by Justin Coke
[204] Two narcissistic parents who disowned him for exercising his Coogan Act rights to the fullest (i.e., suing them to get back the childhood earnings that hadn’t been embezzled yet), and dumping them as his managers the instant he turned 18, right before the money started to get crazy. One older brother who hated Kid Twist for being his replacement when his musical career had peaked as a nameless dancer in Newsies, and one younger sister who resented him for being the center of his parent’s attention and then betraying their family by taking control of his life. Kid Twist felt that not calling the police over some of the things they had put him through was more than they had any right to expect, but he knew she would never understand that. He had an extended family that only ever called after he got famous, and only when they needed money. None of them had his real cell phone number anymore.
[205] MST3K version, of course. Watching the unriffed version of Manos was cinematic torture.
[206] Hayes had a story about her pop into his head, full and complete. Under the name of Sainte Adalie de Merovingian, she would write albums full of such irritating noise that only the mentally unstable would be able to make it through three songs. If they made it through the first three songs, and could understand French screamed into a half broken microphone (she had spent weeks scouring the flea markets of Marseilles to find the microphone that was broken in just the right way to make it feel like worms were trying to burrow out of your eyes), they would find a queasy mix of French racial supremacy, a nostalgia for feudalism, and a political philosophy that seemed contradictory and garbled to people who weren’t French and/or hadn’t done an enormous amount of bath salts. She would call her philosophy anarcho-fascist in fawning interviews on Pitchfork.
[207] Kathy was actually a pretty chipper person, she was just naturally pale, had a bit of anemia due to a poorly managed vegan diet, and had a case of resting bitch face that made Jim look he had happy fun smiletimes disease, or whatever the opposite of resting bitch face was. Hayes was not the first person to assume she was suicidal before they’d even heard her speak.
[208] Second Edition AD&D was nearly twenty years obsolete. Mad Hatter hadn’t played second edition since the last time he’d seen his friend Chris, right before he moved to Nevada. They hadn’t had Facebook back then, and he’d forgotten Chris’s last name; in fact, he hadn’t even thought of Chris in years, but the sight of that creaky old Dungeon Master’s Guide with its corny heavy metal album cover brought it all back, more vivid than when it had really happened, and he missed Chris, who had lived on Dilworth Road and couldn’t stop talking about the Leisure Suit Larry games he played on his shitty old PC because he couldn’t play anything better and the cursed machine wouldn’t die and his mom wouldn’t buy a new computer until it did (words like megahertz and RAM and Voodoo cards meant nothing to her; if it turned on it worked and if it worked it was a waste to replace it) and who looked like Paul from the Wonder Years.
[209] This was Haye’s surprisingly clever way of bringing up the topic of a) not liking people and b) Changing Hands, a combination of topics that he believed would inevitably lead to Teabagz.
[210] The video game neckbeards.
[211] Hardcore boardgame nerds. Sorry, table-top miniature wargame nerds.
[212] D&D obsessives.
[213] Collectible Card Game junkies.
[214] As much as he liked the game, he’d never met a single person in Call of Battle who wasn’t a raging asshole every time they opened their mouth.
[215] Canyon, whose video game experience ended with the Super Nintendo and who knew even less about guns thought P90 was referring to the P90X workout program he’d seen ads for on late night TV and not the submachine gun infamous in video game circles for being the corked bat of FPS games.
[216] Mad Hatter’s eyes widened at the thought of what kind of name a dude named Canyon would think was douchey.
[217] She instinctively defended everybody. If someone implied Hitler was a bad egg, she had to bite her tongue to avoid pointing out that Hitler had been very nice to his dogs, by all accounts.
[218] The grunt was a mix of a lot of emotions. Terry loved gossip, so he was a bit miffed they’d cut off such a juicy topic. He was also a bit jealous that they were so innocent they hadn’t a) done a background check on everyone they knew as a matter of course, which in Jason’s case would have revealed a long career of appearances at malls and bit parts in movies and kid’s TV shows before joining BLU as well as the parental lawsuit and b) hadn’t just known the entertainment industry was full of monsters and that a kid as pretty as Jason had been attracting pedophiles the way a mule’s ass attracted flies. So he grunted, and thought about the career choices that had left him surprised that people didn’t just assume Jason had been getting pimped out by his psychopathic parents in exchange for minor film and TV rolls. He thought about a new career that would leave him less jaded and cynical, like collecting debts for the Mob or becoming a lawyer for Exxon-Mobil.
[219] The legendary staff that they had hidden because possessing it was basically a confession they were behind the Strumpet Stickup.
[220] The word “actual” is a bit complicated when talking about Mundis. The physical—here we go again—the arena visible and accessible to everyone in on this particular server—the “actual” Imperius Rex Arena—was almost always empty. However, there were many other temporary versions of the arena in use by hundreds, maybe even thousands of people, as they played their own little games in a version of the arena that was only visible to the participants in the game.
[221] The possibility of every player on the server being in the same room is a theoretical problem that virtual world engines must, if an RPG is to MMO, take into account. A set of liquid cooled backup servers were being spooled up by the region controller to take the load at the same time that everyone’s frame rate was getting dropped, because there were only two ways to solve this problem. Throw more horsepower at it and reduce consumption. Mundis did both. People on other servers were feeling the squeeze as resources were pulled off their server to deal with what, from a computational perspective, was an F5 tornado ripping through Swann’s Way.
[222] A Crowd Control spell, it made Teabagz run around like a crazy person and kept him from attacking Hayes. So far, Hayes was sticking by the “Cheap Warlock PVP Tricks” handbook to the point of utter predictability.
[223] A piece of equipment that let you escape any Crowd Control spell once and had a two-minute cool down. A wise move from Teabagz—Hayes had been hoping he’d pop the trinket and let Hayes control him like a puppet until he died.
[224] Supra Chapter 1; the staff reflected all the target’s damaging attacks back on the target for five seconds.
[225] Mad Hatter, who of course was at the arena, and splitting one eye between the duel, which in his opinion was not being conducting with the skill worthy of being watched by so many, and the other eye on the keys that were now hanging so low he could see the tip of a key swinging from the wrong side of Braylen, was trying to telepathically tell Hayes that Braylen knew about the staff’s special ability and was saving Cataclysm for after Hayes had triggered it.
[226] It kind of sucked, and required a 50G Rock Demon Voodoo Doll, so most Warlocks just forgot about it.
[227] A teleportation spell.
[228] There he sat on the toilet and pulled out his phone. Mad Hatter: Got the authenticator.
Tick Tock: It’s hard to read the text logs, but I’m CRTL-Fing Squid Pistol. Looks like the drop was supposed to happen now, and they’re getting pissed.
Mad Hatter: 573477, Go get him.
Tick Tock: Thanks
[229] Tick Tock had logged in on Teabagz account and accepted an invite and summons that came immediately from one of the accounts she recognized as a bot. She appeared in the Squid Pistol compound next to the mail box. The “You’ve Got Mail” Icon appeared, so she checked it.
[230] The mail was a text message; another onion file. She cut and pasted
it into Tor; a file began to download. “If this is malware again, I’m just giving up,” Kid Twist said as he watched it download.
“What should I do?” Tick Tock said.
“Keep them placated as long as possible,” Kid Twist said. “If they know they might pull the file before we download it.”
So she mounted up and followed them into the forest; a new location, far away from the two they knew about.
“Good sign,” Kid Twist said, as he dug his hand into some dark chocolate and caramel popcorn. Kid Twist tended to eat when he was anxious and had nothing to do, a fact that had led his manager to have nothing but baked chickpeas in Kid Twist’s dressing room before shows. Couldn’t let the meal ticket pork out.
[231] They rode to a vault. They seemed to expect her to open in. She tried, praying she had the keys.
[232] The vault opened, and she placed the message inside. The download was nearly done; 5 star hotels had fiber connections and no bandwidth throttles, at least not for the people in the $10,000 a day suites.
[233] “Oh god,” Kid Twist said, staring at the completed file. U18Sexscapades.mov. “You have it?” Tick Tock said.
Kid Twist grunted, which Tick Tock took to be yes, but was more of a Lovecraftian descent into temporary madness.
[234] Images played on Kid Twist’s laptop. He felt the popcorn coming back up. Tick Tock got up to check on him.
[235] Tick Tock saw what was playing on the computer and lashed out and sent it flying across the room. She ran back to her computer; in sheer panic, she only knew that Hayes would be mad at her if she didn’t get his gear back. She mailed all of Teabagz gear and money to one of her Squalid alts.
[236] Tick Tock took a deep breath and got out her phone. She texted Mad Hatter and Hayes.
[237] Terry, still outside and bored out of his mind, watched a black Lincoln Continental pull up in front of the store. His spider sense was tingling even before a man and woman, matching the poorly shot iPhone video of the Denver NerdCon brawl, got out. He got out of the van, adrenaline surging. Kid Twist had insisted he not bring a gun, and he was regretting obeying.
[238] The phone in his pocket buzzed.
[239] He would never, of course, admit this.
[240] The previously agreed on password question, set before Terry began providing security. Terry was basically asking if he needed to punch Braylen in the face.
[241] Necktie was the appropriate response. “Nictu” or “What?” or any other response would have gotten Braylen’s ass kicked.
[242] He could see the headlines now: Jason Angel found with child porn and a minor boy in his hotel suite! Is this related to his bathroom blowjob bonanza? Click here.
[243] Brazilian Jui-Jitsu, a martial art that emphasizes grappling.
[244] Davis would, however, have him hauled in for a very unpleasant interrogation. Office Davis hated regular pedophiles with a true passion that paled only in comparison to parents who molested their kids, and you didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out who had been abusing Braylen after what he’d just said.
[245] Very minor cuts that would in no way necessitate a hospital visit if that wasn’t standard procedure in sexual abuse cases.
[246] With Child Protective Services.
[247] Tick Tock, quick on her feet and with a sudden intuition that it was a good idea, slid her cell phone in Braylen’s pocket.
[248] The cops took regular breaks where they compared stories and tried to explain the bits they had gotten to the other cops. They were smart guys but it was a bit like jumping into Nerdery 400 without the required prerequisite classes in Fantasy Literature, Basic Statistics, and Intro to Video Game Skulduggery.
[249] Interpol ran the International Child Sexual Exploitation Database. If the cops had come across Braylen’s videos anywhere in the world, the database would turn it up.
[250] He hadn’t been thinking about it, but seeing the depressed looks on their faces and suddenly realizing why Mad Hatter had no answer to “what do you want to do?”, he decided to take a gamble. They had earned enough trust to take that chance.
[251] The four chords that 99% of pop music uses.
[252] In the back of his head, he figured that Kid Twist’s definition of not very much was more money than he’d dream of.
[253] Unfortunately for Mad Hatter, Kid Twist was well aware of what not very much really was. But hey, free world tour, meet celebrities, room, board, and booze. As far as barely paid internships go, it was pretty awesome.
[254] “Should only take a couple of minutes” was, in Terry’s experience, a red flag in the vein of “Hold my beer” or “What are you going to do, stab me?” that the situation was about to turn into a bag of dicks.
[255] Hayes had to bite his lip to remind Bralyen of whose gear was in whose possession.
[256] If they hadn’t had the headlight on, then maybe they were just lazy. Headlights on, they were trying to induced panic. Terry had read Sun Tzu too.
[257] http://www.clickorlando.com/news/att-users-unable-to-connect-to-orange-county-911
[258] It was actually just unfortunate timing and poor choice of cell phone provider.
[259] Terry had knocked over a console for cover.
[260] “Dad,” Braylen gasped.
[261] Not a lie.
[262] The police, like wizards, arrive precisely when they mean to.
[263] “Just doing my job, you don’t have anything to thank me for,” Terry kept saying every time they showed up with flowers or cards or said thank you. He didn’t mean it. He appreciated how grateful they were (and he knew they should be grateful), but he’d been kind of sick of listening to them talk about TV shows he’d never even heard of before he was shot. After the thank you presents, they ended up yakking about their nerd stuff when all he wanted was silence. Now that he was off the clock, he appreciated the chance to watch spring training and all the Champions League games he never got to watch live as a gainfully employed person.
[264] If they’d heard him whimper “Dad” right before Terry shot Dad in the face, they’d forgotten it. Since his identity was anonymous, nobody besides Officer Davis knew yet, and he’d made Davis swear to keep it secret as long as he could. He didn’t trust these people; he had trust issues with everyone, and he hadn’t forgotten how devious and vengeful they could be. If he’d had anybody else on the planet who wanted to talk to him (and not kill him afterward) he’d probably be somewhere else. But they were the closest thing to friends he had and he was starting to suspect they really meant it. He just didn’t want them fawning over him because his father got shot. They were already so full of pity it made him want to scream sometimes.
[265] Jason made sure to send him a very nice basket of truffles every Christmas from all of them.
[266] Jason, of course, provided the seed funds. He also negotiated a franchise agreement with Pablo’s Tacos, so Daniel was hugely and immediately successful slinging Pablo’s secret recipe. Between game night, the taco game, and the gym, Daniel was a busy boy. Being his own boss suited Daniel very well.
[267] Jason Angel in gunfight! Hero singer put life on line to save a fan! One predator still on the loose! Do not, I repeat, do not, piss off fangirls. They’re everywhere, and they are like honey badgers when angered.
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