Aya looked at me with a wolfish grin on her face. “Fine, fine.”
“Apologize,” Lady C. said.
Aya scoffed. “I’m sorry for throwing a knife at Chase. But he’d be wise to watch what he says around me.”
“It’s fine, just no bickering. That’s my only rule. You both could kill each other, which I’d like not to happen. At least in my room,” I said as Lady C. helped me up.
I took a step back from her. “How did you …?” I returned my focus to Iris’ image on my iNet screen.
“How did she help me up?” I asked, feeling a tingling sensation spread over me as if I’d just been touched by a ghost. “They aren’t real.”
“Why do you think the app is illegal?” Iris asked, an eyebrow raising and further accentuating her blue eyes.
I shook my head. “But it isn’t physically possible. She just helped me to my feet.”
“No, you helped yourself to your feet, but your brain thought that someone was assisting you. It’s weird, and you can watch TwitchTubeRed videos of people doing crazy stuff as they think they’re being guided by their Hunters. This is why it’s illegal… people have tried to fly.”
I considered this as Aya returned to her vertical crunches. “Not possible. I call bullshit. None of this is possible.”
“We need to meet. I’m finished up at Pratt, and can meet you in forty minutes. Da Boss Cat Coffee. How’s that?”
“And you’ll explain all this?”
“I will,” she said, “I promise.”
“And you have a Monster Hunt code too, right? I don’t want to do this alone.”
Iris bit her lip. “Like I said, I’ll explain everything. Just be careful coming here. Don’t let people know you’re seeing them, and if it gets to be too much, close the app.”
“Got it, I’ll close the app.”
“No, you won’t,” Aya said as she started another round of hanging sit-ups. “You already like us too much.”
“What are they saying to you?”
“One is taunting me, and the other,” I turn to Lady C. to see a huge smile plastered across her face, “the other is smiling at me.”
Iris started to giggle but quickly suppressed her laughter. “Just be careful, promise?”
“Promise.”
“And remember, shut down the app if it becomes too much.” Iris winks at me. “See you soon. Wait, wait!”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t try to catch anything until I explain how this works to you.”
“Catch anything?”
“I’ll explain soon!”
Chapter Two: Where the Children Play
“So, we’re in New York?” Lady Cassandra asked as we stepped onto the street in front of my apartment. “I’ve read books about this city.”
“That’s right,” I said hurriedly.
“And it is better than Old York?” asked Aya.
“There isn’t an Old York, at least not to my knowledge,” I told her as we turned in the direction of Da Boss Cat Coffee.
“Then it is a stupid name,” Aya said.
Aeros moved through the air above us, and I could hear the sounds of the subway, which wasn’t far from my home. A couple of hipsters on bikes stopped in front of us.
Her hips swaying, Aya stepped around one of the cyclists and gave him a dirty look. That was something I wouldn’t get used to for a while: Aya and Lady C. were operating as if they truly existed and were as tangible as me, which I knew was impossible.
Lady C. skipped ahead, her armored skirt lightly slapping against her exposed thighs.
“Don’t go too far!” I called after her.
A woman in oversized sunglasses and a maroon scarf wrapped around her neck gave me the hairy eyeball as she passed.
She can’t see who I’m talking to, I reminded myself.
While Lady C. stopped to look at a cat, Aya came up next to me and wrapped her arm in mine.
Except it wasn’t her arm, it was the invisible power she used on me earlier, back at the darkened arena.
“I thought you couldn’t use mana,” I told her.
“I can’t.”
“Then how are you holding my arm?”
She stopped in front of me, blocking me from continuing on the sidewalk. It was fall in Brooklyn, and the trees had started to turn.
Behind Aya, a soft breeze whipped orange and yellow leaves in the air, naturally attracting Lady C.’s attention.
“Have you heard of Tritania?”
“Of course, the Proxima world,” I said.
I wasn’t a gamer, I was a bassist, but I had dabbled in the various virtual Proxima worlds, and nearly everyone knew of Tritania, the famous fantasy world.
“That’s where I’m from,” said Aya as she walked gracefully, “and where all Thuleans originate from.”
“Okay, but what does this have to do with the magic you use?”
She cocked an eyebrow at me. “I told you, it’s not magic.”
“Then what is it?”
“My ghost limbs, called konoshlo in the Thulean language. They are what is left of my ancestral heritage, my dragon wings.” She sighed. “But do not call me dragon woman.”
“Got it.” I tucked my hands deeper into my jacket.
“Just consider them long, invisible talons that can stretch a pretty good distance, at least three times my length. You can call them ghost limbs.”
Now at the mouth of a quaint playground, Lady Cassandra went from happy-go-lucky to incredibly serious. She drew the two blades from their sheathes, and dropped into a battle-ready position.
“What do you see?” Aya asked her, her shoulders hunching as she dropped into predator mode.
“Something is here, where the children play.”
“Let’s get it.” Aya brandished her huge sword as if it were the weight of a rapier. They took off into the playground.
“Wait up, ladies!”
A pair of women in exercise clothing passed me, one of them flipping the bird as she said, “Go fuck yourself, mister.”
“Same to you!” I called after her, secretly cursing myself for forgetting to keep it under wraps in public.
I quickly caught up to Aya and Lady C. just as they moved past the swing set.
“Hey, I’m serious, we have places to go,” I said to them. “No hunting, please, not until I understand exactly what that is.”
“You have places to go,” Aya whispered, her blade turning as she gripped it with both hands, “we have mythcrea to hunt.”
“Mythcrea?”
She turned to me. “You seriously have no idea what a monster hunter is?”
“I mean, I just installed the app like an hour ago.”
“Why would you install something without knowing what it was?” She shook her head, but if there was disappointment in her gesture, it was undercut by the mischievous grin on her face.
“Look, I had a pretty bad day.”
“How bad? Want to talk about it, poor Alpha baby?”
“Are you mocking me?”
She shrugged. “A little.”
“I just did what Iris said. I lay down on my bed, put on my visor, and installed the app.”
“And you didn’t research anything about it?” The Thulean shook her head.
To our right, Lady C. started to climb to the top of a child’s playscape, her swords still drawn. From where I stood, I could see up her skirt-like armor.
“Mythcrea are what we capture here in your world. It is why we have rendered our services to you. We capture, you place them in your Dojo, you train, we all prosper. You are our Alpha, and we are your Huntresses. Need I explain more?”
I heard a loud thunk!
Lady C. ran along the tubing over a slide and leaped just as a …
“Is that a bear?”
The creature was a little larger than a typical bear cub, and it still had a cute and furry face. What separated it from a normal bear was the armadillo-like armor on its back, stomach, and the upper portion of its arm
s and legs.
It was also fast as shit.
“Don’t kill it!” I shouted instinctively.
“It is not our job to kill the baby bearadillo,” Aya said as she watched the Lady C. chase the cub in a circle. “Unless it gets out of hand.”
“It doesn’t seem like it will get out of hand.”
“It will once its mother comes,” she said, tracking the cub, her elbow resting on the hilt of her blade, which she’d stabbed into the ground.
A loud roar cut through the playscape and I felt the ground shook as the creature’s mother came running right at me.
As casual as ever, Aya took her sword from the ground and got into a striking position, her blade at the ready as she tracked the mama bearadillo’s movement.
Its stats flashed in front of me:
Baring its razor-sharp teeth, the angry mama slid to a halt, snorting as she took in Aya and her sword.
Aya said something in a language I couldn’t understand as she pressed one foot off the ground and lifted at least ten feet into the air.
She’s superhuman? My first thought was replaced by a thought from the rational part of my mind. No, she’s Thulean. She’s being supported by her ghost limbs.
Aya, her blade now overhead, landed on the mama bearadillo’s hide.
Both feet on the beast, like something out of a fantasy rodeo, she brought her blade up and dug it deep into the bearadillo’s back.
The creature cried out in pain, and her cub, running at full speed into what would soon be the street, doubled back around towards its mama, only to be knocked sideways by Lady C.’s magic. It wasn’t a lot of magic, nothing more than a gust of wind, but it was enough to send the cub tumbling.
Newfound strength building from the fury of seeing her cub assaulted, mama bearadillo rose onto her haunches, Aya still on her back, and twisted around, slamming her hardened shell onto the pavement and creating a crater in the process.
Aya just barely managed to get out of the way in time, but the blast force sent her flipping away, her legs over her head.
“Capture it, Chase! Capture it!” she screamed to me as soon as she recovered.
“How?” I looked down at my hands and noticed they had a strange glow to them. Pressing my fingers and flicking them outward created a web of light that quickly disappeared. “How?” I asked aloud, as the bearadillo narrowed its eyes on me.
I wasn’t quite shitting bricks at this point, but I wasn’t far off.
“Capture it!” Aya cried, her eyes red with anger as she limped away.
“Um…”
I looked down at my hands again to see that they were glowing with light. How do I…?
Before I could react, the bearadillo’s cub slammed into me and I was tossed to the ground. It reached its mother, and together, both of them disappeared.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
“Why didn’t you capture it?” Aya approached me with her sword drawn, and as she had done in my bedroom, Lady Cassandra got between us.
“Relax, Aya,” she said, breathing heavily. “He’s new.”
“Relax, huh?” Her orange eyes quivered as she took in my form. “We could have had a huge catch back there and you screwed it up.”
I scratched the back of my head. “I have no idea what I’m doing, Aya.”
“Clearly!”
“Look, just ...you know what? I’m shutting this little operation down for a moment,” I said, gritting my teeth. “I need a breather.”
“I didn’t yell at you,” Lady C. said, her eyes suddenly sad.
“I know you didn’t, but someone did, and that’s beside the point, I can take the criticism, but at least let me figure out what I’m doing before I get knocked over by another bear.”
“Bearadillo, and it was a cub. If a baby bearadillo had run at me,” Aya said, “I would have sliced its head off.”
“Thanks, Aya, for the correction, and that’s pretty gruesome, but you know what? I’m fine with that, just need a breather.”
I felt a pain spread up the side of my body.
It was odd to think that I hadn’t actually been hit by the creature, that I’d actually thrown myself to the ground. I still didn’t believe it. All of this seemed like bullshit. “I’ll bring you two back out after I know what I’m doing.”
As if they’d never existed in the first place, Aya and Lady Cassandra were gone in a flash. I also noticed that the app had closed down.
“Iris, what have you gotten me into?” I said as I turned towards the coffee shop. I figured a walk would be nice, even if I’d be late.
Truthfully, I needed to process what I had experienced, and what had happened earlier that day at band practice.
Not wanting to think about that, and not wanting to think about the fact that Thad had punched me in the face – the fucker – I turned away from the playground and returned my thoughts to what had just happened.
Did Aya say something about a Dojo?
Triggered by the thought, GoogleFace search results appeared on my retina. As I walked, I focused on the explanation:
A Monster Hunt Dojo is special place created in the OMIB that an Alpha can expand upon. Depending on the creatures captured, their classes, their demands, and Proxima wealth accumulated by the player, a Monster Hunt Dojo is completely customizable. As a player’s collection grows, the player must customize the Dojo to meet the mythcrea’s needs.
Mythcrea?
There was that word again. Just thinking it created a definition on my iNet screen.
Myth-cre-a/ miTH krēə
noun
A portmanteau for the words “mythological creature.” Coined through the popular, and now banned, creature capturing app known as Monster Hunt, created by the Proxima Company in 2083, mythcrea can range from digital representations of mythological creatures, to creatures used in the Proxima Galaxy.
Okay, I thought as I crossed a street in need of repair. There were still stoplights, but since most vehicles were airborne, the streets were generally empty.
But back to the Dojo.
Thinking of the Dojo produced a carousel of pictures and videos on my iNet screen, my pane of vision.
As I walked, I learned that there was quite a bit of upkeep involved with Dojos.
Catering to captured mythcrea was an obsession of many Hunters, so much in fact that people had downsized their real world living locations, and taken out loans and second mortgages so they could afford to customize their Dojo.
I hope this isn’t one big hassle.
I still couldn’t understand why Iris had given me the code. She said it would be a way to make money to fund future musical endeavors, but I’d yet to see how this would pay out.
From what I could tell, it was going to be the opposite.
And OMIB? I recalled the word I had just read, and an explanation appeared. Basically, it was the glue that held digital worlds together.
Got it.
Of course, I’d heard of the Proxima Galaxy, and I wasn’t lying when I told Aya I’d visited several of the worlds. The galaxy was the name for a collection of digital worlds that one could “dive” to.
The worlds, many of them invented in the 2040s and 2050s, had been popular for decades, so popular in fact that people chose to live most of their lives in Proxima worlds rather than the real world.
Sure, there were music worlds which I could dive into right now and live the fantasy life of a famous musician, instantly able to play any instrument, perform with whoever I liked and compose amazing songs aided by AI.
But that wasn’t me.
Hand me a good bass and a tube amp and I’d be at home for hours, doodling, running scales, and working some crazy chords up past the twelfth fret marker.
A gust of air carried with it the smell of baking pizza. I licked my lips and looked across the street to a little pizza joint that had been there forever. There was usually a line to get inside, and today was no different.
The line was short though, and I ev
en thought about getting in line and ordering Iris a slice, but let the idea slip away when I saw the sign for Da Boss Cat Coffee.
Might as well just get there and get the bigger explanation on this app.
“Chase!”
I turned right to see Iris standing with her backpack turned the other way, so that it covered her chest.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I smelled pizza and I thought I could get us both a slice.” She smiled warmly at me. “You hungry?”
Chapter Three: Pizza Confessional
Iris wore a comfy turtleneck sweater a couple sizes too large. Her short, curly blonde hair was pulled back into two little ponytails and she had on a thick pair of glasses with black and white checkered frames. She had a small amount of makeup applied, a little blush and light pink eyeliner.
She was the girl next door if there ever was one. Well, the girl next door if the girl next door grew up in Brooklyn, listened to indie bands, was into vintage fashion, and could play several instruments.
A virtuoso if I’d ever met one, Iris could move from keys to most stringed instruments in a heartbeat. I didn’t know if she could play drums or not, but playing drums was somewhat irrelevant in 2090, and besides, she was a badass at playing the laptop, a vintage instrument if there ever was one.
After we wolfed down our pizza, we walked to the coffee shop and took a seat on a bench outside.
“I have so many questions,” I told her, cutting right to the chase.
“I still think it is funny that you have a little harem going on.”
“Not at all my intention.”
“Yeah, but what guy wouldn’t want to be surrounded by hot fantasy ladies?” She laughed.
I shrugged. “Anyway, the two Huntresses assigned to me are polar opposites. The dragon chick is kind of sassy, and she carries a sword seriously as tall as you.”
“The Thulean. She probably wouldn’t like being called a dragon chick.”
“Noted. I’m just processing all this out loud. The other is like this kind of innocent warrior lady with two swords. I thought she was possibly the weaker of the two, but then I saw her go after a mythcrea and…”
Monster Hunt NYC: A Fantasy Harem Adventure Page 2
