The Bathrobe Knight: Volume 3 (17 page)

“So when do I get a custom logo?” Kitchens asked, answering Darwin’s question almost immediately with the good, old-fashioned, Kass-like response.

Even if she’s not here, someone will always step in to fill her place and have status envy,
Darwin thought, mentally accusing Kitchens before the man elaborated further.

“I mean, shouldn’t there be separate designs for those who fight, those who build and those who cook or fill other occupations?” Kitchens’ line of questioning repainted itself as acting less like Kass and more like Daniel.

“Hmm . . .” Justin thought for a moment.

A scout with a tense but contemplative expression on his face came up to his side. “There is much wisdom in what you say. I think we shall consult Alex about this after the two of you depart,” the scout nodded.

Crap. This is supposed to be a fighting fantasy game! Not a dress up game!
The words would have come across as scolding had he said them aloud, but he was actually just happily joking to himself about the whole ordeal. It appeared that, no matter which companion he got slotted with for a mission, they’d still be concerned about appearances. Then again, he too had spent a lot of time checking out black armors when he was in Valcrest because they looked cool.
Wait, would Fuzzy Wuzzy also be concerned about this type of stuff? Would he, if he could speak, be demanding top hats, monocles and bear-sized tuxedos? Maybe he would want one of those dancing bear costumes instead . . . Or worse, no costume at all, just like a certain child lov--
Darwin silenced the awful thought before it reached completion. While the first steps down that trail of thought made him laugh, Fuzzy Wuzzy’s over-familiarity with Minx definitely gave him pause to worry about the dark place to which that path led. After all, Minx was the youngest-looking one in the group, and her exact age wasn’t clearly discernible. She looked like she could be somewhere between thirteen and twenty, and Fuzzy Wuzzy was definitely attached to her.
We can never let Fuzzy Wuzzy see anime,
Darwin quickly decided, pushing the subject out of his head yet again, hopefully once and for all.

“Hey, Justin, one more note really quick before you head out,” Darwin called out to Yoo, who had turned around and was already deep in conversation with the scout.
They’re already trying to figure out which emblems would look best for each role, aren’t they?

“Yes, Great Lord Darwin?” Justin turned around sharply, immediately straightening out his posture.

“Can I trust you to send word to Kass and the others that we departed to find out who assigned the quest? They’ll understand what I mean.” Darwin turned to Kitchens. “Let’s get a move on. All that fighting made me want to kill something fully tangible.”

“Can’t run out of firewood, can we?” Kitchens laughed. For someone who had spent most of the time Darwin had known him with a very calm and unmoving expression, this change was almost unsettling. It wasn’t exactly chill-up-the-spine creepy, but rather that weird-guy-on-the-bus-with-the-funny-odor-who-you-think-may-or-may-not-be-looking-at you-or-out-the-window-behind-you uncomfortable. “Anyways, make sure to drop off the shield bots we picked up earlier with Alex. They’re definitely going to need them in the battles to come.”

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to drop them off without us being here to protect them from being eaten?” Darwin joked at Mclean’s expense. She may have been generous enough to eat only certain monsters, saving the best for the rest of the guild, but she had still chain-eaten snow cones all the way from the dungeon back to the mountain.

“It’ll be fine,” Kitchens said and then paused a moment. “It should be fine. . . Right?”

“Hey, speaking of snacks, if we’re going back to the main town, we should really look into getting some more of those chocolate chip cookies.”

“Indeed. We should get enough for the whole group.”

“We’re not going to have to share with them all though, are we?”

“Of course not. I won’t tell if you don’t.” Kitchens and Darwin laughed as they began their adventure back to the city that had lost its best men trying to kill them.

Chapter 5 – Cape Not Included

Valerie
:

              Valerie couldn’t help but worry a little as she sat quietly listening to the group of players who were eating and chatting around her.
They know. They know that you’re different,
a voice seeped through Valerie’s thoughts, seeding anxiety.
Yeah, maybe they do,
she thought back.
You can try all you want, but you’re not the same quiet girl they’ve gotten used to talking to,
came the reply.
Well, maybe so, but I’m managing to be pretty quiet right now,
she shot back at the nagging voice.
Her new, unaccounted-for confidence won out, and her worry was replaced by a constant unease that sat humming like a low buzz in the back of her mind. For some reason, the reticence and self-consciousness that usually kept her on edge and made her doubt herself seemed like they just took too much effort at the moment. She wasn’t used to feeling relaxed or in control, but for some reason, she did now. She had her ups and downs in Tiqpa, and they were often rather extreme ones, but this was neither a high nor a low. She felt unusually collected--as if her companions were more under her observation for once, and she was less under theirs. Ever since she had woken up with a moving leg, she had felt different. It was like her thoughts had changed, like she wasn’t quite the same person. Before, it was like she had been drunk and tired, worn out and dazed by self-pity and an unshakeable hyper-awareness of her disability. Each thought had been strained and competed with too many others, most of which were born out of unrelenting self-assessment.

Now, however, things were strangely clear. She was finally sober, awake and alive.
Daniel, your arm is not a napkin,
Valerie thought as she noticed Daniel wipe his mouth off with his left arm. He didn’t even get all of the mess off his lips either.
Maybe a pig snout would suit you better than bird wings.
Valerie’s lips curled up into a slight grin, which she hid by pretending to rub an itchy nose as she continued watching the people sitting around her.

“So, serious question: Why is it that every time you see lasers in a movie, you actually see the laser?” Daniel asked, continuing to whittle away at some Drake meat on a stick while the gang waited. They hadn’t exactly made a campfire in front of the fortifications, but they had set up some chairs and were just staring out at the woods, holding fast until any signs of danger were reported by the scouts circling above the woods on their riders. “Shouldn’t the laser, you know, move at the speed of light? Be nearly impossible to catch with the naked eye?”

“Oh, you mean those sci-fi movies where the lasers all look like fat Nerf bullets traveling as fast as a well-kicked soccer ball?” Mclean asked, enjoying her own stick of meat. “It’s for the space cowboys, galactic Indians and movie-goers.”

“Huh?” Kass, the only one not eating anything besides Valerie, snapped back into the conversation. While everyone else was focused on watching the woods for a sign of danger or some mysterious bad guy that might pop out, Valerie couldn’t help but notice Kass wasn’t. She kept nervously turning her head and glancing at the Demons who were steadfastly laboring over the fortifications around the city.

Something's wrong with her,
she guessed.
Remember, Tim always warned you to watch the ones who were watching closest--not that it saved him from being stabbed in the back . . . or stopped you from getting him killed.
Her mind betrayed her with another jab at her heart.

“When it comes to movies, space is just another setting where we can tell our stories and pretend like mankind matters.” Mclean paused to take another bite. “Like heroes could make the difference between life and death in some epic journey of discovery or redemption.”

“What does that have to do with the cowboys and Indians though?” Kass asked, not getting the picture that Mclean was drawing.

How does Darwin like you when you’re this simple, Kass? You react more than act. If you had just waited, Mclean would have explained it. She’s that type of person. You’d have gotten your explanation without having to needlessly broadcast your inability to connect the dots.
Valerie sighed and squinted her closed eyes.
The real question is: How has Kass not given me a headache before today?
She laughed to herself, the frustration fading as she smirked at her own joke.

“Well? Isn’t that what it’s all about? People don’t want to go to a movie theater and see real space combat where computers calculate everything that is and will happen. It amplifies the useless and utterly inconsequential nature of humanity. They want to see the epic story of good versus evil, their favorite handsome-faced protagonist saving the day through a string of lucky feats, quick wits and serendipitous timing that only he could pull off. They want to see the ragtag band of cowboys save the world from a wave of angry Indians with a good quick-draw scene--except this time in space and with lasers.” Mclean took another bite. “It’s much better than the reality, than the helplessness that they have to endure on a day to day basis as they trudge through an existence where death, progress and the future are neither controllable nor predictable.”

“Isn’t that why we are playing fantasy games?” Daniel said, reinforcing the point.

“True, but it’s also why the lasers in space move so slowly that a professional soccer player could block almost all of them.” Mclean looked disappointingly at the bare bone where a full leg of meat had once been.

“You don’t eat that much in real life, do you?” Valerie asked, laughing at her winged friend.

“Oh, God, no! Calorie counting is hell though. I thought I’d have fun here. I want to try every beer they have!” she exclaimed excitedly and then looked around. “As soon as we get out of this situation, I guess.”

Now that’s the right kind of simple. Know what you want and know when you’re going to get it.
Valerie smiled.
She’s a reliable person with a good understanding of the world. I can use her.
She found herself slightly taken aback by the last three words at first, but then slightly amused. ‘
Use.’ Yes, ‘use.’ Isn’t that what I’ve been doing anyway? Just using these people for emotional and experiential crutches? It’s a bit psycho-bitch, I guess, but there is no need to feel depressed if there are people I can maneuver to avoid it.
Her grin began to spread wider, but then stopped.
No, control your emotions. Don’t let them see that you’ve changed. People hate change, people need things to move so slow they don’t notice it until it’s far enough along that they can’t miss the old. Valerie, you’ve gotta boil the frog nice and slowly for these guys. Don’t want to suddenly end up in hot water yourself, do you?
She forced a timid and weak expression back onto her face.
Let’s hope this is how I would normally look,
she thought as she consciously made small micro adjustments to her face.

Kass opened her mouth to say yet another stupid and simple thing when Valerie heard something that caused her to ignore her vapid guildmate.
They’re in the woods. They’re coming for us,
she thought, looking to the mounted scouts flying above. They were still gliding through the air, circling over the surroundings. How did they not see anything?
There are a lot of them coming to kill us,
she thought as she found herself listening to the sounds of crunching leaves. It wasn’t that monsters didn’t also produce that sound, but when a monster did it, it was haphazard and bore no rhythm or set beat. This was planned stomping, the crushing of the fallen leaves and grass in a systematic fashion, the beats organized in a way that only man produced.

Valerie looked over and saw Minx staring in the same direction as her.
So the little kitty can hear it too,
she laughed to herself. She could tell that many people thought Minx was slow, dull-witted and painfully stupid, but never once took into account that this was a game. Minx was role-playing like the rest of them. Or, at least, that was the only way Valerie could make sense of her constantly changing personality.

Is Minx going to say something, or should I?
Valerie wondered, but then something else caught her eye. It was Tim walking out of the forest from another direction. He looked like an angel with his majestic wings and sculpted face as he ran out of the woods to her left, trying to say something. No sooner had he run out of the woods than he jerked to a halt.
This has to be a memory of when he came to save me. When he kissed me . . . When he . . .
Tim opened his mouth and blood came out.
When he died.

Why am I remembering this now?
Valerie wondered, looking around Tim for clues.
Tim was stabbed in the back by someone he didn’t see coming. That’s right! What if there is more than one group coming? What if this group is noisy, but the other one isn’t? Perhaps, like Tim, the first group will reach its prize only to discover far too late that there is another party at play and that its knife will sink too deeply for them to act.
“If that’s the case . . .” she mumbled, almost inaudibly, to herself. “If that’s the case, the second group would be easy to pick off after the conflict. We’d go from fighting two hard groups to one injured one . . .” she finished her thought aloud. The others, who had still been playing at the conversation where Mclean explained, Daniel listened and Kass spoke before thinking, all stopped and looked at Valerie.