Know Your Roll Page 4

  “But this is a big deal!”

  I wanted to throttle her, but instead I just hollered, “That’s what you told me last week, when you wasted my already-shortened lunch break by insisting that I come and look at the armor plate that’d supposedly spoken to you. Do you remember that?”

  She nodded. “I was right about that, though.”

  I snorted. “It’d fallen off a shelf and pinned an imp beneath it, Patch! That’s not the same thing.”

  “But it was talking, right?”

  “Screaming, more like.” I sighed. There was no winning with her. Everything I said went in one ear and out the other, and none of it had a chance of sticking to anything along the way.

  True to form, Patch smiled at me as if I hadn’t just shot her story full of holes and grabbed my wrist. “Tonight, then? If you say no, I guess I’ll have no other option than to turn around and talk to them about my dreams,” she said, hooking her thumb over her shoulder at the line.

  “You’re impossible, Patch. You really are.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Also, I think you’re an idiot.”

  She tapped her finger against her temple. “And you might be right. That’s why you’ll make the Pinky Swear with me, because you can’t be sure my threats aren’t empty.”

  “You know you’re an extortionist, right? Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing around here.”

  “I’m a dreamer, is what I am.”

  She was like a broken record. “Whatever.” I sighed. All that mattered was that I get Patch out of here as fast as Gearblinly possible, so I stuck out my little finger and hooked it with hers.

  Pinky Swear

  Completion Condition: Nocturnal Rendezvous

  An Unbreakable Vow has been formed between Patch and Raze. They will meet tonight, come hell or high water. Neither party may lie, bullshit, or use half-truths to willingly deceive the other. The penalty for breaking this promise is death.

  At first blush that seemed like a harsh punishment, until you realized exactly how little our lives were worth. “Good,” I said, “now get back to your work and let me return to mine.”

  Patch’s smile was wider than ever. “Your wish is my command. I’ll prove the dream thing to you tonight, by the way.”

  “Not likely.”

  The first serious look I’d ever seen her wear settled on her features, and she stared me right in the eye. “This isn’t like the imp thing, or the time I saw RNGesus in my pancakes. That was real, but this is realer.” She looked down and rooted around in a pocket of her toolbelt, which gave me a long opportunity to stare down past the d20 and admire the curved slope of her breasts again.

  They were quite a pair, far perkier than they had a right to be, given their size. Just like the rest of her…

  When she finally found what she was looking for she laid a folded scrap of paper on my desk, completely oblivious to my lechery. At least that’s what I thought, until she said, “Here’s something for you to remember me by, once my rack’s out of view. It’s what I dreamed.” With that she hopped off the stepladder and skedaddled.

  I watched her go, partly because she looked as good going as she did coming, but mostly because I wanted to make sure that she left Illgott’s safely.

  Once she had, I opened the parchment up. Patch had written something on it, and I held it up to the neon light and tried to decipher her chicken scratches. ‘Rule of Cool’ it said on one side, and ‘Gadgets, Gizmos, and Gimmicks Galore’ on the other.

  Below that were a bunch of arrows followed by a couple of letters and a single word.

  ▲ ▲ ▼ ▼ ◄ ► ◄ ► B A START

  That last bit felt familiar, but I was too tired and frustrated to place it.

  Who cares? She’s mental, I told myself. Which is probably a good thing. Crazy chicks are supposed to be great in the sack.

  Chapter 3

  Hours and hours after the sun finally set, the last of the Heroes turned in their quests to me and headed for their rented rooms beside the VC barracks. While I’d been working, I’d spotted Patch poke her head in the door a couple of times, but thankfully she’d always wandered off instead of choosing to slow me down again.

  Even if she hadn’t been bound by the ridiculous vow the two of us had made, I knew I could count on Patch to stay up and keep me company when I was forced to work late.

  “Touch and go there, a couple of times,” Illgott said, though I noticed that he was careful to shut the front door behind the last of the Heroes first.

  “You know what they say,” I told him. “You can bring a Hero to Illgott’s, but you can’t make him turn in his quests with anything resembling reasonableness or efficiency.”

  He chuckled. “Do they really say that?”

  “No.” He looked crestfallen, so I added, “But if you hurry up and get this chain off my ankle, I’ll do what I can to get it trending.”

  “You’ll ‘do what you can’, eh?”

  “Sure.”

  “You say that a lot, Raze. Be honest though, when was the last time you ever really did what you could for somebody?”

  I gave him a long look out of the side of my eye. “You are aware that I’m shackled to the furniture most of the time, right?”

  “We’ve talked about this. That’s for your own good. The chain’s been the only thing keeping you out of trouble, though I think the time’s comin’ for that to change.” He trundled over and shocked me by setting his pride and joy down on the desk, a dark skeleton key that unlocked everything in the arcade.

  He’d always told me the thing was archaic, but whatever metal it was made of showed zero signs of wear. The letters ‘ROC’ were 3D printed on the back end of it, with a jackalope’s foot on a leather strap wound through the ‘O’.

  I’d never seen the key out of his possession, let alone had the guts to Identify it, and when I was this close it made the air taste like lightning.

  I pointed at the letters. “What’s that stand for, again?”

  “Raze Occasionally Cares.”

  I scowled at him. “Last time you told me it meant ‘Respect Ogres Completely.”

  “It means both, then.” He poked the key with a blunt finger and it skittered closer to me. “If you want to change your fate so bad, now’s your chance. Have you got the balls to jump, or do you need to get pushed?”

  “You want me to free myself?” I started to reach for it, then stopped. “Wait a sec. This is this a trick, right?”

  “Let’s call it a test.”

  “I don’t like tests, especially ones I haven’t studied for.”

  That got a laugh out of him, even though it wasn’t meant to. “But all life’s a test, Gearblin. No point in pretending it isn’t.”

  “Now you’re reminding me of Patch.”

  He looked down at his own ample chest. The bands of muscle and rolls of fat that cascaded down his ogre body gave him a substantial D cup. “I think I need to start hitting the gym.”

  “Not a bad idea, actually.” I reached down and slapped the metal cuff around my ankle. “No more games. Can you just let me out?”

  I thought he was going to give me an even harder time, but after staring down his crooked nose at me for a couple of seconds he plucked the key off the desk and undid the lock. “Have it your way. Sorry for how late I made you work, by the way. How about I do your chores for you tonight?”

  “I’d rather have had at least one of the breaks you didn’t let me take today, but I suppose a chance to spend my own money on your video games more than makes up for it.”

  He either missed or ignored my sarcasm. “Good to hear.”

  Now that I wasn’t chained to the desk I could climb down from the stool and stretch my legs. Once I’d limbered up, it was time to turn a blind eye to the ogre as he wiped down tables and stacked chairs. Space Paranoids was calling me.

  “Where’s Patch?” he asked.

  “Knowing her, she won’t be far away.”

  While
I waited for her to return, I hopped up on the chair in front of my chosen victim. Fast paced and twitchy, it was the perfect thing to throw myself into, especially after the day I’d had. There was no real plot or storyline, and the only drama involved was the one that resulted from testing my reflexes against increasingly overwhelming odds.

  Pinky Swear Condition Met

  I don’t know how long I’d been playing when my considerable concentration was broken by another chair bumping into me from behind. I was able to catch myself before the impact knocked me off my perch, but only just.

  The tank I was piloting on the screen wasn’t so lucky, lurching to the left and clipping an ion pulse that instantly smashed it down to its composite pixels.

  “I’m back,” Patch said. “Illgott let me in.” She was her usual boisterous, cheery self, only now there was the added bonus of the sweet smell of the cinnamon bun in her hand and tang of the hot metal she’d been working amongst at the Lost and Foundry. “Oh, sorry about your life…”

  “I already gave him a chance to change it,” the ogre called. “But he chickened out. Big surprise.”

  I shot a glare in his direction. “Don’t listen to him.” Her food was making my stomach growl with a vengeance, but I covered the noise by saying, “You owe me a copper, by the way.”

  “Fair enough.”

  My new tank appeared on the screen and I mentally crossed my fingers that we could spend another hour or so in companionable silence before exhaustion drove us both back to ‘Neath. Patch was a flighty creature by nature, and with any luck she’d already forgotten the earlier stuff about Heroes and dreams.

  “Hey, you were right about the Foundry needing me. When I got back all they could talk about was how much they’d missed me, and how terrible my life would be if I ever left again without asking. I had no idea they were so in to me!”

  “Mmm.” Of all of my sounds it was the least-committal, and she heard it from me often. I was in the zone. Not only did I hold the high score on every game worth playing at Illgott’s, I’d already broken my own record on this one half an hour ago.

  “You playin’ the Tron one, huh?” I could feel her watching me maneuver my tank through the digital canyons, and in response I showed off, letting the spray of bullets drift far closer to me than necessary.

  “Nope. I’m owning it.”

  She put her hand on my shoulder to steady herself and leaned in, staring past me at the game. I almost drove straight off a cliff as her right breast warmly conformed to my bicep. “Damn, Raze! Level 68? Great job! You’ve been stuck at 60 for a while.”

  “Thanks.” I took out a trio of stationary turrets and used the gap in the action to catch her eye in the screen’s reflection. “I’ll be a lot happier when I get to 69.”

  Patch rolled her uncovered eye at me. “Well, we both know that’s not gonna happen. Also, you took the bait. All I had to do was pay you the tiniest compliment and you completely forgot that you were supposed to be tuning me out.”

  She was right, of course. I was about to verbally bite back when a couple of Recognizers rocketed out of a box canyon I’d neglected to clear.

  Before I could react, they crushed me between them. The resulting warbled digital explosion made the screen go red and then black.

  “Mea Culpa,” she said sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to get you killed. Honest.”

  “It’s no big deal.” I had one life left, and if I could keep my attention on the game I’d still have a chance at completing the level. “Just tell me that you aren’t still planning on throwing your wages away on that useless claw game and I’ll be happy”

  “Prepare to be disappointed, then!” she said cheerily. “Just like always.”

  “Off you go, then.”

  She chuckled. “Subtle. Never let it be said that I can’t take a hint.” She hopped off the chair, somehow managing to bump into mine again in the process. This time I hadn’t seen it coming, and the impact knocked me to the ground right as I respawned.

  I landed on my feet, but the damage was already done. Your vehicle was always going full speed in Space Paranoids, and I watched as it came to grief against a wall.

  Game over.

  “Oh Raze, I’m so sorry!” Patch said, and even though she was a klutz and a pain and an albatross around my neck, at least her sorrow was genuine.

  If anyone else had done that I’d have taken them on a cross-country guilt trip worthy of legend, but I dropped it. Making her feel even worse about it wasn’t going to change anything. “I’m going to blame it on the day I’ve had and not you. Maybe now I can stop wasting my money on this thing,” I said, gritting my teeth and rubbing my eyes.

  I was proud of myself for staying in control, though it was probably my tiredness and not my demeanor that stopped the outburst. It wasn’t like blowing up at her would’ve taken the shine off her exuberant personality for more than fifteen minutes, anyway.

  “You did it!” she told me, clapping with genuine joy. “You found the bright side!”

  I bit my tongue and watched her head over to the claw game, burning yet another image of her into my brain for later ‘use’.

  She was a stunner, but her disposition was completely out of character for a Gearblin. I’d never met another one of us who bothered to look for the ‘bright side’ of anything, let alone claimed to find it.

  Bright sides, if they existed at all, sounded incredibly overrated to me. Whatever safety a Dreg could find was provided by darkness, not light.

  I wasn’t about to let her play her game in peace though, especially after she’d just ruined mine. “You know you’re wasting your time, right? That game’s rigged. It’ll pick your pocket faster than any of the Rogues that roll through here.”

  “Says you.”

  “I’ve seen the guts of it, remember? It’s as sly as they come.”

  She thunked her money into the coin slot anyway and worked away at the controls. After a little bit of wiggling and second-guessing, she wrangled the claw into position and smacked her palm down on the button.

  The winch set into the top of the game spun, paying out a grasping mechanism attached to a thin metal cord. Everything about the apparatus operated with infinite, nerve-wracking slowness.

  I couldn’t get a good look at what she was targeting from here, but whatever it was stayed behind as the empty claw drifted back up into sight.

  Undeterred, she quickly put in more coins.

  “Really, Patch?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re never going to win…”

  “Says the guy that can’t work out that the reason he’s got every high score in the place is because he’s flat-out desperate to prove to himself that he has more value than people see in him.”

  “Th… That’s not true…”

  “Come on, Raze. There are rules to these games. You can grow and progress and level. You trade copper to the machine for a world where you can convince yourself that you matter, all the while ignoring the one where you could actually make a difference.”

  “Whatever,” I muttered, cut to the quick by her accuracy even as I climbed back up to Space Paranoids again. I’d beaten my old high score, and it was still waiting for me to put in my name. There were only a few seconds left to carry out the task, but I was fast and I’d had a lot of practice using the onscreen keyboard.

  RazeDaRoof

  “Oh! So close!” Patch shouted, and I couldn’t help but glance at her. She was excruciatingly happy, even though it didn’t look to me like she’d gotten any closer to winning a prize than she ever did.

  Something happened, and before I knew it I was staring back at the Space Paranoids title screen again. The game’s Compulsion magic was so old that it didn’t hit most people as hard as it did me, but I’d exposed myself to it for long enough to let its hooks sink deep.

  What can I say? Addiction’s a bitch, yo.

  Contested Poise Roll

  Raze’s Poise Modifier: -2

  Additi
onal Modifiers: Repeated Willing Exposure: -3

  Total Modifier Score: -5

  Roll: 13 - 5 = 8

  Space Paranoids’ Compulsion Spell: +2

  Roll: 10 + 2 = 12

  Result: Raze Failure

  You are under the effects of Space Paranoids’ ‘Dopamine on Demand’ ability. If possible, you’ll pay for another hit at the earliest opportunity. Sucks to be you, since the first one wasn’t even free.

  Crap. I must have a terrible Poise stat…

  If I ever needed proof of how ancient these buggy games were, it was right there. Mother Mayeye and a few of the older Dregs swore that there was a time when we’d gotten to know our rolls, but that all ended when the Smash laid us low.

  Patch was right about a lot of the reasons I played these games, but she’d missed the biggest one; they were so glitchy and confused that they treated me and the protagonists the same. That was a fantasy worth indulging in, even if it did routinely cost me all of my money.

  The Compulsion guided me to obediently reach into my pocket for another copper. When I did, I was astonished to find that there was nothing in there but lint, dejection, and the scrap of paper Patch had given me earlier. Space Paranoids had already sucked me dry, and I was only just finding out about it now.

  Now that it was sure I was broke, the spell let go.

  Great job, Raze. Now you’re poorer than you were a couple of hours ago and your belly’s still empty. Time to throw in the towel, get some sleep, and do the whole meaningless thing again tomorrow.

  Even though I knew that heading home was the best thing for me, I changed my mind once I turned around and caught sight of Patch again. I almost felt bad for where my mind went when she squirmed around like that, the tip of her tongue poking out between her lips and her brow furrowed in concentration.

  Almost.

  Even though she’d hurt my feelings, I had to admit that Patch was pretty good at the claw game. If ability counted for anything, I had no doubt that she’d win. It didn’t though, and I’d never seen her get anything out of that traitorous machine.