Ten minutes later we were sitting at the bar of El Zarape on the building’s first floor.
The woman, who introduced herself as Sam, was of a medium height and wiry build, with light brown skin and frizzy hair that looked to have recently been dyed red. She sat with one hand on the bar and the other gripping the bottle of wine like someone would take it away from her if she let them. She took long, deep pulls every few seconds.
“What is it?” I asked, looking at the object she had just taken out of her pocket and slapped on the bar.
Bryan turned to face us. He’d been walking the perimeter inside the restaurant, checking corners, and generally scouting out the space in your stereotypical retired navy seal or longtime beat-cop sort of way. He must have been either satisfied we were no longer in imminent danger or found whatever foreign object sat in front of us to be the bigger hazard, because as soon as his eyes fell upon it he abandoned his walk and strolled right up to it.
“Where did you get that?” he asked, his voice cold and hushed, all business.
Sam took another pull and gestured to the sky with her bottle. “God. I guess. Turns out he’s less the ‘feel the holes in my hands and feet’ and more the ‘MCU Loki’ type, based on his looks. Maybe his vibe. Eh, vibe check passed, I suppose. More than it has for the rest of this fucked up night.” She finished the bottle and threw it across the room where it crashed into a wall and shattered, taking a piece of comically commercial Tex-Mex wall art down with it.
“Fuck!” I yelped, startled. “Don’t do that, lady! There are monsters outside. Maybe inside too, for all we know, and they’re liable to hear and come suck out our insides right through our—”
“Is it activated?” Bryan asked.
Sam stifled a belch. “Yep.” She climbed down off the bar stool and started sauntering around the bar.
“Jesus,” Bryan whispered, bending down for a closer look at the thing on the bar.
It looked a bit like a Roomba, only smaller, like if they made a Roomba the size of a hockey puck. Or it looked like a hockey puck that might transform into a mech-soldier any moment.
“Uhhm…” I looked back and forth between them, confused. “Somebody want to tell me what’s going on?”
“This god of yours,” Bryan said. “Pointy ears? Garbed all in black?”
“That’s the one.” Sam reached up on her toes for the high shelf behind the bar and pulled down a bottle of golden tequila.
A hint of a smile twitched at Bryan’s lips. “Don’t worry about the noise, Quart. We’re quite safe. For the moment.” He stood up straight again and pointed at the robot puck. “We’ve got a dose of divine intervention.”
“Some kind of weapon?” I tapped the bar in front of me and, as if on instinct, Sam plunked an empty shot in front of me and sloshed tequila into it. She had bombed one already and filled a second for herself as well.
“Better. By far. Jesus,” he muttered, “what would happen if we got you into a beam with this thing.”
Sam slammed her empty shot back down and pointed at Bryan. “That’s exactly what he said. Verbale… berb… vum…”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Verbatum?”
“Exactly!”
I sipped my shot, judiciously, appreciating the rich, warm notes. This truly was some top-shelf liquor. Sam, meanwhile, was attempting to pour her third.
“Think you might want to slow down a bit there, champ?” I asked.
“You don’t control me.”
“That’s fine. But can you control yourself?”
“Fuckkin.” She tipped back the shot, some of it splashing across her cheek instead of finding its way into her mouth.
Bryan sighed. “Always a thing, isn’t there? He sends us a base builder but it comes with a drunk.”
“I,” Sam stated a little too loudly, “am not a drunk.” She stood stock-still for a long moment, hand on her shot-glass, eyes glued forward. Bryan and I both turned to look in the direction of her gaze, but it soon became apparent she was staring at absolutely nothing, however intently.
“Uh-huh,” Bryan said.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “did you call that thing a base builder? Because that sounds suspiciously amazing.”
He nodded to me. “Go ahead, Quart. You’re the chosen one in the room, for gods-know-what-reason. Touch it and see for yourself.”
Say what you will for my gratuitous profanity and lack of emotive range as a character, but you didn’t have to invite me twice to lay my hand on an awesome magical artifact. I set my open palm on the puck and was not disappointed with the information that populated across my vision.
Base Building Node: Level 3
Activate this node within an enclosed space to transform that space into a safe zone. Enemy combatants below level 30 will be unable to detect or enter this space. Curses and poisons below level 3 will be negated within this space. +10% HP, SP, and StP regen rates for all allies within this space.
Can be combined with up to four other Level 3 or lower base building nodes to increase the overall safe-zone level by 1 per node.
Can be upgraded up to Level 10 with adequate resources.
Add-ons available for additional resources.
To close safe zone, deactivate node. Can be deactivated and reactivated at cost of durability. Durability can be restored with adequate resources.
Level: 3
Status: Active
Limit: 300,000 cubic feet
Durability: 98%
“That’s…” I blinked, aware my eyes were dry from having been held wide open for too long in wonder. “That’s incredible,” I said, my voice hushed.
Bryan took the Tequila bottle away from Sam. “That’ll be quite enough of that,” he said, then turned to me. “After everything else that’s happened tonight, this is the thing that gets through? I mean, you’re right, of course; it is incredible. But are you suggesting everything else so far has been credible?”
I shook my head. “It’s not that. It’s… the beams. I’m already so OP’d it’s ridiculous, right? I mean we’re only one night into this thing and I’m basically already Jason Asano, but in the world of Defiance of the Fall, with pacing a bit more like Dungeon Crawler Carl. Huh, jeez. You know, I’d been trying to write a LitRPG of my own, but I just couldn’t get the beginning right. If I could have just written everything that’s happened so far in the past eight hours, I’d have a guaranteed commercial success on my hands, wouldn’t I? Unless, of course, nobody cared how cleverly it blended all the most popular tropes because it didn’t veil them enough to fool the reader into thinking they’d stumbled onto something new, and the vast majority of the readership had taken, as edge-lords, to calling crap on anything relying too much on the tried-and-true as derivative, favoring in their opinion only fresh, new ideas, while actually secretly clinging to the next big release in all of their favorite 3- and 4-year old series. But that… probably wouldn’t happen, right? I’d probably have a bestseller?”
Sam’s brow had grown increasingly furrowed as I spoke. She turned now to Bryan and, with a gentle slur to her words, said, “the fuck is he talking about, Brad?”
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“It’s Bryan,” he corrected.
“Oh.” She nodded sagely, as if that explained everything.
“We need to throw me into another beam.”
“I agree,” Bryan said, “but there’ll be a lull now. Beams will only penetrate the veil after dark, and only for the first seven nights. That’s how long we have to cram you as full of magical powers as we can, but there’s another problem.”
“My foundations,” I said.
He nodded. “Just so. If we just keep ‘Jason Asano’ing’ you without stopping for a little consolidation, you’re going to walk out of here like a toddler holding a shotgun. Massive cosmic power, no idea how to use it, and no way to deal with the fallout.”
“I’m on board.” I gestured with my shot-glass to Sam. “Is she the one we came to meet?”
“No,” Bryan said with a frown, “she isn’t. Or, she wasn’t. Clearly he placed her in our path, however.”
Sam’s gaze alternated between the Tequila bottle still in Bryan’s hand and the half-full shot-glass in mine, as if she were considering making a grab for either or both.
“And,” Bryan went on, “I’m not the sort to look a gift horse in the mouth. So, Sam. In addition to this absolutely princely gift, and a failing liver, what else do you bring to the table? Why did he send you?”
Something about his words seemed to pull her out of her stupor somewhat. Her eyes cleared and she squinted, clearing her throat, before she turned to face first him, then me.
“Please,” she said. “I have to find them. You have to help me.”
“Find who?” he asked, his voice suddenly as weary as if he’d just walked off a three-year tour. Not for the first time, I wondered how much time he’d spent fighting monsters and gaining levels in his previous timelines.
“My sisters,” she said.
I turned to Bryan. His eyes were sad and distant. How many connections had he made and lost? How many people had he saved in past lives, only for it all to end and start over?
How many had he failed to save?
One time when I was a kid I’d been playing at the park near my house when I’d found a baby rabbit. I mean, baby. I was a kid and my hands were small, right? This little guy fit right in one of them, entirely. He was so small and alone, and even with my innocent eyes I could see that he was too small and alone, too vulnerable, to be left outside in the fresh-mowed grass beneath the open sky. I didn’t know the full repertoire of dangers that waited to prey upon him but I understood instinctually that his situation was bad, and I had to help him.
So I scooped him up in my hands and carried him home, cradling him to my chest and whispering to calm him the whole way. His small body, so very light, trembled. I still remember thinking, how is he so light and still alive? How is he so… fragile?
I didn’t tell my parents about him. I didn’t tell anybody. First it was just the fear that they wouldn’t let me keep him, and obviously I had to keep him; he was my responsibility now. Then it was more than that. It was the secret world that belonged to no one but me, the world where I had a rabbit.
I took him out to the garage, found a large cardboard box, and set him down inside. I pulled some long grass and piled it up in a corner and gave him a bowl of water. I promised him I’d find some carrots. And I went inside and went to bed.
Bryan snapped his fingers in my face.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey. Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“Thinking about the rabbit. You were thinking about the rabbit, right?”
I backed up ever so slightly, as if affronted. “What rabbit?”
“Oh my god, so lame,” he said under his breath.
“I’ve told you about the rabbit?”
“Twice.”
“Hey!” Sam raised her voice. “Three people in the room, boys. If you’re not going to let me drink, at least stop pretending I’m not here.”
I quirked an eyebrow at her. “Do you really want to keep drinking right now?”
She straightened again. “That depends. Will you help me find my sisters?”
Bryan ran a hand over his face. “We can’t afford to commit our time, or risk our lives, superfluously. Anyway,” he shrugged, the leather of his bomber jacket crinkling a bit, “I know this is an extraordinary claim, but fucking bloody fuck, it’s an extraordinary time. We’re stuck in a time loop until I get this bugger to save the fucking world. Odds over evens we fail and this all just starts over again. Your sisters will be back. You’ll have another chance to save them. And another. Probably ten more after that. But my bigger point is this.” He set the tequila bottle down, and for just a moment, Sam fixated on it. “Lady, you just aren’t that important. I’m sorry to put it bluntly.”
“Not important.” She glared at him a moment. Then she swept her arm out like a snake and slapped the tequila bottle away, sending it careening across the room to break against another wall.
“Jesus, will you stop that?” I jumped. “That was some good shit, too,” I added beneath my breath.
“Not important?” She leaned forward across the bar, eyes intense. “I’m the most important person on the planet to your little mission. Elf-man grabbed me, remember? Gave me a message. More than a message. Pumped me up full of information, fed it right into my brain, like plugging in a flash drive. I know shit you only wish you knew. Like the fact, according to him, that this is very likely the last time he’ll be able to restart the clock on this weird little experiment. You know what that means? Final act, Romeo. Curtain call. Lights down. The grand finale.”
Bryan gave her an assessing look. “What else did he tell you? What else did he show you?”
Sam’s eyes lost their focus for a moment, and I felt a wave of gentle pressure exude from her body out into the space, pressing against my senses like a dark blanket.
“You’re a cultivator.” It wasn’t a question. Bryan just said it. “Of course.” Then he turned to me, and the lightbulb went off.
“Ohhh, are you going to train me up, Sam?”
“I’m going to trade up for a pair of better listeners if the two of you don’t get your shit together. I’m a bottle of rosé and three shots of Mijenta in and even I’m tracking the narrative better than you, so listen: I. Want. My. Sisters. I need your help. Help me, I’ll help you. Easy deal. Don’t help me? I’m going without you. And I’m taking the magic sausage patty there.” She indicated the base building node.
“The magic sau—” I began, but Bryan interrupted.
“Fine. But we wait until nightfall.”
Sam opened her mouth to protest, but Bryan held up a hand.
“We’ll help you. We’ll go out all together at dusk to hit the nearest beam, which isn’t just crucial for our mission—saving the world, by the way, in case you missed that part—but will only help you by making us stronger so we’re more likely to succeed in helping you. While we’re out we’ll look for them.”
“And what the hell are we supposed to do in the meantime?” she asked, throwing her hands up. “Take a nap?”
“Honestly?” Bryan said, “Yes. We should rest. And then we should train. He clearly sent you to train Quart here in the one arena with which I, and Quart’s past iterations, have no experience.”
“Cultivating Cosmic Qi,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “I am so fucking here for this.” I turned to Bryan. “I don’t get something though. I thought the whole reason we came to this place was to meet someone else you knew would be here. Where are they?”
Bryan’s frown deepened. “I don’t know. Something’s different, I think. You told me you met them here your first night, but something has changed.”
“Butterfly effect, eh?”
“That’s probably right. I hope she still makes it our way; it would be a shame if our actions so far have already gunked things up so bad we miss out on making this connection. In two of the past three timelines the woman you would have met here would have gone on to round out our party and prove a massive power for humanity.”
Sam made a noise of exasperation. “I don’t like this. I want to get out and look for my sisters. Now.”
“They can wait,” Bryan said.
“They have names, you cocksucker.” She pounded a fist on the bar again, firm and resolute. “Sherry. Sashandra. They are human fucking beings, they are my sisters, and they are out there right now facing god knows what—”
“I’m sorry,” Bryan said, holding up a hand. His voice and demeanor had completely transformed. “Did you say Sashandra? Not Sashandra White?”
Sam nodded. “Yes, Brad. Sashandra White. My baby sister. The fuck you know about her? I’m warning you right now, old man, you are way too old to know anything about—”
Bryan looked at me with a twinkle in his eye. “That clever elf.”
“That’s her, then?” I asked.
He nodded.
“—and another thing. I don’t know why the hell you two basement-bedroom looking boys are out here in the downtown instead of lurking in your mama’s house playing Tears of the Kingdom, but if you think you can just crawl up here and—”
“Quart, sleep. I’ll take first watch. We’ll rotate. When you wake, train.”
I nodded at Sam, who was still composing her diatribe. “With Sam?”
He shrugged. “If she’s done fighting the war in her mind, sure. Learn how to cultivate. Have fun, kids. But for now, try to get some rest.”
“—judging me for taking a little liquor while it’s the—by the way, actual end of the fucking world—apocalypse outside, and then you have the nerve to just… to just…” She trailed off as Bryan spun and walked away to sit at a booth looking out onto the street. I assumed from the base building node’s description we were about as safe as we could possibly be, and that no one and nothing outside would see him or us through the window, but I applauded his diligence in wanting to keep a watch all the same and I assumed he knew best, being the literal veteran.
And anyway, the saferoom only protected us from beings level 30 and below.
I turned to Sam. “So,” I said, “you cultivate, eh? You pick that yourself?”
She nodded absently, still looking after Bryan with a vague hint of surprise on her face, as if she had thought he’d been listening intently before he turned and left. “Yeah, I did.”
“Why? I mean, if you don’t mind my asking.”
She shrugged. “Qi. I recognized the word and it hooked my interest.”
“Oh? You a big Wuxia or Xanxia fan?”
“What? No, I don’t think so. Not sure what those are. I’m a, uh, yoga instructor. Or I was. Before…” She gestured vaguely at the liquor shelves and something clicked for me.
“Ah. I see.” Then I chortled. “Yoga Sam. A yoga teacher is going to be my cultivation guru.”
She frowned. “You could do worse, gamer trash.”
“Probably. But I’m not doing anything else until I sleep. Ooo, and eat. You hungry?”
She winced. “Starved. This is a restaurant but we don’t have any power to fire up the grills.”
“No worries. I carry a few things on hand. If you don’t mind a little light carb-loading, anyway.”
You Have Activated the Skill: Peanut Butter Jelly Time!
You Have Activated the Skill: Peanut Butter Jelly Time!
A folded-over peanut butter and jelly sandwich on soft, fluffy wonderbread appeared in each of my hands, and I gave one to Sam. She raised an eyebrow but bit into hers just as I sampled my own.
Buff: Sated; +2 Constitution, +2 Strength, +2 Intelligence for 2 hours.
“Oh man,” I moaned, “that’s good shit. Alright, it’s lights out for me for a bit. I recommend you try the same. I’ll see you in a few hours, I expect. Nice to meet you Sam.” I finished my sandwich and climbed into a long booth to lie down.
You have activated skill: Polysynthetic Fall!
With peanut butter on my face, tequila in my stomach, and vast magical powers in my spirit, I fell asleep.