Step 3 didn’t have a name. Or much of a plan behind it. I kinda assumed the plan would follow. What I mostly needed was everyone’s attention so Cara could sneak out.
Originally I was going to throw something heavy through the big glass windows out front and then race out, like the classic villain breaking into/out of a store in some heist movie. What I didn’t anticipate was how physics would react with my, otherwise brilliant, plane.
“Uh, miss, what are you doing?” This question was posed by the checkout guy, who’d looked up from his post to see me carefully lift a very heavy stereo off a shelf, grunting and sweating as I did. “Do you need help with that?”
I did, but I couldn’t say that because I was too focused on not dropping the stereo to come up with a good lie. And I wasn’t gonna risk the whole mission on a bad ruse.
“I’m fine,” I gasped, which was technically a lie, and the guy completely turned his back on me as I continued to wrestle the stereo towards the window.
The ghosts tried to help. They couldn’t, cause they could only touch me, but they tried. Christopher waved his hands around like he was lifting it, Blair gave us a pep talk, and Joni told us we were all stupid. It wasn’t at all helpful, but they had the right spirit.
Heh. Spirit.
Finally I lugged the stereo to the window. At this point I should have put two and four together to realize that there was no way I had the strength to get this thing through the window, but I was just so damn proud of myself for getting this far, I wasn’t gonna second guess now.
“HIII-YAH!” With a mighty cry, I hurled the stereo into the window, where it shattered into several pieces.
The stereo. Not the window. The window was fine, beyond making a ‘boyoing’ noise.
“Uh oh.” Blair pressed her manicured nails to her lips. “Sammi is fucko wucko-ed.”
I grimaced and squeezed my eyes shut, cause Blair was right. I was.
“Open your fucking eyes and do something!” Joni shouted. “You’re a god damned God!”
I opened my eyes in a flash, cause Joni was also right. I was a God.
All around me, store associates congregated. It wasn’t a terribly daunting sight, two security guards, a cashier, and someone who was probably a manger, but it was more than I could fight, were I a mere mortal.
“I’m gonna run away with my cart,” I said, “and you all have to give me a thirty second head start before chasing me. At the end of the thirty seconds, you all have to chase me. Got it? All right. Ready, set, go!”
As I said go, I slammed my full body weight into my cart of loot, which began creaking forward very slowly. Super strength was apparently not part of the God deal. After about ten seconds and maybe as many feet, I began to sweat.
“Ahh, haha, how about you all have to give me five minutes head start.” I gave the frozen crowd a nervous smile over my shoulder. Then I looked ahead to where I could see Cara poke her head around a corner. Shit. Five minutes would be too long, right? They wouldn’t even be able to find me. Or maybe they would. Why was this cart so heavy?
It was probably the stand for the tv. And the speakers. Should I ditch them? But I’d need them for the tv that was gonna come in. I didn’t want to be the kind of trashy household with a tv just propped against a wall. This was New Olympia we were talking about!
Okay, new plan then. “Okay, new plan. You two security guards, you’ve got to clean up this mess that randomly happened when that stereo randomly exploded. You two–” I pointed at the manager and cashier, “need to help me carry my stuff out to my car and then load it.”
The two guards gave a heavy sigh.
“Man, we need to stop getting the explosive ones,” one said as he headed towards a janitor’s closet. “They’re a menace.”
“Surprised we haven’t had any complaints from customers,” the other one said, bending over to assess the damage.
“All right, ma’am, just let us know where your car is.” The previously bored looking cashier leaned his body weight into my cart, moving it a good deal faster as I led the charge from the store.
“Make sure Cara gets out,” I hissed to the ghosts between grit teeth.
Blair saluted and the three whizzed off to assist my accomplice.
I felt powerful, striding from that TechShack, head held high, two peons behind me, pushing my shopping cart. Just twenty four hours ago, I was the peon, tapping in people’s orders at Burger Blitz, but now I was committing grand theft technology. I knew I shouldn’t let the power go to my head, but I let it a little bit.
Our merry parade stretched on a good ten minutes, down several blocks and far away from the store. Finally, the ghostly figures of my three friends caught up with me.
“Cara’s totally out,” Christopher said. “She’s out out. Gonzo. Did real good.”
I nodded, on the sly, before turning to the two employees. “You had a good walk. Really bonded, got to know each other well. This is definitely the start of something wonderful, but your breaks are gonna be up soon. You need to go straight back to the store. Without the cart. This is my cart. It just looks like one of yours.”
“I really appreciate you hearing me out,” the cashier said, as the two immediately about faced. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do about Poppy. We’ve had her since childhood. Like, she’s just a dog but no dog is ever just a dog.”
“I hear you.” The manager’s voice got fainter as they headed back up the street. “I was eight when my old dog Mac was hit by a truck.”
“Aww, poor Mac.” Blair’s lips jutted in a pout.
“So what’s all this.” Joni gestured at my heap of stuff. “You said you wanted things to outfit your new place? What new place? Do we need to actually find one or have you already–”
I held up a finger. “Patience, grasshopper. First thing’s first.”
Because the minute the two associates had fully vanished from earshot, I started noticing a shimmering glow out of the corner of my eye. It was level up time.
~~~
SCHEME INITIATED:
Type: Theft
Bounty: Technological Appliances
Difficulty Level: Green
Participants: Cara Geraldo
Status: Success > New Scheme
Details: Cara Geraldo stashed her stolen goods at a safe location a mile from the store. By the time all members of the afternoon shift had returned, the losses to inventory were assumed to have been part of your theft.
Reward: New Scheme! “Fence Cara’s stolen goods”
Level up!
~~~
And that’s what we like to see.
As I read over the details of the level up, Christopher and Joni immediately jumped on my case, asking for details. What could I do? Was I given stat points? New abilities? New forms? Did I have to spec into a tree?
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
That last one kinda caught me off guard, cause I wasn’t sure how trees got involved, but I tried to push away their growing chatter. They made it sound so complicated, but honestly it didn’t look that bad. Maybe it was because I was kinda low leveled, but it really only gave me one notification and one multiple choice option.
~~~
GOD OF SCHEMES
Tier: 2
Powers Unlocked: Verity Tongue
Familiars: Joni Beck, Christopher Ricci, Blair Yan
Familiar Powers Unlocked: None (+1)
Attributes: Delayed Sensitivity, Reduced Sensitivity, Heightened Constitution, Regeneration Tier 1(+1), Unaging
~~~
The exciting thing was the familiar power unlocked, but when I opened that menu, things got a little more complicated. It showed my three friends, and underneath each were three options, with one glowing blue and saying Recommended build. I expanded an option, it branched out in multiple directions, kinda like a river. Or a tree.
Huh.
I’d just opened my mouth to comment on how maybe there was some truth to this tree thing, when Joni kinda descended on me.
“Finally gonna grace us with some answers?” she asked. “You’ve been staring slack jawed for five minutes.”
I switched to formulating an answer to that, but before I got a word out, Christopher pushed Joni back and started asking more questions. Then they got in a fight.
So I went back to my interface and did the only thing that made sense.
~~~
Familiar level increased!
Familiar: Blair Yan
Type: Banshee
Abilities: Illusion – Ghostly writing, Ghostly wailing
~~~
“Oooooooooh.”
Blair’s long, drawn out noise quieted Joni and Christopher immediately. Goosebumps had raised on my arm, even though it was more of a ‘look at this shiny new thing’ wail than a ‘woe to you, humans, for you are about to die’ wail.
There was just something about how real her voice sounded. I hadn’t actually heard Blair speak using actual words in a week at least. It wasn’t much of a conversation either. Kyle had invited some people over to watch a football game and Blair had been high as a kite, chatting with some chick I didn’t know about a show I didn’t watch. I hadn’t taken the conversation much into stock cause I hadn’t thought it would be the last time I’d see Blair alive. Technically she’d been alive when we’d trucked her unconscious body into my car last night, but it barely counted.
Ghostliness aside, it was kinda nice to hear her voice again, and she seemed delighted.
I’d made the right choice.
“Wait wait, can we do that?” Christopher asked. He cleared his throat before making a long string of whale noises. I could tell that he could tell (and so could Joni and Blair) that it wasn’t working. “Wait, Blair, do it again. I want to see.”
Blair wooshed over the cracked pavement of the alley, making a low moaning noise that increased in pitch as she zipped up the wall. She punctuated it with a high shriek before landing on a dumpster, giggling.
“Why can’t we do it?” Joni asked, arms crossed. “How did Blair learn this first?”
I gave a smile that wasn’t meant to be smug, cause I had no real reason to be smug, but came off that way. “I leveled her up. Part of my tier increase was a point into one of my familiar’s abilities. You and Christopher were so busy yelling and snapping at me and stuff, so I gave it to Blair cause she was the only one not jumping down my throat the minute I opened my mouth.”
In hindsight, it should have been obvious that this would piss them off. A part of me knew it would. But someone had to get leveled up first. I wasn’t just gonna hold all the level points until everyone could get one evenly. And Blair was being most decent. Besides, she’d deserved something nice. She’d had a particularly rough twenty four hours.
The fighting in the alleyway increased until a window far above us opened, which got everyone’s attention. A woman stuck her head out, and I could see how red her face was, even from forty feet below.
“If you don’t quiet that fucking ruckus, I’ll call the police,” she shouted. “And if you wake my god damned kid up, I’ll come down there and really give you something to wail about. Fucking junkie.” With this loudly issued request for quiet, she slammed the window shut.
It was probably just my imagination, but I swore I could already hear a baby crying.
“Look,” I said, taking advantage of the silence. “It’s not like I was really thinking ‘oh fuck Joni and Christopher for asking questions.’ I had to make a choice and none of you were gonna say ‘it’s okay, give it to someone else.’” I paused at this. “Except, honestly, maybe Blair. And so I thought maybe it would be nice to give her the nice thing first. You’ll all get your chances. It’s not like I’m just gonna hang it up, say it was a good run, and retire. We need to get a place. Then we gotta start grinding through the Kick-the-Bucket lists. Everyone is gonna get their powers, and we got a lot of time to play around.”
They didn’t look happy but they also didn’t look like they were about to start yelling again. Or at least like I might have a few minutes to change the subject.
“So. Henry Miller.” I let out a long breath. “Are we really thinking about going through with this? I got a new quest to help Cara fence the shit, but there’s no way the source expects me to follow through on every quest it gives me, right?”
Joni’s eyebrows zoomed up her face. “Oh God, absolutely not. It’ll probably just give you a Quest Failed notification in a few hours. No biggie.”
“Besides, doesn’t Miller kinda hate you?” Christopher asked.
My cheeks flushed, remembering our last encounter. “Yeah. Might be a bit of a dick move for me to try to rustle his hustle again.
“I mean. Might be a liiiiiittle mean for you to magic him after your last run in went so bad.” Blair puffed out her cheeks, maybe in an attempt to mimic the levels of mad Henry would be. Then she popped them with her fists, and her brow creased. “But it would be even meaner to let Cara show up with all this stolen shit, and Henry’s all pissed at her for trying to pawn it off.”
“Why would he be pissed that someone’s trying to sell him fenced goods? That’s his MO.” Christopher asked. “They’ll figure it out without us.”
I nodded, relief unkinking the knots in my back.
“But we would need to get him there in the first place. Convince him he wants to buy… What did Cara steal anyway?” Joni asked.
“Uh. I told her to grab expensive, small stuff, like phones or tablets or something. Tech merch is easy to pawn off, right?” Please say yes, please say yes. Because the more I thought about it, the more I realized, my popularity and Cara’s ability to get her hands on fencible goods weren’t the only problems here. Far from it.
“Why do you hate the idea of helping out so much?” Blair asked.
“Look, I’m not trying to be a dick but… I’m kinda probably dead.” I shoved my hands deep in my pockets, wondering for kinda the first time how the news of our accident was going down.
Blair squinted hard at me. “Now hang on, Sammi. You’re the only one not dead. You’re the only one who can help here.”
“Legally, I mean. As far as the government is concerned, or whatever.”
“No, legally you’re still the only one not dead.” Joni massaged her temples. “But yeah, that’s the big issue. Your body isn’t with ours. You were last seen driving us to town. Now it’s a day later, you’re free from injury while our bodies are all slumped in your car, and your first act as far as any of our friends or family are concerned, is to harass some dude you sold knockoff headsets to?”
“The headsets weren’t knockoffs. Just the designer logo on them. But otherwise, yeah, kinda.” Obviously there wouldn’t be any trouble while immediately dealing with Henry, but once we walked away from each other, I wasn’t sure how my magic would hold up. The whole Verity Tongue thing wore off once someone was confronted with the real truth. If I interacted with Henry at all, even if I told him we never crossed paths, at some point he’d remember.
“So we bail on this,” Christopher said. “No biggie. Yeah Cara’s got some shit she’s stuck with, maybe she finds another way to sell them. Ebay or whatever. Or she just gives up on it all.”
Blair looked horrified at this, eyebrows shooting sky high and lips opened wide in shock. “But then how is she gonna pay off her debts?! She’ll be stuck with a pissed dealer, and do you even know how dangerous the consequences for that could be? Do you know what kind of fate she might be facing??”
“Blair, chill, it’s just weed.” Even Joni seemed a bit taken aback at Blair’s reaction. “It’s not… whatever shit you were always on. Just weed. Dude’ll just cut her off. Maybe black list her to a few other dealers in the area. So she goes a few weeks without weed. No big deal.”
“No big deal?” Blair clapped a hand to her face. “What if she needs it? To sleep or relax or whatever?”
“Then she probably needs rehab.” Joni’s tone was flat but I was starting to see Blair’s point a bit. Not that being cut off from weed would be the end of the world, but it would suck. “You’re probably just pissed because you’ll never be able to get high again.”
This was, perhaps, the worst thing to tell a worked up Blair who had recently been elevated to Banshee. The penny took a few seconds to fully drop through all the ectoplasm in her brain before Blair opened her lips and began wailing.
I spent thirty seconds trying to calm her. Maybe it was the lack of drugs, maybe it was the fact that Blair was just now realizing just how many things she couldn’t do anymore, maybe she was just clearing her lungs, but after half a minute of shouting over her wailing, I realized this wasn’t working.
Then Joni, who had fled the scene hands over ears, returned with a grim look on her face. She couldn’t make herself heard over Blair, so she just held up her hands, communicating rather effectively with just her fingers.
911
Time to go.