Chapter 72:
Sealing the Deal
“Fuck no,” Stephen said. “Why does it have to be him?”
Tiny Giant seemed just as displeased. “You want me to fight a girl with fucking noob equipment? I would slaughter her.”
I think we all were in agreement there. No way I could fight Tiny Giant and win. Unless they gave me like a year to prepare and, even then…
Tiny Giant continued. “You want this to be a bet. A bet should have at least a small chance of success. Her versus me gives no element of that. I will crush her.”
The masked man scratched his chin, considering. After a moment of silence he clapped. “I’ve got it! Level suppressors. Tiny Giant, your two twin lackeys, and some of your weaker men. All with level suppressors, all gunning for Fishbowl.”
I raised an eyebrow, still unsure if that showed up while wearing the mask. “Why isn’t just a one on one fight enough? Even with the level suppressors–”
“The suppressors I used on myself in the battle royale. Their power will be weakened that much. And you can carry on as normal. You already refuse to take off that helmet so, do you chumps think you can handle a girl with 100 health?”
Tiny Giant rumbled, his hands squeezed into fists in the corner of his arms. If someone was in his arms during this cross armed fest their spine would have exploded.
“Why should I be a part of this? The twins alone are more than enough to–”
“Don’t underestimate her. I made that mistake once, not again. It will be like I said, you and a small crew–with level suppressors–against her. If she wins, she gets Sam. If I win, I get her. And, no matter what, her friends go free. Agreed?”
Before any of my pals could speak on my behalf, I agreed to the terms, shaking his hand.
A message popped.
[ Bet established! ]
And then it basically spat out the exact same thing that the masked man said, so I’ll spare you the repeat. In the Interverse, you could make these official bets or binding contracts and, well, you were bound to them, no matter what. If there were ways out of them, I didn’t know how. But, there was a built in precaution. The Interverse would calculate the probability of you being able to accomplish the goal and, if the odds were too low it would refuse to activate. This was to prevent people from asking too much of someone and getting them into the horrible mountains of debt of the Earth days.
But I’m sure it wasn’t without fault.
[ Would you like to see the odds of your victory? ]
I clicked no. No need to freak myself out. I knew it had to be around the 35% range, too much lower and it wouldn’t have been approved. 35%... was that worth risking a life of servitude?
To save Sam, and ensure he didn’t have to live in a fucking dungeon? Of course. I would place that bet on much slimmer odds.
I didn’t break eye contact the whole hand shake. When we finally broke it off I kept on glaring up at him.
“Now, now,” Tiny said. “I did not agree to this. Those terms don’t work for me. What do you have to offer us?”
“If you do this for me, you don’t even have to win, but I’ll give you a powered up mask.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Tiny Giant actually seemed interested in that, he perked right up, dropping his crossed clenched arms. “Red, like yours?”
The man nodded.
Tiny Giant grinned from ear to ear. “You’ve got a deal. But no hand outs, I only get it if I win.”
The masked man walked past me and held his hand out. Tiny Giant shook it. I couldn’t imagine how tight they were both squeezing, trying to one up the other in a lame show of strength. Men and their penis measuring.
The competition raged for a while, you could see in Tiny’s face that he was straining a bit. Eventually they let go and the masked man clapped again, pleased with his handiwork.
“There you have it! I think we all have stuff to gain now… and even more to lose.” He looked at me with a smile. “You all are dismissed.”
The guards surrounding us broke rank and slowly disappeared into the crowd. The User Killers backed out the door, Tiny Giant and the Twins holding up the rear. He looked down at me, I think making eye contact for the first time. Before now I was just an uninteresting powerless ant.
I’d leveled up, to an ant that might have a bit of poison in her.
“I’ll be seeing you, girly. Even with a level suppressor… your odds are not good. You sure you don’t want to fight without that helmet? Give yourself a fighting chance.”
“The helmet stays,” I said.
Tiny Giant laughed. “Suit yourself, enjoy being a slave.” He tossed Sam over his shoulder as he stepped through the doorway.
I rushed forward to catch him but he was again snatched out of the air.
“Sorry. Until the fight, Sam stays with me,” the masked man said.
Sam was still crying. Through his sobs he managed to say, “Thank you, Miss. But please don’t do this.”
I gave him the best most encouraging smile I could muster. “It will be okay, Sam. I promised I’d rescue you, remember? Have a little faith in me. I’ll see you soon.”
The masked man handed him off to a guard who took Sam and carried him away, off to return to his work in the kitchens or the depths of his cell room…
“That reminds me: when does all this go down?” I asked, trying to distract myself from having to watch Sam be taken away from me yet again.
“I’ll be in touch with that. No set date. Feel free to train, but don’t for a second think you have long before you’re called. Good luck, Fishbowl.”
He gave one last evil grin, and then walked off, back toward the still dancing crowd, the party had continued undisturbed, like we were the weird ones for not joining in on the fun times.
It felt like it was gonna be a while before I had fun times again. For the foreseeable future, I was a slave to this in order to not become a permanent slave. That makes a lot of sense, eh?
My friends all got to their feet and crowded around me.
“The hell is going on, Fishbowl?” Dowser asked immediately and Netta nodded in agreement.
“Your lost friend was a salmon fillet?” She asked.
“You can’t seriously go along with this Dar–” Stephen stopped himself in time. Still being careful about exposing our real names here. But, let’s be honest, there wasn’t much hope of the masked lunatic not knowing everything there was to know about us at this point.
“Let’s get out of here first,” I said. “We can talk somewhere else. Somewhere safe.”
“I got a place,” Stephen said, grinning.
I groaned. “We can’t go there, too many people now.”
“You’ve seen that?” He asked and I blushed a little. Shit, now he probably thought that I went to talk to him or something…
I chose to just ignore it and move the conversation forward. “I have. With so many people around, it–”
“We will just go to my own personal layer of the place. It’s even more encrypted than a normal room. No one is getting in, we will be safe there.”
I wanted to argue more but Netta spoke up. “That sounds good to me. Is there food there? I’m starving.”
At just the mention of food Dowser’s stomach growled loudly. He just laughed and patted it.
“There is,” Stephen said and I could tell he was already in his menu. “I’ll invite everyone, see you there.”
We walked, as a group, out the front doors, emerging alive and well, something I couldn’t have imagined from the moment that ghost came out. It had been a crazy several hours.
Netta and Dowser waved as they teleported away first, heading to the writing nook. But I lingered for a bit. This was the first time I’d seen the outside of the place that so much action and drama had taken place.
It was a giant mansion, looking very much like a Bruce Wayne funded place, with darkness everywhere and impressive architecture from a time long forgotten. Forest was all around and, as I looked farther into the distance, I could see a line of giant torches–with blue fire, of course–making a giant ring around an island. The sound of crashing waves made it to my ears, barely noticeable from the hustle and bustle of the party.
And out in the distance, directly ahead of the mansion was the city, the towers and blue lights jutting out in the skyline.
“It’s… kind of beautiful,” I said.
Stephen gave me a sort of weird look.
“Yeah, I know. I still don’t want to be imprisoned here or anything.”
“We won’t let that happen,” Stephen said, devoid of doubt or worry. I’d never heard him sound so serious in all the time I’d known him.
I’m sure, given time, I would suppress my anxieties and fears and be ready to fight for my life but, in that moment, I felt impossibly small and the task before me was an untamed beast five times as big as any eldritch horror.
I quietly took Stephen’s hand.