Chapter 6

The studio felt smaller than usual that Saturday morning, probably because my brain was still swimming in exhaustion from last night's activities. I slumped in my desk chair, nursing what had to be my third energy drink of the morning while trying to look professionally excited about our upcoming meeting with Collapsed Star Interactive. The sunlight streaming through our pathetic window highlighted the dust motes floating through the air and the fact that the place could use a good scrubbing.

Jonas sat at his workstation, his soft frame hunched forward with genuine enthusiasm as he nodded along to my rambling. His balding head caught the light in a way that made me feel bad for him, knowing how much it bothered him. "So from what I've been hearing at meetups and Discord channels," I said, trying to sound more knowledgeable than I actually was, "the industry's in a pretty rough spot right now. Studios are closing left and right. We'd be lucky to get any deal at all, really. Can't afford to be too picky."

"We're halfway done with the game," Blair interjected without looking up from her monitor, her fingers dancing across her tablet as she sculpted a new NPC. Her messy blonde hair fell across her face, but she didn't bother pushing it back. "Publishers showing up now aren't taking on that much risk, Owner. Any decent deal should reflect that."

I winced at the title. "Yeah, you're right," I admitted, drumming my fingers nervously on my desk. "But we're burning through our remaining funds pretty fast. We've got what, three months left? Maybe four if we really stretch it? Hard to negotiate from a position like that."

"Both valid points," Jonas said in his characteristically diplomatic way, his anxiety channeled into excessive reasonableness. "The market conditions are challenging, but our progress does give us some leverage." He stood up, stretching his back with a small groan. "Anyone want coffee? I'm making a fresh pot."

"God yes," I said immediately. "Please. I'm running on fumes here."

"Sure," Blair said, still focused on her work. "Black, as usual."

Jonas turned to Cael, who was staring intently at their monitor, typing something, clearly distracted. Today they were presenting more feminine than usual, wearing a flowy vintage blouse with lace details and multiple silver rings on their fingers. Their purple-to-blue hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail with tendrils framing their face.

"Cael? Coffee?"

No response. They were completely absorbed in whatever was on their screen, occasionally clicking something with intense focus.

"Cael?" Jonas tried again, louder this time.

Blair rolled her eyes playfully while I felt my patience wearing thin. I snapped my fingers in Cael's direction. "Hey, earth to Cael! We might actually need the opinion of our game designer here. You know, the person who's supposed to care about whether we can afford to finish the game?"

Cael blinked, looking up with a guilty expression. "Sorry, sorry! What were we talking about?"

Everyone sighed in unison. I rubbed my temples, feeling the exhaustion pressing harder against my skull. "Publisher deals. Whether we can afford to be picky. How much leverage we have with the game being half done. The future of our studio. Ring any bells?"

"Right, right," Cael nodded, their eyes already drifting back toward their monitor even as they tried to engage. "Yeah, publishers… they're… important."

Jonas, still standing by the kitchenette, tried once more. "Cael, do you want coffee or not?"

"No thanks," Cael mumbled, their attention already fragmenting again.

Jonas shrugged and moved to the kitchenette, the sound of the coffee maker starting up filling the small space. I watched him measure out the grounds with scientific precision, the way he did everything.

"So what do you think about the leverage question?" I pressed Cael, who was now blatantly staring at their screen again.

"Um… yeah, leverage is… we should definitely…" they trailed off, completely lost to whatever had captured their attention.

"Jesus, Cael," I grumbled, my exhaustion making me sharper than usual. "Pay attention to what we're talking about for a minute!"

Cael froze mid-click, their whole body going rigid for a second. They blinked rapidly, then suddenly swiveled their chair to face us fully, their hands folded in their lap, eyes locked on me with laser focus.

"I'm sorry," Cael said, their voice clearer and more serious than I'd heard all morning. "You're absolutely right. When I worked at Moonrise Studios, we spent months negotiating with publishers. The deal we eventually signed was considered pretty fair for the industry. The publisher financed the entire development cycle plus marketing budget, then took one hundred percent of revenues post-launch until they recouped their investment. After recoup, they left thirty percent of revenues to the studio for seven years, then rights reverted fully."

Jonas nearly dropped the coffee pot he was carrying back. "Wait, that's considered a good deal? They take seventy percent even after they've made their money back?"

I felt my stomach drop. The coffee maker gurgled and hissed as it finished brewing, the sound somehow ominous now.

"It's pretty standard from what I've heard," Blair said, finally looking up from her work to join the conversation properly. "But think about it this way: if a publisher can multiply your sales by five times through their marketing reach and platform relationships, then thirty percent of five times your projected sales is still more than one hundred percent of what you'd make on your own. Plus, in that scenario, they're paying for development. Without them, there might not be a game at all, which justifies their cut."

I nodded slowly, trying to work through the math in my exhausted brain while Jonas poured coffee into our various mismatched mugs. "That… actually makes sense when you put it that way."

"I suppose it does," Jonas admitted as he handed me my coffee, the warmth seeping through the ceramic into my grateful hands. "Still feels wrong somehow, though. Like we're doing all the creative work and they're just… capitalizing on it."

Cael, still unnaturally focused, leaned forward. "But in our case, Collapsed Star would be joining us with the game already half finished. We've got positive feedback from our beta testers, a growing Discord community, some YouTube coverage starting to pick up. They should offer us something much more reasonable than the standard deal. We're not some unproven team with just a pitch deck."

Then, as suddenly as it had come, the intense focus vanished from Cael's face. They blinked, looking confused, their hand drifting back toward their mouse before catching themselves. "That was… that was really weird."

"What was weird?" I asked, taking a sip of coffee that was still too hot but too welcome to resist.

Blair and Jonas both turned to look at Cael with interest, picking up on the genuine confusion in their voice.

"When you told me to pay attention," Cael said slowly, like they were trying to work through a puzzle. "It felt like back when I was taking Ritalin a few years ago, but way stronger. Total focus, no drift at all. And then it just… ended. You said to pay attention for a minute, and I think that's exactly how long it lasted."

I stared at them, coffee mug frozen halfway to my lips. Obeying me? This was either new, or something I'd missed entirely since hiring them.

Blair smirked, swiveling her chair to face Cael more directly. "You feeling more woman than man today, right?"

"Yeah," Cael confirmed casually, adjusting one of their rings. "I mean, most of the time I'm somewhere in the middle, but some days it tilts more one way or the other. Today's definitely more feminine. Why?"

My mind was racing now, the exhaustion temporarily forgotten. I'd known my ownership applied to trans women, I had met a few and they were were clearly mine, and so had figured out it was more about gender identity than anything else, but I'd never considered how it might work with someone whose gender identity was more fluid. Was Cael moving back and forth between being owned and not, depending on how they felt on a given day?

"Cael," I said carefully, "do you feel like I own you right now?"

"Obviously," they replied with a shrug, as if I'd asked whether water was wet. "Why?"

Blair and Jonas both looked at me with surprise. "Why would you need to ask that?" Jonas said, his perpetual anxiety creeping into his voice. "Everyone knows who belongs to you, Oliver. It's just… obvious."

I sighed, setting down my coffee mug and rubbing my face. "Yeah, well, everyone except me. I don't have that radar you all seem to have. I can't tell for sure who's my property and who isn't unless someone tells me, or obeys my commands." I thought back to those few days when Claudia had been free, how everyone else had known at first glance.

"Weird," Blair murmured, before shrugging it off.

"Hold on..." I turned back to Cael, my thoughts finally catching up with me. "What about when you feel more like you're in the middle? Do I own you then?"

"A bit? Like kinda but not really?" they replied, their head tilting to the side. "It's not something I've ever thought about, honestly."

Of course not...

"It's not really like a radar, Owner," Blair chimed in, her voice thoughtful. "It's not telepathy, you know. It's more like recognizing it when we bump into another one of your toys."

I shook my head, not wanting to dwell on the whole ownership bullshit again. Not now. "Right, well, back to the publisher situation. We'll see what they offer, but honestly, we might not have the luxury to negotiate much."

"Why not?" Jonas asked, surprised. "If we've got leverage from being halfway done…"

"Because, again, we only have a few months of budget left," Blair answered for me, her blunt practicality cutting through Jonas's optimism. "And negotiations take time. Time we don't have."

"What about releasing the game without one?" Jonas countered, trying to balance the options. "A crowdfunding? Early access?"

"It's too late for an early access. We didn't plan for it. We only have half a game," Blair explained with surprising patience. "Crowdfunding is not that easy nowadays. You need to do it well, have proper rewards for backers, deal with marketing and logistics… It would take months too."

I glanced over at Cael, who was typing furiously on their keyboard, completely absorbed again. "Cael, what are you even doing over there?"

They looked up guiltily, color rising in their cheeks. "I'm… running an online roleplay session with friends. I'm the DM."

"Not very professional," Blair commented, though her tone was more amused than judgmental.

"It's been planned for weeks," Cael said defensively, still typing even as they talked. "If I skip it, I'd be screwing over five other people. Plus, it's Saturday. We're not usually supposed to work on Saturdays. Maybe next time give us some time to plan ahead?"

Jonas, ever the peacemaker, jumped in. "Well, this is an exception to prepare the meeting with the publisher. We need to be flexible sometimes...."

"Are we getting paid for this extra day?" Cael asked, a hint of sarcasm creeping into their voice as they looked at me.

"You'd certainly not be getting paid to play D&D at the office," Blair shot back, then shrugged. "Though honestly, I don't really see what we need to prepare in the first place. We don't know what they're going to say or what they'll ask for. We're basically just speculating."

"That's… actually a fair point," Jonas admitted. "But it's good that we can discuss it, figure out if there's anything we should prepare."

I sighed, slumping back in my chair. "Maybe this wasn't a good idea, dragging everyone in on their day off for no good reason."

"Knowing what to expect from publishers is important," Blair countered. "We can't go in there blind, Owner."

I nodded absently, my mind already drifting as Jonas and Blair continued discussing potential scenarios. Their voices became background noise as I stared at my monitor, the cursor blinking mockingly in an empty document.

Here we were, on the verge of potentially getting publisher backing for our game, something most indie studios would kill for. Instead, all I felt was this crushing anxiety pressing down on my chest.

What if Collapsed Star changed their mind? Surely they were just doing due diligence, meeting with dozens of studios this month, and we were just another name on a long list. The probability of us specifically landing a deal had to be pretty low. Even if they were interested, how long would negotiations take? The paperwork alone could drag on for months. Could we even last that long? Would my father agree to lend us money on a "maybe"?

Everything felt like a constant struggle that never ended. On paper, my life looked amazing now. I had my own studio, a game in development, a girlfriend who loved me, this weird supernatural power that technically made me the most powerful man on Earth, but not really. But most days, I felt like I was drowning, barely keeping my head above water as I tried to keep all these plates spinning. I wanted to build a life of my own without cheating by using the ownership, or relying on my father's money. But here I was, constantly feeling like a kid playing pretend.

I pulled out my phone, staring at the number Claudia had gotten for me last night. Sonia. The philosophy professor with the analytical gaze that had made me feel like a specimen under a microscope. My heart raced just thinking about how she'd looked at me.

My thumb hovered over my messaging app. I knew I was technically allowed to meet her, spend time with her. Claudia had been actively encouraging me to see other people, also implying she'd like to meet new people too. She'd been patient, respectful, letting me take my time to get comfortable with the idea, but she'd made it clear this was what she wanted in the long run. "You literally own me," she'd said more than once. "Why would you worry? I love you. You'll always be THE man in my life. The others would just be… extras. Different flavors to sample."

I had agreed to it when we got together, when we made things officials, but the thought of her with someone else, someone who wasn't Renee whom I at least knew and had some weird dynamic with, made my stomach clench with jealousy and fear. Me being able to do the same thing should have eased that fear. Somehow, it just made it worse.

A finger snapped in front of my face. "Earth to Oliver," Cael said with a smirk. "Now who's the distracted one?"

"I was just thinking about the meeting," I said defensively, shoving my phone back in my pocket.

Before Jonas could launch into another round of appeasing diplomacy, Blair cut in. "Why don't we all just write up a document? Everyone puts down what they think we should be aware of before tomorrow's meeting. That way we're not just spinning our wheels."

"Yeah, that works," I agreed, grateful for the concrete task. Something productive to focus on instead of my existential dread. Something that could justify this trip to the office on a Saturday morning. "Then everyone can get back home."

We all turned to our computers, the studio filling with the sound of keyboards clacking as we worked on a common document, though I noticed Cael wasn't logged in, clearly still busy with their roleplaying game.

"I'll be done soon, I promise," they called out, not looking away from their screen. "The party's about to face the boss. Twenty minutes, tops."

I shook my head but didn't say anything. For all of their flaws, Cael was a pretty damn good game designer.

Hey there! This was chapter 6 of 4 Billion Toys 2. I'll be posting chapters here regularly, but if you want early access to the next chapters, feel free to support me on Patreon!

In the meantime, I'd be happy to hear your feedback and ideas for where to push the story. I've got the main storylines established already, but I've got more than enough room for suggestions ;)

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