Mind Shard was simple to use once she got the hang of it, and in the astral plane, she had plenty of time to practice. What felt like hours in her ghost body was only a few minutes in real life. Only a fraction of the last day of class had elapsed in the real world by the time she was able to reliably blink from her square to the dummy.
In true master of Luck form, she manifested a different weapon each time she jumped – daggers, swords, battle axes, polearms, even a machine gun. By contrast, each of the PIs could only make daggers, except Joaquin, who summoned an Arthurian-style blade.
The next part of the class was learning to tear herself from her body, which required more instances of the class yanking her ethereal self out before she could do it on her own. Finally, it was all put together when they stood on squares marked on the floor in the real world, and blinked into the astral one for an attack on the non-corporeal dummy and went back into their body all before they could even exhale.
Once she could reliably do it in the astral world, it was time to bring out real life dummies. To an outside observer, it just looked like damage appeared on the dummy, but from Maxi's perspective, her ghost form charged out from her body to gut the opponent. When she asked why she couldn’t just stay in the astral world all the time to go spying or repeatedly attack the opponent, Swami said the split second she was out of her body to make a Mind Shard attack cost her 10 psy points.
The only reason they weren’t already drained of psy points was that the dojo where the training took place was a legendary artifact constantly refilling their psy points. If she stayed on the psychic track, she’d learn abilities to let her stay out of her body for longer, which was what the healing students were learning, as their ability involved putting their hand into a person’s body like it was a bowl of noodles at a Halloween fair. Healing involved getting inside a person and squeezing a vein shut, pulling the skin together, or reshaping the bone.
By the conclusion of the final class, she had learned how to whack someone with her spirit just like the Mind Shard description suggested it would do. She was ready for a real quest. Not some “fix a person’s projector” bullshit of the Generalist or “get coffee for a big wig’s meeting” fetch quest. She was ready for the Printer of Never Jamming II if she ever met the trigger conditions.
During the training, she raised about three levels, and dumped all the points into Luck, based on what she thought Swami was telling her. It sounded like no matter how hard she trained or how well she fought, there would always be someone above her. But if she got lucky… She decided she'd rather take a long shot for it all than languish away in the office of hell.
She got back to her Office after the last day of training to find a pleasant notification that she needed to choose 2 allies for the Printer of Never Jamming Part II. She asked Farhad and Yancy to go on the quest with her this time since they seemed like her biggest supporters. While she wasn’t sure how Yancy would do in a fight, he hadn’t yet shared his level and class with her. Farhad did, and he was a level 59 Hacker, which explained why he could hold his own in a fight.
While Hackers mainly excelled in cyberwarfare, they still had tricks for combat. They could disable electronics, jam communications, and do all sorts of effects. However, most of their abilities required gadgets that were only usable by the Hacker class. Which for Maxi wouldn’t happen till level one hundred, which made most of those class abilities useless.
Knowing they were probably going to fight Grutomatons, Farhad brought a few tricks that he could use against them. Unfortunately, one of the downsides of the Hacker class was that even with a maxed utility belt, he had more stuff than he could carry, and his desired loadout would be different depending on what kind of monsters he would encounter.
After Farhad was ready, Yancy stepped out of the bathroom in a full suit of black leather armor that covered everything but a slit for his eyes. He had two swords on his back, shurikens on a sash across his chest, and a pair of special black boots.
“Yancy,” Maxi exclaimed, “I didn’t know you were a ninja!”
“I mainly wear my yellow shirt to raids and other missions because the repair costs are cheaper,” Yancy said. “But since this is an epic story quest, I imagine using my best gear would be appropriate.”
“So, are you a ninja? Your class, I mean,” Maxi said.
“I didn’t share it with you? Sorry, must have forgotten,” Yancy said. “Accountant. We do have some ninja-like class abilities. Helps with the tax evasion quests.”
“Right,” Maxi said, unsure of what that even meant, but sneaking would have certainly been helpful on the last one, so she decided to roll with it. She selected her allies, and a message appeared on her screen. NEW QUEST: Printer of Never Jamming Part II. Time Limit: 5 hours. Reward: Credits and items based on level. Failure: Termination of employment.
Moments later a panicked email came from IT telling her to get her team to the basement ASAP. She clicked off the email and the three of them went to the elevator.
The others wished them luck, and even Daisuke said, “Don’t die.” In the last week, he had softened a little to her when he saw how hard she worked, though she wouldn’t yet classify him as a friend, or even a cordial acquaintance. However, she had moved him up from the outwardly hostile category.
She called “IT”, and the elevator whooshed them to wherever they were going next. However, when the door dinged somewhere in the basement of the building, it wasn’t a post-apocalyptic office, but rather a call center floor with hundreds of people chattering on headsets. A man in a yellow button-up shirt with a red tie greeted them. He had auburn hair, square glasses, and a scowl on his face. “As you can see, we have our hands full here,” he said. “Follow me.”
He darted off at a pace that forced Maxi to jog just to keep up. The basement wasn’t what she expected. She thought IT would be more like a workshop with computer parts strewn about. Instead, it was a sea of endless cubicles where people were chatting with customers about their computer problems. She caught snippets of conversations about everything from password resets to walking someone through how to reformat their drive.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
After they passed through the call center floor, they went down a hallway with exposed pipes on the ceiling and doors at regular intervals. Some of the rooms with the doors open had people working on computers and other pieces of hardware. There was a server room with two guards posted outside, and other places that seemed more like scientific laboratories than IT.
They finally got to a door marked MONSTER HOLDING with all sorts of warning and danger signs. There was even one of the little bathroom stick figure men getting his leg chewed by what looked like a killer frog. Their guide opened the door and ushered them inside.
The room was spacious, and Maxi couldn’t quite see to the end. They were on a catwalk above a floor maybe thirty feet below that held monster cages. Inside there were all sorts of critters, from snarling hellhounds to a crane with three beaks. There was an inordinate number of copy machines like the one she had fought in the first part of the quest.
Of all the creatures tucked away in the IT basement, the grutomatons were the most violent. They were smashing against the cages and growling, some even to the point of chipping away some of their exterior. There were so many of them that they had to be stuffed several to a cage, where they looked as if they had mauled each other before settling on a pack leader.
In addition to the large copy machines, there were smaller printers, too. They seemed just as vicious, despite their size. The man looked down and said, “It’s happening to printers everywhere. We may have an infestation on our hands,” the man said, but before Maxi could ask any questions, the guy ushered them forward.
They climbed down the stairs and passed some of the printers, which bashed up against the cages when they came near. Eventually, they got to another doorway, where a man had a beast copy machine dissected on a table. It was a mix of machine and organic parts splattered with blood. The guy wore a lab coat and had on some sort of multi-lensed goggles with a way to swap out the magnification with a switch on the side.
He wore thick rubber gloves and was covered with blood spatter. He proffered his hand for a shake and Maxi gave him a “no way in hell am I touching that” smile. He awkwardly pulled his hand away and said, “As far as I can tell, the machines get jammed, then they go berserk.”
“They are getting murderous because of a paper jam?” Maxi said, incredulously. “That makes no sense.”
Maxi had to admit, though, that the very thought of a murder printer wasn’t exactly something that fit in the “seems logical” category either but considering that she had stepped beyond the curtain of the real world (though she still stubbornly clung to the simulation idea), she realized the shit she didn’t know was far beyond the stuff she did.
“'The universe has no obligation to make sense to you’ - Neil deGrasse Tyson,” the IT guy quoted.
“If they're jammed, how are they able to ‘print’ their minions?” Maxi asked and described the bat creatures.
“Those came from the paper drawer,” Farhad said. “Players need devices for certain minions. Grutomatons can just open the drawer and let them fly out.”
“Interesting,” the man in the lab coat said. “The printers that have been running amok created all sorts of paper minions. We’ve seen cats, bats, dogs, and just about any origami nightmare. They are all low level and easy to dispatch, but even low level can be a threat in sufficient quantity, or if they prevent you from using your attacks on the boss.”
Considering everything did a minimum damage of 1 regardless of resistance level, and every attack had a chance to hit since a critical was always considered successful, a pack of bats could take out even a high-level player, and from her temping days, she knew that some copy machines could hold thousands of sheets of paper.
Since she had room on her belt, she had brought some of her bat minions with her despite not having a printer to launch them. With her Stapler of Binding, mundane staple remover, and the minions, her belt was full. She had put the Grutomaton of Defense Muddy Buddies in one pocket, and Farhad had given her some healing gummy bears for the other.
However, she could only fit five sheets of paper rolled up on her belt. She tried to do more, but it failed to latch and the papers fluttered to the floor. Even if she did find a way to use them during the quest, five seemed insufficient against what she could face.
“Okay, so printers are jamming. How do we unjam them?” Maxi asked.
“The Printer of Never Jamming,” the man in the lab coat said, then the sound of an angelic chorus filled the air. The man pulled out his phone and said, “Sorry, my ringtone.” He clicked the answer button and said, “Yeah, yeah, a bagelwich is fine...everything…something with ham and eggs.” He hung up, then added, “Sorry, lunch order.”
“Right,” Maxi said. “What’s the Printer of Never Jamming supposed to do?”
“First off, it will never jam, so therefore never become murderous.”
“Right, but isn’t it just a printer?”
“It’s more than just a printer. It is an artifact, a wondrous item of legends,” Yancy said.
“My shirt is legendary, but it’s still just a shirt,” Maxi said.
“Your shirt is legendary?!” both Yancy and Farhad exclaimed at the same time.
“Yeah. I mean, it’s been pretty helpful so far,” Maxi said.
“But wondrous items make your shirt seem like a knockoff brand that will lose all its buttons the first time you wash it,” Yancy said.
“Okay, so let’s just go to whoever made the printer and ask them to make more.”
“You can’t just make more,” Farhad said. “Each item in the real world has a small chance of being more than it is. Sometimes it’s a monster, other times it's an artifact – basically something with magic-like properties. Why do you think people have car keys they never seem to lose, or you drink a bottle of cola that was far better than any of the colas you ever had in your life?”
Maxi remembered a stuffed animal from her childhood that seemed to be indestructible. Most of her stuffed toys would lose an eye, tail, or stuffing. Her favorite bunny was run over by a car once when she threw it out the window and began bawling her eyes out when she realized what she had done. Her mom, to her credit, remained calm. She retrieved it from the freeway, tossed the thing in the wash, and it looked like the incident had never happened.
Maxi wondered if her luck had gone further back than she could remember. She did have some lucky streaks from time to time. She had once won lottery scratchers thirty-six times in a row in the same bodega and kept cashing her winnings in for more lottery tickets. With a one in four chance of getting the smallest prize, the odds of it happening 36 times in a row was comparable to winning the lottery.
However, because she’d sometimes cash them in for four or five others and they were all small prize amounts, she only walked away with fifty or so bucks in her pocket by the end of the day. The attendant laughed each time she came back to the counter like they were in some strange prankshow farce.
Maybe she was more lucky than other people. Shitty things happened to her, just like everyone else, but then she’d find a five-dollar bill on the street. She just thought it was the universe telling her everything was going to be alright, even though the notion of the universe giving a shit about her was absurd.
The Earth, with everyone on it, was just one gamma ray burst from becoming another lifeless planet in the void. Still, she was now here fighting something that seemed like bad luck, jamming printers causing a murder printer outbreak, with her good luck, a chance to find a wondrous item that would make it all go away.
“So how’s a printer that never jams supposed to save us?” Maxi asked.
“Wondrous items change the course of history,” the man said.
“How do I find it?”
“No clue,” the man said. “But your home printer has taken your mom hostage.”
“Why didn’t you lead with that?!” Maxi yelled, and charged out of the room, with Yancy and Farhad trailing behind.