by Sarah Lin
"Rick?" Melissa approached cautiously, concern in her eyes. He realized how he must look to her, completely covered in black blood. Having lost so much should have made him light-headed, yet he still felt like he could fight.
Emily arrived the next moment and dumped Jack's unconscious ally beside him. Her gaze flickered over Rick, then her aura sword lit up again. For a moment he worried that she'd attack him, but she just tracked his movements with clinical precision.
"I'm okay, Melissa." He tried to rub her shoulder reassuringly and ended up gripping it to keep himself up. "I... don't think I should fight anymore."
"Then what do we do, bro?"
"Let's go back... to that anomaly..."
Both of them looked at him, Melissa uncertain and Emily unreadable, but they did so. Melissa had to support him as all of his injuries caught up to him. As the blood dried, it started to look more normal, as if it was just dark red and he had imagined any other color. Though his body was exhausted, Rick's mind was strangely clear.
He knew what he needed to do. In theory he could do it now, but there was still one loose end that could be a problem. Unfortunately, that part was entirely beyond his power.
When they reached the hill, he saw Damian's group, but no sign of Pan Zhou. Damian's suit had been severely damaged, the beam-firing woman was blessedly unconscious, and the last man seemed to be nursing a broken arm. At that moment Damian looked up at them, eyes going hard. He quickly moved to stand in their way of the unclaimed anomaly.
"You're in no shape to fight me, Rick." Damian smoothed his tie back into his suit, examining him carefully. "The bare minimum you can do is not fight me and let me have this one."
Instead Rick pushed away from Melissa and dropped down into a combat stance. Damian's gaze got harder, but then Rick mouthed the words "Play along."
Rick charged in with a Bunyan's Step, but the crimson aura around Damian let him slide around the attack. In response he dealt several sharp blows to Rick's chest - but not as strong as he could have hit. He was playing along. When Damian grabbed his shirt, Rick sighed and went limp.
"You win, Damian. I surrender."
The other young man's eyes went wide. He let go and drew back, the battle suddenly over. Rick staggered a bit on his feet, but that didn't matter. All the fighting was over now.
Soon after the woman in the green pantsuit descended from above, frowning at him. "It's too late to revoke your surrender, but you do realize what that means? You've lost all your merits to him. You don't place on the scoreboard and you don't get any final paycheck."
Rick stepped toward her. "Yeah, I understand."
Chapter 55: A Quiet Conversation
The woman in the green pantsuit wasn't remotely troubled by his appearance, she just looked at him with distaste. That was good enough - it was time to begin his final gambit. Rick leaned close to her ear and spoke in a soft voice. "I have evidence that the American Basilisk is trying to insert an infiltrator into your organization."
"Ridiculous." She gave him a hard glare, yet it wasn't as confident as a moment before. "You think we don't track such things?"
"It isn't someone he's ever worked with before, but a local operative." Rick knew the woman was far more powerful than him, but the fight wasn't about power anymore, so he forced himself to meet her gaze without blinking. "Maybe you doubt me. But are you confident enough to dismiss the possibility?"
In response he only got a flat stare.
"I want to speak to the Vice President. Let me hand in my resignation personally."
For a moment he was afraid that she would disagree, then her head tilted to the side as if she was listening to something. She made a sour face, then grabbed the front of his shirt and flew into the air with him in tow. In a dizzying second, Rick found himself flying alongside the floating limo. He'd barely recognized that fact when she wrenched open the door and threw him inside.
After the chaos and blood of the battlefield, it seemed impossible that he was now on his knees in the air-conditioned interior of a limousine. His fingers were getting blood on the plush carpet, the seats were all expensive black leather, and an ominous man in a gray suit sat in a seat opposite him, regarding him calmly.
It was the Vice President who had arranged the competition. That fact got Rick part of the way there, but it wasn't over. As Rick shakily pulled himself up into the chair opposite the immensely powerful man, he reflected that all his strength was irrelevant now.
"You claimed to have information that would be useful to us. I suggest you prove it quickly, because a minute of my time is more expensive than your net worth." The Vice President spoke in a smooth, cold voice, but the man hadn't dismissed him. Rick took a deep breath and searched for the words he'd been considering.
"The American Basilisk knew that you would screen all candidates, so he made contact with a local competitor he had no prior connections to. Since then, the man going by the designation 'Jack Ganess' on the scoreboard has been supported by him. You can guess what he'd do if he succeeded."
"You have proof?"
"If you look, you'll find it. Jack's sister participated in a recent tournament, which led to him connecting with the American Basilisk. Then he formally opened a vendetta against me, which he attempted to fulfill during this competition. Verify any of my claims and the connections will become obvious."
"And how did you come by this information?"
"Local research. I have inside knowledge because I've had connections with the mafia boss known as Granny Whitney. I don't report to her, but I removed myself from the competition so that wouldn't be an issue."
To his surprise, the Vice President chuckled. "How very altruistic of you. Since you went to so much effort to deliver this message, I should double your bonus... which is, of course, still zero."
So far the man hadn't been impressed. Maybe he had already known about Jack, maybe not - Rick didn't think he could compete with a man like this. What mattered was that the Vice President would soon throw him out and he only had seconds to make more of an impression.
For an instant he considered throwing Damian under the bus. Based on how the other young man acted, Rick was fairly certain that the GLA didn't know about his intentions. Yet Damian had played along in the end... no, Rick couldn't do that. Instead he decided to just throw everything he had on the table.
"I know that I'm not going to qualify for a bonus or for entering your organization." Rick slowly fished the wooden sphere out of his pocket and stared at it. "But I don't think your goal was to hire anyone from this group, was it?"
"We have every intention of hiring some of those who acquitted themselves well here." The answer came smoothly and automatically, but by rote. Rick thought he saw a flicker of interest in the Vice President's eyes.
"Maybe, but I don't believe that was ever the point. You see, I've been thinking. If the lucrim harvesting process was really so inconsistent that there were this many anomalies around Branton, they would be all over the world. We'd be hearing about disruption entities on the news. Besides, I don't believe someone who created that surveying technique wouldn't have a more efficient method to track down anomalies than hiring hundreds of local fighters."
The Vice President regarded him with mild amusement, then crossed his legs and laced his fingers over his knee. "A wild claim. Why would we waste so much of our money on such a thing?"
"Because this was contest was never about testing our skill, it was to use us in an experiment." Rick lifted the wooden sphere again. "This is too well-defended for me to test, but I'd be willing to bet that this is gathering much more data than you claimed. Or maybe these entities, which you can artificially generate at will, were the true test."
"Not inaccurate, but not correct. I'll give you one more guess."
He only had one left, so Rick just went for it. "I think that the disruption to the demon realm was the point of all this. You wanted to steal profits from your competitors, so you faked the lucrim anomalies i
n order to cause all this. With that data, you can begin to squeeze the demonic corporations and make it look unintentional. But the details aren't important... what really matters is that everything you told us was a lie."
"Are you trying to blackmail me?" The amusement turned to cruelty.
"That would be a stupid thing to try, wouldn't it?" Rick just smiled wryly, and after a while, the Vice President smiled too.
"You seem to have the wrong impression, young man. It is entirely true that the lucrim harvesting process is imperfect, and also true that recent disruptions have led to certain anomalies. Making such public claims that couldn't be verified would be extremely foolish."
"Maybe so, but that doesn't mean what I said was untrue, and you didn't deny it."
The Vice President smiled thinly. "You might not be stupid enough to repeat what you know outside of this vehicle, but if you're intelligent enough for that, what's the point of spelling it all out?"
Though Rick wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, he managed to restrain himself to avoid showing too much weakness. He'd been sure that the corporation had cared only about their own profits, and that the contest was a sham somehow, but he'd been uncertain about the exact details and if he could express them convincingly enough. Apparently he'd managed to scrape through.
"Amusing as this has been," the Vice President said, "I was serious about the value of my time. If you're not trying suicidal blackmail, why go to all this effort?"
"You hired us as tools, but that still means that you hired us in order to perform a service." Rick lifted the wooden sphere once more, this time handing it across the space between them. "Despite what I know, I have provided that service. Simple capitalism would suggest that I should be compensated fairly."
That got him a dark chuckle and the Vice President took the sphere from him. "Reasonable enough. One of my people will take care to... include your unique contributions in the calculations." The man gestured to the side and the door opened, revealing the sky outside. As Rick started to move, he spoke again. "Despite what you may think, we never do anything for only one reason. We might not have scouted you for this, but let's say that this will be an interesting note in your file."
Part of Rick wanted to ask for more information, but power closed around him and pulled him out of the limo. He dangled for a moment before the force swept him down to the earth, only barely slowing his momentum at the last second so he didn't smash into the ground.
After the dimly lit vehicle, being back outside was blinding. Rick just sat there, stunned, the conversation tumbling over inside his mind.
Eventually he was pulled out of it by the arrival of his allies. Melissa rushed to him and pulled him upright to hug him fiercely. His long suppressed injuries began to complain, but he didn't care and just hugged her back.
"Are you okay, Rick? Are they going to punish you in some way?"
"No. The contest is over, but I realized that the contest was never the point. Since the goal all along was to get the attention of the Lucrim Authority, I decided to skip the contest and do it directly." He wasn't sure if what he'd won instead was actually better, but it was the best solution he could find. Jack was defeated, Granny Whitney paid back, Damian owed him a favor, and the Vice President had taken notice. Maybe he'd be getting a paycheck, too, but that might be too much to ask.
An official guided them to the exit, which wasn't so far away. When they reached it, Rick was surprised to find that he was basically free. The woman in the green pant suit had him sign one last waiver covering "proprietary corporate intelligence" and authorizing a final bank transfer. Then he was done.
When they got a short distance away, Emily moved to face them. She was coming out of her trance, but that was worse because he could see sorrow in her eyes. For a while they just stared at each other, saying nothing, then she seemed to nod to herself.
"You can call me if there's an emergency." Emily turned away from him. "Otherwise, I don't want to talk to you. Not for a long time."
"Okay. I wish y-" Before he could finish his sentence, she burst away from them into the air and they were alone.
With all the tension gone, he felt odd just standing on the side of the highway with his sister. The aura walls were coming down, the contest apparently over, but he didn't really care who won. Without the walls, suddenly the entire competition and the desperate battle felt entirely unreal. As if they were just standing in the middle of nowhere for no reason.
"Are we biking back, then?" Melissa looked at him and smiled. "Can I ride on your back?"
"I think... ow... I think I'm a bit too hurt for that. You need to get your own bike."
"Okay, but you have to buy me ice cream!" Rick laughed and put an arm around her shoulders as they went to walk back to the nearest bus stop. It hurt, but the pain reminded him that he was alive.
Chapter 56: Unemployed
The aura bear roared as it saw Rick, trundling forward into a run. Its body weighed as much as a tank, yet it managed to build up speed as it rushed at him. When it arrived, one of the enormous claws came down on his head.
"Hello to you too, Blue." Rick rubbed the bear's chest. It rumbled happily and pawed him for a while. Eventually it huffed, swatted him with a claw, and wandered off back into the forest.
Once the bear had gone, Rick went back to searching around the area. Eventually he felt something that seemed just a bit off and followed his aura instincts to the east. He bent down and examined the little stack of pellets... yeah, that was jackalope shit. Not exactly an amazing discovery, but it was what he was there to find.
Straightening, he slowly stretched his back and looked around. No sign of the beasts themselves. It was getting late, so he decided to head back by a new route, just in case they might attack him. If the things would just act as aggressively as before, he could have ended it in a day, but the jackalopes weren't throwing themselves at him suicidally anymore. Apparently they nested more without a source of lucrim.
As he walked, he felt a twinge in his ribs from his persistent injury. Strangely, that injury had nothing to do with his vicious battle against a mobster or the aura bear that regularly clawed at him. His day of over-training had created a hairline fracture in his lucrima soul, which had been exacerbated by all the fighting. According to Lisa, there was nothing to do but take it easy and let the fracture heal naturally.
At the moment he wore her jacket, still a bit new and stiff but growing more comfortable as he got used to it. Given how shredded his clothes had been during the competition, he was glad that he hadn't taken it along.
Once, it would have been a valuable gift because he couldn't easily afford a combat jacket. Now, the main value to him was the fact that Lisa had chosen to give it to him, though he still wasn't entirely sure how to feel about that.
As he got closer to the offices, he saw Wemilat crouching to the ground, apparently monitoring soil composition with a small tool. When Rick got close, the other man stood up and smiled at him. "Hey, Rick. Any luck with the jackalopes yet?"
"I've found a few traces of them, but I haven't found the warren yet. I was going to go log the locations with Adsila and try again tomorrow."
"Ah, she already went home for the day. Tomorrow I need you to help me reintroduce that dragon back into the wild, but otherwise you can go ahead."
"You finished rehabilitating the green one?"
"Yeah, and it's getting feisty." Wemilat wiped off his device and put it away. "Anyway, no rush on this. We want the last of the jackalopes gone, but we're not trying to kick you out, understand? It's nice having someone around who isn't family."
Rick just nodded and they went in separate directions. It had been nice of Wemilat and Adsila to offer him part time work, but he knew it couldn't last forever. The main problem they had was the group of jackalopes that had invaded the Peakless Wildlife Refuge. Once he dealt with that, he'd be unemployed again, and honestly, he was underemployed now.
But that was fine. Several days
after the competition, he'd received a substantial bank payment from the CSLA as well as a package containing the Mesospheric Extract. All in all, he'd nearly earned back all the money he'd invested into the fight with Jack. Considering that the gangster seemed to have avoided him since then, he considered it money well spent.
He hadn't seen Damian since then and his CSLA login had expired before giving a final merit scoreboard. Reading between the lines from other information, he suspected that Damian had accepted a position with the CSLA. A few days ago, he'd received a message from an unknown number that simply said "I owe you one for playing along". Though Rick didn't want to get involved with anything that heavy again, he counted that favor owed as part of his profits.
As he walked back into the woods, Rick scanned the trees, just in case. His one disappointment with this position was that Delsin consistently avoided him. Given the way the man could teleport, it was possible that they'd never run into each other.
That was also okay. Rick didn't think Delsin was avoiding him because of any great secret, the old man just didn't want to talk to him. In the time since the fight, Rick had gotten himself tested and discovered no real problems with his blood. Whatever the Dark Blood Kettle was, it operated on a spiritual level along with lucrim. He suspected that Delsin had told the truth: it was no grand ability, it just flowed along with who he was.
Eventually he came to the main reason he'd taken the job at the Peakless Wildlife Refuge: the small cabin. It wasn't the best of places, just quarters from a time when they'd employed more park rangers. It had electricity from the main office, though, and it was a decent place to sleep. Since it didn't cost him a single lucrim in fighter's insurance, that was good enough for him.
He walked up to the door, cleaned off his shoes, and stepped inside. Since he hadn't been in the cabin long, it wasn't exactly home, but it was comfortable enough. It had a bed, a desk, and enough space on the floor for training. For now, it would do.
