Twenty-One: Generic Witty Title

Yeah… so Bawkman’s buddy wasn’t really a buddy per se and the training room wasn’t a room exactly, but I’ll get to the room part later. Now, it might come as a bit of a surprise, but Len Bawkman is a seedy character. This friend of his was not excited to see him. Like, at all. My best guess? Our esteemed Public Defender owed the poor gal a considerable amount of credits and had turned up empty-handed.

It wasn’t the first time judging by the way the octopus-fish woman bumbled and warbled inside the water filled dome she wore around an undulating head that made Peyton Manning’s look like it would fit in a normal sized helmet.

Was I sure he owed her money? No, you can never be sure.

But I’d take that bet any day of the week.

The milestone I got for meeting my first space cephalopod was too generic to remember. Though I found it interesting that when I scanned her, it listed her species as a Squaartblaat and the number of tentacles as variable. From Dumbass’s PowerPoint, I knew the Squaartblaats mediated the galaxy’s biggest ever divorce and the worldly custody arrangement that kept the peace between the Gallics and the Dinosaurs for so long. What didn’t make sense is why this thing was here. Dumbass’s presentation had gone out of its way to point out how the Squaartblaats just wanted to be left alone to worship that fungus, gootkap.

But that was at the bottom of my list of things that didn’t make sense.

Near the top was the fact the fish bowl-like helmet garbled everything so bad my translator chip couldn’t make heads or tails of what was being said—the sloshing every time she moved in her air suit certainly didn’t help, but the animated way the space squid held out one of her six and seven eights tentacles in her best Mona-Lisa Saperstein impression told me everything I needed to know.

Len Bawkman, former Sergeant Adjudicator and my guide through the suck, was her sugar daddy. Just joking, he was a piece of shit. He even sounded like a piece of shit when he spoke to the alien.

“Oh, give it a rest, Thulg!” Bawkman shook his head. “You know I paid you back for that three cycles ago! You’re losing it in your old age. Can’t even hold a sixteenth of a tentacle length anymore.”

"Glug glub glub gug glub!" Thulg blew out in a string of bubbles, then she held out a tentacle and pointed at it with another one. It may have changed length. I couldn’t really tell. Or care.

Bawkman laughed. “And now you’re just proving my point! You can call that fourteen sixteenths of a tentacle all you want. It’s the same damn length.”

"Gug glug gub gub!" Thulg bubbled again.

“Well, of course I know your people don’t reduce fractions! But that’s your species’ problem not mine!” Some motor in Bawkman’s chest whirred, and his eye shifted colors from red to blue, no doubt in an attempt to placate his creditor. “Listen, Thulg, I’m gonna play it straight with you because we go so far back, alright?”

"Gub glug?" Thulg adjusted the number of her tentacles. She had somewhere north of nine and south of eight now, best that I could tell. "Glug gub bub glug bub gug glug!"

“Yeah... now that I think about it… it may have your damn brother I paid back. But listen, that's not important. What is important is that I need a bloody favor...”

The Squaartblaat erupted into a flurry of burbles and tentacle waving that genuinely made me concerned for my safety. After a few more placating words from Bawkman, the pair settled into a simple old fashioned argument, the kind where you were fairly certain murder wasn’t on the menu but the passion was at a high enough level you couldn’t rule it out.

I decided that was as good of a time as any to pop a squat, take a load off, and open my latest loot cache. I really, really, needed something to heal my poison before I even thought about setting foot into one of those temples. I had never played any of the Zelda games personally, but thanks to the Twitch streams Dumbass had somehow found space for, I knew those temples could be maddeningly difficult, enough to induce a sudden bout of controller throwing disease.

Especially the water temples. Good thing I didn’t have to tackle one of those. Earth, wind, and fire, baby!

I pulled the cache out of my inventory, flipped open the latches and lifted the lid a hair. A golden glow spilled out, lighting up the ground like a modified car that was somehow both fast and furious. The reminder of that glorious disaster of a series and the overuse of ground effects that came with it caused a whole series of family related memes to flash before my eyes. I chuckled at first, then—

“So… you gonna, like, open it or what?” Dumbass snapped from my shoulder.

“I’m literally in the process of opening it. Quit being such a dumbass, Dumbass.” I snorted and lifted the lid the rest of the way. And, yet again, I did not find the one thing that I was looking for. Instead, I got another—yay!—half dozen bags of chicken feed, a small earring, and a ducking brick. Literally a brick. A square stone with a surface like fine grit sandpaper. I picked it up and felt the weight. I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe for it to be super heavy or unbelievable light or something, but it just felt like a normal brick. Until I flipped it over and realized that one side was a little rougher than the other.

I scanned it.

Gallic Galactic Conquest General Issue Whetstone

For an Earthmanduck, sharpening a bone spur may seem a little stupid. And if we were talking about that sorry excuse for a yard bird you lot call a chicken you’d be right. But we’re talking about space chickens here. Like their Earthbound cousins, the Gallics are a great source of iron, so much so that it accumulates in the keratin around their spur forming an otherworldly alloy the give the things a natural, hair-splitting edge. Yet, like any knife you use too much, it will get dull. That’s why every soldier in the Galactic Galactic Conquest is issued a good old fashion whetstone like grandpa used to keep in the junk drawer.

Sharpening an edged weapon with this whetstone grants the blade the Razor’s Edge buff for twenty-four hours. When combined with the engraving of a rune like Diamond Tip, a blade can cut though practically anything while Razor’s Edge is active. Except for maybe a Curculian exoskelton. Those things are tough, lemme tell you...

“Great ducking pull chickenshit!” snapped Bawkman as he approached. “That’ll come in handy for that stolen combat spur of yours.” He clicked his beak nervously a few times. “By the way, you mind if I take a look at it?”

I shrugged and handed it to him. “Sure, have at it. Did you and… your girlfriend get your problems sorted?”

“Huh?” he said as he ran his real fingers over the runes on the spur. “Oh yeah. Thulg finally admitted she was wrong… or something in the bloody neighborhood of that. My Squaartblaat is a little rusty and the liquid ethane inside her suit does a number on translator chips. But she said we can use her training room, only have to help out a little around the yard first.”

I rolled my eyes. Bawkman was certainly proving to be the terrible defender the simulation promised, but he was better than nothing. I nodded my head towards the implant. “The simulation said something about runes when I examined the whetstone. Is that what those are?”

Bawkman blinked. “You are a right proper genius, chickenshit. Of course they’re ducking runes!”

“They… do anything?”

“These? No. Not these.” The corner of his beak tilted ever slightly upward. “These are family markings. The lineage of the owner. There’s a, um, well, there’s a few runes here that I haven’t seen in a long time. Old... family friends.” He handed it back to me. “You should make your mark on it. It’s yours now. It’s the Gallic way.”

"I ain't no dogdamn chicken. I'm a duck!" I snatched it back. “And the only rune I’m interested in adding to this is Diamond Tip. Where the hell do I find it?”

"You're kind of asshole, you know that?"

"Yeah? Well, so are you."

"Got me there, mate." He blew out a long whistle. “And that’s a toughie. Low chance loot cache drop from a close combat class quadrant boss, which is a rare instance in and of itself. I wouldn’t set my bloody heart on it, chickenshit. Odds are you wont make it that far.”

“Gee,” Dumbass remarked. “We really appreciate the vote of confidence. We're trying to get more Firefly, here!”

"Fat chance of that, whatever it is." Bawkman raised his hands. “And just playing it straight is all. This ain’t my first rodeo—hey! What are you doing with that bloody spur?!”

“Don't get your knickers in a twist, Bawkman!” My words came out all muffled as I raked my saw bill across the spur, grinding a deep furrow into the bone. “Just adding my own rune, is all. You said to make it my own. I figured I’d add one mark for every chicken I killed with this thing.” I spit out the dust and held it up. “See? That one's for Drok!”

New Milestone: Custom Rune!

Look at you racking up the customization points! You have created a custom rune. This one grants you a 5% damage bonus against Gallics. And for each and every additional mark you add, you will gain an additional .25%. Don’t worry, this isn’t a game breaker. The bonus at capped at 10%, so every chicken you kill above the twenty needed for the maximum bonus is just for sheer ducking satisfaction. The marks will still show up on your spur, though. Because hey, who doesn’t love a kill count?

That sounded useful. Very useful. I eyeballed Bawkman for a moment. It almost seemed worth it to take a swipe at him for the added bonus, no matter how meager it would be. I wondered if he could see my notification and milestones.

That question was answered when he turned his head and locked eyes with me. “Don’t even think about it, chickenshit. It would be over before you even brought that ugly wing forward. Plus,” he smiled, “you aren’t likely to run into another Gallic until you hit the arenas up top. We’re the ones running the show, remember?”

I pointed up to our holocam drone. “I think you mean they’re the ones running the show, don’t you? You?” I scoffed. “You seem to have worn out your welcome. You’re a has been if I’ve ever seen one. Like Eddie ducking Valiant!"

"Yeah," Dumbass agreed. "Only you don’t have Roger Rabbit there to pull you out of the gutter.”

He stepped forward, rage in his eyes. “I don’t know who the hell this Valiant bird is, but you sound like you’re fishin’ for a damn fight, chickenshit!”

I pushed back. “Yeah, well maybe I—”

“Excuse,” said Weevul holding up a claw. Nestled firmly on the point was the little earring I had pulled from my loot cache. “What this?”

“That’s an earring, buddy,” I said. "Hold on to it for—"

“The duck it is!” said Bawkman as he snatched it away and brought it up to his cybernetic eye. “This is… Heroin Bob’s Ring of Strength. This is another great ducking pull, chickenshit. Damn thing will add five whole points to your strength stat. What’s your strength now that we’re on the subject?”

I ignored him. “Heroin Bob, Dumbass? Really? Why?”

Bawkman grunted, "I asked you a bloody question."

Dumbass bobbed its head. “I dunno… because he was afraid of needles and that ring didn’t come with one, I guess? You know, for piercing?”

“Duck Dumbass! What the hell does that have to do with the damn ring?!”

"Oh, it has plenty to do with it, chickenshit!" Bawkman growled. "And you're gonna find out after I teach you a little respect."