Taylor Hebert Dungeon Girl Part 24 (Patreon)

Amy smiled as she sat down next to Taylor at the lunch table. “How’s your first day?”

Taylor glanced around the cafeteria warily. “I keep expecting people to start harassing me or have someone come in with a note that says there was a mistake and I have to go back to Winslow,” Taylor admitted softly.

Amy opened her sack lunch and pulled out her sandwich. “Worst case, you drop out and take the G.E.D.”

Taylor shook her head. “Is that supposed to be reassuring?”

“You’re trusting Amy to be reassuring?” Dennis asked as he sat down across from Amy and Taylor.

“Point,” Taylor agreed.

“Did you hear about the raid on the Merchants last night?” Chris asked as he sat down.

Amy snorted. “At length, Vicky couldn’t shut up about it.”

Dennis pulled his container of jello out of his bag. “I can’t really blame her, actual progress against the gangs is pretty rare.”

“Did they ever find Squealer?” Chris asked, trying not to appear too curious.

Amy finished chewing a bite of her sandwich. “Not that I know of.”

“Any sign of your crazy doppelganger?” Dennis asked with amusement.

“I had dinner with her last night. She had some things to take care of or she would have helped with the wounded.”

“Bad?” Chris asked softly.

“Not particularly, I stopped by the hospital afterwards. There weren’t any police or civilian fatalities which is about the best we could hope for.” Amy reached into her bag and pulled out one of the math books that Taylor had picked up in the Winslow dungeon. “Speaking of the best we can hope for, here.” She handed the book to Chris.

Chris raised an eyebrow as he looked at the basic math book. “How is this going to help?”

“Just open the cover in the bathroom or something when there aren’t so many people around,” Amy replied as she worked on opening her juice container.

Taylor glanced around, rather relieved that no one seemed to be paying their table that much attention which wasn’t too surprising as it was out of the way.

“Right, Dennis put you up to this didn’t he?” Chris asked as he opened the cover then blinked in surprise when a popup window appeared over the book asking if he wanted to learn math.

Dennis held his hands up. “I’m occasionally an ass but I’m not that much of an ass.”

Chris’s annoyance at them bringing up his issues turning to curiosity as he moved the book and the floating display didn’t move. “I don’t see any visible emitters.”

Amy whispered, “Just hit yes when you’re alone, I picked it up from a friend.”

Chris hit yes then blinked in surprise as the book vanished and he saw a small floating rectangle that was labeled ‘Math Skill’ with what looked suspiciously like an experience bar under it. “What the hell?”

“What part of alone did you miss?” Amy hissed as she glanced around, hoping no one had seen the book vanish as she really didn’t want people bugging her about magic books. ‘At least no one is staring or shouting or even pointing so we’re probably okay.’

Taylor sighed in relief as she realized that no one had noticed the light show or if they had they hadn’t been too disturbed by it. She took another bite of her sandwich rather than snap at Chris about something that she shouldn’t know about.

Chris winced as he realized the Director was going to read him the riot act for using untested tinkertech. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting that.”

“What just happened and where did you get a disappearing book?” Dennis asked in a whisper.

“From my evil half,” Amy replied, glad for once that she was an open cape.

“And you thought testing it on me was a good idea?” Chris asked warily as the box labeled math vanished.

“Do you know anyone else that can keep their mouth shut that has a problem with math?” she asked sarcastically.

Chris shifted uncomfortably. “I guess not. What does it do? It just said math on it.”

“It basically helps you learn math, at least in theory,” Amy admitted, happy that he’d gotten a math skill rather than a general academics skill from the book as it’d be easier to raise.

“How?” Chris asked, curious as nothing they’d tried had really helped with his dyscalculia. 

“I’m guessing nanobots,” Dennis suggested ‘helpfully’.

Chris shivered as he pictured a swarm of little robots crawling around inside his skull. “Don’t joke about that.”

Amy shrugged. “Magic or tinkertech bullshit would be my guess.”

“Worst case, your brain melts, right?” Dennis asked with amusement.

“Bastard,” Chris muttered then started eating his lunch, trying not to think about how much he was going to get yelled at by the Director.

Victoria walked over with her hot lunch and sat down next to Amy while Dean sat down next to Dennis. “What’s the what?”

Taylor spoke up, “We were discussing the rumors about your Merchant raid.”

“Ah that, I can’t tell you much other than New Wave worked with the police to arrest a number of gang members with outstanding warrants.”

Dean glanced around the table, wondering what people were hiding, he figured he’d ask Dennis later when there weren’t as many people around. “I’m proud of Vicky for helping clean up the city,” he said with a bright smile.

“I try.” Victoria replied smugly.

Taylor was just glad she could sort of fade into the background as Amy chatted with her friends. She was just hoping that Gothic and Kid Win weren’t getting into too much trouble at the garage sorting parts and playing in the Gummi Bear dungeon she’d left open.

0o0o0

“Now that you’ve spent all night surfing the net and proving that we’re not completely insane, any questions about Earth Bet?” Gothic asked as she dropped a handful of Gummi berries into her basket.

“I’m not sure where to start,” Kid Win admitted.

“At the beginning?” Gothic asked, glad that her world was fairly close to Earth Bet.

Kid Win shook his head. “You try waking up in a world where magic doesn’t exist and Merlin is a laughingstock rather than the most terrifying hero in existence.”

“I guess when you put it that, way, it is a bit weird,” Gothic admitted as she went back to picking berries.

“You think? So, ignoring my personal issues, does Neverland have a boyfriend?” he asked, hoping the answer was no.

“Wait, how is that more important than figuring out how the world works?” Gothic asked, with a grin.

“It’s not but I mean, have you seen her legs?” Kid Win asked with a grin.

“Oh, yeah,” she agreed enthusiastically. “Girlfriend here, I actually get to help her shave them.”

“Lucky,” he said with a sigh.

“I know it,” she agreed. “And no, she has no boyfriend,” Gothic assured him making him smile. “Doesn’t have a girlfriend either… yet.”

“Working on it?” he asked.

“Yep, but that shouldn’t matter to you,” she replied tugging at a stubborn berry.

“It doesn’t?” he asked confused.

“Of course not, the boyfriend position would still be up for grabs,” she assured him.

He stared at her stunned for a moment before saying, “You’re awesome.”

“I’m aware,” Gothic replied smugly.

0o0o0

James stepped into Danny’s office. “Vince said you wanted to see me.”

Danny looked up from his paperwork at the forty year old mechanic standing just inside the door of his office. “That depends, I need someone to sort a bunch of vehicle parts.”

“Wasn’t Mitch asking about work?” James asked, wondering why Danny was offering him the job when they had other members that needed it more.

“He was but he’s also got a mouth and can’t keep it shut,” Danny pointed out.

James was fairly sure everyone in the Union knew that about Mitch. “How much does it pay?”

“The foreman gets fifty an hour,” Danny replied as he grabbed the contract he’d written.

“Fifty? For sorting car parts?” James asked in surprise. “That seems suspiciously high for legal work, what’s the catch?”

Danny smiled. “Don’t worry, it’s legal. The prospective employer is a Tinker, they’d rather not call attention to their place of business or any strangeness involved in sorting the parts.”

“Ah, that makes more sense. I’m assuming they’re new?” 

“New enough,” Danny replied as he handed James the contract.

James glanced over the contract, relieved that he could hire help as long as they were trustworthy and kept their mouths shut. “It says no overtime but doesn’t say how long the job will take?”

“Probably a couple weeks.” He wasn’t sure how long it would take them to salvage everything in the yard but was guessing at least a week and a half judging by how much they’d managed to salvage the night before.

“In that case, I’ll take the job.” James figured he’d check the place out, look over what he had to do and go from there. He knew a couple of guys in the Union that wouldn’t have any problem keeping their mouths shut.

“Fill out the paperwork, then we can take a drive, it’s almost lunch.”

0o0o0

“Amy, wait up!” Chris called out as he ran over to where Amy and Taylor were walking down the sidewalk toward the bus stop.

Amy turned and smiled at Chris as he jogged over. “How was Math?”

“Fantastic and weird, I actually understand multiplication and division,” Chris replied enthusiastically.

“So if I asked what 57 divided by 3 was?” Taylor asked.

“Nineteen,” Chris rattled off smugly.

Amy blinked as she did the problem in her head and realized he was right. “How did you figure that out that quickly?”

“Easy, three times twenty is sixty and fifty seven is three less than that which means you need nineteen threes.” Chris shook his head. “It’s a bit weird… please tell me this is permanent.”

“As far as I know, the more problems you solve the better you’ll be…” Amy trailed off as Chris pulled her into a hug.

“Thank you!” Chris replied enthusiastically then let her go. “Ah, sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Amy answered reflexively then laughed as she realized it really was fine. “I’m just glad it helped.”

Chris blinked as he looked down at his watch and realized he needed to get a move on if he wanted to get to the PRT building in time for his shift. “I’ve got to get going but I wanted to say thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Any idea where your evil twin got the book?” Chris asked curious about the book that had already changed his life for the better.

“From another cape?” Amy shrugged. “I didn’t ask.”

‘I guess that’s honest from a certain point of view,’ Taylor thought to herself, trying not to laugh.

“Rats,” Chris muttered then smiled at Amy and Taylor. “Tell her I owe her one when you see her.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll let her know.” Amy smiled as she watched her friend turn and head in the general direction of the PRT building. “That worked out better than I was expecting.”

“I’m just glad it worked,” Taylor replied in a low voice as they continued walking toward the bus stop. “How much homework did you end up with?”

“Just some math problems and a bit of light reading for English, shouldn’t take more than an hour,” Amy replied as she grabbed a seat on the empty bench to wait for the bus.

Taylor glanced at the schedule on the wall. “Ten minutes if we’re lucky.”

Amy shrugged. “I’d rather wait a few minutes than try to cram into the first bus, it’s always packed. Any idea how my evil half and Kid Win are doing?”

Taylor sat down next to Amy. “They should be okay, they’ve got a safe dungeon to run around in and a bunch of computer games to play with, not to mention PHO. They should be fine, either way, we’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“We should look into selling hoverboards so you can get away with having one.”

“Maybe after I get my check from Winslow,” Taylor admitted as she noticed a girl walking down the sidewalk toward the bus stop with a guy with blue hair. “Either way, I’m looking forward to unwinding a bit and playing some video games.”

“Nothing like beating up nameless monsters,” Amy agreed as the two students walked into the bus shelter.

“Beating up nameless monsters? Isn’t that Vicky’s job?” asked the boy with blue hair as he walked over and sat down.

Amy shook her head. “Bullshit, you know I’m better than she is at video games. Taylor, my cousin Eric, Eric, Taylor.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Eric replied with a wink.

Taylor glanced between the two younger teens. “Nice to meet you both.”

The girl grinned. “Since my friend failed to introduce me, I’m Melanie.”

“I was getting there, honest,” Eric complained good naturedly.

“Right…” Melanie said with as much sarcasm as she could then smiled at Taylor and Amy. “What game?”

Amy shrugged. “Not sure, a friend of Taylor’s let her borrow a bunch of games, we’ll probably grab something at random.”

“The new Castlevania looked decent.”

“Is that the one where the hero was a cape?” Eric asked.

Melanie turned to look down her nose at Eric. “No, that piece of shit was a bad knock off. Never happened, got it?”

Eric decided that moving on was the better choice. “I liked the new Star Wars fighting game.”

“You mean the one where you’re lopping off limbs or ripping out people’s spines with the force, yeah, it looked pretty fun. Sadly, Mom took one look at the cover and said hell no.”

“We might have to skip that one,” Amy replied thinking about having to deal with lightsabers in a dungeon.

Eric shrugged. “It wasn’t that bad, it was fun farming for holocrons and killing Sith.”

“You’ll have to show me one of these days,” Melanie said with amusement.

“What’s your favorite fighting game?” Amy asked, curious what their thoughts were considering Taylor’s dungeon ability.

Taylor smiled as she listened to Melanie and Eric debate various fighting games while they waited for their bus.

0o0o0

Gothic squealed as she heard footsteps on the metal steps outside, “They’re back!”

Kid Win looked up from the PHO thread he’d been reading for the last twenty minutes trying to study up on the local villains as Gothic rushed over to the window. “We might need to cut your caffeine supply.”

“Are you sure you’re a hero?” Gothic asked suspiciously as she looked out the window to see who was walking up the stairs.

“Fairly sure, yeah,” Kid Win replied with amusement.

Gothic stuck her tongue out at Kid Win then opened the door to let Taylor and Amy in. “How was school?”

“Better than I was expecting,” Taylor replied as she quickly slipped inside so the heat didn’t escape.

Gothic waited for Amy to hurry inside before she shut the door. “You’ll be happy to know we picked a ‘lifetime’ supply of Gummi berries and turned them into juice.”

“Cool…” Taylor stopped and stared as she saw Kid Win’s face. ‘Damn, he’s hot without his visor.’

“Lifetime supply...” Amy trailed off as she spotted the attractive looking teenager sitting behind Gothic’s computer that she didn’t recognize. It took her a second to recognize the t-shirt Taylor had loaned Kid Win the night before. Now that she was looking she could recognize Chris’s face or at least the basic structure. “Kid Win?”

“In the flesh, mostly,” Kid Win admitted with a touch of amusement..

“Mostly?” Taylor asked as she ran her gaze over his toned arm muscles then pulled it back to his face. ‘Now if I could just figure out why the rest of his face looks familiar, maybe I saw him at Arcadia?’ She studied his jaw, it looked familiar though it could have just been all the times she’d looked at it in the dungeon.

“I might have made some tweaks,” Gothic gloated as she walked over and sat down in Amy’s chair as Kid Win was using hers.

Kid Win smiled at Taylor. “My alternate has a secret identity and no reason someone would make copies of him unlike Amy. Besides, Gothic offered to give me an upgrade.”

“I just did a little airbrushing and tweaked his muscles a touch. When you look good, you feel good,” Gothic stated firmly.

“Do we have a plan?” Taylor asked, attempting to distract herself from trying to figure out his civilian identity.

Kid Win glanced between Taylor and Gothic. “I’m up for just about anything that doesn’t involve avoiding ogres while picking berries.”

Gothic laughed. “Don’t believe him, he spent most of the morning surfing the boards.” She wasn’t going to mention that he’d also spent a decent amount of time doing math problems on the computer after she’d given him one of the extra dungeon math books, mostly because mentioning it would pretty much give away Chris’s secret identity which wouldn’t be fair.

“I was just trying to make sure I knew who the players were,” Kid Win replied in an attempt to defend himself.

“Fair enough. I was thinking about trying a new dungeon, do we have any games that won’t get us horribly murdered?” Taylor asked as she walked over to the desk and started looking through the stack of games Kevin had left on the table.

Amy said, “I’d say Cape Barbie but I’m fairly sure most of the villains would kill us.”

“Cape Barbie?” Taylor asked warily. 

“It’s basically an RPG, you’re collecting tinkertech or fashion accessories so you have enough power to defeat the various fictional villains running around Sparkle City.”

“Sounds a bit…” Kid Win glanced around at the girls in the room and changed what he was going to say, “childish but not too horrible, what’s the catch?”

Amy snorted. “The catch is all of the best gear comes from codes they put in the accessories you buy for your Barbie doll.”

“In other words, if you don’t spend money on the toys your character is going to suck?” Kid asked with annoyance as he thought about the various pay to win games he’d seen.

“Pretty much.”

“Yeah, I can’t see that working well in a dungeon.” Taylor grinned as she saw a rather cute humanoid bermuda shorts wearing raccoon on the cover of a CD case beating up a red eyed shadow ninja with a pair of sticks. “Fuzzy Ninja, a game where you choose your species and your weapons on a grand quest to defeat the Demon Lord Shredder.” She flipped the case over and looked at the four suspiciously familiar ninja turtles on the back. “Made with RPG maker…”

Amy shrugged. “It might be good for a laugh and it gives us a chance to work on our homework while Kid Win plays through the fights and we’re waiting for the guys to get off work.”

“How bad can it be?” Gothic asked with amusement.

Taylor laughed as she walked over to her computer and turned it on. “It’s worth a shot.”