Know Your Roll Page 10
“Okay. Now wait up.”
“I see lights up ahead,” she whispered. The fact that she’d bothered to actually go quiet told me that something must be really scaring her.
This was, after all, the same girl that’d slipped a cherry bomb into a Wyvern’s oatmeal and swapped the Significant Fraternity’s holy water with vodka, just to see what would happen. If her inner sense of appropriateness told her that caution was suddenly warranted, we were probably already goners.
Chapter 9
Instead of answering, I moved up beside her as silently as I could.
Stealth Roll
Friskiness Modifier: +2
Roll: 11 + 2 = 13
Situational Modifier (Obstacles and Darkness): -3
New Aggregate: 13 – 3 = 10
Result: Partial Success
Which turned out to be not that silent at all.
At least the snoring continued. When I mounted the high heap of rubbish Patch was already perched upon, I could sense that the junk ramped down ahead of us. Just as she’d described, 30 yards ahead of us was another turn in the tunnel lit by a string of dim LEDs.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“Ackbar was right?”
“It’s not a trap, Raze.”
“Sure it isn’t… Let’s go check it out. I just hope we get a better death than they gave him.”
“At least whatever’s snoring is a heavy sleeper.”
The LEDs were dim and there wasn’t much light reaching us, but that didn’t make me want to steal them any less. “Let’s tread carefully, just the same. It could be pretending to sleep, right?”
“I guess so…”
I could barely see Patch to my right, but I tried to lock eyes with her anyway. I needed her to listen, since running off again wasn’t safe. “All I’m saying is that I think we should play this smart, instead of just assuming that everything we see and hear is the truth.”
“Okay. You know you’re talking to my tits though, right?”
“What?” I squinted and stared and cocked my head. She wasn’t lying. Patch must’ve been standing on a taller pile of trash than I was, and I’d been having a deep and meaningful conversation with the skull and crossbones emblazoned across her crop top. “Well, my point still stands.”
“Sure it does, Raze. Whatever you say, honey.” She stifled a giggle and waggled her chest at me a little to increase my discomfort, a move that got me to spin around on my heel and creep toward the light.
“Stay here,” I hissed.
“What about all that stuff about not ditching me? I don’t want to get lost on my own.”
“You won’t. Probably.” That wasn’t very helpful, but it was as reassuring as I could get. I had no way of knowing what lay ahead of us, and we were way past the usefulness of false promises.
At least she listened, and once I was far enough away I felt like I could concentrate on the task in front of me. There was no denying that Patch had an effect on my rolls. Now and then she added a big negative modifier, but
Stealth Roll
Friskiness Modifier: +1
Roll: 19 + 1 = 20
Result: Peerless Success
showing off for her seemed to help me roll higher, too.
See? Patch isn’t the only one who can act like a Hero, is she?
I picked my way along the corridor, telling myself that my success had more to do with the light up there than my audience. Sure enough, the closer I got to the string of LEDs the more I could make out exactly what I was navigating through; empty Hot Pocket boxes, discarded foil from a thousand Pop-Tarts, cast-off Krispy Kreme containers, crumpled Crystal Pepsi cans, and a sea of microwave burrito wrappers.
I bent down, picking up one of the cans and sniffing it.
Proficiency Check
Success requires rolling a number equal to or below your current skill level
Scrounging Roll: 99
Result: Failure
Spelunking Roll: 79
Result: Failure
Toxicology Roll: 83
Result: Failure
Tracking Roll: 6
Result: Success
New Skill Values:
Scrounging = 26/100
Spelunking = 6/100
Toxicology = 16/100
Tracking = 11/100
Hmmm… Apparently I’ve got a bunch of skills I can grind as well. This Hero stuff’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Unlike most of the ungrateful world it had come from, I couldn’t resist the call of the Crystal Pepsi. When I licked the top of a can I discovered that it didn’t taste that old. There was only a thin, sticky residue, but it was just as good as I remembered.
My traitor stomach rumbled almost as loud as the monstrous snoring up ahead of me and I set the crumpled aluminum down quietly and kept pushing forward. I was so close to the LEDs now that I could see a few places where I could put my feet without making too much noise.
Stealth Roll
Friskiness Modifier: +2
Roll: 15 + 2 = 17
Result: Success
After a few more steps, I got to the lit turn in the tunnel without making so much as a boot scuff or rattling a stray potato chip bag.
Proficiency Check
Tracking Roll: 3
Result: Success
Spelunking Roll: 36
Result: Failure
Survival Roll: 29
Result: Failure
New Skill Values:
Spelunking = 7/100
Survival = 21/100
Tracking = 12/100
My rolls helped me work out that the source of the sound was right around the corner, and I braced myself against the wall and peered past it with as much grace and stealth as I could muster.
It was much brighter here. After the darkness I’d been surrounded by for so long, now there was almost too much light. It took a couple of seconds for my eyes to adjust, and when they did I wasn’t even sure exactly what I was looking at, except for more trash.
Skill Check
Tracking Roll: 22
Result: Failure
Spelunking Roll: 85
Result: Failure
Survival Roll: 9
Result: Success
New Skill Values:
Spelunking = 8/100
Tracking = 13/100
Those certainly weren’t the best numbers. If Survival hadn’t bailed me out, I doubt that I’d have seen the source of the noise at all. As it was, I only spotted the stumpy Gearblin legs sticking out from inside a trash bag it was using as a blanket at the very last second.
If I’d been any slower, I’d have stepped on them.
The snores kept right on rolling out from underneath the pizza box it’d balanced across its face. The cardboard that shielded its eyes from the light also concealed its visage from me. I knew it was a guy because, in a twist of fate that benefitted the guys and left the girls out of luck unless they decided to bat for the other team, Gearblin males and females have very different physiology.
Patch had curves for days, but even Mother was lean and graceful. This guy’s body was stocky and muscular. I was on the wiry side of the male spectrum and this portly guy was on the beer belly end, but it’d take a lot more than a coconut bra and a wiggle of hips for somebody to confused either one of us with the lady version of Gearblins.
Now that I knew where he was, my heart could slow down a little and stop trying to drown me in adrenaline. I looked past him to see what else was down here.
I’d thought the foothills of trash along the way here were bad, but they were nothing compared to the mountain range of rubbish that choked the entirety of the tunnel just beyond the snorer.
No matter how much of a glutton this new guy was, it would have taken him decades of chowing down to create this much trash. I hazarded another few steps nearer to him, and that was when it hit me.
Nausea Roll
Tenacity Modifier: -1
Roll: 7 - 1 = 6
>
Situational Modifier (Adaptation to Previous Living Conditions): +2
New Aggregate: 6 + 2 = 8
Result: Partial Failure
The tunnel wasn’t drafty at all, which meant that the still air held a vastly unpleasant surprise for me as I neared. A miasma of 100-proof stench exploded inside my sinuses like nostril napalm, making my eyes stream and my throat close up tight as my knees threatened to give way.
I reeled backward, trying desperately to get to breathable air again and succeeding in bumping into Patch in the process. She’d managed to sneak up on me yet again, and even in the throes of alcohol poisoning I found it interesting that losing a passive opposed roll meant that I didn’t get to see the result.
That made sense, of course. Otherwise I’d be tipped off to the threat even if I’d lost. “Careful,” I managed to strangle out, stretching out my arm and holding her back, “that thing smells like a distillery.”
“He sure does,” Patch said, pinching her nose and smiling at the Gearblin on the ground in his nest of scum. “This guy certainly made a lifestyle choice and stuck with it.”
“If that stink is anything to go by, he’s been dead and gone a while, snoring or not.”
Patch pushed my hand away and I let her go. She slowly bulldozed toward him through the garbage and the stench and, once she got there, knelt as she carefully pulled the garbage bag and the pizza box away.
The Gearblin she revealed was quite a bit older than her and I put together. A shock of thick white hair ran down the middle of his skull in an impressive mohawk as stiff as a boar’s bristles. His eyes squeezed shut even tighter against the light’s glare, but he didn’t wake up.
Something was covering his mouth and nose, and I pointed at it. “Is that a muzzle he’s wearing?”
“I think it’s some sort of gas mask,” she said, gently tapping the side of a leather-framed, tech-infused device strapped across the lower part of his face. “But designed in reverse, to sterilize the breath he’s emitting.” The device was humming away, its valves, seals, and intake ports furiously operating in an effort to filter the worst of the noxious exhaust before it could debase the air.
I crouched beside her on my haunches and reached out so that I could brush my palm across the apparatus.
Miasmatic Muzzle of Parental Advisory
Description: A relic forged within the black heart of the hag Tipper Gore herself, this mask filters and purifies everything that passes through it from the wearer to the outside world. The lifestyle and language of its current owner has almost beaten the poor object into submission.
Use: Words and smells rated higher than the PARENTAL ADVISORY setting will be censored, stepped down to PG-13.
Durability: 3/10
“RNGesus,” I whispered, awestruck. “If this reek is what’s left over after the mask’s done its job, this guy must be able to breathe fire and piss rocket fuel. Have you ever heard of that ‘Parental Advisory’ stuff?”
“Nope,” she said. “Never. Do you think he’s okay?”
“Absolutely not…” The stockiness of the pseudo-corpse made it difficult to guess how much of him was fat and how much muscle. Fifty-fifty, maybe? My guess was that he was taller, wider, stronger, and meaner than I was, and I didn’t like that. If he was as belligerent of a bastard as he looked, we might have problems when he woke up.
No you won’t. You’re a Hero now, remember? This guy can’t beat your rolls. Besides, he’s so pickled that the whole Rip van Winkle cosplay thing might turn out to be a permanent feature.
“He’s a dropkick. It’s fitting that he’s stuck, literally, in a dead end. Let’s ignore the obvious metaphor of his misspent life, take his lights and turn around. He can have this end of the tunnel and we’ll explore in the other direction.”
“Now who’s not thinking things through? If there was a way out, don’t you think he’d have used it?”
I shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he likes it down here, or maybe he’s so far out of his gourd that he can’t see straight enough to escape. Either way, I’m not going to let my future be dictated by some plastered lush.”
“But we can’t just leave him here, Raze.”
“Why not? He won’t even know he’s being left…”
“Because he’s one of us, and he’s stuck here too. We’re all in this together.”
“Says you,” I shot back, turning away from both of them and heading over to the LEDs on the wall. There were a lot more on the strings than I’d first seen, though most of them were broken in one way or another.
Patch marched up to my side and got in my ear, planting her feet and putting her hands on her hips. “No. We are not taking his lights, and that’s not up for debate. Maybe we’ll ditch him and maybe we won’t, but it isn’t fair to make that decision before we speak to him.”
“Enough with the bleeding-heart stuff. You just want to keep him because he’s a stray.”
“So what if I do?”
“You’ve always got at least one of your eyes open, hoping to find a new downtrodden Dregs to feel sorry for.”
She nodded, locking her gaze with mine. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be hanging out with you.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, even though I’d walked right into it.
“Hey,” she said, unaware of how deep her words had cut me. “I just thought of something. Maybe this guy’s the real Mountain King, and we’re just lost and lonely.”
I glared at the interloper sprawled out on the ground. “This disgrace isn’t the King of anything,” I said. “He’s just a useless drunk.”
“What does that matter?”
“What do you mean? Look at him! He’s so far out of it that he’s poured what’s left of his grog out on himself.” I took a couple of steps closer and pointed at the intricately crafted flagon clutched in his hand, made with an attention to detail I couldn’t imagine the boozehound appreciating.
As if to prove my point, when he grunted and shifted we could both see that the vessel’s stopper was missing. His movement made the end of the chain that should’ve secured it swing uselessly against his waist.
The brackish liquid that’d spilled from the container had long since congealed down his side. It was bone dry, which told me that the Gearblin had probably been laying like this for days.
“Hang on a second,” she said. Something had caught her eye, and the next thing I knew she was reaching into one of her pockets and yanking out the golden capsule she’d won in the claw game.
I heard it rattle as she popped it open.
Skill Check
Investigation Roll: 63
Result: Failure
Streetwise Roll: 77
Result: Failure
New Skill Values:
Investigation = 31/100
There were a few things in there, but she hid them from me as she deftly plucked one out. Once she’d made her choice, Patch held it up to the light.
There, between her thumb and index finger, was an expertly crafted, highly polished stopper that precisely matched the style of the flask in the drunk Gearblin’s grip.
“Patch” I said. “Don’t you dare say the thing you’re thinking. This is an impossible coincidence and nothing more.”
“Nope. It’s destiny,” she breathed.
“It’s madness,” I told her, searching my brain for an explanation and coming up empty. “It’s…”
“Fate,” she said. “Kismet.” Before I could stop her she stepped lightly by me, braving the vapors as she crouched at his side again. An odd mix of fear and fascination rooted me to the ground as she attached the end of the flagon’s chain to the stopper, bending a broken link so that it wouldn’t fall away again before screwing the cap back on the flask.
The damn thing fit perfectly.
“We were supposed to find him,” she said, beaming up at me. “He’s ours, and we aren’t going anywhere without him.”
Chapter 10
“He’s yours, you mean. I,
for one, am not going to just sit around here and wait for him to surface from his self-induced coma.” With Patch’s one-eyed dirty look burrowing into my back the entire time, I went over to the LEDs hanging on the wall. There were multiple strings of them, and the wires were so badly tangled that they made rat nests look like the pinnacle of architectural perfection.
“Don’t steal his stuff,” Patch warned. “Nobody knows how it feels to have to hide your stash more than we do.”
“Relax. There’s plenty here for him and for us. Besides, I’m only going to borrow it.” The ensnared mess of cables and rechargeable battery packs was a confused nightmare of knots and old tinsel, but gravity and erosion had teamed up to effectively clean my schedule, which meant I had plenty of time to unravel it.
He’d hung the strands from a bunch of rusty pitons in the tunnel wall, and I carefully unhooked them.
6 strings of Light-Emitting Diodes
Description: Whoever used these last was the sort of person who didn’t take the Christmas tree down until the middle of June. Even then, they were so disgusted by themselves that they didn’t bother to store them effectively. They are devilishly tangled, and it will take great care to keep them from returning to this state even if they are separated.
Use: Tough, efficient, and almost impossible to repair, these LEDs can bring light to the darkness.
Durability: 4/10
I sat down and set to work.
Patch was mad at me, but she chilled out a little once she saw how much effort it was going to take to untangle the lights. I knew she was counting on me getting bored or distracted, but that only happened ninety percent of the time.
The other ten I was far more driven than she could ever be. Patch completed mundane tasks with a cheerfulness I could never muster, but it was that same bright enthusiasm that let her easily come to terms with failure. In her eyes, if something didn’t work after a couple of tries it simply wasn’t meant to be.