“Mr. Fulgen, describe how you work best with a team.”

  “Well, first I figure out who the assholes are and do my best to piss them off until they leave. Then I try to ingratiate myself with the rest until I screw something up and they leave anyway.”

  We descended the last set of stairs to the bottom floor of the workshop. Fu just barely remembered to take her grease-stained gloves off before running over and wrapping Wally and I in a hug. She was wearing overalls again, though for some reason she’d only fastened one side this time. She reached her arms up over a head and performed a long, exaggerated stretch.

  [I think—]

  ?Ah-ah! Don’t even start!?

  [I was actually—]

  ?Dude!?

  “Well, damn, Fireman,” Fu said. “I watched the pardon on TV this morning. Gratz on that one. It was boring as hell, but it picked up when the mayor came out. Bet that was cool, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Caught me hella off guard. Did our conversation make it on camera?”

  “No, why?”

  “Castillo thought I flubbed the exchange. I was wondering if the whole city heard it.”

  “Eh, don’t worry about La Presidenta. If she were really pissed te deja cantando en falsete, ya feel me?”

  “Uh, no?”

  “Good.”

  “Yeah,” said Wally. “I almost met the mayor too, but they made me switch to a wheelchair. Plus it was… crowded.”

  “Ah shit Sabaton, that sucks.”

  “Sabaton?”

  She tapped Wally’s metal-encased foot with her own metal-toed boot, eliciting a clinking sound. “Metal shoes, dude.”

  “Oh. Yeah, that makes sense. Awesome.” Wally studied his legs with newfound appreciation.

  Fu turned back to me. “So, how was Bee-Ho? Oh shit, have you heard the news?”

  I puzzled for a moment. “That’s Jessie, right? What the hell is a Bee-Ho?”

  “Jess is, dude.” Fu vaguely waved around her chest area. “She got it goin’ on in the ‘B’ zone. And she a ho.”

  [Told you I liked this one.]

  “Oh. Oh. Wow.” My face burned. Wally was as bright as a tomato. “Shones, that one’s ballsy. I’d be afraid of getting murdered just for thinking a joke like that about Jess.”

  Fu shrugged and stretched again. “Hey, besties with breasties get pardoned too, ya feel me?”

  “Wait…” My brain finally caught up. “You said news? What news?”

  Fu made double fists and squealed girlishly. “Bee-Ho’s joining up as a liaison! My girl’s coming home!”

  “Oh. Here?”

  Fu smacked my forehead with the palm of her hand. “Where d’you think, dumbass? Nah, just playin’. Yeah, Team Snowcrest even! We’re gonna be back in action again! You know we were partners when I was in the Elites, right?”

  “You,” said Wally flatly, “were a cop.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Fu had suddenly gone serious. Wally looked mortified and began to stammer. “No, I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—I’m sure you were a great—”

  Then Fu grinned again. “Relax Sab, just playin’. Nah, I sucked as a cop. Just ask my mom. Ugh, stifling.” She gestured grandly at the workshop around her. “Now this, this place is my playground. I can do whatever the hell I want, as long as I kick ass at it. Which I do, not to brag.”

  “We do have rules here too, you know,” said Marin sufferingly.

  “Eh, no job’s perfect.”

  Marin gritted her teeth. “Miss Tetsumi, why don’t you show them our new acquisition?”

  “Oh damn, yes! All right boys, this one’s juicy. First though, Fireman, can I see your stick?”

  “My what? Oh.” I conjured Bullet Train, doublechecked that it was powered down and no fire-related skills were primed to channel through it, and offered it to her.

  Fu took the skidstick and examined it critically. I was afraid either she or Habby would make a comment, but she’d dropped the flirtatious clowning for the moment. She tapped it in several places along its length. Hefted it. Balanced it on an outstretched finger and frowned as she had to scoot the fulcrum toward the rear; the engine components made the rear section slightly heavier than the front. Then she motioned us back and executed a surprisingly adept series of spins, twirls, swings, and thrusts. At first it looked like some kind of kata. Then her serious expression cracked. She tossed it into the air, making it spin horizontally like helicopter blades. As it came back down she dipped her head to the side and caught the handle in the crook of her neck, making the stick spin around her head a few times before she deftly lifted it back into her hands. She twirled it a few more times, then presented it back to me.

  “Not bad,” she said. Wally’s shoulders slumped.

  I gaped as I made Bullet Train vanish. Now that was hot. I shared a look with Wally, who also looked impressed, but still a little crestfallen at her appraisal.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Fu noticed and playfully tapped Wally on the nose, causing him to shrink back. “Hey, don’t take it hard, Sab. You built that thing out of junkyard parts, right? That takes some freaking genius, dude, and you should be proud. But you in Fu’s playground now, and we are gonna hook you up.”

  Fu motioned us to follow her back to her workstation. “For starters, we need some of this.”

  She reached over to a tool-cluttered worktable and plucked up a metal container about the size of a shoebox. It began to beep. She punched some numbers on a keypad. The beeping stopped, and the box clicked. She opened it and drew out a bar of gleaming silver metal.

  It was the size and shape of a gold bar, except that it was silver colored. Fu had a gleam in her violet eyes as she admired it. She brought it up to her nose and sniffed, letting her eyelids flutter as if it had an intoxicating aroma.

  “No way,” Wally breathed. “No Shones damned way.”

  I also had an idea what I was looking at, but it was so mind-breaking my brain refused to react. I stared numbly at the block of metal.

  Just to drive the point home, Fu picked up a pair of blacksmith’s tongs, gripped the metal bar hard, and swung her arm in a circle. The silvery metal produced a ringing sound like a glass harp.

  [Singing Silver? Is that Singing Silver?] Habby couldn’t resist popping up next to me and staring at the bar with his own beady eyes. It was a nice change to see him gaze at something lustfully other than a woman.

  The metal was known by many names. Singing silver. Aethersteel. Mythril. Or, if you wanted to be boring, you could use the scientific name everyone else used.

  “That is pure cantorium,” said Marin. “We acquired it only a few days ago.”

  “How?” asked Wally. “That stuff sells on the black market for like a hundred thousand GCreds an ounce.” He added quickly, “O-or so I’ve heard.”

  Fu just shrugged and looked to Marin.

  “We’ve wanted some since our inception,” said the CEO. “We finally locked in a decent price by calling in a few favors, so we went for it. We’re going to try to forge it into goldsilver, then use it mostly as plating and reinforcement for some of our existing weapons and armor pieces. But our Guardians will be our priority, Mr. Fulgen, and that means you.”

  “Wow,” I said. Goldsilver, despite the name, was actually an alloy of cantorium and regular silver. It was called “gold” because the two metals were combined at the golden ratio. The result was barely weaker than pure cantorium. Even so, I was stunned that they’d invest something that rare and expensive in me, and I truly wanted to show a little gratitude.

  Instead I got a mental picture of the Mantises of the world having yet another reason to look at me hungrily, and the thought leaked out. “Now the assassins will be coming after me for my own damn weapon.”

  “And you’ll smoke ‘em, Fireman,” said Fu with a grin. “I’m sure.”

  “His fire doesn’t make smoke,” said Wally, still staring at the metal bar as Fu reverently put it back in its box.

  We stood in silence for a moment. The workshop seemed a little dimmer without that metal gleaming in it.

  Then we were interrupted by a monkey.

  Not even a joke. A vaguely familiar cat-sized monkey hopped up on Fu’s table, snatched a pair of pliers, and ran for the large white tent at the corner of the workshop.

  “Hey!” Fu snapped. “Dances! Get your tree rat under control!”

  She stalked toward the tent, the rest of us following quizzically.

  [Jett, while we have a moment to ourselves I think you should know something. While I refrained out of respect for your sensibilities, I believe this is pressing. The woman with the purple hair is clearly infatuated with you.]

  ?Really? That makes you worry about my sensibilities? Not commenting on her figure half a dozen times??

  [Well, excuse me for appreciating aesthetics.]

  It did give me pause, though. Was Fu really crushing on me? She seemed to flirt almost reflexively, but… well, she had acted particularly showoff-ish toward me during this encounter, I guessed. The problem was, I was starting to realize Wally had it for her. Bad.

  “Those are workshop tools, Dances!” Fu shouted. “You better not get titan guts all over my longnose pliers!”

  There were some gasps and shushes from the surrounding chamber. Fu slipped into the tent, and Marin said “Wait!” before Wally and I could think to follow.

  I turned on the woman, crossing my arms. Marin looked at me sternly. “You and Mr. Donner are not authorized to—”

  “What’s a titan, boss?” I asked.

  “It’s what we’re calling the cat creature from last night,” she said. “That’s all you need to know.”

  I held her gaze. After a moment, she seemed to deflate. “No, it’s not. All right, come on you two. One last stop on the tour.”

  Chris Eisner’s smiling face spoke across the G-Tech atrium from half a dozen screens.

  “Remember,” he said, “The LVS Act is increasingly crucial for maintaining public safety and the standard of living we’ve come to enjoy here in the grand city. Be sure to write—Councilperson—and during—-ection year—”

  The screens flickered, cutting in and out. The screens in the conference rooms flickered. The upper floors of G-Tech immediately went into a panic.

  “It’s happening again!”

  “We need to cut the feed!”

  “No! We need to record it!”

  “Hello, hello?” said a male voice. “Is this thing on?”

  An image appeared on the hijacked screens, almost pointlessly, because at first it only showed a masked man sitting in a dark room.

  “Good afternoon, Gigopolis,” the man said. “Greetings all lives both high and low. I have some exciting news for all of our loyal crewcase customers and enthusiasts.

  “As some of you are already aware, we are piloting a new program. You probably saw the product demo we conducted last night. That’s right: the Titan Case is coming soon to a supplier near you.”

  The screens showed an almost commercial-like display of the oversized teleport beacon that had so recently unleashed a giant mutant cat on the city streets.

  “Supplies are limited, and this new service will only be available to those who qualify. If you’re one of the lucky ones you’ll be notified within the next ten business days. Pricing starts at a mere fifty million GCreds, depending on the type of creature and certain other factors. Instructions and a training session for safe handling of your creature will be provided at no additional cost. As always, all sales are final, and we are not responsible for any accidents or unintended loss of life from the use of our products. The so-called ‘fire-eater panther’ is just one of the many species we have available.”

  The screen showed a brief montage of the demon cat, obviously stolen from area CCTV cameras, culminating with the creature pouncing toward an exhausted and injured Jett Fulgen. The monster’s defeat at the hands of Team Snowcrest, which occurred just seconds after the last still, was conveniently left out.

  “As an important note, this is a very exclusive and prestigious program that we are guarding closely. Our suppliers will not carry Titan Cases on a day-to-day basis. Also, I’m sure I do not need to remind our loyal customers that we take our suppliers’ safety very seriously. Anyone who kills or kidnaps them in hopes of obtaining a Titan Case will be met with swift and terrible retribution. You might even receive a free Titan Case, or at least its contents, to be delivered without notice at a time and place of our choosing. The same goes for anyone who attempts to reverse-engineer our teleport beacons or any of the bioaether technology contained within our products. Thank you for your cooperation.

  “Which reminds me, I wanted to give a special shoutout to the Grand City’s latest hardened criminal who is being treated with a soft hand. Enjoy your undeserved freedom while it lasts! Also congratulations to G-Tech, and particularly Team Snowcrest, the ultimate recipients of our first product sample. If you liked what you saw, please leave a five-star review on our dark web portal. It really does make a difference. Enjoy your prizes! And rest assured: I’ll square up with you later, and it will come in a manner you are not expecting. I promise.

  “Goodbye for now! And as always, thank you for being a loyal customer of the Garrison!”

  entire remainder of Jett Fulgen: Licensed Vigilante Sorcerer is now available on Patreon for readers at the 20-chapter early access tier. That means you can read the full ending—19 chapters plus the epilogue—right now, including the… explosive conclusion of this first arc.

  beta state and may see revisions before they’re finalized for Royal Road. Patreon readers get an early look as the next arc takes shape.