Jeremy really enjoyed being blessed by Luck.

Earlier that year, when he had first received his lucky coin, he had wondered if he was truly all that lucky. That unfortunate event where he had lost more gold than his parents had ever seen in their collective lifetimes over a coin toss, was water under the bridge.

Jeremy had learned perspective in the world.

If something bad ever happened to Jeremy, it all was serving the greater purpose of making him even luckier later down the line.

One day, he had snuck out of the house to get drunk at a local tavern with a couple of his chums. He had been totally plastered when he got home and smashed a couple plates and vases as he carefully tried to tiptoe his way back to his room. Even later that night, a man had tried to sneak into his family’s home using a gift from Treachery.

The man had cut his foot open on the shards of ceramic that were left in Jeremy’s drunken wake. He then slipped in a puddle that had formed when Jeremy had knocked a vase of flowers over. Finally, he slammed his head into the corner of a table, which had been moved by Jeremy earlier.

He had been chewed out by his parents, but they could also feel the good fortune that his actions had brought upon their family. So, they were only a little mad at him for getting drunk with his friends.

He had achieved a state of oneness with the world that allowed him to ‘go with the flow.’ Nothing could phase him anymore, because he knew that it all would work out for him in the end.

The day that his parents finally kicked him out of the house hadn’t even fazed him.

Apparently, he had been ‘getting too old to live with his parents’ and he was ‘keeping himself from fulfilling a meaningful life’ by attaching himself to them.

His only plans in life at that point had been to take over his parents’ small clinic once they no longer wanted to run it. Had he thought through the fact that if his mother retired there would be no one to heal the people that came into the clinic? Not really, but everything always worked out for him.

The entire debacle of getting kicked out forced a slight shift in mindset for Jeremy. He was still going with the flow, but he needed to follow the currents to make sure he was going in the direction he wanted. Jeremy needed to become a metaphorical surfer of the waves of Fate.

He had thought long and hard about the things he truly wanted to achieve in life. And he came to a powerful and meaningful answer to his conundrum.

Jeremy wanted to become filthy rich, never have to work a day in his life, and have beautiful men and ladies clinging to him at all times.

Maybe his goals were a bit uninspired and not profound, but he really wanted them.

So, Jeremey decided to try and dedicate himself completely and fully to accomplishing them.

How does a fourteen-year-old boy get rich and gain a harem?

He goes to the casinos and wins, then keeps winning, then puts an extra helping of winning on top of that.

Jeremy walked into the upper-class casinos like he owned the place, he had a swagger that would put anyone to shame. This was his domain, a place where Luck ruled above all else, and he was Luck’s favorite human.

His swagger only faltered a little bit when both the bouncers in black sidle up next to him. Unfortunately, his swagger completely disappeared when they threw him out of the casino.

Lots of the little places didn’t care how old he looked; they were just as happy to let him waste his money on big bets that lined their pockets. But apparently, these big casinos had reputations to uphold, and if a child walked in, they would be losing face to the public.

He didn’t even look that young.

Okay maybe a little baby fat was clinging to his cheeks, and he hadn’t really hit his growth spurt yet. But he had a gift, by the gods they should let him in just like anyone else.

This left Jeremy in the unsatisfying position of going to the small gambling dens and winning small amounts of money.

The problem was that his gift refused to let him bet massive amounts of money in those little dens. He could feel the bad luck that would befall him if he bet more than chump change in any of those dens. It was because a seedier type of person frequented those places, and they would rob or kill him for his winnings if he walked away with too much of their gold.

So, he found himself at a proverbial wall, unable to move forward towards his goals.

Then the king’s representative arrived at his apartment.

Jeremy had been taking his meager winnings and learning how to finance a life in the city. It was quite difficult to know how much bread to buy and how much was necessary for his rent, he barely had any gold left for little treats these days.

A man wearing a tailored suit with fine golden embroidery was definitely not the sort of person who should be in front of his door, but Jeremy rolled with the punches.

He invited the man into his small living room and offered him some tea.

The man sipped on it before giving Jeremy the offer of a lifetime. He would be able to step into the shoes of the aristocracy, he would find entrance to the world of money and harems.

Jeremy would join the king’s court as a hidden weapon. Somehow the king had learned of Jeremy’s gift and was keen on having the luckiest man alive in his entourage. All Jeremy had to do was show up and let the money flow into his coffers.

Jeremy had never heard of such a good deal; he was in before the man even finished speaking.

Renoir was truly a master at using gifts in imaginative ways, beyond the scope they were made for. He had found a way to use Jeremy’s gift in an elegant way. Jeremy would never learn of the secret behind why he was such a good advisor, because it was morbid and one of King Renoir’s better kept secrets.

Renoir had special orders to execute Jeremy if he ever gave bad advice. Jeremy’s gift refused to let him be executed in such a stroke of bad luck. Therefore, he was always giving the most ideal advice possible, even if he wasn’t fully aware of why it was the ideal advice.

Jeremy would simply flip the coin that resided in his soul space any time the king asked him to pick between two options and leave the rest of it up to Luck and the big thinkers.

Jeremy enjoyed serving in the king’s personal retinue, he got to meet some exciting people. But his favorite person was King Renoir’s diviner, Phillip Pen.

Phillip Pen was born with the incredible ability to never write a lie. If he ever lied, the pen and paper used to write it would explode in his face. In some private conversations with Jeremy, he admitted that the item inside his soul space that represented this ability was a contract of sorts. It acted like a personal credo with written consequences for breaking the rules.

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But since he could never lie, he would write crazy predictions about the future and wait to see if the pen and paper used to write these predictions would explode. This allowed the king to have a vague but concrete sense for the future.

Jeremy quite enjoyed spending time with the older gentleman because he was a fount of knowledge about all things, and he was willing to indulge Jeremy’s fantasies.

Phillip Pen was Jeremy’s only friend in the castle, but there were two more people that he was vaguely familiar with because of their closeness to Phillip.

Because of the ‘occupational hazards’ of having his work explode in his face constantly, Phillip had two personal assistants that followed him around.

One was Vinny, a man from the outskirts of the continent who found that a gift from Healing could get him a job anywhere, even in the king’s court. He looked oafish, with a massive frame and a tiny pair of spectacles that clung to the tip of his nose. He clothed himself in fine silks that hung off him in a very unflattering way and gave off the appearance of a man with more money than taste.

The other, was a woman named Franny. She existed to indulge one of Phillip’s odder habits. He enjoyed keeping his facial hair and eyebrows in a fantastical loopy style, however this obviously clashed with the workplace environment he existed in. So, Franny stepped in with her gift from Hair to keep all his beautiful hair from being burnt off every day.

Jeremy chatted and learned from the other two, but never grew as close to them as he did with Phillip.

Now, Jeremy had been working for the king for a few months, he had been doing well enough that some of the fine-looking ladies in the court were starting to chat with him socially.

His parents had even invited him to come home for a few days so they could chat about life, and they could lecture him about how they had forced this good fortune on him, and to be appreciative of all their careful planning.

He had been working for the king so long that the prince had arrived back on the mainland. Apparently, he had gone on some massive expedition to the Frozen Continent to get some special relic for daddy Renoir, and now there were some festivities since he had arrived back home victorious.

Jeremy did enjoy a good party, but the prince had always rubbed him the wrong way. Not that Jeremy had ever met the prince or interacted with him in any meaningful way. He simply was Jeremy’s nemesis, in the same way that moles and fish are the greatest of enemies without ever seeing each other.

He had bigger fish to fry than going to some princely party. He had been following around Franny all afternoon because she was sneaking around the castle.

He wasn’t sure what was up, but there was something fishy in the air.

She stalked around the castle as if looking for something, or someone. And right behind her, Jeremy shuffled quietly and kept out of her eyeline, just to be sure she couldn’t tell he was snooping on her because he was bored.

He followed her into one of Prince David’s private rooms in the castle. Inside the room, he caught a glimpse of the prince’s personal politico, Rose. She had a gift to change the color of anything, she had been known to mesmerize entire audiences of rich folks by making wonderful moving pictures speak to them. But that was not where her power lay, she was the shrewdest, most political woman to have ever lived in this age, and she leveraged her considerable talents to give the prince the upper edge in every endeavor he set out on.

Now, why was Franny, the hair stylist, meeting with a member of the prince’s personal retinue?

Jeremy refused to close the distance more than necessary, so he was stuck with only whispers of their conversation in hushed tones.

But he clearly heard, “a tall, ill-proportioned idiot with a seemingly endless supply of money despite how idiotically he spends it.”

Was Jeremy interrupting the fabled ‘girl-talk’ where women talked about their ex-partners in great detail. Unconsciously, Jeremy licked his lips, then he wiped off his face in disgust, looking around himself to make sure that no one could see him and his foul acts.

He couldn’t hear much of the conversation, but there seemed to be a lot of mirth and evil giggling happening. It was very scary for a boy with such limited experience with other people.

As he heard footsteps, Jeremy ducked down behind a plant to make sure that Franny wouldn’t see him snooping.

Franny exited the room with her long red hair twirling around her finger. No, her finger was not twirling her hair, her hair was twirling the finger. It was entrancing to watch, but Jeremy had to stay quiet in his awe to make sure she didn’t notice him.

She briskly walked down the halls towards the banquet that was being held in the prince’s honor and Jeremy skulked behind her in the shadows.

Jeremy was not a skilled sleuth, and he would never know this, but his gift and his incomprehensible luck saved him time and time again in this escapade. If Franny heard the scuff of his shoes, a butler would conveniently be behind her at that exact moment. If Jeremy started getting too close, his shoelaces would come undone and he would have to stop to retie them; in doing so, he ended being the perfect sleuthing distance from Franny.

To an outside observer, it would’ve seemed a comedy of errors.

Franny left the castle, and she started doing some prowling of her own. She doubled back and hid behind a large set of boxes. She was waiting for someone to leave the castle, hoping to catch them unaware.

Jeremy was almost caught when she finally doubled back, but a well-timed piano removal service kept him from being spotted, and he was able to reposition to keep an eye on what she was doing.

He sat there as the evening turned into dusk, the chill started to seep into his bones and the sounds of merriment erupted from the castle grounds for most of the night.

Finally, as the night was started to edge its way back to day, and as Jeremy’s eyes started fluttering shut, a man exited the castle grounds.

He swayed back and forth, obviously a tad tipsy. His gait was even further disrupted by the massive chest of gold he held over his head. It was truly massive. So large that Jeremy had to wonder how strong this man was to be so effortlessly holding it above his head.

The man looked familiar to Jeremy, but he couldn’t quite place him. He had a fashionably long beard along with a ponytail of brown hair that draped over one shoulder.

The man seemed to stumble a bit on the cobblestones. That was when Franny made her move.

She stepped out into the open and splayed her arms, “Joy, do you remember me?”

The reaction in the vaguely familiar man was instantaneous. His eyes lit up and he reached into his jacket pocket, letting the massive chest fall to the ground.

A clinking sound echoed across the street as the chest exploded and coins fell everywhere, while at the same time a flash of metal went across the man’s head.

As Jeremy survived the scene closer, he noticed that one of the king’s nicer cutlery sets was scattered among the gold coins, and that the man was holding the steak knife in his hand. He had immediately cut off his fashionable beard and long ponytail. The cut was truly unflattering, and his previously charming look was now rather rancid looking.

The man chuckled and replied, “how could I ever forget my hair reaching down my throat?” His chuckle died immediately, “now what do you want, Franny?”

She smiled and started sauntering towards him, Jeremy still watching from his hidden viewpoint.

“I just want to get out of your hair.”

Then the fight began in earnest. The blade swept through the air, but the man was obviously distracted by something. If Jeremy looked close enough, he would notice that the remaining hairs on the man’s head fell off one by one. At one point he flinched over his groin area, which made Jeremy nearly cry out in sympathy.

Despite the massive advantage of the knife, the man had already lost. Franny caused him so much pain that she was able to effortlessly dodge between his feeble strikes and eventually rest a hand on his head.

Once her hand lay on his head, a carpet of multicolored hair erupted from his scalp. It was a beautiful mixture of magenta, white, and black. But each of those strands started waving around like tentacles of some ethereal creature.

They snaked around the man’s throat, and he instantly stopped moving; a single manly tear dropped down from his eye.

He put the knife on the ground and readdressed Franny, “so, what can I do for you?”

“Pick up the chest and refill it with all the gold that the king gave you.”

The man set about his task with fervor, probably assisted by the insistent tugging of his own hair. Jeremy felt for him, but he knew that his powers had no place in this situation, and that he needed to stay hidden, no matter what.

Once the chest was refilled, Franny smiled.

“Well, I am a woman of my word. I will get out of your hair, well, maybe your hair will get out of you.”

Her smile was a tad cruel, and Jeremy watched in utter horror as the hair grew and grew, before taking the shape of a man and pulling itself out of the man’s head.

Every hair on the poor man’s body had ripped itself off him and had created this hair clone.

The clone picked up the chest, and Franny sauntered off with her minion following right behind her.

“Always a pleasure doing business with you Joy.” She called out as she disappeared into the folds of the second layer.

Jeremy started sneaking up towards the man, hoping to at least help him get to the king’s castle again. But the vague familiarity was starting to go away, he could almost place where he had met the man, it was on the tip of his tongue.

Jeremy heard the man muttering to himself as he laid helplessly on the cobblestones.

“The second time she’s stolen a fortune of mine, the second gods damned time. Oh, she will get what’s coming to her eventually, I am going to kick her ass someday and it will be oh so rewarding.”

And finally, it all clicked together. This was the man who had stolen the fortune he had made the first day he had gotten his gift. The man that had altered the direction of his life forever.

On some primal instinct he kicked the man on the head, and he immediately passed out. Jeremy nodded to himself, thinking that made the two of them even. And walked back towards the castle to his personal quarters.

That man was bald and miserable, Jeremy thought that was good enough. Karma always came back to haunt everyone.