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  Chapter 6

  By the time I got there, the ogre was already inside. That didn’t surprise me, as late as I was. What was different was that all the morning chores were done. Illgott was finishing up in the far corner, putting the last of the chairs in place when I let myself in the back door.

  I couldn’t decide which was more astounding, Patch being embraced as a Hero or Illgott lifting a finger around the arcade twice within twenty-four hours. I watched him for a few seconds, basking in the familiar sounds of Space Paranoids blaring away to itself in the corner.

  The claw game was uncharacteristically silent, and I gave it a long, suspicious glance.

  The ogre was a copper pincher, but one of his few splurges was that he left the machines plugged in overnight. Powering them down would have wiped my high scores, and there were a lot of days when coming in and finding them erased would have been the last straw.

  I guess he knew. Either that, or bending over to pull the plugs out of the wall on a nightly basis was a bridge too far.

  “Got home safe?” he asked, and the way he looked at me told me he knew more about it than he was letting on.

  “Sort of,” I told him, warily. He was my boss, not my friend. We walked the jagged line between irritable cohabitators and uneasy allies, and I never knew which side of it we were on at any given time. “An even longer morning, actually.”

  He nodded to himself knowingly. “You should listen to Patch, you know.”

  “Sometimes, all I hear is Patch. Her voice seems to bounce around in my head. I think it’s the high frequency.”

  “Hmm,” he grunted. “Sounds like you need to learn the difference between ‘listening’ and ‘hearing’.”

  I felt like I was on the wrong end of everybody’s secrets, which was making me more irritable than usual. “Can we just shut up about Patch and Bowie and changing my life, Illgott? Smugness doesn’t suit you.”

  He smiled, his big, yellow canines glistening for a moment. “You heard the song, then.”

  “For all the good it did me, yes.”

  “Good.”

  “By the way,” he added, “there was a Paladin in here looking for you a few minutes ago. Tall and blond, buffing the insignia of the Vigilance Committee on his chest and demanding rat tails. You know anything about that?”

  “Warwick.”

  “Caught you last night, did he?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  Illgott studied me, and then sighed. “If you see him again, stay clear. He wasn’t happy when I told him you don’t work here anymore.”

  “Why’d you do that?” The ogre was pleased with himself, even though what he’d done was as good as putting my name on a VC death warrant.

  “Because things are in motion. Here, I’ll prove it.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “It’s easy, actually. Ready?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re fired, Raze. Get lost. And take this.”

  He tossed me something small, and even before I caught it I knew by the jackalope’s foot that it was the ‘R O C’ skeleton key. I’d seen him use it thousands of times, though often it’d involved several tries and an awful lot of cussing.

  Ancient Ill-gotten Latchkey

  {The Previous Owner has relinquished claim to this item. It is now Bonded to you.}

  Weight: .75 ounces

  Durability: 2/10

  Description: Made from Mechronite using a technique currently lost to the ages, this object has a slightly better-than-average chance of not fulfilling its one and only purpose. Repeated attempts can be made, though there is a cumulative 5% chance that the object will lose a point of durability upon further failure.

  Minimum Level Required to Equip: 0

  Base Resale Value: 11 copper

  “I can’t accept this, Illgott.”

  “You just did. Don’t worry about me. I’ll still be able to get in here. Not sure if you’ve noticed, but the locks in this place aren’t very good.”

  “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  “You’ll know it when you see it. Or you won’t, and you’ll screw it up.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence. What are you going to do when the Heroes show up and want to turn their quests in? They’ll go on a rampage.”

  Illgott rubbed his hands together. “Eventually. They’ll have to jump through Sanguine’s hoops first and get permission to burn the place down. That’ll take weeks, and by then it won’t be an issue. For now, they’ll bang on the door and complain to the Vigilance Committee, which is why you need to head off. Tell me, do you youngers still go to Konami Rock?”

  “That place has been off limits since Mother was a girl.”

  He chuckled. “Longer, but that doesn’t answer my question.”

  “I know the place.”

  “If you want to be part of something bigger than yourself, go there now. I’ll have Zazzer get a message to Patch so that she can meet you at the Rock. The Gnoll’s fast and reliable, if the money’s good.”

  I felt a lump in my throat. “Wait a minute. Is that it, then? Is this goodbye?”

  “Let’s call it good riddance. Look after yourself, Raze.”

  I didn’t know what to say, and when a few tall shadows peered into the window of the front door I went out the back way. As I snuck through the streets and got clear of Hallow before Warwick could nab me, I hung the Ancient Ill-gotten Latchkey around my neck and wondered what it would open.

  Konami Rock was all the way on the other side of the mountain. There was a time when me and the other Dregs used to go there to stash the stuff we stole, though it’d always been off limits. Back then I’d flaunted the threat of the execution that getting caught out there would bring, but now that there were so many fun and exciting ways to die, it might be nice to revisit a familiar one.

  By the time I got there, Patch was already sitting on Konami Rock, humming to herself and rebraiding her hair. Normally I would’ve snuck up and scared the crap out of her, but I didn’t even try.

  Adrius had been the last straw. Patch was exactly what she was claiming to be.

  She spotted me as soon as I broke cover and took a bundle of rat tails out of her pocket. “These are for you, questgiver. A couple of the Heroes left their loot in a corner. They were complaining about getting blood on themselves, so I swiped them when they weren’t looking. Now, where’s my vendor trash?”

  I sighed. “I can’t turn them in for you away from my desk.”

  She giggled. “So I am a Hero, then?”

  “Fine,” I told her, “I admit it. You were right and I was wrong.”

  “And?”

  “And somehow, you really are Hero. I just want to know one thing, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How do I get to be one too?”

  Chapter 7

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Patch squealed. “Do you remember the arrows I put at the bottom of the paper I gave you yesterday?”

  “About that…”

  “You lost it already, huh?”

  “I did,” I said, jumping on the chance to respond relatively truthfully and not have to tell her who’d taken it. “Sorry.”

  “No biggie. The important part was at the bottom. Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start.”

  When it’d been written down it had been harder to recognize, but hearing her say it out loud brought it to life. “That’s the Konami code…” I looked at the worn-down, rippled waves on the top of the Rock, reminiscent of its namesake’s logo. “Is it really that easy to become a Hero?”

  “It was for me!”

  I’d been on the cusp of wholeheartedly believing her, but this was taking it too far. Life wasn’t a game, and cheat codes weren’t the answer. “So you’ve strained at the end of that mental leash for so long that it’s finally snapped, is that it? What the hell are you talking about? Konami’s from the other side of the Rift. Why would it hold any power here?”r />
  “Why wouldn’t it?” she demanded.

  “For a start maybe because they haven’t made a decent game since Metal Gear Solid!”

  “What?” Patch squeaked, jumping down off the rock and stomping toward me. I backpedaled fast, since it looked like she was ready to take my head off. I already had two black eyes, and I didn’t need any more knuckle sandwiches. “What about DDRMAX Dance Revolution 6th Mix, you clueless heathen?”

  “Derogatory!” I shouted, bending down to scoop up a handful of gravel and toss it in her face. I missed, of course. “If you can utter that ridiculous name without realizing that they’ve long since sold that franchise’s soul to the vultures, then there’s no hope for you.”

  She was so mad now that she forgot to chase me. “Over 65 songs,” she seethed, her voice getting louder and louder with every word she hurled at me. “A hundred-plus minutes of music including licensed tracks, fresh dance hits, and songs exclusive to the North American release! On top of that, you feckless know-nothing, DDRMAX was the first time we got in-game videos and new gameplay options, not to a mention a legitimately blistering 60 frames-per-second frame rate and the largest song library in franchise history.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I surrender.”

  “Not yet you don’t. It also introduced the freeze arrow. Now, you might be a scrub, but you’d be a Gods bedamned idiot if you didn’t acknowledge that this feature alone changed everything, forcing you to modify your dance steps, increasing complexity whilst adding a twist to what some detractors, who are dead wrong, I might add, had claimed was becoming drab and routine in previous versions. I’m not even mentioning the return of Edit mode and Work Out mode, which helped to give me the ass your eyes are usually glued to!”

  She was panting with rage, and I held up my hands. “You win.”

  “Really?” Just like that, she was back to normal. “You mean it?”

  “Sure,” I said. “You obviously care a lot more about it than I do.”

  That was good enough for her, and it was only then that I realized just how much noise we’d made. Gearblin had been rightfully accused of getting shrill when we were riled, and I’d clearly touched a nerve by slighting her beloved rhythm game.

  “Anyone within a couple of miles will have heard us,” I grumbled.

  “Good, because I’m sick of having this conversation with people!”

  She may be a Hero, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still Patch. If this girl worried about anything, it was always the wrong thing. “Can we just do the code thing now, please?” I asked.

  “Yep. Follow me.” She turned around and headed up the hill. It was only after I caught up with her that I realized she’d taken one of the narrowed, overgrown paths up the backside of the mountain. Thick copses of trees crowded uncomfortably close. After a couple of minutes we were forced to walk single file, and I let her take the lead for the first time.

  Normally she and I were pretty well-matched when it came to Friskiness, but as she bounded over brackish swamp water and balanced on narrow beams cunningly hidden so as to look haphazard and even more precarious than they were I was having trouble keeping up with her. If there’d been a Guinness rep around I think I’d easily have made a Raze World Record, since I saved my breath for breathing instead of filling the next hour with complaints, or questionable quips.

  “Almost there,” she said, once we’d made our way through a sea of ferns that towered over both of us. I was jealous of the ease with which she’d been slipping along, a stark contrast to the sweaty slog I’d endured.

  Together we stepped out into a small clearing. Ahead of us was a circle of fallen monoliths, all of them dripping with sheets of moss and crawling with vines.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “We do the code. Watch.” The nearest slab of rock had slipped sideways a long time ago, and the gap between it and the ground was the most inviting way past it. Patch chose instead to scramble over the top of it.

  I followed in her wake, which put us in the middle of the ring of stone. As soon as my feet hit the ground I felt the air crackle with static electricity. “Did this happen to you?” I asked, pointing at my hair. It was sticking straight up, and I reached out to zap her.

  She giggled and dodged. “Nope. I told you my braids were useful!”

  The churn of power didn’t fade as we climbed over the next structure, and when we ducked through a short, brick-lined tunnel it grew even stronger. She sashayed through a crevice in the rocks beneath the tangled roots of a tree older than time itself.

  I followed, hot on her heels.

  There wasn’t any path or trail, but Patch didn’t falter. She took a left at the first opportunity, even though that meant hopping blindly through a small waterfall and landing on a hidden ledge. As soon as we picked our way up to flat land again we almost ran into a massive meteorite.

  Undeterred, she headed to the right of it, up the hill. Along the way she went left when we came to a transplanted sign originally intended to guide people to the Albuquerque offramp, at which point we found a pond and circled past it to the right.

  We were well and truly in territory I’d never charted, though now I could see that we were standing at the mountain’s summit. It didn’t take long, though Patch was picking up so much speed by the end of it that we were standing at the top of the mountain before I realized it.

  From here I could see everything, from ‘Neath’s warren entrances to the wide basin that’d soon hold the rowdy Heroes of the Reenactment. Hallow lay beyond the intervening forest spread out below us, looking tinier than ever.

  “Nice view,” she said.

  I shrugged. Every part of Hallow’s pompous architecture and holier-than thou, self-important grid layout got under my skin. Seeing like this, all at once, was too much for me to handle. “Most of what I’m looking at needs to burn, actually.”

  She giggled. “All in good time.”

  That sounded promising, at least. “So,” I said, turning to face her once again. “I get the up and down, left and right part, but how do we do ‘B’ and ‘A’?”

  Patch made a pained face. “That took me a long, long time to figure out. I tried everything I could think of: getting stung by bees and then sniffing arsenic, eating avocado toast and drinking booze right after. None of it worked.”

  “So what did?”

  When she blushed, I knew this was going to be good. Sure enough, she pointed at her shirt and said, “‘B’” then swiveled a little so that I could get a profile view of her posterior, which looked great in her tight shorts, and said, “‘A’.”

  I shrugged. “If you say so…” I was never going to get a better offer than that, though when I reached for her breasts she danced backward and slapped my hand away.

  “Not on me, you dolt! Like this….” She demonstrated by tapping the side of her breast and then slapping her own ass. “Now you do you.”

  “Oh. Well, that wasn’t clear.” I patted my chest, and then, feeling like a fool, gave myself a reasonably hard spank. “Now what?”

  “Now you just have to say the word ‘start’.”

  I’d come this far… If she had a hidden camera secreted on her and was recording this, I’d already given her too much ammunition to ever live down. “‘Start’. And just so you know, you better not be pulling my le-”

  New Role, Here!

  WELCOME TO THE WORLD, HERO…

  Level 1 Leadfoot

  Vital Statistics

  Cunning: 9/10

  Ability Check Modifier: +3

  Power: 5/10

  Ability Check Modifier: 0

  Friskiness: 8/10

  Ability Check Modifier: +2

  Tenacity: 3/10

  Ability Check Modifier: -1

  Allure: 7/10

  Ability Check Modifier: +1

  Poise: 2/10

  Ability Check Modifier: -2

  Hit Point Total: (Tenacity X 3) + 10 per level = 19

  Current Hit Points: 18 />
  Acquired Knacks

  First Person: If fully healed, 33% chance that damage that would instantly kill you is negated. Only useable once per day.

  Identify: 100% chance to determine the benefits of an item or individual’s core statistics, as well as your own abilities. If performed on behalf of another, the information given cannot be altered and must be truthful.

  Archetype-Specific Features

  Cog-nition: 25% chance to receive an Epiphany when firing up your personal vehicle. Epiphanies can encompass knowledge on any subject.

  Driven to Distraction: 20% chance to give in to distraction and pursue side quests when operating a vehicle. 10% bonus to speed when not distracted, 20% bonus to speed when distracted.

  Hack: 20% chance to bypass technological system errors, passwords and electrical failures. +1 to damage when using a slashing weapon.

  It’s Bullet Time! – For every 100 rounds traversing the space between the Leadfoot and your target, receive a cumulative 1% chance to hit and dodge.

  Off and On Again: Eventually, this almost always works. 33% chance a forced reboot wipes technological lockouts and cleanses conditions that result in Damage Over Time. Effectiveness increases by 10% with each attempt. Useable once every 60 seconds.

  Trouble Shooting: 20% chance to identify the source of technological error. 20% increased chance to spot stealthed enemies and ambushes, and 20% additional damage to enemies revealed using this skill.

  The Zone: 10% chance to compete a task to as close to perfection as possible despite the relative usefulness of said task.

  Bugs

  Addictive Personality

  Adherence to Sunk Cost Fallacy

  Snuff (the Tobacco, not the Films…)

  Video Games (and we all know what THAT means…)