Trix sat with her back against the steel fa?ade of a supertall, spinning multicolored bracelets around her wrist. She was looking through the barrier to another quadrant at an electric jellyfish that hung in the air. I noticed she had a tattoo on her temple similar to Jagger’s. But hers was of a 2. When she saw I was looking at her, she met my gaze, looking at me with eyes the color of the sea.
I kept a wary eye on her as I retrieved my bat and blade. I don’t think Kane would have trusted her. The bat hadn’t rolled far, but the blade wasn’t where I’d left it. I looked around, confused, then checked my inventory to see that “loot all” had picked that up too. It was back in there, along with Jagger’s Journal, and some other stuff.
“You gonna bash my head in now?” said Trix. “Or are you gonna drop the bat and try to make it around the bases?”
I selected her name and noticed something surprising.
Trix. Level 3. PC.
“You’re not a mob?”
“Aren’t you clever.”
“Why were you with Jagger’s gang?”
She raised an eyebrow. “You think you’ve been killing mobs this whole time?”
I shrugged. I actually had no idea who or what I was killing. “Answer my question first.”
“I’m still alive, aren’t I? Going solo in this place isn’t advised.”
“Oh.” I thought about Kane. We’d always stayed together. I wished he was with me, even though I also hoped he’d gotten out somehow.
Trix stopped fiddling with her bracleets and stood up, drawing near me. “So, look, you killed my bodyguards. That puts me in a bad position. Unless . . .” Trix smiled at me.
“Bodyguards?”
She smiled innocently.
“You want to team up?” I asked.
“You’re strong and smart. I like that in a man.”
I pointed to Jagger’s very dead body. “You knocked me over while I was fighting that dude. How can I trust you?”
“Yeah, well, Jagger was my teammate. Now you’ll be.” She looked down and bit her lip. Then looked back up at me with puppy dog eyes. “But I’m sorry I knocked you down, Will. Won’t you let me be your side chick?”
“Don’t you mean side kick?”
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“That’s what I said, side kick.”
I shook my head. “Sorry.”
Trix held out an open hand, a purple paisley colored friendship bracelet resting in her palm. “Let me follow you and this is yours. Its got +1 to charisma and it gets a 5% bonus to charisma stat per level.”
I zeroed in on the item and saw that she was telling the truth.
Ancestral Friendship Bracelet (Epic).
You know how you used to find arrowheads down by the creek bank when you were a kid? Well, this friendship bracelet kinda has the same energy. Made of cowhide in the 16th century and imbued with faery song, it’s been sitting around in a cave for about 400 years.
Captain John Tyler bequeathed the bracelet to his beloved daughter, Magdalena, on her 16th birthday. Magdalena was lacking in social appeal, let’s say, and people mostly ignored her. The settlement her father led before his untimely death had experienced a great deal of infighting and …
I hit the three dots hovering over the item and cut out the history lesson. I didn’t need some lame story to know that this item was good. All I needed was some mental math on the 5% level stack. “That’s not something you should give away.”
“If you call things even with us and let me fight beside you, it’s worth it.”
I realized that I could have just as easily bashed her head in and slipped on the bracelet. But she’d been loyal to Jagger’s gang. Maybe she’d be loyal to me. “Alright, it’s a deal.”
I slipped on the bracelet and Trix turned her head slightly and smiled. “Looks good on you,” she said. “So, with the bat and everything, what’s your class? Thug?”
“Class? Haven’t bothered with it.
She shook her head in disbelief. “You’re level two now, but when you killed Jagger’s gang you were level one and hadn’t even selected a class?”
“That’s the long and short of it, yeah.” I was about to tuck my bat back under my jacket, but then realized I could just pop it into my inventory and get it back out at a moment’s notice.
“I can’t wait to see what you can do once you’re properly set up. Hey, didn’t your game guide lead you through all that?”
“My game guide was a punk. I told him to get lost.”
Trix sighed. “You can’t be serious.”
“Yeah, total punk.” I waited a second, then said, “You haven’t run into anyone named Kane have you? A little shorter than me?”
“No. Friend of yours?”
“More like family.”
“Then I’m glad we didn’t find him.” Trix teased up her hair with her fingers. “Okay, I think I can lead you through your class selection. You honestly don’t need a demi-god to do it. I think they drop those high level game guides in for the shock value.”
“Yeah, well, my game guide stole my stash. So there’s some shock value for you.”
“Talkin’ drugs?” asked Trix.
“Talkin’ Z,” I said.
Trix shuddered. “I’d say that dude did you a favor.” Trix looked down the street, then noticeably relaxed when she didn’t see anyone. “So, you ready to choose a class?”
“I don’t know. I’ve done just fine without one so far.”
Trix took a step closer to me and put a friendly hand on my shoulder. “You just found more than a friendship bracelet. You found a friend. And now you need to listen to her. So, first off. Forget all about Z. And, second thing, you must pick a class. This place is no funhouse, Will. Somehow, it’s even worse than the city it’s modeled after. And that place,” she made a face, “was no International House of Pancakes. We need everything we can get to make sure we stay on the right side of the bat, you know?”
I was starting to feel comfortable around Trix. She was the one person I’d met since my doctor’s visit that hadn’t tried to kill me, at least, not directly.
“So, you’ll let me walk you through it?” she asked.
“Yeah, why not.”
“Great, then we’re a team. And no hard feelings about that fight?”
“Yeah. It’s water under the bridge.”
“Let’s shake on it.”
She reached out her hand, and as I gripped her hand in mine, I noticed three friendship bracelets around her wrist that looked similar to the one she’d given me.
