Up and Coming 7 – Puzzles for the Mind Goblin

It occurred to Eldred that he had somehow stumbled his way into having not just one, not just two, but three girlfriends (or wives or whatever) without going on a single date. He had kissed, he had gotten sucked off, he had done the deed, but he hadn’t taken a girl out in any romantic capacity. The closest he had gotten was to stop under a starlit sky with Nyx and just rest for an hour in the middle of a mission.

On the first day of his stay, he just remained at home. He woke up in the morning, fucked around with his women, watched videos for a few hours, played a couple of rounds of the trendy shooter game of the year, eventually realized that it was already evening, fucked around some more, then went to sleep. It was a day spent in a similar way as he had back in his old apartment. The difference was that he had female company, which was both for better and (if he was being honest) for worse. Avari especially kept interrupting his time just watching videos with requests to lift this, unscrew that or just give her a hug (though she never asked for it openly).

He liked doing things for her, for them, but there was definitely a lack of peace that he had known when he was alone. Simultaneously, why did he care about peace? There was a world to conquer! Proverbially, Eldred didn’t feel like getting into the administrative business. He wanted to be important, he didn’t want to be swamped with responsibilities.

Responsibilities he did take on willingly were limited to those that got him stronger and that made his women happy – which brought him back to date planning on day two. After spending two hours in the morning racking his brain in an effort to get the perfect idea, he decided to just do as he did best: act first, deal with the consequences later.

With all of the bravado an owner could afford, Eldred burst into Ellie’s little dungeon. He would have kicked the door open if it hadn’t been a sliding one. “Get in the backpack!” he shouted.

“W-w-wha-“ Ellie was sitting in a small circle of various snacks and sodas, surrounding a pile of pillows and blankets. It was like a summoning circle made to call forth or bind girlfailures. The messy-haired goblin certainly did not seem like she wanted to move, but her man knew better!

Eldred grabbed the corners of the blanket his woman was half-wrapped in and turned it into an impromptu bag. Superhuman speed let him manhandle the greenskin faster than she realized what was happening to her. He stuffed her into the backpack alongside the blanket, adding a pillow for extra comfort.

With a goblin on his back and a goal in mind, Eldred set out. He was already halfway to the exit when the bottom-heavy shortstack stuck her head out of her new confinement. “W-where… where… where?!”

Eldred turned his head halfway to smirk at her. “Too overwhelmed to formulate a proper sentence, mhm?”

“Awawawawa…”

“Where are we going? I suppose that is your question. The answer is a store that sells certain things that I am sure you will enjoy.”

“O-okay…. And… where… where?”

“Where is Nyx? Hanging around, but she has agreed to take an incorporeal nap while we have our date.”

Eldred wouldn’t even pretend he understood the exact metaphysics at work whenever Nyx was just dragged along by him being her soul anchor. What mattered was that his banshee wasn’t gnawing on her fingernails, following their date with a mixture of jealousy and boredom. Not that Eldred thought the ghost lady was the type anyhow. She had been very supportive of his harem. That Ellie had joined it as fast as she did was in part because they had chatted so much on their way back to Iridescia.

“Why… why me?” Ellie managed to get a question out in full just as they stepped out of the house. “Aren’t the others… more deserving of dates?”

“Absolutely not!” Eldred disagreed so intensely it made the shortstack flinch nervously. “None of you are more or less deserving,” he told her. “If anything, you are owed a bunch of my attention for giving me a child and because I have paid you the least of it.”

“Uhm… d-didn’t you just say none of us are more or less deserving?”

“This isn’t a matter of logic, Ellie.” Eldred made the goblin bounce when he adjusted a shoulder strap. “I want to spend time with you. It’s that simple.”

Though, if Eldred was being honest, he had the hidden reason that he thought the date with Ellie would be the easiest. Once he managed to engage her hyperfixation tendencies, she would be good for an hour, and he could just watch her make cute noises and give her the occasional head pat.

‘Sounds like heaven,’ he thought. It put a warmth deep inside him that was gentler than that flame of ambition that tended to roar in his soul. Both were welcome against the weather though.

Ellie retreated into the backpack, pulling the flap shut over her head to protect herself against a cold gust of wind. Iridescian weather was weird, seriously weird, but it was a rule of thumb that most districts obeyed a 3-month structure. Arrival, Solemnity and Isolation were months of spring. Tear, Communication and War were months of summer. Peace, Negotiation and Extraction were months of autumn. Lastly, Herald, Collapse and Echo were months of winter.

Eldred had first arrived in Rust Grass in early Negotiation. It was now late Extraction. What had started as a warm, early Autumn was now starting to shift into a cold, early winter. The winds that blew between the two-storey buildings that dominated the dilapidated district were quite unpleasant.

As a positive side effect, the hoodlums had retreated into the ruins, warming themselves on electrically powered heater cells. Here and there, particularly degenerated minds even made an open fire.

Avari’s words from two days ago bounced in his head as his eyes drifted over the empty streets. A crack in the pavement accompanied his steps all the way to the crossroads. The scent of piss was penetrative even in this cold air, growing strongest around the train station. ‘This is not a place to raise a child,’ he thought. ‘I’ll have to either turn this place around or move within nine months…’

Could he achieve that?

He would certainly try.

Carrying the mother of his first child up a flight of stairs, he moved her to the waiting station of the monorail. They sat there for a little bit before the next train arrived, then hopped on to move to a district that Eldred knew semi-well.

It was called the Playground. Some insisted on calling it Play-Ground instead, in line with much of the local naming schemes of the districts. Eldred wasn’t one of them. He never understood why they did the hyphen thing anyway. ‘Probably a leftover from old times.’

The Playground was an entertainment district. It had a multitude of arcades and shops that sold merchandise related to video games. Here and there, they sold physical copies of video games too, but those were collector’s items.

Eldred had been here a couple of times in the past, browsing around. It had been a three month phase during which he had attempted to get himself to like something outside of his room. It had died off bit by bit. One day he had gone to an arcade, tried to get a high score, failed to even register on the scoreboard, and then quit.

That was a different life, a different him. Now he was neither alone nor that easy to be dissuaded. Not that he was there to break any scoreboards. His target was much simpler.

Eldred’s steps carried him swiftly to one of the stores. The doorbell rang as he stepped past the glass door and into a space cramped by the multitude of boxes spilling over the shelves. One had to be careful not to topple anything over, especially with a backpack.

The boxes came in all manners of sizes and depicted all manners of items. What was uniform between them was one word: ‘puzzle’. Be it 2D or 3D, be it a proverbial logic puzzle or an actual puzzle, this store had it all.

An elderly gentleman sat behind the counter. “You’ll have to forgive me for not coming to greet you,” he said, loudly, as if fearing the quiet music in the shop would drown out his voice. “My knees aren’t the best anymore.”

“Entirely fine with me,” Eldred assured. He wasn’t sure what kind of species the elderly man was. The fact that he had brows long and bushy enough to hide his eyes pointed at him not being human. Eldred wasn’t even sure the man had a mouth. When he talked, all that moved was a long, messy beard. It was every bit as white as the dense hair atop his head.

“How may I help you?” he asked.

“I want a puzzle for my…” Eldred stopped for a moment, looking for the correct word. ‘Should have asked Avari about what titles men commonly use for their women in arrangements like ours.’ “…girlfriend,” he chose the most fitting word.

As he talked, Eldred moved the backpack to the front. Ellie raised her head just enough that her yellow eyes could reflect the light. She made a squeaking noise that somehow straddled the line between panic and cuteness, then disappeared back under the covering flap.

“I see,” the old man didn’t miss a beat. “What level of difficulty are you attempting? Something high, I reckon?”

“Very difficult, yes,” Eldred confirmed. “She’s a shy, little genius.”

“I know the type,” the old man drew out the words as if tasting something old and precious. “Mhm… if I remember correctly, there’s an old set on the second shelf to the left. It’s a black box with a big sphere on it. Could you bring that here? I think she would like it.”

“Sure.” Eldred turned around, endeavouring to find the described box. He almost bumped into a precarious stack of puzzles on the way. The goblin inside the backpack squirmed. ‘Someone is getting restless.’

The black box stood atop a shelf like a black monument. It was only about the size of a shoebox. “It is my strongest puzzle,” the old man cackled as Eldred stretched for it. “Are you sure you can handle it?”

“Puzzle seller, I do not intend to handle it. My brain is smooth like a marble.” A stretch, a groan, then a grip and the drawing back of his arm. The puzzle was his one scan at the register later. “Thank you very much.”

“I hope your lady has fun with it,” the man said, before seeing him off.

Eldred stepped back out into the cold air. Though he could have headed back now, a date demanded a bit more in the means of acts out of the ordinary. That was his read on it anyhow. With that intent in mind, he walked on over to a manga café. It was a small establishment where people who did not wish to have private libraries could rent rooms, drink coffee, and read various drawn stories.

A room (or chamber) for two was acquired after asking whether puzzling in there was fine. The woman at the entrance affirmed this, as long as they took it along after their time was up.

Eldred pulled the door behind them shut. It sealed quite tight. The only sound from the outside that could have pierced through was a fire alarm. Inside there was only the hum of the air conditioning. An integrated terminal let Eldred put on his preferred music. The metal tunes of an electric guitar and the heavy drums were kept at a moderate volume.

“Alright,” the driven man put down the backpack and the puzzle. “There’s no one around, Ellie,” he promised.

The goblin poked her head out, scanned the surroundings, then carefully disentangled herself from her mobile pillow cocoon. Wrinkled from the journey, her secretary outfit fit perfectly with her messily braided hair. “F-for me…?” she asked.

“For you,” Eldred confirmed and gently pushed the box towards her.

Ellie crawled across the floor. The small room was designed for reading comfort, so the ground and walls were both cushioned. She tried to open the box but failed at peeling away the sealing bit of glued-on foil.

With a low laugh, Eldred summoned his blade. Chains rattled in an almost disappointed tone when the sharp tip was used as a glorified boxcutter. After he had sufficiently loosened the seals, he handed the box back.

“T-thanks…” Ellie muttered.

‘Difficult to strike up a conversation with her,’ Eldred thought and watched. His goblin lifted the lid, revealing a multitude of differently shaped pieces that were supposed to join up to an ornate sphere, if the picture on the lid was anything to go by.

A bright smile bloomed on Ellie’s face. A cute, wondrous, “Aaaahhh!” left her. It was a sound of unadulterated joy from a mind that had only recently been introduced to the idea of ‘toys’ as such even existing. It made Eldred’s heartbeat quicken. He would do everything to protect that smile.

Ellie spread out the pieces all around her, inspecting each of them under the artificial light. They were pretty enough things, made from a mix of plastics that shimmered like polished stones.

“Is mine?” she asked again, this time with a bit of that goblinish greed in her voice.

“Is yours,” Eldred confirmed again, matching her loss of proper grammar.

Ellie fidgeted with her necklace. The bronze cog was the only thing of her past that she had kept. It was a small thing, unlikely to be of Iridescian make. Eldred guessed that it was an early industrial effort native to the world she was from that had found its way into her hands by way of her plundering ‘family’.

After scanning around for a bit, she began to puzzle. Pieces clicked into each other with ease at first, but the problems soon began. The pieces would only make a perfect sphere if the configuration was perfect top to bottom and every last piece had to be used.

Eldred just watched her for a bit. Already, he felt he had done well enough. Ellie was absorbed in the process, humming along to one of his favourite metal songs, and produced all manner of cute noises of satisfaction and annoyance as she progressed through the puzzle. It wasn’t the kind of date that the media he had watched over his life usually presented, but didn’t this count as well? They were both happy, they were doing something out of the ordinary, and they were making memories together. That was the important factor, right?

“I’ll order some hot chocolate, do you also want something?” Eldred asked.

“Cake!” Ellie exclaimed, unusually boisterous.

Eldred opened the service app on the terminal. The hot chocolate and cake were both there in a manner of minutes, brought straight to the room. Ellie didn’t even notice the waitress entering. ‘Mhm… seems like…’ “Ellie, do tell me where you got that gear from?”

“I found it in the loot pile,” the girlfailure responded slowly, but without stammering. She was too absorbed into her work to question her own words. Without the stutter, she sounded… sexy. Eldred didn’t know how else to put it. He had never noticed how smooth and even her voice could be if not broken into little pieces. “I liked it. The others let me have it because they thought it was stupid.” Another piece slotted into its proper place without a single sound. “Hihihi,” she giggled triumphantly.

“No greater backstory behind that?” Eldred investigated.

“No, I just like it.”

“Do you like me?”

“I love, love, love you!” Ellie said it thrice for emphasis, then looked straight at him. Presence of that lucid state of confidence soon faded. A blush that deepened her green shade crept up from her neckline to the tips of her ears. “I-i-I m-m-mean…!”

“I love you too,” Eldred responded with complete sincerity, then loaded a fork with cake. Offering that to his goblin gave her reeling mind something to focus on. “Don’t worry. No one will bully you for your interests again. Tease, yes, mock, maybe a little, but all in good spirits and if it's ever too much, you tell me and I’ll sort it out.” He gave her the most reassuring smile he was capable of. “I’ll cherish you until our dying days.”

Ellie slowly chewed the cake while looking up at him, her yellow eyes big, the slit pupils dilated. Her blush remained but changed in character. “I’m… n-not sure I… deserve to be this happy…”

“You do,” he gave her a simple head pat. “Keep going with your puzzle. If you finish it in time, I’ll get you a second one.”

For the rest of the date, Eldred fed her sweets and farmed her for cute noises.