X – RE: Expository Dialogue

Previously on ‘Glitch’:

Edward managed to exploit a Glitch called the ISG (Infinite Swing Glitch) and defeated one of the Sprites that was searching for him! However, he dislocated his arm and had to flee! No baseball for a while, I guess.

Fortunately (and unfortunately) for him, the Sprites are not a threat anymore: Sammy, a mysterious classmate who can see the entities through the lenses of her strange camera, was there. Fortunately, because she photographed the entities and imprisoned them in a photo; unfortunately because the girl photographed his transformation into Thief King Edward and desires to blackmail him for unknown reasons.

What will happen if that photo leaks? Will GEO and the Cubs find Thief Queen Elizabeth and Edward? Let’s see!

-| Glitch - |

“I’m so happy it is Saturday!” said Edward as he threw himself on his bed. A beacon of light slithered through the breach of his window and lightened his bed. He basked in the Sun and stretched out his still moving arm—he dislocated the other while exploiting the ISG.

“Any plans for today?” asked Thief Queen Elizabeth, still trapped inside his mind. “I mean, plans besides getting professional help?”

“Getting my phone back, apologizing to Karina for not playing baseball with her yesterday, phone calling my father to see how he’s been doing in the physical therapy, hunt the Sprites…”

“Why not ask Adela out?”

Edward rolled his eyes, as he desired to avoid that question. “You saw what I had to do yesterday, Elizabeth. I told Adela to go home with Brad so the Sprites would not harm her. I must have looked like an idiot.”

“Yes, you did. She’d find it noble if you explained her the real reasons—”

“What there were evil frogs trying to erase me?”

“I said she’d find it noble, not that she’d believe it.”

The boy faltered. “Wait, why are you asking about my plans?”

“I want to borrow your body for a while. There is something I want to try,” she referred to the Heart in a Vat.

“Alright,” he replied, closing his eyes. “Please don’t get dirty, I just took a shower.”

“I saw it.”

The boy recoiled. “Wait, did you see it all—”

He turned into Thief King Edward.

The purple-eyed man lifted himself off the bed, brushed the hair with a hand and looked at his reflection in the bedroom’s window. “Pathetic,” he remarked as he yanked the Heart in a Vat from a shelf. Only one of his arms was functional. “What affects toothpick seems to hurt me as well. This will be a painful existence.”

“Hey, I’m listening to all you are saying!” replied Edward, speaking as a figment of the man’s mind.

“I know,” replied Thief King, smirking. He squeezed the Heart in a Vat and leaned forward to see the relic from closer. “Do you have a microscope?”

“No.”

“An anvil?”

“I don’t think so;”

“A chemical lab, maybe?”

“Why would I have any of these things?”

Thief King snorted, “What do you have? Besides wasteful concrete books and lying textbooks?”

“I have a computer, but—”

“A computer, of course”—he recoiled—“I can access the G-Channel.”

“—mom doesn’t allow me to use the PC, remember? Also, what is the G-Channel?”

“Social network for Glitchers. We access it through a glitch to keep normals out.”

“Does that work?”

“No. Normals find a way to ruin everything. Tell me where that computer is, I must disassemble it and check part by part.”

“Why? It works!”

“To guarantee privacy—”

Thief King heard the sound of steps on the apartment’s floor. He turned back into Edward as the bedroom’s doors banged open.

“Eddy, we must talk,” said Joy, his mother, who had forgotten to take her raincoat off. She entered the room with an empty gallon of disinfectants in hand. “Did you empty this?” she asked, jerking the disinfectants left and right.

The boy frowned. He mumbled, “I-I was late for school and nothing was working—”

“Wake up earlier, then. Do you have any idea how expensive that is? You think my money is grass? Also, have you been telling Hermione she doesn’t need to take a shower? I called Sally’s mom and she said that Hermione looked like she was homeless yesterday. She looked ugly and everyone noticed. You have no idea how hard it is to run a house and a family…” Joy ranted without stopping to breathe. She mentioned every single atom out of place in the apartment as a reason to be angry with Edward.

Elizabeth groaned in anger for having to hear the scolding. She was not Joy’s daughter and did not feel the need to tolerate her shouts. “Let me get this straight,” began Elizabeth, “you miss a test, dislocate an arm, destroy a year of a teacher’s salary in school property; your sister Hermione filled her hand with calluses and what makes your mom angry is that she is out of disinfectants? And that you did not tell her child to take a shower? Also, she is clearly on something.”

Edward’s eyes flashed purple. Numbers hovered over Joy’s head:

Elizabeth concluded, “I knew she was on something.”

Edward pulled his sights away. He had no will to face his mother as she ranted in a frenzy. He had heard the same speech many times before, no matter how much he attempted to be a perfect son. He was sure that he would not change in the millionth speech. The boy frowned and mumbled for only Elizabeth to hear, “Can you go over the theory of combat?”

“Wait, now?”

Joy, the boy’s mother, continued her rant:

“…it’s hard enough to spend all night up working and have that taken for granted. All my friends are up all night partying while I’m working because I have responsibilities…”

Edward answered Elizabeth’s question, apathetic, “I don’t see why not explain it now.”

“Are you sure?”

He nodded.

“Alright,” began Elizabeth, trying to ignore Joy’s rant. “From where do I start? You must know that every object in our reality has emergent attributes. I discovered a glitch called ‘Sesame’ that allows me to take a glimpse of the attributes that the Universe associates to each one of us when it calculates the outcome of a certain interaction, like a car crash. Knowing that data gives me the immediate insight of the most likely outcome of every situation. I, per example, never failed to predict the winner of an arm-wrestling competition.

There are countless attributes in every mob—how we call the objects of the Universe. Yet I choose five of them for their reliability in stressful situations like a potential conflict: Health Points, Reaction Time, Dislocation Capacity, Physical Strength and Five Senses.

The Five Senses are the ones that you learn at school. Since most humans don’t tend to have far better sight or hearing than their peers, I reserve myself to only detailing them when there is a sharp distinction in capacity. Like the one that being sleepy or having a sight disease may cause.

Physical Strength is measured by your average capacity of deadlifting. Very straight-forward, but you are so thin that I doubt you know what deadlifting is.

Reaction Time is an attribute that is better, the lower it is. It is how long you take to react to a certain situation. Some Glitchers, all modesty aside, can act so fast that they dodge bullets. Battles between experienced Glitchers tend to awe those who watch, even when the fighters know absolutely no martial arts. We just react so fast that fights almost look choreographed.

Dislocation Capacity is how fast you run. You’re surprisingly slow for a boy your age.

Health Points is how I foolishly called ‘enough pressure to instantly kill you’. I took this from video games when I looked for the minimum pressure that would be equivalent to 100% of someone’s health. I found that swimmers considered swimming beyond 400 feet underwater were enough to press their chest and kill them. So I decided to adopt the unit. It has been surprisingly reliable since health bars are not a property of matter.”

Elizabeth ended her explanations. Edward listened to his mother once again:

“…I don’t know what would make you happy. I don’t understand you, Edward. What is lacking so much in your life that you have this love for these things?” she glanced at the figures of Glitchers. “I’ve had it far worse when I was your age—”

Edward spoke back:

“Mom, please; this is not about you—”

“What? How can you say this…” The woman continued her ranting. She spoke so loud that Hermione walked into the room, wondering what happened.

Elizabeth buffed, “maybe I should just talk about progression systems while we are at it.”

“Be my guest,” replied Edward.

“There is no leveling up in the Universe, at least not for mobs. The only way to naturally improve attributes—the ones that can be improved—is by practicing them. Just like every athlete already does it.

Want to run faster? Run around the city occasionally.

Want to become stronger? Join a gym.

Want to improve your reaction time? Play fighting video games, join a photography stroll, join a music club. I don’t know.

Want to discover new glitches? Go to new places, do unorthodox things and they will appear. I’m not telling you to hit your head against a wall, yet the more things you try, the greater are the chances of finding new glitches in reality. Have some bloody common sense because you know well you are never living up to your fullest potent—”

Edward snapped:

“I’ll go buy a new bottle of disinfectants,” he said, standing up. He heard neither Elizabeth nor his mom. The voices mixed in his head and the resulting solution was exothermic.

Joy, his mother, recoiled as her son left the room. “You’ll do what now? I’m talking!” she protested.

The boy walked out the bedroom and yanked his red gymnastics jacket from a wall. “I’m going out. Want something?” he asked Hermione. He sighed in relief, noticing that she carried the drawing of a house instead of a murderous toad.

“You are gonna buy drugs, won’t you?” asked the girl as she scratched her chin, suspicious. “We had to write a text about drugs yesterday. I got an A writing about my brother who eats them. I even read it in front of the class—”

“Please, Hermione! I don’t do drugs!” he said as he wore his shoes and left the apartment.

The girl stuck her head out the door and watched him as he climbed down the stairs of the apartment building. She shouted, “that’s exactly what an agict”—how she referred to an addict—“would say!”

Edward did not slow down. He cherished the cold stinky air of Chicago like a soft breeze as if a boxer that leaves the ring and has a coach wave a dry towel on their face. He felt his body lighter—way lighter than it should.

Elizabeth spoke in his head, “Hey, toothpick. Did you bring the dough with you?”

“The dough?”

“Money.”

“Damn it,” he grunted, touching his clothes expecting to feel the shape of a wallet. “I didn’t bring money and there are no shops around here anymore. I’ll have to walk to Ms. Wilson’s. She generally accepts if I pay later.”

“Why not just go back and ask for money?”

“I don’t want to go back in there,” confessed the boy. “It’s so frustrating, you know? The only time that mom is not in a hurry to leave, she makes us wish she was working. Were your family like this too?”

“That is a talk I’m not willing to have.”

“Alright, I guess,” he resigned, glancing at the cracks and trash littering the floor of his apartment building. “I think this would all be better if we were rich and had a big house. There would be no need to fight over cleaning products. I could just stay home and relax.”

“That is a popular theory. Yet I always found that when there is a hole in the heart, the hole in the pocket is soon to rip open.”

“I still don’t know much about you. Were you rich yourself?

“You don’t imagine, Toothpick,” she remarked, chuckling.

Edward left the apartment and the landlord, an old man with a white beard, rose his voice as he saw the boy leaving, “Edward there is a package for you,” said the man, hiding behind steel bars.

“A package for me, Mr. Mouriarty?” asked Edward, approaching the man’s armored office.

“Yes, son. I also got surprised when you received something.”

“Is your daughter feeling okay today?” asked the boy as he yanked the package from a shelf.

“Erika is fine. She’s reacting well to the chemotherapy. The doctor says it is too early to be sure, but I think this is it and she will finally recover. Her birthday is coming soon”—he glanced at a pamphlet his daughter’s birthday party at the door—“ she doesn’t have any friends. Consider yourself invited—”

The boy’s eyes shined. “Really?” he asked the man.

“—if you bring soda.”

Elizabeth rose her voice, “Why is everyone a bloody jerk in this city?”

“Never mind,” replied Edward, laying the package on a table and unwrapping the contents. “I wonder if this is that is the One Piece cosplay that I ordered.”

“Wait, that series is still around?”

“It gets pretty good after episode three-thousand with the new arc,” remarked Edward as he yanked the contents from inside the package. “Wait, this is a”—he recoiled. He saw a picture of Thief King Edward alongside a photo of the toad Sprites that pursued him—“photo?”

A message slipped off the wraps. The boy crouched and squeezed his eyes to read the mandatary’s message. He read out loud, “I know your secret. If you don’t want anyone else to know, come alone. Judy Park, Hughes Road 222.”

Mr. Mouriarty smirked at the scene. “Worried, kid? You should. When I was your age, I remember getting a photo of myself sleeping. The thing is"--he grinned--"I lived alone. So watch yourself, son. There are some creepy people in this city.”

Tables for the Table Gods:

Spoiler: Spoiler

Edward's Stat Cards:

Edward (Thief King Mode)'s Stat Card: