Chapter 9

On Thursday, I picked up the trio from school, took them to the bank, and then dropped them off at Nancy’s gym before heading to Kyle’s.

While changing after a rigorous class, one of the new students approached me, the man from the same couple that stood out from last session. This session too.

“Do you have a few minutes?”

I had planned on showering after going home; going out in public drenched in dried sweat and stinking of four hours of B.O., wasn’t my cup of tea.

Call me vain.

“Let me take a quick shower.”

“Nana’s diner is just up the road to the east. We can meet you there.” I watched the compact Hispanic man walk out of the locker room with an unmistakably erect frame. Especially in the shoulders and neck. My earlier guesses at the pair drifted. Now, I felt that he was military, past or present, I wasn’t sure. Maybe even both. I had read too many stories of shadow organizations that worked inside and outside of the law. Public and private.

My imagination, along with my choice of spy novels, might have driven the guesses.

I threw out a text to Kate that I would be running late. Kyle caught me on the way out and talked to me about his nephew. There was a lot of pressure for him among his friends and certain family members to go Portal exploring, yet the rest of his family, i.e. the womenfolk, were completely against it. As for my instructor and Carl’s uncle, he was ambivalent. The choice would be left up to the ‘daft lad’.

I felt that Kyle’s intent was to put a good word in for his nephew without going as far as openly sponsoring him.

Nana’s Diner was devoid of cars other than mine and the other couple’s. I once heard someone mention them, yet I couldn’t remember their names. I noticed that the closed sign was even flipped over as I approached the lit, yet empty diner.

Sitting in a corner booth, both stood and greeted me, “I’m David, that’s Edna.”

“Jason,” we shook hands and sat. I had suspicions, but would wait for them to talk. They did invite me out of the blue.

“We would like you to join our Portal team.”

“I’m already on a team.”

“With schoolgirls. Our team has five professionals, all former military and a corpsman. He can heal, what we need is a heavy melee fighter.”

“Go on.”

“Our members comprise of a medic, a scout, two fire Mages and a dual sword, we need you to fill us out.”

Their team’s composition closely matched my current one. Only the addition of the second Mage was different. From what I saw, David was the dual dagger and Edna was the dual sword. I agreed with his belief that they needed a heavy melee damage dealer or someone with a large shield.

“Why me?”

“You are the fastest civilian to get through the first two floors of Indigo without suffering a loss. On top of that, you took just three school girls with you.”

Was that posted somewhere? A freaking neon sign that said we were first???

“Aren’t you military? Can’t you take your pick from them?”

“We are private security.”

“What does that mean?”

“Mercenaries,” Edna clarified. She had been silent up to that point after the initial introductions.

Glancing at his partner without expression, “five of our company received Weapons,” David spoke to me. “We need someone we can trust to hold their own.”

“How is the splitting of the loot handled?”

“Silver is split equally; any special items are divvied randomly.”

“How random?”

“We roll dice for it.”

“How often do you run?”

“Twice per ten days. We are at the fourth floor in a Violet and the second Level on an Indigo.”

“How many times have you been in the second floor of the Indigo?”

“Three, and twice on the fourth floor of Violet.” They were one ahead of us in the Indigo Portal and we still had not entered a Violet Portal.

That made sense. One, we stayed longer on the first Level than they probably did, and two, they had more people. Each individual on their team was stronger than any of ours.

“I won’t be leaving my current team anytime soon, but I am willing to give your team a try. I am more familiar with the zombies and ghouls in Indigo. I’d like to try that one first with you, if possible. After I meet the rest of your team, of course.”

“I agree. You need to meet the rest of us first.”

We set a time to meet on Saturday morning at their office on Davidson Ave.

“What do you think?”

“He’s not sleeping with those girls.”

Surprised, David asked, “what makes you think that? I think otherwise.”

“He’s too focused. If he sleeps with any of them, the girls will get emotional. That will lead to jealousy.”

“Even if he slept with all three?”

“More so. They will all want to be number one in his life.”

“I hope you are right.”

“I am.”

Silently frowning at his partner, David unlocked the cuffs from the night manager. With a reminder not to remove the blindfold for ten minutes, he then dropped two hundred in used twenties in an envelope on the desk, before meeting the silent Edna in the car.

Home was quiet. All women, regardless of age, were telepathic with regards to ‘their man’ spending time with others of the opposite sex. Even if it were purely business.

I poured myself a Coke and had everyone gather around. Since it was a Thursday, Nat didn’t work and used the gym with the other two.

“First, tomorrow I expect a call to meet my instructor’s nephew and girlfriend. Kyle gave him the seal of approval.” Indirectly. “When he calls, I will try to schedule Sunday morning when everyone is here.

Nat’s reduced hours had her working from four to eight on Sundays in hope to make up a few missed hours, when we weren’t busy Portal hopping.

“Was that why you were late?” Jude asked with her intuition working overtime.

“A little. My class has a few new students. Two are ex-Military.”

“Just tell us, Jason,” Nat, always in a hurry, pressed.

“They invited me to meet their team of five and if all goes well, to join them in runs.”

“What about us?” Nat complained. Storm clouds formed inside my living room.

“I did state that I wasn’t planning on stopping teaming with you three.”

“Are you going to run with both them and us? What if they betray you or you get hurt?”

“They have a Healer too. I’m not sure how good he is, but even a low grade Healer should be enough to keep me from dying.”

“What about them betraying you if you get something good?”

“They sound like professionals. Think about it, regardless of how good something is, in deeper levels, there will always be something better.”

“So, if they kill you if you have something good, they can recruit some other sucker,” Natalie was not pleased at the prospect of me splitting time.

“I plan on meeting them on Saturday. After that, I will see. Even if I join them, that doesn’t mean I will stay with them. We might click or might not,” I shrugged, “It’s too early to tell. Just like the two that we hope to join us. We won’t know until we meet them and do a few runs together.”

“If you leave us behind, you won’t want to go with us anymore.” And off she went crying. There wasn’t any slamming of doors behind Nat, just silence from the girls’ room.

“Until you graduate, we are mostly limited with the number of days and the level of Portals we can enter, anyway.”

“Just be careful. You don’t know what they really want,” Kate gave her warning and left to console her friend, with a scowling Jude in tow.

Wow, no flying glassware...

I checked the address and found nothing out of the ordinary. The name on the building was Unlimited Exports Ltd. An obviously fake name.

Kate, the peacemaker, gave me a mostly silent backrub that night. They called it paying rent, even if the initial reason for it was to settle Jude around me. The drift of intent masked other reasons behind their behavior.

With their help, I ordered a new stackable bedroom set earlier in the week. Three in one queen-sized bed was too many, and the spare twin mattress on the floor took up all of the extra available floor space. The spare bedroom that I gave over to Trio wasn’t large enough for a second bed, so stacking was the only way to go. I didn’t mind them staying here and they were trying their best to integrate themselves in my life.

With my active cooperation.

Three very subdued ‘Bye’s’ before heading off to school were chorused to me while I was making breakfast Friday morning. I thought their sense of betrayal was too soon, but I was not a teenaged girl.

While carrying the garbage out after my morning shower, Carl MacRory called and asked to visit. I set a time of Sunday at nine.

The new bedroom bunkbed arrived while I was making lunch. It seemed that I would get no peace.

The meeting with David, Edna, Francis, George and Heather went well. Oddly well. I was by far the most un-relaxed person in the room. They all treated our meeting as a done deal of a new coworker. Easy smiles, casual yet probing questions and a willingness to accept me on face value. Not all, since Heather was still somewhat reserved and Edna kept the same stone face as she had in my interview, but I concluded that was her normal disposition.

At one point, I asked “what happened to Irene?”

“We have vays of making you change your name,” Francis replied in heavily accented German-English, a smile twinkling in his eyes. Enough so that I mostly thought he was joking. Mostly.

We discussed our experiences in the dungeons. They even revealed that they found magic Marbles in the ghouls after reading the forums. My posts, apparently. I pulled up my main account and showed it to them. They had read one of the offshoots on a different site, which copied and pasted all of my entries hours after I posted them.

Heather, the Fire Mage and intel specialist, had long concluded that they were posted by me, after hunting for my information.

I volunteered finding the diamond and the original necklace with revealing the Skill bonus it unlocked. The cash didn’t stir them, but the 2500 silver did get their attention.

Edna voluntarily admitted to buying silver from Earth and trying to exchange it in the White Room. No dice.

After the getting to know each other session, we went to an old warehouse on the south side,” What was it about old warehouses? “and faced off against a hundred men in flack armor and ski masks. We all had blunted weapons and the two Fire Mages had lacrosse wiffleball throwers. For the following two hours, we practiced against a better zombie. Lunch, hydration and another session of teambuilding ensued.

The only one of us who had their real Weapon out was Francis the Medic. His heals were less than Kate’s now-upgraded ones, but his staff combat abilities were light years more advanced than hers.

From the smiles and the air of accomplishment, my second team approved the addition of their new heavy melee fighter, ‘Frontliner’, as the girls called me.

Compared to my reinforced motorcycle racing outfit, they all wore military vests, pads and helmets. I couldn’t get used to the helmet and told them I would consider it. I would look into wide lensed motorcycle helmets. The military ones that David had me try didn’t feel right.

I promised to return at 1:00 the next afternoon for a second set of two workouts. I wholeheartedly agreed at their necessity.

“Well?” Jude asked, even before I removed my windbreaker.

“I’m giving them a try.” I accepted a Coke from Kate, standing in the living room while they waited for me to speak. Nat was at work, so she would have to hear secondhand.

I described David’s team and the teambuilding exercises with the hundred masked mercs acting as zombies.

I brought up the Marbles that they had found, each very similar to ours. Their Violet Portal runs were filled with ants. The bosses were Royal Guardian Ants. Floor one, had two Royal Guards. Two had eight, three had sixteen and four had thirty-two Royal Guard ants.

They were disappointed in the Violet Portals, the Indigo level twos gave more experience than the fourth floor of the easier Portals, twice as much exp and over three times as much silver. Added to their lack of rewards, Violet Portals were bereft of a possibility of magic items except on the rarest of runs.

“Are you going to abandon us?”

“Why would I? We have fun together.”

“But they are stronger than us. Won’t you be safer with them?” Jude’s insecurity revealed its ugly head.

“Is there a reason, I can’t go with both their and our teams?”

“Of course not,” Kate interrupted, “Jason, thank you for staying with us. Why don’t you shower, I’ll make dinner.”

“Jude. I said I would team with you three and I will.” Showering sounded good.

I didn’t blame Jude for worrying. I would have in her position.

Sunday morning, we met Kyle’s nephew Carl and Lucrecia, his fiancée. Carl was a younger version of Kyle, with a large frame, red hair, oft-broken nose, friendly disposition and a ready smile. His Weapon was a ball-headed, one-handed mace with a silvered steel shaft.

Lucrecia, was a tall woman, a hair over six feet, with dark mocha skin, broad shoulders, a modest waist and bust, and strong hips with a pleasantly-rounded ass. Her Weapon was an ugly looking, blood-red bladed whip. They met their freshman year at Northwestern while taking the same schedule. Both planned on getting a degree in physical therapy at my alma mater.

She was leery of the sizes and ages of the girls, I believed from the narrowing of her eyes on first meeting my teammates. That Kate had Level 2 in Healing went far in convincing the woman to throw her hat in our ring. I felt that Carl was already sold, thanks to his uncle’s and Lora’s work, I imagined.

They stayed and talked for three hours, leaving shortly before lunch after agreeing to enter a Violet dungeon with us on the upcoming Saturday. Lucrecia admitted leaving their last group of underachievers and slackers in disgust. The group of three treated the Portals as a game and the last time the five entered, the others were hung over and listless.

The tall woman did most of the talking for the two, and all of the negotiating. She was not willing to make an agreement past the first run with us. I felt the same way. I wanted to see how they worked once inside a Portal, even if it were an easy one.

...

“Your thoughts?” I asked once they drove off.

“She’s a bitch, but should work.”

“I like them,” That surprise came from Jude.

“I’m not sure about Carl. Lucrecia is fine. Probably better than fine,” Kate shrugged, “I might be reading too much into it, but Carl might be following her, I don’t know, desire or something.”

“Desire to run Portals?” I asked.

“Something like that.”

“I don’t think we will discover much in Saturday’s run. It might take a few Portals or an Indigo run or two before we see their true colors.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. As long as she doesn’t try and boss us around, they’re okay.” Nat concluded that the topic for the evening.

I ate lunch and headed out. They still were not happy that I was training with a second team, a ‘better one’, at that.

The second day of practice, I wore the blasted combat helmet. The first two-hour session, we had active mics. The second, they were switched off. Since electronics did not work in Portals, we didn’t want to rely on them. They tried me at both right and left point position. I preferred right and Edna was more flexible than I was, as the other and more experienced frontliner.

In our alternate lineup, there was no choice other than placing me in front and her in the rear-guard position.