XII – There are things that Money cannot buy. So bring some Bitcoins… (Part 3)

- / Glitch - /

“How long you will hide from me, Edward Williams?” asked Sammy, crestfallen. She frowned upon the image of Thief King Edward as she approached the building where he lived. The night was of New Moon and the streets were dark. The yellow light of Chicago’s poles was her only guidance. “You have a new package, Eddy,” she said, leaving a black box in his apartment’s mail. “You either come meet me or goes to meet the police—”

GEO’s voice crawled out of the darkness. “You play with danger, little girl,” he said, not revealing himself.

She yanked a picture of a Sprite from her vests. “Who is talking?” asked Sammy, jolting her head left and right.

“I just desire to talk,” replied GEO. “You might not know, but what you have in your possession—that camera—, has a glitched item in it. These are dangerous objects, fathers to as many legends of fortune as they are of tragedies. I am a Glitcher, I can help you.”

“I don’t fear the unknown.”

“You should, for you are a child. I want to know who gave that camera to you. Don’t be concerned about revealing their identity—that person is not your friend.”

“I-I’m fine on my own. Your concern is not welcome!”

“Who is the purple-eyed man in that picture that you were holding?”

“The man whose fate is bound to clash with mine.”

GEO smirked. “So you are blackmailing him?” he asked.

Sammy snorted, “That is not of your concern!”

She ripped the animated picture of a Sprite in half.

“Luminous Wisp” LV3 Sprite

A creature in the shape of a bright flame with a baby face sprung off the picture. The entity closed its eyes and its fires brightened, revealing all the surroundings as if the neighborhood basked in the Sun of nine o’clock.

Sammy snarled, “So you brought a friend.”

The light revealed that GEO faced the girl from across the street while a mobster of the Cubs stood on the same sidewalk as if he expected her to run away.

The man wearing the bandana of the Cubs fell on his backs, trembling. “W-What the hell is going on? Why is everything bright?”

GEO frowned nonchalantly. He narrowed his eyes at Sammy and suspired. “I was hoping that we would join forces,” he said, yanking his sunglasses from his eyes. “But it seems that there is no other option.”

The Glitcher yanked his sunglasses from the face and a blinding bright light flashed. Sammy covered her face to protect herself from the flash, yet the reality was not the same as her eyes opened the second time.

“Where am I? What is going on?” she asked, opening her eyes. She stood in the hallway of a dark castle alongside her Wisp Sprite. Two Moons hovered like chandeliers near the ceiling. Piles of gold rose like hills and blocked her sights. “What is this place?”

“In a cave to where there is no entrance,” replied GEO. His eyes glowed white. “This dungeon may be inside your wardrobe, in the middle of the sea, or in the entrails of a whale—we’ll never know. It was generated alongside our reality, but the means to reach it were lost. A few parts of reality, however, still work as if this place existed. Those parts are glitches.”

“Open Sesame?” she asked, looking around. Piles of gold, microchips and hard drives stretched as far as her eyes could see. The cave seemed endless. “I feel like I’m on an alien planet,” she remarked.

“For a tiny ant that cannot climb, the top of a table would also seem alien,” he explained. “This is but how it looks like when a real Glitcher is in control of a Glitched Item. Don’t force me to go beyond this”—he outstretched his right hand—“tell me what you know of Thief Queen.”

Sammy frowned. She yanked two other photos of Sprites from her album and ripped them in half. Two wolves as silvery as a Full Moon materialized:

“F-Wolf” LV3 Sprite

“It’s not over yet,” she remarked, smirking.

The mouth of one her F-Wolves widened. The creature devoured its partner, and then it proceeded to swallow the Luminous Wisp. The wolf’s body enlarged and the Sprite became a man-sized wolf with fiery fur and red eyes.

“The Midday Werewolf” LV6 Sprite

“What’s your answer, Glitcher?” asked Sammy, raising her camera so that she could see the monster as it readied itself to attack. “Can you even see evil spirits that roam our world?”

“These Sprites”—he corrected her—”are not Pokémon for bored teenagers.”

“Attack!” she ordered.

The Midday Werewolf rushed at GEO. The entity’s body was so warm that its fur caught on fire. The creature trampled and razed the ground where it walked, leaving nothing but ashes behind.

The Glitcher’s white eyes widened and reality moved once again.

“What?” faltered Sammy, recoiling. The girl, GEO and the Sprite moved to the insides of a flooded Greek acropolis. Water was as high as the girl’s waist.

Yet the entity continued its attack.

The Glitcher narrowed his eyes at the approaching monster, nonchalant. “There is always a bigger fish”, he said.

The ground ripped open. A tentacle sprung out of the floor of the Acropolis, wrapped itself around the Midday Werewolf’s waist and pulled the creature to the depths.

Sammy’s eyes widened and took long to shrink. She was catatonic, incapable of believing what she saw. “T-T-That was—”

She struggled to speak, bewildered.

GEO smirked at her reaction. They returned to Chicago and he wore his sunglasses again. The man narrowed his eyes at her and continued his threats, “We can either indulge in this nonsense, going through your entire album of trapped Sprites, or—”

“—so cool!”

“What?”

“Please, mister, make me a Glitcher!” she said, grasping his shoulders without any fear. “I want to see those dungeons again and photograph them all! That is my calling!”

“You are serious, teenager?”

“There is nothing that I’d like more! You don’t understand, mister”—tears filled her eyelids—“The stars have given me a mission. This meeting was not an act of chance.”

GEO heaved a loud sigh, reluctant. “I can make you a Glitcher,” he conceded, crouching and yanking a photo from Thief King Edward from the ground. “All you must do is to take him to me.”

“Now that I have a strong why. All I need is one photo,” she said, activating the zoom function of her camera.

“What are you up to?” asked GEO.

Sammy turned around and eyed him. “Step aside,” she told the gangster.

GEO opened the way and the girl aimed her camera’s lenses towards Adela’s apartment. Edward's innocent neighbor sat down on her pink bed and did homework, unsuspicious.

“Say cheese,” rustled Sammy as she took the picture and printed the image. The girl yanked a marker from her vests and smudged Adela’s picture with a blurry message for Edward, “Judy Park, Hughes Road, 222. Come, Edward. I do not want to hurt her.”

“This is not the first time you blackmail him?”

Sammy swung her head left and right.

“What makes you sure that this work?”

Sammy replied with a malicious smile on her face, “I did not want to use her out of a sense of decency. But I must see those places again”—she wrapped the photo in a package and deposited into Edward’s mailbox—”it’s Adela. I have no doubt that Edward will come.”

Tables for the Table Gods:

Spoiler: Spoiler

Edward's Stat Cards:

Edward (Thief King Mode)'s Stat Card: