Chapter 3

I exited the shower feeling a thousand times better, and maybe a million times cleaner after a week in the wilderness fighting against Orcs who never even heard of a bath. While combing my hair, the doorbell rang. The pizza boy had arrived early.

A cute girl in a Moma Sobino’s windbreaker and threadbare sprayed-on jeans, stood on the porch carrying a bright-red warming bag. Opening the door in a towel, I asked her to wait a second, then hunted down my wallet from my bedroom and returned.

“Woah! Were you attacked by a rose bush or something?”

Glancing down at my chest, and arms, I realized that I did have plenty of scratches.

“A vicious one; it went ‘Rawr’, but I heroically prevailed,” I joked back.

Her voice dropped a few registers, “I bet you did.” Her knowing grin completely revealed her thoughts.

I chuckled, “how much do I owe you?”

“Forty-three ten,” the brunette teen didn’t even blink, while staring at my chest and rattling off the price of dinner.

“Here’s a fifty. Keep it.”

“Thanks,” she passed over my pizzas and salad. The teen hadn’t moved, since blocking the storm door open made passing the pies to me easier. As usual for early January in Chicago, it was windy with swirling light snow, more of the white stuff seemingly going up than down.

“Anything else I can help you with, miss?”

“Natalie, you can call me Nattie.”

I waited, quite amused. I knew my body returned to my early season days of my freshman year, but her reaction was a bit over the top.

“Okay, Nattie, it is. Nice to meet you.”

“Yeah, I should go,” contrary to her words, she wasn’t moving.

“Aren’t you a bit young?”

“Not for those abs. Or chest.”

I laughed. Great line! “I’m a bit hungry and its cold out.”

“You look great in a towel. But you’re right. It is cold out. I’ll come back later and warm you up.” Turning adroitly in her cute, torn, low leather boots, she left my porch humming a tune.

I watched the teen saunter to the pizza company’s assigned car and drive off, but not before she waved once more. Shaking my head with amusement, I headed for the kitchen.

What the hell was up with that?

I dressed, seemingly inhaled a large deluxe pizza and half the salad, then texted Paula. I told her I would call in a minute, to let her come to terms with actually speaking with a live person the phone.

She was a tad bit better on the phone than face to face, and with me a great deal more than with anyone else. We had worked together since my hiring. She had five months seniority on me, and in those years that we worked on the same team, I had not seen her speak more than two sentences on non-work related topics to anyone else in one sitting. Type, yes. Speak, no.

Her father had ‘rustled up’ a few clients for her. More than she could handle. When I joked about her being the boss, she panicked.

Sheesh.

“Paula, I was joking, okay?” silence on the other end. “We can either use your father or have me talk to anyone that needs it, okay?”

“Okay,” a long pause. “How was your ski trip?”

That was my excuse for my extended vacation. “Good, but I met a tree on the slope and it wasn’t very pretty.”

“Are you okay? Do you need a doctor? Did you break anything?” she shot out in a rush, something the ultra-shy Paula rarely did.

“I’m good. My tetanus shot is only a year old.” I had stepped on an old nail in the basement last year while searching for something, shortly after moving in.

Two years now, the date just changed...

Of course, after the rush of adrenaline, Paula hit her personal mute setting. I asked her to send me a project and after prying out the particulars, then hung up. Once upon a time, she’d had a crush on me. But after I dated my old girlfriend for more than a few weeks, I felt that it had completely vanished. She remained a friend, thankfully, or so I thought and hoped. She was nice, but not at all my type. For her, being adventurous was saying, ‘hi’ back, to the cashier or waiter.

I cleaned up and then booted my computers to check over the information that my partner sent me. A very straightforward automation program. My early guess for it was one hundred fifty to two hundred hours carrying a deadline of three months. The fee was even above what I hoped for. Paula’s father, David Lovington, came through in spades.

We decided that between Paula and her father, they would get a total of ten percent off the top, which she forgot to deduct on the handover. I would have to make sure that her father was paid his commission for drumming up business for us. It was only fair. Reading the requirements of what the customer wanted, I sketched out an outline, followed by an early flowchart. The required libraries needed and what not were all also jotted down.

Next thing I knew, it was 9:00 PM and I had missed a full day of football playoffs.

Kicking back, I turned on the TV, to catch the second half of the AFC Championship game and chilled with a Coke and popcorn.

Fifteen minutes later, the bell rang.

I so didn’t want to move.

“Hi, Jase.”

The same pizza girl from earlier snuck under my arm after I opened the door to see who came calling this late on a Sunday evening, entering my house uninvited. She had changed clothes into a fluffy, short purple sweater and streaked, bleached, painted-on jeans. I did appreciate that small tight ass. But she was too young. I had no interest in jail.

My ‘guest’ took in the living room, then moved to the kitchen. She glanced longingly at the hall to the bedrooms but didn’t go further. The basement door received a glance, so too did the garage door. I followed the chocolate foot-long ponytail, as it took in the living area of my house. My eyes were well off her ass, at that point.

“The kitchen needs new cabinets. But you knew that. Before you ask, I’m seventeen. I haven’t seen my dad since I was four and my mom in two years. She went to live with her boyfriend and never returned home. I have to work if I want to eat.”

“You are still considered illegal in this state for someone my age.”

“I’m seventeen, no prosecutor will touch the case.”

That, I couldn’t argue.

“Now that that’s settled,” she plopped down on my oversized, overstuffed, favorite leather chair. “Ooh, warm and comfy. Don’t just stand there. Aren’t you going to offer me a Coke?”

“Natalie, would you like something to drink?”

“Yes, please. A Diet Coke, lite-ice.”

I was curious to see how far she wanted to take this, so I got her a Diet.

“Thanks,” she took a sip of the Diet Coke, mostly for show, “so really, how did you get all those cuts?”

“A tree while skiing.” It was my story and I was sticking to it.

“That was a nice tree, to not hit your face or the back of your arms.”

“I agree. What year are you in?”

“Senior.” Taking a breath, for the first time she looked unsure of herself. “Where is your portal?”

“What makes you think I have a one?”

“You have a title.”

“Huh?”

“A title. If you pull up your Status screen you can see it. You need to disable it, so no one else sees it.”

“Which title do you think I have?”

“Orc Slayer.”

Damn ... Pulling up my Status, the line below my name stated clearly ‘Orc Slayer’ in white, I clicked on the ‘display Y/N’ and turned it off since Y was glowing green.

That could have been dangerous.

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” the too thin girl offered, with more than a hint of innuendo.

“That’s fair,” I responded after some consideration. If Nattie could see my status, she had to have entered a Portal herself, for that was the only way of activating the Status screen and accessing our abilities, at least that the internet knew of.

Setting her mostly-untouched Diet on the coaster, my visitor pulled out her cell from an ultra-tight pocket and texted something. Reinserting her cell with a little effort, she stood and said “Come on.”

Grabbing my keys, wallet and phone, I followed her out. We walked the two miles in the swirling snow to an unfamiliar apartment complex. Mostly in silence. I passed over my jacket to my guide, since she was obviously freezing after the first block or three.

“What color is your Portal?”

“Indigo. My friends and I struggled. It’s too hard for just us. I’m a Fire Mage. Katie is a Healer and Jude is a Thief. She calls it a Rogue but I think it’s a Thief. She has daggers and stuff. What about you?”