Monster Hunt NYC 3

by Harmon Cooper

  And with that, Ray Steampunk turned away, taking slow steps toward his brass stairwell as the crowd cheered him on.

  He stopped at the first step and turned, looking over his shoulder directly at me.

  Visit me soon.

  Chapter Ten: The Hotel After

  Iris wanted to hang out at the dojo alone.

  I got that, I respected that, and I didn’t want to bother her.

  I knew that she was bummed out about our loss, even if we had come in second place. And I had already tried the angle of, “We just started doing this, we can come in first place next year,” but Iris wasn’t having any of it.

  Nor was Aya.

  Even stranger, Iris hadn’t heard the direct message from Ray Steampunk.

  “Are you sure?” I asked her for the second time before I logged out. “He looked right at us when he said it.”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” she said, turning to the meadow.

  Iris had her ukulele in one hand, strings in the other. She held it in a way that showed just how defeated she was, her head slightly bowed. Rose, the bearadillo, moseyed her way over to Iris, Gobi not far behind.

  The gentle beast placed her head under Iris’ hand, lifting it, and saying something privately to her. Iris nodded and mounted the bearadillo, the creature turning away with its cub, aimed in the direction of meditating Yaksha, the golden Buddha still in his peaceful posture with his form lit by a red sun even though it was technically night.

  “I will be better tomorrow,” Iris called over her shoulder to me.

  Whap!

  Aya slammed her cabin door shut; I heard the lock click, indicating she would not be coming out for the rest of the night.

  “Looks like it’s just you and me,” said Lady C. She stood to my right, an uncertain smile on her face. “Didn’t you want to go to the Steeple?”

  “How did you know?”

  “You mentioned something about it earlier.”

  “That I did. You know what? Ray Steampunk can wait. I want to hang out with you, in New York, at a hotel.”

  “Just us?” she whispered, even though Iris was far enough away that she wouldn’t have heard Lady C. anyway.

  “That’s right. Just us.”

  “Okay, I’ll go to my cabin and get into the dive vat.”

  “See you soon,” I told her.

  “Can’t wait.”

  The Metican warrior kissed me on the cheek and turned to her cabin. Meanwhile, I lifted my hand, the logout button appearing. I hovered my finger in front of it for a moment, wondering how strange it would be if the button didn’t actually work, if I were stuck here.

  Maybe I would care more about winning and losing if this was a real place.

  Regardless, we had done our best.

  And sure, I could have practiced more with Iris. But even if I had, there was no telling how much training the fiery twin sisters had undergone.

  We’ll do better next year.

  I pressed the logout button, and as soon as I did, a vortex swirled my mind back to my normal body, a voice reminding me to relax, to allow time for the Proxima system to power down.

  And there was that Brian Eno tone.

  I just lay there for a moment, the NV Visor over my face, sine waves moving back and forth.

  Just existing.

  Eventually, I pushed the visor up and sat, careful not to disturb Iris, who lay next to me.

  I went for my glasses, and as soon as I did, I looked to the humandroid sitting in the room, who was still powered down. It was a bit startling, and I was glad Iris hadn’t logged out before me because that would have freaked her out.

  A message on my iNet asked me for permission to allow Lady C.’s avatar to take the humandroid’s body. I accepted this request, and only a few moments later, the humandroid blinked her eyes open. “Chase?” she said, turning to me immediately.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said with a whisper.

  “We still haven’t told Iris…”

  “I know, I know, but we can tell her another time. Is there really any point in waking her up just to tell her that you now have a humandroid body?”

  “I guess you are right,” she said as we stepped outside.

  I ordered an UberLyft, and while we waited for it to come, I sprung for a fancy hotel in Bushwick.

  It wasn’t very far from here, and based on the reviews I had read online, it was a pretty swanky joint. It was only a few minutes later that a Tesla landed, the suicide doors opening.

  I let Lady C. shuffle in first, and then I moved in next to her, her body immediately pressing into mine as she placed her legs over my lap.

  “Please fasten your seatbelts. Please fasten your seatbelts.”

  Ignoring the vehicle’s verbal warnings, Lady C. wrapped an arm around my neck and started kissing me.

  There was no part about her that seemed unrealistic, or artificially produced.

  The noises she made, the softness of her lips, the small amount of saliva as our tongues touched, even the way her body felt was spot on.

  An orange warning sign started flashing on the inside of the windshield; eventually, I had to push her away and tell her to buckle up. “It won’t take us to the hotel if we’re not buckled,” I told her.

  As soon as Lady C. was strapped in, the vehicle rose into the air, an advertisement for a sale at JC Target’s appearing on the inside of the front window.

  “It’s fall, and you know what that means,” a kid’s voice said.

  “That means it’s time for you to get ready for another mild winter,” said a motherly voice.

  “It’s not gonna be too cold this year, is it, Ma?”

  “No, not this year, son, and probably not next year either, but if it ever is cold, you can rely on JC Target’s Dura X Fashion Warm Reversible Pea Coat and matching Neo-Wool Nylon X7 gloves.”

  “Advertisements, off,” I told the vehicle.

  “You will incur an additional fee for turning advertisements off. Do you accept?” the vehicle asked, the voice emitting from a center console speaker.

  “I accept.”

  “Is there anything else I can do to make your trip more enjoyable? Would you like me to adjust the temperature of the vehicle? How about a stick of gum?”

  “Actually, make that two sticks of gum. And the temperature is fine.”

  “You will incur an additional fee for two sticks of chewing gum. Do you accept?”

  “Yep.”

  A compartment opened in front of us, presenting two sticks of gum wrapped in silver foil.

  “What’s this?” Lady C. asked.

  “Just chew it, and you’ll see,” I told her. “But don’t swallow it. It makes your breath fresher.”

  “Is my breath not fresh?”

  “Actually…” I kissed her again. “You don’t really taste like anything right now.”

  “Okay well, if you say it will make it even fresher, then I’ll try it.” She popped the stick of gum in her mouth and chewed cautiously for a moment, a skeptical look on her face until she got the hang of it. “This is pretty fun. But my gosh, it’s so minty.”

  “The mint flavor will fade away, and yes, it is pretty fun,” I said, blowing a bubble.

  “That’s cute,” she said, trying to mimic me.

  Her eyes flashed black, which was sort of freaky.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to search for the best way to blow a bubble,” she said. “Why? Is something wrong?”

  “Your eyes flashed black. It’s fine,” I told her. “I’m sure you can find some videos on iNet about how to blow the best bubble.”

  “Okay, I will do some searches later though. For now, I’ll just practice my chewing. It’s so minty!”

  “It is indeed…”

  Our vehicle started to drop into a lower airlane, a transport vehicle blazing past followed by an aeros motorcycle, the driver not wearing his helmet. Eventually, we landed on the rooftop of the hotel, where we were greet
ed by two humandroids in three-piece suits.

  The vehicle rose silently, and once it was gone, the man on the left spoke to us.

  “We’re glad you could join us, Mr. Knowles. Your suite is now available, and you will be provided additional food options once you are in your room. Check out time is at noon, and there will be a five hundred dollar hold on your payment account for incidentals. Is there anything else we can do to help make your stay more comfortable?”

  “No,” I told the two humandroids as they led us to a rooftop door with a Zen garden off to the right. “I think we’re fine for now.”

  “And you, ma’am?”

  “Me?” Lady C. asked. “I’m okay. Thanks.”

  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

  “Play something with a groove,” I told the room.

  “What type of groove would you like to hear?” a speaker near the bedside asked.

  “Any preferences?” I asked Lady C.

  “No, you’re the expert in that realm. Anything’s fine by me.”

  “Play something with a good beat, driving, but not too in-your-face,” I said. “And dim the lights. Turn on any exterior lighting.”

  “That’s magical,” Lady C. said as a purple light moved along the frame of the bed. It dropped to the wooden floor, and as the lights dimmed it looked almost as if the bed was floating.

  “I guess you could say that,” I told her. “It’s technology.”

  “Have you ever thought that technology is for people that don’t know how to use magic?” she asked as she sat on the corner of the bed, crossing one leg over the other.

  “No, but I can see why you would think that. It would be awesome if there were actual magic in this world. I guess that’s just the limitations we have to deal with, and we’ve created all these cool things to overcompensate for the fact that we can’t actually create magic.”

  “Are you being sarcastic with me?”

  “No, it really is strange, and I appreciate the way you put it. Technology is definitely our form of magic.”

  “Get over here, you,” she said as I approached her. The tone of her voice wasn’t quite convincing, and once I paused, she looked up at me in an innocent way.

  “I haven’t broken in this body yet,” she said, a little more convincingly this time.

  “I know, I know,” I told her. “I suppose I should look online for how this works.”

  “You already know how to have sex. You showed me in the Proxima Galaxy. Unless…” She raised an eyebrow at me. “Have you ever had sex in this world?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “No need to make it sound like that!”

  “No, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant that yes, I have done it before.”

  “Sometimes, I think you’re this kind, eloquent man. Other times, you make statements like that.”

  “What statement did I make?” I asked her, smiling, sensing that she was now teasing me. Lady C. began to take off her maroon dress.

  “Are you going to sit there and watch?”

  “I was sort of planning on it,” I told her.

  “When did you become so creepy?” She tossed her dress to the floor, now in her bra and panties.

  I felt a surge of energy in my lower half upon seeing her in the flesh.

  “It looks like someone is happy,” she said.

  “I am happy. I don’t know what to say other than that.”

  “Maybe you should just come and kiss me then.”

  Lady C. pulled me onto the bed and my hand eventually made it to the gap between her legs, where I noticed that she was actually wet.

  “Whoa,” I said, pulling my hand away for a moment.

  “You’re not the only one that’s turned on,” she whispered to me between kisses.

  Lady C. flipped me over and hopped onto my waist, gyrating her hips as she looked down at me. I could feel the strength between her thighs, a sensation I quickly ignored as she pressed forward, her bra now off, dipping her nipples into my mouth.

  It only escalated from there.

  Eventually, we finished, both of us lying with our backs on the bed, looking up at the ceiling.

  I couldn’t believe how real it felt.

  No, there really was nothing to describe the feeling aside from it felt exactly like it was supposed to feel. The tightness, the movement, the momentary apprehension as our bodies figured out how to work together.

  It felt exactly like it should have.

  “Open up the galaxy,” I told the room, still catching my breath.

  Lady C. went to the restroom to clean up, promising me she would return in a moment. I turned and watched her walk, my eyes tracing over her ass with each step that she took.

  I tried to remember everything that had just happened, and as it replayed in my mind, an iNet feature asked me if I would like to watch an actual replay. This feature was troublesome; it had gotten a lot of people in trouble, and most people, at least decent people, didn’t mess with it.

  I declined, my eyes tracing over to my inbox as the Milky Way appeared on the ceiling, twinkling stars, swirling galaxies, the galaxy spreading across the ceiling of the entire room, as if someone were using a magical paintbrush to spread the picture.

  My eyes glazed over the last message I had received, which happened to be from Iris.

  I knew that I was going about all this wrong; I would get it figured out at some point, not right now, but possibly tomorrow. I needed to come clean about all this, but because of the relationship that we’d had, I didn’t quite know how to do it.

  And knowing Iris, she probably would be cool with everything.

  I was the one that was making it worse by not saying anything there, and I felt that in that moment.

  At least until Lady C. returned.

  Then I didn’t feel anything, just the desire to be next to her.

  Maybe I was falling hard for her. No, I was definitely falling hard for her. And being able to be with her in both worlds added dimension to our relationship that I had never experienced before.

  Both of us were quiet for a moment as we stared up at the ceiling galaxy, and eventually, I looked to her to see that her eyes were black, that she was processing information.

  “What are you doing?” I asked her.

  “It is really easy to read books like this,” she said, turning to me with her black eyes. “Is something wrong?”

  “Your eyes are just all black again. No biggie.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said as her eyes returned to normal. “Are you going to sleep now?”

  “I was thinking about it.”

  “And tomorrow’s plans? What are we going to do?”

  “We have that rare monster meetup that Keegan invited us to. So I figured we would check that out.”

  “Is Iris going to come?”

  I shrugged off the question. “I think she’ll still be bummed about losing. But we’ll see. She may be a little down for the next couple of days.”

  “Hopefully not. There are always other tournaments.”

  “But I get it, that was kind of the big tournament. And I could have…” I swallowed hard. “I could have done better. I could have trained with her, instead of just doing all these things.”

  “All these things? You mean like getting my body?”

  “Yes, those types of things. Not that I regret any of that, I just should have thought about the timing of all this before, how much this tournament meant to Iris.”

  “I get it. She’s disappointed, but so is Lady Aya. And that’s just how these tournaments go. You win some, you lose some. And we seem to have found a rivalry with Kingdom Ignis. Maybe an outside sponsor or something will put together a series of matches pitting them against us. Who knows?”

  “You’re right. You’re right.”

  “And you still need to meet with Ray Steampunk, so maybe he knows more about some exclusive tournaments that are happening, possibly even on a different world.”

  “It’s strange,
you know.”

  “What is?” she asked, a strand of her hair falling in her face as she shifted her weight.

  “I really don’t have anything I’m technically supposed do, yet sometimes I feel like my days are becoming more and more booked up.”

  “What would you like to do?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe just relax for a little bit. But things come up, and I take care of them when they do. I would like to play my bass. I would like to play it as loudly as I could. Maybe I will do that soon. Rent out a practice room for the day, or hell, rent one for a month so Iris and I can start up again.”

  “You still have to tell her about us,” Lady C. said, the tone of her voice changing.

  “I know I do. And I know I’m making it worse by not just coming out with it. I probably should have said something at the beginning, and since I didn’t, I’ve now made things a bit more awkward. Or maybe I’m just making this a big deal in my head. Maybe there’s nothing to really worry about.”

  “Why would there be anything to worry about, unless she was actually a love interest of yours?”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I told her as I turned away. “There’s nothing to worry about. Let’s get some rest, and see what tomorrow brings.”

  “If we’re going around the city tomorrow, I want to go in my real form, not this body,” she said. “And I want Aya to come. It’s fun when she’s around. Sometimes she annoys me, but I also miss not having her around constantly commenting on things. Besides, when she’s around, she can talk to you, which gives me time to read.”

  She yawned. Perhaps, it was a fake yawn. I really had no way of knowing.

  “Good night, Lady C.”

  “Good night, Chase.”

  Chapter Eleven: Rare Monster Club

  “Why didn’t you bring Lady Cassandra’s real body?” Aya asked in a mocking tone.

  “No reason,” I told her as we stepped out of my bedroom.

  Lady C. and I had returned to my home early in the morning to drop off her humandroid body. She now stood before me in her warrior form, her digital avatar playfully reaching her finger out and touching my sleeping roommate’s nose.