“Yeah,” Ryuk says, “beer me.”
Everyone in the room, including Aiden, who hardly knows Ryuk, turns to the Ballistics Mage with surprised looks on their faces.
“What?” he asks.
Hiccup uses his mechanical hand to dab at his eye. “My young Marbles finally, finally got woke. Shit, better make it a Horse Piss for me too.” He snaps his fingers at the pint-sized waitress. “You heard me, lady, a Horse Piss and a warm Cherry Apollos with a little whipped cream on top. Bill it to Doctor Wang.”
“Right away, sir!”
Chapter 28: Friends in High Places
It doesn’t take long for Hiccup to lose the five thousand rupees loaned to him by FeeTwix. As another round of horse piss comes and goes, he borrows another five thousand, and once he loses all that, he promises Aiden double or nothing.
“You already owe me ten thousand,” Aiden reminds him.
“Fick you, Balaclava, I’m taking it all back!”
“I told you, if you want a nickname, it’s Morning Assassin.”
“What gives with that anyway?” he asks. “Why not Evening Assassin? Fick, it’d be much more fun to kill someone in the evening. We goblins have a phrase for that.”
Zaena, who sits at the table near Ryuk, laughs. “A phrase for killing someone at night?”
“Yeah, it’s called an After Supper Mint.”
“So you think that should be my new nickname?” Aiden rolls his eyes. “It’s too long.”
“No, I’m just saying that Morning Assassin sounds like something that happens to my bunghole the night following a couple rounds of dragon wings. It has a ring to it too, After Supper Mint.” Hiccup licks his fingers and goes for another wing. He dips it in white sauce and sucks it down. “These things should come with a warning: WILL BURN SPHINCTER. Something like that.”
Zaena cringes. “Then why do you eat them?”
“Yeah,” Ryuk asks as he takes a sip from his second pint of Horse Piss. “What gives, Hiccup?”
“What gives? Shit, you drunk, son? When’s the last time you spoke to an elder like that? What the fick, Twixy, I thought Japanese people were obedient or something!”
FeeTwix says, “You know, if NPCs ever do come to our world and stick around, I believe one of the first to come should be you, Hiccup, just so you can get a sense of things and so you can, um, stop using words and concepts incorrectly.”
“What have I used incorrectly?”
Ryuk laughs. “I believe you suggested we eat monkeys up there. And then there’s chalupa, and that’s just off the top of my head. Pretty much everything you reference from our world is skewed somehow.”
“Whatever,” Hiccup growls. “Are we doubling down, Afternoon Assassin? Or are you quitting like a fickin’ pansy?”
“We don’t have to bet, you know,” Aiden suggests. “You already owe me everything you have.”
“See, he’s scared! Third time’s a charm – that’s another goblin saying, Marbles. Keep up the fickboy act and I’ll have you be my note taker.”
A flash in the center of the room signals that Sophia has arrived. Her form appears alongside that of a short, muscular faun in a tactical vest. An extinguished cigar rests in the faun’s mouth, a golden medal is pinned to his chest, and two firearms with polished grips are holstered at his side.
The RPC icon flashes over his head and his stats appear.
Doc Level 99
HP: 7499/7499
ATK: 5,554
MATK: 1128
DEF: 8330
MDF: 4532
LUCK: 102
“What’s up, Doc?” Aiden calls over to the faun.
“Aiden.” The faun’s hooves tap against the ground as he takes a few preliminary steps.
“Having fun in Barbie World?”
“You betcher ass I am. Then Doctor Wang gets hold of me and tells me what’s going down. I got here as quickly as I could. So, is this the guild?”
“We have another member,” Ryuk blurts out. “Three other members, actually.”
Doc places his extinguished cigar in his mouth and bites down on it. “I’ve seen worse.”
“Marbles, Enway is not a member.”
“She is, Hiccup,” FeeTwix says. “She’s our new cleric.”
“Note to self: figure out a way to add a veto procedure to the vetting process.” Hiccup’s eyes flash. “Not this time, Goblinheimer’s! And we don’t have three other members, FYI. Conan and Dogbert haven’t been properly vetted. It really depends on if we have room. Four’s a company, five’s crowd. Or something like that.”
“We have plenty of room.” Zaena stands to greet Doc. “Ignore the goblin.”
“There’s a goblin in the room?” Doc asks with a twinkle in his eye.
“Hey!”
“I can silence him again,” Sophia says.
“Not a bad idea,” says the Thulean assassin as she approaches Doc. He extends his hand and they greet each other.
“You in charge?” Doc asks, his little goat tail twitching.
“Nope, he is.”
Ryuk feels something tap on his shoulder and ruffle his hair. He stands, and sheepishly makes his way over to Doc to meet him. “Ryuk Matsuzaki,” he says. “And this is FeeTwix Fajer.”
“Hiya, Doc!”
“And the goblin? Or do you guys just call him ‘goblin?’”
Hiccup crosses his arms over his bare chest, which still has blacklight-responsive paint smeared across it. “That settles it. I’m getting a fickin’ nametag. Hell, a tattoo, old English letters, right over my belly button. The name is Hiccup, which is short for–”
“–Hiccupanaratapana,” Sophia says, her nose held high. “I speak Thulean.”
“Cool, then you can fickin’ take the medal off the faun’s chest and stuff it in your mouth.”
Doc laughs. “Sophia has an Order of The Red Flag of The Hero of Socialist Fraternal Labor of The Peasants and Workers of The People’s Democratic Republic of Tritania medal too, Hiccup. We both have one. But I like the idea.”
“Doc!”
“Kidding, Doctor Wang,” the faun says, straightening up. “This is your show now, so let’s get down to brass tacks.”
“Right.” Sophia smooths her hands over her white dress and lifts into the air a few inches. “Ryuk, I need to meet you in person.”
Hiccup snorts, but doesn’t say anything else.
“In … person?”
“Yes. As your humandroid reported, there have been multiple attempts from NPCs to come through to our world using resetters. Since you are still experiencing digital hallucinations from time to time, I believe it is best if we meet. I will leave the US for Japan later tomorrow morning.”
“Just you?”
“I will have my AI Chuntao with me as well.”
“I’m dead, an RPC,” Doc says, “in case you didn’t already know through context clues. I’ll be overseeing the Knights in the meantime. Your guild – what was the name again?” he asks Sophia.
“The, um, Mitherfickers.”
“Got it. The Mitherfickers will act as a satellite of the Knights. It’d be best for the Shinigami to believe that you are all still in trouble. We can easily mask your handles and get new looks for you, hell, new avatars, but one of you livestreams so that’s a no go.”
FeeTwix says, “I can stop streaming temporarily, if it means I’ll avenge Tomas.”
“He’s the reason he came here,” Sophia informs Doc, again using her advanced abilities to read the Swede’s mind.