2. A Man and His Heelys

“Take off the Heelys.”

The words echoed around the small alleyway that two figures conversed in, bouncing along worn brick walls lining the right half of the alley and modern reinforced concrete on the other. This alley was one of many similarly mismatched nooks and crannies located inside Solonell City, one of the eight realms of the Underside.

The Heelys wearing person in question was a tall middle aged man, nearly 7 feet in height, who possessed a thick beard and a black eyepatch covering his left eye. These two things in tandem made it difficult for anyone to see his facial expressions, which in turn had given him a stern reputation over the years among the people who didn’t know that he’d gotten his eye injury from walking straight into a building corner. Clothing wise, the man wore a full suit of worn, dull silver armor that was littered with scratches and obscured his body from view, adding to his already imposing stature.

That description wasn’t entirely accurate, however. There was one place the man’s armor didn’t cover, and that happened to be his feet, where a set of unassuming wheeled sneakers sat innocuously, a blast from the early 2000s past that immediately put Isaac in a bad mood when he saw them.

Isaac, the Heelys accuser, was a young man in his twenties. He wasn’t short per say, though he certainly looked like it when standing next to the taller man. His brown hair was cropped unevenly and just messy enough that it might look purposeful if someone was being extremely generous. He had tan skin, currently narrowed brown eyes, and a slight forward head posture as was common for youths of his generation. In his hands, he held a small rectangular tablet, which in Solonell City was better known to the residents as a “funny book.”

“Take off your wheel shoes,” he corrected without pausing. He tapped his finger impatiently against the tablet screen.

The man, Igor, frowned, or at least Isaac thought he did. It really was difficult to tell with that beard.

With all the contemplative grace of an Arthurian warrior about to be knighted at the end of his quest, Igor kneeled down and carefully unlaced the shoes that absolutely, definitely were not Heelys. Isaac stared at the now removed shoes, vaguely wondering when the last time he’d seen them was. Should he expect to find the next person on his list wearing Silly Bandz? He wasn’t sure if that would be better or worse.

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“Where the hell did you even get those?”

“Mortimer was selling them,” Igor replied. “I thought they could make me faster.” He stared at the Heelys sadly. “I quite like them.”

Mortimer was another resident of Solonell City and probably the closest thing to a friend that Isaac had in the Underside. That was a continuously fluctuating position, however, and this incident was another case study in why the man had not yet solidified his position on Isaac’s internal list of tolerable people. He resolved to confront Mortimer later, once he was finished with work, and ask the man what had possessed him to invent the Underside equivalent of Heelys.

In the meantime, he released a long sigh, rubbed his forehead, and turned to the tablet, where Igor’s stat sheet was already pulled up. He aggressively punched the button to add a new item to the man’s inventory and named it [WHEEL SHOES]. He was unsurprised to find that it automatically came with stats attached to it, having already been added to the general item list at some point between then and his last visit. Really the most disappointing part was that the shoes provided a legitimate speed boost when they were equipped.

He pointed outside the alley, down the crooked winding street, at a distant brick wall. It was a nice brick wall. The right shade of red, worn enough to not look fake, but also not so cracked to be concerning. Out of all the brick walls that existed in the Underside, it was certainly one of the better ones.

“Okay, you know the drill. Just run there and back.”

Igor nodded, and on Isaac’s count, he sprinted towards the wall while Isaac watched idly, a stopwatch on his tablet screen counting the seconds. It was a nifty gadget, automatically beginning calculations once Igor reached his designated finish line. If not for it, Isaac might hate his job even more than he already did.

Igor returned to the alleyway just as the tablet made its last adjustments, his armor clanking terribly with each step. Isaac held up the results once they popped up on the screen.

NAME: IGOR

SPECIES: HUMAN

LOCATION: SOLONELL CITY, SILVER LINE

[CLICK TO EXPAND DETAILS]

ATTACK: 10

SPEED: 5

SKILL: 9

DEFENSE: 11

INSTINCT: 5

INTELLIGENCE: 5

STAMINA: 11

CALCULATED LEVEL: 7

Igor stared at the flashing text and numbers, nodding solemnly once he’d finished reading them. “I see,” he said gravely. “The stats are the same.”

Isaac rolled his eyes and closed out of the sheet. “Yeah, they usually are,” he muttered.