Taylor Hebert Dungeon Girl Part 6 (Patreon)

Carol glanced up from a contract she was reviewing as Amy walked into the living room carrying what looked suspiciously like a treasure chest. “How did the testing go?”

Amy carefully set the chest down. “Better than I was expecting but not as well as we’d hoped.”

“Meaning?”

“Her healing elixirs only repair injuries, they won’t regenerate limbs or correct badly healed injuries. She has elixirs that cure poisons or diseases as long as the diseases aren’t genetic.”

“That’s still rather impressive. Prohibitively expensive?”

“Not particularly, she’ll probably charge between 25 to 50 dollars per healing elixir, maybe more for the cure disease potions, it’s harder to make.”

Carol stared in surprise as she tried to wrap her head around tinkertech healing serums being that cheap. Most of the versions she’d seen available were expensive, temperamental as hell and came with a decent number of side effects. “That’s a lot cheaper than I was expecting, side effects?”

“Not that I’ve seen.” Amy took a breath then let it out. ‘Worst she can do is scream.’ She stood up a touch straighter. “I’m looking forward to being able to cut back at the hospital, only deal with the stuff that her potions can’t.”

“Weekends?” Carol was a bit surprised that Amy wanted to spend less time at the hospital.

“Probably a couple hours in the mornings and maybe a few hours Wednesday for the cases that can’t wait.”

“That sounds reasonable, they have your cell number if there is an emergency dosing people that the elixirs can’t handle.”

Amy was more than a little surprised that Carol hadn’t made a snide comment or insinuated that she was shirking her responsibilities. “Thanks for understanding, I’ve been feeling a bit burned out.”

Carol studied Amy’s face, she looked a bit worn out though happier than she remembered her looking. “How was dinner?”

“A lot of fun,” Amy admitted.

“I’m glad.” Carol glanced down at the treasure chest Amy had brought home. “I’ve got to ask, what’s with the treasure chest?”

“I needed a place to stick some of my extra clothes.”

“Why a treasure chest?”

“It was free and looks neat.”

“It does look well crafted.” Carol went back to reading the contract she needed to finish looking over for tomorrow.

Amy picked up the chest and headed up to her room, glad that Carol hadn’t grilled her about where she’d been or anything, it was a bit strange but she’d take it. ‘At least she didn’t freak out about me wanting to cut my hours.’ She set the chest next to her bed against the wall then walked back out of her room, into the bathroom and over to the sink. She studied her reflection in the mirror then adjusted her jester’s cap.

Victoria poked her head into the bathroom. “How was your date?”

Amy turned to look at her sister. “It wasn’t a date, I was just having dinner with Alchemist.”

“Fine, don’t tell me. Did you at least have fun?” Victoria asked with amusement.

“It was productive, I got a new hat.”

Victoria grinned as she looked at her sister’s hat. It wasn’t something she’d wear but it was nice to see her sister lighten up a bit. “It looks good.”

“Thanks, when did you get back from patrolling?”

“Half an hour ago, I’ve been working on homework to calm down from having a crackhead try to vomit on me. I mean seriously, I didn’t even hit him that hard.”

Amy raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

“Really, guy just folded, not my fault he couldn’t take a hit.”

“Right, weren’t you supposed to get that done before your patrol?”

“It’s not due until Tuesday,” Victoria defended herself.

“Point.” Amy yawned. “I should get some sleep.”

“You look a bit tired.”

“I think my lack of sleep is catching up with me.”

“Probably. See you in the morning.” Victoria smiled as she headed back to her room to get some more work done on her homework.

“Sure.” Amy headed into her room, shut the door then walked over to her bed, flopped down and opened her new Tailoring menu. ‘Bullshit trumps. I’m going to need to grab some rolls of fabric, maybe I can have Alchemist buy them. Ah well, something to worry about later.’

0o0o0 

Principal Blackwell looked up as a man opened her door. “What do you think you’re doing?”

The man smiled coldly. “Your assistant told me to go right in. I’m here on behalf of Taylor Hebert.”

Blackwell scowled at the man dressed in a rather impressive black suit. “You’re not her father.”

“No, my name is Franklin Giovanni, I’m her lawyer. I’d like a word.”

”You’re wasting your time, your client is a troublemaker.”

“I’ve already filed for a subpoena of all the video records from the school cameras; if any of the video is destroyed before my clients and I have went through it with a fine toothed comb there will be charges filed,” Franklin replied with a smile that could have done justice to a great white shark.

“A simple case of bullying.”

“So you say; the judge signed off on the subpoena and if you don’t turn over the video I can always ask the police to come acquire it, a civil suit is already in the works so it would be easier for you if you cooperate.” 

“I’ll have to have the school’s lawyers look things over.”

“You do that,” Franklin replied and handed her the document from his briefcase, “this is your copy of the subpoena; by the way my client will not be returning and asked me to retrieve her files.” 

“I’ll have someone get right on it.”

He raised an eyebrow at the bold faced lie. ”I’m surprised, maybe it’s ego or hubris but I thought my name would ring a bell considering how I make my living.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I make my living suing assholes like you and it’s a very good living. You will have her transcripts by the end of the day or I will make it my personal mission to make sure you never work again rather than just never work in education.”

Blackwell screamed, “Get out!”

“I’m going to enjoy this.” Franklin smiled as he turned and left the office, having already stopped by the tech office and grabbed a copy of the video. He was rather interested to see what portion of the video would actually match the videos Blackwell turned over. Some people at that school valued their jobs and staying out of prison a lot more than that woman did. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and called his assistant as he left the school.

“Hey Boss, what’s up?” his assistant asked.

“I need you to do some leg work, call your friend Tommy in Brockton Bay and ask if there has been any weird police reports about Winslow High School for the last year or so. Specifically the last couple of weeks, the principal is being a stubborn bitch about something that scares her more than I do. Call it professional pride but that’s just weird.”

“On it, are you going to cover the bribes?”

“They’re not bribes, it’s lunch, get it straight. Get some nice flowers for his wife too and yes, I’ll cover it.”

“On it, anything else?”

“Tell Jim that I have some footage for him to look over. I’m going to text you a date, look for anything involving an Alan or Emma Barnes for a couple of weeks surrounding that date.”

“Any particular reason?”

“Just tell me what you find.”

“On, it,” his assistant replied. 

“I’ll call if I need something else.” Franklin ended the call then headed toward his car. He needed to talk to an old friend at Arcadia about getting Taylor transferred.

0o0o0

Taylor dropped her empty bowl in the kitchen sink then walked back into the living room and flopped down on the couch. It felt a bit weird knowing that she’d never have to go back to Winslow. It had been a bit of a shock to get back from running the tailoring dungeon a couple of times to find her father and ‘uncle’ Giovanni discussing Emma’s bullying campaign in the living room. She hadn’t really enjoyed dredging everything up a second time but Frank had promised to deal with the problem and he’d never broken a promise that she knew about. 

Of course, getting up in the morning and realizing that she didn’t have school had been a bit weird. She had a feeling her freetime wouldn’t last as Frank was going to try to get her into Arcadia but she wasn’t sure how long that would take. She glanced at the television she was using as background noise then opened her crafting menu and looked over her options for building focusing crystals. “No clue what that is, no clue, no clue… hey alum. Quartz, okay, I’m going to have to hit a store.” She glanced at the broom closet. “I wonder.”

Taylor bounced to her feet then walked over to the broom closet and grabbed the handle. “I need a shop that sells rocks.” She concentrated on what she needed then opened the door and smiled as she saw something that looked like the inside of a shop. She glanced at the blue translucent film that covered the doorway. “At least it’s not red.”

She quickly equipped her armor then stepped into the dungeon. She looked around the abandoned shop she found herself in. The shelves looked more than a little dusty, worn and more importantly empty. She shivered as she heard a sound from the back of the shop that sounded a lot like claws scraping on wood. ‘Great.’

Taylor drew her sword then carefully snuck back toward the backroom. She jumped backwards in surprise and slashed with her sword as a large rat the size of a rottweiler jumped out at her from the darkness. She hit the rat with her left bracer to knock it out of the air then slashed it with her sword until it died and dropped a creepy rat tail, a chunk of charred hide and a small piece of quartz. ‘I’m getting way too used to this crap.’ She reached down and picked up the quartz and rat parts. She glanced at the popups. ‘Alchemy and part of a focusing crystal… oh, that’s what what skeever hide is. Eww, cure disease potions take rat hide.’

She felt a little green as she dropped the stuff into her ingredients bag. ‘I guess it sort of makes sense, they’re nasty critters or maybe it’s because they use them as lab rats.’ She frowned as she heard chittering sounds coming from the walls and various shadowy areas. ‘Right, rats of unusual size, at least I’ll have plenty of cure disease potions.’ She pulled her staff off her back with her off hand then carefully worked her way through the maze of shelves, stopping every couple of feet to blast any shadowy areas that looked overly suspicious, which was pretty much all of them. 

Fifteen minutes later she’d managed to make it to the back room after killing a ‘small’ army of rats only to see a black bear sized rat with a crown on its head. ‘I wonder if I can keep the crown.’ She unleashed lightning on the giant rat then frowned as the lightning washed over it to no effect as it charged her. “Shit!”

Taylor slashed at the rat with her silver sword while trying to fend it off as best she could with her staff at least until the damned thing tried to grab her staff. After that she mostly just tried to hack it apart as enthusiastically as she could. Thankfully her armor was up to the task of stopping the creature’s claws because each hit still felt like a baseball bat. She slipped the staff into her pocket and pulled out a healing potion as she continued to slash at the vicious rat. She took the opportunity to drink her potion after her slash to its nose caused it to back up a second. She resisted the urge to sigh in relief as the healing potion fixed her bruises as she continued to slash at the annoying boss. She sighed in relief when the boss finally fell down and its crown tumbled from its head. She smiled as the boss turned into pixels leaving the silver crown, a scroll, a long femur with several small holes in it and a rat trophy behind.

“That was fun,” Taylor muttered sarcastically as she glanced at her forearm guard where the rat had damaged it. She picked up the crown and blinked. “Crown of Lightning Immunity… nice, ugly as hell but nice. I might have to give that to Kevin. Then again, it is lightning immunity. I might just have to loan it to him.”

She put the crown on then grabbed the scroll and looked at it. “Shop deed.” She blinked as it vanished. “That’s useful.” She picked up the trophy with the rat on top. “ROUS 23” She frowned as she mentally counted up the number of large rats she’d killed. “Might be 23 if I don’t count the countless small ones.” She put it in her pocket then picked up the bone and looked at the popup. “Unfinished bone flute. Huh… okay, that’s going to require more skills.” She put the femur in her pocket then looked around and smiled as she saw a treasure box under some other junk.

Her smile turned into a frown as she realized the damned box was locked. “Damn it. This is getting annoying.” She scowled as she started dragging the heavy box out of the shop. Thankfully she’d either killed all of the rats on the way in or the rat king dying had caused the other rats to stop spawning because she made it back out of the dungeon without any trouble from more rats. 

She set the treasure box down in the living room then walked back and closed the door to the dungeon. She focused on her new shop then opened the door and smiled slightly when the film across the dungeon was green. “That’s different.” She stepped into the shop and glanced around at the nearly empty shop then over at the shopkeeper. “Hello?”

The middle aged man in a red and yellow jester’s costume turned to look at Taylor. “We have an excellent selection of rocks today.”

Taylor glanced around the empty shelves then over at the closed back door then looked over at the single shelf selling various rocks. She sighed as she walked over to look at the selection. “Quartz… rock, large smashy rock, narrow rock, water skipping rock?”

The man smiled. “It’s guaranteed to skip at least a couple of times, provided you throw it properly.”

“Right… and the pet rock sitting in a small yellow puddle?”

The man shrugged. “It’s a pet rock, it’s not my job to take him for walks.”

Taylor opened her mouth to comment then closed it. “I’m guessing you can sell the quartz?” She glanced at the three books on the shelf. “And the books?”

“The geology book is 10 dollars, the completely worthless book about Elvis Presley is 50 and the book on making instruments isn’t for sale but I’ll challenge you to a contest for it.”

“Contest?” Taylor asked warily.

“Of course, may the best flute player win.”

“I haven’t played in awhile,” Taylor admitted.

The man smirked. “Excellent! Each challenge is normally ten gold but I’ll give you a discount on the first one because you’re out of practice.”

Taylor considered her options, on the one hand risking five gold coins in a contest she was fairly sure she wasn’t going to win seemed a bit silly, on the other hand she had plenty of gold and it would give her a better idea how much skill he had. She pulled five gold coins out of her pocket and set them on the table. “Let’s do this.”

The man smiled as he pulled two flutes out from under the counter and set them on the counter. “You can go first.”

Taylor picked up the dusty flute and wiped it off on her shirt then brought it to her lips and played Mary Had a Little Lamb to try to warm up before she did something more impressive.

The man snorted as he picked up the other flute. “Very impressive,” he replied sarcastically then continued before she could speak up about about her song being just practice, “Now listen to a real song.” He brought the flute to his lips and started playing Devil Went Down to Georgia like the devil himself... before he sputtered in the middle as a bug crawled out of the flute into his mouth. “That doesn’t count.”

Taylor cut in as she realized she would never beat him in a straight contest, “I finished mine, you didn’t, thus I win.”

He glared at her as he stood up straight and prepared to give her a trashing then winced as his back twitched painfully. “Damn it, if I was twenty years younger...” 

“It’s not like I could win fairly,” Taylor admitted.

“Of course not.” He smirked as he pulled two books out from under the counter and set them on the countertop. “Here, you need this more than I do.”

Taylor looked down at the books. One was about crafting musical instruments and the other was apparently playing them. “How to Play the Flute?”

“Yeah, you suck.”

Taylor briefly considered arguing the point then changed her mind, he sort of had a point, she could play a couple of really easy songs and that was about it, it had been her Mom’s thing, not hers. She grabbed the geology book and several large quartz chunks and set them on the table. “How much?”

“Twenty dollars.”

“Deal.” Taylor pulled a twenty out of her pocket and handed it to the man. 

The man smiled as he pocketed the twenty. “On that note, best of luck.”

Taylor blinked as the man walked around the counter then walked out the door. “Hey wait...” she trailed off as he vanished rather than appear in her living room. She grabbed the stuff she’d paid for and won then walked over to grab more quartz. She checked the various rocks then grabbed the rest of the quartz as the rocks weren’t useful. “Hopefully this helps with the focusing crystals.”

She walked out of the shop dungeon then closed the door. She opened the instrument crafting book and smiled as her crafting menu opened to a new tab. “Neat.” She opened the music book and smiled as a popup appeared. “Special Musical Songs unlocked. What the hell does that mean?” She blinked as an empty song window appeared. “Okay, that’s still less than helpful.” She smiled slightly as she looked at the experience bar that would hopefully help her learn to play instruments. “Or not.” She looked over the list then closed it with a thought.

She swapped back to her elemental pistol crafting menu and selected focusing crystal then selected the quartz and hit enter. She sort of zoned out as her hands pulled a piece of quartz out of her pocket and channeled mana into the crystal. She looked at the completed focusing crystal and the popup for it. “Cracked focusing crystal. Low damage, high probability of failure.” She smiled as she looked at the bar at the bottom of her crafting menu. “Upside, I got experience, downside, it’s shit.” She checked her mana level. “I should be able to make four more then I can work on the gun part of the pistol.” She figured some aluminum cans would work for the metal bits and some sticks for the wooden part of the gun without too much work. She smiled as she went to work making the focusing crystals. “At least I’m getting practice.” 

0o0o0

Taylor stared in shock at the fire aligned focusing crystal that she’d just gotten back from her salvage ability. She knew that tinkers were bullshit but ripping things apart shouldn’t give you better materials than what you put into it. She’d used aluminium cans for the metal bits and carved branches for the wooden part of the pistol. If she was being honest, her first elemental gun had looked like a toy that a six year old might have sneered at, which was sort of bad considering most of them were perfectly happy to use sticks as props. Still she might have kept it as a keepsake if it hadn’t had the unstable quality. “Weird.”

She carefully set the focusing crystal in on the dish rag she’d set on the end table so things wouldn’t roll off the table then grabbed her next ugly as hell elemental pistol and fed it to her salvage box. She frowned slightly as she got a warped focusing crystal and a wooden handle that looked better than what she started with. “I guess there’s a minimum level of quality for the parts that come back.” She set the focusing crystal on the rag as far from the decent crystal as she could then set the wooden stock on the table and picked up her next poorly crafted elemental pistol. She was just about to toss it in her salvage box when the door opened revealing her father. “Hey Dad.”

Danny walked into the living room then shut the door behind him. He glanced at the decent collection of rather crappy knock-off flintlock pistols then over at some of the cut up aluminum cans and bits of wood scattered over the table. “Do I want to know?”

Taylor sighed. “I’ve been working on building elemental pistols, I’m not the best at it.”

“I’m fairly sure that starting with actual pipe would help,” Danny replied as he took off his coat and hung it up on the coat rack.

“Yeah, I didn’t have any.”

“I’ve got most of an hour left for lunch, do you want me to take you downtown?” Danny asked with amusement as he headed into the kitchen to grab some leftovers to zap in the microwave.

“Considering I have a chest I need to open, that would help. It would also give me a chance to pick up a few boards for the wooden pieces rather than using sticks.”

“Sticks?” Danny muttered as he stuck the plate of pizza into the microwave and hit the thirty second button. He had a sinking feeling he’d sleep better at night if he didn’t ask how dangerous her project was but he forced himself anyways, “How dangerous is it to make one of the pistols?”

“Making them doesn’t seem to be a problem though I wouldn’t want to fire most of them without decent elemental resistance and some armor.”

“That bad?” Danny asked as he grabbed a fork from the silverware drawer.

“I don’t really trust anything that can be described as unstable, twitchy, or will explode on a critical failure.”

Danny twitched. “They can explode?”

“Pretty sure the crappy ones that mention it as a problem can. Don’t worry, my power should warn me if it’s a reasonable possibility.”

“That doesn’t fill me with confidence.” Danny waited for the microwave to beep then opened the door and grabbed his pizza. Normally he would have just taken it to work or grabbed something at work but he’d wanted the excuse to check on Taylor and it hadn’t been all that busy.

Taylor tossed the pistol into the salvage bin and hit accept. She scowled slightly as she got a crappy barrel and stock for parts. “Damn it, no focusing crystal.”

Danny walked back into the living room and sat down in his chair. “What do you mean?”

“I have a salvage option which gives me back some of the material used to create things. The crystals are the most annoying bits to make so when I don’t get them back it sucks.”

“What does it take to make them?” Danny started working on eating his slice of pizza.

“Mana and crystals or various chemicals I don’t have. I wouldn’t mind buying some supplies from the hardware store at some point but I’m more concerned about unlocking the chest I found.”

“Oh?” He took another bite of his pizza.

“I found it in the back of a shop dungeon after beating up a giant rat. I’m hoping it has something useful in it.”

“Giant rat?” He shook his head, even with powers women never changed, he recalled the ‘giant’ spider she’d called him into the bathroom to deal with just last week. “Never mind, I can drop you off at Randal’s shop if you want, it’s on the way and I’m sure Randal will let you leave the chest at the shop.”

“I guess I can always find more.” Taylor scrapped another pistol and smiled as she got a cold aligned focusing crystal and a basic wooden pistol stock. 

Danny finished his last bite of pizza. “Anything good?”

“A cold aligned focusing crystal and a basic pistol stock. Which means that I might be able to put together a halfway decent pistol once I hit rank 3.”

“If he’s there, great, if not, I should have enough time to drop you off at the hardware store, you can ride the bus home.”

“That works,” Taylor agreed as she tidied up her table and stashed the various elemental pistol parts in her ingredients bag while her dad headed to the kitchen to put his plate in the sink.