Confronted with the stark and boring reality that was my apartment, it was hard to motivate myself to do anything worthwhile. So instead I just slumped onto the couch in yet another set of tattered clothing.
At least this time it was just my shirt that got ripped up. The wolves only managed to claw my legs enough to slightly tear the jeans. I thought while staring up at the white stucco ceiling. My muscles and back ached from the exertion of the fight and then carrying that bloody hide back to the city. Even the top of my head felt tender. Poking it, I discovered that I’d managed to develop a sunburn.
“Bugger,” I muttered. With a moment of focus, I used my Shape-Shifting to give myself hair once more as well as eyebrows again. The prickling sensation of hair sprouting from the skin was slightly painful because of the sunburn. Thankfully, once the hair settled into place it wasn’t as bad.
Doing that also reminded me to check the rest of my skills.
Hmm. Okay, so the two ranks of Shape-Shifting I have are fully maxed on mastery. Probably why the moderate rank showed up. Completed the first rank of Enhance Self (Minor) and half the content of the Enhance Self (Lesser) rank too, mental stats only. I thought while flicking through a more detailed character sheet. Huh? My natural strength and fortitude went up a point each too. Wonder when that happened.
As if summoned by the thought, a scrolling message in a more reserved font that was colored a bright blue popped up in another window on the screen behind my closed eyes.
Due to exertions and cumulative exercise, the Traveler has gained additional points.
Strength was gained during your last training session while Fortitude was gained earlier today as a result of the injuries received.
Do you wish to have automatic notifications of latent stat increases?
Y/N?
“Well yeah, I definitely want to be told when stats increase. Can they decay?” I mumbled while studying the message.
Stat decay can happen. However, Travelers are more insulated against it.
Notifications have been updated.
“Good to know.” I sighed again. I wondered at the response. The System rarely answered questions when I asked them. I’d not thought of the ‘help’ menu as very helpful in a while after all.
I shifted when my uncomfortable couch began to dig into my spine. A sudden pang of loneliness hit me and I wanted to see my girls again. I’d spent the last two days in close contact with them and the last several weeks either with them, training for them, or thinking about them.
Unconsciously, my left hand drifted to my right forearm where the runic tattoos that marked my Guardian contracts were located. The symbols defied description, they honestly seemed to shift and change when I wasn’t looking at them, but I knew each one and what they signified intimately at this point.
Pressing my index and middle finger to the symbol closest to my wrist, I felt a ghost of Kassandra’s emotions. She was tired, but felt content and lazy. I could imagine her luxuriating in the large bath she had in her private room, sculpting a castle out of bubbles while humming quietly, the mischievous grin bouncing around on her lips.
Shifting further up my right arm, I touched the other symbol there. A rush of emotions, stronger than Kassandra’s, came to me in a flood. Normally, the tattoo that marked my bond with Rieka was the calmer of the two, but it was not true this time.
Rieka was worried, excited, guilty, and overjoyed all at once. The mental image of her pacing back and forth in her room, her ears back in frustration but her tail whipping up a storm of blonde fur as she muttered to herself, popped into my mind's eye.
Don’t stress, Rieka. It’ll be fine. I thought and tried to push reassuring thoughts through the tattoo. I had no idea if it worked, as the alternating stress and happiness continued to flow as long as I touched the tattoo. It might have been my imagination but it felt like it did abate at least a bit before I removed my fingers from the mark.
Touching the emotions of the girls renewed my resolve again and I went back to my character sheet to review my most recent powers.
Hmm. Manipulate Elements (Minor) and Mana Reservoir (Minor) are making good progress. 493/1000 for the first and 472/1000 for the second on their mastery. I should expect them to leave the minor tier soon. Should I save the SP to boost them up then?
I considered the option for a moment and then rejected it. As much fun as using magic was, I only had ten mana and had no idea how much the next rank of Mana Reservoir would give me. I’d shot my load very quickly in the fight with the wolves earlier and I’d already promised myself to focus on Shape-Shifting in order to be flexible.
Before I could get lost second guessing myself, I checked my SP total to make sure my math had been right before and it was. I then opened the ‘Powers’ tab on my interface and selected Shape-Shifting (Moderate) and selected ‘accept’ when prompted. The ability flared and the mastery bar appeared under it. At the same time Shape-Shifting (Mass-Control) shifted colors and became available rather than just legible, but my SP total had dropped down too low to select it now.
This left me with only 270 SP. Enough that I could buy one rank of Enhance Self (Moderate) to boost my mental stats with, or I could get the lesser rank to boost most of my physical stats to match the mental.
Decide on that later, before bed maybe? Time to start working with my new rank of Shape-Shifting. I thought with a smirk and opened my eyes.
It was mid-afternoon when I had gotten back from the other world and I spent the following two hours working my imagination with Shape-Shifting.
I replicated the lashing, armored tail/arm from that morning and practiced weaving it back and forth to get used to the flexible appendage. I experimented with hardening my skin and creating chitinous armor over my torso, arms, and legs now that I had spare weight to do that with. I even spent a bit of time experimenting on how I could shift my legs to improve running and sprinting though I didn’t go outside to test them yet.
My already tattered shirt was sacrificed to the cause of amusement when I added the hundred pounds of mass as muscle to my upper torso. I’m not afraid to admit I giggled like an idiot when I ripped through it like a certain green superhero with an anger problem.
Having the extra muscle mass definitely helped me to lift things, something I demonstrated by doing a one-handed dead-lift with my couch. It also made it difficult to do small things, like touch my hands to my chest properly, as the swollen muscles actually puffed my physique out a large amount and made smaller gestures hard as it threw me out of proportion.
“Good thing this doesn’t leave stretch marks or damage the skin. Imagine if it did,” I muttered as I reeled that shift in once more and shrunk to a more normal size. The mental image of myself with the loose flaps of stretched skin hanging under my biceps definitely made me glad that it did not. “Nope, just shredded clothes.” I chuckled ruefully and began collecting the shreds of my shirt from the ground.
The edges of my vision flashed and the return message from Cariad finally arrived, scrolling across my vision. So I flopped back down on the couch in just my jeans and closed my eyes to chat with her via this bizarre ‘instant messaging’ system using a cross-dimensional supercomputer as a hub.
Cariad
Hey Liam! So, I did some digging and apparently since you’ve been such a busy boy with all the contracts you’ve been completing, it’s caused your Guardian contracts to level up as well. Normally it takes far longer than a few weeks for this to happen for a Traveler. But you have been working with them exclusively since you started, so I should have expected this.
Liam
That’s good, right? What is the Guardian contract anyway? I remember seeing it way back when, but I don’t remember if I ever got a specific explanation.
As was usual, Cariad was quick to respond to my question and I had an answer in a few seconds. The only time she took longer to respond was usually the first message or if she had to go research something. While I waited, I shifted my left arm into another of the lashing tail/talon limbs and began weaving it through the air idly to try and build dexterity with my off hand.
Cariad
Oh that is simple enough to explain. The Guardian contract is your first contract with the girls. Think of it as the basic letterhead that all following contracts are written on. It establishes your relationship with them and the context that they use to summon you. Through that context, the System searches for prompts that they give in order to find out what service they require before it will pay out for you. You may have found that a notification pops up when one of them asks you directly to do something relating to protecting or caring for them, right?
Liam
Yup, noticed that. Got a snap mission today when we were heading back from a hunting trip when they decided to help out a lumber-operation that was dealing with wolves.
Cariad
Make sure to remind them that they need to blatantly state requests for help as soon as you arrive. The longer you wait, the more opportunities might fall through the cracks. Also for things like that, they need to formally request your assistance on it to trigger the System’s response. But to the point! Since you are contracted to them as a ‘Guardian’, the system will only generate missions that relate to their protection or care. It might be flexible in the context to a point, but you won’t ever get a mission to pass the salt or give them a foot-rub. That would be a servant or familiar contract instead. Likewise, the longer you have a Guardian contract in force, the more the System will search for powers that will improve your ability to fulfill them. You’ve earned almost all your SP at this point from Guardian contracts, so expect to see some protector-type powers showing up. And by that I mean more narrow-purpose powers to that type.
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
Liam
Interesting. I look forward to it. What about the difference in levels?
Cariad
Just that you are closer to one than the other, or have answered her direct call a few more times. It’s not an exact measurement as there are different ‘values’ assigned to each. If I had to guess, then the one that is a rank higher than the other is the girl you were summoned to personally save that one time, right? Just a shot in the dark since you didn’t mention which one was ahead.
Liam
Yeah. That is right. Kass is rank 3 while Rieka is rank 2.
Cariad
That sounds accurate then. Give it time and they will even out. If Rieka ends up summoning you herself more in the future that will help speed it up. This is one of those things that the System keeps track of in the background and doesn’t let us peek at the exact values, just a general summary. Also if she gives you more specific assignment requests that will help too. Some of them will be judged by the System under the same umbrella. Like if your first mission is to ‘escort them from point A to point B’, it won’t trigger if they ask you to kill bandits that attack them on the road. But if, along the way, you happen to track the bandits back to a camp with captives, they could request your help retrieving them.
Liam
Gotcha. Thanks Cari. You going to be at one of my beatings with Cerebaton this week?
Cariad
I think I can make this next one. Why?
Liam
I have something to show off to the old man. Hoping he might have some more ideas and suggestions to use with it.
Cariad
Okay, just be careful, Liam. Mr. Cerebaton has a lot of experience and you don’t want to catch him by surprise and have him react on instinct.
Liam
Got it. Don’t scare the old soldier. Have a good night, Cari.
We signed off a moment later and I opened my eyes and winced. While I’d been mentally typing things out, my left tail/arm had been stretching and moving back and forth while I exercised it. I guess the talon that it ended in wasn’t exactly sensitive to touch as it had thumped into the wall a few times and left triangular holes in the plaster half the size of my palm. Holes I’d never felt it leave. Holes I was going to need to patch over now too.
“Damn it…” I groaned and got to my feet to get a new shirt and head to the hardware store.
<><><>
Work on Monday was an exercise in frustration and just generally shitty, more so than Mondays usually were.
I’d shown up early in order to post my request for emergency leave with the gal who did all the scheduling. Bernice was a nice old gal, but a stickler for the rules. She’d initially declined the request outright until I reminded her that I hadn’t taken any paid time off in over a year and it was a personal emergency. She’d huffed a bit, but agreed I was overdue and set about rearranging the schedule for next week to ensure it was covered.
It had taken less time than I expected to convince Bernice, so I’d decided to go for a walk before my shift. That was until Dutcher spotted me on his way in from the parking lot.
Dutcher had somehow convinced the company to install four of the electric-car chargers in the company lot, despite the fact he was the only person to drive an electric vehicle. That meant that he had his pick of the four parking spots daily and unfortunately they were all in the front row, closest to the building. So he was parking as I headed out to go for my walk to relax a bit before work.
When I ran into him by the front door, he demanded I go punch in and get started on my shift early since I was here already. Figuring that one type of exertion was just like any other, I shrugged it off and complied. Either he’d send me home a little early to avoid overtime or I’d have a shorter work week in general. What was for sure though was that I’d be able to get a jump start on the workday, regardless.
I was wrong.
As soon as I got back from the punch clock and before I’d even gotten halfway to my regular dock, Dutcher was already chasing me down on his idiotic nerd-chariot. The whine of the Segway’s little rubber wheels on the concrete of the warehouse floor was like the siren of an approaching air-raid to me.
“Cosgrave! Your loads aren’t ready yet since you decided to come in early today,” Dutcher snapped from behind me. I stopped walking and took a deep breath to swallow my frustration before I turned on my heel to look him in the eye.
“Then why did you have me clock in early?”
“Because I need someone to finish the trailer on dock seven. It’s been sitting since Friday,” the basketball-shaped man said with an evil grin. I had to physically force the scowl off of my face. Dock seven was Matheson’s dock and I was getting really tired of being used to clean up after that idiot.
Why is it that Dutcher hasn’t fired him yet, anyway? I grumbled internally. Again, I questioned why I was even doing this. I hated this job and I knew there were other options out there. Hell, maybe other options I could make use of my Traveler abilities if I thought hard enough about it.
That reminded me that I still had the 270 SP left to spend from the weekend, I’d planned to use it on Enhance Self (Moderate) to boost my mental stats but had gotten distracted fixing the walls. Instead, I pushed the idea away as something to deal with later and focused on the current problem.
“Any idea why the weekend crew didn’t do it?” I gritted out and I swear I saw amused joy light up in Dutcher’s eyes.
“They were too busy dealing with other problems. But since you have time to show up for work early then you can help sort it out and get us caught back up! Hop to, Cosgrave. The others are going to be arriving for the start of the week shift soon and you don’t want to fall behind.”
I really wanted to just slap the smug look off of Dutcher’s pinched face. But I managed to hold on to my temper. I stomped to my dock to drop off my lunch-bag on my little desk before going back to roll up the shutter on dock seven and take a look at the mess I had to deal with.
The entire trailer reeked of stale weed and as soon as I opened it up, I was hit in the face with a blast of the rank odor. The trailer was less than half loaded and it looked like Matheson had just pulled most of the trolleys with their loads of groceries into the trailer and then closed it up to hide them when he took off on Friday.
Checking the stack of papers on top of one pile of totes, I brushed away dried donut crumbs to find there were no notes as to where he was on the load. The scanner next to the papers was equally useless. The machine used to check in the orders was dead. It had been left here all weekend and that had drained its charge.
Biting back profanity, I took the scanner back to the desk to swap it out and see if I could pull up the order on one that was actually usable.
It took me an hour and a half to get the trailer sorted out and loaded. The final half-hour I had Matheson ‘helping’.
The idiot spent more time out on smoke breaks than anything else.
What time Matheson did spend in the trailer was helping me by scanning in the items slowly while I arranged them in the trailer. The lightest amount of work he could possibly get away with.
As soon as the trailer was sorted, I rushed back to my dock and got busy on my actual workload before Dutcher could give me something else to do. This didn’t stop him from his usual petty heckling whenever he patrolled past on his Segway, intent on ensuring that none of his little peons stopped working for even a moment.
Normally, I’d have been able to stifle the irritation by working on my Shape-Shifting when I knew he wasn’t around and no one was watching. But after getting creative the previous weekend, turning my hands into claws wasn’t as neat as growing a prehensile tail or practicing with a limb that had a dozen extra joints in it. That kind of thing was something I wasn’t willing to risk in public.
I’d decided to skip my lunch and just eat while I worked to try and catch up enough to leave on time when the final straw hit the camel's back.
“Cosgrave!” Dutcher’s annoying voice grated on my nerves like a knife scraping down a taut wire.
“What do you need, Dutcher?” I asked, hefting another tote up onto the stack in the back of the truck.
I daydreamed for just a moment about how he would react if I turned and threw the tote to him to catch before settling the heavy plastic object into place.
“Your leave for next week is denied.”
The words made my muscles freeze as I parsed them, wondering if I’d just heard what I thought I’d heard.
“What?” I asked calmly, staring into the depths of the trailer in front of me. I had to fight not to grind my teeth at the tone of his voice as he answered.
“You heard me. Leave is a minimum two weeks notice. So your leave request for next week is canceled.”
“Bernice already approved the request.”
“And I canceled it. She shouldn’t have approved it without going through me.” The cruel satisfaction in Dutcher’s tone made me turn and he was grinning evilly at me. Wicked joy marked every flabby fold of his florid face.
“Bernice works with HR and scheduling. She’s not under you and doesn’t report to you. You don’t need to approve time off, Dutcher. That’s her job.” I reminded him and the man’s piggy eyes narrowed while his smirk turned into a scowl.
“Don’t challenge me, Cosgrave. You are working next week. Get used to the idea,” Dutcher snarled, his face going purple in anger.
The tone and action wasn’t intimidating on the fat man. I’d been snarled at by a wolf bigger than some Asian cars already this week and been bitten by one nearly the same size. Dutcher wasn’t scary and I decided abruptly I didn’t need to deal with this anymore.
“Fuck it, I quit,” I growled and stormed out of the trailer. Dutcher blinked in surprise at me, his face going a shade darker as the tiny wheels clicked and ground in his mind while he tried to process what I said.
“What was that, Cosgrave?” Dutcher hissed, as if he expected me to change my mind suddenly. I slammed my thermos back into the lunch-box and zipped the whole thing up before I answered him.
“I said, ‘I quit’,” I repeated the statement a bit louder before I carefully saved the spot in the loading of the trailer on my scanner and then logged out of it. I had begun lowering the shutter on the door when Dutcher finally caught up mentally and exploded.
“The fuck you mean you quit!? You can’t just quit like that!” roared the fat man and the clamor of the loading dock went silent as all eyes went to our end of the loading dock to observe the shitstorm in progress.
“I quit, Dutcher. I’m tired of putting up with your bullshit. You constantly use me as a stopgap to fill in for work that you don’t want to do or can’t bully someone else into doing. You give us trouble every time that anyone puts in for time off, those that you don’t find some way to bully into canceling it at least. You are trying to force me to give up emergency leave that was already approved as a power-play right now. You constantly insult employees and are a complete failure as a manager. I’m done with this and I’m done with you,” I growled, stepping up to tower over the pudgy man, my volume rising with every sentence.
Dutcher looked like he was a firecracker about to explode. His face was going darker and darker as his temper rose while I spoke. Several veins on his face throbbed in fury and I swear he was seconds from smoke coming pouring out of his ears.
However, when I stepped closer to deliver the last part of my statement to him and loomed over him, despite the fact he was on top of his scooter, he must have remembered our sheer difference in size.
Dutcher shrank back from me suddenly, nearly falling off his scooter. His face went pale and left a blotchy mess of purple and white behind. It made him look like he had blackberry yogurt on his face and his piggy eyes darted back and forth in concern as he looked for an escape.
Movement on his periphery must have caught his attention though and he realized everyone else on the dock was watching us. With that, Dutcher mustered what courage he had left and decided to stuff his foot even further down his throat to see if it came out of his ass.
“Fine! Then you are going to be forfeiting your PTO and last paycheck, Cosgrave! Insulting a member of management like this-” he began to bluster and I had to fight the urge to just pick him up by the throat and shake him like a dog shakes a rat. Thankfully, someone else intervened.
“No. He isn’t. Colorado is a ‘right to work’ state, Dutcher. Cosgrave doesn’t have to give notice and the company is required to pay him out his PTO. Stop talking out your ass and pull your head free so you can realize you just pushed your best loader to quit.” Hawthorne’s gritty voice echoed from nearby and I glanced over to see the older man striding up with his clipboard in one hand. His flyaway gray hair and paunch did not detract from the solid strength in his old shoulders as he glared at Dutcher.
“Thank you, Hawthorne. I wish the loaders had someone half as clever as you as a manager.” I said, forcing myself to step back away from Dutcher before the urge to throttle the fat man became overwhelming.
“I wish you did too. Would make my job easier by half. Go on and punch out, Cosgrave. I’ll make sure the report gets put in about this. Give HR a call tomorrow to make sure they are starting on the paperwork for your last check,” the manager of the pickers said, not taking his eyes off of Dutcher the entire time. Dutcher, for his part, was mouthing incoherently as he glared between Hawthorne and me.
Deciding that it was probably a good choice to get moving before Dutcher managed to get his mouth in gear and I did something I couldn’t walk back, I snatched up my lunch-box and left the building.
I spotted Geoff giving me a smartass salute from inside one of the aisles as I went by. The old picker was grinning at me. I nodded to him in return as I stopped at the punch clock to mark the time I left.
Emerging out into the midday sunlight outside the building, I wasn’t sure what to feel. I strode across the lot with a disconnected feeling haunting my mind and unlocked my truck. Settling into the seat of my battered pickup, I sighed and slumped down in the seat. Now that I was out of the building, the tension and anger was draining out of me and the realization of what I’d just done was finally sinking in.
I was now, officially, unemployed. The one positive thing I could think of right now was that I hadn’t tendered my resignation with my fist to the side of Dutcher’s fat head.
Small comforts.