38. Fable

The speed at which the scowl appeared on Isaac’s face was honestly kind of impressive. “What the fuck are you doing here.”

Fable laughed, the sound coarse and grating. That laughter was easily in Isaac’s top 10 list of the most irritating sounds in existence, right underneath screeching tires and fire alarms.

Unlike Isaac, who was a poor hapless human who’d happened to make some really weird subway transfers, Fable was an Underside native. According to them, a similar situation had happened and they’d ended up in Chrowall City, making them also a Traveler, but in reverse.

(Or, as Fable liked to point out whenever they needed to leverage their seniority or just wanted to flex, Isaac was actually the reverse Traveler because they had done it first. They were, in fact, the original.)

Isaac still shuddered to think of the poor souls in Chrowall who’d had to interact with Fable and all their bullshit. He couldn’t imagine that they’d been normal or not made problems when they first stepped foot in the city, but he hadn’t heard anything about a weird annoying fucker who always wore sunglasses causing trouble, so he was going to assume that the threat of Lilith had kept Fable’s worst proclivities in check.

Isaac shut the door behind him and set down the new bubble straws before he could accidentally crush them in his hands. Fable still hadn’t answered, which was expected but no less irritating. He tapped his finger sharply against his arm. “Any day now.”

Fable just grinned lazily and reached into their pocket, rummaging around for much longer than necessary. Finally, just when Isaac was about to snap at them to hurry up, Fable pulled out a wad of bills and slapped them down onto the table. Some of the piping tips he’d left out shook from the impact, sliding dangerously close to the edge.

“Congratulations, it’s your paycheck,” Fable drawled. “Do I get a thank you?”

Isaac frowned down at the worn pieces of cash bound roughly together with an elastic. About a month after he’d first met Fable, the other Traveler had started occasionally popping up with his “salary” on orders from Lilith. He never knew where the fuck Fable got the money from (it was either illegally or with magic, which was also illegal), and they also weren’t particularly consistent with when they showed up, either.

He stared at the wad of bills, and Fable raised an eyebrow.

“What? It’s not like it’s gonna bite you.”

“I know,” Isaac muttered. He grabbed the cash and slid it into the closest drawer. He never quite knew what to feel when he got paid like this. On one hand, obviously he wouldn’t say no to money, especially given how many hours total that he spent in the Underside. On the other hand, he couldn’t shake the feeling of wrongness that rose every time he accepted his “salary.” Isaac shook the thoughts away, forcing himself to return his attention to the person in front of him.

“If you’re done, you can leave now,” he said. “I’ve got cakes to decorate.”

“Yeah, I saw.” They gestured vaguely at the fridge, and their scarf came dangerously close to knocking the piping tips off the table. “You missed a spot on the back of the cake, by the way.” Fable grinned. “Suuuper professional of you.”

A flash of irritation flared up. “Quit going through my stuff,” Isaac snapped. “And I’m covering that up later.”

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“Eh, if you say so.” Fable began twirling the end of their scarf around their finger. No matter how many times he saw it, Isaac could never get over how bright the red fabric was. He was pretty sure it would glow in the dark, with that absurd level of saturation.

“Are you gonna say whatever the fuck you’re not telling me or are you gonna leave?”

Fable snorted. “Chill out dude, I was getting to that.” They turned to face him with those giant sunglasses that somehow didn’t fall off their face. “Lilith’s holding a special event soon. A tournament.”

Isaac’s mind screeched to a halt. He ran over the sentence again, attempting to process it. “What?”

“You know, you take a bunch of people and you tell them to fight, and then they beat each other up and—“

“I know what a tournament is,” Isaac interrupted. “I mean how?” With the system in place, people literally could not fight. Were they planning on lining people up and comparing their stat sheets in mass? What was the point of that?

“Oh, they’re not actually fighting each other.” Fable snickered. “Even though that’d be fun. But nah, Lilith’s set up a bunch of activities, like races and shit, for people to run through and burn off stress or something.”

Isaac frowned. “That’s not a tournament.” Literally, the definition was wrong.

Fable shrugged. “Whatever dude, I’m just the messenger right now.” They pointed at Isaac with a gloved finger. “Anyway, since a bunch of people are gonna be competing, it’s a good chance to update stats and stuff if you see shit that doesn’t line up.”

Isaac raised an eyebrow. “We already know who’d win everything. You might as well just plug all their stat sheets into these races and announce the results. There’s no point in doing this.”

“Yeah, but that’s not fun. And remember, stress relief. I guarantee you the folks participating in this care more about getting to move around and be active and stuff.” The other Traveler shot Isaac a sharp grin. “And hey, maybe there’ll be some surprises. That’s why you’re gonna be there, to do all the stat updates and system maintenance.”

It didn’t sound like the worst of ideas when put like that (as low of a bar as that was), but Isaac couldn’t shake the feeling that, like many of Lilith’s other ideas, this was going to go terribly wrong. Any reasonable parts of the plan were drowned out by the overwhelming knowledge that this was probably a very bad idea. His eyes drifted over to the still tablet lying innocently on the counter, then back to Fable. Wait. He frowned.

“Are you participating?”

One of the privileges of being the other Traveler was that Fable didn’t have a stat sheet. Or, well, they technically did, but it was literally a bunch of empty boxes. Supposedly they were under oath by Lilith to not start any fights, and the system did still seem to apply to them. They just never bothered to have their stats tested, Isaac supposed.

Fable grinned, cocking their head to the side. “I’m the commentator,” they said.

Of course they were. After not seeing Fable for several blissful months, it figured that when they popped up again, it would be in something as high profile and unavoidable as this. Isaac sighed and turned to grab his kitchen scissors.

“Fine.” It wasn’t like he had much of a choice, and most of all he just wanted to finish decorating this cursed cake. “I’ll ask Lilith for details later. I’ve got shit to do right now.” He grabbed the bag of bubble straws and carefully began to cut it open. “Now hurry up and leave.”

“Fine fine,” Fable drawled as they stood painstakingly slowly. Their scarf, which had danced around his decorating supplies the whole time, finally knocked into some and sent a few piping tips and bags sliding to the ground. Isaac scowled at them as they walked towards the door at a glacial speed.

Just when they finally reached the exit however, they paused. Isaac frowned.

“What?”

Fable glanced back, grinning. “Oh, just thought I should return these before I head out.” One foot holding the door open, they stuck a hand into those impossibly deep pockets and pulled out a handful of crushed and twisted bubble straws, bent beyond use, which they proceeded to drop to the ground. The destroyed plastic rolled around and scattered all across the floor with a clatter.

Fable waved cheerily. “See ya,” they said before the door slammed shut behind them.