Firesign 1 - Wage Slave Rebellion

by Stephen W. Gee

  Gavi smiled. That’s when she noticed Derana hustling by, a short waiter with a long Frynk braid following her. Gavi rose. “Are you sure you don’t need some help?”

  “Don’t you dare!” said Derana, brandishing her tray at Gavi, and accidentally dropping the beer she was carrying in the process. The other waiter reached out and snagged the drink in midair, and quietly passed it to a man hanging drunkenly over the back of his chair. He thanked her.

  “You’re the hero today,” said Derana. “No working. Rest and enjoy it!”

  “Right. Thanks,” said Gavi. She didn’t really feel like a hero, especially not while she was wearing her work uniform. She had come in this morning ready to work, not wanting to inconvenience her coworkers just because she spent the night prior fighting in a scary warehouse. This was vetoed the second she stepped through the door. Now she just felt silly—a skirt just didn’t say “conquering hero” to her.

  Gavi glanced at her companions as she took a sip of her beer. In contrast, Mazik and Raedren were in their full adventurer regalia. Well, Mazik was at any rate, his battle-damaged robes draped proudly around his shoulders and the dagger he stole—looted, he kept insisting, as if that was any different—from the cultists embedded point-first into the table. Raedren’s outfit was as impressive as the one he wore last night, which was to say not very. Only his new staff, its dangling charms stripped away until it was nothing more than a thick, heavy piece of wood, was there to speak of his new bona fides.

  And there were the injuries. If they had any proof, any badges of honor from the trial they undertook and surmounted, it was those. Like mummies wrapped by a junior embalmer, the three of them were bandaged all over. Mazik looked especially rakish, with one bandage wrapped around his forehead and an adhesive stuck diagonally across his cheek, staunching injuries that no one remembered him receiving. He wasn’t alone—at the time they were all too busy fighting to pay attention to the pain, focusing instead on making sure that they were around to feel it later on. Now that they were, their injuries didn’t hurt very much, though the beer was probably helping.

  “What was it like?” asked one of a gaggle of giggling girls around Gavi. She thrust her face uncomfortably close, her eyes wide like a hopefully puppy.

  Gavi stifled a grimace. People had been hanging off of them since the moment they arrived, and the three of them were adapting to their newfound popularity in different ways.

  Gavi tried to pull away. “Frightening!” she said. “I don’t think I can really remember half of what happened now. It was all just a blur of explosions and fighting and more explosions.”

  “You were scared?” said another girl.

  “Oh, yeah. Definitely,” said Gavi. A gasp went up from the girls. Gavi’s lips twitched. She wasn’t sure why she was being mobbed. Did they think of her as a role model? That was a frightening thought.

  Raedren was faring similarly well, save that he was being paid more balanced attention, and less of it. Sitting across the table from Gavi, he was chatting with a couple of guys while a brunette woman who would have never paid attention to him normally fawned over him shamelessly. Raedren said something, eliciting laughter from his audience. Then the woman folded herself into him, a finger playing across his chest. Raedren stiffened.

  And then there was Mazik. Sitting between the two of them, Mazik held court. Seated atop the tabletop like a mercenary chieftain addressing his gang, Mazik leaned forward, one leg dangling off the table like the tail of a reclining tiger.

  “…and then I hit her with the dagger I had in my other hand!” he was saying, stabbing the air. His audience laughed and cheered.

  “But how’d you get behind her?” asked someone sitting on the floor, which probably made him the bravest person in the building, given how often The Joker’s floors were cleaned.

  Mazik chuckled. “Funny story, actually. So we were on the stage by that point, right?” Nods all around. “Well, I didn’t want to have to fire through Gavi, so I decided to just drop down and ran past her.” He illustrated with his fingers, two digits scrambling over his palm with comedic urgency.

  “I was assuming she would see me going past, and my plan was just to take advantage of attacking her from both sides, but in all the confusion I guess she didn’t notice me. After Gavi got knocked away”—and this time his hand flew, finger-legs kicking ineffectually until thwack! It struck his other hand and slid sloooowly down to the table. Another round of laughter, louder this time—“I realized she was confused, looking where I used to be. I figured I had about two seconds before she looked my way, so I nuked the hell out of her and went for the jugular!” He smacked his hand with a meaty clap!

  Amidst the whooping and laughter, Gavi leaned over toward Mazik. “That was nice and all, but did you have to include the part where I got tossed around? Couldn’t you have deemphasized that a bit?”

  “What, and be dishonest? Never!” This got the biggest laugh so far. Gavi rolled her eyes.

  “Crazy, isn’t it?” asked Raedren. Gavi turned to find him looking across the table toward her. Swallowing the drink she had just taken, she nodded.

  “It is,” said Gavi, wiping at her mouth. She gestured around them. “All this, it’s just so…”

  “So awesome?” interjected Mazik. This earned an undeserved laugh from his audience.

  Gavi looked around. From friends and coworkers to customers, acquaintances, and even complete strangers, all around her were people celebrating them. Sure, what they did wasn’t easy, nor was it pleasant, but it was … good. Yes, definitely. Good.

  Gavi shrugged helplessly. “Something like that.”

  “She totally agrees,” said Mazik, winking at his audience.

  Gavi snorted this time. “Something like that.”

  A thought came to Gavi, and before she knew what she was doing she had raised her tankard in the air. Everyone quieted down, waiting for her to speak.

  “A toast,” said Gavi, overcoming a blush as her voice rose above the background chatter. “To doing something we had no right getting away with, and not getting killed in the process. Cheers!”

  “Cheers!” chorused the group.

  “I’m hurt!” said Mazik after they had all touched mugs and drank. “I said I’d protect you, remember?”

  “Pffft,” said Gavi, setting her drink down and leaning on the table. “I was talking about you two.”

  “We resemble that remark,” said Raedren.

  Mazik laughed, slapping his thigh. “Only in every way possible,” he said, nudging Gavi. She glared at Mazik, and then slugged him for good measure.

  “Glad you agree,” said Mazik. “Now…”

  And here Mazik swept to his feet, his arms flying outwards like a preacher beginning his invocation. “Another round!”

  To absolutely no one’s surprise, this got the biggest cheer of all.

  *

  Across town, the scene of the trio’s adventure was greatly changed. Where once it was dim and silent, the warehouse’s thick, blank walls betraying nothing of the trials and horrors that went on inside, it was now ensnared in a cacophony of noise, of shouting investigators and patrolling guard dogs and yellow rope strung across crowded alleys and busy streets alike. What was once thought abandoned was now positively crowded, as coppers combed through cluttered halls and a huge crowd gossiped outside.

  Amid this scene, four plainclothed men and women walked, listening.

  A casual onlooker would have been hard-pressed to realize the four of them had anything to do with one another. The four heard a great many things as they moved through the crowd, stopping periodically to exchange a few words with an onlooker or look up at the building or pretend they were looking for someone they were supposed to meet. In the span of ten minutes they heard what had happened here, that it was new adventurers who stopped the kidnappers, not guilded ones, and that some of the kidnappers had been captured and taken to jail, though none of them could find out where they were being held without
arousing suspicion.

  They heard all of this and more, and after they had heard all they were going to hear, they left the crowd and quietly disappeared.

  At an outdoor café two blocks away, a bearded man wearing brown robes lowered his hand from his ear. He glanced toward the warehouse, then at his three companions. He pushed away from the table and stood. “Let’s go.”

  *

  Mazik and the others stared at the brown cloth bags on the table in front of them.

  “Wow,” said Gavi.

  Kalenia, who had come to join them during her lunch break, rested her hands on the tabletop and examined the bags like they were interesting new specimens. “I’ve never seen this much money in one place before.”

  Raedren took a sip of his beer. “I guess we won’t have to worry about our tab today.”

  Gavi opened one of the bags, and coins gleamed richly back at her. They were of rather large denominations, she noticed. “You can say that again.”

  “I guess we won’t have to worry about—”

  “I will hurt you,” said Gavi evenly, still not looking away. Raedren smiled.

  “Well? That’s everything,” said the battle-worn guard captain looming over them. He crossed his arms and stared, stopping just short of tapping his foot in his quest to make his impatience clear.

  “It looks good to me…” said Gavi, trying to snap herself out of the shock.

  “—that said, I hope you don’t mind if we count it,” said Mazik with an amicable smile.

  The guard captain grunted. “Go ahead.”

  “Glad to see your suspicious nature hasn’t disappeared,” said Gavi.

  “Salesman, remember?” said Mazik, smiling a little too brightly.

  It didn’t take them long. “Looks good,” said Mazik as he scooped the money back into its bag and cinched it shut.

  “Glad to hear it,” said the guard captain, though he was clearly lying. He checked his pocket watch. “We need to go, but we’re going to need to ask you a few more questions once we’re done questioning the suspects from last night. Will you be here all day, or is there some other place we should come looking for you?”

  “One of us should be here, and if not we’ll tell the staff where we’ve gone and when we’ll be back,” said Mazik. “They’re our friends.”

  “And only partially because we tip well,” said Raedren over his drink.

  “I see,” said the guard captain, who knew enough adventurers to not be surprised that they would spend the day in a bar. He nodded to the moneybags. “You should get those to a bank as quickly as possible. We’re not going to reimburse you if you’re stupid and get robbed.”

  “Yeah, we will,” said Mazik. He wasn’t concerned about being robbed, but he wouldn’t mind putting a stop to all the staring. He briefly wondered if this was how women felt all the time.

  The guard captain nodded and, with one last look around the bar for anyone too obviously suspicious, headed for the door. As he the other coppers with him filed out first, the captain seemed to remember something and turned back. “By the way, would you like to know how many you killed last night?”

  Mazik looked up at the guard captain. He sensed a low-level unpleasantness in the captain’s question, as if he wasn’t sure Mazik and the others were cut out for this, and he wanted to find out.

  “It’s not a burning curiosity of mine, but sure, go ahead,” said Mazik.

  “Six, and we’ve got a few others who could die anytime. We’re hoping to get a little more information out of them before they kick the bucket.”

  Mazik absorbed this. He wondered how the captain expected him to react, and how exactly he felt.

  “And how many did we save?” asked Gavi, her voice rising over the background noise. Gavi’s annoyance was clear, likes spines sticking out from every word.

  “Twenty-three,” said the guard captain. “No one knows how long they would have lasted if you hadn’t found them when you did, but at least one probably wouldn’t have lasted the night.”

  Gavi settled back, though her irritation was still clear. “Thank you. I was just curious.”

  The guard captain smiled tightly, giving the feeling that Gavi had impressed him. “Stay where we can find you,” he said, and then left.

  *

  Though the afternoon hadn’t yet ended, The Bore’s Head was already filling up. Tired from the day’s work, people walked, ran, or stumbled into the old pub, convinced that greasy food and a beer or three would make them feel better. Probably it would only make them feel bloated and hungover, but that was a detail easily forgotten, especially after the second beer turns into the sixth.

  The front door swung open, and a fat man in a suit two sizes too small stomped in.

  The fat man scanned the bar, his head swiveling this way and that. From his straining pinstriped jacket he drew a much-folded sheet of paper. This was unfolded and, with the squinting of a man who should be wearing glasses, silently examined.

  Three people. A tall, thin man with curly hair, beard, and glasses. A young woman with brown hair, fit, possibly a waiter. A loud man with sharp features, might be wearing robes. Probably together. That was everything he and his allies had gathered so far. He looked around the bar, looking for anyone who fit that criteria. Not a lot to go on.

  “Excuse me,” said the fat man, leaning over to jab a man sitting nearby in the shoulder. “Is this where those adventurers who caught the kidnappers are celebrating?”

  “What?” asked the jabbed man, his eyes glaring from beneath the perfectly flat plateau of his buzz cut hair. His craggy features morphed into a scowl. “I don’t know. If so, they’re not doing a real good job of it.”

  “I haven’t seen them,” ventured the first man’s companion, a mahogany-skinned man with pale yellow hair collected into a tight ponytail on top of his head.

  “Do you know what bar they’re in?” asked the fat man, jabbing the first man again, because he could.

  “Look, I have no idea,” said Buzz Cut, brushing the fat man’s finger away. The ponytailed man shook his head as well. “Now would you get lost? I’ve got the late shift tonight, and I’d like to enjoy my meal.”

  As the fat man turned to leave, he pretended to yawn. “Not in this one. The Bore’s Head,” he whispered. Then he pushed open the door, collected his waiting companions, and headed to the next bar.

  *

  “Ooo, food’s here,” said Mazik, sliding back into the booth they had moved to earlier.

  “They were fast today,” said Raedren. “Just got here about five minutes ago.” A plate of grilled meat and butter-soaked vegetables simmered in front of him, untouched; he had been waiting for them to get back before starting.

  “Good thing we called ahead,” said Gavi as she slid in after Mazik. “I’m starving.”

  “Truth.” Mazik reached into his robes, drew the twisted cultist dagger, and jammed it back into the table.

  Gavi winced. “Do you really need to do that every time?”

  “Absolutely,” said Mazik, picking up his fork and giving it an unnecessary twirl. “It’s advertising! Or a conversation piece, or something like that. Maybe someone will see it and give us another quest.”

  “I doubt that,” said Gavi.

  “He just wants people to come over and ask about it, so he can brag,” said Raedren.

  “That too,” said Mazik, without hesitation. He speared the forkful of fried potatoes and jammed them into his mouth. He moaned, “oh yeah, that’s good…” as steam escaped from his lips. The others sampled their meals and mumbled their agreement.

  “So, how were the guilds?” asked Raedren, once he had wolfed down half of his meal.

  “Mmmm, all right, I guess,” said Mazik, swallowing. He started to take a draught of whiskey, but realized this would do little to quench his thirst, so he opted for stealing a drink from Raedren’s beer instead. This passed without comment; Raedren was used to it. “They seemed a little, um…”

  “Of
f balance,” volunteered Gavi, popping a piece of fish in her mouth.

  “I was going to say ‘off’, but yeah, that. They didn’t seem to know what to do with us42.” A thought occurred to Mazik, and he laughed. “You should have seen their faces when I told them Gavi was a waiter! Some of them damn near did themselves in right there.”

  “Heh,” said Raedren. “So, what did they say? Can we join any of them?”

  Mazik shrugged. Raedren waited patiently for clarification.

  “We’re not sure yet,” said Gavi, more helpfully. “They all told us they needed to think about it, and that we should come back in a few days.”

  “Hah!” said Mazik. “A few days, my ass. We’ll be back there tomorrow. That’s straight from Sales 101. I’m not about to let them forget about us.”

  The front door opened, and a man in a burnt orange tunic and brand-new fatigues walked in. He stopped right inside the door and immediately scanned the room. It wasn’t long before his eyes fell on Mazik and the others, and he froze. He noticed the staff resting next to Raedren, and his eyes narrowed. Then he saw the knife embedded in the table, and his eyes grew wide.

  The door hit the man in the back of the legs. “Hey, move out of the way!” said an irritated voice behind him. The man mumbled an apology and moved out of the way, his eyes never leaving Mazik and the others. He bent over and whispered to himself for a while, one hand on his ear. After a minute he straightened up and, after several more minutes of fidgety waiting, headed toward the trio.

  “—said, so we went over to Paralysis next,” Mazik was saying.

  “Paragon,” Gavi corrected him.

  “Right, them too,” said Mazik, who knew full well what the guild’s name was. “They said—” Mazik stopped. “Uhm. Can we help you?”

  The man in burnt orange tore his eyes away from the knife and turned to Mazik. “Ah, yes,” he said. He cleared his throat, and it sounded like he’d recently swallowed a handful of gravel. “Sorry if I’ve got the wrong people, but are you the ones who stopped those kidnappers last night?”