“I probably shouldn’t say. That’s more of a secret for Ichibad to tell, but there was one more thing I wanted to discuss with you,” Lucille admitted. She looked to Ichibad, but the Cat Sith player seemed content to let her dig out of the hole alone.

“Ichibad isn’t saying you can’t tell me,” Jay pointed out. “And I’m not sure jumping straight to keeping secrets is the right way to ask for trust.”

Lucille narrowed her eyes at Jay; he couldn’t imagine what was going through her head. “It seems obvious there are things you are keeping back, too. I don’t think that makes you untrustworthy. But… I’ll answer your question. There might be some things I can’t say yet—for various reasons—but I’ll prove we can still work together.”

Lucille waited for Jay to give some sort of response, but he just stared. He didn’t know much about formal negotiation, but he knew one thing about human nature: people tended to fill silences.

“Ichibad has an ability,” Lucille said, though she seemed strangely awkward about the conversation topic. “He can turn it off and on. When the ability is on, at least as far as Tumultua knows, we’ve simply logged out of the game.”

“Can they track his character?” Jay asked, very curious about the origins of the ability. He had his own strange ability, and the source of it was unique.

Jay hadn’t explained the details of Synthesization or the ability he gained using it to his party members. He was suddenly glad for that, although he wasn’t sure about the long-term ramifications of tangentially revealing it to Lucille and the Demon players.

While Jay was in his own head, he watched some kind of attempt at silent communication pass between Lucille and Ichibad. As Jay’s question hung in the air, they were shooting each other looks. Finally, Ichibad was the one to answer the question.

“Tumult cannot track me,” Ichibad said. “My character information is not stored on their main server. With a little luck, Lester Green won’t find me notable enough to discuss with his brother. Lucille was made a lieutenant for her skills in the game. I was made a lieutenant for my ability to create tactical plans and effective logistics.”

“You do realize,” Jay said plainly, “Even if I set aside all my questions about where you developed skills in tactical planning, it doesn’t explain why he chose you two. Why didn’t he just stuff a bunch of people he knows into the leadership?”

“To maintain the integrity of their game, Tumultua needs to be careful how much they intervene,” Ichibad explained. “They couldn’t just load up a bunch of family members into a guild. It would eventually draw attention. If that came out, some of their contracts would be in jeopardy, and the public outlook would be terrible.”

At the end of his words, Ichibad used the small puppet to complete the destruction of the bigger puppet. The little puppet—now freed from the grasp of the other—fell lifelessly to the ground.

Jay sighed.

“Out of respect for our blossoming friendship,” he paused to look at Lucille and smile weakly at his word choice, “I’ll leave it there for now. I’m very interested in how and why you worked your way into the guild leadership, even though you seem to be working together. I hope we can share more once we know how far we can trust each other.”

Jay left unspoken the thoughts in his own mind. To him, one of the most important things was verifying the information they gave him about Lester. If their information was good, he might be willing to risk sharing more. For now, he figured it was better to keep his own cards in his hand.

“Once a few more things fall into place, I am sure we will speak again,” Ichibad agreed. He picked up the small puppet, returned it to his inventory, and left the other on the ground. “I am already in the process of arranging a gift of sorts. Something for you.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Jay said, inclining his head slightly. The mention of Ichibad’s gift was vague. He wasn’t sure what he had done to earn it—but he wasn’t going to argue with a present, either.

“One more thing, before I let Lucille share her last piece of information,” Ichibad said, putting his cat paw onto Jay’s shoulder, “and this is important. Do not, under any circumstances, share information about the Monster Hunter class with Tumult Corp. until we speak more about it. I’m telling, instead of asking, because this is vital. Anything you can contractually avoid discussing, do so.”

With that, the Cat Sith took a step back and found a tree to lean coolly against. He did cut an impressive figure between his gear and his outlandish appearance.

Jay watched Ichibad move and was struck with a realization. Ichibad’s avatar didn’t look remotely Elvish. At first, Jay had simply assumed—since classes were so versatile—that it was the nature of his class. The oddity stood out in stark contrast after the revelation of Ichibad’s special ability.

“Why don’t you look like an Elf?” Jay blurted out.

With a grin, Ichibad simply said, “Soon.” After he spoke, the player quickly faded from view. He had used some kind of stealth ability again, but Jay could no longer see through it. At least, not at whatever distance the Cat Sith currently watched nearby. Jay was confident he was still around to listen.

Jay turned back to Lucille, his mood sinking rapidly. The nature of Ichibad’s avatar was going to be stuck in his head. He was firmly convinced that it was essential, and his opportunity was gone, at least for now. He hoped the player would ultimately share since Lucille and Ichibad seemed to want details on the Monster Hunter class. The anticipation was going to linger in the back of Jay’s mind.

“I don’t suppose I can convince you to explain why Ichibad has a cat avatar, huh?” Jay asked sharply, including a little more venom than he had intended. Though asking nicely would have likely yielded better outcomes, he wasn’t feeling friendly.

“That’s really more of his thing,” Lucille said. “But I can share that it helps him do his job. Just make sure you don’t let Ichibad steal your soul.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“What?” Jay asked, absolutely perplexed at the random inclusion.

“It’s part of the legend of Cat Sith,” Lucille said. When that didn’t spark any recognition in Jay, she added, “Never mind.”

“I don’t suppose you can explain how you know about my contract, how you know the Monster Hunter class is important, or how you know about Taylor Lynn’s new job?” Jay asked.

“You picked up on that, huh? I was hoping I could get away with shoving it in between all the other stuff.” Lucille deflected. “I know this isn’t going to improve your opinion of me, but I can’t say yet. As in, I’m not allowed. The moment I can, I’ll come find you. I know it’s getting overshadowed right now, but I had a lot of fun today.”

“Well,” Jay transitioned. He was completely done with the conversation, so he pushed forward to end it. “What was the other thing?”

Lucille swallowed hard, sensing the shift in tone. He could see the movement in her throat, even though the game didn’t require breathing or non-verbal pauses.

“Your lawyer is in league with Mr. Georges. They’ve been friends since law school. If you search for Ted Inges on the internet, you’ll find the law school. Look up the mock trial team, and you’ll find tons of imagery of them together. You were played.” As an afterthought, Lucille added, “Sorry.”

As she spoke, Jay’s mood deteriorated further. Jay didn’t ask any questions about how Lucille knew about the list of lawyers. He didn’t ask questions about how Lucille knew which lawyer he decided to go with. Jay was tired. He was annoyed, he was tired, and he needed to do some research.

Intentionally throwing a frustrated look into Lucille’s face, Jay logged out. It was going to be a long night.

***

Jay reached his fingertips down to his feet, stretched out his back, and did a couple of shaky push-ups. After the motion released some accumulated tension, he spent another ten minutes following a stretching routine. The stretch in his muscles felt wonderful after stepping out of several hours in full dive machinery.

Feeling motivated after his stretching, he went about cleaning his apartment. Jay managed to make it very clean, even taking only an hour. A pile of trash bags in the corner needed to go out eventually, but he had things to do. He would remember to deal with them after his research.

When Jay signed into his computer, he was hit by a deluge of social media notifications. One of them was Casey wanting to connect, which he accepted. Most of the messages were posts forwarded to him by Taylor Lynn.

He watched a video with a series of cats in increasingly unlikely circumstances. The following video was a talking dog who seemed to say, ‘what up, cuz.’ He spent a few minutes laughing at all the memes, which was a great way of taking his mind off everything else.

Finally, a series of posts about Tumult Corp. caught much more of his attention. One such post shared a video interview discussing the pending lawsuit. The conversation was between a reporter and a Tumult technical staff member. To Jay’s surprise, the man worked as a Senior Development Manager at the corporation, and his name was, naturally, Lucas Green.

The video was a short five-minute interview with the development manager. The content was so obviously staged it was almost comical. Lucas Green discussed some of his team’s innovations in dynamic questing. He focused primarily on the toolset game masters used to introduce new quests efficiently. The implication was transparently meant to sell the narrative that Tumult’s system was one of their own design.

In the end, Lucas Green’s story might even be true. Jay didn’t know all that much about game development, corporate law, or dynamic quest engines. Still, as he watched the video, he had to admit he felt more compelled to trust the small game studio. He often fell on the side of the underdog or the little guy.

Jay put a little heart reaction on a few videos, so Taylor Lynn knew he actually watched them. After that, he added a short message: hope the leveling is going well. Once his social obligation was fulfilled, he switched to a search window. He typed: Lucas Green Tumult development manager.

The video Jay had just watched was the top search result, which was obvious. He reviewed a few more videos but found only vague discussions about the game. Tumult kept most specifics of the game private, instead focusing on dramatized explanations of a dynamic world created by players. Much of it was true, but the game was still a ways away from true dynamism.

It wasn’t until the eighth search result that Jay stumbled on something interesting. The link led to the official Tumultua Online website but contained nothing about the game. It was a corporate culture subpage on the careers section of the site.

One of the primary pictures on the page was from a corporate holiday party. The page included a holiday party photo that caught Jay’s attention. Underneath the picture was a caption listing the names of the pictured employees from left to right. The brothers weren’t front and center, but Lucas Green, and the easily identifiable Lester, were in the background of one of the photos.

Jay could see them holding drinks and seemingly in an intense conversation. It didn’t seem heated, but the image clearly captured an involved discussion.

He scoured through the subsequent twenty links but couldn’t find any more pictures of Lester and Lucas together at Tumult functions. He found a social media page for Lester where Jay saw photos from a family wedding. Lucas wasn’t in any of the pictures. There was plenty of Lucas in his business role, but he had no personal pages.

In the end, the evidence against them wouldn’t hold up in a court of law. Jay knew there wouldn’t be enough to attack the integrity of their game. But he wasn’t a lawyer, a judge, or a jury. He was a contractor. Plenty was going on from where he was sitting, enough to make him suspicious.

Jay thought over what he would do about Lester before moving on to investigating his lawyer. The evidence against Lester certainly wasn’t overwhelming, but it did increase his trust in Lucille somewhat. At least she hadn’t been falsifying things to get information on the Monster Hunter class.

For now, he was wary of Lester looking for information about his class. There was no reason to do anything beyond paying more attention yet. Most of all, he was looking for someone to tell him why the Monster Hunter class was such a big deal. He didn’t believe for a second the excitement was about making sure players could access it.

Still, the whole nature of his conversation with Lucille and Ichibad didn’t sit right with Jay. Next time, he was going to need a lot more details.

Shaking it out of his head, Jay followed through on some of Lucille’s suggested searches about his lawyer, Mr. Georges, and their mock trial team. The answers he found made him a little depressed and left him feeling foolish that he hadn’t checked into this previously.

In this case, the evidence was absolutely overwhelming. Ted Inges and Mr. Georges, known then as Samuel Georges, had been very close friends during their college days. Mr. Georges’s feeds were scrubbed, but Ted Inges had photos from their glory days publicly available on his social media.

Beyond that were a bunch of posts written by the school. Mr. Georges and Ted Inges hadn’t just been friends and mock trial associates in law school. They’d attended the same undergraduate program. They’d been in the same fraternity. In that fraternity, they’d served on the same executive board.

Mr. Georges and Ted Inges had played him.

Feeling heavily disheartened, Jay opened up his copy of the legal agreement. His eyes swiftly glazed over as he attempted to read the dense language. Once he had his first payment from Tumult, it would be worth looking into new representation. Jay needed to learn what the lawyers had slipped into the contract.

Jay forgot all about his pile of trash bags. He tried to sleep but found it challenging. His brain was alight with expectations for the following day. He was going to Mr. George’s office for a little chat.

Jay didn’t think it was going to be pleasant.