Chapter 53

Shared Hoarding

My face slammed against the blue street but the mask protected me. The force of the blow knocked the skull off me, it spun out farther ahead. I was in no hurry to pick it up again. Couldn't if I wanted to. My limbs were completely immovable.

I just lay there, breathing heavy, trying to calm myself down. But it felt impossible, I was still running, my legs shifting underneath me, the memo that we had stopped hadn't yet made it down there.

"RaeDarz? You're okay. You made it out," Boots said, trying to help but for some reason he just made me angry.

"I-I'm..." It was hard to talk. I still felt like I couldn't breathe right even though I was gasping in air. "In so much... fucking pain."

"I can't even imagine... but... you did it. You got the mask!"

I still didn't care about that. My focus was on stopping feeling like I was dying. I shifted my body back and managed to get up into a sitting position—my legs were still mildly kicking, making it even harder to stay up. I looked down at my arms, scared of what I would find. They looked... normal? There was a dark, slightly blue tint to them, and a layer of steam rose around the limbs. But otherwise they were my arms. Skin was still there just looking burnt and blue.

The truly weird thing was that my health hadn't dropped at all. That made zero sense to me. Unless the whole thing was an illusion? Possible, I guess... but the pain... that was 100% real.

My breathing slowed. My feet stopped running. I was going to live.

"Do you have anything that can heal burns?" Boots asked.

"I don't think anything I have will do any good. My HP hasn't depleted at all."

"The fuck? You serious? Interesting..."

The amount of new info I'd given him. He really owed me something. All he'd done so far is give me the world address that brought about all this pain. I guess he did also help me make it passed the guard... so I could walk into the skull of the beast and fucking end the night in even more pain than when it started. And that was saying something.

It'd only been hours since Sam was taken, since I lost that battle. I felt like a different person now. Not more powerful, but damaged. Way more damaged. Despite what my health bar showed.

"I'm done for the night." I said. I think I wanted to cry but I didn't have the energy for it.

I couldn't even exert the energy needed to be worried about Sam. All I wanted to do was fall into my bed and sleep all the pain away.

I stood up, a bit wobbly but I managed.

"Don't you fucking dare leave without that mask." Boots said. "You know, not for me or anything. Just all you went through."

He didn't have to tell me. I walked over to it and just stared at it and my arms, back and forth. This was not happening.

Before I resorted to bending down and picking it up with my teeth, I remembered. I had mental Magic on my side.

I reached out with my mind, grabbed it, and pulled it toward me, imagining putting it into my inventory. I'd never tried doing that before but it worked like a charm, vanishing off to the safety of my Hoard of Stuff.

"Whoa! You're a Magic user? I had no idea."

Talking was hard. I had probably one run on sentence left in me.

"Thank you for helping me I am in so much pain and I am about to pass out so before I do I am going to go home I will talk to you whenever I get up goodbye."

Without even waiting for a response, I logged out and killed the voice call.

#

I slept for pretty much two days, waking up mid afternoon on the second one. It wasn't a fearful sleep, more like just a necessary one. So I awoke groggy and feeling like I could sleep for two more. But I managed to stay awake.

I rubbed my eyes, not immediately understanding how big of a deal that was. But my brain caught up and my body did a jolt of realization. My hands and arms were mostly healed. The weird coloring was gone, the pain. A full ache all that was left of that night's crazy adventure.

Well, one more thing...

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I searched my inventory and, yes, I still had the mask. I don't know if it was just my imagination playing tricks on me, but I thought the mask winked at me from within my menu.

I exited out immediately. I went to so much trouble to get the thing and I was too scared to touch it. I would need to get over that. But not now. For this moment I thought I’d earned some time away from Blue Masks.

My inbox was flashing like mad with a whole slew of messages. One guess who from?

I didn’t bother reading any of them, I knew what the gist would be. So instead I typed up a message for him.

[ Hey, sorry for disappearing. I am alive. Are you the king of your “colleagues” now? ]

I hadn’t even closed my eyes again before a voice call request came in. To my surprise, it wasn’t an unknown caller this time but his full User handle.

“RaeDarz!!” Boots screamed. “You freaked the fuck out of me, dude! Two days!?”

“I know, sorry.” I yawned. “It still wasn’t enough.”

“How are your arms?” Huh, he actually cared.

“They ache but otherwise, okay. You didn’t answer my question: you a conspiracy theory god now?”

“Not yet. I haven’t shared anything.”

“Uh, what? Why?” Boots was full of surprises today, already.

“I didn’t know what you wanted your handle to be.”

“My handle? You… want to give me credit?” The fuck was going on?

“Yeah, duh. I can’t take all the credit. You, literally, risked your life for everything you got the other night. I was just the cameraman, basically.”

I didn’t know what to say. After everything that happened with Stephen… I couldn’t imagine that a conspiracy theorist stranger showed me more respect than the guy who was on track to be my best friend. I didn’t know how to respond to that level of kindness.

“Soooo… your handle?” Boots said after I’d been quiet for a probably uncomfortable amount of time.

“Oh, uh, yeah. Um… how about Fishbowl Head?”

“Hm. You sure? That kind of makes me think of the noob helmet.”

Even fucking Boots was against my helmet. Unbelievable.

“No, that’s what I want.”

“Hm, okay. I’ll work on showing all we found then. Have you put on the mask again?”

I laughed. “Not at all. I don’t know if I’ll ever put it on again.”

“What? Dude, you risked your life for that thing.”

“I’ll give it to you. You can save Sam for me.”

He laughed. “I am not the guy for that job. But… I would like to see the mask in person."

"You want to meet up?" Who was this guy? We were shattering all kinds of walls together.

"Uh, I don't know about that. Can you just send it to me?" He asked.

"You really think I can send a gang's initiation item through a fucking message? As paranoid as you are?"

"Yeah, I know..." He sighed. "I just really don't want to meet in person."

"Ouch, hurtful, Boots. You still don't trust me?"

"It's not you, I don't like people." Right. That was just something he told himself. He went out of his way with worry last night and helped me. Sure, he wasn't in any danger himself, but he could have taken my pictures of the red mask, gave me the world address, and left me for dead.

"I don't think that's it. Come on, Boots, what's the real reason? Social anxiety is part of it, yeah?" He was silent. "Oh yeah, big time social anxiety. That's okay, you know I can talk enough for both of us. You just take the mask and examine it. I'll talk about my favorite pizza toppings or some shit."

"It's more than that... my apartment... it's not in a shape befitting a girl—I mean, a guest. Any guest."

I laughed. "No big deal, I'll rest up some more and you get to cleaning."

"You don't understand. This isn't something that can be handled in a few days."

"Oh. Well, wait, why can't you just put it in your inventory?"

"You vastly underestimate how much stuff I have."

I couldn't comprehend that. "You've run out of space in your menu?"

"Pretty much." I could tell he winced when he said it, awaiting my judgment.

Instead, I whistled. "Man dude, that's impressive! I'm not even that bad! And I'm baaaad."

"You're a hoarder too?"

I clicked my tongue. "No, no—we never call ourselves that. Collector. Much more socially acceptable."

He laughed. "Okay, well, I'm a big time collector. No in-person visits."

"Why can't we meet somewhere else?"

"I need a place to work. Just easier here, got everything I need."

I didn't think it would be too difficult to bring stuff with him to another location but I didn't press him. I could see him arguing that a public PRIVATE room wouldn't be safe. So paranoid.

"Alright, well, give me your address." I couldn't wait to hear his arguments.

"Uhhhh..." Yep, here we go. "I guess I can encrypt it. You don't strike me as a hacker type that could get through that."

"Are you calling me dumb? I can't even pretend not to be—how can you encrypt an address?"

"It makes a sort of waiting room, unattached to my direct location but we can meet there. Make the hand off. Sound good?"

I opened up the menu and stared at the mask. "How do I know you won't take it?"

If I hadn't had my best friend betray me so recently I might have been willing to trust him but we were post betrayal. In this new world I couldn't just hand over something I'd risked my life for to a stranger. Who wouldn't even meet me at his own apartment.

"Have you looked at the mask?" He asked. "Take it out for a second."

I was a split second from taking it out of my inventory when he continued, "But don't physically touch it."

"Huh?"

"Close your menu." I did. "Now think about the mask."

I did and—"Whoa!"—it appeared in my hand. I threw it across the room where it bounced off the wall and landed face down on the carpet. I willed it to me and it vanished, reappearing in my outstretched hand.

"I'll take that as it's bound to you?" Boots asked.

"Yeah, I've never seen that before. Heard of it, sure. What are the limitations?"

"None really. If you want it, you can summon it, no matter where you leave it. Which means..."

"I can drop it off for daycare with Bootsy."

"Don't ever say that again," he said with zero shred of humor. What a buzzkill. "I'm sending you the address."

Sure enough, it popped up, the weirdest link I'd ever seen. It was in flux, constantly changing between letters and numbers every few seconds. Guess that was part of the encryption.

There was a part of me that still hesitated. The only thing that really got me to go through with it was the fact that, one, he couldn't take the item he wanted from me. And, two, I'm pretty sure I could kick his pre-teen voice having ass.

I clicked the ever changing link and was teleported into an empty brown room. It looked like it was made out of wood, an empty cabin. A door was in front of me. Not knowing what else to do, I knocked on it.

The doorknob rattled and I stepped back not knowing what to expect. What did a conspiracy theorist hacker hoarder with social anxiety and a pre-teen voice look like in the flesh?

The door opened... and a giant boot filled the doorway.