“I’ll bet. You know,” he said, just about to turn away from me, “they say that the Hunters and Huntresses choose us because some part of our psyche identifies with their core beliefs. Something to think about.”
He waved his hand over his shoulder at me and was gone.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
We had two more Brawls scheduled, and both went rather quickly.
I hadn’t yet lost a Brawl, which was nice, but also not wanting to risk losing it all, I only wagered a little PD on each fight. By the end, I was sitting pretty nice at 14,000 Proxima Dollars.
I continued to fight with Sun Wukong, as both the fights were single mythcrea brawls. My two opponent Alphas were at the same level as me, their Hunters were weak too, so there wasn’t really a need to chide Aya and Lady C. about working together.
That would be something I’d have to handle later.
“Come on,” I told them after the final brawl, “We’re supposed to meet Iris in Central Park.”
“No more fights?” Aya asked. “I was just getting warmed up.”
I smirked. “I’m sure you were.”
“Why would I lie to you?” she asked.
I checked the bank account. I had twenty-five dollars to my name, and an UberLyft from here to Central Park would cost about ten. I decided to splurge, mostly because I’d had a windfall that morning and was feeling rich.
Our taxi lowered about five minutes later, and we got in. The self-driving vehicle lifted into the air, and away we went to Central Park.
The cool thing about aeros was the fact that they no longer had to rely on bridges to cross over the East River. This definitely cut down on travel time, and it allowed one to get around New York relatively quickly, if one could afford it.
“Wow, your city is so beautiful,” Lady C. pressed her face against the window.
“It’s just a big city, like Aramis.” Aya sat in the front, her buster sword tucked between her legs. Meanwhile, Lady C. and I were in the back, and she was a few hairs closer to me than she should have been.
But what could I do?
“It is a big city, I agree, Aya. Lived here all my life, and I still find something new every time I step out my door. It's never-ending, and sometimes it's frustrating, but all that life ... I don't know, I couldn't live in the countryside, or someplace that didn't have this hustle and bustle. It's in my blood.”
“Like music.”
“Excuse me?”
“Like how music is in your blood. And Iris’,” she said, still focused on the airlane before us.
It was interesting to watch aeros navigate. There were a variety of vehicles, some front-facing some with seats that faced back, some for families, transport vehicles, and also entertainment vehicles, where you could get drunk or wasted off pollutes and enjoy the scenery while you did.
Getting a helicopter ride around New York used to be a big thing back in the day, if you could afford it. Now, pretty much anyone who could afford a taxi could afford it, which was weird to think about.
As we lowered down to our drop-off point, the air in the vehicle began to smell like coffee.
This type of the advertising had been going on since I was a child.
The cabin of your vehicle would be spritzed with some type of scent that corresponded with a business you were landing near. If it was a Krunkin’ Kronuts, you'd smell fresh baked donuts. If it was a McStarbucks, you smelled coffee.
Sure enough, I spotted a McStarbucks as the vehicle landed. Iris stood by the road, her backpack full of instruments over her chest. She wore a backwards hat and an oversized sweater that read ‘Dancing with Myself.’
“Damn have I had a good morning,” I told her as I reached her.
“Have you?” she smiled at me, and nodded in the directions of the digital imprints.
“Oh, those glasses…. Does she see that I'm trying to pet her on the head?” Aya asked, as she pressed her hand through Iris’ head.
“Apparently not.”
“Um, so are you hungry? That was the plan, right?”
“Yep, and I have fifteen bucks to my name and fourteen thousand PD. I would love to take you out for lunch…”
“How about a rain check?” Iris asked. She unzipped her bag and took out two sandwiches wrapped in saran wrap. “Besides, don’t you already owe me $320?”
“I can pay you back now,” I said as she handed me a sandwich.
I’d seriously upped my cash reserves. At 12.3 PD to 1 USD, I was looking at nearly 1,140 USD with fourteen thousand Proxima dollars. Almost enough to pay back Iris and pay my citation. Of course, this number would soon fluctuate as I dealt with the tournament requirements and any other requests at my Dojo.
A person could make a lot of money exchanging PD for USD, but as with most things, there was overhead and tons of add-ons.
“Pay me back later,” Iris said. “We have plans first.”
“Thanks.” I unwrapped the sandwich and took my first bite. “You had time to make these?”
“Hardly. EBAYmazon delivered them. They're part of a new quick lunch at the park package that my parents subscribed me to. All I have to do is press the button on my iNet dashboard.”
We walked through Central Park as we ate our sandwiches. Once we were through, I activated the Brawl add-on. From there, I flicked on the Monster Locator and noticed the first active location, which was near the Ravine.
“Remember,” Iris said, “we're hunting in broad daylight, and in Central Park no less! We need to be careful and not draw attention to ourselves.”
“Got it, you hear that, ladies?” I asked over my shoulder.
“I’ll behave myself,” Lady C. said with a hint of snark to her voice.
Joggers passed us, people walking their dogs, couples holding hands, and a woman pushing a baby stroller with a cat inside. There was a food truck area now in the center of the park, and I could smell meat sizzling as we approached the Ravine.
“Okay, it's around here somewhere.”
“I'll look towards the right,” Iris said.
“Yeah, that'll work,” I said as I tracked the mythcrea movement on my pane of vision.
“I hope it's something big.” Aya unsheathed her sword and flourished it once.
I stayed on the main path, while Iris looked to the right, and the two huntresses looked to the left, near the water.
“Something is over here,” Iris called over to me. She was about thirty feet away; a woman walking with two dumbbells in her hands gave us a strange look as she passed.
A goblinoid creature tore out of the brush next to Iris.
Iris chased after it, even though she could only see a moving blip of light on her iNet screen. I could see much more, such as the creature’s reptilian skin, its large chameleon eyes, its beak.
“Good! Your real-world girlfriend has made things easy for us.” Ignoring the sudden dirty look from Lady C., Aya brought her sword to the ready. “Are you just going to watch me kill it, or you going to help me capture it?” she asked her counterpart.
“I will help,” Lady C. said, the look on her face suddenly indecipherable.
The Kappa crossed the path, and I did nothing to try to distract it.
There really was no point. They were entirely capable of taking out the Level Two mythcrea. And of course, they weren't supposed to actually take it out, capturing a mythcrea was centered around not killing it. And this little guy ...
The Kappa skidded to a halt in front of the two Huntresses, who both held their blades in a way that would have spelled certain doom for it.
Lady C. made a noise with her throat, her eyes softening as she took the creature in.
“Tsk, tsk,” was Aya’s response as she stabbed her blade into the ground, radiating confidence as she tilted her hat ever so slightly to the side.
My hand began to charge.
The waves of light zigzagged up my arms as I pulled my shoulder back, and cast the radiant net. It hit the creature, and it was gone befor
e I could lower my arm.
“What was it?” Iris asked as she caught up to me.
“It was a low-level Kappa. We’ll trade it.”
“Kappa ...” she said as her eyes flickered back and forth. “Ah, another Japanese mythological creature. I think some of the developers borrowed heavily from Japanese mythology.”
“And what exactly was the Kappa known for?” I asked.
“Aww…” she said as she continued to parse through details over iNet. “Supposedly, one of the things they did was warn children about the dangers of being too close to rivers and streams. But it was technically, or should I say it is technically, a type of demon most closely analogous with the Western concept of an imp. The name actually is a combination of the Japanese word kawa, or river, and wappa, a variant form of the word for child, so river child.”
“It was an ugly river child,” Aya said as she approached. “Hopefully, the next hunt will be a little more exciting.”
“You know that I have no control over that.” I reactivated the Monster Locator, and noticed that there was another blue circle, somewhere around the Conservatory Garden.
“Find another?” Iris asked.
“Yep.”
“Good, let's go there.”
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
We made our way over to the Conservatory Garden, and as we walked, I noticed that the blue circle on my iNet GoogleFace map was moving. It wasn't moving as quickly as Mothman was the previous night, but it was fast, and it did zip around in a way that told me it would be a more difficult capture.
There were also a lot of people around, which meant I probably shouldn't be yelling things out to the Huntresses as they did their work.
“Heads up, ladies, we are going into a heavy civilian area, and I won't be able to communicate loudly with you.”
“I think we can hunt by ourselves,” Aya said.
“Hey, I'm not that bad of an Alpha.”
Only hearing one side of the conversation, Iris shot me a funny grin. “I will assume they are giving you shit.”
“And you would assume correctly, and it is just one of them.”
Squirrels above us jumped from tree to tree, occasionally catching Aya’s orange eyes. Once a Hunter, always a Hunter, I thought as I watched her track the chubby squirrels who were getting ready for winter.
“I will provide some distraction this time,” I said after we’d walked a little further.
“Will you?” Lady C. asked.
“Iris, I want you to play some music on your keyboard, and I will do an interpretive dance to it…”
A grin spread across Aya’s face.
“No, I'm serious, hear me out. If I am able to help, I will distract the creature or try to get its attention by doing a weird dance, people passing will think that I'm just a weirdo, but I may be able to distract the mythcrea.”
“Do it,” said the Thulean. “I want to see you dance.”
“Me too,” said Lady C. “Take your glasses off too. They make you look too serious.”
I put the glasses in my sweater pocket. “Better?”
There were surgeries to fix most eye discrepancies. Furthermore, a person’s iNet feed could also autocorrect most vision related issues. Still, both Iris and I wore glasses, which was one of the things that brought us together so many years ago.
We were at a concert for a band called British Professor. The band mapped a dozen digital keyboards with the vocal clips of twentieth century Oxford lectures and pitched them up, creating a shoegaze sound defined by its subsonic blips and offkey harmonics.
She wore glasses, I wore glasses, no one else wore glasses, so we talked about it. And found out that we liked the same bands, knew some of the same people, and lived relatively close to each other.
A friendship was born, and now that friendship had morphed from something sonic to something digital.
“Do you think he is cute without his glasses?” Lady C. asked as she walked past me to the mythcrea-prone area.
Aya shrugged. “He should wear sunglasses because they make him look smarter. Hey, get ready to dance, Alpha,” she said to me over her shoulder.
Iris brought out her keyboard and sat on a bench.
She looked up at me as she played a few chords, just a normal progression. She then pressed a circular button that started a little drum loop. It was offbeat, cool, and held together by that phased hi-hat she liked.
Nodding her head, Iris began playing the same chords as before until she found a simple, four-part progression.
“That’s sick,” I told her, my eyes still trained on my two Huntresses, who had entered into a small wooded area. There were people to our right, lots of people, and I got that nervous feeling in my stomach I used to get before gigs.
I didn’t have to look to know that Iris was nodding her head to the beat. She always looked so cool when she rocked out. Stupid to say, but it was true, and I knew that she had singlehandedly sold our band at most gigs. Iris was original, mysterious, and when she rocked out, she made it seem so easy.
“Aye!” I heard Aya’s familiar cry and braced myself.
What I saw next was something that sent a chill down my spine.
A dog tore out of the underbrush, except it wasn't quite a dog. While it had four legs and a tail, a bushy tail at that, from chest up it was all human, the bare-chested torso of a man, with two arms and nice muscles.
“Um, what in the hell is an Adlet?”
“Researching now,” Iris said. “Oh wait, I'm supposed to be playing music ... Let me just hit this demo button.”
The demo music played, a poppy, happy number, and I began swiveling my hips like an idiot.
The Adlet looked at me curiously for a moment.
The way his dog body turned into the body of a man reminded me of the breaking point of a fawn, or a centaur.
But there was something off about it, especially the fact that a man's torso was usually a little bit larger, especially a muscled guy like him. The dog's body wasn't very large at all, maybe the size of a Labrador, so an upper medium sized dog.
I continued to dance for it, shaking my hips to the demo music.
Iris chuckled as she said, “The Adlet is a mythological creature originally from Greenland. What’s it look like?”
“No time to explain that!” I said as the weird fucker charged at me. He didn’t have a weapon, and it was only when he was about five feet away that I saw metal bars in each hand, almost like brass knuckles.
A bolt of lightning cut him down.
He used his arms to press himself off the ground as he neared me, and ended up doing a quick about-face turn.
Lady C. stood fifteen feet away, her legs wide and her two swords crossed in front of her body. She opened her arms, flourished her blades, and the Adlet took off towards her.
His dog legs kicked him up to a standing position, his brass knuckles veering towards her face. The Metican warrior swiped her right blade at him, creating a spark as it connected with his brass knuckles.
“Watch his left!” I called to her. A passing family looked at me and I continue to dance as I sang, “Watch his left, watch his left.”
I continue doing my little jig, bouncing from foot to foot as I repeated this phrase.
“Is it working?” Iris asked, as she switch to another demo song, this one being a twangy rendition of Yankee Doodle Dandy.
“I don't know ...” I said as I kept dancing.
Aya entered the melee, an angry look on her face as she swung her big-ass sword. She brought it down to the ground, kicking up dust and causing a small enough quake to get the man-dog’s attention.
He turned to her, glanced back at me as I started waving my arms, and was quickly struck in the chest by one of Lady C.’s swords. Of course, she was only looking to give him some damage, not actually cut him in half, so her blade just barely grazed across his bare chest.
He cried out, and fury washing over his face.
Whipping around, he lunge
d for Aya and connected with the hand that was holding her sword.
Aya didn't let go.
Even though I could hear the smack from where I stood, she simply bowed out of the fight, and switched the blade to her left hand.
Gritting her teeth now, the Thulean pivoted onto her back leg. As Lady C. again moved in with a full-frontal attack, Aya came up from the side, her blade severing the Adlet’s fist.
The beast-man shrieked as she spun and brought her buster sword to his neck.
He paused there, glaring at her as I moved into position, my hand charging as the net of light formed.
I cast the net, it hit the Adlet, and he was gone in a flash.
“Filthy stupid dog,” Aya said, slightly out of breath. She dug her sword into the ground and leaned against the hilt. Her hat was missing, and once she realized this, she went back into the brambles to find it.
“Let's get over there,” I told Iris. We crossed the gravel path and join the two Huntresses. “Great catch, everyone. That mythcrea was worth four tokens, which should bring us a pretty penny.”
“Instead of a pretty penny, I would like a cabin, with a fireplace and lots of books and comfortable seating,” Lady C. said as she brushed her hair out of her face. “A big bed too, big enough for two people.”
I cleared my throat. “You'll get your cabin, and you will too, Aya, maybe even one with a jungle gym inside.”
The Thulean approached me with a serious look on her face. I braced for her to strike me with her blade, especially after she lifted it over my head using her ghost limbs. Instead, she smirked, and turned away.
Whew.
“More hunting in Central Park?” Iris asked.
“Good idea,” I said as I pulled up my Monster Locator. There was activity near the Great Hill and activity in front of the zoo. My instinct told me to go towards the Great Hill, and besides, it not often that I was able to take a long walk in the park with Iris.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
So that’s where we went. Iris on my left, Aya and Lady C. on my right, we took a stroll through the park, the Huntresses discussing what they’d like in the cabins, and Iris and I talking about some musicians we knew that she’d seen earlier that day.
Monster Hunt NYC: A Fantasy Harem Adventure Page 20