A few hours later, after agreeing to disagree about which Public Enemy rapper would make a better ice cream flavor, a feed in the corner of Maxi’s glasses ticked up with the credit cost of talking to her mom. Even though it was her phone, she was on the company wifi, and if she used it for anything that wasn’t work related she would be charged for the usage.
The Company didn’t care if people surfed the internet all day and didn’t micromanage their computer time. Printing something personal wasn’t stealing company resources, or even nicking a pen. If employees wanted to take a three hour lunch and sit in a bathtub for half of it, there were no supervisors watching over their shoulder.
They ensured productivity by charging for everything. If Maxi forgot that she had a pen in her pocket when she went home for a couple nights to get away from the sleeping pods, she’d be charged a fraction of a credit for it. If she came back with the pen, she’d be reimbursed for it but at the used pen rate.
If she surfed the internet instead of working, she was charged for it. If she talked with her mom, she was charged for it. Even time off had a cost. Now that she was questing regularly and bringing in cash, it was tempting to give into the middle class life.
The manager of the Generalist Branch (her defacto guild even though they weren’t exactly guilds), Ted, lived a comfortable middle class life with weekends and family vacations. He even owned a house in Texas, a fact only possible by magic elevators making the commute to anywhere in the world near instantaneous.
It was tempting to buy the time to sleep in her own bed every night, go home to her mom, and even play some video games that she had neglected since she started the job. She had a steady enough credit flow where she could afford her old life back, but then there was the guy cowering behind her in fear. He was a Worker, covered in blood and nearly killed by the three headed beast that killed most of his Office Pool.
The room was a lot like her home away from home but bigger, gray cubicles packed together, perhaps forty, maybe more. There were mangled corpses at the elevator entrance, and Maxi could hear weeping of other Workers hiding in their cubes. They weren’t a fighting class, but rather the backbone labor of the company. They did menial labor that generated the classflow necessary for people like her to do the dirty work of fighting monsters.
This particular monster was cute if it wasn’t such a killer. The three heads were a dog, cat, and rabbit with large doey eyes. The body was built like a panther with black fur and claws. It had a barbed tail with a white poof at the end that hid more spikes as Maxi found out the hard way, because she had a wound in her chest that wouldn’t stop bleeding.
Her life ticked down while the charges to speak to her mom ticked up. The dog head snarled and drooled at her while the cat hissed and bared its fangs. The rabbit… it just looked so freaking cute.
“I know ma!” Maxi said as she dogged the dog head and stabbed it in the shoulder but not before taking another blow from the cursed tail that only seemed to speed up her bleeding out. “But if I take some time for myself. What’s your name again?”
“Rudy, ma’am,” The worker said and winced as Maxi traded blows with the creature.
“Nice to meet you Rudy,” Maxi said as she dodged the cat head from biting into her shoulder, “What tier are you? If you don’t mind me asking?”
She grunted and fended off another strike from the tail, and the guy meekly said. “12.11.”
“So, there you have it ma,” Maxi said as the cat head bit down on her sword and she used her Mind Shard attack to knock the dog head from taking advantage of the situation. The rabbit head wiggled its nose, and was still looking very cute. “If I don’t keep fighting, sleep in the capsules almost every night, then Rudy here will get killed at the end of the month when he is terminated.”
“What a second!” Rudy yelped. “Termination means death?”
“You didn’t read the terms and conditions?” Maxi called back as the battle raged on with the beast.
Maxi’s mom’s voice came through the bluetooth headphones, “But you need time off for yourself. Trust me, I’ve worked your job too. You can’t help people when you are exhausted and beaten down. It’s as much about self care as it is caring for others.”
“Monsters don’t take a day off!” Maxi said and cut the dog head clean off. The cat hissed and cried out in pain, and the bunny was… a bunny. A freaking adorable rabbit. The creature thrashed as she thought that it was in its death throes, but before it toppled over, the canine part regenerated a new one as if it was inflating a balloon.
Rudy screamed and tried to make a run for the elevator. Maxi attempted to stop him but the guy was gone. The creature pounced and jumped on the guy and tore through the man’s chest. Maxi had a moment to weigh her options while the thing mauled the Worker.
“Mom,” Maxi said. “I have to go.”
“What are you fighting?” Tara said, undeterred by the urgency in Maxi’s voice.
“What?”
“I’ve seen it all kid, just describe it.”
“A cat, rabbit, dog, thing.”
“A bandersnagger? Those are easy.”
“I’m almost dead mom!” Maxi wasn’t kidding. The bleeding status effect from the tail was getting her to near zero.
“Just stab bunny.”
“But it’s so… cute.”
“That’s a charm effect.”
“I’m not charmed!” Maxi said, but as she said it.
A message appeared, “You have discovered a hidden status effect, charm. Roll to resist? Contested Emotional Intelligence.”
“My Emotional Intelligence is shit,” Maxi said.
“I could have told you that.”
“Mom!”
“What? You’re like your father, blunt, and always speaking your mind. Even if more precision is required.”
Maxi took a breath and attempted to will past the charm effect. She crept up to the beast, and brought up her sword to stab the critter in the head. Right as she attempted to hack at the beast, she saw its such big adorable wide eyes. It was just too precious. She shook her head, and attempted to bring the sword down.
But she couldn’t, the thing was too damned cute.
The dog and cat head turned their bloodied maw on Maxi, and Daisuke’s blade sliced through the bunny’s neck, and the most precious little ball of fuzz rolled on ground while the creature hissed and yelped its death throes. It flopped on the ground, and whimpered. Daisuke stabbed it in the chest, and it died.
A good portion of the blood splattered on her legendary yellow shirt, that started its self cleaning cycle that was akin to evaporating the fluids would otherwise stain the thing.
“I had it taken care of.” Maxi said to no one in particular, her heart still melting for the thing that would have gnawed her head off.
“Didn’t look like it to me,” Daisuke said as he wiped his blade and put it into his invisible sheath.
“Is that the cute one?” Tara’s voice said a little too loudly over her bluetooth headphones.
“Mom!” Maxi said, and turned away from Daisuke to check for any other survivors. While she was almost positive he couldn’t hear her, he was pretty, in sort of an arm candy sort of way, almost too immaculate. She preferred men who were a little rough around the edges, a little less put together. Daisuke had probably spent more time in front of a mirror than a Victoria's Secret model did on pageant day.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
He was also a kinda of an asshole. A loyal asshole, she’d give him that, but she preferred partners who were more courteous. Not that she had given much thought to dating her coworkers. Office romances rarely worked out, and Maxi’s even less so. She had a few awkward flings in high school. Then dated someone semi-regularly in college, who decided he was better off as a buddhist monk in their senior year.
Post college, she was too busy building her completely neglected-at-this-point Spasm channel to care about dating anyone, and she certainly didn’t want to meet anyone she met online. Maxi wasn’t opposed to using an app to find a partner, it was just too much work. She had a friend who went on 32 dates just to find a person who lasted about two years. It sounded exhausting to her.
If the right guy came along, she be into it, but she was also fine with the idea that she’d be an old maid living in her mom’s rent controlled apartment with fifty cats. Maxi didn’t even like cats particularly more than any other animal, murderous bunnies aside, but she figured living alone in her twilight years would involve some loner stereotype.
However, she wasn’t alone now, and she had to keep reminding herself about that. When the emergency quest popped up to help the Workers whose day was disrupted by the murder rabbit-cat-dog, she answered the call and took off to the elevator, before realizing that she had an Office Pool of mates that would drop anything to help.
And they did, Patti was somewhere in the room taking care of the wounded, Flav. Farhad and Belinda had cornered another one of the creatures, while Daisuke must have taken care of the third. It was a team effort and they made a good team.
“I’m not interested in dating right now, ma,” Maxi said quietly while she hefted Rudy onto his resurrection chair. It was the least they could do for them because Janitorial would charge them a fee to do it, and Maxi had seen the menial labor options, they would be paying off the clean up bill for a while.
“I was like you too, you know,” Tara said. She was the top player at the company back in her day. Rank 1.1. “I just focused on saving as many people as possible, but I didn’t really get good until I practiced self-care too.”
“Duly noted,” Maxi grunted as she hefted another body onto a chair. “Look ma, we have a lot of cleanup to do.”
“Just let Janitorial do it.”
“They charge the workers for putting them up on their own chairs.”
“They never did that in my day.”
“Times change.”
“Are you coming home for dinner?”
“Depends on the surge pricing.”
“Fine. Love you lots. And Maxi, tell your uncle he’s still an asshole.”
“Will do,” Maxi said, neglecting to tell her that Lo was on some sort of paid leave. Something about Yancy turning into a death god had really shaken him up. Maxi had gotten a message from him a couple weeks later.
“Don’t trust anyone,” Lo had texted.
“Including you?”
“This is not a joke. They like to toy with their prey. Feign weakness. They are anything but.”
“Who are they?”
“The dark.”
Before Maxi had the chance to inquire any further, Cassidy West, one of the Power Twelve and the leader of the Paranormal Investigator Branch strolled into her Office Pool as if she owned the place. The woman implored that they share any information they had about Yancy or would tell her if Lo attempted to contact any of them. Then she lectured them about staying in their lane.
None of which Maxi did, but the delay in her response was enough to scare off her uncle because he had been ghosting her ever since.
As if thinking about the woman evoked her Branch's presence, the elevator dinged, and a team of Paranormal Investigators flooded into the room with their hands on the hilts of their swords. They were all wearing trench coats and fedoras as if they were ripped out of some 1940s thriller novel.
Maxi recognized Joaquin, one that had started around the same time she did, and was in her psychic training classes. He wasn’t a total asshat even though he kept company with them.
The leader of the squad, a guy with brown hair and a scar across his cheek glanced around the room. Daisuke and Belinda were dutifully looting the corpses of the creatures and stripping them of anything useful or valuable. Patti was finishing up healing who she could while Flav, Farhad, and Maxi were on corpse duty.
Joaquin didn’t look Maxi in the eye, and said to his leader, “Come on, Takashi. Looks like they already took care of this one.”
If Daisuke and Takashi were in a scowling contest, Maxi wasn’t sure who would win, but the PI leader looked as if he had swallowed a ball made from brambles. Takashi narrowed his eyes on Maxi, and said, “Seems like you just can’t refrain from doing everyone else’s job. You’re taking away business from Janitorial now?”
Maxi hefted another body and said, “Nope, just pitching in where I can. You should try it sometime. In fact, you can start now. We still need to do that row.”
Maxi pointed out another row of cubicles with empty chairs.
“I don’t know where you are coming off high and mighty,” Takashi said. “But we have a certain way of doing things around here.”
“Like coordinating your outfits instead of saving people’s lives?” Maxi said, and Takashi drew his blade. The others followed suit and pulled out their weapons, except Joaquin, he looked apologetically at Maxi and attempted to deescalate the situation with his commander.
Takashi brushed him aside, and marched towards Maxi. Her crew was at the ready too, though their weapons weren’t out yet. Daisuke thumbed his side where his invisible scabbard hid his Katana. Flav set down a body he was hauling so he could grab the battle axe on his back. Belinda fidgeted with a remote control that summoned deadly critters she had constructed. Even Farhad placed his hand on a pistol he had holstered.
While murdering each other wasn’t exactly against company policy, being there were resurrection chairs, there were stiff penalties for any employees who brawled outside of sanctioned areas. Even if the PIs were the aggressors, they would all get penalized for the misconduct.
The question was not whether Takashi would drag them into a fight but whether his ego was worth the credit and level penalties of the confrontation. While Maxi’s Office Pool wasn't underwater with debt like when she had first joined the company, they ran a tight operation. There weren’t any margins for something as pointless as kicking some PI ass. Even though it’d feel good.
He got up into her space and said, “The PIs have been saving people since before you were born. I’m just telling you to stay out of our business because you’re going to get your whole team permadead.”
“I’ve heard that one before,” Maxi said nonchalantly. “You really need a new line.”
Takashi’s knuckles turned white from the grip on his sword.
“Come on boss,” Joaquin said. “There’s an all hands meeting coming up. We’ll get the next one.”
“You’re lucky, but you might not be so lucky next time,” Takashi said. “Come on.”
The man flicked his arm up in the air, and the others put their blades away.
While they all piled into the elevator, Maxi called out to them. “I am lucky. That’s my thing! Have fun in the meeting! We’ll just be here. Keeping the world safe from monsters.”
Daisuke scowled at Maxi and after the elevator door shut, he said. “You don’t have to antagonize them.”
“What? They’re dicks. Well, except Joaquin. He’s cool, but the rest of them…”
“We are all in this together,” Daisuke yelled. “The sooner you learn that, the better it will be for everyone.” Daisuke stormed off and punched the elevator call button. He stepped inside, leaving one of the creatures half looted.
“What’s his deal?” Maxi said to Farhad, who was now on the row next to hers.
Farhad lifted a corpse while Belinda took over looting the creature. Farhad shrugged, “I dunno. He’s been on edge about something lately but on edge is a relative term. He does have that drill sergeant charm.”
“He’s just been more Daisuke than usual,” Maxi said.
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Farhad said. “Maybe give him some time to cool down.”
Maxi wasn’t a stranger to being overwhelmed. When she first unwittingly signed up to kill monsters for a living, she had made some rash decisions. However, Daisuke didn’t seem the type to get overwhelmed. In fact, he was the one who’d watch their Office Pool finances, and would not so politely get on their cases for using too much resources.
However, maybe he was just good at hiding it. The man did have a history of storming out of the room. Had Maxi been looking to make a few more enemies at work, she’d probably would have made a game out of it, just to tease him, but since the guy seemed always one step away from popping an artery in his head, she knew when to back down.
They continued their clean up of the room.
Just as Maxi was putting on the last one, Terry interrupted her corpse duty, “Maxi, you have requested that I alert you when you’ve met the requirements for the Printer of Never Jamming V.”
“Yes, and?” Maxi said.
“You have met the requirements for the Printer of Never Jamming V.”
“Great, so want to enlighten me about what I’m supposed to do?” Maxi asked. The Printer of Never Jamming quest line seemed to be linked to her missing and most likely dead father. A goal popped up starting around IV about figuring out what happened to her father, but when she had completed additional goals about capturing some grutomatons parts for a guy named Von Patrick down in IT who was studying the creatures, she was still no closer to figuring out what happened to her dad. Same with another ongoing quest she had about saving the world.
Having completed IV by delivering the beasts with the help of her Office Pool, the figure out what happened to her father objective just moved to V, and she was no closer to figuring out anything that she had before. Other than he used the word Albuquerque in the magic elevators the last time anyone had seen him alive.
“The goal: Learn vital information from Von Patrick in IT Allies: 0 was added to the quest,” Terry said.
Maxi turned to Farhad and said, “I’m going to IT.” Then as an afterthought added, “For a quest.”
“You should really go back to your cube and heal,” Farhad said.
“I’ll be fine. I’m the lucky one.” Maxi said as she wandered to the front of the Office Pool and called the elevator. “How do you think I met Belinda?”
She smiled, and the elevator doors closed. It was mostly true. She had a string of bad luck that had almost permakilled as there was no resurrecting bones, but she got lucky. Belinda had burned the offending slime. She figured meeting Dr. Von Patrick wouldn’t involve any fighting.