Her eyes went wide. “You did what?”
“We’re going to sell it, and I sent in the paperwork to Ray Steampunk’s lawyer on the way over here that would allow me to make you a co-owner, so a fifty-percent stake.”
“You really didn’t have to do that…”
“I really did,” I told her, setting my chopsticks down. “I do not deserve this. This app has changed my life, and now… And now…” I looked around. “You know what I’m trying to say here. I owe it to you. If you won’t take a transfer, I figured this was another way to get around your chivalry. Is that chivalry?”
Iris laughed. “What if I fall in love with the Steeple and want to live in it?”
“Please, you’ve seen that place. It’s beautiful, but I wouldn’t consider it a place that someone could fall in love with.”
“True. Oh, and here it comes. The email from your lawyer, Mr. Thomas Baker, esquire. He is your lawyer now, right?”
“Unfortunately. I don’t really know another lawyer, and he already seems to know what’s going on. I can’t wait to get that first bill,” I told her with a tight smile.
“You may rethink bequeathing me half the Steeple after you get that bill,” she said as the waitress came by and filled her green tea.
“Maybe,” I told her with a grin.
“What about the rest of the day? What are your plans?”
“No plans. Do we have a gig tonight? I can’t remember.”
“How did you know? Dalton joined up with me last night and told me that he had arranged for us to play at the Midnight Library tonight. A celebration of our…” Iris’ smile faded. “Our performance at the tournament. People in Kingdom Lume are actually pretty proud of us. I wasn’t expecting that. I went downtown last night, just to have a drink at the Midnight Library, and that’s where I ran into Dalton. Spew Gorge too. People were cheering and buying me drinks all night.”
“Was it just Dalton and Spew?”
“Fujin was there too, drunk as hell. He didn’t talk or anything, but he sure was smiling. His cheeks were red too. Like two apples or something.”
“Okay, so we have a gig tonight. And maybe we should visit the Steeple as well.”
“Good call. Now that I am part owner, I might as well make plans for renovations,” she said with a snarky grin. “I’m kidding. We are definitely going to sell the place. But maybe it’s best if we hold on to it for a while until we find the right buyer.”
“That’s another thing I forgot to tell you,” I said, the thought coming to me that instant. “People don’t know that we’ve actually solved the mystery yet, but there is a rumor that someone has. And now, well, because of what I told the rare monster club, people are definitely going to know.”
“You told them?”
“I sort of had to prove my worth.”
Iris bit her lip. “I hadn’t considered that.”
“Yeah, so just be prepared for people to ask about it. Maybe this is another reason why it’s better that we both own it, so one of us can’t be tricked into doing something.”
“Definitely,” she said. “And what about going to a music store? Didn’t you say you wanted to do that?”
“Definitely. Let’s go after this. Music store, then we log in and go from there.”
The waitress brought a tray of sliced meat to the table, along with lettuce, and bowl of thick red sauce. She started a burner built into the table, and cooked the first piece of meat for us, showing us how it should look. Once she was done, she placed the cooked meat in the lettuce to show us how to eat it.
“Now this I can get behind,” I said as she handed me the meat wrapped in lettuce.
“I can’t wait to dig in,” Iris said once the waitress left. “I haven’t had Korean in forever…”
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
The music shop was awesome, and there were a ton of instruments I wanted to buy. But I was trying to behave myself, so I simply tested them out, inquired about keyboard repairs, and at one point, played some electric drums while Iris messed with a Theremin.
Good times.
No Huntresses either.
“My place or yours?” Iris asked once we were finished window-shopping.
“Actually…” I watched as our UberLyft aeros lowered to the street. This was a red one, sleek, shaped in a way that reminded me of a motorcycle helmet. We were still in Midtown, and it wouldn’t be a very long trip over to Brooklyn, but I didn’t want Iris to just walk into my room and see Lady C.’s humandroid body lying lifelessly on my bed.
“Yours is more comfortable than mine,” I reminded her. “And you don’t have a pipe in the middle of your room.”
“Sweet, sounds like a plan to me.”
“Oh, and Iris…” I started to say to her as she got into the vehicle.
But she didn’t hear me, and once I was in the backseat next to her, she started talking about a vintage Moog keyboard she was checking out back at the music shop, and how easy it was to use iNet to go through its sound bank.
So as usual, our conversations shifted to music and a few things we could do at the concert later that night.
“I definitely want to do more keyboard stuff for this show,” said Iris. “It is nice to be behind the keyboard sometimes.”
“What about a keytar? Have you thought about getting one of those?”
“That could be pretty awesome…”
I imagined Iris swinging back and forth, keytar in her hands. It was a strange instrument, but it was definitely cool, and it would give us some sound options that we didn’t currently have.
Or maybe we already had them, but it was still cool.
“We may have to go instrument shopping again in EverLife,” I said.
“Yeah, once we get the studio set up that’s the first thing we should do.”
“Have you thought more about the studio?” I asked her.
“I definitely have. I’m thinking we just add another room to the back of our practice space, take out a wall, put a glass partition there so the producer, or whoever, can see what’s going on on the other side. Something that feels, you know, more classic than current studios.”
“You mean apartment studios?” I asked with a grin.
“It’s the easiest way to record…” she reminded me.
“That’s definitely true.”
Iris and I had never actually recorded in a real studio before. All of our demos and the singles we had put out were recorded in apartments. This was common. There were only a handful of actual studios left in all of New York state, and most were owned by celebrities.
“We’ll get started on it whenever you want,” I told her. “You are way better at architecture than I am. And once it’s finished, we will hit up the music shop, Dirty Dave’s, or whatever.”
“I hope Dalton is as chill in the studio as he is on stage,” she said as our vehicle switched to a higher airlane.
“We will see. But I have this feeling it’s going to be mostly a jam type record.”
“Probably, but there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Yep. Just let him do his thing and conduct us, as he normally does. We can just go with the flow. I am guessing that punching in is incredibly easy in the Proxima Galaxy too.”
“Definitely,” Iris said. “Already watched some vids of people doing it. It’s even easier there than it is out here.”
“Nice. So we’ll let him do his thing, and we’ll just come and improvise whatever he wants. Anything else can be fixed in post.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she said as the vehicle lowered, coming to an abrupt halt behind a passing transport aeros.
“Those things drive like crazy sometimes,” I said as it zipped away.
“That’s because the ones in New York still have human drivers,” Iris reminded me. “There’s a union, and the people that were part of the union are still able to actually drive their vehicles.”
“Whereas all the other vehicles in the air are driven by AI…”
She nodded. “Uh-huh. What could possibly go wrong, right? And can you imagine actually driving?”
I shook my head. “No. My grandpa talked about driving, but it never really interested me.”
“I just can’t imagine how primitive it was back then when you actually had to pay attention to the road.”
“Primitive?”
She smirked. “You know what I mean. Not primitive. Just, well, I get so much done when I’m in a vehicle by myself. Whether it’s catching up on something online, or doing my homework, or even some sleep if it’s a long trip.”
“It would be weird. It’s also weird watching movies from the turn-of-the-century, where driving is such a big deal.”
“It’s still a big deal in some states,” Iris said as the vehicle lowered to the street front of her flat. “Especially in the South.”
We got out, and I followed Iris up to her door. Once we were in, she kicked off her shoes, immediately going over to her futon and setting up her Proxima rig.
“Hey, Iris,” I started to say. “There was something I wanted to tell you…”
“That’s right,” she said, her eyes lighting up. “I meant to tell you about something that happened last night at the dojo!”
“What’s that?”
“You know that phantom kangaroo that you got, the one named Mirror.”
“Yeah,” I said, remembering the sort of sassy phantom kangaroo. I hadn’t seen her around lately, but I’d heard that was because she was just being translucent.
“Well, she knows Hiccup. And they got to talking, and I learned that she was actually a mirrored dragon before.”
“I think she mentioned something about that to me,” I said as I sat on the futon next Iris.
“She didn’t like the body that she’s in, and she originally wanted to be in a human body, but she recently decided to become a dragon again. Anyway, I was in a bit of a mood last night…”
“It happens,” I said, not wanting to spark off that conversation.
“So at first, I ignored her, but then I started thinking, if she wants to be a dragon, how awesome would it be to have a dragon? So I went down to the Fusion Center and I started playing around with it a bit. It turns out there are options to just simply pay for the creature you would like to create, so, no fusing. Well, it is still fusing, but you actually pay for mythcrea to be delivered to you then fuse it into whatever you want.”
“Are you telling me that we now have a dragon at our disposal?”
Iris grinned. “Not only that, a mirrored dragon who is fantastically bitchy. I think she already ate like a dozen of the Mitchell clones. In fact, we have to stop her from doing that. If you are ever going to take your revenge to William, you will need these trolls, right?”
“Don’t you worry; I’m planning to take my revenge soon,” I told Iris. “I’ve been a little distracted lately. How about we do it in Newport?”
“If you are suggesting that you and I ride in on a mirrored dragon leading a battalion of cloned trolls to another Alpha’s dojo, you bet your ass I am in!”
I laughed. “Oh my God. It really is going to be sweet revenge. Hopefully, he doesn’t show up tonight at the concert.”
“Hopefully he does. We can start the revenge tonight…”
“Since when were you in such a fighting mood?” I asked as I lay down next to her, putting on my NV Visor.
“Since yesterday. Also, aren’t you going to the restroom before you log in?”
“I should.”
“Sweet. I’ll go next. I have a feeling we’ll be logged in for a while.”
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
“Aye!”
The Thulean swung her buster sword at Lady C., the Metican pivoting just in time to miss her attack, but not in time to miss Aya’s heel, which she had brought around using her forward momentum from the weight of her sword.
The bottom of Aya’s heel connected with Lady C.’s chin, sending her twisting to the left.
And she would have hit the ground too if it hadn’t been for a burst of magic that propelled her backward and up into the air, Lady C. superhero landing, a wisp of her brown hair falling into her face.
“You guys are just sparring, right?” I asked the two of them. Iris was next to me, our forms having materialized just moments ago.
“Fick! What the fick does it look like?” Hiccup the goblin sat at a folding table with his nephew (or son?), a platter of what looked like chicken wings in front of him. “And keep the wings coming,” he shouted over to an elf wearing a chef’s hat, who stood before an outside grill with a frown on his face. Hiccup stuffed another wing in his mouth. “And your fickin’ lemon pepper is off. Get it right! Or we’ll fickin’ fry your ass up and feed you to the big chalupa that’s wrapped around our dojo.”
“That’s a world serpent, Hiccup,” Spew Gorge groaned.
“Spewy, eat your fickin’ wings and shut the fick up. Of course I know it is a fickin’ world serpent!” Hiccup cleared his throat. “I was trying to be funny.”
Spew Gorge rolled his eyes. “I never really understood why dick jokes were funny. I guess dicks kind of look funny.”
“First of all, we don’t say ‘dick,’ we say ‘chalupa.’ And Spewy, we both know you’re queerer than your fickered uncle, on your father’s side, wait, fick, that means he’s my brother. Fick this is confusing. I’m not trying to say I like chalupas here. But if an orc chippie is hiding something and I don’t see it, well, fick, a mouth is a mouth,” Hiccup said, licking his fingers. “Where the fick was I? Spewy, you know I’m your dad, right?”
“Fick you, Hiccup, that’s not true!”
“It isn’t fickin’ fake news, Spewy, it’s the god-fickin’ truth, and you fickin’ know it!”
“What have we stumbled upon?” I asked Iris, who was already giving me a funny look.
Spew Gorge beat his fist against the table.
“Fick, watch it! There are dragon wings here, son.”
“You’ve made this fickered confession to me like three hundred fickin’ times. I still don’t believe it! There is nothing similar between you and me. You are not my fickin’ dad!”
“Now hold the fick on…” Hiccup stuck another wing in his mouth, latched on and pulled it out, cleaning it of all its meat. “When you put it like that, it almost sounds like you’re being a liddle racist fickboy, a chicken-shit liddle chicklefick who’s keen to find out what it feels like to have hot oil poured on his taint before being beaten with a bag of angry bees. That kind of fick. Where the fick was I? Fick, these wings are good.” A healing potion appeared in his hand and he threw it back, tossing the empty bottle over his shoulder.
“Don’t litter in the dojo,” Iris told him as she picked up the bottle, dropping it back into Hiccup’s lap.
“Yoy!” he cried, squirming around in his chair. “Fick me, Glasses! You hit my chalupa square in the goblets… fick… fick… I’m seeing double. Fick! Spewy!” Hiccup fell out of his chair, his legs crossed, definitely overselling it.
“Just don’t throw your empty healing potions wherever you want,” Iris said. “We have recycling.”
“What the fick kind of snowflake SJW fickery is recycling?” Hiccup groaned. “Yoooooy…”
“Sorry about him,” Spew Gorge told us. “They started fickin’ training, and this obnoxious ficker thought it would be nice to watch.”
“I can see that,” I told him, noticing that Hiccup was now on his knees, his hands in prayer position as he begged for Iris to let him litter. “And who ordered a chef?”
“I did,” Lady C. said as she swung both blades at Aya, her two swords sluicing through the air. Aya pivoted left and right, her hands at her sides as she playfully avoided her attacks. “We got bored waiting for you to call us to New York, so we decided to have us a little party. Everyone else already ate; they are either resting, or out in the meadow.”
“Stop talking, more fighting!” Aya cried as she swung her blade low, Lady C. jumping over
it and flipping around her. She twisted in the air with both blades aimed at the Thulean, doing a move that I’d only seen in high concept martial arts movies.
“The fick you just say? How come you guys get to go to New York?” Hiccup asked the Huntresses, no longer faking his injury. He waddled back to his feet and took a seat, going for another dragon wing, which he gobbled down. “Fick, did you try these ones, Spewy? These fickers got a kick!”
“Fick yeah they do!”
“For fick’s sake,” Hiccup shouted over to the chef, “I’m not trying to light a fire out of my ass later. What the fick part of the word ‘mild’ do you fail to comprehend? This is what we get when we hire immiNPCs! I keep fickin’ telling everyone that there are not good people on both sides. Elves are bad, mmkay? They may seem clever, and I have been known to pay good rupees to spend some quality time with the drow, especially the ones with the face tattoos, but that’s just for pleasure. This is fickin’ business. Fick!”
He threw his hands up in the air, flinging barbecue sauce everywhere, a bit splashing against the front of my glasses.
“Okay, I think I’ve seen enough of this,” I told Iris as I removed my glasses and cleaned them. I didn’t need to wear them in the Proxima Galaxy, obviously, but I did so anyway. As did Iris. It had now become part of our style.
“Hold the fick up. I heard you guys were in a band,” Hiccup said, eating another dragon wing. “And that means you need a manager. I don’t come cheap, but I’m worth every fickin’ Proxima dollar.”
“Fick no,” Spew Gorge groaned, “you are not becoming their buttfickin’ manager. But maybe I’ll audition to be their drummer. So you definitely aren’t becoming the manager, especially if I become their drummer. No fickin’ way. That’ll break up the fickin’ band!”
“Hiccup,” the goblin with the pink topknot said to himself, “do not make a skin flute joke to your clearly homosexual nephew, and sometimes son. Do not do it. You are fickin’ better than that. There’s nothing wrong with craving an oozing chalupa. Okay, deep breaths, and here goes. Spewy, since when did you know how to play skin flute? Fick! I mean drums, since when did you know how to play drums?”
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