The Arbiter
Copyright© 2025 by James Girvan
Chapter 46
Just how fucking big is this country?
The Kid kept his head down in the backseat as Robbie drove us out of town as boringly as possible. I was hopeful that everyone else was too busy with their own shit to notice our departure.
That’d been three days ago, and we’d been moving west and burning two hundred dollars of gas every six hours since then. We’d started out of town to the East, dumping the Kid’s prized cell phone just as we passed Needham’s farm. Just to be a shit, I threw it out the window at the pulloff to Grace’s camp. If found, it’d point anyone searching towards them. Maybe it would’ve been better not to, but Grace was a prick and I smiled at the thought of her being interrogated.
Sarah still wasn’t talking, and thank Christ for that since this guy talked enough for the rest of us. The first few hours I was willing to put down to initial excitement, but he should’ve shut up by now. If his eyes were open, and his mouth wasn’t chewing, then he was talking.
And he smelled, dear gods! A man has the right to fart but this guy truly abused the privilege. We had the windows down most of the time we were moving, and all of the time we weren’t. I caught both Robbie and Sarah tugging at their collars on more than one occasion, it was no wonder we were all a bit testy.
We’d been avoiding the toll highways, trying to keep ‘off the system’ (something that the Kid thought was ‘shiny’). I can’t fault his driving though; whoever ever taught this kid to drive did a good job, but he tended to throw a hand over the back of the bench seat as drove; looking like the hick he was.
Feeding him wasn’t a problem though, he’d eat anything in reach but like any other teenager he preferred things salty and greasy which probably lead to his other problem. His talking gave me an opportunity though; before his own vision he’d been already obsessed with Portals and Weapons and was a fountain of information about ‘our’ people recently.
Seems that the guy with the big black axe might just have had a hell of a week. I tried to maintain a straight face as he retold the government propaganda about him being a terrorist, and being the target of a huge manhunt after his escape from custody. Part of me was pleased to hear it, hoping those other huge assholes (who’d scared the crap out of me) had taken a beating after finding him not quite as disarmed as they had been told. The Kid’s opinion seemed to waffle between hoping he could meet him, and praying he never did.
Besides giving us news about the world of us Weapons; the never ending stream of consciousness helped me understand my new Skill a bit more. Lighter colours seemed to be associated with truth, while darker ones were the opposite. There were types of truths too, the yellow ones were things that seemed to be true or false to him. Blue auras were true or false about the world around him. Red showed up rarely, and I hadn’t yet figured out what that colour meant yet. (I would eventually read up on the philosophical concept of Objective, Subjective and Normative truths and then understand better what I was seeing).
In the mean time, I got used to telling at a glance if someone was intentionally bullshitting me, unintentionally bullshitting me, or just giving me the truth, the whole truth and nothin’ but the truth. It was rarely a simple cut-and-dry sort of thing; coloured auras were around everyone whenever I had that Skill active.
Driving by other Weapons on the road, I’d get a flash of recognition from my first Skill, or possibly a longer look of we happened to be close enough for long enough. Leaving the Silver alone was hard but without knowing the person, I couldn’t just grab it all though I did steal a single piece every day from some random passer-by if I could get to it fast enough. I considered it like training a reflex and it might just save my life one day.
Our real first interaction with another group came after we’d stopped for a meal and all gotten out of the truck for a change. I’d publicly reasoned that a sitting at a table was better than sitting in any car, but I’d really just longed to stretch my legs.
Three big dudes were in another booth across the way, only one of them was just barely within my range of detection. His Silver levels were pretty health and so was his inventory. (So was he, judging by the size of his shoulders and how fast he packed away his dinner).
“All three of them, Evil alignment...” Robbie muttered while wiping his fries in the disappearing ketchup on his plate. “Two are Fighters and one is a Rogue”
I’d already seen all their stuff and figured they were something like that when I’d walked past to use the washroom. The Rogue had “knives” but they were over a foot long so were in short-sword territory as far as I was concerned. The tallest guy had a two-handed sword that he could probably use single handed and the biggest one had a big wooden club with an iron cap on it.
“They have some good stuff, but give me the heebie-jeebies.” I muttered back quiet enough that even Robbie would have had a hard time hearing it. We finished our meal with only the Kid talking very much; the other Weapons seemingly ignoring us as they paid their bill and left.
On the was back to the truck they were waiting. “You all’s Hunters, ain’t ya?” The tall one with the sword called out. His partners leaned against an older truck parked near ours with their arms crossed, looking bored.
I was on edge and was preparing to steal anything that looked threatening. I kicked myself when I realized that my inventory was full and I’d have to take a split second to equip three items before I could steal their weapons.
“What makes you think that?” The Kid called back, cocky and stupid.
“Those two,” he waived a hand at my two collared. “ ... seen’em before. They’re famous, they are.”
“How’s that?” Robbie asked in a bored tone. “ ... I don’t recall ever doing anything too exciting that could make me famous.”
“Really?” The spokesman asked, flipping his big phone around, a video of Robbie fucking the shit out of a chained Sarah on the screen with the volume up high enough for there to be no question about what was going on. Robbie stiffened but said nothing. Oddly, Sarah didn’t seem to react at all. “ ... this has been all over PoonHub fer the last week, and some dark sites got the first part too where you fight a giant Goat before mounting the bitch.”
“Heard that one before, it’s just that he looks like me.” Robbie said, regaining his previous bored tone.
“A she jus’appans ta’ look like the girl? Sure...” the spokesman mocked while gesturing to our surprisingly calm girl.
“Just what is it you want?” Robbie asked, all but acknowledging the guy in the video was him. “One of you wants me to bend him over like the chick in the video was? That’s it right? You three a bunch of steers and tired of each others cock?”
I’d never seen Robbie like this, it’d be funny if I didn’t know he could disappear and slash out all three of their throats in just a few seconds if he was mad enough. The two others in the back stiffened at being called out like that.
“Fuck you and your bitch!” The smaller one with the daggers said (though small was a relative term with these three). “ ... Dale, we don’t need these assholes, fuck ‘em.”
“Now-now, we seem to have got off on th’wrong foot here, we just wanted to invite y’all on a Dive with us.” The spokesman ‘Dale’ said slowly, glancing between the two Rogues while holding his hands up in the sort of placating gesture that doesn’t actually placate anyone.
“We don’ need ‘em.” Daggers said, puffing up his chest some, not that he needed it.