Chapter Sixty-Five - Pop Uncultural

Chapter Sixty-Five - Pop Uncultural "Josh sent for me," I said. "Uh-huh? Lemme call him," the guard said. I Reloaded. "Franklin asked for me," I said. "Franklin? Yeah, nah, that guy's a dumbass, ain't no way he--" I Reloaded. "Hey," I said as I came up to the two guards standing in front of the meat packing place. "Is Becky around?" "Yeah," One of them said. "I mean, maybe." I sighed. "She in there? I need to talk to her." "She's busy," the other said. "With the portal thing? Look, lemme go chat with her? I'm a D-ranker, I can handle a few goblins or whatever. Tell Josh if it's trouble. Actually, if she's in there alone, someone really ought to tell Josh. She shouldn't be left unsupervised." And just like that, I saved $100. Easy! I mostly did that to see if I could get in while raising a bit of an alarm. Maybe the message would get passed on to Josh and he'd come in to check? I was still undecided about how I'd handle this one. Maybe if it was a portal in the middle of nowhere, I wouldn't have problems, but this one was actively monitored and occupied, and my end-goal for it was to clear it, and look good doing it, and also not make enemies of a gang that had multiple D-rank members and a lot of community support. If there was one thing I was moderately sure of, it was that the River Rats were probably not responsible for the Breach. They had a lot of reasons not to have such a major breach nearby, and no reasons to trigger it. They'd, hopefully, know better than to mess with A-rank portals. The magical energy around one of those was so dense that it could be outright lethal to normal folk, and dangerous to E and even D-rankers. There was no profit to be made from hiding one, and it wasn't like they weren't very obvious. Anyway, I made it into the factory and glanced around. It was the same people, doing the same stuff, mostly. There was that one guard around the portal's entrance. He wasn't paying too much attention, though. So I went around the edge of the room, walking as if I had a purpose, ignoring the people around me, which had them mostly ignoring me, and then I walked up to the portal and stepped in from the opposite side as the guard. Unless he was looking very carefully--and not at his phone--then he wouldn't see me. I managed not to stumble into the portal, but I was still instantly on my guard. This was a place that, when I'd last seen it, had been crawling with goblins and some dead gangsters. For now, it seemed quiet. Ish. "Ah, come on! I've only got seven twinkle left!" I blinked and looked over to the side where a young woman was sitting, legs spread out in a wide V, right on the floor. She had a phone in her hands and was glaring at it, then she looked up, saw me, and just stared. "Hey," I said. "Hey," she replied. "We, uh, gonna fight?" "I hope not," I said. "'Kay, cool. So, who're you?" I had several ways to approach this. Most of them would, in the end, depend on how easy it was to work with Becky here. "I'm Deadline," I said. "Never heard of you. You from another gang or somethin'?" She rolled to her side, then got up before brushing her pants down. It was all very casual, laidback, and put her hand close to the handgun by her side. I shook my head. "I'm independent. Look, I'm just here because I know that this portal's about to breach, and I'd like to clear it before people die." "Nah, how could it do that, I'm right here," she said. "Nothing's getting by me." I shrugged. "How many goblins could you take?" Becky blinked, then blinked again. "Like, in a fight, or?" "Yes, in a fight," I said. "Oh good, because I'm not into... is it bestiality if it's a monster or is there like a whole other kink for that?" "I don't know," I said. "Wild. I know some of the Rats watch some wild shit. You know there's monsters with tentacles out there?" "Yes. I met one, once." She stared at me. "I didn't have sex with it," I said. "Okay, if you say so." You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. I couldn't even tell where I'd been going with this woman. "In a fight, how many goblins?" "I dunno, twenty, maybe twice that? I'm pretty strong, ya know?" "Yeah, I believe you," I said. "But there's a lot more than forty, and if this breaches, I think you're going to be overwhelmed." "And how'd you know that?" She asked, her arms crossing. I stared at her, really stared. Becky was stick-thin, to the point that she looked one missed meal away from anorexia. There was some muscle there, but not that much. More wiry thin than gym thin, if that made any sense. She had a bright yellow coat on, made of what I guessed was synthleather, and cut off at the midriff in big tears. Her exposed stomach showed a tattoo of a rat on one side of her waist, and she was covered in piercings. Lower lip, nose, and she had a metal plate across the bridge of her nose, some sort of cyberware, maybe. She was pretty, though. Very much fitting into that kind of punk aesthetic that would have had a younger me stuttering and staring and feeling very envious. "Alright, let me just come out and say it," I said. "I'm a time traveller." "Wait, really?" she asked. "Yes." She squinted at me. "I don't believe you." "Well it's true," I said. "Where's your TARDIS then, huh?" "My what?" I asked. Did she just call me a slur? "Your time machine." I shook my head. "I use magic. I can loop back and repeat things." "Yo! You can groundhog yourself?" she asked. "Rad!" "I can what?" She stared. "How have you not seen Groundhog Day and don't know what a TARDIS is? Now I really don't believe you. What number am I thinking of?" "That's mind reading, not time magic," I said. "Oh yeah... then what I'm I trying to pull?" she raised her phone and wiggled it around. "This is my second loop here, and you didn't tell me that before, so I have no idea," I said. "I don't even know what you're talking about." "I'm playing the Family samurai gacha game," she said. "And I'm trying to pull a five-star Deus Ex. I'm eighty bucks down and haven't even gotten her special weapon yet, because this is bullshit. Do you play games?" "Uh..." I said. What the hell was going on? This woman had me absolutely stunlocked with the way she was bouncing around from topic to topic. "Okay, back up. First of all, I'm not lying, not that it matters. I'm going to Reload this loop soon anyway. You really will die here though, and I'd like to avoid that." "Because I have a special destiny?" "No," I said. "Fuck. School lied when they said I was special, huh?" "Probably not, they just meant it in a different way," I said. She stared, then cracked a smile. "Hey! That was funny! Okay okay, let's assume that I'm extra-special and believe you, which I don't, but it's boring so let's pretend that I do. What's the plan, corpo?" "Corpo?" I asked, then shook my head. "I'm not corporate." As Deadline I wasn't. "I just shower and clean my clothes on occasion." "Okay, oof, but also... yeah, fair." "And my plan is to clear this portal before it breaches. Or as it's breaching. I'm not particular about it. Ideally I do it in a way that doesn't have me making enemies of the River Rats." "I guess saving us would stop that, but we're making mad cash with this gig, and I need every buck for more pulls. Them waifu PNGs don't roll them-- hold the fuck on!" "What?" "You can use time magic to cheat at gacha games!" "I have better ways to use time magic," I said. "Yeah, like what?" "Cheating in casinos?" She paused, then shrugged. "Okay, I guess. But why steal all that money if you can just use your free spins and get five stars every time anyway?" "Becky, anyone ever tell you that you're strange?" "All the time. And that's not my name." "It isn't?" I asked. That's what Josh had called her, and she answered to it earlier. She uncrossed her arms and grinned. "If you get a cool name like Deadline, then I want one too. Call me... Pikachu." "That's copyrighted," I said. This was going to be a long loop... but I couldn't lie and say that this wasn't fun. ***