room down there, so they might not be above.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Gary shrugged and produced a coin from somewhere, flipping it and hiding it beneath his palm. “We each take half the army, one of us goes down, one up, and if we don’t find anything we join the other. Heads you go up, Tails I go up!”

  He revealed the coin, showing the shiny head of some bald dude probably cryogenically frozen somewhere. “Good luck,” Bobby told him, separating off half the army and making his way upstairs.

  Bobby left a third of his skeletons guarding the stairway of the first floor, to stop anyone coming down while he was exploring, then he raided the floor with the other two thirds, methodically working his way up. It definitely wasn’t the fastest approach, but he’d rather they apprehended absolutely everyone than let a few people slip through the cracks to escape and alert… Well he wasn’t sure who they would tell, but it sure wouldn’t be good.

  On the first few floors he found again not much of interest, but on the fourth floor he found an armory type area which a few more men were guarding, they had barricaded all alternative routes into the area and happily sprayed bullets down the only accessible corridor when Bobby stuck his head out to look.

  Bobby scratched his head, he could use a spell to clear a route through and sneak up on them, but he wanted to conserve his magic in case he needed it against the gang leader. Instead he sent twenty skeletons in to brave the bullets and round the men up. Am I enjoying this? He asked himself, finding the answer did seem to be yes. It feels so much like one of those big MMORPGs I used to play with my friends.

  Bobby found himself wishing he had a walkie talkie so he could make some inane anecdote to Gary, then he refocused on the task at hand as he heard the men grow quiet and stop shooting. He poked his head into the corridor again and when he wasn’t shot at, made his way into the armory room to find all the men unconscious and heaped in a corner.

  “Gary has taught you well Padawans,” he told the skeletons, grabbing a loaded automatic rifle from one of the men and a wicked sword that someone had mounted on the wall. Then he progressed onwards to the fifth and final floor, which he knew was the last because the stairs had run out. Damn, I’m getting some intense boss battle vibes.

  Bobby stepped out of the stairwell to find someone had knocked through most of the walls on the top floor, clearing the way for a now decrepit death star control room kind of place. It would have once been remarkably realistic, and even had pits full of computers for the pilots as well as a large glass window at the end which looked out over the gate.

  “Awesome,” he breathed, surveying the dark room for people and spotting a pair of giant thrones against the wall made from welded car frames. They completely clashed with the decor, but were no less cool.

  Bobby felt himself jump slightly when he realised someone was in one of the great seats. At first he thought they were asleep or dead, but when the shadow moved and a red light flickered on where he expected one of the figures' eyes to be then he realised two things.

  Firstly that they were looking directly at him and secondly that he was indeed in for a boss fight.

  +++++

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