Chapter 20

Monster Food

“It’ll be an easy assignment. You’ll see. Well, with that, our first session is complete!”

It was not easy. After we said our goodbyes to the man and were at our spot in Stephen’s writer nook, our socially anxious asses could not deal with our “homework.”

We had found the list of names, minus us and the evil girl–which didn’t give us a way to contact her even if we wanted to–we had ninety-seven names. There was a lot of possibility of rejection.

“Okay, here, give this one a try,” Stephen said after a few minutes of silence as he typed away on another draft of our message.

I brought it up and started to read it out loud. “‘Hey there fellow monster food.’ Okay, hell yes, that’s a heck of a way to start.” Excited that we could finally almost be done with this, I read faster. “‘Please team up with us to not die as fast. Thanks, Stephen and Darcy.’”

I let the words hang there. I exited out of the text to just stare at Stephen. “THAT is what you spent the past fifteen minutes writing??”

“No, the monster food part took the first fourteen to come up with. The rest came in that last minute.”

I groaned. “I haven’t read any of your stories yet and, I have to say, this is making me not too hopeful.”

Stephen stiffened. “Hey, come on, this is different. You don’t judge a novelist on his writing homework assignment.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Writers thrive on passion. I have no passion for a freaking assignment.”

“Well we really need to find some or we are going to be here all fucking night.”

Stephen threw the text back into my vision. “You try it then.”

I sighed. I guess it was only fair that I give it a crack. I was keeping that first line, that was pretty incredible. But what next…

[ Hey there fellow monster food! Divided we fall, together we can tumble the beast. Come to [name of Stephens writer bar]. Ask for RaeDarz. Let’s do this, together! ]

I read over my work that I spent all of five minutes on. Satisfied, I showed it to Stephen.

“Yeah, this will do.”

“I wrote it in five minutes.”

“Yes, but that first line set the stage. Without it you would have been lost.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m going to send it now.”

“Do it!”

My vision hovered over the send button. If I continued to think about it and obsess over it, the message was never gonna get sent. So I swallowed, closed my eyes, and mentally pushed the button.

[ Message sent! ]

It didn’t take long for replies to start coming in, thankfully saving me from nervous stomach knots.

[ No thanks. ] Was the first reply, disappointing, but at least not rude. That didn’t last long.

[ Fuck off. ]

[ I’m going to be the one to kill the monster, one on one. They are gonna skip the tournament completely and just give me the grand prize. Bitch. ]

[ I would rather die than team up with a bunch of nobody noobs. ]

[ I don’t even care about this damn tournament bullshit. I don’t want to fight and die every day! ]

On and on it went. Those were the general range of responses, varying in anger and language. But more than half of the people didn’t respond at all.

I slumped back into the booth chair. “Well that bombed.”

“It was worth a shot. Maybe they will come around.”

“Maybe. We have seven days to up our abilities and convince the other Users to fight with us. That doesn’t sound impossible at all.” I slumped even farther into the chair.

“Let’s focus on what we can control. Rest up and be ready for our training session at noon. It hasn’t even really begun properly yet. I’m sure they will come around once we all get desprete.”

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That was about all we could do. I went through my inventory and equipped my fishbowl helmet.

Stephen laughed. “What are you doing?”

“Going home. I want to see what my pet goldfish says when he sees me in this.”

“You can speak fish?” Stephen could hardly hold back his laughter.

“No, but Sam can. At least a little bit.”

“Of course the talking salmon fillet can do that. You lead an interesting life, Darcy.”

“Only been like this since I met you. You should share in the weirdness, come over. Sam is actually a hella good cook. He took my kitchen stocked to the brim with off brand foods and made that most fucking incredible pizza I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.”

“Seriously?" Stephen said. "That’s so… weird.”

“I know, isn’t it awesome? Come on.” I sent him an invite to my apartment.

“I would love to… but I think I would have an allergic reaction.”

“What, how?”

“His hands will be handling all the food that I will put directly into my mouth. Not a recipe for a fun timne for me.”

“That wouldn’t happen. Would it?”

“I’m pretty damn allergic.”

I rubbed my chin, thinking of options. “What if he wore gloves or something? Although I don’t have anything that would fit on his tiny hands…”

He laughed.”Yeah, that might work. Another time. Whenever one of us remembers to pick up some baby gloves.”

“I’ll remember! You’re going to come and get some of his cooking dude, and soon.”

“I won’t hold my breath.” He grinned at me. “Night, Darcy.”

“IM SERIOUS YOU–” He switched locations, laughing the whole time.

I brought up a new note.

[ REMEMBER TO GET SAM SOME BABY GLOVES

MAKE STEPHEN COME OVER ]

The all caps probably was unnecesary but I always felt the more aggressive I made my notes the more serious I would take them.

I’ll let you wonder how well I remember things I write down. But I’m sure you can guess.

#

I made sure my helmet was on properly and then entered my apartment. I spawned at the front door.

“Hey, Sam, are you here?”

“Yes, Miss!” I saw him hop off the couch, where he appeared to be watching a cooking show. He entered the hallway and stopped dead in his tracks. “Miss–what is–?”

I held up my finger in a shushing gesture. “I want to surprise Percy. Can you translate his reactions?”

“He will be very surprised indeed. But, yes Miss, I can do that.” He left the hallway and went to stand by the fish tank.

I followed him and put my face up to the glass, like I did nearly every day. “Hey, Percy. I’m home!”

There was movement from within the sunken ship. The fish emerged with the excitement and speed of a puppy, who had just heard their master at the door. He swam right up to the tank, wiggling like mad. He had done this so often that up until this point he’d been operating on reflex.

But the reflex gave way to perplextion. He swam around, looking at my fishbowl from all directions. Bubbles escaped his little mouth.

“He says, ‘You’re a fish now, too?’” He swam around in happy circles and the swam back and forth between the front of the tank and his shipwreck. “‘Come on in, Darcy! I’ll show you my house,’ he says.”

“Awww, Percy. I thought you would just get startled or something, not all this cuteness.” I unequipped my helmet and put my normal face up to the tank and smiled at him. “Sorry little guy, I’m still human. And still too big.”

He was still excitable, but his pep diminished a noticeable amount. Sam spoke again. “‘That’s okay, maybe another time.’”

I laughed and put my hand on the tank. He rubbed against it through the glass.

“Miss,” Sam said as he ran into the kitchen and hopped up onto the counter. “What can I fix you? I would have had food ready but I was not informed when you would be returning.”

“No, no, no.” I went over and plopped him gently back on the ground. “You cooked for me once already, no more today. Besides, the best is still ahead.”

I threw open the fridge, rummaging around until I found a big piece of tupperware. I held it above my head like a Zelda item. “Cold pizza!!”

Sam shook his head, his body rocking so much he almost fell over. “No! You can’t eat pizza COLD! Let me heat it up for you.”

He leapt up onto the table and made a grab for the tubberware.

I shook my finger at him. “This will be the true test of how great your cooking is. If this pizza isn’t good cold then it fails as pizza.”

Sam complained more and kept trying to grab the container from me but I fended him off at every turn as I took out a slice and took a bite.

He stared at me in horror. I silently chewed. Taking in all the flavors. I swallowed and grinned. “Yep, that was offically the best pizza I’ve ever had in my entire life.” I chowed down on the slice.

“You are crazy, Miss! Crazy!” Sam squealed.

I stopped eating on the halfway point of the slice. “Wait. Are you telling me you’ve never had cold pizza?”

“Never. Food should always, ALWAYS be hot,”

“Spoken like someone who has never tried cold pizza. Come on.” I waggled the slice in his face.

He crossed his arms and shook his head.

I shrugged and downed the rest of the slice. “Suit yourself. One day though I’m gonna get you to try it.”

Sam tutted. “No, no, no.”

“Even if I have to hold you down, it’s happening dude. I’ll wear you down.” I took a plate out of the cabnet and piled it full of pizza. I took another bite and made a loud satisfied moan.

“You are very strange, Miss.”

I walked over to the couch and plopped down with my meal. “We’ll see, Sam. We’ll see.”

He wasn’t convinced but that’s okay. One day. We sat on the couch, still tuned to the cooking show, and Sam watched me eat out of the corner of his eye, disdain and disgust clear on his face.

The rest of the evening was uneventful. I ate my pizza and just chilled, I actually got super into the cooking show Sam was watching, one of those competitions that were made way more extravagant in the Interverse. Where once contestants merely cooked, nowadays it had a hunting element attached where they actually had to go to great lengths to find, catch, and sometimes kill their targets. And then cook them. Kind of barbaric? Yeah, but it made great television.

I was completely immersed in it, could only think about pizza and the show, when an unsuspecting contestent unleashed something a tad familiar.

[ Eldritch horror awakened! ]

Fuck. I forgot that the tournament pass shit had appeared in so many weird corners of the Interverse. And just like that my immersion was broken and I was back to worrying about tomorrow.

But Sam was even more into it. He’d completely forgotten about the cold pizza and was on the edge of his seat, watching as one by one the contestants failed to satisfy their new monster overlord, being eaten one by one.

That would be me.

I shook my head. I couldn’t think like that. We had a chance. Not tomorrow, tomorrow I was definitely going to get stomped or ripped apart. But before the event was over with. We had a shot.

I kept reminding myself of that as the contestants were torn apart.