After a few catastrophes that I will happily deny when asked about, we found ourselves at levels approaching fifty (Excluding Mariana, that had somehow gotten enough XP multipliers to level several times faster and began investing heavily in her inner idle games, facts that were probably related.) and Fernando met me by a lake, under romantic moonlight, to discuss gay shit. Alliances, for example.

“So, tomorrow I want to take you to our headquarters to formally present you to the Escapists, and make them pass Judgement in person. Don’t worry, your incorporation to theam has been already discussed. We would like to know what are your demands to meet us in what you consider enemy ground.”

I cast Mariana over the benighted lake like a skipping stone, and she happily began returning, with a pant and a wag, with a swim and a swing. “Again! Again! “She clamored as she energetically approached. Then a titanic creature with a wide mouth and sharp teeth emerged from the lake with its jaws open, swallowing Mariana in a swift motion. Fernando was ready to jump into action, but I extended my hand to deter him.

“Walter, what’s your problem? Mariana is in danger!”

“She’s already dead.”

“What do you mean she’s dead? The party interface shows her as alive and nearly full health! You cannot let your—“ with two fingers of mine on those sexy (no homo) lips of him I stopped the load of nonsense from surging out like a virgin spring in the valley.

“I wasn’t talking about Mariana.”

The creature, with its slimy orange and black skin, with its bulging eyes, began groaning and sputtering, kvetching. Blood began flowing out its gills, and, moments later, fireworks. Guts of monster fish rained upon us, all warm and sticky, all smelling foul, some with hairballs incrusted.

“See? Nothing to worry about.” I casually said to my disgusted companion. Fish blood dripped in my mouth when I smiled. It was not as good as the hobo’s.

“Iugh.” He elaborated as his hands wiped the goo from his face. “What sort of monster did you raise, Walter?”

“Walter!” Mariana called, rushing with long thrusts of her legs as she, covered in entrails , blood, and mirth, showcased the cladistic superiority of tetrapoda.

“New Yorkian Golden Retriever, the perfect combination of sweetness and rudeness.”

“I’d say blowing up an animal goes beyond rude, Walter.”

“Well, yes, that city also has its fair share of psychopaths. None as cute as Mariana, though.”

“I am the cutest!” She claimed, still far from the shore, when another predator decided Mariana looked tasty and swallowed her, sealing its fate.

Fernando pulled a couple of umbrellas out of his mind and offered me one. I politely declined, showing an open hand. “This is what I live for. For now, at least.”

“So… your demands?” he said, holding onto the umbrella as if it were a lifeline, waiting for the unavoidable rain of guts.

“Okay, I want to be in possession of Mariana at all times, so long as Mariana doesn’t decide otherwise. You will not tempt her with edible items or toys. This is my first demand. As for my second… ah, there.” I said as the fish exploded, showering me with filth and wriggling parasites.

“Walter! The fishies are meanies!” An even dirtier Mariana communicated as she paddled towards us.

“As for my second demand, I want the room where we reunite to have a fishtank as the center piece. Saltwater. With a rocky bottom. No fishes in it.”

Fernando raised an eyebrow and gestured for me to go on.

“I want a circular arena to be built on its center, a mostly flat surface. You see, I want to have polyplacophorans fighting there.”

“Excuse me?”

“Suck-rocks. Chitons. Mollusks with a multipartite shell, no arms, no torsion, a muscular girdle… you know the deal.”

“Like a clam? Or a mussel?”

I took exception to that. How he dared not know about chitons! I shot a finger in his direction. “You better magic up an encyclopedia before I physic out your kneecaps.”

“Fine, I will see to get you these… things. Chitons, right? Pronounced like titans?”

I swiveled my hand from side to side. Fernando was a clever bandit, trying to weasel his way into figuring out my plans by faking ignorance. “I promise I won’t dress them up like the Teen Titans, if that’s your concern.”

Fernando joined his hands, as if praying with a worried stare. “Walter, if you need psychiatric meds, we can get them for you. You just need to tell us. ”

Mariana was reaching the shore, preparing to shake and bath us with filth once more, but then a long tentacle came out of the lake and coiled around her. “Is this a leash? WALKIES! WALKIES!” She began chanting before being pulled away, back into the water. ”WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII.”

“I think that one is a boss,” Fer observed.

“Nihil novum sub soleasterisk, friend. asteriskPrices of consumer goods exempted.”

A minute or so later, the lake kraken surfaced, just in time to explode.

----------------------------------------

My entourage comprised of sexy half-elves, Florencia and Sabrina followed me as we walked down the long entrance hall of the Escapists’ lair. I dragged Mariana from her tail, her nose and nails raising a trail of sparks from the untarnished white tiles as we strode under the arcs of clear wood. I hummed a march as we got closer to the magnificent ivory doors behind which, I had been informed by Fernando, we would find the most prominent Escapists reunited. Phaela would be there. And also a bunch of individuals I had never met. This , of course, was no problem for me, because my approach to strangers was acting like an ass, and I had years of experience in that department.

“I want to pee on the marble columns,” said my favorite bitch.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Mariana, don’t be a bad girl, Walter needs to cause a good first impression to be accepted as an aid to the heroes of the world.” Florencia said, kneeling in front of my reluctant weapon and smiling.

Sabrina placed a commiserating hand in her sister’s shoulder. “You need to stop being so innocent, sis. Like, do you even realize there’s a male around us that wants to bed you?”

Florencia rushed in front of me like the Flash, grooming her hair-feathers with her hands and trembling like a pug taking their first breath — thing they manage at around seven years of age, if the stars align. “We would have to marry first, you know, but if you are willing, Walter — “

“Stop right there, you have a bug in your face.” I said, and immediately drove a jab to her cheek, powered by Mariana’s stats. This immediately knocked her over, leaving our party tank laying in the floor. I used her like an expensive rug and resumed my walk towards the door.

“Didyoukilldebug?” she slurred before passing out.

I opened my hand and turned just in time to catch one of Cornelio’s shots, aiming for the back of my head. “Behave, sexy one,” I chided, snapping the energy arrow in two with just three fingers to showcase my dog-wielding supremacy.

“You hit my sister!”

“Hesplattbug,” Flor spoke despite her obvious pain, still testing over the white tiles. Thanks Florencia.

“Don’t try, Cornelio, Walter is our… misbehaving royal pet,” Sabrina said, grinning her teeth, her eye twitching.

Fernando broke from the line and went ahead. “Let’s get done with this, please: my cortisol is powerleveling.”

Without further ado I walked up to the doors and pushed them open with a flair, a level of drama worthy of my person. Behind them I found the most variegated characters sitting politely in ornamented, wooden chairs, around a round table in whose center stood an equally round fish tank. And inside, over a flat rock surrounded by some taller ones, I could see their bright colors: chitons.

“Mariana, the march!”

“What the?” broke the silence one of the scapists, a small-framed woman dressed futuristically, with metal plates, wires, and mask with a dark visor. The whole Robocop thing, really.

The music started playing: “Los muchachos peronistas…”

I slammed my bitch against the delicately polished floor. “The other march!”

Mariana changed the cassette, so to speak. This time, the rhythm was the correct one, so I cleared my throat and began taking long steps towards the table, still dragging my dog.

“Quitones en el ring, hoy se empiezan a enfrentar, con sus conchillas de acero y el poder de su rádula sin igual…” I began singing to everybody’s surprise.

Fernando’s hands met his face. “That answers one question. One that I would rather go unanswered.”

A long-haired dude that looked like the bastard son of a rolinga and a hippie ( straight fringe, sliced jeans, a shirt depicting some peak asteraceae and all) jumped out from his chair and joined me. “¡Quitones en el ring, compitiendo con ardor!”

“¡Cada uno con sus branquias buscará victoria y oxígeno!”

Phaela stood from her chair, back as straight as humanly possible, and slid towards the nearest door with her soundless steps. “I’ll return whenever this foolishness ends.”

“The witch is gone.” Calmly stated a shadowy figure with an androgynous voice. Draped in their cowl such that only their eyes were visible, I could not figure out if I needed to hate them for being a woman, or hate them for being a man. “¡Triunfar y ramonear es parte de su vida aquí en el ring!

We gathered round and placed our hands around each other’s shoulders, with me at the center. We kept on singing as we jumped as one, and, slowly but surely, our chants devolved into football field songs. “¡Olé olé olé, el que no salta, es nivel diez!”

I began swinging mariana like a dirty shirt above my head. She was singing too. “Vamos vamos, escapistas, vamos, vamos, a ganar…”

“What’s…happening?” Florencia asked, perplexed at our behavior.

“Argentinians in foreign lands are like neurons: the more you connect, the greatest their potential for idiocy gets,” Fernando merely stated a fact. “For example , now they will start singing about me eating dick.”

And his prediction became true before he even finished the sentence.

After a while, we stopped jumping and stupiding around and I presented myself with the Escapists. The long hair dude was Mauricio, the mystery-gendered individual went by the name of Incognito and didn’t take it kindly when I asked them to fetch me their finest porn, and the short girl with the cyborg look — maybe that way she could reach the upper shelf, with the aid of a pair of bionic legs — called herself Clockmeister. “Cockmaster, got it.” I told her, and she winded up a slap that never got released.

Seeing that we were done with the stupid, the eyepatched-up bitch walked back into the room.

“Now that you have formally… and informally… gotten to meet the most powerful Escapists, Walter, it falls upon me to inform you of the trial you will need to best if you intend to become a hero of Planet.”

I raised Mariana from the tail, like one would a dead opossum. “I am the man with the weapon of fluff destruction.”

Mariana squirmed like an asphyxiating fish, or she would have, had fish been real. They are not. Fish are paraphyletic. A disgrace for taxonomy. Either all vertebrates are fish, or no vertebrates are fish. If fish fear me, then fish exist. If fish exist, women are fish. If fish fear me, women fear me. If women want and fear me at the same time, then they deserve my scorn for not getting it together. Luckily for womankind, I am of the school that denies the existence of fish and Silver Labradors. Thus, my hatred for them is purer, cleaner.

I shook her to stifle the revolution gestating inside my pet. “Again, again!” politely asked for Mariana. I shook her some more. Then, with a twist of my fingers and my wrist, I dropped her, spinning in place over her nose.

A system message appeared in my visual field.

SUPER SECRET TEETOTUM MODE UNLOCKED.

“I swear this thing gives achievements for taking a huge shit,” I mumbled.

“As a matter of fact, it does,” Clockmeister said, and then realized everyone except Mariana was looking at her. “I read about it,” she added before sitting quietly and faking dementia.

Phaela’s nostrils widened as she exhaled slowly. Oh, the sweet smell of exasperation. “Listen, it’s easy: show us you are willing to work for the wellbeing of people that owe you nothing and offer you nothing.”

“Can I kill them during the quest?” I asked earnestly. “It’s hard to control for all possible ways that Mariana can cause collateral damage.

“Y-y-u-u-p-p-p-p-e-e-e-e-r-r-s,” she said, still spinning.

“It’s a fantastic addition to my life, I love her. What were we talking about?”

“Sometimes you have the attention span of a dove, Walter Gallardo.”

“I have a very good attention span. But I suffer from FGED.”

“Nobody ask what that is!” Sabrina warned. Then, she struck a thinking pose for a few instants, and , lastly, snapped her fingers. “Fucks given exhausted disorder?”

“Bingo. Casino, even. I don’t randomly switch my focus: I simply stop caring and externalize it by switching focus. I have a pathological need to show how much I don’t care.”

“I will send a quest your way. Complete it, with no unwarranted casualties. Then we may consider trusting you a little bit more.” Phaela turned, her robe waving behind her like a cape. She probably had been born as a pawn of drama and, unimpeded due to the slovenliness of those around her, she had reached the opposite side of the board, undergoing a promotion. And, when given the choice between being a drama knight, drama bishop, drama rook or drama queen, we all know which option she picked.

But I needed to be sure. “Hey, Phaela, con you jump over the heads of others?”

“Moron. Take the goddamn quest. Feel free of taking one of them as a companion. Not Fernando. You are clearly friends with him already.” She kept advancing towards the arch opposite of the doors through which we had entered the room.

“Twinkognito, come with me.”

They probably pouted under her mask. “Why me?”

I pointed at my illustrious party.

“Because if you happen to be gay or trans Florencia will do the discrimination for me, and that takes a weight off my sexy shoulders.”

I could almost see them getting green in the face, about to vomit. Beautiful.

I slapped Mariana , breaking her spin, and making her land on her side. Letters of fire hovering over her hair announced the result of spinning the top. “+10000 gold to everyone” it read. Other readable option, one she had not landed on, was “Kill everyone in the room but me and Walter.” I reached to spin her again, but both Florencia and Sabrina steadied my hand, grabbing me from the sleeves of my shirt. “No!” They said in unison. Party poopers.

I breathed in and out. “Right, I should not jeopardize the polyplacophorans. They are innocent.”