Thought I might as well get a thread started and see if we can catch some easy wins. BetOnline has some Super Bowl props up and I Just saw/bet this one:
Will Joe Biden be in attendance?
Yes : +300
No: -500
No. A President has never attended a Super Bowl. Recent tradition is to cut a commercial and just call the winners. And given we are going through what Biden admin has called a "dark winter," don't expect that to change. Would be hard to justify the President attending during middle of pandemic, especially when general public (with some minor exceptions) is not allowed to attend. Obviously you have to lay a lot, but at -500 we are talking approximately 83% of non-attendance. Really no way to quantify, but feel like it should be more like >90% he does not attend.
Any other targets out there?
Edit: Went back and checked this morning, they got "No" at -700 now.
submitted by I did a Super Bowl Prop Bets pool and one of the questions I had was "Who will the Super Bowl MVP thank first in his speech?" Unfortunately my recording of the speech got cut off, and being in Canada, I can't seem to go back and watch it online. I remember him vaguely referring to "these guys," while gesturing towards people on the field and took that as him thanking his teammates, but I'm wondering if anyone knows what the books paid out for this prop?
submitted by A/N: So, not the longest, only 12,264 words, but this completes Rinn's first adventure through the portal. Episode 9.5 will be another visit to Tyriel, and Episodes 10, 11, and maybe 12 will be another adventure to Earth, this time to a physics lab. After that, the rest of the artificer augments will show up, and some group training will commence, including some time visiting a nearby keshmin city/town, and various antics along the way.
EDIT: Forgot the
Patreon link.
Retreat, Hell – Episode 9
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“And we’re half-way there...”
“Woah-oh! Livin’ on a prayer!”
Rinn laughed as the entire van joined in on the chorus. It had been an hour since they left base, and most of it was filled with music, and questionable attempts to sing along.
“You got a problem with our karaoke road trips?” Bradford asked over the music.
“What is… kair… kair-ye-yoke-yi?”
“Kair-ee-oke-ee,” Bradford laughed. “It’s….” she tilted her head. “Actually, I don’t know what language it comes from. Probably Hawaiian or something.” She shrugged. “It means to sing along to music, usually without other vocals to back you up. It’s a party game.”
“Man, Elder would have a cow if he were here,” Sampson said, leaning over the back of their seat. “It’s Japanese, not Hawaiian.”
“Hey, I’m not a language expert. I speak American English and, apparently…” She paused, looking at Rinn. “What’s your language called?”
“Gyani,” Rinn replied. “It’s the official language of the Kingdom.”
“Gyani,” Bradford nodded. “I can understand Gyani thanks to some magical fuckery. Otherwise, I’m a dunce with languages. I failed my second year of Spanish.”
“Wait, the mighty Jabs, goddess of knowledge and intelligence among Marines, who is studying for a degree in aerospace engineering
in her spare time, failed
basic Spanish?!”
“Languages aren’t my thing!” she said, throwing her hands in the air. She shrugged, glancing to the side. “I might also have only taken it as an elective because I had a major crush on Kyle Eckels…”
Rinn’s ears perked up. “Who is Kyle Eckels?”
Bradford rolled her eyes. “Just some douche I went to high school with.”
“Oh, you’re not leaving it at that,” Sampson said, tapping her shoulder, then rolling his hand at her. “Spill.”
“Fine,” she sighed. She leaned back, looking past the ceiling of the van. “He was the star of the track and field team, and I thought he was the hottest person ever. He really nailed the tall-dark-and-handsome look, you know? Had kind of a quiet, brooding vibe, without a hint of Twilight.”
“No sparkly vampires for you, Jabs?” Edison asked.
“Ugh, no,” she rolled her eyes.
“Go on,” Sampson said, putting his elbows on the back of their seat and propping his chin on his hands, giving her an expectant smile.
“He was athletic, and suave, and I thought that, because he did track and field, he wouldn’t have the same jock attitude that a lot of the guys on the football team did.” She sighed. “He would look up from his mild brooding and give me a tiny smile, like just seeing me brightened his day.” She shook herself. “It sent shivers down my spine every time he did it.”
“Aaand…” Sampson prodded when she let the silence drag on too long.
“And he was a douchebag who did that to
every single girl he thought he could score with. Asshole was juggling three girlfriends and hooked up with or was trying to hook up with half the girls in the school.”
“Oh, snap!”
“Yeah, when I found out he was playing me…” She shook her head. “I figured out all his girlfriends, told them, and told the other girls in our year. They all kept it a secret right until the day of Prom, after he had already spent his money on some big party reservations, when they all dumped him in front of the whole school assembly.
Nobody showed up to his after-Prom party.”
“Damn, girl!” Sampson smiled. “That really showed him!”
“What about you, Shields? Do you have a girl back home?”
“Ah… no….”
“Kawalski’s got a girl in every whore house,” Gomez said.
Kawalski turned, giving him a look of fatherly pride. “Truth.” His expression instantly shifted to a scowl. “Now shut the fuck up, Gomer!”
Gomez sat back, grinning the smile of someone who knew he did good.
“Do keshmin even mate for life?” Kimber asked. “Or do you have seasonal mating cycles?”
“Can you only mate once every seven years, and you have to fuck or you die?” Edison shouted from the back seat.
“That is… oddly specific… and no.” Rinn shook his head. He wasn’t going down that conversation path. “Marriage is supposed to last forever, but doesn’t always… Some people get to choose who they marry, especially in the lower classes, but it’s often arranged.”
“Is there someone you’re looking to marry?”
“No.”
“What? No sweetheart waiting for you to sweep her off her feet when you come home from the war?” Bradford poked his side, giving him a sly look.
“No…” He leaned back against his window, ears shifting awkwardly.
“Do
you have a girl in every whore house?” Kimber asked.
“No!”
“What’s the matter, Shields?” Sampson asked, raising an eyebrow at him. “A little sensitive about your love life?”
“Do you even have a love life?” Bradford asked, trying to suppress her characteristic smirk.
Rinn found himself plastered to the window, suddenly the center of the focused attention of eleven humans.
“Nah, man, relax, we’re just fucking with you,” Bradford waved at him, glancing away to mask a grin.
“Yeah, who you fuck, or don’t, is your business. Nobody cares.” Sampson said.
“Fuck knows there’s enough of you that will share, anyway,” Bradford rolled her eyes.
He sighed, relaxing away from the window. “I felt like I was back at the university again for a moment, there.”
“Ha,” Bradford laughed, throwing an arm over the back of the seat to pat him on the shoulder. “Sounds like high school drama is universal, doesn’t it?”
“Apparently,” he said, tensing briefly under her touch but forcing himself to relax.
Humans are just very tactile. Like the dohlgra.
The song changed on the “radio,” or Gomez’s “phone,” Rinn wasn’t sure which, nor the significance of either. There was a short, tapping beat, and then the song was immediately loud again.
“Is all human music this loud?”
“No, not all of it,” Bradford laughed.
“Some of it is louder!” Gomez grinned, like this was an awesome thing. He put his hands up to his mouth like he was holding something, closed his eyes, and scream-growled into them.
Rinn’s ears swept back, flat against his skull. “Are you dying?”
He took a breath and screamed louder.
“What did we say about death metal and screamo in the car?!” shouted Kimber.
Gomez stopped screaming, dropping his hands with a pout. “You guys are lame.”
Bradford laughed, shaking her head. “We’ve got all kinds of music. Some… more palatable than others…”
“Laaame!”
“Shut the fuck up, Gomer!”
She rolled her eyes. “We’ve mostly been listening to Classic and Hard Rock, but there’s a whole bunch of other types of music, even other types of Rock.”
“Like rap and hip-hop,” Sampson said.
“Country,” Miller added.
“Rhythm and Blues,” Edison suggested.
“And then you have classical music, different types of folk music, and cultural flavors from all over the world.” She smiled. “We have a lot of music.”
“Here, I can show you,” Gomez said, snagging his phone and flipping through the display with his thumbs. A moment later, the music stopped and a new beat started. It was slow at first, but then the pace picked up as the singer started chanting. His ears flicked from side to side as the singer sped through words at an alarming rate and he struggled to make them all out.
Gomez flipped through several more examples, some loud or fast, others soft and slow. Some were simple, some were grand and complex. The diversity alone was staggering.
"What about you? What is keshmin music like?" Gomez asked.
"Or at least, what is Ganlin music like?" Sampson added. "You've gotta have a fair bit of variation, too."
He waved his hands. “Well, I don’t have anything that can show you, but it’s usually a lot less… loud.”
“Just wait until you guys get amps.”
“What?”
“Amplifiers. Takes the sound produced by an instrument, turns it into an electrical signal, and amplifies the signal to make it louder when it’s put out on a speaker. In a nutshell.”
Rinn quirked his ears, then shook his head. “We have symphony orchestras, and operas, but those are mostly reserved for the wealthy and nobility. The common keshmin play a variety of songs.” He paused, his ears flicking to the back of his head in frustration. “If all of my things hadn’t been lost in the retreat, I could play you something…”
“You play an instrument?”
“Yes, two.” He held a hand up. “One is a
tulu.”
“A what? That didn’t translate.”
“A
tulu.” He held his hands up in front of his chest, as if he were holding something. “It’s made of clay, and shaped like… a double-pointed tear, with a piece to blow in, and holes for your fingers.”
“That’s an ocarina!” Bradford said with a smile.
“Okha-rinn-a?”
“Oca-reen-a,” she said. “It’s one of the oldest instruments ever made.”
He nodded. “It’s a very old instrument for us, too.”
“I guess that makes sense,” she nodded. “That’s awesome! What else do you play?”
“The
seilei, it’s like… It’s a board, with strings on it, and a ridge in the middle. You can play it by plucking the strings, or using a bow.”
“I think we’ve had similar instruments, though none are common in this part of the world.”
“So you had those with you?”
“Yes, but they were all lost with the rest of my things when the camp fell to chaos during the retreat.”
“You know… When we head up to el-ay on Sunday, we could stop by a music store and get you a new ocarina. It might not replace everything, but it’s a start, yeah?” She gave him an encouraging smile.
He rolled his ears, considering, and they slowly rose to the idea. He nodded. “I’d like that.”
She grinned. “I’d say we could go today, but the highway’s a parking lot right now. It’s going to take long enough to get wherever we’re going for food as it is, and I don’t know about you, but I’m fucking starving.”
Rinn looked down at his stomach as it growled at the reminder. They both laughed.
“Hey, driver! Are we fucking there yet? Some of us didn’t get to have lunch today!”
***
Thirty minutes later, Rinn saw glimpses of buildings in the distance that seemed further away than they should be. They crept down the highway. Their pace was stop, and go. Stop, and go. A stark contrast to the speed they moved at that morning.
The number and variety of vehicles baffled him.
I understand that they probably don’t have carrels or yashi, but do they have no working animals at all? He considered the mechanical artifices around him.
Do they have any need for working animals?
Another ten minutes went by as they crept closer to San Diego, and Rinn got a proper look at the city in the distance. They had been surrounded by what he would consider city for miles, but
that…
There’s got to be some trick of the air… they look too big for as far away as they are, or too far away for as big as they are…
The van rounded another bend in the road, and there they were, straight ahead on the highway. The city was over a mile away, but still towered over the horizon. He stared out the window as the traffic crept forward, and the “city” before him stretched towards the clouds.
Those towers are so tall, they scrape the sky!
“If you think those are tall, you should see New York,” Bradford said, giving him a knowing smile.
He consciously shut his mouth and picked his ears up from where they had drooped in amazement. “We have tall buildings, too, just… not quite… as… tall…”
“Hey, we were where you were not that long ago,” she gave him a pat on the shoulder. “Once we get done kicking the keeblers’ asses, we’ll help you build your own skyscrapers.” She squeezed his shoulder, gesturing at the city before them. “In the meantime, enjoy the sights.”
Rinn nodded, giving her an encouraged flick of his ear. He leaned over to stare out his window as they followed traffic up a ramp that broke from the main highway, his horns clunking lightly against the glass.
***
As the van drove into the city itself, Rinn looked up, and up, and up at the buildings that towered above them.
I lied… not even the Great Tower at Shyiyani is as tall as some of these buildings… He was reminded of the picture in Bradford’s room, and as the street they followed took them
through the middle of a building, he became certain that the picture was real.
The van worked its way down the street, carefully navigating through a stream of other vehicles. A left turn put them onto another street that was almost as large as the highway, and a few minutes later they were turning into a paved lot filled with marked lines for vehicles to park in. An attendant met them, giving Rinn a glance through the window. Kawalski showed him his phone and talked about a pre-paid reservation. The man nodded and waved them to an empty slot, removing an orange cone that had been blocking it.
Kawalski carefully maneuvered them into their assigned slot, the big van dwarfing most of the other vehicles around them. Once satisfied with their alignment, he shoved a lever next to his wheel and turned off the van’s artifice. “Alright, everybody out! Chow’s just a couple blocks up the street.”
Doors were carefully opened and the squad climbed out of the van, squeezing past the small vehicle next to them. Rinn joined in the stretching and groaning as everyone worked the kinks out of the long ride, but was quickly distracted by the sights, sounds, and smells around him.
There is so much noise! He thought. His ears swiveled around, trying to pinpoint it all, and his nose exploded with a cacophony of scents.
He had been in cities before. He recognized the familiar sound of people moving and chattering, albeit in a different tongue. But here, there was no sound of carts and wagons rattling across cobbled streets. No clop of hooves. No lowing of muhla, no braying of queshi.
Instead, there was the rush of traffic. The sound of air they shoved aside as they moved, their rubber wheels on the road, the muttering and rumbling artifices that powered them. Loud horns would honk periodically, sometimes nearby, sometimes in the distance. An artifice roared in the distance.
Rinn looked up at the dizzying heights of the buildings that surrounded them on three sides, and closed his eyes. He smelled oil and tar, humans, the faint scent of stale piss… And food!
He opened his eyes as his stomach rumbled, and found the humans all watching him.
“You ready to eat?” Bradford asked.
“Absolutely!” he said.
“Good,” she said, stepping towards the street. “Because I’m fucking starving.” Rinn fell in beside her, and the rest of the squad formed up around them. “Where are we eating, Kawalski?”
“It’s just a couple blocks this way,” he said, taking the lead and walking back the way they had come with the van.
“This better be good, Kawalski, we’ve waited long enough,” she said as they merged onto the brick-paved footpath that ran alongside the street.
There were many people walking on either side of the street, but not nearly as many as Rinn had expected. He flicked an ear at the “cars” that zipped past them in the street, and began to suspect why.
The people who were walking the footpath with them quickly got out of their way. He couldn’t blame them. The group wasn’t exactly marching in step, but they were moving with a clear and determined purpose, nevermind their physical presence.
Rinn saw several people do double-takes when they caught sight of him, staring at him, or pointing him out to their companions so they could stare together. A few pointed phones at him, though most were discouraged by a simple glare from one of the Marines.
They crossed three side streets that would have been a grand thorofare in any Ganlin city, before making a left turn immediately after the fourth.
“Here we are!” Kawalski said, waving at a red brick building ahead of them. “La Puerta! One of the best, authentic, Mexican joints in San Diego.”
“According to the online reviews, anyway,” Kimber said. “None of us have ever been her before.”
“Yeah, well, you weren’t offering any suggestions,” Kawalski growled as they walked through the open door, “So stuff it.” Rinn caught some surprised glances from the people seated outside.
The “Mexican joint” looked a little small as their group filed inside, but it was still roomy enough, and was very warmly lit. The wall to their right was paneled with wood slats. A line of tables, each surrounded by a curving, seat-backed bench upholstered in brown leather, ran the length of the wall. Glowing, stained lamps hung over each table, and strands of small, yellow-orange lights were strung across the ceiling.
To their left was a lacquered bar, lined with upholstered seat-backed stools. The wall behind it was bare brick, covered by shelves and cabinets lined with bottles that were unmistakably alcohol.
Or whatever it is they drink in place of alcohol… He eyed the bottles.
That glass and crystal would not be out of place at the king’s table, but here… He flicked an ear at the rows of perfectly identical bottles, and turned his attention to the man behind the bar.
His black hair was far longer than any of the Marines he had seen, except for Bradford, and hung down to his jaw. His chin was also covered in fur, and it completely surrounded his mouth.
Do only some of them grow fur on their face? Is it just around their mouths? Rinn glanced at Miller, and for the first time noticed faint stubble across the entire lower third of his face.
Do they shave their fur?!
“Evening!” Kawalski said, bringing Rinn’s attention back to the present. The man behind the bar jerked his attention away from Rinn. “I called earlier, said there’d be about twelve of us coming in, asked if we could have a couple booths towards the back.”
“Kawalski?” the man asked.
“Yep!”
“Yeah, um,” he shook his head. “Yeah, the two booths on the end,” he pointed to the back corner.”
“Sweet, thanks!” Kawalski gave him a half-wave and the squad filed to the back of the room.
The booths weren’t large enough for all twelve of them, but a brief discussion and some shuffling later, Rinn found himself wedged into the back of the corner booth next to Bradford, surrounded by Kawalski, Gomez, Miller, and Kimber. The rest of the squad packed themselves around the adjacent table.
A few moments later, a woman appeared with a stack of large cards that she passed around. “Can I get you started with anything to drink, or appetizers?” She stopped, staring at Rinn. “Is he?”
“Yes,” Bradford said.
“Were you…“
“In the thick of it,” Kawalski said.
“We had to come back Earth-side for official business, and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to show Rinn, here, around.” Bradford clapped a hand on his shoulder, giving him a light shake.
“Your world is amazing,” he said, flicking his ears back self-consciously.
The woman blinked. “Do you… understand…”
“Yeah, it’s magic, we haven’t figured it out yet, either,” Edison said, leaning over the back of his seat. “One of them cast a big spell that let us all understand them, and them understand us, but only if you were in range. He said “Your world is amazing.””
“That’s…” She shook her head. “You know what, I’m just going to focus on taking orders. Would you guys like anything to drink?”
“Takeela,” Kawalski said without hesitation. They had a brief discussion of what kind of “takeela” he wanted, which Rinn couldn’t follow, though he was fairly certain that Kawalski was flirting with the waitress. He was less certain about whether his efforts were successful.
“I’ll just have a coke,” Kimber said. “I’m the dee-dee.” He held out a hand in front of Kawalski as the waitress moved around the table. The other Marine fished a key attached to a pouch out of his pocket and handed it over without comment.
Further discussion was had about what Rinn wanted to drink. The Marines were delighted to learn that keshmin also drank alcohol, and it was decided that he should have something called a “dose ekwis” to “stick with the mexican theme.” He was a little uncertain about imbibing on this adventure, but…
I’m an infantry veteran in His Majesty’s Royal Host. I’m hardly a stranger to alcohol.
“Any appetizers?”
“Queso Fundido,” Miller said.
“For one, or for the table?”
“For the table.”
“Excellent. Oh! And how are we splitting the bill?”
“Individually, but I’ve got his,” Bradford said, pointing a thumb at Rinn.
He opened his mouth to object, but then closed it, his ears drooping, as he remembered that he had nothing to pay with.
This is embarrassing… I need to fix this.
“Anything else?”
“No, that’s about… Oh!” Bradford interrupted herself, snapping her fingers and pointing at the waitress. “Can we get a selection of hot sauces? We’re not sure what he can stand.” She pointed back at Rinn.
“Of course. I’ll be right back.”
As she walked away, Rinn was handed a card. He stared down at the alien text, his ears twisting in consternation. “Umm…”
“Here, I’ll read it for you,” Bradford said, tilting her own card so he could see as she read off the items. Another discussion began on what everyone wanted to eat.
The waitress seemed to know her job well, because she returned at exactly the time that everyone had decided. She passed out drinks and set wooden bowls of baked chips alongside a plate of what smelled like some kind of melted cheese, followed by several bottles of some kind of sauce, then began taking orders.
Rinn stared at the chips and cheese after she departed again.
“Pass me one of the mild ones,” Bradford said, picking a chip out of the bowl. Kimber picked a bottle out, opened it, and passed it to her. “Alright, Rinn,” she said, dabbing some of the brownish liquid on the chip, “We’re gonna do some science here.” She passed him the chip. “Try that.”
He took the chip and gave it a sniff.
Definitely some kind of spice here… He gave Bradford a glance, and popped the chip into his mouth. He nodded slowly while he chewed. The chip was some kind of hard flat bread; a little salty, but not much different from similar food on Gahla. “The sauce is kinda sweet… and…” He opened and shut his mouth, running his tongue across his upper teeth a few times before swallowing. “It had a weird bite at the end.”
“Here, try this one,” Bradford said, handing him another chip with another sauce on it. He could smell the bite in this one.
He eyed her again, and popped the next chip into his mouth. Instantly he felt his mouth burn. His eyes went wide and his ears stood up straight, but with ten Marines and a Navy Corpsman all staring at him, he didn’t dare spit it back out. His eyes watering, he continued chewing, and just barely managed to swallow before the fumes triggered his sinuses and he sneezed.
The humans laughed.
“Okay, so that was a couple steps up from mild,” Bradford admitted.
“Only a couple?” Rinn coughed. He could feel the heat of the sauce all the way down to his stomach.
“Well, it wasn’t the hottest they have.”
“Want to try another one?” Miller asked, holding out a chip with a subtle smile. Rinn could smell the fumes from the other side of the table.
“No. You try it,” Rinn said before sneezing again.
Miller shrugged and popped it into his mouth with a mild smirk. He chewed and swallowed as if it were nothing.
“Dude!” Gomez said, picking up the open bottle. “That’s Holy Jolokia! It’s, like, a million Scoville! That’s getting into weapons grade range!” He set the bottle back down, shaking his head in awe. “How is your face not melting off?!”
Miller shrugged, snagging another chip and dipping it in the cheese. He stuffed it into his mouth and nonchalantly chewed away.
“Try the queso,” Bradford said, elbowing Rinn. “It helps neutralize the heat.”
He immediately grabbed a chip and dipped it into the cheese. He popped it into his mouth, and closed his eyes, savoring this flavor. It wasn’t like any cheese made from muhla milk he’d ever tasted, but it was definitely cheese, and it helped ease the burning in his mouth.
“Try this stuff, it’s barely medium,” Bradford said, handing him another open bottle. He took a cautious sniff, and nodded. “Try putting it on top of the cheese.”
Rinn nodded again, scooping another chip full of cheese off the plate, and cautiously poured a few drops of sauce onto it. He took a careful bite, strings of cheese trailing from his mouth to the other half of the chip.
The spice is still hot… but much more manageable… even good… He dabbed some more sauce onto the rest of the chip and popped it into his mouth.
Swallowing, he picked up his glass of beer. He took a moment to marvel at the glass itself, and how pristinely clear it was, and the fact that it was
cold. They drink their beer cold?! The cost in mana to keep things chilled like this… He shook his head and took a sip.
It is… interesting… he decided.
Different, and cold, but definitely still beer. He took another sip.
And definitely stronger than table beer…
After a short discussion of hot sauce, the history of capsaicin, and alarmingly, its weaponization, the waitress returned with a platter stacked with food. Rinn’s ears perked up and his stomach rumbled as the scents wafted across the table.
Plates were passed around the table, and Rinn’s gazed locked onto the plate containing his “mix-and-match” order of steak, pork, and chicken “tacos.” He had to swallow to keep himself from drooling. He vaguely heard Kawalski make a joke about the waitress being his new hero, but all of his attention was fixated on his food.
He spared a glance at the others for some cue as to when it would be appropriate to start eating. Seeing them all immediately tuck into their food, he carefully picked up one of his tacos. He tilted his head one way, and then the other, trying to figure out how to best eat it, and decided that head-tilted was the best position. He took a bite, doing his best to keep the contents from spilling everywhere, then sat back, chewing and savoring.
Silence reigned over the table for a time as everyone tucked into their food, but eventually conversation returned. The topic shifted wildly depending on who was talking and who was stuffing their face, and ranged from plans for the evening, to past exploits, prospects for the war, and their own recent adventures.
“We had a lay-over in Memphis, but we got stuck there because of the hurricane going through at the time,” Gomez said. “It was like a day-and-a-half delay before they would let any flights into Savannah. Normally, they wouldn’t have let us leave the security area, but because it was a day-and-a-half delay, they let us leave the airport.” He took a drink of his “soda.” Apparently, humans had an age requirement before they were allowed to drink alcohol. “So me and my buddy were like, ‘We’ve just been gifted one last night of freedom before we spend the next three months in boot camp. Let’s go to a titty bar!’”
“Of course you did,” Bradford rolled her eyes.
“Hey, you can’t tell me you wouldn’t go out to a strip club if you had the chance right before three months of guaranteed no sex.”
“…. Continue with your goddamn story, Private.”
“Right,” Gomez said around a bite of food. “So, anyway. We get out to the titty bar, and it went about as you’d expect. We event got special dances in the back-room for a “discount,”” he said, scrunching the first two fingers of each hand in the air, “When we told them we were on our way to boot camp.”
Everyone at the table, even Rinn, shared a knowing roll of the eyes.
“So, we’re in the back room, right?” He washed his bite of food down with another gulp of soda. “I don’t know what the fuck Frankie was doing, I wasn’t paying any attention to him, because I had this smokin’ hot stripper dancing in my lap. And she was fiiine. Just enough chunk to have some junk in the trunk that you could hold onto, but a waist thin enough you could almost wrap your hands around, and big ‘ol titties like melons that felt like-“
He was interrupted by Kawalski reaching over Rinn and Bradford to smack him in the back of the head. “Gomer! We’re in public, keep it pee-gee thirteen!”
“Oh, right,” he sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. “Sorry.”
“Continue,” Kawalski said, sitting back down.
“So, right,” he took another bite. “So, she was dancing in my lap, top came off, then the bottom came off,” he took another drink. “She’s shaking her ass in my face. I’m thinking I’m about to be one of the luckiest bastards heading to boot camp. Then she busts ass, rips out this massive fart, right into my face!”
Kimber snorted into his drink, starting a coughing fit, and Bradford lowered her face into her free hand, hiding a smirk. Rinn's ears shot up, then swept back in empathic discomfort.
“Now, I grew up on a pig farm in Indiana. Didn’t bother me none. I thought it was fu-, uh, flippin’ hilarious, and sat there laughin’ my ass off. But her? Instantly killed the mood. She was so embarrassed she disappeared, and I never saw her again the rest of the night.” He shook his head, taking another bite. “Spoiled my hopes of getting laid that night, but otherwise we had a great time, and made it back to the airport just in time to catch our flight, which got bumped up because the hurricane wasn’t as bad as they thought.”
He set his glass down after another drink. “So, after that, we get to Parris Island, go through the whole processing in bee-ess, and of course, they keep you up the whole time, don’t let you sleep the first night.” He got several nods from around the table. “My buddy and I, we’re
dying, because we spent the night before getting wasted at the strip club, and got maybe twenty minutes out on the flight into Savannah.
“They finally get us to our new barracks, and then its lights out. I dropped straight onto my rack, no blankets or nothin’, and just died.” He took another drink.
“So, I wake up the next morning, right? Both eyes glued shut. I thought I was freaking blind!” He shook his head. “Turns out, that stripper’s fart had been festering on my face the entire time, and when I woke up, I had the worst case of pink-eye anyone at Parris Island had seen in thirty years! Both eyes were welded shut, and I had to be guided to medical to get ‘em uncrusted enough to open back up. Was ess-aye-cue for two days because of it!”
“Jesus Christ, Gomer…” Kawalski shook his head.
“I bet the Dee-Ayes loved you,” Bradford said.
“Oh, hell yeah. Once I’d been cleared by medical and finished processing in, they beat my ass harder than I’ve ever worked before. That first day, they had me pee-teeing in a lake of my own sweat!”
He picked up the bottle of Holy Jolokia and casually tipped it back like it was his drink. The bottle glugged once, and Gomez’s expression instantly changed to that of a man who knew he had screwed up and regretted being alive. It glugged a second time before he could react, and hot sauce drizzled across his face and the table in his rush to set the bottle down.
Gomez twisted away from the table and slid off the bench, falling to his knees in a coughing, gagging fit. His face was crimson and covered in sweat.
Rinn stared in horror as Bradford quietly put the cap back on the bottle. “I think we’re done with this one…”
“I don’t understand what your problem is,” Miller said, scooping up some tribbles of the hot sauce with a chip and popping it into his mouth. “This stuff’s good.”
“M- mo- monster,” Gomez managed to cough out.
“Is everything alright?” the waitress asked, walking over.
“He grabbed a bottle of hot sauce instead of his cup,” Kawalski said. “The super-hot stuff.”
“Oh no…”
“Yeah… Can we get a glass of milk for him?” Bradford asked.
“Absolutely!” She disappeared behind the bar, and returned a moment later with a glass of milk.
Gomez took it from her and gulped it down like a drowning man gasping for air. The glass drained, he handed it back. “Thank you…” he croaked, getting back up and sitting back down. He immediately started shoveling chips and cheese into his mouth.
A few mouthfuls and carefully-identified gulps of his refilled soda later, he seemed to be mostly recovered. “Well, I’m not going to be looking forward to when that comes back out the other end. It was unpleasant enough going in.”
“Gomer, you’re a big, dumb bastard, you know that?” Kawalski laughed.
“Yup,” he said, shoveling another bite of food into his mouth.
***
Twenty minutes later, Rinn was wobbling back to the van, stuffed with more food than he had eaten in a very long time. Foot traffic had increased, but they were still given a decent berth by anyone they passed.
As they piled back into the van, Kimber took the driver’s seat and Kawalski called shotgun. Rinn and Bradford climbed back into what had become their designated seats while the rest of the squad piled into the back.
Kawalski gave Kimber directions as they pulled out of the parking lot, and Rinn went back to staring out of his window. The van worked its way through the city, and he gazed in fascination at all the different types of people and
things that he saw. Sometimes he got some commentary from the Marines, but they mostly seemed to have fallen into a “food coma.”
To be honest, if I wasn’t so sparked up, I’d probably be passed out, too… Is that a carriage!?! What creature is that pulling it? It looks at least as large as a queshi…
After navigating through the city, Kimber turned the van back onto the main highway, but he had barely finished accelerating to speed before he turned off again. For a moment, Rinn thought they were turning back into the city again, but looking forward he saw the ocean. Kimber kept driving towards it until he reached a road that ran right along the edge of the harbor. Out on the water, he could see the masts of countless sloops and small ships.
They made a left turn, and he had to struggle to keep himself from crawling over Bradford to gape out her window.
“Never seen the ocean before?” Bradford said.
“No, not until today.” He rolled his ears. “I’ve seen the royal fleet sheltered in Lake Kaigyap when we were at Yishyishi for a while, but never the ocean.” He flicked his ears back. “Neither have most of the sailors in the royal fleet.”
“I’d think they’d be the ones who saw it for sure.”
He shook his head. “The elves have kept our fleets bottled up in port for years. Lake Kaigyap is a brakish lake, a couple miles above the mouth of the Yishi river. It’s too narrow for the elves to get their fleet up the river, not without being obliterated by our shore batteries, but it’s also too narrow for our fleet to sally out in force.”
“Why’d your fleet bottle up there in the first place?” Edison asked.
“It’s where our main shipyards are, and the choice was shelter the fleet there, or lose it.” He growled. “Ship-to-ship, in a conventional fight, our ships are superior. They’re better built, better designed, but…” He nodded at the galleon and proper three-masted frigates they were approaching. “Like your ships, ours depend on the wind for power. We don’t have the
mana to be able to move the ship and still fight and shield it. The elves, though… They can draw more ambient mana, and stock more of it, and they can move independent of the wind. When we can catch them when their reserves are low, or their motive artifices dispelled to conserve mana, our ships have rarely lost a fight, even when out-numbered.”
He shook his head. “But they are rarely so caught, and no matter how many we’ve destroyed, their ships just keep coming.”
“Well, the good news is, that’s not our Navy,” Bradford said, patting him on the shoulder.
“Yeah, those are museum ships, centuries old,” Edison added.
“If you look ahead on the right,” Kawalski said, “You’ll see something a bit more modern.”
“The USS Midway,” Bradford said as an immense, towering ship of
metal came into view.
“What is
that!?!”
“That is the USS Midway, a Midway-class steam-powered aircraft carrier,” Kawalski said, taking on his tour-guide tone once more. “Commissioned seventy-five years ago, and decommissioned and turned into a museum ship nearly thirty years ago.”
“When did you become so educated, Kawalski?” Bradford asked.
“When I looked it up on Wikipedia this morning while planning this trip.”
“You think he just actually knew things?” Kimber snorted.
The van turned right, into what was obviously a parking area for the ship. Kimber slowed the van to a crawl and Bradford shifted, allowing Rinn to crawl past her and get a better look through her window. “We haven’t been limited to sail power in almost two hundred years.”
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It was a grim, snowy day in November when I took in a homeless man with ice-blue lips and flame-red eyes. What choice did I have? I couldn’t let the only good metahuman left in the world die in a dirty alley, drowning in a pool of his own blood. If even he fell, we were all screwed.
It took every last inch of my small frame to drag his half-limp body up the seven flights of stairs back to my apartment. Each dusty step was excruciating. He barely made it to my moth-eaten couch before bursting into a column of flame. The next thing I knew, a completely uninjured figure emerged from the fading light, looking about as hearty and hale as a homeless man could. I wanted to punch him.
“Couldn’t you have done that in the alley?” I yelled.
“Pshaw,” he snorted. “It ain’t like ya got somethin’ special here, kid.” And with that, he propped his bare, soot-streaked toes up on my rickety table and picked his nose.
I repeat, the only good metahuman left in the world.
It turned out that when people received great power, they didn’t use it with great responsibility. One by one, outnumbered, every meta that tried to fight for the law died gruesome deaths. If you weren’t with the bad, you were against them. That meant regular folk were out of luck.
“Ya got any food?” PhoenixMan asked me one day as he stomped through my door. The lights flickered and went out completely. Just lovely. A pile of mail and fliers teetered precariously over a stack of unwashed plates, which I steadied when I was sure he wasn’t looking. The pungent smell of expired Febreze barely masked the stink of undone laundry.
“Have you heard of knocking?” I handed him a bag of chips. It was all we had.
“I killed anotha’ crazy meta today,” he said conversationally, popping open the plastic and crunching away. “She did this wonky thing where she spit acid. Can ya believe that?”
“PhoenixMan.” I tried not to grit my teeth, I really did. “You can literally convert your body into a flaming phoenix and back. She was probably the one who couldn’t believe it!”
“Nah,” he said, swallowing greedily. “They all know lil’ ol’ me.”
“That’s because you’re the only good meta left! Everyone else got killed!”
“There’ll be more,” he scoffed, peering into the bag. “We’re outta chips.”
One day he came back with a birthday cake. It was slightly crushed and half of it was missing. The vanilla frosting looked a little gray, and cake crumbs were spilling out of the opening like the guts of a disemboweled victim.
“Happy birthday!” he told me, plopping the package down on the grimy kitchen counter and pulling out a bag of red striped candles.
“It’s not my birthday,” I told him.
“Well, it is now,” he informed me gravely. “I had ta kill a steel meta tryin’ ta rob a store.”
“Is the store okay?” I asked.
He laughed raucously. “Yer a funny one, ain’t cha! Yeah, yeah, so I can get a lil’ outta control sometimes. So what? We gotta cake outta it!”
“So, you robbed it from the store that you saved from being robbed,” I said.
He jumped to his feet. “Naw!” he shouted. “I ain’t no crook! The owner said ta take whatever I wanted, and this cake got banged up when I was fightin’ the steel guy! And candles were on sale!”
“Then you should’ve taken more stuff!” I shouted back. “We’re starving out here! Food’s expensive!”
“Haw, haw,” he said sarcastically. “Now who’s the righteous one, eh? Accuse me o’ being a villain, when I kill villains! Pshaw! Now let’s get ta celebratin’ yer birthday.”
It was the best goddamn cake I’d ever eaten. I made a wish on the cheap waxy candles that we could go back to a time when humans never had powers. The next morning, I woke up to PhoenixMan whistling and burning a corpse in the middle of the living room. The smell of charred human flesh assailed my nostrils.
“What the fuck, man?” I said. “Who is this!?”
“Zombie meta,” he said. A stream of fire constantly poured out of his outstretched fingertips like he was a human flamethrower, bathing the room in a hellish glow. “Can’t kill ‘em, gotta turn ‘em ta carbon, or he’ll regen’rate.”
“And why aren’t you doing this…oh, I don’t know…outside!?”
He jabbed a thumb at the window. “The city’s crawlin’ wit crooks right now! Ya want me ta slowly cook a zombie out in the streets?”
“Why does it matter? You can’t die,” I said. The inferno was brilliant, and I stared at the slowly crumbling corpse in fascination as flickering tongues of orange licked the air.
“Don’t mean I gotta act like an idiot,” he said. “What if I run outta juice? Then I ain’t gonna revive. ’Sides, that’s how all tha other good guys died, eh? Powers don’t make ya invincible. Brains do.”
“There’s more bad brains than good ones, then. They still win.”
He spat a loogie at me that I barely avoided. “With that kinda attitude, hell yea they will!”
I balled up my fists. “You really think that there’s a shred of decency left in people? I wait tables at a bar, did you forget? Everyone with powers is a nightmare, and everyone without powers grumbles about not having them. And that’s just the people that can afford food and alcohol! I see people at their worst, which happens to be absolute crap!”
PhoenixMan’s laughs echoed through my apartment’s hollow walls. “You think the powers made people crappy? Nah, kid, they was always like that. When I was on tha streets, before I got ma fire, I saw just how low people can go. Things ya wouldn’t believe!”
“Fine!” I said. “Then stop spewing that bull everyone online keeps regurgitating, that ‘good guys will come back’, and ‘there’s still a spark of goodness left in people’. It’s all fucked!”
He dropped his arm. The room went dark and quiet. The cooling embers on the metal sheet glowed softly like fireflies in the night. PhoenixMan gave me a look, and that’s when I realized how short and sickly he was.
“Naw,” he said. “The second ya give up, that’s when they win. Sure, I heard a lotta fucked up shit. Ya know what? I saw a lotta damn good things too. I saw a group o’ complete strangers team up ta help get a car outta ice and snow. It took ‘em hours, and when they was done they didn’t ask for nothin’. Each went their own separate ways.”
“Not many cars on the street these days,” I said. “Not after the governments collapsed.”
“I saw a woman buyin’ food for a starvin’ man. Tha man took it and fed it to tha person ladling out soup for the needy, who’d been workin’ a sixteen-hour shift with no breaks. He just drank a small bowl o’ soup instead.”
“Some good that does with all these metas,” I said, throwing up my hands. “We can open all the soup kitchens in the world and it won’t matter!”
He stomped over and grasped my shoulders, looking me straight in the eyes. I smelled his rancid breath and heard his rasping voice. “I fought next ta one spoiled kid from a rich family, back when heroes still tried. He had the stupidest meta I’ve eva seen. Can ya guess?”
“Nose picking,” I said.
“Naw. He could make cheese move a lil’ bit. That’s it! Not make it, not shape it like a lotta metal metas, just move it a lil’ bit. That didn’t stop his dumb ass from followin’ me everywhere like he was Supaman in tha sky! He dressed up in spandex, but let me tell ya, he grew up right fast and fought like a banshee. Bravest kid I eva knew.”
I snorted. “Brave, or stupid?”
“Stupid woulda been if he didn’t think he’d die,” he said, voice trembling. “Like ol’ Cygnus, who actually thought he was good ol’ Supes with his laser eyes and super strength. Didn’t last long, did he? Cheese dude knew he could die every day he put on his stupid ugly suit, and he was scared, let me tell ya! But he still did it! He still ran wit me as long as he could, and the fucker had the audacity to apologize to me as he died!”
PhoenixMan was shouting, tears dripping down his weathered face. He coughed in embarrassment, dragging a dirty arm covered by a dirtier ragged shirt across his eyes. For a moment, my stomach dropped from under me into a pit of shame.
“So don’t fucking think that there ain’t good peeps out there! There’s gonna be more people like me. They’re too scared right now, but they’re here! I just gotta inspire ‘em. Kill enough villains ta make it safe for people to be good again.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I didn’t believe him.
I lost track of how many fights PhoenixMan got into, how many nights he stumbled back with the rags on his back torn more than before, how many times his injuries forced him to flame out and crawl out from his own ash in my cramped living room.
PhoenixMan stormed in bruised and battered one sullen evening, hurling his pack against the wall. I didn’t flinch. It wasn’t the first time.
“I can’t fucking catch that bitch!” he yelled in frustration.
“Which one?” I asked, typing away at my banged-up laptop. “Solace? Lazor? Cerulean? Which of the Invincibles did you fight this time?”
“None of ‘em,” he grumbled. “Blink, the speedster. I wish I had backup, jus' one person! We could trap ‘er, no problem. It’s just so damn difficult on my own.”
I looked up to see a hopeful expression on his face. “Uh, no. No, no, no. God, no,” I said. “I don’t have a death wish. I’m not like the cheese guy.”
“Ya wouldn’t be in danger!” he said. “Just a small trap! She’d never see us comin’! ‘Cause her eyes are closed, hah! Get it?”
“Ha, ha.” He couldn’t know. Could he?
It was a frosty morning in February when I woke up to shouting in my ear. I was about roll over and go back to sleep when my fogged-up brain realized that the voice sounded scared. PhoenixMan was never scared.
“There’s a bloody friggin’ meteor comin’!” he yelled. “I gotta stop it! Get a notice on tha web fer all metas ta get ta Center Square pronto! Just me ain’t enough!”
I bolted awake and watched him blaze through the window in his phoenix form. A pinprick of light high in the sky grew larger and larger right before my eyes. Fuck. I hastily posted a warning notice to the city-wide bulletin before racing out the door.
By the time I could see Center Square in the distance, the wind was picking up and churning debris through the air. Reports were coming in that a meta from a different city had gotten bored and launched what could be considered a small mountain into the atmosphere.
PhoenixMan stood alone in the middle of the city, eyes trained on the meteor streaking towards him. He glanced around at the empty, abandoned square. Not a single soul was in sight. Although he was far away, our eyes met. He smiled sadly at me before fire swallowed him whole. A blazing phoenix surged into the air like a rocket ship, burning so hot I broke out in sweat.
The falling missile melted and broke apart as unstoppable force met unstoppable will, impact rings blasting outwards. The sheer power he radiated melted chunks of the meteor into slag that dripped harmlessly into the square. He was going to save the day again!
And then I watched in horror as the rock stubbornly pushed towards the earth, fighting PhoenixMan all the way down. The twin titans slammed into the middle of Center Square. All windows shattered. The ground erupted. Shockwaves hurled me back twenty feet.
After the ringing in my ears finally stopped, I winced and pulled myself up shakily. “PhoenixMan,” I yelled, coughing out dust. No response. I staggered over towards the square, clutching my ribs.
A homeless man sat in the middle of a large crater with his hands over his knees. He had ice-blue lips and flame-red eyes. He looked up at me. I ran and tripped and slipped down the side of the smoking hole, past small divots sputtering with fire.
“No more…flaming out,” he croaked when I knelt by his side. His voice was hoarse and unnaturally quiet.
“What do you mean?” I asked, touching his skin. He was burning up. “We need to…gah…get you home. Come on!”
“Naw,” he said, looking past me with a glassy expression. “This is tha end for me. I can’t…can’t revive again. Not enough energy.”
“Then let’s get you some energy! You can’t die,” I pleaded. “You’re the only one who can fight for justice, remember?”
He chuckled quietly. “Naw, kid. Times change, cities fall, and people die. Ya wanna know…what’s never gonna change? What never ends?”
I gripped his hand tight. “PhoenixMan.”
“Naw. Heroism. Tha good…tha people can do. That’s never gonna change. There was heroes before me…there’s gonna be heroes after me. It always begins again.” His eyes found mine. “There ya are. Give yer hand here.”
I put my hand in front of his face and he managed to slap it weakly. “There.”
“What?”
“Baton pass, kid,” he said. Cracks spread over his skin like spiderweb fractures over a frozen lake. Chunks of his body collapsed like the grains of sand in an hourglass. “It’s up ta you now.”
The one and only PhoenixMan crumbled into ash in my arms. I didn’t even have time to cry before he was gone, his life extinguished like any other candle.
One crisp and chilly sunrise three years later, I sat on my raggedy old couch humming the tune to some song I heard on the radio, gazing at the urn on my broken coffee table.
“Mornin’, PhoenixMan,” I said to the urn. “Spring’s here. You wouldn’t believe how many new metas are joining my squad. It’s practically an army. A big, powerful, dysfunctional family.”
The urn sat there quietly, but I didn’t mind. PhoenixMan was a good listener. I glanced around at the apartment, basking in the clean glow of shiny countertops. There wasn’t a single unwashed plate in sight.
“I killed Blink yesterday,” I told the urn. “Turns out you were right. So much easier with more than one person.”
Talking about the speedster made my eyes water. It feels like it was just yesterday when PhoenixMan was ranting and raving about her.
“I wish I’d listened to you back then. I wish I hadn’t hidden my…my powers. My telekinesis. I could’ve made a real difference, and maybe you wouldn’t be dead. I was…”
I bit my tongue hard, almost enough to draw blood, and averted my eyes.
“I was a coward. A damn fucking coward. I should’ve stood by your side, but I was too scared of getting killed for standing up to them like mom and dad. And I’m still scared. Scared every day that I’ll mess up, so scared that I want to puke.”
The urn didn’t judge me. It sat there peacefully, soaking in the morning rays and collecting a few dust bunnies.
“But you gave me courage. And I’m still out there every day like you and cheese guy were. It took only a year for another meta to join me and come out of hiding. And then another. And another. And now…just look at us. You were right, you know? Heroism and good people will never end. I teach that to all the newbies. If I fall, someone else will take my place and begin anew.”
I slipped into the charmed jacket that Wiz Kid gave me. I slid on fingerless gloves made from cold living steel, a birthday gift from Smith John. I celebrated the same day he brought me that cake all those years ago.
“I’m heading out, PhoenixMan. As always, don’t worry; I’m coming back for you.”
I snuck another glance at the urn. My telekinetic engraving was a little sloppy and I was never great with haikus, but I bet he would’ve liked it.
Here Lies an Old Flame
Though Time May Forget His Name
In Us He Lives On
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