Just behind Mongo was the entrance to the guild’s pet stables. I really needed to get in there and check on Rend. He, Gonk, Simoom, and now Penelope were all in there, supposedly all having a great time.
Prepotente was also here in the room. He was examining a pet carrier. “Interesting,” he said, handing the case off to Mordecai.
“So,” Mordecai was saying to Li Na, who did not acknowledge him, “this is how this works.”
I released Samantha, and she zipped over to Louis, who stood right next to me. Donut jumped to my shoulder.
“Has she saidanything?” I whispered.
“Nothing,” Donut replied. “But she did cast some gooey dread thing on your cactus when Rosetta asked her to.”
“She did what on my what?”
Mordecai held up the pet carrier, which had some sort of device installed on the outside. “This is an XL pet carrier. As we all know, they can’t hold crawlers. But as some of us also know, theycanstill suck crawlers in if the crawler allows it. What happens is a crawler gets sucked up by the pet carrier, and approximately ten seconds later, the carrier breaks, and the crawler is expelled. They have aBonkeddebuff that lasts for about twenty seconds. Unfortunately, if the crawler gets zapped into the pet carrier and someone attempts to add the carrier to their personal inventory, it will not work. However, the cleaner bot’s weight-based utility inventory systemdoeswork. What we’re going to do is zap you into the pet carrier, and before the carrier breaks, we will have, uh, Suckira here suck the pet carrier in.”
“Suckira?” I asked.
Donut scoffed. “That was Louis’s idea. I wanted Anna Nardini. I insisted we name the cleaner bots now that we had two, and he said that was the name of the robot vacuum his mom had in Florida. We flipped a coin for the right to name it, but Samantha was the one to do the coin flip, and I think she cheated.”
“Anna Nardini?” I asked. “What?”
“I did cheat,” Samantha said from Louis’s shoulder. He’d given up trying to shoo her away. “That’s what a woman does for her man.”
Louis let out a spray of water. “She didn’t cheat. It was a fair flip. Please stop sticking your tongue in my gills. It freaks me out.”
“Freaking you out is my love language, Louis.”
“Wait, what did you name the one in our space?” I asked.
Before Donut could answer, Mordecai started droning on again.
He continued like this for some time before Elle interrupted.
“Holy shit, we get it. It’s going to work. Can we get on with it?”
“Carl, did you understand any of that?” Donut whispered.
“Sort of,” I said. “Basically, Li Na gets sucked into the cleaner bot, the cleaner bot gets put up for sale, Herot buys it, and he empties her out inside of the other place. And now Li Na has left the game because this Cabaret place is outside the playing field. She’ll be considered to have been ‘lost.’?”
“It’s like trading a Pokémon between devices,” Louis said.
Donut snorted. “You wouldn’t catch me dead doing that.”
“Are you absolutely, positively positive that the contents of the bot’s storage will still be there when this stranger purchases it?” Prepotente asked.
“No,” Rosetta said. “But we believe they will be. It’s a container. And containers and their contentsdotransfer. But it is a risk. We are also not positive that Na will survive when the floor collapses. The rules suggest she will survive, but as this has never happened before, we’re not positive.”
“It’ll work,” Mistress Tiatha said, speaking for the first time. “Ithashappened before.” She was drunk again, swaying where she stood. She didn’t elaborate.
“Okay,” Prepotente said. “But how will we know if it’s successful? We’ve already established that the regular messaging system probably will not work. She is partied with Zhang, but she will automatically leave the party. Will we even receive a this-crawler-has-perished message if we send her a note?”
“That’s actually a very good question,” Mordecai said. “But we have a solution for that as well. Rosetta?”
Rosetta produced a tiny cactus plant with a plastic pot. The cactus glowed blue. “Li Na has cast a dread trap on this plant. Deadly bloom. We’re in a safe room, but the trap will still activate if you touch it, so leave it alone. You won’t get poisoned, but it will ruin it. Normally, someone comes near the plant, the flowers bloom, and they release a spore that will paralyze you.”
“Hey,” I said, “that’s from my room! I got that from picking an Earth class. It’s just a little cactus from Home Depot.”
“It didn’t match with the new rug,” Samantha said. “I put it out. It’s covered with poky parts. Much too aggressive for the vibe I’m going for.”