Donut’s reaction to the gift was more than a little worrying, but at least she seemed to enjoy the prize. It could’ve been much worse.
I grinned, looking directly up at the ceiling. I gave a very deliberate shrug. “You really think I’d care about that? Nice try.”
“Carl, open yours! Maybe it’s another picture!”
I sighed, and I selected my box. If it was something awful, something designed to upset Donut, I was prepared to toss it into my inventory before she could see it.
I wasn’t expecting the basket.
“What the hell is that?” Mordecai asked the moment it appeared. He examined it, his eyes going wide. “Oh,” he said. “You got a good prize. The rabble-rousers must have spent all their effort on Donut’s gift.”
“What are you talking about?” Donut asked. She looked at the strange wicker basket. It looked like a large, banana-shaped scoop. A group of buckles along with an unfamiliar strap were attached to the end of the object. “What is this thing?” Donut asked. She read the description. “I don’t get it. What’s… how is that pronounced? High lie?
I didn’t need to read the description. The moment I saw the item, I knew exactly what it was. The buckles were unusual, but my brain was already processing how it worked. This was a good prize. In fact, this was a great prize.
“Hey, Fitz,” I said. The barkeep had wandered over to look at the picture of Bea. He still clutched it in both hands, and he was rubbing a finger down the glass, stroking the image of Bea’s breasts. “Do you have any oranges?”
He appeared startled, as if he realized we were still there. He quickly placed the photo down. “I reckon I do,” he said.
“Give me four or five of them please,” I said.
While he went to the back, I picked up the large basket. I ran my hand down it. While it appeared to be made of wicker, it was really made of a light, metallic substance. My mind raced with the possibilities. It was so strange. This knowledge was from that Earth Hobby Potion. It all came rushing to me.
The skill I’d received had been in something called Cesta Punta. I’d thought it was a martial art. It wasn’t. It was a sport. A sport more commonly known as jai-alai. It was a complicated, fast-paced, squash-like game where people wore scoops on the ends of their hands and threw balls against a wall. It was dangerous as fuck, and even with helmets, those little hard balls bounced and flew fast enough to knock your damn head off.
The gift I’d received in my fan box was called a xistera. It was the scoop a player wore on their hand. Normally there was a leather sleeve along the back of the handle that you could tighten, which would keep the basket from flying away. You used the scoop to catch and toss the ball, and because of the shape of the basket and weight of the ball, you could throw very hard and fast, especially if you spun and swung your arm in just the correct manner.
I’d never played it in real life, though I’d known a senior chief who had something similar designed to lob tennis balls great distances. The thing was really for dogs, but he’d used it to toss cherry bombs off the side of the cutter out onto the glacial ice of the Arctic Ocean. He’d let me do it once, and I remembered how far it’d flown.
And at that moment, I realized that small memory, of me tossing firecrackers onto the ice in the middle-of-nowhere was likely the impetus for the chain of events that led to this prize. Whether the system really knew my memories or not, they had a rather obvious plan for me. I no longer needed the slingshot with this item. This was better. Much, much better.
I strapped the xistera onto my wrist, awkwardly using my teeth and left hand to fasten the first set of buckles. The second set went just before my elbow. The rounded scoop extended about two and a half feet past my right hand, almost like a single, massive fingernail. It felt natural on me. I wouldn’t be able to punch or summon my gauntlet while it was on me like this, but I could feel the plastic-like slit just above my palm. Anything I summoned into my hand from my inventory could be pushed directly into the scoop. And conversely, I could make a claw and remove the item in the scoop.
The xistera wasn’t magical, at least it didn’t say it was, but it was mechanical and made with some pretty neat technology. It had a trick. The second strap just below my elbow had a small pull-ring. I pulled it, and the entire scoop yanked in on itself, forming and twisting over my right forearm like a metallic bracer. The motion was quick and smooth. Once the scoop was retracted, I formed a fist to make sure my gauntlet would still work. It did. In fact, the gauntlet fit snuggly over the end of the bracer as if it’d been made for it. Now the missing right arm of my jacket didn’t look so ridiculous.
“Here’s your oranges!” Fitz said, piling five of them on the table.
I picked them up and pulled them all into my inventory. I eyed the entrance door to the saferoom, which I knew was the most unbreakable thing in here. I extended the scoop.
I pulled an orange into my hand. I was worried it’d be a little too fat for the xistera, but it automatically widened itself. Hey, that’s pretty cool.
I spun, arcing my arm over my head. The orange rocketed out of the scoop and smashed right into the center of the door. The fruit completely disintegrated.
“Hey!” Fitz said.
“Wow,” Donut said. “That’s delightful! Do it again! Fitz, get him some apples and plums!”
Fitz stopped complaining and ran to comply. I attempted to hit the exact same spot. My aim was just a hair off, but I could already tell that as my skill in this grew, I’d become more and more accurate. I really needed to get outside and try it for distance. I could now sling projectiles fast. I knew with a rock or a metal ball, it would do some serious damage.
I also realized I was going to have to start tossing a few points into dexterity here and there. I’d been planning on a strength and constitution build, but if my accuracy became an issue, a dexterity boost would help.
I tried tossing some of the small ammo I had for my clurichaun slingshot. The little rocks weren’t uniform enough in size to properly lob. While the scoop tried to make itself thinner, it didn’t get nearly thin enough. Their aim was unpredictable because I couldn’t control their passage through the scoop as I swung.
Carclass="underline" You win, Zev. No more slingshot.
Zev: Yay! People are pretty excited about this. I’m glad you got it. It was a close vote with something utterly inappropriate.
Carclass="underline" What was it?
Zev: You know I can’t tell you that.
“I’m going to need regular ammo and more of those hob-lobbers,” I said after I finished. The human couple who’d been sitting in the corner got up and ran out the moment I stopped fruit-ninjaing the door.
“That’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Mordecai said. “You’ll be able to make yourself smoke bombs, and I can fashion tossables like poison bags and pretty much anything else you can think of. I know a recipe for a rubber-like substance that breaks apart when it hits something. We’ll need a table for it, though.”
I nodded. I pulled one of the hob-lobber bombs out of my inventory. I examined its properties.
Hobgoblin Hob-Lobber – Fused.
Type: Fragmenting Tossable.
Effect: It blows shit up.
Status: 150. Fortified.
A mainstay of the Hobgoblin Hob-Lobbing Lobbers, the Hob-Lobber is a stable, mostly-predictable, more practical and tactical solution to dynamite. All right? But if you toss it, make sure its wick is lit. While not guaranteed to do a premature blast, it’s better than nothing, innit?
“Your rhyming scheme is all off,” I muttered.
The round bomb was the perfect size for my xistera. This kind of hob-lobber had a fuse that needed to be lit. A minor inconvenience. I could go back to crazy Pustule the hobgoblin and buy the impact-triggered ones. Though, thinking on it, there was a lot I could do with this kind. A lot. Especially once Mordecai got his hands on that alchemy table.