Copyright © 2018 by Harmon Cooper
Copyright © 2018 Boycott Books
Edited by Andi Marlowe (www.andromedaediting.com)
Narrated by Jeff Hays and Annie Ellicott
www.harmoncooper.com
[email protected]
Twitter: @_HarmonCooper
All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Monster Hunt NYC is dedicated to my father, an Austin, Texas musician, who passed away on May 3rd, 2018, exactly one week before the publication of this book.
My father was the person who encouraged me to pursue music, and who taught me the basics of playing guitar. Later, as I transitioned from musician to writer, he became my first reader and a champion for my books.
He was a friend, a father, and a man who always had a hot meal and a wild story waiting for anyone who visited. He will be thoroughly missed.
-Harmon Cooper
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Aya and Lady Cassandra
Chapter Two: Where the Children Play
Chapter Three: Pizza Confessional
Chapter Four: These Monsters Won’t Hunt Themselves
Chapter Five: I Want to be Attacked by Japanese Wind Gods
Chapter Six: Dojo with No Mojo
Chapter Seven: Mortem Mythcrea
Chapter Eight: Training Grounds
Chapter Nine: Little Little Bear
Chapter Ten: Party Time, Excellent
Chapter Eleven: Tournament Jam
Chapter Twelve: Close but no Cigar
Chapter Thirteen: Floral Cheer and the Brawl Add-On
Chapter Fourteen: Central Park Fight Club
Chapter Fifteen: Sucker Punched
Chapter Sixteen: Mothman and the Monkey King
Chapter Seventeen: Hunting a Giant
Chapter Eighteen: Suiting Up and Better Together
Chapter Nineteen: The Manor
Chapter Twenty: Two Alphas United
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Chapter One: Aya and Lady Cassandra
As soon as I activated the Monster Hunter app, I was whisked away to a space that reminded me of an arena with its lights off. I could tell the space was expansive, mainly because of the floating red lanterns above, but other than that, I had no idea what to expect.
Activate this app and select two people to join you, Iris had said. You’ll make a great Alpha.
Easy enough, I’d thought at the time, and sure, using the Monster Hunter app was illegal. But like all things, it was only illegal if you got caught. Besides, after the day I’d had, I needed something, anything, to add a bit of spark to my life. And regarding the law ...
I didn’t intend to get caught.
“You there!” A man twice my size stepped out of the shadow. He was bald, muscled, cross-eyed, unibrowed and heavily tatted. Slung over his shoulder was a huge club with nails jutting out of its tip.
“Me?”
Bam!
He swung the club into my chest and I was tossed to the ground.
Sorry, Chase Knowles, you have died.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I respawned in the darkened arena.
I could hear the murmur of people in the shadows, and despite the light provided by the paper lamps, I could barely make out their details. My peripheral vision was blurred, and I could only see clearly for a space of about five yards ahead of me.
How am I supposed to choose someone, let alone two people? I thought as I checked around me to make sure baldy with the club wasn’t planning to clobber me again.
Iris didn’t tell me that part.
All she had said was: go home, lie down, install the app, and put in the access code.
“You there!”
“Do we have to do this again?” I asked the bald man with the club.
He dropped down in front of my face, spit hurling from his mouth as he said, “You’re too weak for me.”
I was just about to tell him to get lost when I heard a sudden swooshing sound. A thin line of blood cut across his neck.
Shock rippled across the burly brawler’s face as he fell to his knees, blood misting from his throat.
“I never liked that guy,” a woman said as she stepped out of the shadows.
My eyes went wide as I took in a lean woman with orange hair, matching orange eyes, and a green complexion to her skin. The woman had high cheekbones, a long neck, elven ears pointing out of her hair. She reminded me of a cheetah, her gait hyper-balanced, her face slightly predatory even with the mischievous grin on her face.
“Aya,” she said, extending her hand. “Aya Duchig.”
Across her back was a monster of a sword, with a blade easily the size of a surfboard. I looked at it uneasily as we shook hands.
“I’m Chase. This is my, um, first time.”
She rolled her eyes. “Is that the way you normally talk to a lady? Because if so, it will always be your first time.”
I chuckled at this, snapping out of my momentary surprise. “Yeah, no, I just, I don’t really know what I’m doing. My friend Iris gave me this code, I activated it, and here I am.”
As Aya let go of my hand, a wave of green energy traced over her body. The words BONDED appeared over her head, and I suddenly felt a closeness to her that reminded me, of all things, of the closeness I felt with Iris when we played music together.
“We bonded?” I asked.
“You’re my new Alpha, and I’m your new Huntress. I would have preferred someone with a little more skin in the game, but I guess you’ll do. You’re pretty stylish too, for a gamer.” She smirked. “You an artist or something?”
“A musician.” The thought of what happened earlier that day flashed across my mind’s eye. “But I don’t have any gear.”
Aya’s orange eyes scanned me from top to bottom. “That so?”
I felt an invisible force grab my junk, and I jumped back. “What was that?”
Aya laughed. “Just some locker room humor. To be honest with you, I’ve been in here waiting for someone to arrive for far too long. Lots of big bad boy warriors in here, so I’ve learned to hold my own, and kill if need be.”
An invisible force grabbed my hand, and I felt the sting of electricity move through me.
I didn’t know what it was exactly, but whatever was holding my hand didn’t feel like a normal human hand at all. It felt like a talon, and from what I could gather, especially since it was leading me towards Aya, the invisible force was coming from her.
“Out of the way,” Aya told a pair of orcs with skull epaulets. One of them turned, his eyes filling with anger as he saw me. “Watch it,” she said, without turning to the orc. He mumbled as I passed, but didn’t make eye contact with the warrior woman.
“So, you have questions, right?” Aya called over my shoulder. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to where she was leading me. We moved through the crowd in the way one would navigate the crowd at a festival, just going where we could fit.
“I have a lot of questions, yes.”
She giggled and turned back to me. “You nervous or something?”
“I don’t know if ‘nervous’ is the right word. I’m a bit confused; I thought I was supposed to select the two Hunters that join me, not the other way around.”
“You’d prefer someone else?” Sadness flashed across her eyes.
“No, I mean, nothing like that. I only get two, right?”
“Yes, and now
that we’ve bonded, you only get one.”
“I just want to make sure the Hunters I choose are balanced.”
Still holding my hand with an invisible talon, Aya lifted onto her tippy toes.
She extended one leg out, grabbed her thigh with both hands, and as she stared at me curiously, she extended the leg completely up, her heel pressed towards the ceiling and her leg nearly parallel to her body.
“I get it, you’re balanced.”
“Very.” She snapped her leg back down and we continued into the crowd.
There were a few other people like me here, people who had access codes, and each of them had an icon over their head indicating they were waiting to be paired with the two allotted Hunters.
I tried to wave at one, a guy with a military haircut, but he just ignored me.
My eyes landed on a warrior female sitting on the ground with her legs crossed, a book in her lap. She wore incredibly sexy clothing, something like a maid outfit that had been merged with a suit of bristling armor – typical male fantasy stuff – and half of her long, brunette hair was braided at the side.
The warrior female looked up at me, I looked away, and then I felt a tap on my shoulder.
I turned, expecting it to be another bald guy with a club, or possibly one of the berserker warriors I’d just passed with a morning star.
I was pleasantly surprised.
“I choose you,” the warrior woman said, her book now under her arm.
Feeling that I’d stopped, Aya turned and approached us, her hands on her hips.
She looked the warrior woman over and shrugged.
“Not who I would have chosen for us, but I guess she will do.”
“I thought I couldn’t choose anyway,” I told Aya.
“That’s right.”
“What’s your name?” the beautiful warrior female asked me. Her stats appeared before me, but I was too mesmerized by the soft look on her face, and the overall oddity of my situation, to really pay attention.
“Chase Knowles,” I told her.
“Hmmm.” She smiled lightly as she considered my name. “I’m Lady Cassandra.” A spark of green magic spread over her body and the word BONDED appeared above her head.
“Shall we?” Aya asked.
“What do you mean?” I asked her.
“We’re done here.”
Aya grabbed my hand and we disappeared in a flash.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I awoke on my bed. After I was told it was okay, I removed my NV Visor and stared at the ceiling for a moment. Once my vision settled, I placed my glasses on and sat up.
My closet-sized room had never been something to brag about, but it was Bushwick, and living in Brooklyn was expensive. Hell, I was lucky to be able to find a place that I could sort of afford.
Sure, I skipped some meals, and sure, I rarely broke even, but that was the cost of living in the city I loved.
“Damn, that was crazy.” I blinked my eyes open and saw the pipe that ran across my room. I jokingly called it my limbo pipe because it cut through the room above five and a half feet above the ground, and I was barely grazing six, which meant I had to be extra careful at night not to run into it.
“You’re… here!?”
Aya had her legs wrapped around the pipe and was doing curls up. Putting me to shame, she barely broke a sweat as she curled to one side and curled to the next, forcing breath out every time she reached full sit-up.
“Aya,” I started to ask, still not able to comprehend the power of the Monster Hunt app. I mean, I’d heard that it augmented reality, but in my bedroom ...
“I think she really likes to work out.” Lady Cassandra was next to me now, her head propped up by her hand as she looked me over. She blew a strand of hair out of her face as my mouth dropped open.
“You’re here… too?”
“Of course, you’re our Alpha. We’ll always be with you now.”
I reached my hand out to lightly touch Lady Cassandra’s arm. Rather than passing through it, my fingers pressed into her exposed flesh. There was no feeling though, which was weird. I mean, I touched something, but it didn’t have the same sensation as actually touching someone’s arm.
“That,” I gulped, “no fucking way. Iris.”
As soon as I said Iris’ name, a picture of her formed on my retina, my iNet desktop.
The singularity and its implications were something that the 2050s had to deal with. In the 2090s, we were fully connected through life chips installed in our temples and retina-based internet. The internet happened on my pane of vision in real time. It was never off, I was always connected.
“Who is Iris?” Lady Cassandra asked.
“Not me,” Aya said from across my small room, still doing sit-ups.
“Iris,” I said again as her icon blinked, letting me know she was just about to take my call.
Using the brain’s natural ability to augment things so they made sense – something that would totally, totally make more sense to me as the next few days unfolded – Iris appeared in my pane of vision in all her three-dimensional glory.
“Hiya,” Iris said, her big blue eyes settling on me. “Did you try the Monster Hunt code?”
I cleared my throat. “Um ...”
“Um? Yes or no?”
“Who are you talking to?” Lady Cassandra, still lying next to me, asked. “Are you okay, Chase?”
I focused on Iris’ face, which was still in my pane of vision as if she were in the room. “Right now, shit, I really, don’t know how to describe her, but let’s just call her a dragon woman. She’s doing sit-ups using the pipe in my room.”
“A Thulean,” Aya said with a grunt as she did another sit-up. “The correct term is Thulean. If you are talking to an invisible friend, tell them I am a Thulean. Do not refer to me as dragon woman.”
“Okay, she’s saying she’s a Thulean,” I told Iris. “Ring a bell?”
Iris laughed. “That’s so awesome!”
“Hey, who are you talking to?” Lady Cassandra asked.
I nodded. “My friend, Iris.”
She poked me and pointed to her own eyes. “You can see her, right?”
I nodded.
“Well, any friend of yours is a friend of mine. Tell Iris that I’m here too.”
“Are they speaking to you?” Iris asked.
“Yes, and let me guess, you can’t hear them.”
“Right,” Iris said, her three-dimensional form wavering. “What’s the other one like?”
“A warrior woman of sorts.” I was about to say scantily clad, but decided against it.
“I’m from Metica,” Lady Cassandra corrected me. “A city in an extinct Proxima world known as Unigaea.”
“Correction, she’s a Metican, from Unigaea. Did I say that right?” I asked Lady Cassandra, who had since scooted closer to me.
Iris laughed, her laugh loud and crisp in my inner ear. “So, you have two beautiful women, right?”
“You could say that.”
“The two Hunters you chose are female, huh? Interesting ...”
“I, um.” I remembered then that Aya and Lady Cassandra couldn’t hear Iris. “Sure, that about sums it up. And another thing, these two chose me, not the other way around. You didn’t warn me about that part!”
“I see.” Iris laughed again.
“What’s so funny?” I asked her, growing embarrassed.
“You kind of have a harem going on.”
“That totally was not my intention. I would have chosen this big barbarian guy,” I lied, “but he killed me. And I had to start over.”
“Right, Chase, right.” She jokingly rolled her eyes.
“Look, they are here right now, just like you said they’d be, but I didn’t think they’d be so real. I can seriously touch them.”
“Oh, touch me!” Aya shot a playful glance in my direction. She had finished doing crunches and was doing some type of stretch in the center of my room. “Kidding. I will fillet you if
you even think about touching me.”
“One just threatened me.”
Iris laughed again. “That’s so cool!”
“Not if they’re in your bedroom with swords, it’s not.” Aya’s buster sword, an ironing board of a weapon, leaned up against the wall. Lady Cassandra hadn’t shown me her swords yet, but I figured she had something of the sort.
“What do their stats say?”
“How do I read their stats?”
“Focus on them.”
I glanced to Aya and her stats appeared in my pane of vision.
“I’m looking at Aya’s stats right now, they’re pretty damn colorful. What do you need to know?”
“What level is she?”
“Ten, I believe.”
“And the other?”
I turned to Lady Cassandra. “Hold still for a second.”
“Sure,” she said, still staring at me curiously. Her stats appeared, also outlined by a colorful background.
“Lady Cassandra is at Level Nine.”
“Call me Lady C.,” she said, “that sounds cooler to me.”
“I mean, Lady C., that’s what she wants to be called.”
“Aya and Lady C. Is she a magic user?” Iris asked.
“Yep, she uses magic.”
“I can heal you,” Lady C. laughed. “Actually, that’s not true.”
“She’s a healer,” I started to tell Iris. “Wait, not true.”
“And the other, the Thulean, does she use magic?”
“Aya doesn’t have any mana.”
“I could have just told you I can’t use mana,” Aya said, mid-stretch.
“She’s also kind of sassy.”
A throwing knife sunk into my headboard, inches away from my face.
“Holy shit!” I scrambled out of the bed and dropped to the floor, covering my head with my hands, all to the sound of Aya’s laughter.
“Don’t you dare throw knives at him!” Lady C. rolled up from the bed and placed her hands on the hilts of two swords sheathed on either side of her waist.
“What’s happening?” Iris asked, reading the concern on my face.
“They’re about to fight, wait a minute, my room isn’t big enough for them to fight. Chill out, both of you!”
Monster Hunt NYC: A Fantasy Harem Adventure Page 1