Monster Hunt NYC 3

by Harmon Cooper

  I wanted to cross reference the information I had seen on the real estate site, to make sure that the Steeple was worth as much as the estimate. Over the course of the next several minutes, I checked a few of the other Proxima realty sites and found out that it was indeed worth the amount listed, maybe even more.

  An incredible sum, really, something I still couldn’t quite get my head around.

  I was rich. This was it.

  What so many people had hoped for, what so many people had misinterpreted as the American dream, had actually happened to me, and I wasn’t even trying for it to happen. I didn’t even know why I solved the mystery of the Steeple, aside from the fact that I found it interesting, I wanted to try something else, I was just…

  Playing the game.

  That’s exactly what I was doing, playing the game.

  And this made me smirk.

  Sometimes the game just hooked you, and there was nothing you could do but give in.

  And I guess there was nothing wrong with that.

  I stood, realizing that I was starting to sound like a philosophical asshole in my own head.

  Smoothing my hands over my pants, I took my glasses off, cleaned the lenses, and turned to the fabric shop, figuring I would try to find Iris and see these buttons she was so interested in.

  It took me a while to locate her, considering the shop was so packed full of fabrics, buttons, patterns, sewing goods and customers.

  The only other place I’d seen so densely packed was a Chinese supermarket in Chinatown, which practically required a map to navigate.

  But I eventually found Iris ducking down, moving quietly through the aisles.

  “Hey,” I told her.

  Iris jumped back. “Chase, hey!” she said, embarrassment coming over her face as a heavy Hispanic woman wearing a neon jacket squeezed past us. “Ummm…”

  “What’s going on?” I asked, noticing that we were in the silk aisle. “This isn’t buttons.”

  “Yeah, I was just looking around…”

  Iris glanced left quickly, and nodded her chin.

  I snorted. “Hold up, are you hunting right now?”

  “...Maybe?”

  “Seriously?” I asked her.

  “Yes,” she hissed, “are you going to join or what?”

  I gave her a playful sigh as I activated the Monster Hunt app, Aya and Lady C. taking shape almost immediately.

  Lady C. had both her blades out; Aya’s buster sword was sheathed on her back, the Thulean striking a cool pose while also giving me a skeptical look.

  “What?” I asked her.

  “Less talk, more hunt, Chase,” Aya scoffed.

  “You’re the one standing there with a grin on your face…”

  “It is a pre-hunt grin.”

  “What are we hunting anyway?” I asked Iris as I moved closer to her, hiding a bit behind Aya.

  “It’s called a brigantia, a sort of goddess of sewing,” Lady C. explained. “The reason Iris wants her on the team is because she can heal, but she’s not Class Sana like a normal healer. She also has a defense spell. Definitely helpful!”

  “Okay, and is she worth any tokens?” I asked Iris.

  “Not much, but I think she’ll make up for it in usefulness.”

  “This seems like a bad place to hunt…”

  Aya brought a finger to her mouth as she looked behind me, the Thulean warrior slowly drawing her sword.

  “Are you going to stand there, or will I have to cut you down as well?” she asked me.

  I stepped aside, letting her pass, her buster sword at the ready.

  Lady C. wasn’t far behind Aya, both her sharp blades now at her sides as she glanced left and right.

  The Metican warrior was in the same outfit that she’d worn back at the tournament, a short skirt and an armored top that was a little too revealing to be taken seriously.

  That was something I definitely wasn’t going to stop doing. It didn’t matter if I was in this world, or the Proxima Galaxy, playing in front of people that were cheering me on was the way to go.

  Aya tiptoed up to the end of the silk aisle, gesturing with her eyeballs that the mythcrea in question was near, that she could see her.

  The Thulean still wore the cap she had picked up after one of our Brawls, but this time it was backward, her red hair spilling out the sides.

  Lady C. moved past me again, pressing just a little too close, and offering me a flirty smile as she went around the other way, to try to cut off the mythcrea.

  Even though I had seen them work together before, I still found something fascinating about their “years” of training, and how they congealed together, Aya’s tactics more brash and brunt, Lady C. with her magic and quick swordplay.

  Because the Metican warrior was in the other aisle, I couldn’t quite see what spell she had conjured up, but when I noticed bits of snow swirling around, I knew that it was probably her Bomb Cyclone.

  “Chai dokavani!”

  Aya sprang into action, crying out as she tried to strike the mythcrea with her big buster sword. I slipped past a Mood Fabrics attendant, probably looking like I was either crazy or needed to use the restroom.

  I saw Aya dip in and out of the swirling snow; the clink of swords and grunts from both Huntresses were loud and clear as they engaged the brigantia.

  The brigantia’s stats appeared on my pane of vision.

  I didn’t have much time to look at them before Iris shouldered past me, a web of light moving around her hand as she got into position to catch the creature.

  Iris slipped, taking down a barrel of rolled up fabric with her, the fabric falling into the aisle and some of it rolling in the opposite direction. One of the bundles caused a man to slip and catch himself by grabbing onto a swath of satin, which brought down an entire rack of fabric.

  “Shit!” I said as I moved over to Iris, a web of light now forming in the palm of my hand.

  Lady C.’s wintery cyclone had started to clear, allowing me to see the action taking place.

  I knew that the mythcrea wouldn’t be able to hold up for long against two trained Huntresses, but she was doing pretty well so far. A broadsword in one hand, her other arm turned to stone, the brigantia engaged Aya in the front, and Lady C. at the side, alternating between both of them.

  “I’ve got this,” Aya shouted to Lady C., the Thulean warrior lunging forward with her big blade and narrowly missing a swipe from the mythcrea.

  An annoyed look on her face, Lady C. stepped aside, allowing for Aya to fully engage the woman without distraction.

  The Thulean feinted a swipe, causing the mythcrea to stumble forward some. Aya changed the way she held her buster sword, and used its broad side to shove the mythcrea to the ground, quickly bringing the tip of her blade to the woman’s chin.

  “Finish this, Chase!” Aya hissed, the mythcrea cowering before her.

  “Got it!”

  A web made of light burst forth from the palm of my hand and wrapped around the armor-clad woman, her form instantly disappearing.

  “Sweet,” I started to say, just as I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to find the Mood Fabrics manager, a large black woman with a huge pair of breasts.

  “I don’t know what the hell the two of you are doing in here,” she said, smacking gum, her eyes narrowing, “but I’m about to call the cops.”

  “That’s okay, you don’t have to do that,” I told her, lifting my hands up. “I’ll pay for any damages.”

  “You better,” she said, nodding Iris over.

  “Sorry,” Iris said, trying not to laugh.

  “This is all your fault,” I told Iris under my breath as the manager led us to the front counter.

  In the end, the manager only charged a couple hundred dollars for some rare fabric that was ruined by touching the ground.

  We left Mood Fabrics as quickly as we could, Iris without the buttons she’d come for, and the Huntresses back at the dojo. The two of us took the elevator down to the
first floor, and stepped outside, back onto Thirty-Eighth Street.

  “Well, that was something,” I finally said.

  “But it was fun, right?”

  I shrugged, but that did nothing to stop the smile creeping across my face. “I guess. So what now?”

  She bobbed her head for a moment, as if she was listening to music. “Okay, I have an idea. Have you ever wanted to stay in one of those big hotels in Manhattan, like the fifty floor ones with glass walls? You know what I’m talking about…”

  “Yeah,” I told her, an image coming to my mind of what one of these hotels would look like.

  Of course, that image sparked GoogleFace advertisements, one of which let me know that there was a particularly popular hotel on Forty-Second Street, with views of the Financial District.

  “Done,” I told Iris as I booked a suite that had two beds and a terrace. All hotels came with an optional Proxima package, so I went ahead and booked one of those too, knowing that we would probably end up diving later.

  “Seriously? Tonight?”

  “Why not?” I asked her. “You have class tomorrow, right?”

  “Just one,” she told me.

  “Good, then that should give us plenty of time. Besides, we did make some promises in EverLife, or at least I did. Let’s order room service, and then log in.”

  “Sounds like a date,” she told me as she looped her arm through mine, both of us turning toward Eighth Avenue.

  “Date? Sounds like the best night ever. Also, next time you decide to go hunting in a fabric store… how about letting me know beforehand?”

  “Deal,” she said with a big, goofy grin on her face.

  Chapter Two: New Dojo, New Me

  What a hotel.

  Some New Yorkers traveled a lot, others never left the city. I fit into the latter crowd, only taking a trip or two Upstate when I was a child, once playing a show with the Lenins in Hamden, Connecticut, and of course, trips to Hoboken and Philly from time to time.

  But not far. Which meant that I hadn’t stayed in many hotels in my life. Why stay in a hotel when you have a perfectly decent bed in one of the five boroughs? Even if there was a pipe that cut through the room.

  The place that Iris and I had checked into was overwhelming, the interior completely white in a way that reminded me of the top room of the Steeple. There was a wall of mirrored holoscreens in the middle of the lobby, and as we approached them, one recognized my life chip, an elevator door opening on the right.

  “So cool,” Iris said as we stepped into the elevator, which immediately took us to the thirty-eighth floor. The doors shut, and a soothing voice thanked us for visiting the hotel.

  “...We hope you enjoy your stay…”

  This was followed by what reminded me of saloon music, as if Scott Joplin was playing in a basement, his music piped directly into the elevator.

  A message appeared on my pane of vision, indicating that a restaurant was located on the second floor, and reminding me that if I needed to speak to a receptionist, I would also find them on the very same floor.

  The message then went over hotel policies and procedures, including our checkout time and breakfast hours, a meal which was definitely not complimentary.

  The theme of the hotel was apparently the color white, the walls and white-washed oak wood floors making the space feel like we were walking through a music video set. We eventually found our room, the door clicking open as soon as I approached it.

  “Holy crap,” Iris said as she took in the space, bringing her hands to her mouth.

  “Seriously,” I told her as I stopped dead in my tracks. “This is sick!”

  The room had purple carpet that contrasted heavily with its single white wall. The rest of the walls were made of glass, including the wall that faced the bathroom.

  There were two beds in the center of the space, each with purple side rails. NV Visors and haptic gloves were hooked to each of the beds, arranged in a way that was pleasant to the eye.

  “Look at this view,” I told Iris as I came to the glass, looking out over the city.

  We were facing toward the Financial District, and even though there were a few buildings in the way, I could see the towering skyscrapers on the horizon, mentally reliving in that instant all the trips I had taken between Midtown and Downtown.

  There was a time, a few years back, when I had a few gigs in Harlem, and since I was working in Union Square, I would sometimes start my day off in the Financial District just to walk around for a bit, then Union, sometimes the East Village for an early dinner, then the gig.

  But to see New York like this...

  “I’m calling the Huntresses,” Iris said. “They will definitely want to see this.”

  “What about getting some food first, and then just logging in and seeing them there?”

  She considered this for a moment. “It would be nice not to share this view for a bit…”

  “Or deal with Aya,” I said, jokingly.

  “I’m sure she’ll dig the space too. But food. Yes to food. I’m definitely hungry, approaching hangry.”

  “Scary.”

  “You’d better believe it.”

  “And after, I want to see what you’ve done with the dojo.”

  Her eyes lit up. “It’s been such a rollercoaster day that I’d forgotten about that part. You’re going to freaking love it.”

  “I’m sure I will.”

  “It totally screams ‘Iris,’” she said, wiggling her nose at me. “But anyway, what do you want to eat?”

  I took a look around the space. “Why does being in this room make me want to eat sushi? Am I crazy?”

  “Crazy rich? Yes, I believe that applies to our current version of Chase,” Iris asked with a smirk.

  “I think I’m suffering from… Is there a term for someone who suddenly gets a lot of money and just blows it on stuff?”

  “I think there’s an old term for that,” Iris said, her pupils dilating behind her glasses. “Hood rich? That’s one way to put it.”

  “New money?”

  “That works too.”

  I shrugged. “We should spoil ourselves tonight, and discuss how we should handle the rest of this money later,” I said, still intending to give Iris half of it.

  “Or we could just get sushi and go from there,” she said, patting her stomach. “Your being hungry has made me hungry.”

  Iris found a place and sent it to me over iNet, with a note about what I should order. I placed the order, the sushi costing about two hundred and fifty dollars in the end, and while we waited, Iris and I reminisced about some of the gigs we had played as the Lenins.

  “Have you had any contact with Chad?” I asked Iris. She was on her bed now, facing me, her shoes off, looking cute as ever in her tights, black shorts and faded Mitherfickers T-shirt.

  “He’s trying to get clean,” Iris said. “That’s all I know.”

  “Good,” I told her.

  I still wasn’t over the fact that our former lead singer had broken our instruments, his egotistical rage putting the dagger in the Lenins. I also couldn’t forget punching him and having to pay that fine.

  Damn was that expensive, at least at the time.

  And now?

  Is this how it feels to be rich? To know that a simple fine, an accident, or anything else that came up would do little or no damage to my finances. It was just so hard to process. All of it.

  And this was sort of why I was glad to be in a hotel with Iris, to be in an enclosed space where the only place I could spend money would be over iNet. I just needed a moment to process these funds, to figure out what needed to be done with them.

  And I was definitely ready for a distraction.

  “I’m excited to log in,” I told her after another long gaze out at the city.

  “You are? You seem to keep avoiding it,” she said.

  “No, it’s just been a wild day. I’m actually excited to see what you did with the place.”

  �
��It’s not the same as before…”

  “I didn’t expect it to be. Plus, we have to hop on our lightning horses and get over to Kingdom Sana. We have a gig.”

  “Lightning steeds!” Iris said with a laugh.

  “Exactly.”

  “You were saying earlier that you had an idea on how we could deal with William. Care to expand upon that idea?”

  “We do have two trolls, don’t we?”

  Iris puffed her cheeks out. “You mean Mitchell and Schnoogles?”

  “Yep.”

  “I put them back at the front in a guard tower this time, a high one too. I told you about the serpent, right?”

  “Serpent?” I asked her. “You did not.”

  “Well, I’ll save that for when we log in. But back to the trolls. What could you possibly have planned for the trolls?”

  “Here’s the thing: I’m not really a ‘get revenge’ type of guy, as you probably know by now. I don’t care to raid William’s dojo, and while I could use some of our growing influence in Kingdom Lume to make trouble for them, I don’t want to do that either.”

  “Then what do you want to do?” she asked.

  “What anyone would do this close to the twenty-second century?”

  “Stop being so vague….”

  “Just trust me,” I told her with a grin. “Once we log in, I’ll put the pieces in motion. Then we’ll get to the gig in Kingdom Sana. I’m sure Dalton will be waiting for us. Since I promised the Huntresses that we would go shopping in Sana, we can get a hotel or something for the night. I’m pretty sure Dalton said we had a gig in Ignis coming up, and didn’t Spew Gorge say his uncle was there?”

  I recalled the goblin and his fashionable haircut and high-pitched voice. He was a bit unconventional as a member of our dojo, but he was scrappy, and good with a dagger.

  “Did he?”

  I shrugged. “I seem to remember him saying that. Anyway, I will get all that sorted out once we log in. But for now, just trust that I have a plan. Oh, and tomorrow, definitely before you go to your night class, we should hit a music store.”

  “That sounds like a bad idea, especially if you’re planning to buy every instrument in the store.”