Imani: I have no idea, but we probably shouldn’t tell him yet until we have a plan. We don’t want the sock to panic.
“Imani!” Bigs shouted as she returned to the garage. “Whoop, whoop, bitch!” The slug was followed by Samantha, Mongo, and Rend. All of them except for Samantha were stumbling. All had theInebriateddebuff over them. Samantha was chatting about her “ex-boyfriend Charles,” who’d been the best bartender she’d ever met.
“Mongo!” Donut shouted. “I told you not to drink! You’re going to turn into an alcoholic!”
Mongo screeched and waved both of his wings joyfully.
Rend giggled and turned back toward the food truck, which continued to swarm with gremlins.
As this went on, I watched Dong, thinking. Thinking of all the pain, all the suffering inflicted by this damn dungeon.I am so sick of this.The first sparks of an idea were starting to form.
Carl: I agree. Let’s keep an eye on him and make sure he’s safe. We still can’t let him go on races. This is now a priority.
[ 25 ]
We sentRosetta and Tipid into Hungry Eyes to grab a mercenary—if any were left—while Donut and I returned to the safe room to quickly open our boxes. My blood bar had refilled with the death of the kangaroo, but Donut’s had barely budged up, and we needed to make sure it didn’t run too low.
We only had a few hours. We didn’t have time for any of this.
The safe room was completely spotless now that the cleaner bot had finished sorting through all the crap I’d received from my fan box. He’d sucked up most everything, but there was a small pile of items of interest that we had in the corner. One was a broken communication device. There were multiple items of makeup Samantha had already rooted through, a few random odds and ends, and a pile of papers that looked like legal documents. Some were scorched and in a language I didn’t understand. Tipid had been in the process of sorting through them when we sent him and Rosetta into town.
A group of strippers, NPCs, and sluggalos circled around the view screen. They were taking turns playing the Wii version ofMario Kart, all screeching, laughing their heads off, as they had four players on at once. Bucket Boy sat on the couch with Dong, watching with an unreadable look on his face. Bigs was in thecorner vomiting while the cleaner bot shrilled at her. Mongo and Rend remained in the garage, guarding. We also left Jamal out there as an extra guard until the two pets sobered up.
Samantha was controlling one of the cars. She was playing Princess Peach on a pink motorcycle. She had the controller in her mouth and was hovering just a foot off the ground, spinning back and forth. She was literally pressing buttons with her tongue. She made muffled zooming noises as she played.
She was also dominating. It wasn’t even close. Apparently, Tipid and one of the larger sluggalos were the only ones who could even challenge her. I just sat there and watched for a few minutes. Right now it was Samantha versus Doctor Bones, Splash Zone, and a pair of smaller level 10 slugs who worked in tandem with a classic controller. They were playing Wario and cursing up a storm as they kept running off the road and hitting the wall.
We had another game system hooked up in the main guildhall. Bodi, the quiet, deadly colonel who’d dominated Land War, was currently with Louis in Katia’s former safe room. He was supposedly taking very well to one of theForzagames on the Xbox.
“It’s absolutely appalling,” Donut was saying as I tried to grab something out of my broken food box. She was talking about the lack of good prizes in her loot boxes.
“You’re already pretty strong,” I said, trying not to choke. I still had to eat something at least once a day to keep the buffs, but the systems were completely broken. Every time we received an “optional” food box upgrade, it wasn’t really optional. Everything that came out of the boxes now was liquefied, fish-smelling, and burned to a crisp. To make matters worse, I wouldn’t be able to reset my foot buff in the kangaroo suit, so it would expire. Nor could I brush my hair, as the hood was firmly attached to my head.
I could, however, pee. I didn’t even look. I just hopped into the bathroom, pulled down the boxers, and prayed I wasn’t wetting myself.
I didn’t want it to work because that came with a ton of really uncomfortable implications. But it did.
Or, at least, it worked once I hit level 5 in my new “Fursona” skill.
With each new skill level, the sensation that the suit was my actual body increased, which was terrifying.
Even now as I ate and watched Donut hiss her way through her loot boxes, it kept increasing on its own.
Your Fursona skill is now level 8!
Yiffing is unlocked!
I didn’t know what “yiffing” was, and I didn’t want to know.
I still had to hop everywhere.
We’d replaced the broken kitchen table with a bar counter that Elle had in her inventory. We sat at it now as Donut powered through her boxes. She’d received multiple achievements and prizes, including a “Last Place” achievement she was grumbling about. Most of the scrolls we received were more of theEmergency Gremlinones, and there wasn’t anything else very good.
Imani sat with us. She said she couldn’t handle another minute of Elle’s fan group guy Linus hanging around their garage and wanted to stay here. But as usual whenever Imani was around, multiple sluggalos had come out to say hello.
“Victorious again!” Samantha announced, spitting out the Wii controller. She turned to the two level 10 slugs. “We had a deal. I now own you both as slaves, and you must do my bidding for all of eternity.”
“Yo, that wasn’t the bet,” one of the sluggalos said.