Chapter 11:

Call to Arms

I Failed As a Professional Baseball Player And Now Have To Fight Otherworldly Creatures With Nothing But a Baseball Bat


Bentley sat at the oval conference table with the characters who were apparently his teammates spaced around it.

The red haired boy named Two Mace Jack.

The boy with nunchucks named Chuck.

The short girl carrying a sledgehammer named Corinne.

The crowbar proficient mime named Grady.

And the one who had revealed herself as the team leader that would direct them from the comfort of the Command Center, Chrysanthemum.

Bentley could tell that despite varying greatly in appearance, they were all around his age, ranging anywhere from 17-20 years old.

Chrys stood up from her chair while keeping both hands flat on the table.

“I’d like to welcome you all to the first official meeting of the ever changing and never complete D.U.V. Cerb Extermination Unit 03,” she said with a little smile.

The other members of the team, besides the mime, laughed at this comment despite it not making much sense to Bentley. Inside jokes were something Bentley was never privy to in high school and it appeared that the real world would be much of the same. This particular one wasn’t too hard for Bentley to decipher though and he figured out with relative ease that the members of this group were no strangers to “first” official meetings.

“Let’s give a warm Unit 03 welcome to our newest member… Bentley Flynn,” Chrysanthemum said.

With that, the rest of those who sat around the conference table stood up and formed a single file line behind Bentley.

Chuck placed a hand on Bentley’s shoulder and handed him a blue pen.

“Great to have you aboard,” he said.

He moved out of the way and Corinne shuffled up to take his place. She nervously held out the offering while keeping her eyes firmly clamped shut. In her tiny hands was a refrigerator magnet shaped like a teddy bear with the phrase “I am bear-y happy” printed on its stomach. Bentley picked up the small metallic thing and placed it into his pocket with the pen.

“Let’s do our best,” she shouted red-cheeked before running over and hiding behind Chuck.

Next, the mime strode up to Bentley and held his hand up to his mouth before pretending to blow up a balloon. After a few seconds of blowing, the mime began to twist the imaginary balloon into an incomprehensible shape. Once he decided the work was acceptable to him, Grady the mime dropped the fistful of air into Bentley’s waiting palms before walking away proudly.

Finally, Jack walked up with his hands in his pockets, indignantly refusing to make eye contact with Bentley.

“Jus’ don’t slow me down, ya hear,” Jack said before delivering a swift and forceful punch to Bentley’s shoulder. He shoved his hand back in his pocket and returned to his seat like the rest of the team had.

“Do you guys just carry that stuff with you at all times?” Bentley’s question was directed more to Chuck and Corinne than the less sane duo of Grady and Jack. Bentley still rubbed the spot on his shoulder where Jack had left a rapidly forming knuckle shaped bruise.

“People are constantly rotating in and out of these extermination units so you learn to keep something on hand,” Chuck said, his voice tinged with a mixture of emotions that Bentley couldn’t quite pinpoint.

“By rotating in and out do you mean—”

“Anyways,” Chrysanthemum interrupted, “To get the team closer with its new member, I’ve planned some icebreaker activities.”

They all collectively groaned.

“Do I really need ta introduce myself ta some guy who is gonna get himself killed on the first mission?”

“I’ll have you know that I killed one of those Cerb thingies in a single hit a few weeks back,” Bentley chirped.

“Do ya wanta cookie or somethin’? Yer not even carryin’ yer weapon on you so ya clearly don’t have a lick of combat experience. One lucky hit don’t make ya anything more than that… lucky,” Jack said. "Not to mention that I heard ya were knocked out fer weeks after tha fact."

“I hate to say he’s got a point but where is my baseball bat?” Jack’s sharp tongued comments had reminded Bentley that Chrysanthemum had taken his weapon of choice as soon as he had entered the headquarters, citing it as following protocol. He had trouble believing that it was standard procedure now that he sat beside a girl under 5 feet tall carrying a sledgehammer the size of her body.

“We’ll be returning it to you after everyone here is caught up to speed on the current state of affairs,” Chrysanthemum said.

“Yeah but I kind of look like a bum without it and everyone else here gets to keep their weapons so—”

“We’ll be returning it to you after everyone here is caught up to speed on the current state of affairs.”

“Also, why doesn’t anyone here have a gun? Wouldn’t that be the easiest way to kill a Cerb?”

“We’ll be… Wait, that's actually a valid question,” said Chrysanthemum.

“Why were you so ready to write off my comment before I even made it!?”

“The reason nobody carries guns here is simply because we’ve found that they’re ineffective against Cerbs,” Chrysanthemum said while ignoring Bentley’s complaints, “In our experience it seems that the only real way to kill a Cerb is via blunt force trauma, they are relatively immune to bullets.”

“I see,” Bentley said, now understanding why they felt the need to employ someone who used a weapon so obscure as a mace.

“Can ya quit asking yer dumb questions so we can get outta here at some point today?”

“I don’t mean to be rude but I agree that it would be nice to get this out of the way as soon as possible,” Chuck agreed.

“Please Mr. Bentley,” Corinne whispered.

Bentley felt arrows shoot through his heart as his team was already turning against him, other than the mime who was pretending to be stuck in an invisible box, after knowing him for a grand total of ten minutes.

“I’m new here so cut me some slack,” Bentley whined, “And getting called Mr. Bentley hurt more than anything Corinne, I’m only 19 ya know.”

Corinne covered her face with her hands and peeked out between her fingers in response to this confrontation. Chrysanthemum carried on as if nothing had happened.

“So as far as locating the gate goes, the General has been hard at work but unfortunately there’s no progress to report.”

“Shocker,” Jack snorted.

“If you’d like to speak I’ll gladly give you the floor after cutting your tongue out,” Chrysanthemum said with a smile.

Two Mace Jack shrank back in his seat. Bentley guessed that Jack too had found out the hard way that Chrysanthemum was far from all talk.

“As far as others in the field, we have still yet to hear back from Unit 01. Unit 02 on the other hand just returned having sustained various injuries that will take time to heal. Unit 04 was sent out yesterday to address an unverified Cerb appearance in a southern prefecture and Unit 05 is still searching for replacement agents. Thus, unless anything changes, we will be the Unit on call for the immediate future.”

“Why does it seem like we’re the last option?” Bentley again interrupted Chrysanthemum’s report and was on the receiving end of a quick scowl, apparently having brought up a sore subject.

“That would be because we are,” Chuck said, “Unit 03 has long been used for supporting other units when backup is needed rather than being sent out on solo missions.”

“We’re tha laughin’ stock of tha agency,” Jack said. The amount it pained him to force out this ugly truth was evident.

Corinne tried to say something but it came out as an incomprehensible mumble through the hands that were still pressed to her face.

The mime had still not managed to find a way out of his invisible box.

“It’s only a matter of time before that changes though,” Chrysanthemum said, “As the youngest director in D.U.V. history I promise I will make sure that Unit 03 gets its long overdue respect.”

This seemed to improve everyone’s spirits ever so slightly. It was clear to Bentley that they truly believed in their director. He didn’t blame them. After all, he had seen her punch a demon eel monster in the face. Bentley had one more trick up his sleeve to fully inspire everyone in the room though.

“Don’t worry everyone, the old man in the cell told me that I’m the key to saving the world. So once that whole deal happens, we’ll all be heroes and get massive pay raises. Nobody will ever disrespect your… I mean our Unit ever again,” Bentley proudly announced while puffing out his chest.

Bentley had no problem being a member of a laughing stock unit that rarely left headquarters. The less times he had to risk his lives fighting Cerbs the better. For all he cared, he could sit in this conference room every day just waiting for the paychecks to keep rolling in. It was a miracle that he had survived his first encounter with a Cerb, and while he may have made Chrysanthemum promise that D.U.V. would pay off the medical debt in the event that he died, he still knew that he wanted to be there for May when she woke up. So Bentley didn’t care about the Unit’s prestige or anything meaningless like that, but he did feel a strange urge to try and lift their hopes, just like he always wished someone had been there to do for him.

After Bentley’s declaration, the room fell silent for a few beats. The ticking of the wall clock sounded like shouts.

The momentary quiet was broken by everyone simultaneously falling into uproarious laughter.

Jack. Chuck. Corinne. Chrysanthemum. Even the mime was feigning laughter with a hand on his stomach despite not producing any noise.

“Bentley you weren’t kidding when you said the old man was going senile,” Chrysanthemum said between wheezes. In that moment all the worries she had about the old man being right about the coming tragedies dissipated and she concluded that he had somehow drugged her or hypnotized her in some way to cause the vision. After all, Bentley had talent with the baseball bat, but to say that this naive and arrogant boy would somehow achieve the goals that soldiers worth one hundred of him couldn’t accomplish was unfathomable.

“And ya told ME that I was a marker sniff away from bein’ sent to a psych ward,” Jack said as he dabbed tears from the corner of his eyes. “We may be the laughin’ stock of the agency but yer gonna be the laughin’ stock of us.”

Chuck and Corinne didn’t say anything so as not to further damage Bentley’s free-falling ego but their inability to stifle their chuckles spoke volumes.

Bentley lowered his head in shame, his face coated in red. His ears felt like they were ringing. Maybe the old man was going senile after all? It could’ve all been some elaborate trick. The old man hadn’t said anything specific and had instead made vague blanket statements about the fate of the world resting in Bentley’s hands. Bentley could not come up with a reason for why the old man would do it but knew that he was an idiot for believing him. In the end, there wasn’t anything special about Bentley, he was just a guy with a baseball bat that had been in the right place at the right time.

I’m definitely not inviting him to the Okinawa trip,” Bentley thought.

He tried to calm down, reminding himself that he’d still be collecting his paychecks regardless of whether or not his coworkers thought he was a clown, before realizing that the laughing had stopped.

Bentley noticed that his face was far too red for it to just be from embarrassment and that his whole body was coated in the same light.

The ringing in his ears no longer sounded isolated within his own head but rather blared throughout the room like an alarm.

What Bentley thought was happening surely couldn’t be happening. He had figured that timing as strange and coincidental as this only happened in cheesy action manga.

Chrysanthemum’s face showed no sign of the laughter that had painted it moments ago.

“Unit 03,” she said with a gulp, “Prepare to be deployed.”

Sujin 崇神
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