Mr. Hill found a decent place for me to stay at in a Polish neighborhood where I didn’t look out of place, not far from where he had a lair of his own. That block was basically under his protection, the locals knew it and kept things quiet when he was around, and the local gangs maintained a healthy distance.

Mayenka, my landlady, was full of quiet stories about The Mountain, as naturally having a supermerc staying in the area meant they took a great interest in him and the things he did. They watched out for him, tracked his comings and goings, ran errands for him, took messages, and basically acted like an extended family of sorts for him.

In return, the surrounding streets were kept brutally clear of any drug dealers and petty crimes, and he’d help out if there was something requiring a lot of muscle. One of the families, the Pyrowskis, worked on his truck or any other vehicles he had to use, while others made him any food he was looking for, cleaned his rooms while he was away, mowed the grass and trimmed the lawn, and basically kept things nice and peaceful for him between jobs.

Naturally everyone was very interested in my relationship with Mister Hill (they never called him The Mountain) and the fact I wasn’t in school. I waved off any hint of a sexual relationship with a roll of my eyes, and contrary to all expectations, spent much of my time down at the local library, going through encyclopedias and books of local and world history.

And, of course, I Leveled every day while I could, ate far too much for my size, and continued to grow slowly... although by human standards it would be like a weed.

The vampires and mercs had combined to allow enough Naming Karma to empower my Ring, and Vier was now a fully functional Sustaining Ring. I didn’t need to eat for energy, but I still needed to grow, so I had an appetite.

-------

“Mr. Hill, I’d like to thank you for your help, purchased as it was, and wonder if you might not be open to some business.”

He grunted at me as he sat on the other side of the table in his backyard. Most of his chairs for himself were made out of stone or metal, as it turned out he weighed close to six hundred pounds, and he needed sturdy stuff to support him, even if he restrained his strength. “You got my attention with ‘business’, Dyna. Say your piece.”

“You got any problems killing vamps?” I asked casually.

“No. Never took a job for it, tho. They see me and go to mist or bat and run away.”

“How about sorts who prey on young Powered?” I held up a certain pawn shop owner’s business card.

He looked interested now. “Scum are scum, and they all go down the drain sooner or later,” he replied without batting an eye. “What’s on your mind?”

“I’d like to call this ass and get a job from him. If it’s clean, no problems; I’ll pay you a boredom fee for the night and we’ll call it good. If it goes south, AND I can’t handle it, well, they’re going to be playing cards. I imagine the pot will be something we can split.”

He thought that over, rubbing his brick of a jaw. “That’s a decent and productive way to spend an evening.” His eyes glittered a bit. “I can probably just draw a shield up for you if you want.” I raised an eyebrow as he pulled out a pen and a business card, and wrote on the back of it slowly and carefully. I imagine he broke pens frequently.

He held it out to me between two thick fingers, and I took it calmly.

The Mountain, it read, overlaid by a simple open triangle. Straight and to the point, but I couldn’t imagine a lot of people had one. I turned it over.

She deals for me.

I half-smiled. It was true. He’d hosted a couple poker nights during the last two weeks, one for the local fellows, and one for some fellow mercs after I’d proven myself on my first night.

=========

A couple days ago...

They were hard men, six of them in total. They’d come in with ten grand each for a kitty, ready to play some friendly poker until time was called or they ran out of money. They were a bit surprised to see an actual poker table there to greet them in Mr. Hill’s basement, and me standing there waiting to receive them, politely Masked and everything.

Mr. Hill was in his big corner seat, greeting each of them as they came in, giving them a handshake without getting up. His money was on the bar over there, and his chips were in front of him already, their clink-clink of custom metal he didn’t have to worry about breaking rhythmical and subdued.

When all of them were there and seated, all of them wearing guns or knives or deadly weapons themselves, he introduced me.

“Boys, this is the Dealer. She’s good with cards, she’s entertaining, and she knows her stuff. She deals the cards, she moves the chips. You want her to fix you a drink, you wait for the break and you pay her to do so. No hands on her unless you want to lose them.”

He held up a joker in his hand.

I cut across with the other joker, shearing through the card as cleanly as a razor. As the top of it flew up, I flicked my hand, and the card in my hand flashed out, impaling the other half-card in mid-flight, and carried it back to nail it firmly into the wooden beam support behind Mr. Hill.

They all blinked, and a few ideas about wandering hands went away as Mr. Hill tossed the stub of the card over his shoulder.

“Gentlemen, I am the Dealer, and the deck is neutral. I play no favorites, and do not tolerate anyone messing with my deck.” I pulled out a fresh deck from those stacked behind me. “This deck was purchased at Shel-Mart two hours ago. It is mass-produced, mass-run, cheap, and has no defining features. No form of divination or time-sighting is going to work effectively with such a ubiquitous product after I Ward it,” there was a crackle as green-white arcs zipped over it, “and I know my deck.”

I unsealed it with one hand, the cards jumped into my grasp, and I fanned them instantly for all to see, removing the jokers and placing them into my breast pocket. They glanced at the walls and understood I was storing knives and ammunition in the same place.

Despite themselves, they were drawn in as the cards tumbled around in my hands, shuffled and mixing as if they were alive.

“This is a test deal.” I flicked out the cards precisely in front of each of them, four evenly spaced. “If all of you could look at your cards, and I note three of you are Core-users. Feel free to Mark them.”

The hard men glanced at me sharply, then over at Hill, who had lit a cigar and had a face like stone... or normal, in other words. They reached forward to pick up their cards, and got curious expressions on their faces after they did so.

After they were done, I collected all the cards in one sweep, swirled them through my shuffling again, and dealt out four more to each of them. The three men with Cores all got very wary expressions... which grew even warier when I dealt out all the Aces, Kings, Queens, Jacks, and Tens in front of them, face up.

“If you would kindly look at your cards,” I said in no uncertain terms, and they grudgingly bent forwards to turn over their cards, which were random assortments of valueless lower cards, and definitely not the face cards they’d Marked that were now staring at them.

“I can tell when a card is Marked, Inked, Pressed, or Altered, gentlemen. Don’t try it. Furthermore, when I deal, I Chaos-seal the deck.” I collected all the cards with one sweep of my hand, the paper leaping off the table into my grasp. “It randomly disperses the cards within the deck, so that even I don’t know what is what... and nor do you.” I put the deck down, flicked it, and there was a swirl of rainbow light.

I dealt out the cards again. Their expressions changed when the Marked face-up cards landed with different values in front of them once again.

“More to the point, if you mark a Card, substitute one out, or otherwise interfere with the deck, I will Burn it immediately and break out a new deck.” I pointed with the flat of the deck, and sprayed the cards towards a wastebin a yard away.

They ignited in midair, and a burning line fell into the wastebasket as they watched.

Paper popped as my thumb broke the seal on a new deck. “Gentlemen, the game is Texas Hold’Em, the opening ante is one hundred dollars. Please place your chips.” Cards riffled and ruffled behind my fingers, I Sealed it after two shuffles, shuffled it twice more, and the game was under way.

----

At two hours they took their first breaks, heading for the bathroom. The pale-eyed blond guy with the harsh face promptly approached me after taking a glance at Mr. Hill, who just watched with his stony face. His name was Chill, and he worked as a sniper. “You fix drinks?”

“I can fix a drink for you, or you can tell me a drink to fix. Which would you prefer?” I’d done a LOT of research on drinks over the past two weeks, and Visual Filed something like six hundred different recipes from various sources, including international.

That seemed to interest him more. “Fix a drink FOR me? What’s that cost?”

“One hundred dollars.”

That made his eyebrows climb. “You can fix me a drink worth one hundred dollars? With what the big man has down here?”

“I fixed him a drink that he gave me a grand for. I think I can stoop to a mere hundred dollars.”

He looked at Mr. Hill sharply, who just nodded slowly. “Had diamond dust in it,” he clarified wistfully.

Figuring out that Mr. Hill only ate normal food for the taste, not the nutritional value, hadn’t been too awful difficult. He didn’t really eat much for someone his size, so he had to be eating other stuff.

Energized diamond dust in a cocktail of Energized heavy metal salts and other fun stuff had gone down his throat like boiling fire. He sat there with steam coming out of his nose for five minutes, actually sweating a bit, and slapped down a thousand bucks for me without saying a word.

Chill flicked up a c-note for me. “Okay, I’ll bite. Let’s see what you have.”

I plucked it out of his fingers so quickly he flinched, and glided around behind the bar.

Therein followed a proper display of bartending dexterity, of this pouring into that, getting shaken this way while that got stirred, ice was crushed, melted, poured again... and little crackles of lightning in myriad colors popped and snapped first outside the drink, then inside it.

The drink I set down in front of him was purple on top, orange in the middle, and yellow on the bottom. It had an icy cloud inside it swirling on its own, and tiny arcs of lightning were pulsing in the middle of it.

“A Hotwire Special. Go stand over by the jakes. Drink it all down in six seconds, nice and measured. Enjoy for the next thirty seconds, and then take a hot piss.”

He blinked at me, looked down at the drink, and then over at Mr. Hill. “Do I really want to drink this?” he had to ask.

“If you won’t, I will!” one of the Core-users, a thin man named Needler, piped up, staring in fascination at the drink.

“I got no idea what it’ll do to you,” Mr. Hill rumbled casually.