Donut looked up at me, and I nodded. “Come on, Mongo, cage,” Donut said. Mongo screeched in dismay but turned back toward the cat as she activated the carrier. He sucked away into the ether.
“And the book,” Loita said. “You can’t bring the book onto the set.”
“Fuck off,” I said. “It’s so I can have something to read while we wait.”
Loita looked angry, but only for a moment. She shrugged. “Suit yourself, but you need to keep it in the green room.”
“It’s what I always do,” I said. “Where’s Zev?”
“Zev is taking some much-needed time off. She’s had a… personal tragedy… back home. She’s been sent off to a temporary reeducation retreat so she may reflect upon her life and her personal philosophies. But do not worry. Such things never take long, especially on the weak-minded. When she returns, she will remain as your social media manager, but I will be taking up primary duties as the team’s PR agent.”
“Well if we don’t have Zev, then we’re not…” Donut began. I held up my hand to stop her.
“Zev didn’t usually come with us to our interviews. Are you always going to be here?”
Donut jumped to my shoulder. She was trembling with rage. I reached up and put a calming hand on her.
“Yes,” Loita said. “We are putting tighter controls on the information crawlers are being fed through these interviews in an attempt to make the crawl more equitable toward those who aren’t privileged enough to get a view of the world outside the dungeon.”
That’s just wonderful, I thought. In addition to the cookbook and Mordecai, our once-a-floor, post-interview chat with Odette had done more than anything else to help keep us alive.
“Great,” I said.
“Indeed. Do you have any questions for me?”
“Yeah, I have a question,” Donut said. “Why don’t you take your ugly…”
“Stop,” I said. “We don’t have any more questions.”
“Carl,” Donut said. “You said we only work with Zev.”
“Don’t worry, Donut,” I said, staring directly at the fish. “We can’t do anything about Zev right now. She’s on a short vacation. Isn’t that right, Loita?”
“That’s right,” Loita said, her mouth forming a straight line.
Donut let out a hiss.
I again patted her. “Sometimes things are beyond our control, Donut. We need to pick our battles.”
“Well, I don’t like it. We should have a say in who we work with. She’s our PR person.” She glowered at the empty counter. “Zev always made sure there were snacks. Very professional. I don’t like this one bit.”
“We’ve determined that some crawlers were receiving illegal buffs via interview refreshments. As a result, crawlers will no longer be offered food or drink while outside the dungeon.”
Donut gasped with dismay.
Odette’s assistant Lexis entered. She stopped dead sensing the tension in the room.
“Hello all,” she said hesitantly. “We’re on in five.”
“Thank you, Lexis,” I said, not taking my eyes away from the mudskipper. “You don’t need to wait with us anymore. We have our new PR agent now to keep us company.”
“Okay,” she said, backing away.
“You don’t scare me,” Loita said after a few moments of me just staring at her. “I have a job to do, and I will make sure it’s done. I will make sure it’s done right this time.”
“Ditto,” I said.
“So, Katia,” Odette said as the audience roared with laughter. “When you changed yourself into Carl back there, you sure did a good job. Almost like you’d done it before. Is there anything you need to tell us?”
Katia’s cheeks burned red. She’d been doing a better job at being “zippy” though she was still shy, not fully comfortable playing to an audience. Donut was doing her best to prop her up.
This time, however, Katia recovered on her own. “I’m getting better at emulating other people. Next time maybe I’ll pretend to be you.”
“Oh you don’t want to do that,” Odette said, laughter in her voice. Her gigantic breasts sloshed on the table. She rose up and down on her crab lower half. “I don’t think anybody wants to see me back in the dungeon. Do they?”
The audience clapped and laughed. I felt myself gritting my teeth. Smile. Keep smiling.
Odette leaned in. “Whose idea was it, anyway? To save Carl like that?”
“It was Katia’s idea,” Donut said. “Mongo and I were ready to just charge in there and start blasting. Once I saw that the god was being played by that silly pig boy, I knew we had a chance. That’s what, the third time now he’s gotten fucked by Carl? I really wanted to get in on the action. It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten laid, Odette.” The audience continued to roar. “I mean, really? What’s a girl gotta do?” She sighed dramatically.
“It sure was something indeed,” Odette said. “Minutes after the Death Challenge ended, a new snick appeared on the net. Even as we speak, its views are going through the oort cloud. This one is a little more obvious that it’s a snick than the last.” She cocked her head. I couldn’t see her face, but I could sense her devilish smile. “We all know Mongo likely isn’t that well-endowed.” She looked up at her audience. “Does anybody know what this new one is called? I forget.”
Multiple voices shouted their answers.
Odette laughed. “That’s right. That’s right. Carl’s Naughty Little Piggie Goes to Market.”
Donut gasped. “I was in the video?”
The audience’s howling reached a fevered pitch.
“Oh, you were there.”
“Do you have the video? Do you? I want to see! Who wants to see the video?”
The audience shouted their agreement.
I just shook my head.
“Glurp! Glurp!” the audience chanted. “Glurp! Glurp!”
“Unfortunately, the showrunners are saying no to us showing the snick.” Boos filled the room. “I know, I know,” Odette said, laughing. I sensed a hint of sourness to her voice. I was relieved. Either way, I knew Mordecai would be pissed. He didn’t want us dealing with gods or factions, and here we were.
But we had so little, and goddamn if it wasn’t fun to needle at the prick. I wished he’d had stayed dead, but I would settle for humiliating him over and over.
“Speaking of the Death Challenge, Carl, are you aware of the significance of what happened today?”
“Well, I got stepped on by a god and got a close-up view of a building-sized monster get split in half. That was pretty significant.”
The audience chuckled. “A Death Challenge is not a boss battle. It’s a pop-up gambling event where viewers, in systems where gambling is legal, are given the option to bet on a multiple set of outcomes, with each possible outcome being given different odds. There are dozens of possibilities, and people can bet on general or specific outcomes. Like ‘Carl survives’ would be a general outcome. And ‘Carl survives, the Mimic is killed by Grull, and Grull is ejected from the arena via a secondary summoning.’ is a specific outcome. The system AI initially put your general odds of survival at 50 to 1.”
“What? Fifty to one?” Donut exclaimed. “And they knew the Maestro was driving Grull, right?”
Everybody laughed.
“Needless to say, a lot of viewers agreed with Donut and thought that was a good bet. The odds started sliding once the votes poured in, but it didn’t change as much as you’d think. Borant just filed an appeal on the AI’s decision to give you such terrible odds, citing its sluggish response in altering the spread. If the appeal doesn’t go their way, there’s nothing they can do.”
“Wow,” Donut said. “I’m with Borant on this one. Fifty to one? I mean, really. It’s offensive. Haven’t they been paying attention? They had to know we’d come save him. I’d like to think we’d make the odds a little better. Did you see how fast Elle flies? Or Li Na’s chains? Or how Katia dodged that death ray? There were five people who’d been in the top ten in the area.”