Strategy Meeting

’Well shit.’ The sound of crunching gravel as Brenda’s car made a hard brake after turning into the driveway at a bit too much speed was a dead giveaway that she was going to be pissed. Not that John had needed more hints than her showing up when she should not have been at home yet for several hours.

“John Newman! You had better have a very good explanation for why Ashcroft called and told me that you hadn’t been to a single class today!” She didn’t bother closing the door as she exited the vehicle, and stomped towards John and the human-disguised Qhila. Who, on her part, looked at a complete loss for what to do when Brenda turned her expression of maternal fury on the kobold. “If this was your idea, young lady, then I swear to-”

John reached out and shifted his mother’s finger away from pointing at his friend as soon as she was within reach. This effectively returned her attention to him, glaring expectantly for an explanation.

“Qhi- Kira is… not unrelated to it, but she didn’t do anything wrong.” The simple assurance did not placate his mother, though he did take crossing her arms instead of pointing fingers to be a small improvement. “I didn’t tell you anything, because I didn’t want to get your hopes up when I wasn’t sure it was going to pan out but… We applied for internships at a medical tech firm with an office down at the hospital. I don’t know if you remember the protein folding game I showed Grandpa a few years ago? Anyway, the interview was today. We got back like 10 minutes ago.”

“An… internship??” The emotional whiplash from worried anger to something she probably wouldn’t have dared to hope for a month ago was written plainly in Brenda’s tone and expression. “You applied for an internship?”

They both nodded, bringing a smile to break through Brenda’s befuddlement. “That’s wonderful news! Kira, I am so sorry for accusing you of being a bad influence.” ‘Kira’ made a dismissive ‘don’t worry about it’ gesture as Brenda continued. “I am so proud of you, both of you.” She turned her attention back to John and a half-hearted sliver of reproach came back. “You really should have told me what was going on though. I was super worried driving home, and Mr. Edwards isn’t gonna be happy I left early…”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I didn’t think they would call you over a single day, but I did also decide to stay out of Conroy’s classes while Frank is still benched…”

“... I know that in principle I should, but I can’t really fault you for that.” Even the joy of the internship stuff wasn’t quite enough to prevent a note of bitterness from creeping into Brenda’s tone. It was gone quickly though, as she moved on to something else, “Was the afternoon last week also about the internship?”

“Oh, uh, no. I was eating lunch with Christie and we ended up… talking about Dad…”

“Oh sweetie.” Brenda pulled him in for a warm, motherly hug, which he reciprocated with one arm. Qhila had opted to take and squeeze his other hand in her own wordless show of compassion.

He just enjoyed the support and affection for a moment, then remembered that Qhila had only taken a small sip of humanis elixir, meaning it would run out fairly soon. “Thanks, Mom, I’m fine. But we were gonna go over to Marisa. Her boss, err, one of her private lesson clients I mean. Anyway, the guy knows our potential future supervisor, and may or may not be dating her, so we were gonna see if she knows anything that might give a hint about our chances.”

Qhila was visibly uncomfortable from the moment they entered Marisa’s house. Or a barrier copy of it, anyway, at the kobold’s insistence. Her anxious shifting and cautious glances at everywhere someone could enter from weren’t quite as severe as they had been when visiting the Abyss Market, but still far more pronounced than John had expected. Seeing it drove needles of guilt into his gut for having suggested this in the first place, but even if this hadn’t been the best way forward he could see, it was too late to back out now.

If Marisa or Charlotta noticed the kobold’s anxiety, they made no indication of it. The ice fencer pulled a can of beer from a box and held it towards the new arrivals in a wordless offer they both declined, while the gnome occupied her excitable energy fiddling with some mechanical gizmo. That’d been her strategy to not accidentally overstep on Qhila’s boundaries the past few days.

“So, ya wanna score some dope.” Marisa opened with a cheeky smirk as soon as they were seated.

“That’s… technically true.” John sighed. “But I’d really rather you didn’t put it like that. You mentioned going undercover-ish in the Inferno, which I assume would be the first stop for new drugs hitting the streets. And it really doesn’t sound like a place we should go without someone familiar with it…”

“Half right on both counts, Johnny. See, while the Inferno is the biggest hive of scum and villainy this side of… wouldn’t surprise me if it was both sides of the galaxy, actually. Anyway, it’s basically the vice capital of the Abyss, but it’s still a business. Well that, or Dante cares enough about making it look like one for it to act like one. Which means there are rules, because if a third of the people that went left as slaves, cripples, or corpses, the flow of visitors would run dry real quick.

“In other words, the place is predatory as shit but it’s set up in a way where it’s your choice to get potentially fucked over. Most everyone who loses everything in there does so in a way where most Abyssals hearing the story would say the person chose to risk it all themselves. The only places where you might get a Throat Stab Surprise are the parts of Wrath marked as lethal combat free for all, and the cage matches advertised as non-lethal are very, very strictly non-lethal. There’s no fuckery with the gambling tables or betting odds, designated areas where drugs that are biologically addictive, or whatever it’s called, can be had, and so on. And anyone who breaks those rules is gonna have very few days left to live, and all of them bad.

“Which means, as long as you keep your wits about you, you’re gonna be fine. But, the people operating in there are really good at convincing you to forget that, or convincing you that actually the risk is worth the prize, without outright scamming. So having someone along who knows the ropes makes it a lot easier to keep those wits.”

“Okay, I guess that makes sense.” John nodded. “It still sounds like the place to go for new developments in the ‘get high’ circles. Seems like it’d be the place for trendsetters.”

“Trendsetters.” Marisa giggled. “Yeah, for the fancy shit like court dust or completely new drugs you’re absolutely right. But pink E ain’t fancy shit. It’s, like, the boxed wine, cheap ‘shine, or glue sniffing of party dust. They do sell it at the Inferno, and stuff that’s guaranteed not cut with junk too, but it ain’t a big draw in any sense. In there, it’s padding for people whose main vice is something harder or something else. Outside, it’s a fallback for people who got hooked on fancier stuff that they can’t sustain a habit of, or escapism for people who couldn’t afford the top shelf stuff to begin with.

“Which means, 99 times out of 10, a new take on it is some back alley cook figuring out another way to cram junk filler in that the burnouts won’t notice, or figuring out how to tweak the addictiveness to make it hook harder or make other variants not quite scratch the itch. None of which flies inside the Inferno. So we’re looking at dingy alley clubs and street dealers in the Inferno territory but off the main street. Which is also the part of the city where you’re currently most likely to catch a dagger in the ribs for whatever’s in your pockets, or run into slavers.”

“Slavers?!? We must vanquish such scum or drive them from the city!” Charlotta declared firmly, brandishing a screwdriver like a tiny sword. To her credit, she had already managed to listen quietly for long enough for John to lose a bet with himself.

“Sorry to say, girl, but ya ain’t vanquishing shit until you’ve hit some Gamer Bullshit barriers. Even if my leg was working, we’d be outnumbered and outgunned by even the smallest crews. It’s best to put on the scouting hat for this one and come back to fight another day.” Marisa beat John squarely to the punch putting the brakes on that idea. Mostly because he had been trying to think of a way to put it more delicately. Not that he had needed to, apparently, as the reality check barely saw Charlotta’s highly emotive ears sink at all, even if she did stop waving her tool around like a weapon.

“Sounds like we train Levels first then. And get regular sample from Auction to compare,” Qhila concluded, to general notes of assent.

“I’ll keep an ear to the ground with the other contract mages. The ones that aren’t on the front lines, anyway,” Marisa added. “And if you can fix my leg ahead of time, I can hold off a day or two on reporting it to go with you into the lion’s den.”

“Thanks, tha-”

“Got it!” Evidently, Charlotta had burned through her whole supply of quiet. She placed the contraption she had been working on on the table while sheepishly muttering something that John decided to assume contained the word ‘sorry’ twice, rather than one of those s-words being ‘saint’.

“Good job,” John tried to be encouraging, “but uh, got what exactly?”

“I noticed that you were going back all the time to vials of something that needed to be stirred every half hour alternately clockwise and counterclockwise a number of times matching the prime numbers in ascending order. So I made this to do it for you.” She was very clearly making an effort to speak slowly enough for Qhila to keep up. At the same time, she pushed a button at the top of the device, causing it to unfold into what was clearly a set of four gripping claws for beakers and four arms with stirring rods.

“Thank you…” Qhila’s tone was one of mixed emotions swirling beneath polite gratitude, though the first part of that, John might’ve been the only person to catch.

Between Charlotta not knowing any alchemy and Qhila regularly having to use a Draconic word in the lab for lack of knowing the English one, it was exceedingly unlikely that the gnome knew what the brew they had been keeping up with on the side was. But she had essentially made a specialized tool to help Qhila with her heat medication.

“Y’know,” Marisa had evidently had a thought, and judging by her shit-eating grin as she voiced it, John was about to get some sass along the way, “seeing as you’ve been putting the moves on lil’ miss Brighton, she might be able to lend a hand. Actually going with to trawl for drugs would be a mess, but the inquisitors keep an eye on the drug scene ‘cause even if getting high ain’t illegal, lots of shit that is happens around drug use. Might be they’ve even got a sample of the new stuff on file already.”

“No.” The hardness of Qhila’s tone made John glad that she knew that the ‘putting the moves’ bit was a major exaggeration. “No direct involve the Order.”

“Why not?” There was nothing but earnest confusion to Charlotta’s tone, but John still needed to make an effort to resist facepalming. This had the makings of putting the shortstacks at each other’s figurative throats, and he hadn’t yet thought of a good way to avert it. “Surely the Lady, and thus the Warden, would approve of a s- of John apprenticing under an Apothecary like Dr. Breshnik.”

“Of course they approve of Breshnik. Is us they no approve of.”

“What are you talking about?!?” Though confusion was Charlotta’s dominant expression, there was a clear, frustrated edge to her tone as well.

“Gold Rose Order protect humans, not care about non-humans.”

Qhila’s words and caustic tone turned Charlotta’s confusion to righteous indignation. “That’s not true! The Order protects mundanes first because they’re the most defenseless, but they defend all innocents!”

Qhila snorted derisively. “If Order can protect one human at expense of village of non-humans, whole village die.”

“Slander!” Charlotta surged to her feet, slamming her palms against the coffee table as she leaned aggressively across it towards Qhila. “Take that back! Right now!”

“Is not slander. Is experience.” Qhila taking a similar stand across from Charlotta was more deliberate and less explosive. She didn’t raise her voice either, though the snarling undertone left her seeming no less aggressive.