Amazon Apocalypse 2: Chapter 34 (Patreon)

It took me a few minutes to find the orc woman Myrina favored. I worried that she might be off-duty and that I'd need to use someone else, but after a bit of scouting around, I found her.

I hadn't realized it before, but the teleportation center was less a business or organization and more a place where a lot of people with teleportation jobs gathered together to work, setting up shop in the same location. It seemed a bit odd to me that people who specialized in getting people from place to place would gather together, but Myrina had once told me that most people who came to Themyscira from off-world only did their business in the capital.

It made sense that everyone capable of making an off-world teleportation would gather here.

"Hey, are you doing teleports?" I asked.

The orc woman was midway through a sandwich, leaning against a wall with a cup of something in her hand.

"You’re that offworlder... what are you doing here? Where's the Samhain girl?" the orc woman asked.

"She's not with me, right now. But I know you're discrete and have a good history with the Samhain Clan. I need to hire you for a job of my own."

The orc woman frowned. "What kind of job?"

"Nothing nefarious. I just want to bring two women over from my homeworld so they can visit Themyscira, too." I flashed her a smile and held out my hand. "I'll pay you well for it."

The orc rolled her eyes. "Let me guess, you've got a few side chicks and don't want miss heart-eyes to know about them? No, don't answer that. The less I know, the better. Fine, my usual fee is two hundred thousand gold. And that's taking into account the fact that you've got a destination array."

I gulped at the high number but steadied myself. Sakura and Bridget would each bring more than enough goods with them to pay for my bringing them over. And if they could benefit even half as much as I had done on my last visit, then the expense would be little more than pocket change in the long run.

I held out my hand. "Deal. I didn't catch your name before."

The orc woman laughed. "Ha! You know what? Most clients never bother to ask for my name. Maybe I should give you a discount. It's Thulga."

***

Thulga and I went back to the rooftop where she'd brought me over the first time. She pulled out a stick of chalk and started adding a series of runes to a bronze circle embedded into the ground.

I watched carefully, having never seen this end of a teleportation.

"The bronze ring and symbols do a lot of the heavy lifting for me," Thulga explained when she saw me watching her. "Without them, a teleportation specialist at my level would only be able to bring someone over from the nearest world. With them, I can reach all the way to your newly integrated planet."

She stood, groaning. "I do have to charge it up between uses, though. This thing eats power, and my mana pool isn't that big.”

She sighed. “That's the downside of a physical class. But I wouldn't have made it as far as I have here on Themyscira without it. I'd been hoping to get a quest that would let me pick up a second class. I figured I'd go to one of those wizard worlds and see if I could buy an apprenticeship for a bit. But the System has yet to smile on me. I figure it wants to see more action from me than just stacking coins."

"It just so happens that I have a decent mana pool. I’d be happy to help fill your ring, if you’ll throw in a third teleportation," I negotiated.

Thulga looked skeptical. "This requires a craftsman's touch. You sure you have the eye for that?"

"It's not too dissimilar from my own job," I admitted.

"Oh? Are you an enchanter or a runesmith?" Thulga asked.

I gave her an enigmatic smile. "Something like that."

Charging Thulga's circle wasn't all that different from charging a Mana Bomb. And in just a few minutes, I had it ready for action. I was happy to have negotiated the use of the array three times for the price of two.  Though it would leave me with less than a hundred thousand gold in my bag of holding, it was within what I’d budgeted.

And it was a bit of luck I sorely needed, as three uses of the array were what I'd agreed upon with Sakura and Bridget. The first use would let them know I was getting ready to teleport them, but it wouldn't be a wasted teleport.

After I departed, they had instructions to pile the teleportation array high with as many bundles of Mana Bombs as they could stack on the teleportation array. When the light faded from Thulga's teleport, I was greeted by grocery bags stacked as tall as me filled to the brim with Mana Bombs. I emptied the paper bags one by one into my Bag of Holding.

"Important items, I take it?" Thulga asked.

"Yes, but this is also something I'd like you to be discrete about."

Thulga nodded, looking away as I finished filling my Bag of Holding. "Understood,” she said. “Just tell me when you're ready."

Soon, the array was clear. I recharged it and Thulga activated it again. Suddenly, Bridget stood in the circle, blinking in the light of a new world. She glanced at the horizon for a moment, taking in the strange sights. But after no more than a pair of heartbeats, those eyes turned towards me.

"Carter! You did it!" She rushed forward for an embrace.

More mana bombs tumbled off the array from where they'd been gathered at her feet. She dropped the two bags she’d been holding, each of which were also filled with Mana Bombs, to glom onto me.

I chuckled as I returned the warm hug. "I can't take credit for it. The teleportation was all Thulga here."

"Hello." Bridget waved to the orc woman, who waved back.

Bridget turned back to me. "Sakura will need a minute to load up the array with more Mana Bombs."

We spent the next few minutes gathering up what Bridget had brought over with her. When added to all the gold I was carrying, that filled up my bag of holding. Fortunately, I now had the Kidnapper’s bag of holding, as well as the bag of holding Myrina's mother had lent me. I filled the loaned bag up with Mana Bombs, too.

With every Mana Bomb safely stashed in a bag of holding, I recharged the teleportation array. Not long after that, Thulga teleported Sakura over.

"I knew it!" Sakura yelled, holding her club overhead with a shout. "Ha! You're trying to steal our man!" She pointed her club at Thulga.

"Enough, Sakura. Thulga's not trying to steal me. She's a valued and discrete business partner." I pushed Sakura's bat down so that it wasn't pointing threateningly at Thulga.

Sakura lowered her bat but narrowed her eyes. "I know you stupid Amazonians can't date without indulging in your weird head-crushing fetish!" Sakura jabbed a finger at Thulga. "Well, I'll have you know that we like Carter's head just where it is!"

Bridget cleared her throat and took a step in front of me. "Yeah!"

"But I'm not an Amazonian. I'm an orc..." Thulga ran her fingers through her thick hair as she frowned at Sakura and Bridget.

Slapping my face into my palm, I sighed. "I will point out a real Amazonian to you two if you promise to be normal about it, okay?"

I paid Thulga, and she agreed to teleport us back to Valkyrie's Watch.

"You could save some coin by going to one of the weaker teleporters down the street," Thulga offered.

I shook my head. "Getting to you involved dodging a few unsavory types as it was. I don't think I want to risk running into more of them."

"Ha! Yeah?" Thulga laughed. "I hope you kicked their asses. I'll give you the coordinates to my personal teleportation array, that way you don't have to run past the scum and villainy that plagues the underbellies of all big cities like this one." She scribbled something down on a scrap of parchment that I stuffed into the new pouch of holding at my waist.

I arrived to find Valkyrie's Watch much as I'd left it.

"Welcome to Valkyrie's Watch. Entrance Fee is ten gold," the guard at the teleportation array grumbled.

There had been nothing about an entrance fee before, when I’d been with Myrina. Either she and her companions got in for free, or the guards had decided to start charging a fee while the Samhain Clan was understaffed and not keeping a proper eye on things.

Whether it was bribe or a fee, I paid it happily for each of my girls.

"Carter, I have to ask… are those real gold coins?" Bridget asked.

I grinned. "Neat, huh? They're real. Bite one if you want."

I retrieved a gold coin from my bag of holding and tossed it to Bridget. She caught it and held it with reverence, like she felt guilty for sullying it with her fingers. Her jaw hung open as she studied the coin.

I tossed one to Sakura as well, since she seemed curious, too. She was a bit rougher with it. She'd been born into a rich family, so a gold coin was just another trinket to her. While Bridget was still admiring her coin's shine, Sakura took me up on my offer and bit into it.

"Mmmf. Yep, real gold!" Sakura said as she showed off the bite mark. The coin now bore a print in the shape of her molars.

"Sakura! What if the merchants won't take it now?" Bridget scowled. "You know how much gold coins are worth? This one coin alone is likely worth a month's salary!"

I chuckled. "Don't worry, Bridget. There are more where that came from—a hell of a lot more. Gold is valuable around here, but not as valuable as you and I are used to. Or maybe it is to the average farmer, but we're not average farmers."

"We're not?" Bridget asked curiously.

I nodded, leaning in close. "Not so long as we have these Mana Bombs to sell,” I whispered. “Come on. I want to introduce you to my contact at the Auction House. We should get all that stuff you brought with you listed. Then, we'll find somewhere for the two of you to stay and figure out what you're going to be doing while you're here."

Sakura and Bridget were a little lower than the average level walking around Valkyrie's Watch, since the two of them were right on the verge of D-Grade. But there was something to be said for safety in numbers.

On another world, I might have worried about the two of them catching the eye of some unsavory men who could cause them some trouble, but not here. From what I'd seen, that was my burden to bear on this world, not theirs.

"Who is this Misa you're introducing us to?" Sakura asked suspiciously.

I shrugged. "She’s a local woman. Her family owns the auction house in Valkyrie's Watch"

"A ‘local’ Amazonian woman?" Bridget asked. The two of them stared hard at me.

I shrugged sheepishly. "I suppose so. She doesn't seem too focused on combat, though, so she's not as tall or as strong as most of the Amazonian women you see here on the street.” I nodded to the few passers by that we saw. “She’s more… normal sized."

"Is she pretty?" Sakura asked, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and leaning close.

I rolled my eyes. "You can see for yourself when I introduce her to you."

"We'll keep an eye on her," Bridget assured me. "So she doesn't try to squish your head."

I groaned. "Not every woman in this world wants to squish my head!"

Sakura shook her long black hair before looking up and down the street with a sneer of contempt. "Amazonians only want one thing, and it's disgusting."

"Please promise me that the two of you won't act weird in front of my business partner? I won't be able to fence the Mana Bombs anonymously without her."

We eventually made it to the auction house. Bridget and Sakura clung to either side of me. It looked like the auction house was closing down for the evening, and I was fortunate to catch Misa sweeping the floor.

"Hi, Misa," I waved. "I want to introduce you to some people. This is Bridget, and this is Sakura."

My companions stepped forward, each with a laser-like glare fixed on Misa.

"It’s a pleasure to meet the both of you," Misa smiled. "Business partners, I assume?"

"And more," Sakura stepped forward, holding out her hand.

Misa accepted the handshake, wincing a little at Sakura's grip.

"So, Carter tells me you've been selling his Mana Bombs for him. It just so happens that the two of us brought more of them to him," Sakura began.

"Yes, our partnership has been very lucrative." Misa beamed.

Sakura’s smile widened. "And you wouldn't want to lose this partnership, right?"

Misa suddenly looked worried. "Uh... no?"

Sakura inspected her nails for a moment. "Well, it's nothing important. We were just thinking about diversifying the sellers we use."

"W-what? No!" Misa's eyes went wide. "I haven't done anything wrong, have I? I thought things were working splendidly."

Sakura waggled her finger. "Really? Because from where I'm standing, it seems like you're talking half the profit while Carter does almost all the work creating and supplying the product. He has production expenses, you know. All you're doing is flipping the goods."

Misa bit her lip. "Okay. Maybe my fee was a little high. What if—"

"A flat fee per batch and five percent of the net profits!"

"That's absurd!" Misa's cheeks turned red.

At first I thought I was going to have to step in, especially when Sakura started squeezing Misa's hand. But I'd been wrong. Awakening her Oni bloodline had made Sakura more assertive and aggressive—two things she'd always lacked in her previous life.

But even as a human, she'd been a skilled negotiator and clever business owner. She had to be, considering her father had raised her to run the family business, starting from the time she first learned to talk.

Sakura new exactly how to get the best deal possible out of someone. I hadn't realized how much coin I'd been missing out on until Sakura renegotiated our deal. Even Bridget looked impressed.

"Wow. I thought you were going to shout about how she was trying to steal our man, then whack her over the head with your bat," Bridget commented after the second round of negotiations was done and Misa had the next batch of Mana Bombs safely secured in the auction house.

I ran my hand through my hair. "I also forgot how smart you are, Sakura. That was amazing."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sakura placed a hand on her hip.

"Nothing. Nothing..." I placed a hand on her shoulder and pulled her in for a hug. After mollifying my Oni with praise and a few kisses, I brought Sakura and Bridget to the nearby inn.

I gave them my original bag of holding,. complete with a hefty sum of gold coins. Tomorrow, they were to meet with Misa after the auction finished. Then, they were to use the earnings from that auction to visit Marol the Theory Crafter to see if they could get their classes straightened out.

I would stick with Myrina the whole time. If anyone in the Samhain Clan was suspicious of me, they wouldn't be when they saw more Mana Bombs being sold and me not leaving Myrina's side.