The Missile 4
Copyright© 2026 by Zen Master
Chapter 4: Auctions
Coming of Age Sex Story: Chapter 4: Auctions - The fourth in a continuing series about how the Missile came to be the man we all know.
Caution: This Coming of Age Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including mt/ft mt/Fa GameLit
I got home in plenty of time to have dinner and then steal the remote and watch Sunday Night Football. I always rooted for Atlanta because they were the closest thing we had to a local team. They should have beaten the Giants, but, well, the Falcons. They hadn’t had a decent QB since Matt Ryan. The ‘boo-birds’ were out early that game, and they stayed to serenade the players until the bitter end. I think, I turned it off as soon as it was clear that the Falcons weren’t going to win this one.
I still had a couple emails coming in from the training announcement, and one of them said they’d be there. Seriously? You emailed me late Sunday morning for an event at 1 PM Sunday afternoon when the deadline for registering was Friday at 5? That database needed a field that could be checked if that person had demonstrated stupidity.
Although, I shouldn’t judge without all the facts. Maybe they’d been at church camp and just got their email from a week ago. Maybe the only time they could get online was in Sunday when they visited Grandpa.
I texted Mary to ask if I could have a copy of the final attendance list, as I was getting emails that made no sense to me. Did <that person> sign in or not? Please send it to “[email protected]”. She replied pretty soon, saying that she’d send it as soon as she got to the office in the morning. I replied “Thanks!”
There were also a few from people who clearly actually DID attend, thanking me for the training and asking some questions. Yeah, some I could answer and I did. Others I couldn’t, except to tell them “I got your question but I don’t have the answer. I’ll try to find out tomorrow.”
I did go out back with my training staff for a moment, just to heft it. Yeah, the first set that Mr. Jeffreys had bought were all 1-1/2” diameter, and mine was too small for my hands. I’d had a 2” one at the training, the same thickness as Cindy’s staff, and it was much better but it was really a little too thick for me. If I could, I wanted to try everything from 1-1/2” up to 3”, by eighths if I could, just to see which one fit my hands the best. Of course, I wasn’t done growing yet. The best size for me may well change over the years.
Monday morning I got double the normal homework because I’d missed school on Friday. When I got to my study hall period I used my phone to go looking for quarterstaffs. Yes, Avondale Hardwoods just around the corner from the BTF carried oak and hickory, but they didn’t do round stock. All they carried was ‘dimensional lumber’, wood that had been cut at a mill to be 2x4s or 6x6s or 2x10s or something like that. I asked where I should try next, and they said try Woodcrafters. They do round stuff.
I couldn’t find ‘Woodcrafters’. I did, however, find ‘Woodcraft of Birmingham’. I called them, and they said they did round stock and they had oak and hickory, but only short stuff to make banisters. Certainly, nothing longer than 3 or 4 feet. I did notice on their website that they had wood lathes to turn a log into a bowl or plate, but apparently they are fairly short with only a foot or so between head and tailstock.
Oh, and when I asked who they thought I should contact to get my quarterstaffs, they, in turn, said to go to Home Depot. Man, I went there first! They have long fir dowels like I was asking for, 1-1/2” up to 2-1/2”, in lengths that would work. Fine, I’ll go look. Again.
No, I’m not going to go look again. Their website shows everything they stock, plus everything you can order. Yes they have oak and hickory and fir and pine. Yes they have round stock up to 2” but no larger. Yes they have longer wood up to 16’ long. No, they don’t have any round stock at all in those larger diameters any longer than four feet no matter what kind of wood you want. They don’t have it, and they can’t get it.
(Author’s Note: Those were real phone calls I made 9/10/25, while I was researching this story. You want an oak quarterstaff in the middle of Alabama? You’ll have to go into the woods and cut your own. Me, I made mine out of a downed cedar tree. I’m not any good yet, but I’m practicing and I’m learning. -ZM)
Amazon has things for sale that they call ‘quarterstaffs’, but they are all four or five feet long. Nope. I’m going to have to find a mill somewhere.
Fine. I texted Nell and asked if she could drive me by Dixie Timber Harvesting, the local sawmill for locally grown pine, after school. Maybe they’ll know something. And, I texted Cindy, Matt, and Margie about the exact diameter and length of their staffs. Were they the same?
I’d gone as far as I could with that, so I went to PortalControl on one of the library computers. I didn’t want to log in as me. Something would go wrong, my login would get out, and some 9th-grade jackass would end up posting ‘I suck dicks for a quarter’ messages from my account. Nope, not using my login on a library PC.
I got to know the sales and auction side of the site, though. Using the same basic setup, a seller could flip between a direct sale for $X and an auction for whatever the market would bear. Crap. I had no idea how much our Portal stuff would go for.
I wanted to support medical research, but at the same time we were selling them to make money. I started writing a note to add to each auction.
“Note: This is a public auction for items collected in various Portals by Team Newbie. This auction is open to anyone. Our intention is to help medical research while generating funds for our team. We will sell a portion of our items to public (government, educational, or commercial) research laboratories outside of these auctions. If interested, contact us here or by private email.”
If I added that to each auction, that should tell researchers that they didn’t have to win an auction to dissect a Portal monster. A collector might pay some absurd amount for something that we’d sell to a research team for less. I’d better check with the team, though. They might insist that I was wrong, getting the most money for our sweat and blood was more important.
The more I thought about it, the more I agreed with them. If I was Matt or Cindy and I had to go in there with little chance of surviving without help, I think I’d vote for “Fuck the researchers, get the most you can.” We’d have to talk about it.
They may want to do something else with their stuff. In that case, I could sell mine however I wanted. The only way Cindy would get any money, though, would be considering them all as team property and splitting the proceeds six ways.
Cindy DID participate in all these fights. She ‘Blessed’ us which gave us front-liners significant upgrades. She healed us when we were hurt. She acted as lookout/overwatch. And, as she gained experience and confidence, she would start to take over the battle-management job from Margie. She earned her share, all right.
Writing the descriptions was fun. “Dungeon World Trophies: Two Giant Centipede legs, removed from freshly-killed opponent on <date> by Team Newbie in <Portal ID>. Preserved in personal inventory until transfer to buyer.” We’d have to take pictures of whatever we were selling and number them so we could tell them apart.
#1 was my two RoUS paw ‘honor’ trophies, of course. They were never getting sold. #2 would be the two paws I sold to UAB-H, #3 would be the Centipede legs I threw in for good will. So, I’d start with #4. I had fifteen Centipede legs, so I could sell seven pairs and keep one leg for, well, I couldn’t think of a single reason why I’d want one. Sell them all. If I ever came up with a need, I could go get more.
Then, I had six complete sets of four RoUS paws. Sell them together? As pairs? Individually? Probably all three ways. Split up two sets into eight individual paws. Sell them. Then, split up two sets into four pairs. Sell them. Then, sell the last two sets as-is, two complete sets of four paws.
Who knew how much they would all go for? Maybe no one would want them. Judging from some of the emails I got, though, there was enough interest to let all six of us quit our jobs. Those of us old enough to have jobs, I mean. Four of us were going to be stuck going to school no matter how much money we made.
I was almost late to class because I had to send out a group text before I forgot. “Need to talk about selling trophies. I have ideas but I need consensus.”
I got several answers, but I couldn’t continue until lunch. “Two questions. I am setting up to auction my trophies on PortalControl. I think they are really team property, and all the funds should get split six ways. If so, I should sell them all regardless of who I am holding them for. Or, mine are mine and yours are yours. Comments?”
“Second, I want to auction for anyone, hoping Joe TooRich wants to buy them. I also want to sell them on the side to medical researchers. They have legitimate reasons and funding. I got $55,000 on Friday from UAB Hospital’s Department of Pathology for two RoUS paws and two Centipede legs. Comments?”
Yeah, my phone got blown out all afternoon with the responses and discussion from that. I could feel it vibrating. It was a good thing I kept the ringer turned off while I was at school.
I’d been able to glance at the last couple of texts between classes, but I didn’t get to read them all until after school, in Nell’s truck. The consensus seemed to be “Yeah, we’re a team. Sell all the stuff ‘we’ collected. But, you’d better get some good money!” They reserved the right to claim any particular items as personal trophies, though. Sure.
“I’ll do my best.”
Dixie Timber Harvesting was a bust. First off, I missed the turn. We didn’t want the second paved road after we climbed out from going under the railroad, we wanted the second possible turn, which was the FIRST paved road. After I figured that out, and Nell had gone around several blocks to get back on 431, it was easy to find. It was right where it was supposed to be.
Unfortunately, all they had at the location given on the internet was a small dirt lot and a building with a truck scale to weigh the logs. The place was barely big enough to turn a tractor-trailer rig around. Which, after all, was exactly what I’d seen on the satellite photo. No one was there and everything was beginning to look abandoned. As my Dad would say, ‘Now what, Batman?”
I asked Dad about that, once. Apparently, back in the Bronze Age when he was a kid, there was a live-action cartoon of Batman and Robin on TV. The actors would charge in to disrupt whatever the bad guys were doing and get in trouble. Robin would say that, and Batman would figure out how to foil the evil-doers’ plans. Dad said it was all pretty hokey and stupid, it belonged in the Saturday morning cartoons for the kids, but it became an internet meme before there was an internet or memes were a thing.
We went over to the Lowe’s in Gadsden. Talking to their contractor desk gave us a couple of numbers to call for long hardwood roundstock, but that was about it. We sat out in her truck while I called them. One was fairly brusque, telling us basically that they didn’t have anything like that. The other one was willing to make and sell us whatever we ordered. Send them our requirements, and they’d give us a quote.
I got the idea that we’d have to order thousands to get a decent price, though. And we didn’t need more than a hundred, right? I mentioned that to Nell, who’d heard my side of the conversation of course.
She said I was right. Alabama didn’t need more than a hundred at most, of the correct size to train people for Portal staffs. However, next year there may well be another set of ‘New Class’ people. And, there were 49 other states out there that needed those staffs just as much as we did. Oh.
After that, well, we were parked in the Lowe’s parking lot in broad daylight. We probably shouldn’t be doing anything personal, but we could at least talk, right? I reached out and grabbed Nell’s hand. “Nell, what can I do for you? You’re doing everything for me.”
She smiled. “That’s the way it is, for a lot of women. We do everything for our man, and every so often he smiles and holds our hand. It’s okay, Sam. You’re still in school. You can’t buy a house and give me a place to live, yet. You can’t even pay for our groceries, although it sounds like you will be able to soon. Although, you’re going to have to split up that $55,000, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I saw that coming. Hopefully we’ll get more soon, from the auctions.”
“You should set up a company for that money so the IRS doesn’t consider it all your personal income.”
“Oh, yeah.” They’d gone over THAT, too, in the economics course. If I kept it as ‘mine’ and gave away 5/6 of it, well, the IRS would tax me on all $55,000. The bastards. Yeah, it needed to go to a company that ‘employed’ us and distributed our ‘earnings’.
Another text to the team. “That $55,000 - Form a company for that, we are employees and we get 1/6 as earnings?”
I got several meaningless answers, but Margie jumped on that. “Yes, an LLC. I can help with that. If we continue to make money, that will soon BE my job. I can quit this, if Team Newbie gives us enough income to live off of.”
I replied “Good. I don’t want to give away 5/6 of ‘my’ money and then have IRS tax me on whole amount.”
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