Part 2 - Out the Dungeon
Chapter 12
Huck and Elise didn’t stay much longer, both making excuses and that they’d see me tomorrow. Which meant I was left alone against Daniel and my mom. I, unfortunately, was too full for more pizza and came up with a new plan to avoid tricky conversations. I went to bed early and then turned my notifications off as Daniel kept pinging me on his walk back home with more reasons why I should finish school and go to college and not become a diver and blah blah blah.
I had already heard it from my mom, I didn’t need to hear it from someone I had made a blood pact with when we were in 3rd grade. We had promised to always share our candy after Halloween and had used a pair of safety scissors to cut our palms and seal it. Well, I had been the only one to do so, still had the scar—Daniel just pinky-swore.
I eventually fell asleep, but I couldn’t stay asleep. I was too excited. Too nervous. By 6 am I was already up and out on the streets going for a run. I hadn’t been up this early since… well, not that long ago. Roosevelt had liked waking us up way too early for my tastes, even Elise hadn’t been her normal cheerful self.
I finished my normal jog. 7 am.
I sighed and decided I’d take a long shower. Maybe I’d even shave.
7:23 am. Groaning, I flipped on my HUD, ignoring the commercial talking about some dumb politician running for New York City’s mayor.
I scrolled through my notifications, ignoring the thirteen new messages from Daniel, and jumped straight to a message that Elise had sent when she left last night.
Elise // A. Contract attached.
Elise // <<Tap to Open Attachment>>
I mentally tapped on the document and it opened, filling my vision with a translucent document. I focused on the words and the document became solid, filling my vision with a white document with black words. I glanced at the top of the page.
THIS AGREEMENT is made and entered this TENTH day of AUGUST, 2123, by and between THE NEW YORK MANTICORE DIVER’S SCHOOL, a Limited Liability Company, and <<INSERT FULL LEGAL NAME and AGENT’S FULL LEGAL NAME and DIVER REGISTRAR NUMBER>>, hereafter referred to as Diver and AGENT.
WHEREAS, Diver desires to enter a LETHALITY DUNGEON DIVE that shall enable to develop Diver’s career in the field of dungeon diving.
WHEREAS, the —
I closed the document. It was boring.
7:26 am.
Fuuuuuuuuck.
I flicked through a series of streams, watching a few minutes here and there of different dives, music videos, vlogs, and more until I couldn’t take it anymore and looked at the time.
7:47 am.
I hated waiting.
I closed out of my feed, ignoring an ad for fast food, and decided to finish getting dressed. Maybe I should start packing just in case for my new school. I looked around my room, sighing heavily, and flicked back on my feed. I ignored the ad about a dive being streamed tonight. I wouldn’t be able to afford to watch it live, I’d have to wait for tomorrow’s third or fourth stream before it got cheap enough to pick up—at that point, it’d pry be spoiled if anything interesting happens.
While most dives were free to watch, so long as you didn’t mind constant ads, the higher lethality dives charged a premium to watch them live, as well as shoving a ton of ads into it. You could purchase streams with fewer ads or no ads, but I didn’t know anyone who would spend that type of money. In addition, every re-stream of the dive after that would lower the cost, but you had to watch at scheduled times until a week after the dive when it entered the Lethality app and you could watch the dive whenever.
Typically during that week, the dives were shown multiple times a day, though it greatly depended on the severity and the divers. If you were a nobody doing a Minor dive, you’d get maybe one re-stream a day. If you were Frederic of the Flame and you were doing a solo Extreme dive against unique monsters built for that dive, you could see re-streams going every five or ten minutes, each re-stream only decreasing the cost to watch the dive by a few dollars, if that.
Typically, I just waited until it was available on the Lethality app and watched it when it was free. There were a few dives I was interested in watching, and I made it a point to pay for some of them when I was at school. I didn’t want spoilers from the other kids or not be able to join the discussions. Sometimes it was worth not eating lunch for a day to avoid spoilers.
I continued flipping through my feed, closing it, staring mindlessly at my room, and then returning back to the feed. Slowly, minute by minute, time passed until 10:30 am came along. It was still too early for the meeting. It’d take an hour to go from Brownsville to Astoria so long as the trains weren’t down again.
I pulled up my feed and checked the train schedule, ignoring the usual start-up ad and mentally waving away a few pop-ups that cluttered my screen. Everything was fine, no reported brownouts that I could see. Though, that didn’t mean anything. Sometimes a train was down and it just never was reported on the app so that they could keep their uptime high for the mayor—at least that’s what my mom would tell me.
I shoved some clothes into a bag, just in case I wasn’t coming back home from the meeting, and ran down the stairs. Pausing at the base of the stairs I looked over at the kitchen and saw a bunch of dishes piled up in the sink.
Eh… I was supposed to clean that up before I left today.
All well, the dishes would keep until I got back. I left the house, mentally commanding the door to lock behind me.
It was a pretty boring ride to the small office building in Astoria. I watched New York slide past me as the train clanked along the tracks. Several of the skyscrapers had cranes arranged around them with glittering vid and holo screens, ads scrawling along them.
I looked along the streets and saw cars filling every inch of the street. I didn’t understand the appeal of them. I had a friend in high school who said her family had a car, but I don’t think my mom had even been in one, let alone me. There was no point, the train was faster. And cheaper. Much cheaper.
I let my eyes glaze over as I activated my feed and watched ads appear before my eyes. I ignored the prompts about jewelry I’d never be able to afford and started cycling through my normal channels. Dive videos, cat memes, music videos, dive videos, back to cat memes, and on I flipped through them, mindlessly watching as I waited for the train to arrive at my station. Once we did, I swapped over trains and continued the boring journey to Astoria. I was interrupted when my mom sent me a message. I hesitated before finally clicking on the notification.
Mom // Hey sunshine - I know you r going to ur meeting soon. Make sure to get the dishes and laundry done! Good luck! Love u!
I stared at the message for a minute, the clanking and groaning train signifying the train was beginning to slow down for my final stop in Astoria. I wrote a message back right before I shut off my feed and left the train.
Aurea // no prob - already did them
It wasn’t a lie, I’d do them when I got home.
I hefted my pack, stepped off the train, and looked around the busy station. There were a few people jumping onto my train, it had two more stops in Astoria, but most were waiting for a train going deeper into the city, from where I had come from.
I took a deep breath and sighed. The smell wasn’t much better than where I first got on in my neighborhood. It had been a while since I was last in Astoria and I pulled up my feed and started following the highlighted path that appeared before my eyes.
I followed the trail, walking past storefronts, cars left on cinder blocks with curtains in the windows, people sleeping across the sidewalk, and more. There were a few times when I cut down an alley, the maps I was using wanted me to walk a bit out of my way so I’d go past a store paying for more foot traffic.
It only took 10 minutes to arrive at the office building, and I realized I still had over an hour to kill. Looking around for something to do, I frowned slightly. At a nearby bench, I thought I saw someone I recognized.
“Colin,” I said, attempting to keep any acid out of my voice. I remembered the single message he had sent me telling me to not join the team, “You’re early.”
I watched as Colin’s eyes moved, probably minimizing his feed, and then looked up at me. “So you decided to join us.”
“Yup.” I sat down next to him, after making sure that the bench was mostly clean.
“You know that I think we should get a different rogue in our party, right?”
“Yeah, dude. I got your message,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Ok. Just making sure you got my message. You never responded.”
“What is your problem?” I demanded, turning to look at Colin. He was sitting on the bench, arms crossed, staring forward without looking at me.
“I don’t have a problem. I just think we could get a better rogue,” he said, still not looking at me and just looking straight ahead.
“You got knocked out once by some sims, I already apologized for it. It doesn’t matter!”
“It does!” He finally looked at me, well, not in my eyes, just at my chest. He never looked in anyone’s eyes. “I dropped a rank because of that! I’d be a higher rank than Josephine but I’m not.”
Josephine had been another diver in our training class. Think she was a mage as well, but I could barely remember her. I think she was in the last group to arrive at the final showdown.
“I’d point out that Josephine probably isn’t a diver anymore! Her team lost, they got fourth place in the dungeon. You beat her, your rank is higher now.”
“I was artificially lowered.”
“Why does that even matter now? We are signing up with a school, we’ll get to do dives still. We are going to be divers!”
“It matters!” He said with a surge of emotion I wasn’t used to. “I could’ve gotten on Bria’s team with a higher rank! She could’ve picked me!”
“Well, I’m sorry you didn’t get to join her team.”
“Thank you,” he said, turning back so he was looking back out at the street.
I was quietly fuming as I chewed at one of my fingernails. What an arrogant prick. Bria was never going to pick him, no matter his rank. He was impossible to deal with. Bria had instead gone with Sarvas. I was pretty sure those two girls had been friends before we began training. Even if Sarvas wasn’t an option, I couldn’t imagine Bria picking Colin. I don’t even know how I had ended up with him, probably because all the other mages had been scooped up by the other teams. I was pretty sure this was all Huck’s fault.
Several long moments passed in silence between me and Colin. He seemed to have returned to his feed and had forgotten about me.
“I’m going to find food,” I said, excusing myself from the bench. Hopefully, I could join another diving party and I’d never have to work with Colin again.
“I’ll join you,” Colin said, moving to his feet and waving away his feed.
“I uh…” I muttered, trying to think of something to say to get away free. “Are you sure?” I finally stuttered out, trying to drop a hint I wanted to be alone.
“Of course,” he said, “we are friends.”
“Are we?” I asked, my voice cracking on the last word.
“Yes.”
“I don’t… understand.”
“Well, you apologized. So if you apologized, then my dad said I am supposed to forgive you. We are friends again.”
“I had already apologized for you getting knocked out!” The anger was coming back.
“That wasn’t what I was upset about. You just apologized for me not joining Bria’s team because I had dropped one rank. I have forgiven you. We are now friends again.”
I stared at Colin incomprehension plainly written across my face.
Noodles?” He asked, pointing at a soup shop a block away.
I felt my stomach grumble. I looked at the amount of c-coin I had left. Luckily I had mined a bit yesterday during my run.
“Yeah, fine whatever,” and I walked to the store, Colin walking silently next to me.