Chapter 56: Unemployed

The aura bear roared as it saw Rick, trundling forward into a run. Its body weighed as much as a tank, yet it managed to build up speed as it rushed at him. When it arrived, one of the enormous claws came down on his head.

"Hello to you too, Blue." Rick rubbed the bear's chest. It rumbled happily and pawed him for a while. Eventually it huffed, swatted him with a claw, and wandered off back into the forest.

Once the bear had gone, Rick went back to searching around the area. Eventually he felt something that seemed just a bit off and followed his aura instincts to the east. He bent down and examined the little stack of pellets... yeah, that was jackalope shit. Not exactly an amazing discovery, but it was what he was there to find.

Straightening, he slowly stretched his back and looked around. No sign of the beasts themselves. It was getting late, so he decided to head back by a new route, just in case they might attack him. If the things would just act as aggressively as before, he could have ended it in a day, but the jackalopes weren't throwing themselves at him suicidally anymore. Apparently they nested more without a source of lucrim.

As he walked, he felt a twinge in his ribs from his persistent injury. Strangely, that injury had nothing to do with his vicious battle against a mobster or the aura bear that regularly clawed at him. His day of over-training had created a hairline fracture in his lucrima soul, which had been exacerbated by all the fighting. According to Lisa, there was nothing to do but take it easy and let the fracture heal naturally.

At the moment he wore her jacket, still a bit new and stiff but growing more comfortable as he got used to it. Given how shredded his clothes had been during the competition, he was glad that he hadn't taken it along.

Once, it would have been a valuable gift because he couldn't easily afford a combat jacket. Now, the main value to him was the fact that Lisa had chosen to give it to him, though he still wasn't entirely sure how to feel about that.

As he got closer to the offices, he saw Wemilat crouching to the ground, apparently monitoring soil composition with a small tool. When Rick got close, the other man stood up and smiled at him. "Hey, Rick. Any luck with the jackalopes yet?"

"I've found a few traces of them, but I haven't found the warren yet. I was going to go log the locations with Adsila and try again tomorrow."

"Ah, she already went home for the day. Tomorrow I need you to help me reintroduce that dragon back into the wild, but otherwise you can go ahead."

"You finished rehabilitating the green one?"

"Yeah, and it's getting feisty." Wemilat wiped off his device and put it away. "Anyway, no rush on this. We want the last of the jackalopes gone, but we're not trying to kick you out, understand? It's nice having someone around who isn't family."

Rick just nodded and they went in separate directions. It had been nice of Wemilat and Adsila to offer him part time work, but he knew it couldn't last forever. The main problem they had was the group of jackalopes that had invaded the Peakless Wildlife Refuge. Once he dealt with that, he'd be unemployed again, and honestly, he was underemployed now.

But that was fine. Several days after the competition, he'd received a substantial bank payment from the CSLA as well as a package containing the Mesospheric Extract. All in all, he'd nearly earned back all the money he'd invested into the fight with Jack. Considering that the gangster seemed to have avoided him since then, he considered it money well spent.

He hadn't seen Damian since then and his CSLA login had expired before giving a final merit scoreboard. Reading between the lines from other information, he suspected that Damian had accepted a position with the CSLA. A few days ago, he'd received a message from an unknown number that simply said "I owe you one for playing along". Though Rick didn't want to get involved with anything that heavy again, he counted that favor owed as part of his profits.

As he walked back into the woods, Rick scanned the trees, just in case. His one disappointment with this position was that Delsin consistently avoided him. Given the way the man could teleport, it was possible that they'd never run into each other.

That was also okay. Rick didn't think Delsin was avoiding him because of any great secret, the old man just didn't want to talk to him. In the time since the fight, Rick had gotten himself tested and discovered no real problems with his blood. Whatever the Dark Blood Kettle was, it operated on a spiritual level along with lucrim. He suspected that Delsin had told the truth: it was no grand ability, it just flowed along with who he was.

Eventually he came to the main reason he'd taken the job at the Peakless Wildlife Refuge: the small cabin. It wasn't the best of places, just quarters from a time when they'd employed more park rangers. It had electricity from the main office, though, and it was a decent place to sleep. Since it didn't cost him a single lucrim in fighter's insurance, that was good enough for him.

He walked up to the door, cleaned off his shoes, and stepped inside. Since he hadn't been in the cabin long, it wasn't exactly home, but it was comfortable enough. It had a bed, a desk, and enough space on the floor for training. For now, it would do.

As soon as Melissa no longer needed it, he intended to finally close the lease on the old apartment complex. Though they had lived there for a long time, when he left he found that he wasn't at all broken up about it. There had been good memories there, but also a lot of awful ones. Once they left, he'd be taking the positive memories along with him and leaving the negatives behind.

It was a bit odd that he didn't have a message from his sister, though. Rick checked his phone again, then set it aside on the desk. That would work out too. As much as he'd feared for his sister during the fight, he'd also seen that she could increasingly take care of herself.

And her goddamn ether score just kept increasing. At the rate she was going, soon she'd be the most successful member of their family in financial terms. Rick thought he'd do well for himself, but he planned to make a lot of jokes about bumming money off her in the future.

With work done for the day, Rick flopped down onto his bed, put his arms behind his head, and just thought for a while. He enjoyed working at the Refuge well enough, but he was also glad that it wasn't a permanent position. What would come after it remained uncertain, but at least he had a lot of time to think.

Sometimes that made his thoughts drift to Emily, which was still a bit painful, but he could live with that too. Every time he thought about their last encounter, he tried to remember the exact expression on her face. Maybe he was tricking himself, but he didn't think he'd seen any hatred there. Better to let her go on her own path than hold her back.

A knock sounded on the door and Rick realized how long he'd been lying in bed thinking. He forced himself to get up, wincing in the process, and went to open it. The door had barely cracked open when Melissa burst in, leaping up to embrace him. She moved fast enough that they ended up spinning around fully due to her momentum.

"Bro, I got in! I'm officially a Young Lucrim Artist of America!"

"That's great!" He set her down, mirroring her huge grin. "The judges weren't too creeped out by the Manifest Destruction shell?"

"Oh, some were, but there was a doctor who said it was really fascinating. He actually tried to convince me to do a YLAA year with a medical program, potentially doing work with other children who are born without aura sparks."

"You mean helping them become like you?"

Melissa shook her head sharply. "Oh, no, he didn't think my condition was ideal or something that should be replicated. But he thought that it was interesting and that I might be an inspiration to the kids." She stuck out her tongue. "That sounds dumb, so I'm going to try to get into more interesting programs. But that's something to decide later, I'm just pumped that I got in."

"Yeah, you deserve all the congratulations in the world." He paused, frowning slightly. "Wait, you aren't still working at the House of the Cosmic Fist, are you?"

"I guess technically I never put in my resignation, but whatever. Do I even really need to? Feels like it'd be easier to just not show up, since I'm on to better things."

"Nah, you should do it properly. There's no reason to burn bridges, even if you never plan to put it on your resume."

"More timeless brotherly wisdom. Fine, fine, I'll do it. After we celebrate."

His sister pulled off her backpack and began pulling out stuff, including a large number of cheesy snacks and a DVD of a movie that looked even cheesier. It made him chuckle, since despite the huge changes in their financial circumstances, he still looked forward to relaxing in exactly the same way.

While she moved stuff around so they could watch the laptop from the bed, he went to get a couple sodas from the mini-fridge. He didn't drink them himself, but he remembered how Melissa had liked them way back when they'd been kids. She smiled when she saw them and they clinked the glass bottles together before drinking. The last toast they'd made had been over obscenely expensive philosopher's elixir and this one was over sodas that cost a few bucks. Both of them tasted good.

There wasn't a couch, so they both sat on his bed to get ready to watch the movie. Before she started it, Melissa leaned over against him and he put an arm around her. After a while, she spoke. "What now, Rick? Once I leave for the YLAA and you finish working here, where do you go next?"

"I really don't know."

"And is that fine?"

"Yeah, I think it actually is."

X X X

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Acknowledgments

Thank you to all my alpha and beta readers for their feedback.

Thanks to Cultivation Novels and GameLit Society for the community.