Chapter Thirty-Six - Picking Perks

"Are you sure you don't want to take the Cheezeburger perk?" Sharp asked.

"I'm positive," I said.

We were currently both making our way across the city. Fenway was relatively safe now that we both knew it better, and most of the north-western parts of Boston Two were... are not secure, then at least not actively dangerous.

The gangs and police forces in these areas only tended to target minorities and people who looked like they might be up to no good. While Sharp's courier jacket didn't make her the most popular person around, it did give her a valid reason to be crossing the city.

We had packed up our things and hit up a bank first thing in the morning. It was relatively uneventful. We walked in, made for a counter, and then made a deposit in Sharp's freshly opened Solonet-linked bank account.

When the automated teller detected the amount we were depositing, a flesh and blood bank worker came out to greet us and helped Sharp through the deposit within the safer confines of the bank.

We didn't deposit everything. Just seventy-thousand. Even with modern inflation, that was still a hefty amount. More than the average corporate worker made in a year, and far more than they could save up in five. The seventy-K now sat safe and secure in a digital form, and Sharp had the remainder of the additional five thousand stuffed into her pockets.

We'd spent a lot of that already on essentials over the last few days. And for breakfast this morning. But that was in the past, and in our digestive systems, now. Our current goal was getting across the city, and that meant sitting at a bus stop after having spent eighty dollars on a one-day ticket that would bring us to the far end of the city.

From there, we'd be able to get a ride on one of the few passenger train lines out of Boston, this one in Central.

"We don't know if Cheezeburger gives you a summon, or if it allows you to summon infinite cheeseburgers," Sharp said.

"And why would I want either of those?" I asked.

Sharp smiled. "Because can has."

Asking Sharp for her opinion was a mistake. "No," I said.

Sharp giggled, then resettled me on her lap. We were at a bus stop, though the bus was already five minutes behind schedule. "Okay then," she said, pitching her voice low enough not to be heard by the few business men and students loitering nearby. Most of them were listening to something anyway. "Which option did you want?"

"I've narrowed it down to a few. They're not the most potent or powerful, but they are mostly perks that would lend me a great deal of survivability. I prize utility above all else."

"What an old lady way of thinking," she muttered.

I lightly bit her hand and then shifted to the side to avoid a retaliatory swipe. "See if I let you call me that again. In any case, I have five options I'm interested in. Some I might just ear-mark as future choices."

Sharp nodded. "Go on, then?"

I had already listed off the full list of perks, along with their descriptions. Sharp indicated that her own list for Anima had been quite a bit longer. Overwhelmingly so, even. "Cat Nap Resurrection is a great option as a self-healing ability. Paw of Infinite Mischief might be one of the best utility abilities on the list, as is Voidstep Blink. Then there are the two major contenders for choices that I place above all the others."

"What are those?" Sharp asked. "Oh."

The last was because a bus was pulling up. It was a lightly armoured vehicle, with a small turret emplacement on the top. Passengers shuffled out of it, then we took our place in line to get in under the watchful glare of the bus's automated defences. By the few scrapes and dents in the armour, those defences had been tested before.

We showed our ticket at the door, then Sharp quickly found a seat within. She was almost immediately pushed against the window as a... rather corpulent fellow sat next to her.

I climbed up to her shoulder to have some room, then continued where I'd left off. "Nine Lives is an 'I win' button in so many situations. It regenerates as well, which is incredible. Though we'll have to experiment a little to see how it functions in practice. Does it just bring one back from the brink, or would I be returned to full health? Either case is useful, but one is more broken than the other. Also, would I regain a life as in... be reborn, or regenerated in a fixed location, or just where I died? If I died in a fire pit, would I just be returned to an unburned state only to cook again?"

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"That's morbid," Sharp muttered.

"It's important to think about," I said.

If the perk did send me back to a fixed location, then... then I could just strap a grenade to myself and take out targets with impossible ease. That would be ideal.

"What's the other?" Sharp whispered.

"The other is Purr of Tranquility. It's essentially a method to counteract a number of mental effects from spells, and if I'm reading it correctly, from other sources as well. Regeneration might only be mental, but I suspect that there's a weak physical aspect to it. Perhaps even magical?"

Mages tended to use themselves up when casting, becoming tired and lethargic. If I could counteract that as well... it would make for a powerful combination with any future magical abilities.

The bus took off, and I held myself in place as it rode through the city. There were a few screens on the inside linked to exterior cameras, but no windows, obviously. The ride wasn't going to be too long. We could have walked it. But... well, I wanted to make it home earlier rather than later.

"I think hesitating over the choice is foolish," I said. "I'm going to pick Nine Lives. Purr of Tranquility can be my next pick, and past that I'll make another choice when the time comes."

"Good choice," Sharp said as she gave me a scratch. "But wait a bit. My last perk was... very anime."

What did that even mean?

The rest of the bus ride was dedicated to me dressing Sharp down for having terrible tastes in TV shows. I didn't care that the orphanage didn't have any real subscriptions to anything, that just meant that they ought to have pirated better shows.

Eventually we made it to the stop nearest the train station. It was in Central, one district away from South Boston, and on stepping out of the bus, I could make out the mega-building where we'd fought the cult just a couple of days prior. It was smoking.

"Let's see if we can't find a newspaper with information on the cult," I said. It would be good to know, just in case. Some cultists might be out for retribution, and it wouldn't take the world's best to narrow down a search all the way to Sharp and myself. She hadn't worn a mask, and was a somewhat known associate of Jenny and Alyssa.

We walked over to the station, buying a newspaper from a kiosk along the way. Once there, we had to sit and wait, which was as good a time as any to catch up to the news.

It wasn't on the front page, but it wasn't far from it.

"Whoa," Sharp said.

There were images of some people stepping out of the ruined mega building, most covered in blood, but looking damned heroic about it. Men and women, some magic-users, others halfway to cyborgs, all armed well enough to take on an army.

Edgerunners.

The big damned heroes that Sharp foolishly looked up to. The news was light on details, but the overall story was simple enough. The cult had pissed off enough people that the bounty on their heads rose to the level where it caught the attention of some mercenaries.

The next day, the cult was gutted.

It looked like we'd gotten Alyssa out of there just in time. Another day and she might have been caught in the crossfire. Assuming the cult didn't kill her in the meantime.

"We can probably put them aside for now," I said. "If they wanted revenge, we're far down the list. And they'll be low on resources after this."

It made me wonder what the longer term plan even was.

The train arrived, and we boarded. Another hundred dollars gone.

At this rate, I might have to splurge and buy Sharp some driving lessons. I had a little car--just for groceries and the like--but I sure couldn't drive it in my current state.

The train took off, and I found myself nervously pacing on Sharp's lap.

Home.

Soon, I'd be home.

***