(Strive 2:1)

Ding!

The second floor of the Tower Strive was not what I had expected. In my head, I’d had images of something more grandiose, more exotic, and more… pleasant-smelling.

El and I stepped out of the elevator into a narrow alley, the floors covered with trash and the walls with graffiti. Rickety steel scaffolding blocked out the sky, dripping slightly as if from a recent rainstorm. That liquid mingled with piles of garbage to create suspicious brown puddles on the ground.

El lurched over to the wall and began to make retching noises.

“Damn,” I said. “I would’ve thought this was a raccoon’s bread and butter.”

“No,” El panted. “That fucking Fernet. Everything… spinning.”

I leaned down to pat her on the back. “Why don’t you stay here for a bit while I look ahead?”

El weakly nodded and then retched again. It sounded less dry this time, and I backed away to avoid the splash zone.

There was a fluorescent glow and harsh electric buzz from the end of the alley. It came from one of those Japanese style vending machines, with the products displayed in neat brightly-lit rows. There were only five items for sale, arranged in a cross formation.

The top one looked like a protein bar, with a green and white wrapper that had a mint leaf on it. The leaf had a cute anime face, with a dialog bubble coming out of its mouth that proclaimed: “Oh! So Fresh!”

The middle row held three individually wrapped hard candies, the kind they’d give to kids at a doctor’s office. Each was a different color: red, green, and blue.

At the bottom, there was a cyan-colored soda labeled “Super Bubbles!” with a cartoon image of a surfing shark on it.

Next to the snacks were an unmarked slot and a cross-shaped keypad. Simple enough, but I didn’t have any cash on me, certainly no coins.

Besides the vending machine, the path was a dead end, so I walked past where El was busy emptying her stomach, back to the elevator we’d arrived from.

As Hilbert had promised, there was no down button.

My throat tightened. It was one thing to be reincarnated and learn that the afterlife existed and you had to take a placement test and then climb a magical tower. That was all cerebral, big-picture shit. It hardly seemed real. But starving to death trapped in a filthy back alley was something very concrete. My lizard brain grokked that, and it wasn’t happy about it.

To give myself something to do, I examined the graffiti on the walls. Mostly it looked like spray-painted tags in made-up languages, or pictures of monsters. Completely indecipherable. Finally, though, after minutes of searching, I found something clear. An up arrow.

I tilted my head back and spied a gap in the scaffolding, big enough for me to wiggle through. I jumped and caught the edge with my hands, but it was slick with an unknown substance and I lost my grip. Gross. One more try in a different position, a brief struggle, and I was up, standing inside the scaffolding.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

A few electric lanterns in the corner lit the ramshackle space. There was a ramp to a higher level in one corner and not much else, other than the smell which was somehow even worse here. Against my instincts, I followed my nose to what looked like an overstuffed garbage bin with something leaking out of it. Nasty but harmless.

Then the leak raised itself off the ground and lurched toward me. Here it is, I thought, in its natural habitat. What is it with me and garbage cans lately?

The slime was a congealed brownish mass, with random trash floating within its body. It moved slowly, its own stickiness seeming to hamper its movements.

With my right hand, I signed R-T for Retrieve Item, and my plunger appeared in my hand with a flash of light. I stuck the slime with the business end, then slammed it against a flat piece of plywood that comprised the wall. The goopy part deflated and stopped moving.

Well, that was easy.

There was no notification that I’d gained experience points or items or anything, which was a bit of a bummer. In fact, my display didn't acknowledge the kill at all.

I inspected the dead slime’s contents and spied a dull glint within the ooze. I almost reached in to grab it before I remembered the burnt-off patch of skin on my ass and grimaced.

Using my trusty plunger, I fished around inside the goop until the round token came free. It bounced on the scaffolding once with a bright metallic clink… and fell between the floorboards.

“Ow!” El Bandito’s voice floated up. “Who’s throwing coins?”

“Sorry. You feeling any better?”

“A bit.”

“In that case, could you do something for me? Put that in the vending machine? Any item, just see if it fits.”

There was the sound of grumbling and then a long pause. I thought I heard a far-off ch-chunk of an item being dispensed. After another pause, El appeared below the gap of the scaffolding, using both hands to hold an opened soda can.

“Pretty good,” she said, and burped.

“You drank it already?”

El chugged the rest of the can and tossed it on top of an existing pile of litter. “That’ll teach you to drop loose change on me.”

I put a palm against my face. “Well, did anything unusual happen? Do you feel anything?”

“Hmm.” The raccoon thought for a minute. “Feel hydrated.”

“Great,” I said. “Thanks for the report.”

There was nothing else of note on that floor of the scaffolding, so I shimmied up the makeshift ramp.

On the next level, I found a slime gorging itself on a takeout container. It didn’t notice me, and I quickly drew my pellet gun and shot it. That worked even better than the plunger, but it felt like a bit of a waste of my limited ammo.

This slime held a coin as well, and I brought it down myself, jumping down from the scaffolding onto the ground.

“What’s the matter?” El trundled alongside me. “Don’t trust me to run your errands?”

“Frankly, no,” I said, approaching the vending machine. “I’m zero for one on that right now.”

The soda had been the bottom item, and there were four other items. I slid the coin in the slot with a satisfying clink. The five buttons all lit up, and I hit the center one at random. El tried to swipe the small wrapped candy as it clattered down, but I picked it up before she could.

“Looks suspicious,” she said. “You should give it to me for taste-testing.”

“I’ll risk it.” I popped the candy into my mouth. It was intensely sour, and I almost spit it out. But I held it in, gritting my teeth, and was rewarded with a surge of energy that jolted my body like electricity as my optical display came alive.