Chapter 37: Lucrim Boutique

As much as was going on in his life, Rick didn't feel comfortable leaving work for long. For one, it was impossible to forget about his ordeal in the demon realm and everything it meant. Practically every day he got more spam about demonic bonds, both emails and glossy fliers in the mail. They basically promised the moon, sometimes with the usual tactic of sex but often with images of powerful demons. He junked all of them.

Furthermore, his reprieve from his quotas was running out. He'd already dropped out of the top ten:

[1) [redacted] - 245 merits

2) Pan Zhou - 244 merits

3) Kate Durham - 231 merits

4) Heidi Cunningham - 219 merits

5) Damian - 213 merits

6) Jack Ganess - 206 merits

7) Machk Bearan - 201 merits

8) Elliot Rutherford III - 189 merits

9) Oswaln - 188 merits

10) Javiera Banks - 185 merits

...

10) Javiera Banks - 185 merits

11) Rick Hunter - 183 merits

12) Skinmaster0 - 171 merits]

That was completely fine with him, if it kept him from getting called in for any other emergencies. It looked like no one had even gotten their 100 merit bonus, perhaps because the meeting went so wrong.

What truly bothered him was how multiple people had implied that his position was insecure. Obviously there were a finite number of lucrim anomalies, unless more were appearing at a terrible rate, but he was concerned that there was something fundamentally more troubling.

So he threw himself into work for a few days. Just applying his body fully to biking helped him feel more refreshed than expected. There he discovered one obvious benefit of his time in the demon realm: the aura exercise involved felt much easier. Before he had biked normally in 30^th gear and at most in 33^rd - now he cruised in 35^th gear and could push up to 41^st gear if he exhausted himself. That didn't grant him much raw power and he wasn't sure what benefit it had at all, but it was something.

Unfortunately, work didn't prove particularly profitable. He did his best to track down lucrim anomalies, but they seemed to be harder to come by. Once he thought he might be homing in on one, only to run into another group of surveyors. They included Jack, so Rick decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

For a while he tracked them to try to see if he could learn anything about the madman who had it out for him, but Jack had just done his work and then hopped on a motorcycle to return to Branton. Rick could have tried to pursue him, but judged that was too risky. None of his other leads had turned up anything in particular, though he hadn't gone too far out of his way on that account.

One time he was pretty far out in the wilderness when he ran across an odd reading in the surveying technique, but it turned out to be some kind of animal droppings instead of an anomaly. Whatever it was, it used lucrim. He took a sample back to the Peakless Wildlife Refuge and they confirmed his suspicion. It was unclear exactly what is was, but they urged him to leave it alone if it wasn't near an anomaly or getting in the way.

Either Delsin was avoiding him or he was actually out working like his family claimed. Rick decided to just keep building up his excess lucrim mass in the hope that it would be useful eventually. Emily would persuade him to invest it in something if she found out, but he thought that she'd accept that what he needed most was a new foundation.

Still, better not to argue the matter with her. He had enough to deal with in his life.

It was a random day out surveying the wilderness when Rick got a call from an unknown number. He ignored it, assuming that it was a robocall, but a minute later he got a text from the same number. All it said was "pick up asshole - Damian". Since he'd been waiting to talk to the other man for quite a while, Rick eagerly picked up.

"Hey, you still up for doing some shopping later?" Damian sounded ridiculously strung out, maybe even high. Rick bridled for a moment before realizing that it must be part of the act, for some reason. Did he honestly think anyone was listening in on their phone calls?

"Yeah, I could."

"I've got just the place. Okay, so listen close..." Damian gave him a specific address that was just outside one of the larger malls in Branton. Maybe a higher end one, but nothing special. It had to be a pretext of some kind, so Rick just agreed and then hung up.

When Rick arrived, he found Damian loitering in the plaza outside the building. As always, he was dressed in his three-piece suit, even though he was going to a fucking mall. Since Damian seemed to react well to mockery, Rick glanced him up and down and raised an eyebrow. "You're a bit under-dressed for the mall, aren't you?"

"Oh, where we're headed, it really won't matter." The other young man gave a smirk and gestured for him to follow. "Let's not talk about anything serious at first. I want to give you a little present... consider it an apology for not being able to save you from the demon realm."

"Right... that's why we're meeting here, isn't it?"

Damian rolled his eyes in response and just headed inward. Yet instead of going to the main atrium of the mall, where teenagers went shopping and middle aged couples drank from gallon-sized soda cups, they turned aside almost immediately. There was a small elevator there, basically ignored compared to the large escalators that guided the crowds between the main layers.

Inside it looked like a service elevator, with only a few buttons going to the main floors. But Damian pressed the buttons for the top two floors, then turned a small key in a slot that was nearly invisible. They'd been walking in silence, but as the doors closed Rick had to speak up.

"Are we headed to your secret society? This isn't going to involve any orgies or murder, is it?"

"I think you'll see what this place is pretty quickly." That was all Damian said, a hard-to-read smile on his face. The elevator seemed to take a long time to get started, so Rick spoke up again.

"What is this really about?"

"I was wondering if the two of us could create a temporary alliance in surveying the area outside Branton. Unfortunately, the others are teaming up, and confrontations are becoming more common. I've been able to slip under the radar, but I'm starting to think that strategy is turning bad."

Though Rick didn't think that was his real motive for meeting, it did sound like an honest offer. He preferred to work alone, but given the situation he couldn't just turn down an alliance. "I'm open to working together. I don't really care about the merit rankings, I just want to get paid."

"That could work well, because merits are all I care about. Honestly, you should too, if you want to get ahead in this contest."

"Are you going to stop being cryptic and actually tell me what you mean by that? Telling me what's going on would be a lot better statement of good faith then just trying to buy me off with something."

"Yeah, we can talk about that." At that moment, the doors dinged and slid open. "But never mind that for now, we're here: welcome to the Orient Boutique."

The elevator might have looked simple, but it opened into a floor that screamed wealth. There were no neon signs or crass advertisements here - in fact, the elevator opened onto a bamboo floor. Twin statues of guardian lions stood outside the elevator, which struck him as simultaneously impressive and a bit ridiculous, considering they were guarding the passage between an elevator and a store.

And despite all the pretense, it was a store. Instead of trying to attract customers with bright colors, it had all the understated appeal of a high end tech chain. Though the floor had trees and even an artificial river flowing through it, there were also many wooden stands with merchandise on them. Instead of plastic labels they had the prices elegantly printed on what looked like little business cards. It was all very impressive, but...

"Is this place really called the Orient Boutique?"

Damian shot him a look that seemed both amused and irritated at once. "I suppose a peasant like you has never seen the like, huh? Well, you can pick something you like. I don't pay too much attention to money, so just get whatever catches your eye."

"Really?" Rick knew that more was going on, but hadn't expected such a generous offer. "You'll buy one item for me just as an apology?"

"And as a token of good will toward our future collaboration! Feel free to look around... just don't wipe your hands on anything."

Ignoring the jibe that doubtlessly wasn't sincere, Rick began to look around. The prices for everything were insane - all listed in lucrim, as if none of their customers would even think of using something so crude as dollars. He passed from block to block, examining the items displayed on them. There were far more pills than he was used to, all with ornate names.

He really had no idea where to begin, and Damian had to know that. Was this another test? Suspecting that he was being examined, Rick tried to look over everything skeptically. There were employees dressed in robes who hovered in the corners, not interrupting. One woman in what he thought was a very daring cheongsam smiled at them, but he just smiled back and ignored her. No, he had a feeling that speaking to the staff would not be the right choice.

Instead he looked more carefully at the cards, ignoring the eye-popping prices. They spoke of the virtues of their items, some actually promising a specific amount of growth in generation rate. That was the first thing that really bugged him, because he didn't think there was any way that could be true. Different people were at different stages, had different natural dispositions, different lucrim portfolios... there was no way a pill could apply the same to all of them.

And once he got over how high class the place looked, his suspicion kicked into overdrive. Many of the pills advertised benefits that struck him as suspiciously vague or reminded him of internet scams. What did a "lucrim-fueled immune system" even mean, anyway? In fact, he started to notice some language that he remembered Lisa complaining about in one of her rants about supplements.

"You know..." When he started to speak up, he wasn't sure what he was going to say, but as he turned to Damian he felt a strange sense of confidence. "I'm not sure I can choose. What would you advise?"

"Oh, I'd advise a lot of things." Damian smirked, but beneath the smugness there was something else... Rick thought that had been the right decision. "Come along, peasant. Listen and learn."

Damian moved from display to display, pretending to examine the contents. As he did so, he continued speaking.

"For a start, if you want the CSLA to take you seriously, you need to upgrade your method of transportation. Children bike around, not adults. Even if you don't want to buy a proper vehicle, you can actually get a decent Transportation Core for just 25,000 lucrim invested. Well, I suppose that might be a bit steep? I suppose you could get a tolerable budget core for just 5000 of your generation rate."

Rick grunted, fairly certain that advice was nonsense. Even if it wasn't, it was absurd: he was desperate for an edge against superior opponents, so of course he couldn't waste his limited assets on transportation.

"On a similar note, you ought to invest in the trappings of quality. A proper suit, for one, and having a decent amount of net worth in a house or two never hurt." Damian glanced back at him with a nonchalant glance. "Oh, or you could upgrade your Graham's Stake Lucore a bit. Putting away a lucrim or two is well and good, but you need it to be higher rated for it to be worth much."

That last part struck him as potentially actual advice. Though he'd put more lucrim into the core since it was created, it had stayed rated at exactly the same stage since the beginning. The difference between aura leech stages had made a big difference, so it was plausible that the same would be true of an improved version of his core. "I'll look into it."

"Very good, very good. Say, I could use a bit of fresh air - do you want to step this way?" Damian swerved sharply to another elevator, leaving Rick with no choice but to follow along. This one wasn't in the same column as the others, he noticed, and looked far more elaborate.

On the ride up, Damian kept up a line of patter about nothing. It wasn't a very long ride, then to Rick's surprise, the elevator opened onto the roof. There was a garden area that seemed to overlook Branton - Rick hadn't known that it existed. Damian's attitude shifted and he walked swiftly to one edge, leaving Rick to catch up.

"We can speak freely here," Damian said, his voice now completely serious. He turned his head to give Rick a hard stare. "Now, tell me what you think of that place?"

"I'm not sure." Rick folded his arms and stared back. This was obviously another test, he just didn't know what was being tested beyond his basic observation skills. Damian knew what he could do, so this must be about who he was. "I don't think I'll offend you if I say I'm skeptical about the claims of most of those items."

"Oh, it's a lot of bullshit." Damian spun to face him, spreading his hands to either side in an expansive gesture. "Welcome to the upper crust of society! One show after another designed to remind us just how refined and urbane and powerful we all are!"

"Huh." Rick scratched one ear. "I didn't think the upper crust would go shopping in malls."

Damian smirked. "You're right, of course. This place is more about the illusion of wealth than the thing itself. New money, some would say, but that's bullshit too. No matter how high you go, you're playing the same sort of games."

"So what exactly is the game here?"

"The pretense of the exotic, of course. Obviously some Chinese lucrim resources are among the best in the world, but they have some of the worst in the world too. That's assuming that anything here isn't just produced in some factory in a third world country, which is frankly asking a lot. And the ridiculous theater of the secret entrance via the elevator, when the floor is visible from the outside! It's not about security, it's about letting people feel like they're a part of a secret society. Everything is style over substance."

Though this was giving him a better sense for the other man, Rick wasn't quite satisfied. "Speaking of style, you're monologuing a lot. If we can talk freely here, why don't you just get to what this is actually about?"

"Heh, fair enough. I've never claimed that I was more substance than style." Damian turned to him, however, and his gaze became deadly serious. "I was serious about a short term collaboration for the sake of the merit scoreboard, and I'll give you something worthwhile for the sake of appearances. But that's all secondary. I brought you here because I believe you can be trusted with a potential longer term collaboration."

Rick folded his arms and waited.

"You actually got my number earlier in the demon realm. The point is to be a flashy idiot obsessed with himself and his petty little secrets. Skilled enough to give a position, but harmless. But I'm not that person - I'm not even as rich as I pretend to be. I've spent years preparing and this little contest is just the opportunity I needed. What I need is for them to hire me and not take me too seriously."

"Your goal is to infiltrate the CSLA?"

"No, the Global Lucrim Authority itself."

Though it should have been ridiculous, Damian said it so somberly that Rick found himself taking it seriously. "Okay, why?"

"You've seen what they've done to this world. The rich get richer and the weak get weaker, because they keep finding new ways to choke off any chance we have. First they harvested power itself from the air, robbing us of what many would consider a birthright, then-"

"You sound like someone else I know." Rick pushed thoughts of Alger aside and just focused on the man standing opposite him. "This isn't about bringing in a new era of warriors and combat, is it? That time is in the past and it's not coming back."

"Oh, I'm not pining after some past era that wasn't as good as we pretend. No, I care about what our systems are doing today." Damian turned away and put his foot up on the side of a flower box, staring over the city. "You see how the systems are all entangled. The demons suffer because of our greed, so their greed gets stronger and humans suffer. It isn't sustainable."

"Then what do you suggest?"

Damian turned his head back just enough to grin at him. "I want to burn it all down."

For a long moment Rick just stared at him, wondering if this could be another act. Damian was strong, sure, and seemed to have some decent resources. But that was nothing compared to the corporations and governments that enforced the status quo. They'd just recently gotten a reminder of how powerful the representatives of the Global Lucrim Authority could be. Saying something like that was insanity.

"You look at me like I'm crazy, but who was the one feeding his blood to the poor downtrodden toad demons? I want to help them too, I'm just thinking a bit bigger."

Rick sighed and decided he needed to take this seriously. "If you're trying to recruit me for a suicidal attempt to fight the GLA, you're going to be disappointed."

"I'm not an idiot, Rick. I plan to be working toward this for years, even decades. But this is an important first step, because there aren't many chances to be properly employed by the GLA. All I want is for you to help me win... and maybe keep a bit of sympathy for my cause, when things go down."

"And what happens then? You crash the world economy?"

"It doesn't have to be that dramatic. We had an economy before lucrim was controlled like this, and we can have one afterward. What do you say? Isn't that a worthier goal than winning a merits contest?"

"You," Rick said slowly, "are crazy. But I trust you just a bit more than I trust our bosses, or just about any corporation. I won't go talking about this, and I think we can work together for the merit competition, at least. I don't think I'd want a job with the GLA even if I could manage it. Just this has been stressful enough."

"I suppose I'll take it." Damian stuck out a hand to shake, but Rick ignored it. "Alright, what is it going to take for me to seal this agreement? I thought I'd made it clear enough from the beginning that I intend to compensate you for your trouble."

Rick took a step back and just thought about it for a bit. He didn't think he was making a huge mistake with this - Damian was either delusional or a very long term thinker, but either way, it didn't have much immediate impact on their lives. What mattered was that he had a potentially useful ally and one source of uncertainty in his life had been removed. Maybe he should remove a second.

"You said that you did research on all of the top candidates..." Rick said slowly. "Does that include Jack?"

"Of course. Nasty piece of work. Local mercenary from Branton, had some ugly juvenile cases but has kept out of prison as an adult. Mostly kept to smaller time stuff, but the American Basilisk hired him for this. Probably to get a man inside local CSLA business."

"Wait, the American Basilisk? That's the connection?"

"I know he might seem a bit apocryphal, but-"

"So that's why he's after me." Rick rubbed his forehead irritably. "This relative I fought must have been one of the Basilisk's fighters in the tournament. So I have an actual mobster after me... I guess I should be grateful that it isn't another hit job."

Damian just examined him with raised eyebrows for a long time, as if trying to figure out if it was a joke, then gave a strange smile. "You're talking about the American Basilisk very casually. Guess you're a more interesting man than my research indicated."

"I'm doing my best not to be interesting. I'll cooperate within the bounds of the law, but I don't want to attract the attention of either side."

"Then we have an agreement?"

"A bit of one." Rick stuck out his hand and Damian shook it firmly. "Like I said, you might be crazy, but I trust you more than them. For this merit contest, we can work together. What you do after that is up to you."

"That will do just fine." Damian smiled, then put a hand over his shoulder to guide him back to the elevator. "Now, let's buy you an overpriced gift..."