The Prize

John didn't even have to knock on the front door when he showed up at the Frozen Flame's fort this time. The camera's simply followed him up to the warehouse's door, which then surprised him with the sound of a loud buzzer as one of the members spotted him on the camera's and granted him access. He jumped and watched as a sharp clicking noise echoed out from the door and then swung open as it was unlocked remotely. The lights in the giant main room of the Frozen Flame's base remained off until after he stepped inside and entered the nearby barrier.

You have entered the 'Eddie's Place... Yes! Finally! Fixed it!' barrier.

A pop-up greeted him first as soon as he crossed a few feet into the threshold of the building, followed by an array of powerful, bright, white lights. He appeared within an arm’s reach of Robyn's familiar black car, the deuce, and then froze momentarily when he realized that the eyes of a few dozen women were all on him. The faces of people he hadn't met before had all turned towards him as soon as he had appeared in the middle of the room, and while a few reached for their weapons instinctively, none of them actually drew them or threatened him. The ones who didn't know who he was or why he was there were quickly briefed on the subject by their nearby allies, and then some quickly went back to their business. Most of them continued glaring at him.

By this point, he figured that the majority knew about his refusal to help them any further with rescuing the Warden and Cassandra, so the glaring didn't seem unprovoked to him. He just found it hard to continue walking into the building with all of those warriors staring daggers into him like that.

After a while, the door behind him blared with the sound of its buzzer again, breaking through John's feelings of nervousness with another little jump and forcing him into moving again. He cast a glare at the grey metallic exit behind him, but he got the message nonetheless. He crossed the room, past the kitchen, armory, and the sleeping quarters, and then arrived at the familiar entrance with a large, golden, bedazzled plaque on it that was lovingly labeled 'Eddie.'

Thankfully, he didn't have to stand around and wait for a buzzer to ring him in this time. The door was already unlocked. The staircase inside was just as uneven and unsteady to walk on as it had been the first time. Despite the fact that he had been expecting the hard journey down the steps, he still tripped on them while going down and had to hold the railing to enter the basement. Each step was either further down than he thought it was or higher up... if it wasn't just slanted at a ridiculous and slippery angle.

He didn't get over the feeling that he was constantly falling down the stairs until after he was already fifteen steps away from the staircase. He clutched at one of the nearby wooden shop tables below and then smiled unconsciously when he heard the familiar sounds of various arcade games going off around him. There was no active thought or memory that caused the warm nostalgic feeling in his stomach when he heard those noises; the atmosphere it created just gave him that reaction by that point. He felt at home around video games and had to suppress the urge to stop and look at the nearby computers whenever he located one of the sources of the sounds.

Thankfully, the scattered empty pizza boxes and ramen cups made it a little bit easier for him to ignore the temptation before him.

Two heads of hair, one red and the other golden, turned to look at John as he pushed past a handful of heavy curtains to find the women that he was supposed to talk to, and both frowned upon seeing him. It only made sense to find that Robyn was still upset with him for quitting on their 'mission' so soon... but Eddie... Eddie seemed more... disappointed than anything. When Robyn avoided his gaze, Eddie kept glancing over at him and then away like she wasn't supposed to be looking at him.

It was like the redhead was trying to give him the cold shoulder and failing.

Both of them had clearly noticed him arriving on the cameras, but only one of them had bothered to cover herself up. Robyn had even gone so far as to zip her long leather jacket up in front of him, despite the fact that moving around with it like that made her wince whenever it rubbed against the shoulder that her mechanical arm was connected to. Eddie was still wearing as little as possible. Though this time the redhead at least had a pair of blue panties pulled up over her plump mound when he first walked into the room. He didn't get a chance to see her enormous round freckled butt since she didn't turn her back to him. Her shirt, another short-sleeved crop-top that left her belly exposed, was gray and had another science joke written over the front of it. It took him a couple moments to read what it said but he smiled once his eyes finished roaming her chest.

'My head hertz from the frequency of these puns.'

"Alright," Robyn grunted after a couple of minutes of silent staring had passed. "I take it you've been thinking this over for a little while. What do you want as payment?" Immediately, John's thoughts turned to the most perverse answer he could think of. He had to focus just to bring himself to think of a better answer than sex, and even then the answer he gave didn't seem as good as the first idea.

"Some kind of a laser cannon would be nice," he gestured to one of the nearby weapons dropped on top of a pile of milk crates and then took a step towards the item like it was that simple. There were so many barrels on the gun that John naturally assumed that it was some kind of minigun. He didn't even care about the fact that the back of the gun was shredded in half like something had simply ripped through the metal on it and hundreds of frayed wires and computer chips were exposed. If Eddie truly could create something like that, then he didn't doubt that she could fix it back up too.

"A laser cannon?! What are talking abo-" Eddie started.

"No," Robyn interrupted her. She rapped her metal knuckles against the nearest table, and John turned to look at the blonde with a furrowed brow. "You found a name and a location. That's it. Your payment will reflect the amount of help you provided." John opened his mouth to argue with her, but Robyn quickly crossed her arms in front of her chest. She stared him down with hard, determined eyes, and John got the message.

She wasn't changing her mind. He sighed and glanced around the room, but none of the things he found looked like they would be of much use to him. Guns seemed so... primitive to him now that he could use magic. He needed something helpful.

"How about prosthetic eyes?" he asked, his thoughts drifting to Urga. "You seemed to be able to help Robyn with her arm. I have a friend who could use some help like that." Eddie didn't hesitate to answer him.

"I would have to meet him," she said, and John shook his head. "Her." she corrected herself. "It's a complicated process, even more so for eyes, I'd have to make it solely for her from scratch."

"Also, it would have to wait until we get Cassandra back," Robyn grunted. "Her enchantments are also a part of what makes it work so effectively."

"Can you bring her here? That way I can get started on gathering the parts while Bluebird goes to get Cassandra," Eddie said, and John idly cast Observe on the both of them as Eddie stepped over to one of the nearby computers and began typing into it. She accessed a website or an application of some kind, but he never noticed what it was.

Eda Zoe Deeley
Level 5 Techomancer
<Eddie>
113/113 HP
RP: +46
Effects: None

Robyn Braxton
Level 15 Barbarian
<Bluebird>
556/556 HP
RP: -112
Effects: Artificial Body, Capped Strength, Totem Of The Hawk.

"I don't think I can bring her here, actually," John answered Eddie and briefly frowned at the fact that his relationship score had gone down almost ten whole points since the last time that he had spoken to the redhead. Robyn liked him a little bit more but not by much. "She's uh..." Well, there was no time like the present for him to spill the beans about one of his secrets. Based on the conversation he had had with Robyn in the hospital, Kingdoms weren't easy places to access so, if he needed to run from them again at some point, he felt safe mentioning the place once at least. "She's an Orc," he said and watched as both girls lost their frowns. They stared at him with big wide eyes, one pair colored like ambers and the other emeralds.

"Like... a World of Warcraft kind of Orc?" Eddie asked, and John looked over at her. She seemed surprised, but based on everything he had seen over the past week, he felt like it couldn't have been that big of a deal. Robyn moved on from the information pretty quickly.

"A little bit better looking than that but... yeah," he said and watched as Eddie stared at him a little bit longer. Her relationship score with him jumped by twenty whole points... and then she frowned again.

"In that case, I can't help you with her vision," she said. John opened his mouth to try and ask why, but Eddie explained it before he could finish a single syllable. "Our biology may be similar but... still different and I've never even seen another one of the other species before. Eyes especially are too complicated and unique to assume that we would be able to use the same kind of ones I might normally make for... humans.

"You're going to have to pick something else," she said, and John's head sunk. He glanced around the room briefly, but everything looked like something that Robyn would refuse to allow him to take. Ammo for the gun he already had seemed like it would be too easy. No laser or electric weaponry. No prosthetic limbs. No enchanted weapons. All of it was just-

"Woah..." he stopped, as his eyes landed on one of the items in one of the nearby curtain-separated pockets. "... How about that Grenade launcher?"