by Sarah Lin
He found that Emily had already reached the parking lot, and when he got close she manifested her car so that the passenger door was facing in his direction. When he got in, he grunted in pain, though he managed to stifle the sound through discipline. Emily didn't seem to notice, simply turning her keys in the ignition and heading out.
"What lit a fire under you now, of all times?" he asked. She didn't answer even when he looked over at her, but Rick just watched and waited, knowing that she would speak eventually.
"I don't want you to be hurt. I'll defend you if I can, but I don't think you want to rely on me and there are limits to that strategy in any case."
"I'm glad you're concerned, but why now? I mean, Granny Whitney didn't have my best interests in mind and I had some other nasty things hanging over my head. I actually got maimed in that Slayer match in the Underground. My life is much safer by comparison now - honestly, even getting stuck in the demon realm wasn't as bad as it could be."
She looked over at him, gaze piercing. "Rick, that was a murder attempt. You need to take it deadly seriously."
"You mean Jack?" Rick was taken aback, though he understood her thought process a little more. "I really don't think it was that bad, he just hit me to make me perform worse on the exercise. He had no idea that there would be a reaction like that."
"I disagree. Based on everything I've read about such anomalous disruptions, they can be extremely lethal to the unprepared, and they're more dangerous the closer you get to them. Striking you in the middle of combat was an attempt to end your life."
"You think he'd try to commit murder in front of a bunch of GLA and demon reps?"
"He obviously felt confident enough to commit assault."
"I don't think it would go beyond that. When he threatened me back at the golf course, he just said he wanted to maim me-" Rick saw Emily's fingers whiten on the steering wheel and realized that he'd made a mistake mentioning that. "Look, he's just someone with a grudge. I've had people who hate me trying to beat me up for most of my life. I'm not saying to just ignore it, but I don't think it's as serious as you think."
"You may be right, but I see no reason not to take the threat seriously." She glanced over at him, brow furrowed. He thought it was in concern for him, not anger, but he wasn't actually sure. "You still don't know which relative of his you beat at the tournament or anything about his alignments. It's premature to assume you understand the threat and therefore better to consider the worst case scenario."
"Maybe you're right." He managed to say it, but he didn't really mean it and that was obvious. They drove in silence for a while, the quiet growing heavier between them. Before they arrived, Rick decided he needed to say more or their date would get off to a terrible start. "I'll investigate what I can about him, okay? I agree that I should have at least been doing that."
She didn't answer, staring forward. They arrived at the restaurant and Rick shifted his position automatically, ready to land when the car reverted into her keychain. Emily paused for longer then usual, then after the car disappeared, stepped closer to him. He wasn't sure when she'd put up her hood, but it shielded her eyes from his angle.
"Rick, I'm not trying to criticize you. I just... I fuck up enough of my relationships, I don't want someone coming from the outside and ruining it before I even have the chance."
"Emily..." He leaned down so that he could look under her hood and found her staring back at him. Not angry anymore, at least. Since she just looked concerned, he leaned in and kissed her briefly. "I'm glad you're doing so much to help me. Let's just leave it alone and have fun on our date, okay?"
She nodded and leaned up to kiss him again, then headed toward the restaurant at a brisk pace. Though Rick hadn't thought anything about the selection when she'd suggested it, now he found himself reconsidering. The place looked like a pretty nice upscale restaurant, but that wasn't the issue.
No, it was the fact that it specialized in unique steaks from exotic creatures. The site had talked about serving steaks from local bison... bison that were known for using lucrim. They weren't very dangerous, but their meat was supposed to be extremely useful for lucrim development. At first he had just thought it was the kind of place Emily might pick if she was feeling slightly more adventurous, but now he had to wonder if it had been a calculated choice. Most likely he could assume that safely.
Inside, he was surprised to be greeted by a rather large man wearing a cowboy hat and traditional combat robe. It was obviously a costume, unless he actually had a legitimate reason to be wearing boots with spurs on them. The man tipped his hat to them politely.
"Park, party of two? Right this way."
They were led to a corner booth and the host assured them that their waiter would be around shortly. Before they had even gotten completely settled, Emily spoke up quietly. "They have lucrim-boosting numbers on the menu here and some of the food gets expensive. Please get whatever you think would be best for you, regardless of cost."
"So that is what this is about." Rick sighed and caught her gaze. She hadn't even tried to hide it. "Emily, I appreciate that you're concerned, but you're pushing this really aggressively. There's such a thing as over-training, you should know that."
"You haven't yet reached that limit." Her eyes bored straight back into his. "Your training regimen is excellently balanced for long term growth, but we can't count on the long term right now. Two or three periods of your life where you're pressed beyond your limits won't lead to any long term harm."
"Oh, really? You've been through the same thing?"
"Twice, so far."
Her flat answer caught him off guard. She didn't look away and he found himself thinking about how she had killed the hitman who threatened both of them. It was easy to think of her as just a laid back engineer, but at that moment he had to wonder who she really was. "Why?"
"That's... difficult to explain." For the first time Emily looked down, though he caught a hint of uncertainty in her eyes. "I really want this to work, I just..."
She trailed off and Rick found a deep discomfort welling up from within him. Their relationship had been so easy thus far, but now this made him wonder. He enjoyed being with Emily, but was he actually the right person for her? If he didn't make the right decision now, this minor argument could grow into a rift that would-
"Hey, folks!" A jovial voice cut in from the side. "Welcome to - holy shit, Rick? What the fuck, man?"
The greeting completely threw Rick off his train of thought and he found himself staring up at his old coworker, Henry. He looked leaner and he was wearing the apron and hat of the waiters. It was just about the last thing that Rick had expected, and at least part of his mind had expected a sudden attack.
"Uh, hey, Henry. Really didn't expect to see you here."
"Yeah, it sucks, but..." Henry gave an exaggerated shrug. "What can you do? Those Advanced Lucrim stations really got me out of a bind, but they don't tell you how those things can bite you in the ass! So I decided that I should go back to basics and just earn some money the old-fashioned way. That gym you work at is a dead end, no offense."
"No, you... got out at a good time." Though Rick would never forget how his coworker had thrown him under the bus, he saw no reason to make an enemy. "I've left too."
"More Underground fights, then? I guess that explains why she's with you again. I take it you'll be ordering the most lucrim-heavy items on the menu?"
"Yes," Emily snapped, glaring at Henry, "but that is not the reason. This is..." She had started to put her hand on the table toward Rick, then hesitated. The uncertainty in her expression looked so wrong that Rick immediately reached out and put his hand over hers.
"This is a date. Listen, man, it's been great catching up with you, but..."
Henry looked back and forth between them as if he didn't believe it. Eventually he shook his head a few times and somehow transitioned to nodding. "Yeah... yeah, you're right. My boss would get on my ass for chatting too much anyway. L
et's get your orders quick, alright?"
They ordered and Rick did as Emily planned, ordering one of the most expensive bison steaks. He wasn't sure how much good the ethereal mushrooms and alleged crushed pill toppings would really benefit him, but at minimum it would be a shot of natural lucrim to his system. Henry took their orders quickly and headed out.
"Fucking asshole..." Emily stared after Henry, but her hand shifted to lace her fingers through Rick's.
"You know, you never explained why exactly you hate him so much."
"Before you joined the Underground, he would not stop creeping on me." Emily sighed and rolled her eyes. "Listen, I work with engineers and some of them are pretty awkward. I'm not going to get offended if somebody clumsily hits on me. But that guy... I can easily imagine he went off about how I was a lesbian or something..."
"As it happens, I have bad news for you there." Rick briefly told the story about the first time they'd met, which had also been his first conversation with Emily. To his surprise, he actually got a laugh from her.
Wanting to continue the positivity, Rick pulled out his phone to check... yup, Henry had never revoked Rick's friend permissions. Therefore he could easily access his portfolio:
[Name: Hendog69 (pseudonym)
Ether Tier: 20th
Ether Score: 31
Lucrim Generation: 15,250
- Demonic Bond: 12,000 (overextended - 20% repayment penalty)
- Demonic Bond: 4000 (overextended - 23% repayment penalty)
- Demonic Bond: 7000 (overextended - 35% repayment penalty)
- Advanced Lucrim Penalty: 3000
Lucrim Generation with Penalty: 6480
Current Lucrim: (private data)]
The numbers were so bad that Rick almost winced. He showed the screen to Emily and she laughed again, but he found himself a bit sobered. Henry was kind of a dick, but even he didn't deserve to be so abused by the system - it looked like his generation rate had actually decreased, which it shouldn't normally. Rick kept that thought to himself, just glad that Emily was relaxing, but at that moment her expression faded to a somber one.
"If I recall that first conversation, I was actually the asshole there." She watched him seriously and he hastened to reassure her.
"No, given how things went, I completely get your assumptions about me."
"I disagree. I didn't have a right to make assumptions like that. I can be... hard to live with sometimes." She reached out and touched his hand again, staring back into his eyes. "Sorry about pushing you so hard. It's because I care, but you can tell me if I go too far, okay?"
"Thanks for saying that, Emily. I just want us to be on the same page." He squeezed her hand back.
They chatted lightly until the food arrived. It was delicious and managed to push the conversation into more comfortable territory. For once they didn't even discuss lucrim, but instead he found out that Emily did have some opinions on technology and entertainment after all. He knew they'd have to discuss their broad objectives later, but it was a wonderful relaxed evening like it had been before.
For the first time in his life, Rick thanked Henry for being a good wingman.
Chapter 37: Lucrim Boutique
As much as was going on in his life, Rick didn't feel comfortable leaving work for long. For one, it was impossible to forget about his ordeal in the demon realm and everything it meant. Practically every day he got more spam about demonic bonds, both emails and glossy fliers in the mail. They basically promised the moon, sometimes with the usual tactic of sex but often with images of powerful demons. He junked all of them.
Furthermore, his reprieve from his quotas was running out. He'd already dropped out of the top ten:
[1) [redacted] - 245 merits
2) Pan Zhou - 244 merits
3) Kate Durham - 231 merits
4) Heidi Cunningham - 219 merits
5) Damian - 213 merits
6) Jack Ganess - 206 merits
7) Machk Bearan - 201 merits
8) Elliot Rutherford III - 189 merits
9) Oswaln - 188 merits
10) Javiera Banks - 185 merits
...
10) Javiera Banks - 185 merits
11) Rick Hunter - 183 merits
12) Skinmaster0 - 171 merits]
That was completely fine with him, if it kept him from getting called in for any other emergencies. It looked like no one had even gotten their 100 merit bonus, perhaps because the meeting went so wrong.
What truly bothered him was how multiple people had implied that his position was insecure. Obviously there were a finite number of lucrim anomalies, unless more were appearing at a terrible rate, but he was concerned that there was something fundamentally more troubling.
So he threw himself into work for a few days. Just applying his body fully to biking helped him feel more refreshed than expected. There he discovered one obvious benefit of his time in the demon realm: the aura exercise involved felt much easier. Before he had biked normally in 30th gear and at most in 33rd - now he cruised in 35th gear and could push up to 41st gear if he exhausted himself. That didn't grant him much raw power and he wasn't sure what benefit it had at all, but it was something.
Unfortunately, work didn't prove particularly profitable. He did his best to track down lucrim anomalies, but they seemed to be harder to come by. Once he thought he might be homing in on one, only to run into another group of surveyors. They included Jack, so Rick decided that discretion was the better part of valor.
For a while he tracked them to try to see if he could learn anything about the madman who had it out for him, but Jack had just done his work and then hopped on a motorcycle to return to Branton. Rick could have tried to pursue him, but judged that was too risky. None of his other leads had turned up anything in particular, though he hadn't gone too far out of his way on that account.
One time he was pretty far out in the wilderness when he ran across an odd reading in the surveying technique, but it turned out to be some kind of animal droppings instead of an anomaly. Whatever it was, it used lucrim. He took a sample back to the Peakless Wildlife Refuge and they confirmed his suspicion. It was unclear exactly what is was, but they urged him to leave it alone if it wasn't near an anomaly or getting in the way.
Either Delsin was avoiding him or he was actually out working like his family claimed. Rick decided to just keep building up his excess lucrim mass in the hope that it would be useful eventually. Emily would persuade him to invest it in something if she found out, but he thought that she'd accept that what he needed most was a new foundation.
Still, better not to argue the matter with her. He had enough to deal with in his life.
It was a random day out surveying the wilderness when Rick got a call from an unknown number. He ignored it, assuming that it was a robocall, but a minute later he got a text from the same number. All it said was "pick up asshole - Damian". Since he'd been waiting to talk to the other man for quite a while, Rick eagerly picked up.
"Hey, you still up for doing some shopping later?" Damian sounded ridiculously strung out, maybe even high. Rick bridled for a moment before realizing that it must be part of the act, for some reason. Did he honestly think anyone was listening in on their phone calls?
"Yeah, I could."
"I've got just the place. Okay, so listen close..." Damian gave him a specific address that was just outside one of the larger malls in Branton. Maybe a higher end one, but nothing special. It had to be a pretext of some kind, so Rick just agreed and then hung up.
When Rick arrived, he found Damian loitering in the plaza outside the building. As always, he was dressed in his three-piece suit, even though he was going to a fucking mall. Since Damian seemed to react well to mockery, Rick glanced him up and down and raised an eyebrow. "You're a bit under-dressed for the mall, aren't you?"
"Oh, where we're headed, it really won't matter." The other young man gave a smirk and gestured for him to follow. "Let's not talk about anything serious
at first. I want to give you a little present... consider it an apology for not being able to save you from the demon realm."
"Right... that's why we're meeting here, isn't it?"
Damian rolled his eyes in response and just headed inward. Yet instead of going to the main atrium of the mall, where teenagers went shopping and middle aged couples drank from gallon-sized soda cups, they turned aside almost immediately. There was a small elevator there, basically ignored compared to the large escalators that guided the crowds between the main layers.
Inside it looked like a service elevator, with only a few buttons going to the main floors. But Damian pressed the buttons for the top two floors, then turned a small key in a slot that was nearly invisible. They'd been walking in silence, but as the doors closed Rick had to speak up.
"Are we headed to your secret society? This isn't going to involve any orgies or murder, is it?"
"I think you'll see what this place is pretty quickly." That was all Damian said, a hard-to-read smile on his face. The elevator seemed to take a long time to get started, so Rick spoke up again.
"What is this really about?"
"I was wondering if the two of us could create a temporary alliance in surveying the area outside Branton. Unfortunately, the others are teaming up, and confrontations are becoming more common. I've been able to slip under the radar, but I'm starting to think that strategy is turning bad."
Though Rick didn't think that was his real motive for meeting, it did sound like an honest offer. He preferred to work alone, but given the situation he couldn't just turn down an alliance. "I'm open to working together. I don't really care about the merit rankings, I just want to get paid."
"That could work well, because merits are all I care about. Honestly, you should too, if you want to get ahead in this contest."