It took maybe forty minutes or so to get down to the mall. Usually it was around thirty, at least when Harriet lugged him up there, but the traffic had been surprisingly clogged for a weekday and Ed swore he’d heard the driver sort of snort in frustration a couple times after a few particularly long honks of his horn at a large blue minivan.
That said, the good news about all this was that he’d been able to take the time to look over his status sheet. It was still as barebones as ever. Health, mana, and stamina; still no other stats in sight but he had apparently gotten a new skill. It was under the little skills tab below his name and was neatly labeled with a nice little ‘warp resistance’ (mental) level 0: 0.2%
His eyes had somewhat widened at the implications of that. He’d written it off to Kim as something as close to the truth as he could make it.
“Feels like some magical shit just happened in my head. Like that presence sense thing.”
“Is that what you’d been staring about at Ms. Addison’s?”
“Uh, yeah.”
Kim hadn’t looked like she completely believed him but ended up letting him off with yet another suspicious look and a short, “Alright.”
That was sort of how the rest of the ride went as well. Ed stuck to the truth for as much as he possibly could as he answered her questions until it got to the point that he just straight up told her that yeah, he was withholding something probably important but with potential magical mind mages around he seriously believed it was safest to simply not know and that he probably wasn’t going to budge on the matter. He did end up promising he’d tell her absolutely everything after the meetup though. Ed figured it probably wouldn’t hurt considering he was either going to find out the exact limits of this crazy shadow world, or die some horrible death.
As he got out of the cab the driver grabbed his shoulder. At first Ed had almost panicked thinking it was some sort of an attack and that the driver’d been thralled all along but when he let go a second later with a small wink Ed’s stomach fell for a very different sort of reason.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Kid, don’t lie to your girlfriend. Even if it’s just some game, that’s a good way to lose err.”
Ed was left speechless for a couple seconds as the driver drove away. He could vaguely hear Kim wheeze-laughing like some sort of donkey from behind him. Right, of course. Because they were a guy and a girl going out together from a school when it wasn’t even out yet. Of course that’s what he would think.
“Dude, that guy’s a fucking riot!”
“Yes.” Ed said as they crossed the double sliding doors to the mall. “He is a funny man. We should get him on a show.”
“What, like the two of us, a camcorder and a karaoke booth?” Kim started wheezing again.
“Precisely, I’ve even got a wheelchair up in my attic to use as a trolley. Extremely professional. Major studios would be falling over themselves for this.”
“Hey hey. Look at that.” She pointed to a hair salon with a couple wigs out front. I bet he’d look pretty sick in blonde, he was even rocking that little goatee thing. It’d be perfect!”
Ed paused, that was actually a pretty good idea. He’d been planning on just buying a hat before, but a wig sounded much better. Especially since they were indoors.
But before he could mention it to Kim he was stopped by the sight of a tall man in a trench coat walking past. Since they’d taken the escalator to see the wigs he was down on the floor below them and seemed to be looking at the large floor map. He was followed by a small blonde girl in a nun's habit lugging a long thin case that had to be twice the length of her body.
Which was weird enough as is, but what had really caught his eye was the large cross shaped… well, it looked like the sort of cross they’d put up at a cathedral or something. It was strapped across his back and Ed was having a hard time believing he hadn’t been stopped by security yet. He was also wearing sunglasses, and a bowler hat of all things. Yes, they were still indoors, the mall didn’t even have any glassless atriums.
“Hey.” Ed nudged Kim. “You see that?”
“Woah!” She exclaimed, ducking below the rail.
Ed cursed. “No, get up. Just act natural.”
“Right right.”