I’ve fucked up pretty bad in my life, but even my worst moments wouldn’t hold a candle to what I did this time. Despite Colt’s warnings, I tinkered with my recreational drug settings before we entered the Lucky Kobold Casino. We were there on serious business, to free our newest friend from almost certain death. He also owed us a large sum of money.
The casino was a noisy place, both audibly and visibly. There were people of all types scattered throughout the large open room, but for the most part it was occupied by the usual suspects. Drunks pulling levers and watching their money disappear in hopes of that little taste of victory that slot machines sometimes provide. Groups of young people drinking and laughing near the bar, the bravest and most inebriated of them crowded the dance floor to my right. There were serving androids wandering around, passing out free drinks to encourage their patrons to lose more money. We weren’t there to gamble, but a free drink is a free drink. I waved down the nearest server and grabbed a pair of beers from her tray, handed one to Colt, then sipped at my own cup of liquid courage.
The thing that really stuck out to me as a giveaway that we had indeed found the secret base of the New Thieves’ Guild was the copious amount of security guards wandering the floors, eyeing the patrons, and generally doing their best to be visually intimidating. Any casino has security, but the Lucky Kobold Casino’s security guards were a different breed. They came in all sorts of shapes, but they only came in one size: fucking huge. And they were entirely overstaffed.
Since Colt had told me that, at least for the foreseeable future, nobody in this world would be able to resist my level 100 seduction skill, I didn’t feel any sense of fear at all. If our plan fell to shit, I’d seduce the guards and we’d be on our merry way. Even if that didn’t work, Colt told me that as long as we paid our monthly subscription fee, there was no limit or penalty for respawning. Having infinite lives always adds a little confidence when taking on dangerous missions. It also probably helped that I’d turned my recreational drug settings to PCP at level one out of a possible five. Not enough to start eating people’s faces and shit, but I was feeling fucking bulletproof.
Colt finished his beer in one go, nodded gravely at me, and jutted his chin subtly toward a back entrance that I hadn’t noticed on my oh-so-thorough peremptory scan of the floor. It was a black door against the far wall, left of the crowded bar. On a closer inspection, I noticed it was shrouded in unnatural shadow - almost as if it were avoiding attention by design. I nodded back slyly, and we started in that direction.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something troubling. Colt had that fucking look on his face. The self-righteous do-gooder look of injustice and resolve he always wore right before doing something (he felt to be) altruistic. I followed his gaze to land on a slot machine, and I looked it over thoroughly. Even so, I couldn’t see anything that would differentiate this slot machine from any other. It was a one copper machine, basically a penny slot. There were moving shapes, none of which made any damn sense. It seemed like every slot machine ever made to me.
“Why are you giving the slot machine the look?” I asked.
“What?” he replied, pulling his eyes away from the ordinary machine.
“You’re just staring at the slot machine. You want to play a few rounds before we do this, or what? We’re not exactly in a hurry but until we finish,” I lowered my voice to a whisper and leaned in closer, “what we came here to do, I don’t think you should gamble with the little money we have.”
Between the two of us, Colt had always been the more responsible one. He was decent with his money and paid his bills on time. And if I was ever getting myself in too deep, he would be the one to make sure I didn’t sink. But, Colt also had a bit of a gambling problem. He won big once in Reno. Not that big. A couple hundred bucks. But ever since then, anytime he’s laid eyes on a slot machine, he almost can’t help losing a hundred dollars - despite having lost much more since than he won the one time.
“No,” he said after a few more seconds.
I let out a small sigh of relief.
“I just had an idea. You know I don’t like stealing things. I mean, the Von Sassmug situation was one thing, they were involved in human trafficking. They had it coming,” Colt said with a really intense look that was out of place on his happy-go-lucky features. “Well I don’t have a problem stealing from thieves. And it may look like these people,” he motioned down the row of gamblers pulling the arms of the machines with hopeful expressions, “are having fun, they’re actually being robbed.”
“You want to empty the slot machines?”
Colt smiled a sickening, revenge-fueled smile. That’s when I realized that this wasn’t about this casino ‘robbing’ these people. It was about every casino that had ever ‘robbed’ Colt personally. I smiled back. Whatever his motivation was, Colt had an overpowered skill too. If he decided to use it to reappropriate the ridiculous amount of money in this casino, we’d be set to live like kings for… I don’t know, at least a few months. Maybe more. I really don’t have any idea how the economy works in this new world. And only had a basic understanding of how the economy worked back on Earth. One thing was clear though, it was a lot of fucking money.
“Let’s do it on the way out though,” I suggested reasonably. “No need to alert security to us before we have to, right?”
“Yeah,” Colt agreed. “Yeah, that’s a good call.”
That look in his eye hadn’t faded, even if he had agreed to wait. He was definitely going to bankrupt this place before the day was through.
“Let’s go get our fucking trash panda.”
Knowing the fun was really about to get started, I opened my settings and cranked my PCP setting up to level three. I instantly felt like I could take a gorilla in a jiu jitsu match. I looked around, to see if there was a gorilla nearby to test that theory. No luck. But one of the security guards was covered in thick black hair, and his arms seemed way too long for his body. I felt my lips stretch into a grin sickening enough to match Colt’s.
Close enough.
I’d never taken PCP before this, and probably should have experimented with it a bit before attempting to use it as a pregame for breaking into the notoriously dangerous New Thieves’ Guild, but that isn’t what happened. What did happen, was bad. Really bad.
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I felt Colt’s hand as he grasped the collar of my shirt, but it was peripheral. I was a predator now, and I was locked the fuck in on my prey. I heard the shirt ripping and felt the sweet freedom of release as I pulled away and broke into a sprint. The security guard’s eyes widened in clear surprise when he saw me coming. He lifted his too-long arms to protect himself, but he was too late. I was already on him.
Looking back on it now, I can only imagine what the scene would have looked like to anyone else, but I can only tell it the way I remember it: a whirlwind of sensations. Pain and excitement for the most part, but then everything was consumed by that hunger.
It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I knew, on some level, that I was losing the fight I started with this hairy security guard. My body was being battered by his bludgeoning fists, and my health bar was draining quickly. But none of that mattered to me. The only thing that did matter was the fact that I needed this security guard’s ears in my belly. With a hyper-focus that made cleaning on adderall seem like a weed fueled aimless wander through the woods by comparison, I went after those ears with every ounce of digital strength I’d been programmed with. And maybe a bit more, based on what I’ve heard about PCP.
Finally, I got my fingers around one of his ears, squeezed with all of my might, and ripped.
If you’ve ever seen someone’s ear get ripped off while tripping on PCP, and are subsequently reading my story from a prison cell somewhere, then at least you can relate when I say that it was a fantastic visual experience. Violent, terrible, and shaking to the core. But fantastic. Spurts of blood shot from the side of his head, two, maybe even three times before he reeled back and covered his new, larger ear orifice with one hand. He probably cried out in pain or something, but I stopped caring about the security guard. I looked down at my prize, heart pounding in anticipation as I brought it desperately to my mouth.
I know, I know, gross, right? Like so gross. Yeah. In hind sight, pretty fucking gross.
At the time though, nothing could have been better. I chewed, slowly at first to feel out the texture, but my chewing grew faster when my mind was blown by the perfect combination of crunchy from the cartilage and chewy from the skin. There was an amazing array of flavors, mostly the salt of dried sweat and the tangy copper of the blood, and I don’t know where it came from exactly, but there was a hint of bacon in there too.
I bathed in reverent appreciation as I enjoyed my prize, and then swallowed. A horrible emptiness came over me as soon as the last bits of flesh slipped down my throat. I needed another one.
It was then that I looked down at the guard, writhing around on the floor. The small pool of dark red blood growing near his head reflected the casino’s many lights. He still held one hand over his missing ear. On the other side of his head though, was exactly what I needed to fill that emptiness consuming me. And then I felt a sharp smack across my face.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Colt demanded to know.
I looked at him with confusion for several seconds. “Did you want that ear?”
“What?” he asked, brows drawn together.
It was at that moment, staring into the disgusted eyes of my oldest friend, that I saw the veritable sea of ears behind him. My mouth fell open. The only hang up was the fact that they were still attached to people’s heads. But that wouldn’t be a problem for long. I don’t know if it was drool at the thought of gorging myself on so many ears, or maybe some blood from the ear I just finished eating, but something wet rolled down my chin and dripped onto the ground.
“Wait here,” I whispered, so as to not alert the ears behind him that my predatory attention was on them. High on PCP or not, I was well aware of the fact that everyone in the casino was already staring at me, horror struck and gawking, but I still didn’t want them to hear what I was planning. “Give me five minutes. I’ll be back with a whole fucking platter of ears.”
Colt smacked me again, harder this time. And followed it up with a second one. If he’d really wanted the ear that badly, he could have just found one himself. Needless to say, I didn’t appreciate his approach at all.
If you want something, ask nicely, is what I was thinking when he smacked me a third time.
“If you changed any of your settings, change them back right fucking now,” he demanded. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Colt look so serious. Pleading almost.
A small part of my brain registered his suggestion, and even agreed with it, but all that would have to wait until I satiated my desperate hunger for more ears. And it was then I realized that Colt, too, was sporting a pair of ears. I reached out slowly, to avoid alarming him, toward his right ear. My fingers were only a hair’s breadth away from my next meal when a system message obscuring my vision gave me pause.
I swear I turned these fucking messages off…
You have been removed from the party.
A party? Why wasn’t I invited? I hope they catered ears…
I didn’t have time to ask about the party’s food options before I felt that something bad was happening inside of my body. My chest, specifically. It didn’t hurt necessarily, but some part of me knew I should be concerned. I looked down to see my ribs bent outward and protruding from my skin. I watched in morbid curiosity as my heart ripped itself free of the veins. The fountains of blood, reflecting flashing lights from all around, were so beautiful that it took my breath away.
Or perhaps that was an effect of the death that occurred shortly afterward. It’s hard to say.
The last thing I remember seeing was Colt standing in the middle of a dozen security guards, his hands held out, eyes focused.
I remember thinking, oh damn, their hearts are doing fountain shows too!
And then everything went black.
It wasn’t until I respawned in the graveyard and my settings were returned to default, a courtesy of this new world, that I was able to wrap my mind around everything that had happened. I’d fucked up the whole mission, and jumped a security guard right after telling Colt not to unnecessarily alert security to our presence.
Whoops.
***Therapy in session***
Dr. Sweete’s office smelled of lavender and leather bound books. A nice touch in the programming, if you ask me. It was my first time seeing her, and I led with the casino incident to see if this doctor would be able to handle the vulgar, horrible things that I seem to do on a regular basis. To her credit, the high elf therapist listened to my entire tale without interruption - apart from the occasional scratching of her pen against the notebook in her lap. She handled it all a good deal better than her predecessors.
When the tale was told, Dr. Sweete stood up - a bummer, since from where she’d been sitting I could almost see up that tight little pencil skirt she was wearing. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, Elves have the best legs.
“Well, I can honestly say that I’ve never heard a story quite like that one,” she said seriously. “Unfortunately, as our session is almost over, we don’t have much time to go over the many, many things I’d like to discuss with you until next time.”
Nice! I’ll just do this every time. Colt will be satisfied that I attended my “mandatory” therapy sessions and I won’t actually have to go through therapy. Again.
“That is unfortunate,” I said, as genuinely as I could manage.
Dr. Sweete didn’t look convinced.
“Before you go, I would like to know if there is anything positive that you can take away from such an… experience?”
I thought about that briefly.
“Yeah,” I told her. “I learned that PCP is one drug that really just isn’t for me.”