Chapter Sixty-One - Becky Mode

Chapter Sixty-One - Becky Mode People were definitely giving me looks, but it wasn't like I could go and get changed into something less conspicuous. I mean, I could, but I didn't want to. I didn't know who here had good cyberware optics with cameras built in, and lots of folk had smartphones out. Someone had rigged up a laptop with some antenna array in one corner and had a small sign that said 'Wi-fi $10' next to it. Someone else was standing next to a fold-out table with three air-fryers connected to a single powerstrip in a way that was asking to start a fire, but also whatever they were cooking smelled good, even through my mask. Yeah, this was a regular old shindig. It wasn't ideal. There were kids here, teens, some women that were visibly pregnant. I remembered when I'd paid to stand next to an E-rank portal. It had cost me a few months of saved up money and half a day, and before I could even step close to it, I had to pee on a strip in a field porta-potty. It hadn't been a luxurious experience, but they didn't want pregnant women near a portal. There were reasons for that. Horror stories of babies born as E-rankers to mothers that weren't, and the consequences of that weren't great. Something about the fetus sapping the mother for magical energy that wasn't there. People here had either missed the PSAs or didn't give a damn. Still, for all that I was a little horrified, and the part of me that had grown used to corpo-culture saw nothing but red-flags... well, the vibe wasn't bad? People were talking, chilling, laughing. Some were trying to make money, but a lot more were sitting back and having a good time. My first loop's goal here was to remain until shit hit the fan. I knew that the alert went out around two AM, but the reality was probably that things went wrong long before that. I just had to figure out how and when. And maybe get a peek into the portal too. It wasn't even guarded except by one guy in a beaten old leather jacket with his sleeves rolled up to expose some glowing rat tattoos. Staring around for a while made me feel way too awkward, so I ended up removing the mask, then sidling up to a group of younger women sitting around some guy fiddling with a guitar. I struck up a conversation with the guitarist, which was damned awkward at first, but eventually it came easier. I didn't have to pretend to be interested in his playing, and when asked, I said that I was just here for the vibes and the magic, which was somewhat true. He showed me some tricks, and we went back and forth, though I was embarrassingly bad compared to the dude, and he was middling at best. Still, I could smile prettily and answer questions with questions, and the time slipped away. Now... to figure out why they were so comfortable with this portal, and how and when it all went to shit. *** Everything went to shit the moment she got just a teensy-itty-bit distracted. It wasn't her fault tho! Wah! Why did everyone want her to be the one to take care of stuff? The older rats kept turning around and giving her the worse jobs and it wasn't fair. Becky grunted in pain, then looked down at her hand. There was a loooot of blood coming out of her at the moment. A lot-a lot. More than she liked seeing. Actually, she rather liked it when her blood stayed on the inside. "Ah, shit shit, that's bad," she said as she leaned her back against a wooden wall. The portal had been cool. Like, hella cool. Some rat runt had found it some old zapped out meat packing place that even the corps didn't care about anymore. Didn't know what they were doing there. Probably pulling the wires from the walls, but they were about two years too late for that one. Anyway, big portal. D-rank, E-Z. She could taste that as soon as she got close. She wanted to clear it. The Rats had like, four, five D-rankers in the group, herself included. Mousey was a C-ranker too, and while she was hard to pull out of her hole in the wall, for this, she would. And because of that, the boss had said nooo. Stupid. And she was stupid-er for agreeing with him once the cash started to flow in. Couple grand in a day? Hell yeah. She was getting a tenth of that guarding the place. That was a few hundos a day for basic-bitch guard work and she was allllll for it. This tale has been pilfered from novelhall. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. Cash wasn't flowing so well sometimes, and she even considered maybe hopping onto the corpo bandwagon, but her better judgement (and lack of papers) told her not to. Maybe if she hit C. then they'd give her a swanky penthouse and kiss her cute lil' toebeans. Oh, right, bleeding to death. "Fuuuuck," she muttered. The portal had been so easy. Walk in, fling a few shockers at the gobbos. Spray some brains and fry the rest. They were tougher than some goblins she'd fought before, but not that much tougher. The dungeon was kinda neat. It started 'outside' the portal leading into this sort of old camp with walls made of trunks planted into the ground and with a huge firepit in the middle. Behind that, an old ruin of some sort. The entrance was tough, though. There had been goblins all over, like twenty of the little shits. But they had awful twigs for bows and basically just flung rocks around. She introduced them to her favourite one-two punch technique. It was called the bang-and-zap, and it was where she'd shoot a bitch then zap them with magical lightning for good measure. Sometimes she zapped then banged, hehe! With a couple of other D-rankers and some of the normies from the gang, they'd cleared the space out in like twenty minutes flat. No real loot, but the portal alone was gooder than any loot, so it didn't matter. It was their cash cow, and they'd been milking it for three days already. Then she was left alllll alone. She wasn't supposed to be! Becky had a lot of problems keeping to herself. She was distractable. It wasn't even entirely her fault! They sent her into a portal with bad wi-fi! What did they expect would happen? That she'd read a book? Fuck that! She played games on her phone until she got bored (one of the first spells she'd ever managed to learn was Recharge Battery. It was illegal to use because sometimes batteries didn't like that, but she used it all the time anyway and had only had lithium spilled on her lap once). Then she paced. She did some squats, some shadow-boxing, had fun flicking tiny bolts of lightning across the room at the pile of corpses in the corner... then she started to explore. Somehow, she ended up inside the fortress. The goblins on the outside had sticks and rocks and maybe a few spears and shitty bows. The first one she encountered inside was wearing cobbled-together armour made from pots and pans and was carrying a rusty sword. She'd laughed as she fried him. It was fun! Exp! Like a game. And then a gobbo with a staff showed up that could eat her bolts like nothing, and the goblins started to move with trailing wires behind them that grounded her magic, and then someone shot her in the gut with a crossbow. That shit huuuurt! She had a choice. Stay by the entrance and be overwhelmed, or run off to the side and hide and hope that the angry goblins didn't charge right out the entrance portal. She ran. And now she was leaning against a wall, with lots of blood coming out of her. The crossbow... bullet thing... bolt? Whatever. It was on the floor next to her. Yoinking it out had been one of the most painful things she'd done in ever. "Ahhh, that's no good," she complained. Man, she shouldn't have wandered! She should have stayed put. Maybe get some other idiot to take her place. Then she'd be outside, right now, enjoying fried mystery meat and doing gacha pulls on her phone. She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, then blinked the sting away. Then she heard movement around the corner, and while pressing her insides back in--which suuucked--she learned over and peeked out. The gobbos were moving. Like, a heap of them. Some twenty or so, she guessed. Some in bits and bobs of armour, some not. A few had staffs and looked magical-ish, and one large one was wearing more steel than some street tanks she'd seen. "Ah, fuuuck," she muttered. They weren't even looking for her. They were heading out. And behind them, more goblins were looking out of hidey holes and chattering to themselves. Now she'd done it. Good thing she was gonna die. Best way to get out of being responsible, that. Didn't mean she couldn't take a few with her, though. "H-hey, fuckerinos! Wanna learn about lightning!" ***