by Wyatt Kane
25: Fun And Games
Immediately, Balthazar advanced with a repeated jab. Ty wasn’t familiar with Wendy’s moves, so he backed off and tried different combinations. He managed to get her to duck, do a leg sweep, and back away with a triple back flip, but couldn’t produce the power attack even though the power bar at the bottom showed full.
“I’m gonna slaughter you,” Brad said gleefully.
“You’ve got to catch me first,” Ty responded, and with that, the battle was joined. Ty quickly learned that all he needed to do to avoid Balthazar’s jab was to stay low. He did so, and swept Balthazar’s leg three times in quick succession, dropping his health bar by nearly a third.
“Are you just mashing the controller?” Brad asked in quick frustration.
Ty just grinned. He pretty much was just mashing the controller. He didn’t have the finesse required to do anything else.
Then Balthazar flipped over the top of Wendy and used his special attack from the other side. It was too quick for Ty to come up with a defense, and all at once Wendy’s health dropped to half. When he tried to counter with another leg sweep, Balthazar blocked that as well, and swept in return. Another third of Ty’s health bar disappeared. In desperation, Ty tried a move he’d seen Brad use before, but had no idea if it would work with this character.
To his very great surprise, it produced Wendy’s special attack. She stood in place and shouted a war cry, then unleashed a huge blast of energy at Balthazar. All Brad could do was put his guard up and wait for the blast to stop. But even though he was actively blocking, his health bar continued to decrease while the attack was in process.
When it finished, Balthazar was well in the red. “Ha!” Ty said.
“Bullshit chip damage!” Brad said. “How did you do that?”
“Never underestimate the power of a blonde superhero,” Ty said. But in truth, he didn’t really know what he did. Nor could he try it again any time soon. The power bar had dropped to below the point where he could use his special attack. He had to survive long enough for it to slowly climb back up.
“Yeah?” Brad said. “Well, try this on for size!”
Ty knew what Brad intended to do and was already moving Wendy into her back-flip retreat. Just in time, because Balthazar unleashed his special attack a second time. He let out a roar that reminded Ty very much of Bain and spun about so quickly that his arms acted like the rotor of a helicopter. He flew through the air toward where Wendy had been and would have ended the bout then and there.
But Ty’s quick thinking and Brad’s telegraphing of his intent saved her. Wendy was able to watch as Balthazar wound down, and as soon as he did, Ty moved her forward and aimed a simple sidekick to the groin.
“Round one, Winner!” Both the words on the screen and the commentator cried.
“Bullshit!” Brad said, and Ty just laughed.
“Round two, Ready!”
The characters reset themselves on the screen and showed off a different power move. This time, Balthazar leapt high in the air and came down with a scary looking axe chop with his hand. Wendy raised her face to the sky and uttered a primal scream, then bounced around the screen like a pinball, delivering kicks and chops at a furious rate for a handful of seconds. Then it was time for round two.
“Fight!”
Brad and Ty fought.
As the rounds passed, they started to talk about everything that had happened. Within very few minutes, Brad knew about the battles Ty and Tempest had fought against Bain and his men, and Lilith as well.
Brad offered a series of stunning head kicks that finished Wendy off for the round, then looked at Ty sideways.
“So, there’s Bain, a recurring boss you have to defeat more than once. A superboss you haven’t met yet who is pulling the strings. And this demon chick you thought was a boss, but who is actually some sort of side quest. Is that about it?” he said.
Ty nodded. It was a pretty good summation. Then Ty told him about getting fired (“Good!” Brad replied. “You were wasted at that place!”), and the limitations he’d found with the shield he had made.
It was then that Brad proved to be surprisingly insightful. “You said that the shield uses the same energy principle as your girlfriend, right?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Ty said.
“And you also said that it gives her a stat buff not just in terms of durability, but also strength and stamina, and that it allows her to fly.”
Ty couldn’t help but wonder where his roommate was going. “Yeah?”
“So, you should be able to get your shield to do the same.”
The game had reset to round five. Ty had won four of the rounds already played and opened with his special attack. But Brad had anticipated that, and made Balthazar jump clean over Wendy so the attack did no damage.
Ty made a rude noise. “Should be,” he said. “If I could figure out how.”
Brad started his own special attack, and then hit the pause button as Ty mashed the buttons of his controller, trying for a combo-breaker. He gave up when he realized the screen was frozen.
“You know that comic book hero with the guy in the metal suit, right?” Brad asked.
Ty knew who Brad was talking about. “Yeah?”
“Well, he’s just some genius billionaire playboy, right? He’s not going to have the fighting skills to murder a duck, let alone take on one of the gods of Asgard. So, who do you think is doing the fighting? Is it him? Or is it his suit?”
Ty had never really thought of that. “It’s got to be his suit, right?”
“Exactly. Or at least, the AI controlling it.” He looked meaningfully at Ty. “Get the idea?”
Ty thought about it. He understood where Brad was going. “You’re saying that I should be able to work up some sort of algorithm that adjusts the energy parameters my suit projects so it can do more than just enhance my durability?”
“Precisely!” Brad said. Then he looked uncertain. “I think.” With that, he unfroze the screen, and Ty was too slow to react. He couldn’t get his counter in, and Wendy’s health drained almost to nothing.
“Hey! You could have given me some warning!”
“Ha! Do you think the bad guys in real life will give you warning? Consider this training.”
Yet even as he spoke, Brad had left his character open. Ty didn’t have enough power to launch one of his special attacks, but he did manage to get in three quick jabs, two to Balthazar’s chest and one to his groin. Then he backed away, watching as his power bar slowly approached the point where he could launch a special attack.
At the same time, he was thinking about what Brad had said. It would take some time, but he thought he could actually do it. He wondered if he could download the specs of Tempest’s power into the holographic imager. He needed to know exactly what happened when she threw a punch, lifted something heavy, or even flew through the air.
If he could then create an algorithm that replicated how it all worked, and somehow integrate that with his conscious control, then he really could do what she did.
It would take a lot of work, but he thought he might be able to do it.
As soon as Wendy’s power bar reached the point where a special attack was on, Ty mashed all the buttons at once. Wendy faced the heavens and uttered a shriek, then spent the next few seconds bouncing around the screen kicking and punching for all she was worth.
At the end of it all, Balthazar stood looking out of the screen with stars circling around his head. For three seconds, he wobbled back and forth, then he crashed to the ground.
“Winner!” the screen said.
“Hmmph,” Brad said.
Ty was enjoying himself. He didn’t usually win as much against Brad as he was now. Admittedly, this wasn’t Brad’s preferred game, and it certainly wasn’t where he made his money. But it felt good to beat him in this harmless way.
Before the next round could begin, someone knocked at the door.
26: Estimate
E
ven though Brad was closer, it was Ty who got up from the couch and answered the door. But he didn’t simply swing it wide. His previous experience with the mercenaries had taught him caution. He first used the peephole and saw a scruffy-looking guy wearing jeans and a checked workshirt and carrying a tablet.
“Who is it?” Ty called out.
The guy looked vaguely bored. “Building Repair Services,” he said, pronouncing each word as if it was the name of a business rather than just a description of services. “Got a call about damage to a wall.”
It was good enough for Ty. He opened the door wide. “Come in,” he said.
The man did so, barely glancing at Ty as he started to look around. “Where’s the damage?” he muttered.
Ty figured him to be a practical man who preferred doing the work to talking to people. Ty also figured that Brad would likely spend the time on the couch, mostly ignoring everything that happened and just playing his games. But, surprisingly, his roommate heaved himself out of his seat and moved to the cardboard-covered hole in the wall.
“Here,” Brad said, peeling enough of the tape off that he could fold the cardboard away from the hole.
The scruffy man had made his way into the lounge. As Brad exposed part of the hole, the man’s eyes widened, but only a little. It was as if he had seen much worse than that in his job. He just nodded a little to himself.
“Hole as big as the cardboard?”
“Yeah,” said Brad. “Big enough to fling a huge guy through without any problems.”
“Hm,” the man said. He made a note on his tablet, then looked up. “Shift aside for a moment?” he said.
When Brad complied, the man held up his tablet in recording mode and described the damage.
“Large hole in the main external wall. Approximately seven foot by six. Steel framed building, so probably not structural.” He glanced at Brad and Ty, who had followed him in to the main room. “Window?”
Both of them nodded.
The man gave an acknowledging grunt and stopped recording. Then he looked Brad and Ty up and down. “Significant damage,” he said. “I take it you don’t want to involve the landlord?”
It had been Brad’s call to contact the contractor directly, so Ty left it up to him to answer.
Brad looked away from the man as he answered, his expression vaguely guilty. “The landlord is one of the mega-corporations. I looked up the lease. We’d be liable for a whole bunch of costs if we go through them. Repair, lost rental earnings, you name it. And probably eviction as well. Kinda wanted to avoid all that if we can.”
The man gave a knowing grin. “Yeah, I hear that a lot. Well, I’ll tell you now, it ain’t going to be cheap.” With that, he gave an estimate so large it made Ty doubt he’d heard him correctly.
His mouth went dry and his stomach tied itself up in a knot. At the same time, he felt his palms start to sweat. This was the last thing he needed. To be tied up with another crippling debt to go along with his student loan. Especially at that moment, when he’d just lost his job.
Far from having leveled up, Ty felt his whole life crashing down around him. This was the type of blow that could lead to him winding up on the street.
Nor was he the only one to react that way. All the blood drained from Brad’s already pasty face and his mouth dropped open. He looked positively ill, as if he might throw up at any moment.
The contractor looked between the two of them once again and gave a shrug.
“Of course, you don’t have to go ahead. You could talk to your landlord, anyway, and see what they say.”
In the last few days, Ty had faced all manner of challenges. But this was different. He didn’t know what to do. He felt as if he had been kicked in the guts and wanted nothing more than to sit down and stare into space for a while.
How was he going to come up with that sort of cash?
“We’ve got payment plans, if that helps,” the man said.
Of the two of them, it was Ty who recovered first. “Um, thank you,” he said. “We’ll be looking at a couple of other options as well. We’ll get back to you.”
The scruffy man seemed completely unfazed. “Fair enough. But I think you’ll find other providers will all quote a similar price. It’s because jobs like this aren’t insurable. Mega-corporations tie us up both ways. It’d cost about the same going through proper channels, but this way, you don’t risk eviction.”
He looked at them again and nodded. “I wouldn’t wait too long to make up your minds, either. There’s a bit of a gap in the schedule right now, but these gaps can disappear pretty quickly. When is your next apartment inspection?”
It was a good question. Again, neither Ty nor Brad gave him an answer.
The contractor took it as his cue to leave. He nodded again. “Be seeing you,” he said, and made his way out of the apartment.
When he was gone, Brad looked at Ty and gave him a tentative grin. “Well. That could have gone better,” he said.
Ty couldn’t come up with an answer. He just shook his head and worried about what he was going to do.
◆◆◆
Ty would have liked to hang around for a while, just wasting time with Brad, shooting the breeze, playing games, and ignoring the looming debt hanging over them for as long as they could. To Brad, it was a simple existence, and despite his less-than-wonderful grooming habits, in a way, Ty admired his friend.
So many people in New Lincoln were like Ty. They spent their time doing stuff they didn’t enjoy for a repulsive manager or faceless corporation, never getting anywhere and living a single paycheck from financial disaster.
As far as Ty knew, Brad wasn’t wealthy. But he’d found a way to turn something he enjoyed into a career. He lived his life his way, and that was something that was more than impressive given the state of the world.
Maybe Brad would be able to weather this latest financial setback as well. He’d just had a big score. Maybe it would be enough to cover his share.
As for Ty himself, he planned to go to the Concubine Club, beg Angie for his job back. Depending on how that went, maybe talk with Martin as well.
Maybe he would try to squeeze both jobs in at once, at least until he paid back this debt.
Or maybe he could somehow use his skill and repair the apartment wall himself.
Ty said his goodbyes and made his way back down the stairs, his head still swimming with shock and uncertainty. When he reached the sidewalk, he noted that the regular New Lincoln drizzle had already begun. But at least it wasn’t too cold, and Dinah’s bike was right where he’d left it, unmolested and as sparklingly black and awesome as ever.
With a sigh, Ty deactivated the anti-theft system and climbed on. He was about to slide his helmet over his head when once again, his device sounded an alert.
It was Dinah.
“Ty, where are you?” she said. Before he could answer, she continued. “I think I might have found a lead. Or at least, a hint of one. I put out a call, and one of my contacts responded.”
It took Ty a few moments to catch up with what she was saying. The thing with the contractor was still too large in his head. But when he pushed all that aside and focused on her words, he couldn’t help but feel excited. Yet her expression didn’t match the magnitude of the news. She seemed uncharacteristically serious. Worried, almost.
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” he asked.
“It would be, yes. Except that the contact isn’t the most savory of characters. He’s from one of the crime families we’ve been trying to put out of business.”
Ty didn’t know what to say. “Oh,” he said.
“Yes. Exactly. They’re into sex trafficking, drugs, blackmail, protection rackets, everything you can think of that makes New Lincoln less than it could be. But they–he–says they have information and wants to meet. Tempest is looking to go, but normally would have taken Zach along for something like this. Just in case.”
Ty understood where she was heading. He was noddin
g before she even asked.
“I’m not comfortable with Tempest going alone. Can you go with her?” the deerkin finished.
“Of course!” Ty said. “Anything. Where do I meet her?” He was more than happy to help out where he could, and it would help to distract him from his financial issues.
Dinah’s grin returned. “There’s time yet. Just come back here and we’ll give you all the details.”
With that, the deerkin blinked off, and Ty put on his helmet. Despite everything, his job and what to do about it was going to have to wait.
27: Rubio’s Bistro
The persistent drizzle put a dampener on Ty’s spirits as he made his way back to the mansion. Or maybe it was the lingering despair over the meeting with the contractor.
Either way, the soggy roads and gloom conspired to slow traffic to a relative crawl, and while Ty was able to weave in and out, it was far from the free-flowing travel he preferred. Yet it was still better than any form of public transport and beat walking without even trying.
Despite the difficult conditions, he was still disappointed when the familiar building came into view. One day, he promised himself, he would go for a long ride, if Dinah was okay with it. Other than flying, it was Ty’s favorite form of travel.
Perhaps he would ask one of the women in his life along for the ride.
He parked the bike back in the garage and made his way upstairs, making sure to close the door and reactivate the shield behind him. Quite deliberately, he forced himself to forget about his financial woes for the time being. He would deal with them later, and Tempest and Dinah didn’t need to share in that particular stress.
He found Tempest waiting for him when he reached the penthouse.
“There you are,” she said with a smile. She looked to be completely recovered from her exhaustion. Dinah, it seemed, was right. Even though it had only been a couple of hours since Tempest had arrived from her conversation with the police, she looked bright and refreshed and ready to face whatever was to come.
