Double Check’s description had Hiro thinking immediately, even as he moved to block a strike from the statue’s bronze briefcase.
Description: Three signs that you’re battling Tall Poppy Syndrome include people criticizing you for being too ambitious, workplace hostility, and feeling reluctant to create meaningful content.
Don’t let people downplay your success! Or… do?
The origin of the phrase ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’ stems from King Tarquin the Proud of ancient Rome, whose son asked him for advice on conquering a neighboring city. Rather than reply, Tarquin led his son to his garden and cut off the heads of the tallest poppies, which his son interpreted to mean that he should kill all the aristocrats. Turns out, as the French later discovered during their revolution, this works—stick your neck out and face the consequences.
Double Check, the statue who is about to beat you senseless with his briefcase and bury you in paperwork, learned this the hard way. He stuck his neck out. There was a scandal brewing in the accounting department, and he blew the whistle before upper management could figure out a way to cover it up.
Had Double Check kept his fucking mouth shut, the brokerage firm would have figured out a way to create money out of thin air, perhaps even calling on a few friends in the SEC to downplay the discovery and spread the loss out over a couple of years, satisfying shareholders and ensuring the CEO could continue taking his private helicopter from Greenwich, Connecticut, to Manhattan every day and avoid lone wolf gunmen.
But no. Double Check had to say something. He just had to open his big stupid mouth, and as punishment, he was dropped into a vat of boiling bronze along with all the information he leaked.
“I get knocked down, but I get up again, you’re never going to keep me down,” isn’t always the best way to live one’s life, despite what you may have been told. Sometimes, the only path to victory is by keeping one’s mouth shut and keeping one’s head down. Maybe try being a coward for once.
Just ask Double Check.
Wham!
The statue struck his bronze briefcase against the bench, creating a whirlwind of power that swooped up the scattering metal papers. They folded into paper planes and took off toward Hiro like F-15s. Bianca swatted several of them down with her tendrils, Hachi jumped and caught one in his mouth, and Hiro managed to strike a few away, only for one to stab right into his bicep, its pointy end going out the other side.
He fell, and his arm screamed with pain. It pulsed through him as the teddy bear cried in his backpack and Bianca continued to defend against Double Check’s planes.
I can’t use it now! Hiro thought as he scrambled backward, no longer able to hold his odachi. He dropped the enormous sword, and it vanished. The Zone of Influence is preventing me from bouncing away. I need another second.
He used {Thoughts and Prayers}, and nothing happened. Hiro went with his next logical skill.
~Kore Nani, kore nani, kore nani, kore nani, kore nani, neko!~
His phantom demon cats rushed toward Double Check, Hachi joining them. The statue managed to beat a few of them away, but was prevented from wide sweeps with his lethal briefcase due to Hachi, who latched onto his arm.
“Think,” Hiro said as he tried to fight through the pain, which spawned something he wasn’t expecting. It was as if time had come to a grinding halt. Is it my injury? Is it… His eyes went wide as an intense fear rushed over him. Did I just trigger my new Roulette Skill? Shit!
Hiro’s first reaction upon triggering {Terminal Lucidity} was to start labor breathing, just like Samuel had taught him. It worked with the rage side effect of {Lupine Shift}.
Yet he couldn’t contain the thoughts. Hiro couldn’t stop them from zipping through his mind, thought after searing thought, all of which sizzled away as the Sentry’s description came to him, all centering around the very last line: Just ask Double Check.
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The ‘man’ was supposedly murdered because he leaked some information. What did he expose? Hiro glanced ahead to find Double Check starting to overwhelm his cats and dog. What made the statue stand out like a tall poppy?
Things still hadn’t fully returned to what he experienced as its normal state. There was a slowness to everything, Hiro feeling like he had enough time to think further. Even Mishka’s sobbing and Bianca’s shouting seemed off.
Another thought came to Hiro, and he crouched there bleeding, one he intuited to the very core of his being. The Doom System is enticing me to use this power. It gave it to me for a reason, and it’s made the first one easy.
He stood and completely ignored the rush of pain that followed as his arm bled profusely, the metal paper airplane still stuck in his bicep. I have a band-aid for that, he thought, recalling he had gotten band-aids for puncture wounds in First Interim.
Hiro took a step toward Double Check and spoke. “Bianca, deal with Mishka.”
“What?”
“Trust me. Hachi, stop!” he told the dog, which instantly obeyed the command.
The dog dropped from Double Check’s arm and snarled as the last of Hiro’s phantom cats disappeared.
Double Check tensed and brought his briefcase up to the ready.
“Wait,” Hiro said as he felt Bianca get the teddy bear out of his backpack.
“I sure hope you know what you’re doing!” she told him, yet Hiro’s entire focus remained on Double Check.
“What happened?” Hiro asked, blood dripping from his arm. “Why did they kill you?”
Double Check bristled at the question.
“I want to know what you uncovered at your brokerage firm.”
The statue’s briefcase snapped shut. He smoothed his hands over his suit. “The firm assigned fictitious valuations, which artificially inflated the value of assets. They created fake derivatives tied to these dubious assets to show profit on paper, which they sold to investors to generate cash flow. I discovered the internal communication detailing the creation of the fake derivatives, audited the logs, and leaked the information.”
“Why?”
“Because it was my duty.” Double Check took a knee. “And now, the briefcase is yours.”
{A Sentry has fallen.]
New title acquired!
You got cash!
You have new followers!
Backseat Philosopher > Profit Prophet
+.02 REG
+.02 MIND
+01 DEX
Hiro Johnson
Level Nine
Current Title: Profit Prophet
STR: 1.4 [+0.5 Roulette Boost]
STA: 1.8 [+1 Roulette Boost]
DEX: 2.9 [+2 Roulette Boost]
REG: 3.5 [+2.5 Roulette Boost]
MIND: 4.3 [+3.5 Roulette Boost]
Soul Cash: 1567
The briefcase popped open and a golden smartwatch fell out. Hiro approached cautiously and picked the watch up.
Roulette Accessory: {Nuclear Football}
Grade: S
Description: When the villainous Jenny (stylized as Jeh-Nay) from Forrest Gump realized that there was a song written with her phone number, she was livid.
One of the men who frequented her services used Jenny’s number—8-6-7-5-3-0-9—as the pin code for the infamous ‘nuclear football,’ which in simpler times was a suitcase given to the President of the United States to authorize a nuclear attack on the go.
Now, Survivor, that power is yours.
Key in Jenny’s phone number on your watch to order a one-time targeted nuclear strike on a single opponent.
Just be sure they don’t actually like radioactivity…
Hiro stood there processing what he had just been given, his arm still pulsing. The Doom System wanted me to win this tutorial, and it wanted me to get a nuclear weapon. I’m not the main character. He whispered these words to himself as Bianca continued to calm Mishka. “I’m not the main character.”
But what if I am? The implications struck Hiro in a way that led to a new thought. What if others have a similar power? Are people going to be running or one-shotting nukes?
He gingerly turned his backpack around and got out a bandaid. Hiro placed it on the puncture wound and noticed a tingling sensation as it went to work. Soon, the bandaid had melded with his skin, no sign of the injure remaining.
“Yo, Big Bro. Are you going to help me, or what? Ugh, you’re such a dude.”
“Sorry.” Hiro was just turning to Bianca when he spotted something moving toward him. A great wave of electronics and other consumer goods ripped through the street, gobbling up everything it touched.
His phone buzzed, but by this point he was on the move, toward Bianca, Mishka, and Hachi.