XI – There are things that Money cannot buy. So bring some Bitcoins… (Part 1)

Previously on ‘Glitch’:

It’s Saturday and Edward is resting when his mother comes yell at him for having wasted the house’s disinfectants. What a drag, not even I can be excited about it.

Tired of her ranting, he decides to leave home so that he can go buy some. Yet he receives an anonymous letter from Sammy, the girl who somehow trapped the Sprites in a photo! She includes a picture of Thief King and threatens to publish the image.

The only way for Edward to preserve his privacy is to go to a shady address. Something tells me it is not a blind date…

- / Glitch - /

“What must we do?” asked Edward, nervous. He sat on a ruined bench on the sidewalk as he flipped through the photos of Thief King. “Here says the mandatary has all the negatives…”

“We must do nothing,” replied Thief Queen Elizabeth Shao, still trapped in the boy’s mind. “It’s either a bluff or a trap.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“What happened to the Sprites sure is impressive, yet how could the person know that we have an important secret? The blackmailer has no film of the transformation, so they have no evidence that you and that handsome purple-eyed fellow are the same individual. He may have been a trespasser in the school who looked exactly like you. Going to the blackmailer’s meeting spot would just prove that they have power over us.”

“Who you think this blackmailer is? One of the Cubs? A Sprite?”

“I’ve once seen a Glitcher do something similar,” pondered Elizabeth, silent. “Could it be them?” she asked herself, thinking of the Skulls, the Glitching Gang that betrayed her.

“Are you alright, Elizabeth?”

“Yes. For now, I want you to look for something.”

“What is it?” he asked, standing up. The unrepaired bench tumbled as he rose his body.

“I want a hideout. I don’t want to work on that metal heart and have someone storm in the room to ask you to clean a toilet—”

A car’s engine roared across the neighborhood. Brad, the jock who dated Adela, rode down the street on his new convertible. The car was so polished that the Sun was brighter on the vehicle’s bodywork than in the sky. “Hurry up, babe, come on!” he said, facing the exit of the girl’s apartment and smashing the horn.

Edward snorted, “It’s eight in the morning of a Saturday! Can’t you be quieter?”

“I can’t hear you, man,” replied Brad as he faced Edward “What did you say again?”

“I told you to stop—”

Brad pressed the car’s horn and drowned out the boy’s voice The jock teased him, “ “Sorry, you speak too low. What were you saying, bro?”

“It’s eight in the morn—”

Brad smashed a pedal. The car’s engine moaned so loud that the sound drowned out Edward’s voice and ripped cracks in windows.

“My ears!” screamed Edward, agonizing.

“Was my baby too loud for you, Eddy?” asked the jock, referring to his brand new car. “Because I’m sure Adela’s louder,” he said, chortling. “I’ll find out today and tell you, bueno?”

“Screw you!” snapped Edward.

Elizabeth mocked the boy’s response. “’Screw you’? Is that your bloody best, toothpick? Are you sure your dad’s in the military?”

Adela ran out of her apartment building to the symphony of a car’s loud engine. “Calm down, Brad, please”—she opened his convertible’s door—“you woke up my mom!”

Brad smirked. “And you love me for that, don’t you”—he kissed her as she sat on the passenger seat—“why the &$(%¨% you took so long, babe?”

“I was feeding my cats,” she replied, wearing the seat belt.

“Babe, this car’s not insured yet! I don’t feel like donating it to the Cubs. If you want to take long, you either move out of this craphole or I find someone else.”

“We can’t all live in a mansion like yours,” she said, using her reflection in the car’s rearview to mess her long blond hair.

Brad chuckled. He rustled in her ears, “Be nice to this kitty here”—he wore his sunglasses—”and you might just live in one. Meow.”

He smashed the accelerator pedal and the convertible sped down the street. Edward watched high and dry as the car disappeared into the horizon.

Elizabeth rumbled, “She did not even notice you. What was that, Toothpick?”

“Maybe it’s better like this,” he conceded, crestfallen. “We’d have to go on a bus if I asked her out. I have no money for a car.”

“That’s rubbish. You keep talking about money when the bloody problem is somewhere else. ‘Screw you’?” she quoted him. “He disrespected her, you dunce! You should have ISG’ed that bloody &$&%¨.”

“She’d get angry if I picked a fight with him…”

“Which of your mom’s pills did you swallow, Toothpick? I have a feeling it was that one that comes with a calendar.”

“Elizabeth, please. She knows I don’t like him, but I must be civil—”

“Girls don’t like civil guys, they like guys”—she corrected herself—“and some like girls. Who taught all that rubbish, by the way? You don’t want to be happy, Toothpick? I don’t know what voice you have in your head that is telling you exactly what to do for you to retire cleaning your family’s toilet, but it was not mine.”

“Let’s just go home, alright?” mumbled Edward, turning around. “I should not have left my bedroom today.”

Elizabeth heaved a loud sigh. “The body is yours,” she resigned.

The boy climbed the stairs to his apartment building. Yet a thought weighed in his chest. “Hey, Elizabeth,” he faltered, testing if speaking freed him from the angst.

“What is it?”

“I really like having you as a company,” confessed Edward, blushing. “We’ve known each other for so little and I feel like you know all that there is to know about me. I really like you.”

If the woman had cheeks, they would have reddened. “Y-You’re a tool for me, Toothpick. If anything, your teenage angst entertains me,” she snorted. “And don’t use compliments to buy my silence. You can dodge the money issue for a while, but I want you to do what I tell you the next time. Having a box of disinfectants won’t make your mom nice, and a BMW won’t make you more of a man.”

“You sure?” he mumbled, scratching his cheek. “Those sound really nice.”

“Shut up, Toothpick. Let’s get that shoulder fixed.”

The weekend passed as if time rode on the back of a bullet. Mr. Mouriarty, who often claimed that he was a famous doctor from Chicago, was the only free pair of hands that the boy found to fix his dislocated shoulder. What Edward only realized as he sat in Mr. Mouriarty’s office and saw the man’s proud degree hanging on a wall, was that the landlord was a doctor of mechanical engineering, not of people. And his real proficiencies showed: the man grasped the boy’s dislocated arm like he screwed a screw nut with a wrench and pushed the limb forward as if he shifted the gears of a tractor—and the boy screamed as loud as the engine of one.

“Two days of rest and you’ll be fine, son,” guaranteed Mr. Mouriarty. His breath smelled of whiskey and smoke.

The man’s words repeated like an echo in Edward’s head as the boy laid down on his bed, agonizing. The only greater pain than his arm was the one that he felt whenever he heard the horn of Brad’s car coming to pick Adela up again. After a while, Edward’s hearing became one that would envy Mozart, as the boy could tell every single note, accord, and scale of the jock’s usual uproar.

Monday arrived and Edward attended school as dreary as if he went to a funeral. His dislocated arm was still limp and he hid his injury with more caution than one hides their intimate shames.

“Still no sign of the Sprites,” remarked Elizabeth, concerned. “What could this mean?”

The boy entered St. Michael’s High, unaware that a pair of eyes watched him from a dark room.

“There you are,” said Sammy, observing Edward through the breach of a window. “You did not take my threat seriously, Edward. “Now the world will know that you chose to hide your sortileges from us,” she said, yanking the new edition of the school’s newspapers from the press. Thief King’s clumsiest scowl stamped the colorful front page. "It is an act of fate that you smiled for the camera," she said, frowning at his image.

Once released, that picture could lead the Cubs directly to St. Michael’s High.

Tables for the Table Gods:

Spoiler: Spoiler

Edward's Stat Cards:

Edward (Thief King Mode)'s Stat Card: