Dungeons Are Bad Business

Tracy looked over at the clock next to her desk and scowled. It was almost ten, which meant that she was running out of time to finish up her stupid math assignment before heading out with Cooper to get started on the cleaning work for Mister Vales. She didn’t love the prospect of going out into the night and watching the slimes eat garbage, but the pay was good and that was all that mattered.

Pressing her tongue against the back of her front teeth, she glared down at the sheet of math problems she’d been working on for the last two hours and tried to will the symbols into making sense.

It didn’t work.

When she was younger, she’d actually liked math quite a bit, but then her teachers had started screwing with the numbers. They replaced some with letters, shrank others and moved them up or down, added a bunch of weird squiggly symbols, and expected her to carry out a quasi-alchemical process of algebra that relied on obtuse abuse of the ability to creatively "multiply by one".

She still managed decent grades, but found herself dreading her math homework every night. Increasingly, Tracy found herself not caring if she missed a few points here and there, especially since homework was only fifteen percent of her total grade and there were so many other things she needed to do.

A few futile scribbles later, Tracy decided to leave the stupid problem blank and take the hit. She was pretty sure she’d done the rest of the worksheet right, so it shouldn’t be too big of a deal.

There’d be another batch of extra credit at the end of the semester too, so she could always make it up then if need be.

(Are you ready to go yet? I’ve been waiting for like twenty minutes)

Cooper’s telepathic voice – courtesy of [Twinergy], a skill they shared – bloomed across her thoughts, tinged with irritation.

Nodding even though her brother wasn’t in the room and couldn’t see, Tracy activated the skill and thought back, (One sec. Let me get some warmer clothes on.)

(Be quick about it. We’re just holding the slimes. It’s not like there’s going to be any boys out there for you to try and impress or anything.)

Thinking back a biting retort, Tracy got to her feet and hurried to her closet. It was chaotically filled, stuffed to the brim with all sorts of things she never wore but couldn’t bear to part with, but she found what she was looking for almost instantly.

Her old thick sweatshirt, heavy coat, two pairs of gloves, and a spare pair of pants she’d gotten from her aunt that looked terrible but were surprisingly warm. It was almost spring, but the nights were still pretty freaking cold.

(Come on…I have to get up early tomorrow. Old man Datum is the only guy who’s given me work for the past month and I don’t want to jeopardize that.)

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Tracy muttered, hurrying over to the door and giving the New Sally poster pinned to it a long look before opening it up.

“Sixteen bronze fleurs an hour,” she whispered, psyching herself up for the hours of labor ahead. “That’s better than I’d get anywhere else.”

Cooper was standing outside, his face pulled tight in a scowl. He was dressed much as she was, but he was also wearing the lumpy, garish hat she’d knitted him for his birthday the year before. It was a small thing, but it made Tracy happy all the same.

“Lead the way,” she said with a smile and an exaggerated bow.

“Keep it quiet though,” Cooper said as he turned and started walking down the hall. “Da is already asleep on the couch and Ma is in their room. She didn’t heat up any of the leftovers for dinner, so I’m guessing she had a rough day and went straight to sleep.”

Tracy nodded, following her brother out into their living room which was lit by the faint crackling silver glow of their crappy old viewing crystal. She paused for a second, looking over at da, who was asleep on the couch with a blanket haphazardly thrown over his pajama’d legs. There was a mostly-empty jar resting on the table next to his head, and even from where she stood Tracy could smell the acrid stench of liquor wafting out of it.

“Sleep easy, da,” she whispered as he shifted and muttered something she couldn’t hear well enough to understand, clenching her teeth hard to ward off the now-familiar burning in her chest as she tiptoed over to the back deck where they’d stored the slimes they’d gotten from Mister Vales.

Cooper was kneeling down in front of their cage, a pair of ectoplasmic leashes on the ground next to his right knee. The slimes blurbled softly, though they seemed to cheer up quite a bit once Cooper shook them out.

“Hope you little monsters are hungry,” Cooper said as he picked his slime up and cradled it in his arms like a newborn. “The faster you all eat the quicker we can get home.”

Tracy squatted down next to her brother and scooped up her own slime before it could spoil its appetite on the collection of debris littering their deck. The creature was warm and squishy to the touch, though she had to keep shifting it around to make sure that her gloved hand didn’t sink too far into the creature’s gelatinous body. Mister Vales had assured her that the slime wasn’t big enough to cause her any real issues, but over the winter she’d learned the hard way that the slime’s digestive juices got progressively stronger as they approached its core.

She’d lost three separate pairs of gloves before she’d gotten the hang of what Cooper called ‘slime juggling’, which kept the creature moving in a sort of rolling motion.

They went back through the living room, stepping over the mess of ma’s purse right by the front door – she must have been exhausted – and into the night.

“Where are we meeting the fiends?” Tracy asked.

“Over by the westown gate,” her brother answered, setting down his slime and hooking it up to its leash.

“Is Mister Vales going to be there?”

“No, but his [Majordomo] will be. Apparently he’s going to be supervising the fiends.”

“The hat? How’s he going to do that?”

Her brother shrugged. “Dunno. That’s just what Mister Vales told me when we picked up the slimes. Maybe one of the fiends will be wearing it or something.”

Tracy hooked her slime to its leash and followed her brother down the steps to the streets. Thankfully there weren’t any sketchy customers loitering outside the “[Alchemist]’s”, and the rest of the complex was surprisingly quiet too. That was a relief.

Keeping a firm hand on the slime’s leash to prevent any nibbling before they got to the job site, Tracy walked next to Cooper, and they made their way toward Westown. As they walked, she had no choice but to stare at the dull and ugly buildings that lined both sides of the street. Oar’s Crest was a dark, dingy, and awful city. She hated it with every fiber of her being.

That’s why we’re out here in the middle of the night, she thought bitterly. So we can leave.

The answer to the question of how Reginald was going to supervise the task was answered as soon as they saw him: the hat was riding atop a large, grotesque dog creature that for some reason had a pair of arms hanging from its shoulders.

Cackling wildly at the twins’ expression, Reginald urged the nightmarish creature forward and said, “Good evening, you two. I’m glad that you’re on time. There’s a lot of trash to get rid of and not a lot of days to do it. Meet your coworkers!”

The dog turned around, and one of the arms went up to point at a group of oddly shaped creatures in dark uniforms. They were all vaguely humanoid, but their limbs were the wrong size, shape, or quantity.

“This is the Light Section of Vee’s orchestra,” Reginald said. “Cooper and Tracy, meet Sweep, Scrape, Scrub, Shuffle, Scour, Swab, and Sluice. They’re not great at talking, but they understand speech pretty well. And before you ask, yes they’re fiends, and no they’re not going to hurt you. Vee’s influence will make sure that’s not going to be an issue. Okay?”

“Okay,” Cooper said. He looked over at Tracy.

(Make sure he brought the money, sis.)

She held out her hand. “Since it’s a school night, we can only do three hours. So that’ll be forty-eight bronze fleurs before we get started.”

Reginald grinned and snapped the dog’s left hand. One of the fiends – whose four hands were evenly divided between claws and buckets – walked forward and raised an arm. There was a tiny box inside one of its buckets, and Cooper lifted it out with a bemused expression.

“I didn’t feel like filling a bag with bronze fleurs,” Reginald explained. “So I just grabbed a silver instead. Consider the spares a tip.”

(That’s fine by me,) Cooper thought. (Add it to the savings pot or give it to ma to help with groceries?)

(Give it to ma, I think. The pantry is pretty empty and she was saying something about work being late on wages this week. I’d love to add it to the pot, but I also don’t want to eat nothing but rice for the next few days.)

(Same. Want to go see if we can drum up some other business after school tomorrow?)

(Yeah, I like that idea. A couple of the [Shopkeepers] over on Springtree Lane said they’d pay us to clear their sidewalks. Let’s start there.)

Her brother nodded, and tucked the coin into his pocket to keep it safe. “Thanks. Alright, we’re ready whenever you guys are.”

Reginald turned to the fiends, and said, “You lot know your business better than I do. Do your thing, Sweep.”

The broom-handed fiend stepped forward, its glowing green eyes meeting Tracy’s brown ones.

“Happy working together,” it said in a soft, scratchy voice. “We clear street. Slimes follow. Repeat. Please.”

Tracy nodded, and pulled on her slime’s leash.

Sweep turned to its fellows, and made a low humming sound that was vaguely reminiscent of a beehive. Making a similar sound in return, its fellows formed a single file line. Then, one by one, they started heading down the street, their arms a whirlwind of motion as they cleaned. Large pieces of trash, broken glass, and other debris were knocked left and right by Shuffle while smaller ones were turned into nice neat piles by Sweep. Scrape and Scrub peeled grime off the street, looking like a person peeling an orange, and Scour, Swab, and Sluice brought up the rear, washing the entire area thoroughly.

They made various noises while they worked, and Tracy idly wondered if that was how the creatures activated their skills. Wait. Could they even have skills? She scratched her head. She was pretty sure fiends didn’t have classes – she vaguely remembered learning that during one of the many boring safety lectures back in school – but that didn’t necessarily mean that skills were off the table. Plenty of creatures around the continent could use skills without having a class.

Her musings were interrupted by more thoughtspeak from Cooper.

(I’ll take the right side of the street, okay? You take the left.)

Tracy nodded, guiding her slime over to the freshly created piles of debris and letting it eat as it pleased. Watching the slimes wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience, but it was interesting, and she fell into the familiar rhythm of pulling it to where she wanted it to go next. It wasn’t physically demanding work, nor did it take all of her concentration; Tracy had certainly had worse jobs that paid less.

However, it was slow – a lot slower than the fiends, who stopped at the end of the street and looked back rather awkwardly when they finished – and so Reginald told the light section to go ahead and move on.

“The slimes will follow after you in a bit,” he said, dismissively waving one of the dog’s arms. The fiends bowed, made their strange humming sounds, and disappeared around the corner.

He walked past Cooper and Tracy. “You two catch up when you can. I’ll be at the end of the street so that I can keep an eye on the fiends while they work. Should I have Vee get you guys some more slimes, by the way? We have plenty of them and it’d definitely make this whole process faster. Plus, with the help of just a couple little hats, you could probably set up a nifty slime wrangling operation for yourselves. You know, have an actual business instead of just jumping from job to job. It wouldn’t be glamorous, but it would be yours. Plenty of money to be made in cleaning up things other people won’t touch, if you’re interested in that type of thing.”

Tracy caught Cooper’s eye. She didn’t need thoughtspeak for him to understand her question.

(I’m not opposed to the idea, I just don’t know where we’d store the slimes. We might be able to get another two onto the deck, but that’d be pushing it. We certainly couldn’t get a herd of slimes in there. We’d need like a big abandoned building or something.)

Cooper’s shoulders stiffened, and Tracy knew that he’d just had the same idea that’d flickered through her own thoughts. There were plenty of abandoned buildings out in Westown. Surely at least one of them could be used to hold slimes, right?

Haltingly, Tracy asked Reginald if such an arrangement would be possible, and found herself slightly unsettled by the hat’s knowing grin as he told her that it was.

“We have just the place for you,” he said. “Come by the dungeon in a few days if you’re interested and we’ll get you all set up. Make sure you try the hat on beforehand, though.”

With the conversation finished for the moment, Tracy and Cooper continued their work until three hours had passed, then they bid the fiends and the [Majordomo] a goodnight and returned to their apartment. They wrangled the slimes back into their cages – a substantially more difficult task than getting them out on account of how much larger they’d gotten – and then bid each other a good night through thoughtspeak.

Returning to her room, Tracy took off her coat and sat down on her bed. She yawned. It was nearly two in the morning, and she had to get up in a few hours for school. After packing up her math homework so that she wouldn’t forget it in a sleep-deprived rush the next morning, Tracy looked once more at the poster of New Sally.

As she had every night for the past three years – and fairly often before that as well – she closed her eyes and imagined herself wandering those beautiful streets with her family. Their lives would be so much better if they could just get out of Oar’s Crest.

She clenched her hand into a fist. She and Cooper just had to stay the course and keep saving as much money as they could. According to their math, they needed twenty gold fleurs to fund their dream of moving to New Sally – where Cooper would start his [Architect] training and she could find a bank or other financial entity to work for, but Tracy wanted to have a little more than that. She’d learned all too well that bad things could happen unexpectedly.

Despite the late hour, she wasn’t actually all that tired, and her thoughts turned to what Reginald had said about expanding the slime cleaning operation.

It wouldn’t be glamorous, but it would be yours. Plenty of money to be made in cleaning up things other people won’t touch, if you’re interested in that type of thing.

She was. Gawain and Piper dancing in the moonlight, she was.

But did she want to tie herself down to Oar’s Crest by getting involved in something like a slime cleaning operation?

Delicately, she reached out to Cooper with thoughtspeak and found that her brother was also still awake, and seemed to be pondering the same thing she was. They discussed it for a few minutes, then Cooper thoughtsaid, (I think we should take the hat up on his offer, sis. At least for a few months. Winter might be behind us, but we could start saving up for next year at the very least.)

(That’s how I feel about it too. I’m just afraid.)

(Of what? That we’ll get stuck here if we start something more permanent?)

(Yeah.)

(Don’t worry. That’s not going to happen,) Cooper assured her. (If anything, the whole dungeon thing is going to go busto and we’ll be back to asking the usual suspects for odd jobs before the end of summer.)

(You really think so? People seem really excited about the dungeon.)

(Eh. People get really excited about all sorts of stupid stuff that doesn’t matter. Go to sleep, Trace. It’s late.)

(Okay. Good night, Cooper.)

(Good night.)

Tracy found out the reason for Reginald’s insistence the next day, when she and Cooper dug through their parents’ closet and found a pair of matching hats. Ma and Da had worn them for some sort of party years and years ago, and as soon as Tracy put hers on she got a notification.

[You have unlocked the Slime Wrangler class! Would you like to take it?]

(Did you get that too?) she thought-asked Cooper.

Her brother nodded. (Think we should take it?)

(No reason not to, right? It’s bound to help us with our work for Mister Vales.)

(Yeah. Alright, I’m taking it.)

Reaching up, Tracy accepted the class.

[Congratulations, you are now a Slime Wrangler Level 1!]

[Might +3]

[You can now use the Settle Down Slimes skill!]

[You can now use the Oli’s Rallying Point skill!]

[You can now use the Makeshift Pen skill!]

[You can now use the Early to Rise skill!]

[You can now use the Eye For Quality skill!]

A sense of tranquility spread through Tracy’s body.

“Let’s go talk to Mister Vales,” she said.

Tracy and Cooper’s Character Sheets:

Tracy Kartine:

Primary Class: Dutiful Student (Oar’s Crest High School), Level 10

Secondary Class: Streetwise Citizen (Oar’s Crest), Level 3

Tertiary Class: Younger Twin (Cooper Kartine), Level 2

Additional Class: Slime Wrangler (Reginald), Level 1

Might: 7 (+3)

Wit: 8

Faith: 2

Frugality: 6

Filial Duty: 9

Driven: 7

Ambition: 10

Charisma: 5

Citizenship: 1

Cooper Kartine:

Primary Class: Lifelong Learner (Self), Level 10

Secondary Class (Aspirational); Architect (Self), Level 3

Tertiary Class: Older Twin (Tracy Kartine), Level 2

Tertiary Class: Slime Wrangler (Reginald), Level 1

Might: 10 (+3)

Wit: 7

Faith: 1

Frugality: 3

Filial Duty: 5

Driven: 7

Ambition: 9

Charisma: 4

Citizenship: 1

Bonus-ception: Reginald’s Character Sheet:

Reginald:

Primary Class: Core Spirit (Unknown), Level ??

#$&Q#$)(@#$#@#$%!@#$##%#%()@#$**@@##

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 41

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 19

Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 11

Additional Class: Hyperthymesiac (Self), Level 5

Might: 1

Wit: 37

Faith: 17

Ambition: 28

Greed: 24

Deceptiveness: 27

Manipulativeness: 43 (+1)

$#&*!@!!: !!!

Loyalty: 46

Patience: 12 (+1)

Irritability: 24

Remorsefulness: 17

Expository Prowess: 23

#%$Pragmatism*#$: @#61$5

Hop@#!! @#$@!@#

@#$@%%^

#4^5#*&_!+++#(@$#

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 9