Chapter 58

Kicky to the Rescue!

I said my goodbyes to Lenny, who didn’t give me much of a response. He was still staring at his pile of cash. That’s okay, I didn’t blame him.

Before teleporting back to Boot’s waiting room, I said, “Thanks for your help Le–uh, kind merchant. I will spread the good word of Lenny’s Snakely Oddities!”

He snapped out of it enough to smile and wave. And then I was back to staring at a locked door.

I knocked on it. “Hey, Boots, you done? I’m back.”

No answer. Not even a quip. Weird.

I knocked again, harder. “Boots!”

The door slid open and I jumped back. Kicky filled the doorway but, something was wrong. Her eyes spun around and her whole body shook.

“Kicky? What’s the matter?”

“The…master,” she said. “Needs… HELP!”

She screamed the last word, a desperate cry for help that shook me to my core. I stepped forward but I bounced back.

[ You do not have permission to enter! ]

“Fuck!” I hammered my fist at the field but it didn’t do a thing. “Boots! Can you hear me? Let me in you idiot! If you’re in there dying and STILL won’t let me in…”

Kicky rocked back and forth so fast I thought she was going to take off. But the truth was worse than that. Her mouth at the bottom of the boot rumbled too.

“Kicky! No! Please, don’t do–”

Her tongue exploded from the boot, wrapped around my arm, and yanked me forward. I face planted against the forcefield until the Interverse decided that Kicky had invite privileges. With a wet slurp, I was pulled the rest of the way into the dark apartment, the base of an Interverse hacker.

#

The force of Kicky’s second yank pulled me so fast that I knocked her over and we both spilled out onto the floor. My shoulder slammed into the wall. The force of the hit jostled a shelf, tipping it over.

“Oh fuck!”

I tried to roll out of the way but just crashed into Kicky again. WIth nowhere else to go, the shelf fell on us both, burying us under tons of gamer nerd shit. As much as I was a connoisseur of those very items, it was not my dream to die under them.

I groaned and just lay there, unsure where even to begin with pushing all the shit off me. Luckily, Mrs. Kicky helped with that. She jumped to her feet (foot? Boot?) and manhandled the shelf violently back up against the wall. Even more shit fell, an avalanche of scantly clad anime figures pounded against my head. But Kicky didn’t even notice. She still had my arm in her tongue and she hopped forward, pulling me along for the ride, deeper into the apartment.

A jumping giant shoe was not a great vehicle, in case you were wondering. My arm was pulled painfully, up and down, and again. My arm was in danger of being yanked out of socket. In the midst of my unpleasant journey, I caught glimpses of the apartment and, ooh boy, it was pretty bad. At first, it was just all anime figures, walls of video games and movies, nothing TOO hoarder like. But as we made it to his inner sanctum that's when it got bad.

His huge living room had been turned into a command center. The full four walls were screens, showing all kinds of weird hacking stuff I didn’t understand. Except for the ceiling screen, which was running an episode of Dragon Ball Z. That screen was the only one mostly visible because all the others were blocked by piles of… just, stuff. There were wires going everywhere; empty cups and cans; trash bags in piles. But not all of them had food in them, most were overflowing with even weirder electronics. There had to be a better way to display all that.

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Kicky stopped in the center of the room and swung me around one more time and then deposited me onto the ground, directly in front of Boots, bent over a table.

I shook the slime off my arm, wanting to stop and get it off completely but Boots’ unmoving frame was creeping me out.

“...Boots? Are you okay, man?” I put my hand on his shoulder and shook him.

He didn’t move. I walked around, not prepared for what I would see: Boots holding the mask on the table, his eyes completely locked on it. I only vaguely took in his appearance, he looked exactly like I imagined. Long dirty blonde hair jutting out in all angles from under a beanie. His face was acne filled, which was weird, it was not super expensive to handle that. And his eyes were bright blue. I didn’t know if that was his real color or just some effect of the mask.

I held my hand up to his mouth. He was breathing. I waved but his eyes stayed staring at the mask.

And as far as I could tell he wasn’t in his menu. He was just locked in a death stare with the skull.

“Boots? Dude, you’re freaking me out.” Still no answer.

I tried to shake him free of his trance again but no dice. He didn’t leave me with a lot of options. I hesitantly reached out and grabbed an edge of the mask. I prepared myself to be assaulted by some weird energy and pulled inside the trance, too, but nothing happened. I tried to pull it out of Boots’ hands. He showed his first signs of movement and clasped it even harder.

I sighed. “Okay, man. I hope this is the right thing to do.”

I walked over to the right side of the desk, giving him some space. And then I held up my hand, willing the mask to return. No resistance at all. It phased out of Boots’ hands and returned to mine instantly.

Boots gasped and jerked back in his chair.

I flicked my hand and mentally righted him back up. But I put a little too much force into it and he almost banged his head on the table.

“Shit, I’m so sorry. Are you okay, dude?” I fell to my knees by his chair, trying to make eye contact with him.

“Y-yeah. I’m fine. How long was I out?” He rubbed his head.

“I don’t know. But I’ve been gone for a few hours. What happened?”

“I tried to examine it. I didn’t even get to do anything. All I did was touch it and…” He groaned, his face white.

“Here, man, you need some water.” I went in my inventory and brought out a cold bottle of water. He shook his head. “Come on, I know it's not gamer fuel shit but you need it.”

I took off the cap and forced it on him. He didn’t retort further and downed the whole thing. I wondered how long it’d been since he had a normal drink of water. I bet his body didn’t even know how to handle it.

He exhaled after taking the last drop and threw the bottle over his shoulder. “Thanks.”

I mentally reached out and caught the bottle and returned it to my inventory, to be disposed of later. “Dude, how hard is it to throw away your shit?”

He groaned. “This is why I didn’t want you in here.”

As he said the sentence it seemed to dawn on him. “Oh fuck!” He slid his chair away from me. “Get the hell out of here! Who let you in!?”

I pointed to the giant boot that was now rubbing up against his body, glad that her master was alive.

“Kicky! No visitors, damn it, why did you do that!?”

This was my moment to even further make up for insulting her earlier. “Hey, she was worried about you. If she didn’t let me in you could have been staring at that thing forever. Is that what you want?”

He patted her on the head and she looked up at me, a grateful little smile on her face. She was actually kind of cute, like an oversized ugly cat. Or something.

It was almost easy to forget my arm was still drenched in her slobber.

Almost.

That seemed to get through to Boots and he gently patted Kicky on the head. Aw, so cute. And not at all one of the weirdest sights I’d ever seen.

“Ah!” He held his head again. “That mask is fucked, bro.”

“What happened? Did you learn anything?”

He shook his head. “Not a damn thing. My very first test resulted in what you saw. And what it made me see was… not fun.”

“What it made you see?” I stared at the mask in my hand.

“It, like, hacked into my brain or some shit. It’s got mad protection on it. I didn’t even touch it directly at first, just used a tool but once it made contact with the mask, it got to me. Next thing I knew I’d thrown aside the tool completely and touched it full on, something I NEVER would have done. Then it just got worse…”

He rooted around under his desk and found a bottle of soda. He chugged some of it and then continued. “It made me see things. Blue fire. So much of it. And it kept, like, talking to me…”

“What did it say?” I asked, scared of the answer.

“‘Not yours,’ over and over. I know that doesn’t sound too bad but, repeated so much and with all the fire… it was horrible. I… can still hear it.” He wouldn’t even make eye contact with the mask anymore, like it was cursed.

And maybe it was. I just stared at the mask, wondering how the heck I was ever gonna feel comfortable wearing it again.