New System, Who Dis?

Friday, April 19th, 2069

“Employment Insurance will cover Clara,” Ms. Stovall said. “Unfortunately, you walking out on the job is going to make it hard for me to get the Union involved, Gary.”

“He threatened Clara in front of everyone!” My father exclaimed.

“We’ll try to get you a lawyer to handle a case against him and with sworn testimonies, I might be able to convince the Union to cover your salary, Gary. But you realize that what legal coverage you have is already being used up with your son.” Ms. Stovall’s face was deadly serious, making everyone stay silent. My dad sighed sadly as she turned to Willa but included Jarred and Dave with a hand gesture. “You three have no recourse. You weren’t threatened, and you two are under probation. Yes, Jarred, even though you’re returning to the Union.”

The glass-windowed meeting room went quiet, and I looked around searching everyone’s faces. Dave was the most expressive, likely thinking about returning to school on Monday. Jarred was the next person showing his feelings—looking both empathetic and furious with those of us around the table. Willa was a strange mix of emotions, hard to read but for a few. Anger, certainly from the red flush and piercing gaze, maybe some stubbornness too? Then there was something that might have been fear or nervousness in the set of her shoulders, looking ready to hunch forward in defeat.

As I said, it was a strange mix.

My father met my eyes and nodded. Why had he done that?

I stared at him, and he spun his hand in a circle indicating I should get moving—What? When it clicked, I flinched back in my chair. He wanted me to tell her about the plan to start a Portal Mining Company?

“Ummm,” I stammered, managing to get all eyes focused on me, which didn’t help. “We were—” I coughed and managed to get my voice to come out solid again. “—We were thinking that we should start our own crew. Maybe even leverage our bonuses from the other job, if we’re able…”

“Why wouldn’t you be able to leverage your bonuses?” Ms. Stovall asked. The question shocked me enough that I looked to my dad and Willa.

“Cause the court confiscated everything as evidence?!” Willa said, in both question and exclamation.

“And Jagger isn’t paying the bonuses?” Ms. Stovall responded with widening eyes, even as she began scribbling on a legal pad. “He is required by contract to pay out the bonuses regardless of if the goods sell.” She went to a side table, clicked a button, and said into an intercom. “John, bring in the Union contracts!”

She turned back around to see all of us staring at her. “It’s in the contract. I’ll have to check the exact verbiage, but Jagger can’t withhold bonuses if I’m right. It’s a clause to stop him from holding onto metals or ores and claiming they didn’t sell—to avoid paying the workers.”

A sigh of absolute relief left the lungs of three people around the table. Smiling, I turned to Dave. “At least the Unique Experience and killing the Golem won’t go completely to waste!”

“Wait—” Ms. Stovall pointed at me. “Say that again!”

“Say what again?” I asked.

“Did you say that the Ore haul was triggered by a Unique Experience?” Ms. Stovall asked, very pointedly.

“Uhh? Well, yeah—” I answered and saw everyone around the table look at me with wide eyes. I realized I hadn’t yet admitted this part to everyone, just assuming they knew. “My new Skill was ready for Evolution—and I found something called Shining Meteorite. When I struck it with the Pickaxe—”

“New Skill? Evolution?” Willa and Jarred mouthed at each other. I realized they still weren’t in on the whole story yet.

“You didn’t say it was Unique!” My dad semi-shouted over them. His volume was a mix of excitement and concern. “How do you know it was Unique?”

“Uhhh,” I answered ‘smartly.’ This would have been a good time to have Smegma here to help me come up with a lie. As it was I figured a semi-truth wouldn’t hurt. “My Skill,” I began, stressing the word to let the people fully aware of the Demonic Vault Skill, make the connection.

I felt bad for Willa and Jarred but figured I would include them eventually. “I managed to Awaken an F-rank Mining Skill, which grew from the rank of low-F to high, but stopped. I’d heard somewhere that sometimes the System gives people opportunities to Evolve Skills or gain Stats, and the Mining Skill allows me to see what some minerals and ores are called.”

“Oh and their ranks,” I added when people looked confused.

“How many Skills do you have?” Willa asked.

“Umm,” I began, thinking of Dragon Heart, and Demonic Vault. Did that count as a single Skill or multiple because of all the sub-Skills? Technically, was Demonic Vault a Skill under Dragon Heart because it was what had ‘stolen’ it? “Depending on how Skills are classified you could consider me to have one or as many as seven.”

“What?!” My dad exclaimed loudest, which drowned out everyone else in the room, who uttered similar sentiments. All but Dave.

“Does that include--?” Dave started to ask but I cut him off.

“Yep! Anyway, it was a Unique Ore for sure. And I can confirm that my Mining Skill has Evolved after it.” I turned back to Ms. Stoval, half-way desperate to keep Dave from spilling the beans on my new Class system. Let’s just stick with one mind-blowing revelation at a time, shall we? “Why did you ask about that?”

“All Unique Experiences and kills in Portals belong to the person who received them, unless they have signed a contract with the Guild as a Hunter. In this case, you were a worker who got attacked by a Monster, and killed it—so we can definitely claim the Golem Heart and Monster Core as your loot—well you and the people who were involved—it’s all of your loot. However,” she held up an emphatic finger. “A Unique Encounter triggered by an individual rewards the individual with all the benefits that derive from it. I assume that the Golem and all the ores mining themselves out of the walls was part of it?”

I nodded and pointed out to the parking lot below. “Any Pickaxe that was in good repair also changed upon defeating the Golem. The Golem spawned after I struck the Meteorite and the gong when I struck his heart was what caused the Ores to mine themselves.”

Ms. Stovall began furiously scribbling. After a moment she looked up, “How many Specialists were in the mine?”

“Just us three,” my father answered, despite the question being directed at me.

“And how many veins could you have all tapped in a perfect scenario with the tools you had with you?”

“We’d been doing one per day, but could have managed two each if they weren’t hard Ores, or two difficult ones if we were comfortable with more damage to our Picks than we could repair from working Mana Crystals for a work shift,” Willa answered this time.

“Okay, so best case scenario, six deposits.” Ms. Stovall confirmed as she continued scribbling.

When John came into the room with a folder, she tapped the table next to her and then said, “John, we’ll need my husband in here, if you don’t mind.”

“John two-point-oh, coming right up.”

“Mr. Stovall, please,” Mrs. Stovall said, with a bit of exasperation. I couldn’t tell what was bothering her with John calling her husband by the shared name, but from John’s smile I could tell that it was not something that worried him.

“As you wish, Mrs. Stovall, I’ll send the big guy in!” He said and somewhat fled the room. I couldn’t help but laugh at Mrs. Stovall’s rolled eyes. I thought perhaps I was starting to understand the situation. Mr. Stovall probably didn’t care for formalities, where Mrs. Stovall did. It made me like them both more.

Mr. Stovall, for letting his coworkers call him by his name and Mrs. Stovall, for allowing the joking to happen with minimal reaction. It humanized her even more. That wasn’t the only reason for my Cheshire smile. I truly had possibly just gotten the canary—

“Don’t get too far ahead of yourself, Brodie,” Mrs. Stovall said. Then she smiled herself. “I personally suggest that we settle with Portals, Portal’s, Portalz. If your end goal is to start a company, it will get you the capital faster. It will also let Jagger Vance keep a good chunk of the money, which will probably make him fight less, when faced with the possibility of losing everything.”

“Wait.” I said, confused. “I think I’m missing something here. Jagger complained that his contract with the Snowbird Guild meant that he was getting stiffed on any real benefit from the extra materials. So that means that Jagger doesn’t have the biggest stake here, when it comes to those materials and ores potentially belonging to me. How is that going to affect everything, if it’s not us versus Jagger Vance, but us versus the entire Snowbird Guild?

The door swung open and a big and tall man entered. When I say big, I don’t mean overweight but I also didn’t mean gym muscled. Because he was tall, he carried his weight well—and by the size of his shoulders, I could tell a great deal of that weight was muscle. It was probably something that girls at school would call the perfect dad bod. It was a physique built to be able to keep them warm at night but also get shit done when it was needed. His smile and manner of dress immediately marked him as jovial and happy to me.

“Hey cupcake—” he began jokingly but stopped midway through when Mrs. Stovall raised an eyebrow threateningly. “What’s got you asking for the big guns?”

“They need a lawyer who specializes in Portal Law, but you’ll need to take a commission on winnings, only. I hoped you’d have time,” Mrs. Stovall replied, and I could hear the sarcasm building. “You know since this case shouldn’t go to court.”

“Oh!” John responded. “Why’s that?”

“Well, first of all, it will be a bit of a joint effort. I’ll be working to get the court to release some seized ores and materials. They’re being held as evidence in a murder that happened weeks before. You’ll be negotiating with Mr. Vance, and Taz from Snowbird’s to settle with twenty percent after paid bonuses and your fees.”

“Ahh, so you’re giving me the easy task?” John responded mockingly, even as he pulled out a chair. As he sat down, he asked, “This isn’t a conflict of interest?”

“Not according to the definition, which is all we really care about. We don’t represent Portals, Portal’s, Portalz, but the Miner’s Union.”

John nodded and then rolled his chair to a side desk to get a legal pad and a pen. “Okay, fill me in.”

Mrs. Stovall primarily did the talking, helped at times by the group and me. At the end, John had a page and a half of notes. He unfortunately was wearing a frown. “How can you prove that it was a Unique Encounter to Evolve your Skill?”

“Umm?” I questioned back.

“Does Ore normally mine itself?” Dave said, speaking for the first time. Everyone around the room looked at him and nodded in agreement, but John scratched his five o’clock shadow.

“It certainly does not, but that could be seen as a product of defeating the Golem—which I could also use to claim the ore as loot!” John started stoically but quickly grew more excited. “Either way the ore and materials would belong to Brodie. Of course, a Unique Encounter would be better, though. Do you have an Awakening record with your Skill before the event?”

I shook my head, even as Mrs. Stovall winced. “I can see by my wife’s reaction you haven’t. May I ask why?”

“Well, now that you fall under client confidentiality as well, you certainly can,” Mrs. Stovall said lovingly. “However, Brodie, is there anyone in this room that doesn’t currently know everything?”

My eyes found Willa and Jarred’s. “Only two, but I’ve been meaning to tell them.”

“Okay, Smegma,” Mrs. Stovall said the name distastefully, clearly understanding the meaning behind it, and held her hands out to the side theatrically. When no Demon popped into existence, she looked at me questioningly.

“Ahhh,” I sputtered. “He’s kind of… missing at the moment. He’ll be back though.” I turned to Willa and Jarred. “You’ll just have to believe us when I say that I have a Skill called Demonic Vault, and with it I have something of a snippy Demonic butler that follows me around mostly invisibly.”

Jarred’s face morphed into a distasteful look, as he mouthed ‘Demonic’ to himself. Still, after a quick moment he shrugged and seemed to tune back into Dave, who was speaking.

“It’s a good thing he isn’t here to hear you say that,” Dave said while chuckling. “He’s more of the Skills’ curator. Maybe, point of interaction? Sentient interface? Something like that.”

Jarred’s face seemed to grow less wary with each normal interaction of those who’d met Smegma.

I shrugged, while chuckling myself. “Either way, despite how dangerous he looks, he isn’t actually in our plane of existence and can only verbally inflict damage.”

John looked at Mrs. Stovall. “Shami, is he for real?”

“I’ve seen the bat-winged, horned, annoyance myself. Honestly, I think the Demon said it was the spawn of an ‘Imp’ and a ‘Felguard’.”

“Holy crap. It’s like Dragons of the Coast!” John exclaimed, almost standing from his chair as he leaned toward me. “You think he’ll be back, right? I want to see this thing. It’s going to be badass inspiration for when I’m DMing!”

“You guys still play that game?” Jarred asked, confused and slightly alarmed. Whether that was from Smegma’s description or the ‘game’ he mentioned I wasn’t sure.

“We do. It’s online, for the most part, but my main group has found that almost every creature in the game has roots in this System. It’s rather uncanny. That’s why I wanted to see—”

“I can tell you right now, that it doesn’t look anything like I expected,” Mrs. Stovall said, her own excitement matching her husband’s. “Still, I can’t wait to see how you use the likeness one day!”

Eventually, the group got back to business, and Mrs. Stovall filled John in on the problems that had arisen because of Mr. Varnish. “I’m only telling you this in case he tries to put a spanner in your case as well.”

“Other than the shoddy excuse that it could conceivably be ‘evidence’, he doesn’t have much to stand on. Make sure you argue Slim Shot versus Righteous Guild. If they plan to hold the evidence back, then the court needs to at least put-up twenty percent of its value in cash for the use of the aggrieved. That will usually get them to smarten up.”

“I will. Although I’m hoping Carterman versus Rainbow Stars will be enough. That’s the only case I can think of where the court held evidence from a Portal in the wake of an alleged crime. However, in that situation, the evidence spoke directly to a stolen item. In this case, I think Mr. Varnish will try to claim that Morgan had a Mining related Skill that was also ‘stolen’—however, I’ve gone through everything and there is no record of it.”

“You sound like you don’t need my help,” John said humbly, and stood from the chair. “I’ll start putting some motions together and serve Jagger with everything tonight or tomorrow. Don’t worry Brodie, if Jagger is sensible, we should have this all taken care of this week.”

John left, and Mrs. Stovall turned to me as she also stood. “As John says, most of the evidence and legal ownership stuff should be straightforward. At least for the purposes of acquiring capital to start a company. As for the murder trial, you should talk to Sparkle Legion again and let them know about the changes going on.”

I glanced down at the camera that was still on my chest. It was still recording. I’d turned it on when I’d gotten in the car this morning.

“Holy shit!” I said, realizing that not only was this conversation on it, but so were Jagger’s threats. “This thing recorded Jagger firing me.”

Mrs. Stovall’s smile grew very large. “I’ll let John know what you have, after you talk to Legion. I think you might get more than we originally thought. However, Geneva and Kristen might want to use some of the footage for sensationalism. You’ve been unjustly persecuted, after all. So, let’s start with them.”

Mrs. Stovall began collecting her papers into bundles and Dave spun to me. “Can I come with you to Sparkle Legion?”

“Hell yeah! I’ll call them now to see if they’re available.”

They were.