City of Opportunities 6 – Then they were Three

Eldred waltzed into the government building.

He was an altogether less put together version of himself than the one that had walked in there the day prior. His rain jacket was covered in dust and damaged from the various items that Nyx had launched at him. His pants were in a similar state. His hair was dishevelled. Likely, he also reeked, having not showered while sweating a whole lot.

Nothing he could do about that now. There was just him and the purpose ahead of him.

Scanning the room quickly had his gaze wander to the gremlin he had talked to the day prior. She was distracted, alternating between chewing the inside of her cheek and mouthing curses to herself while operating her computer.

Eldred had wondered if he would feel less attracted to the shortstack the second time around. Whatever one would call the relationship he had with Nyx now, it was physical so it took the immediate horniness out of him.

The answer was no. If anything, he noticed all the more how much of a waste her grey suit was on her voluptuous curves. She would have looked so much better in a tight, white blouse and a black pencil skirt – a secretary outfit to accentuate all she had to offer, from the huge tits to the thick thighs.

The driven man stepped towards the table with even greater confidence than he had the day before. “One moment,” the gremlin declared, without even looking in his direction. “I have to write an angry email so this retard realises that it’s not the government’s duty to take care of his flowers.”

“I am able to save you from that fate.”

His voice had the gremlin suddenly turn in her comparatively large swivel chair. Golden eyes widened. “You!” she declared. “You actually lived?!”

“Living and thriving,” Eldred responded and put a hand on his hip, posing with justified smugness.

“And looking like you joined the beggars,” the grey-skinned woman responded instantly. “Peed your pants and decided to run before the banshee got you? Smart, but that doesn’t get you a date with me, dust-boy.”

Her bratty tone had Eldred’s left eyelid twitch. Suddenly, he tilted forwards, putting himself face to face with the gremlin. “Why don’t we talk about this privately?” he growled. “I have a proposition for you.”

“I get propositioned by stinky beggars all the time, comes with the tits,” the gremlin drawled. “I’m not-“

“One chance,” Eldred interrupted her. “I am giving you this one chance to get out of your chair and switch to the private sector. You can sass me or you can take your dump truck of a rump out of this dump of a building.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” she responded

The dismissive tone had Eldred growl. Before he forgot himself, before he responded to her continued disrespect in equal measure, he decided to take his efforts elsewhere. He would have been happy to take a quick meeting in a break room. “Your loss,” he stated and turned around.

“…Wait… wait…!” The gremlin muttered and sighed, meeting his gaze when he glanced over his shoulder. “…you are actually serious?”

“You’ll have to buy me breakfast to find out.”

“Wha- that wasn’t a condition before!”

“You weren’t being a bratty bitch before.”

They glared at each other for a bit. Eldred hid well how much he actually needed the meal. He had spent the last four hours with Nyx in the derelict building, killing time until the first shops opened. When he had walked up to the bakery, he had realized he didn’t even have enough coin for a ham sandwich. Living off charity meant he never had much in the way of personal funds. It hadn’t been a hindrance before.

It wouldn’t be a hindrance for long.

“I have a break in–“

“I’m not waiting for your break,” Eldred pushed. “It’s a simple choice, you can stay here or you can tag along and listen to my offer.”

The gremlin rolled her cutely swung jaw for two seconds, then looked around with open disdain. “Screw it,” she whispered to herself and jumped out of her chair. “There’s an acceptable bakery at the corner, let’s go there.”

They did. Eldred walked ahead, acting as if he knew where they were going. The gremlin did not say a word, not to him anyhow. She went ahead and bought him a nice, thick sandwich and a chilled cup of apple juice to go. She pushed the brown paper bag against his chest. He took it, then actually led the way.

“You know…” The gremlin stopped once she realized they were heading towards Eldred’s building. “I am willing to play along with a lot of stupid shit, but I am not going to commit double suicide by banshee.”

Eldred let out a long sigh, then looked into all directions of the crossing they were at. The advantage of wandering a decaying district was the emptiness. He could not blame her for growing doubtful at this point either. Similarly, the point that her initial brattiness had annoyed him had been made. Proof had to be delivered.

“Nyx, can you show her?” he asked the air.

The gremlin looked confused at first, then wide-eyed when the ghost lady manifested in the air next to him. Squeaking, she bounced half a step back and put her hands on her ears. “Are you insane?!”

“Relax.” Eldred nodded to Nyx, who disappeared again without a word. “Relax,” he repeated once the gremlin took her hands off her ears. “I let her possess me, but I am just a guy right now,” he informed her. “I doubt her voice still has the capability to kill.”

“Wait… in what manner did she possess you?” the gremlin asked. “Did you beat her into submission?”

“No, she was lonely, I said we needed to come to an arrangement, she told me she could haunt me instead of the building if I spilled my essence in her – I fucked her brains out.”

“Sure, you did,” the gremlin drawled sarcastically. “Must have taken 5 whole pumps.”

Eldred suddenly grabbed the gremlin by one of her vertically curving horns. He had wanted to do that since he first met her, though he had not imagined he would do it in anger. The gold-marked, smooth extensions of her forehead made for a fantastic handle while he towered over her. “You’re lucky you’re hot,” he told her, “but this is my actual final warning. Piss me off again and, when I turn this whole district around, I’ll make a point out of leaving you in the dust.”

“…Right… sorry…” she sounded genuinely remorseful, so Eldred released her horn and let her steady herself. “I’m having some doubts, but you actually mutually bonded with a banshee, so that’s impressive.”

“What does that mean?” Eldred asked as they resumed their way.

“Insert joke about your lack of education here – can I not be at least a little bratty?” The question came after he glared at her. “I won’t insult you for anything you didn’t do, okay? That’s the best I can do. I’m just a little gremlin with mommy issues.”

“Your name?”

“Pardon?”

“I just realized we never introduced ourselves,” he said. “You know my name is Eldred. Yours?”

“…Avari,” she responded, after a moment of hesitation. “Short for Avarice.”

“Interesting name.”

“You clearly don’t know many gremlins. Avarice is the Jane of the greed demons.”

Eldred shrugged, just taking her word for it, then pushed open the gate to his property. “So, what is a mutual bond?”

“Basically, what it sounds like. There’s parasitic bonds, mutual bonds and exploiting bonds, based on whether the spirit controls you, you are equals, or you are drawing energy from the spirit. Mutual bonds are the hardest of the three, for obvious reasons. Rare to find a spirit, especially a banshee, that’s willing to even make a contract like this.”

“And the advantages?” Eldred asked.

“The advantage is that you have a hot ghost lady attached to you, with all of the abilities she can learn. The disadvantage is that you have to fuel the hot ghost lady, as you no doubt realized already… also, I hope you didn’t want to become a Cultivator.”

Eldred stopped, a hand on the entrance door. “Why?”

“Because cultivating a new Core while you have a second soul grafted to yours is excruciating. Exception being when the two souls are of the same type – which definitely isn’t the case for a banshee and a human.” Avari gave him a thoughtful look. “Does this shatter your plans in their infancy?”

“Is it impossible?”

“No, you’ll just scream your lungs out as you try.“

“Then I will succeed or die, it’s that simple.” Eldred gave the front door a shove, forcing the rusted hinges to give way. They had moved enough of the trash behind out of the way that it opened fully. “Welcome to our humble abode.”

“Did we really have to come here just so I can watch you eat?” Avari asked as she followed inside.

Now firmly out of the eyes of the public, Nyx manifested again. Unusually, she did it without asking for permission first. It wasn’t that she had to – mechanically she was the one who flipped that switch – she just had always asked so far.

“You were invited,” she hissed, her melodic voice pressed into a thin, sharp note. “Be courteous.”

“I’m trying,” Avari countered. “Place is a dump though. I thought my dump truck of a rump was supposed to get out of those?”

“For now, this is a dump.” A kick to a rusty table underlined Eldred’s agreement. “It’s my dump though and I won’t let it be one for long. Your workplace is only going to get worse as the district does, right?”

“…You’re entirely correct in that sense.”

Eldred guided his guest up the stairs and to the last room on the upper floor. That, as he had discovered, must have been the former office of the owner. It was by far the largest, had the remnants of a private bathroom, including a shower, and was connected to the adjacent room, Nyx’s room, with an additional door. Likely, the secretary had worked there before.

Most important about the boss’ office was that it had a hardwood table that had survived all this time. Eldred used it as his seat. Nyx eyed the furniture with distrust but hopped on as well, cuddling up to him while he pulled the sandwich out of the paper bag. He wolfed it down in such a hurry that Avari couldn’t even make a comment before he was done. The cup of apple juice immediately followed.

“So,” he finally began his explanation, “here’s the simple situation. I’ve found a company laptop…” he tapped the device twice, sitting next to him on the table. “…that let me log into something called the OMiRe.”

“The Open Mission Register? Anyone can install that on any machine,” Avari remarked. “Though… did you have Private Netspheres in there?”

“Focused on ore extraction, yes… are you well informed or do I seriously know so little?” Eldred had to ask at this point, he felt like he was explaining the theory behind an engine to a train engineer.

“Little bit of column A, little bit of column B,” Avari answered, her unsteady tone betraying that she was biting back a meaner retort. “So?”

“So, I intend to take a job,” he told her and opened the laptop. “This job, to be exact.”

Avari walked on over and checked out the page. Past the initial booting, the laptop had proven to be pretty fast. “And you need 3 people… and you thought you’d ask me? Got no friends to ask instead?”

“No,” Eldred said bluntly. “I was a phantom wasting away in my apartment. I died in the rain yesterday. Now, I am going to build myself an empire.” He offered her his hand. “You can be part of it.”

“Why me?” Avari asked, with a raised eyebrow. “You don’t know who I am. You shouldn’t be picking me.”

“There’s the simple answer and the simpler answer.” Eldred put his arm around Nyx and simply admitted. “You’re hot, so you stuck out.”

Avari laughed out loud, then cleared her throat. “It really is a shame that you’re a scrawny, poorly dressed guy. If you put that confidence in a suit, that might do something for me.”

“It is your loss to judge the book by its cover.” Nyx remarked and put a possessive kiss on Eldred’s cheek. “He… what was the crude language...? He ‘fucked my brains out’.”

“Okay, so that was real, noted.” After going over the mission details one more time, Avari took a half step back. Cocking her hips, she looked up at Eldred, one of her short eyebrows sharply raised. “Assume I do join you and assume we make it out with a big haul, what then?”

“Then I buy Echo and learn to cultivate. Then we take on a larger job. More Echo, more work, more money. We rebuild this structure. I buy Nyx a sexy secretary outfit.” His banshee hummed approvingly, dissatisfied with the tattered dress her nature provided. “This will become the seat of a new corporation and I’ll be its owner.”

“And my part in all of this?”

“As big as you want it to be,” Eldred stated. “I need your help right now. Keep working for me after and I’ll take you as far as I will go. Leave to do your own thing after this first mission and I will repay you in whatever way I can for helping to get me started.”

“Alright… before I make my decision… what was the simpler answer?”

“You being hot was the simpler answer,” Eldred told her. “The simple answer is… because I sense we have something in common. You also want to prove to yourself that this isn’t where you stop.” The fingers of his extended hand twitched as an invitation. “There’s only beggars and morons here, you said. Let’s change that.”

“Well…” Avari grasped his hand as best she could with her own, tiny digits. “…I’m feeling like a moron right now.”