Monster Hunt NYC 2

by Harmon Cooper

  Iris looked at me and shrugged.

  “Sure,” I told the goblin as we continued into an alley full of shops.

  Dozens of banners and advertisements hung from the balconies above us. In fact, it was almost hard to see the sky over EverLife due to the banners, which crisscrossed at the top of the alley.

  There were enough to stop rain, and it made the alley much darker than the main street.

  I felt a hand slip into mine, and I turned to see Lady C. smiling at me. “It's dark,” she told me.

  Iris and Spew Gorge were up front, followed by Fujin, Aya, and Altsoba, with Lady C. and myself at the back. Aya and Altsoba mostly kept to themselves, talking quietly as we slipped past people carrying boxes and bags.

  I saw Spew Gorge’s nail come up, and I followed the tip of it to a building about half a block away.

  It was clear that this was the music store, it was labeled as such, and besides that, the grand steps leading up to the place were crafted from melted down brass instruments.

  We reached the entrance and went up the flight of stairs.

  Once we got to the top, I turned back to see the sheer size of the crowd moving through the alley. While the main street may have been empty, the alleys, where the real deals were apparently made, were stuffed to the brim. “It’s amazing we didn't lose anyone navigating that crowd,” I said as we entered the shop. “Also, who is Dirty Dave?”

  “Who?” Lady C. asked.

  The instrument shop was packed; it reminded me of one of those crazy pawn shops they had in Brooklyn, a type of place where you could get lost for hours. I nodded at the sign above the sales counter and read it aloud. “Dirty Dave’s Musical Instrument Emporium.”

  Spew Gorge bristled. “You don’t want to know about that ficker. He’s the richest NPC in the Proxima Galaxy. Practically has his hand up everyone’s skirt and constantly stirs up all the pots that can be stirred. A drug dealer, a politician, a famous weapons dealer. Dave is a big fickin’ deal in goblin circles. My fickin’ uncle claims to know him, but that ficker is a liar of the highest order.”

  “Dirty Dave is just a humble instrument seller,” an attendant said. He’d appeared out of nowhere, and was some sort of ogre, judging by the way his face was beaten to hell. Patches of his hair were missing, and big golden rings hung from his ears.

  “Like fick he is!”

  “Ahem, and if it's instruments you want, you came to the right place.”

  Iris stepped forward. “We’re looking for a ukulele and a bass.”

  “A ukulele and a bass guitar, huh?”

  For a creature of his size, the ogre was pretty light on his feet. Even though the place was cluttered, he managed to skirt around a couple of counters, narrowly squeezing his overhanging belly past a trombone perched on its stand. Eventually, he returned with a small guitar case.

  “That's the only ukulele we have. Is it good enough?”

  “Is it good enough?” I asked under my breath to Iris, who elbowed me.

  “Well, there's only one way to find out.” She took the instrument from the seller and began tuning it up.

  Once the instrument was tuned, Iris started fingerpicking a sweet little ditty. I had heard her play similar things before, but there was something magical about this one, something otherworldly.

  By the time she was finished, Iris was sold.

  “It sounds so pretty,” Lady C. said. “What do you think, Lady Aya?”

  “Sounds like an instrument to me.”

  “What about a bass?” I asked, any skepticism I'd had previously completely gone.

  “We have an acoustic bass, but damn is it loud, so loud in fact that I don't let people play it.”

  “How am I supposed to know if it's right for me?”

  The ogre grunted. “I can't help you there, you'll just have to take my word for it.” He gave me a toothy grin, baring all his crooked yellow teeth.

  “Two thousand for the lot,” Spew Gorge said, lines on his face appearing as he scowled at the ogre. “And throw in some fickin’ cases too, I don't want these things to get banged up.”

  The ogre’s smile shattered as he looked from me to the short goblin.

  “Did I fickin’ stutter? Two thousand for the lot.” Spew Gorge drew his jagged little dagger. Fujin also stepped forward, lightning blazing behind his eyes.

  “Is the goblin serious?” Aya asked, exchanging glances with Altsoba. Realizing that he was, the Thulean placed her hand on the hilt of her buster sword.

  “A Tritanian goblin trying to intimidate me, huh?” The ogre snorted. “You do realize that sort of thing isn’t allowed in Kingdom Lume, don’t you?”

  “That’s how we barter in Jatla!”

  “This is Kingdom Lume. If you want to barter like you do in Jatla, please visit our branch in Kingdom Ignis, but I can tell you this, they don’t have the same high caliber instruments we have here.”

  Spew Gorge grumbled as he put his dagger away.

  “And to be quite frank with you, I wouldn't sell these instruments for under ten thousand Proxima Dollars. And that's my final offer. And if you want to barter, you can get the hell out of my musical instrument shop.”

  “The shop belongs to Dirty Dave, not you,” Spew reminded him, his shoulders rising.

  “Yeah? Well, Dirty Dave ain't here, and he's never been here, so unless he shows up all of the sudden, then that’s the deal. Ten thousand Proxima dollars.”

  “That’s like eight hundred USD,” I whispered to Iris.

  Aya kept her hand on the hilt of her buster sword. “I suggest that you bring the cost of these instruments down to a reasonable price, or there will be hell to pay.”

  “Hell to pay? What part of ‘you’re not supposed to threaten shop owners in Kingdom Lume’ does your little group fail to understand?”

  “Enough,” I said as I pushed past her. “Do you have some sort of financing option?”

  “Finally, a man of reason.” The ogre’s grin returned to his face. “Let’s talk financing.”

  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

  Well, we’d finally taken out a loan, at a cost of an additional ‘service fee’, as the ogre had called it, of a thousand Proxima dollars.

  Proxima Dollars: $170

  Spent: $98,500

  Loan: 9,000

  We were nine thousand in the hole, and until we got out of that hole, we wouldn't get any of the money we won during tournaments, brawls, or simply selling off mythcrea.

  But that was fine, we could get nine thousand easy, it would just take a little bit of brawling tomorrow.

  And besides, that wasn’t what mattered: I now had a bass guitar, and boy, was it slick. The handmade acoustic bass had a blond wood finish, its body not as hollow as an acoustic bass would need to be in the real world.

  I could tell a lot of work had gone into creating the bass just by placing my hand on the neck.

  Every single part of it was utter perfection – the feel, the weight, and that was before I got to the most important part, the sound.

  I lifted the leather strap over my shoulder and connected it to the body of the bass.

  Once in place, and with a captive audience considering we were still in the cramped little music shop, I began playing.

  Even with the limited room, Iris lifted her ukulele and played along with me. We locked eyes, and began hitting all the right notes at the same time.

  Lady C. placed both hands over her mouth, nodding with excitement as we played.

  A quick glance and I saw that Aya had locked hands with Altsoba, both swaying to the music.

  Even the ogre was getting into it, his hands in the air as he shook his large belly. About the only person that wasn't rocking out to what we were playing or showing any sign of appreciation was Fujin, who simply stood guard as normal, that familiar spark of electricity behind his eyes.

  “Plenty more where that came from,” I told them after we finished. “I believe we will be at the Midnight Library tonight, if anyone w
ants to join us.”

  Lady C. started clapping. “I'll definitely be there!”

  After another song and a little more banter with the ogre, we said our goodbyes and shuffled to the exit. Once we were in the streets again, both Iris and I sent our instruments to our inventory lists.

  It was too crowded to call our horses here, so we had to make our way back to the main street, and call them from what I was starting to call the horse parking lot.

  We mounted our lightning steeds, and after a quick glance to make sure everyone was ready to go, we lifted off into the air.

  There were other horses charging through the skyways, electricity radiating off them in various colors. I supposed this was how they were distinguished from one another – it made sense, and upon closer inspection I saw that no one had the same color horses that we had.

  Ours were an electric blue, yellow at the edges, and crackles of blue energy made their presence known as the horses charged forward. Other riders had electricity charged with seafoam green colors, or light peach, or ripe tangerine.

  It was an incredible sight, and I was glad that Iris led the way, so I could simply sit back and enjoy it.

  Not that the Steeple was that hard to find.

  Sitting on the horizon, the top of the Steeple was the same color as the sun, a violet hue that reminded me of a blacklight. Below us now, I could see the city center ending and the outskirts of the Kingdom Lume, which were peppered with rock formations and wide-open spaces.

  As we continued forward, I focused in on the graphic image of EverLife located on my viewing pane.

  As it had done before, focusing on it increased its size.

  Looking to down and to the left, I noticed the border between Lume and Ventus, a clear change in scenery, especially with all the trees whipping in the wind on the Ventus side. I also saw the border between Lume and Chrono, but I couldn't quite make out Chrono’s terrain.

  I knew there were more detailed maps, there had to be, but I liked the graphic on my dashboard. It made it easy to understand just how all this worked, and sure, there was nothing topographical about it nor was it to scale, but it was easier now for me to see how some of the kingdoms were related, like Ventus into River into Glacio, or Fumus into Ignis into Mortem.

  Lady C. rode up alongside me, her skirt flapping in the wind so I could see her exposed thighs.

  She lightly held the reins of the horse, a contemplative look on her face as she continued toward the Steeple. Her meditative look dissipated once I called for my horse to move faster, signaling that I wanted to race her.

  Her body now low to the horse’s neck, Lady C. quickly surpassed me, her brown hair beating in the wind as she pressed ahead. She glanced over her shoulder at me, made a funny kissy face, and rode even faster.

  Iris rode up on my right, and as I turned to smile at her, she yanked the reins harder, her lightning horse whinnying as it too streaked past me.

  Eventually, we reached the center of the EverLife, the Steeple of Litur and Industria.

  Like any monument to a world's civilization, the Steeple towered over the inhabitants of EverLife. It was surrounded by other players and NPCs, and I could tell what kingdom they were from just by looking at them.

  Icons appeared over their heads, flames for Ignis, a cloud of smoke for Fumus, and so on.

  The group from Kingdom Mortem were all dressed in bone; the two clusters of players from Kingdom River wore sleek, nearly translucent clothing. If I hadn’t known kingdom-based patriotism was a thing, I did now.

  There were twelve guards standing on either side of the entrance to the Steeple, six on each side of the door, each with a different Kingdom icon over their heads.

  They paid little attention to the occasional player who would step up and try to blast the door off its hinges, or the groups that tried to pool their mana together to take down the door.

  I could tell by the glazed over looks in their eyes that they'd seen every attempt to crack open the Steeple, and knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the people shooting at the door weren't going to be the ones to succeed.

  “Any ideas?” I asked Iris.

  “Not really, I just wanted to come and see what it looked like.”

  We were all off our horses now, Spew Gorge off talking to another goblin who had an Fumus icon over his head.

  I still wasn't over the sheer beauty of the structure. The outer walls of the Steeple were smooth, reflecting the Proxima borealis above and a smattering of light from all the kingdoms.

  Its center line was where the colors took shape. The colors cascaded up to the top of the Steeple, glowing softly, hiding a mystery that none had ever uncovered.

  A group from Kingdom Terra stepped up at the same time as a group from Kingdom Ignis, and a verbal altercation broke out.

  The ground rumbled, and a few hands blazed with fire, but the fight was quickly squashed by the Steeple guards, who grew in size as they approached the two opposing parties, quickly ending the skirmish.

  I watched the guards moved back to the Steeple, their forms returning to their normal size.

  “Want to try anything?” Iris asked me.

  “It seems that the foolish thing to do is to attack the entrance,” Aya said, her hand on her buster sword just in case I gave the order.

  “No, that's not what we’re going to do.”

  A mage from Kingdom Algo blasted the door with a fizzing purple energy. His blast did absolutely nothing to the structure.

  “We could fly to the top on our horses, like those people are doing,” Iris suggested.

  Two groups rode hundreds of feet above us, circling the Steeple with their horses. Blue flames licked off the body of one of the sets of horses; the other group was encompassed by a ring of snow flurries.

  “Worth a shot.”

  After we’d moved away from the people attacking the front entrance, we took to our horses, and like the others we had seen riding high in the sky, we spiraled our way up the Steeple.

  It was surreal watching our forms move through the mirrored surface of the famous structure. I could see why so many had been inspired to try and crack its secret; it was just there, in the center of all this life, its colors changing, its presence always known.

  A mystery ever present.

  Chapter Ten: A New York Minute

  “Let's meet in the middle,” I told Iris just before we logged out. She nodded, and I ignored the sidelong glance from Lady C. as I raised my finger to select the logout option.

  Into the vortex I went, where I suddenly found myself lying on my bed, waiting for the NV Visor to power down.

  I thought about Lady C. in that moment, about what it would be like to actually be with her, and wondered again about the services that allowed a person to download an NPC into a humandroid’s body.

  Of course, thinking anything created an automated internet search via GoogleFace, and this led to subreddits and other discussion boards centering around the topic.

  I skimmed through the horror stories as I waited for the prompt from the visor letting me know I was cleared to remove it.

  Once I heard the tone, I rolled out of bed and stretched for a moment, getting back into my body. I ducked under the pipe that cut through my room and made my way to the restroom, where I washed my face, fixed my mess of dark brown hair, and cleaned my glasses.

  Iris sent me the location of a pop-up restaurant, some type of Jamaican-Japanese mash up.

  It was a mile and a half away, so I figured I'd walk. Besides, I needed to clear my head, and fresh air never hurt anyone.

  My thoughts returned to the Steeple.

  Why was it there? What did it do? And if you were able to go inside, what would you find? This last question was on my mind as I put on a different shirt, I fixed my dark jeans, and laced up my Vans.

  My shoes on, I entered the living room to find Alex asleep on his belly, his ass crack showing. He was snoring, and I tried to keep quiet as I let myself out.

 
; A cold gust of wind greeted me as soon as I stepped onto our front stoop.

  The air smelled fresh today, which was nice considering that sometimes the city smelled like a festering shithole, especially in the summer, when the sewers warmed up, Long Island doubling as a microwave.

  As I walked, my position on the GoogleFace map updated in real-time, a flashing little blue arrow pointing toward the pop-up restaurant. It was subtle, and I could make it go away, but it didn't really bother me.

  I had a lot of thoughts streaming through my mind, and rather than try to engage with each one, I simply let them filter away. I was just a musician in the city, who had somehow started making money by gaming.

  Speaking of which...

  I opened the Brawl add-on and found there were a few in Central Park that were available, as it was a popular place to brawl, found the two that were my level, and took them.

  I'm sure there were more interesting places to brawl in New York, but I kind of liked going to Central Park. Besides, I'd been lucky there in the past, and since I was now nearly ten thousand Proxima dollars in debt, I needed that luck to continue.

  I saw Iris before she spotted me.

  She was dressed up for once, wearing a red dress and a tight black cardigan with Rolling Stone lips pinned over her right breast. She had beige tights on her legs, and leather ballet flats to complete her get-up.

  Something about the way she looked made me want to sweep her into my arms.

  I had felt this way about Iris before, not all the time, but there were these fleeting moments in which I would fall for her again and again, practically tripping as I looked her over and tried to maintain my composure.

  But rather than tell her all that, I went with a more casual greeting. “I see you got all dressed up.”

  “It's a nice restaurant,” she told me. “Where’s your tie?”

  “I left my suit in the Proxima Galaxy, somewhere at the Dojo, maybe in the meadow.”

  “Did you call ahead?” she asked as we approach the entrance to the pop-up restaurant. It was set on the bottom floor of an old building that used too, if I was not mistaken, be a vintage greeting cards shop.