Monster Hunt NYC 2 Read online

  Copyright © 2018 by Harmon Cooper

  Copyright © 2018 Boycott Books, LLC

  Edited by Andi Marlowe (www.andromedaediting.com)

  Narrated by Jeff Hays and Annie Ellicott

  www.harmoncooper.com

  [email protected]

  Twitter: @_HarmonCooper

  All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: Mythcrea Mariachi

  Chapter Two: A Rare Sun

  Chapter Three: The Battle for Retail Supremacy

  Chapter Four: Familiar Grounds

  Chapter Five: Shopping for Info

  Chapter Six: DUEL!

  Chapter Seven: The Midnight Library

  Chapter Eight: Beach Bums

  Chapter Nine: The Steeple

  Chapter Ten: A New York Minute

  Chapter Eleven: Birds and the Bees and the Games we Play

  Chapter Twelve: Subway Safari

  Chapter Thirteen: Musical Swords

  Chapter Fourteen: Rockstars

  Chapter Fifteen: Sonic Boom

  Chapter Sixteen: Multifarious Musical Epiphany

  Chapter Seventeen: The End of Our Dojo as We Know It

  Back of the Book Content

  Chapter One: Mythcrea Mariachi

  I took a deep breath as I watched Iris take the lead. We were at Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, near the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument. I had her acoustic guitar in my hand, ready to go.

  I knew a few things about the monument, mostly because of a band I was in years ago that went around Brooklyn writing songs dedicated to the monuments. The name was Brooklyn Monumental, and we were terrible.

  But the idea was cool, and because of our band, I knew that this monument had been erected to remember the nearly twelve thousand Americans who were taken captive by the British during the American Revolution and who died on ships heading over to England.

  We even had a song about that, it went: The Brits they came, the men were fodder, the stolid rain, betrayed the slaughter. At Fort Greene Park, a statue was cast, to honor the men, of fortune’s wrath.

  So maybe not a great song, but still a cool idea.

  And as I watched Aya, Iris, and Lady C. approach the statue, I started hearing that old song in my head, the chorus on a loop.

  Our plan, conceived by Iris, was to be like a mythcrea mariachi band.

  And rather than go to EverLife, we decided to do the one thing no one would have done after winning Sagelock’s Tournament. We logged out, grabbed our instruments, and decided to go hunting.

  Even now, I could see Iris' Casio keyboard sticking out of her backpack as her hand charged. We were supposed to be playing music to distract the mythcrea, which was what I was trying to do, but the problem was that this particular creature ran as soon as he saw us.

  And I would have let him run too, because no one wants a goblin. However, he was worth five tokens, and Iris felt like we might as well go after him.

  Thinking of our stats caused them to flash on my pane of vision:

  Alpha Duo.

  It was a cool phrase, cool enough in fact that I had the notion that it could be a band name. I stopped playing the acoustic guitar for a moment and quickly tuned up the high E, the chromatic scale appearing on my iNet screen.

  Soon I’d have an actual bass, but for now, I was stuck with Iris’ acoustic.

  A breeze blew in from the Atlantic. Brooklyn was dense, so dense that you sometimes forgot how close you were to the sea. But breezes like this always reminded me that we were on an island.

  “Riptak jatla blanktakh boomboom morrha,” Aya growled as I approached. Whatever the Thulean warrior had said, she sounded angry.

  “Hi, Chase,” Lady C. said, when she saw me out of the corner of her eye.

  A mist was spreading around the monument in question, which I quickly attributed to trickery by the goblin.

  “Fick you! You’ll never fickin’ catch me!” a voice cried from the darkness.

  “I was going to let you handle the catch, but this goblin...” I smiled at Iris. “Kidding, I promise not to get in the way, this is all you – I want you to know how to catch them.”

  “It’s fine,” Iris said, focused on the statue. I saw something gleam across her glasses, the wind from earlier ruffling her blonde hair. “This is going to be worth the tokens, I can feel it. Besides, it might be helpful to have a rogue if we decide to keep him.”

  “Well, he's not doing a great job of convincing me that we should keep him around.” The male goblin lobbed another smoke bomb in our direction, causing Aya to curse again. “I’m surprised he hasn’t run off into the woods. It’s dark; he could lose us there.”

  “Because goblins are scared of the dark, and they are especially scared of ghosts,” Aya informed me, her grip tight on the dragon-tipped hilt of her buster sword.

  “Fick all of you!”

  I lowered the guitar, and let it swing to my side, held up by its strap. “What does he keep saying?”

  “Tritanian Goblins cannot say the word fuck,” Lady C. informed me. “So they say the word fick instead. I read about it in one of Lothar Shane's books on Tritanian oddities. A mind mage named Sophia cast a spell on the entire goblin race, preventing them from cursing.”

  “Fick Sophia!” a high-pitched voice cried from the mist.

  I glanced at the goblin’s stats again.

  “What do you think Turn Cloud does?” I asked Iris as the goblin continued to scream obscenities at us.

  “Not a clue, but I think we’d better make our move, because there are other things to catch, and besides, I thought we were doing that mythcrea mariachi thing tonight. I was looking forward to that.”

  “Let's just get the goblin.”

  “I was waiting for someone to say that,” Lady C. said as she nodded to Aya.

  Like predators, they both crouched a little as they split up, the Thulean warrior and her humongous sword going to the right, the Metican warrior and her two razor-sharp blades to the left.

  “It's all you,” I whispered to Iris.

  “This net is strange,” she said as she stretched her fingers wide and retracted them, the net of light growing and shrinking.

  “You'll definitely get used to it,” I said as I followed her lead.

  Iris moved toward the right, a good thirty feet behind Aya. Just as we came around the monument, we saw a yellow mist spray at Lady C.

  The goblin chortled, and ran directly at us, a small blade in his grimy paw.

  He was a thin goblin, and covering his body was a dark gray tunic. His gray hair had been shaved on one side and was long on the other, and while he was goblin-ugly, it was clear he had put some consideration into his appearance.

  Aya sprang into action, taking the goblin down with a throwing knife that cut deep into his shoulder.

  “Fick! Fick!” the goblin screeched.

  “Now!” I told Iris, and just as her hand started to charge, Lady C. screamed out, scissoring toward Aya with both blades drawn.

  “What the hell is happening?” I asked as Lady C. and Aya went at it.

  The Metican swung her swords wide; Aya met her, barely blocking the two blades with her buster sword.

  Clearly possessed, evident in the way her eyes had turned yellow, Lady C. grunted and tried again to cut Aya down, but quickly had her legs pulled out from under her by the Thulean’s ghost limbs.

  “He's getting away!” Iris shouted as the goblin scurried off to the side.

  While still handling Lady C., Aya flung another throwing knife at the goblin, this time
clipping him in the ankle.

  He went down, screaming and cursing, and Iris took this chance to approach him, ready to send the goblin straight to our Dojo.

  To our surprise, the goblin started crying.

  “Please, please don't kill me! I'm sick of dying! I'm an NPC, damn it, I know what I am, fick, but please don't kill me. It's fickin’ painful to respawn.”

  “Aww, we’re not going to kill you,” Iris said, soothing the goblin. “We’re here take you to EverLife.”

  “EverLife?” he asked, his eyebrows lowering.

  “Stay down!” Aya said as she pinned Lady C. to the ground with her ghost limbs. Lady C. was still trying to put up a fight, but without the use of her hands, she was mostly just flopping against the ground, her armor clinking and clanking with each attempt to free herself from Aya’s grasp.

  “The fick she just say?” the goblin asked, looking at me.

  I cleared my throat. “We’d like you to join us. Actually, you don't really have a choice.”

  He started to laugh again. “Now there's a goblin bargain if I've ever heard one. Of course if I don't have a choice, I'll join you. What kind of question is that? And did she say EverLife? ‘Cause fick yeah, if that’s the case. I've been trying to get back there ever since I was banned.”

  “You were banned from EverLife?”

  “Just from Kingdom Ignis. Mostly because of my father. He got us banned. I think he’s in a different realm now, though, the fickin’ ficktard.”

  “What did you do to her?” Iris asked, nodding toward Lady C., who continued to try to fight Aya even though she was pinned down.

  “It'll wear off, or just give her a whiff of this.” The goblin reached into his fanny pack, and returned with a small vial of mustard-colored liquid.

  I took the vial from him, and walked over to Lady C.

  She glared at me as I approached, baring her teeth as I uncapped the vial. I couldn’t smell it, the Monster Hunt app wasn’t that good, but Aya could, and she immediately started to dry heave.

  Luckily, the toxic scent worked, and Lady C. was soon herself again, asking why she was on the ground and what had happened to the goblin.

  “The goblin has a name!” the goblin shouted as I helped Lady C. to her feet. “And that name is Spew Gorge, call me Spew Gorge.”

  Aya and Spew Gorge quickly exchanged words in their native tongue, at least that’s what it sounded like they were doing, and he bowed to her ever so slightly.

  “I wish I knew that language,” Lady C. said, still standing next to me. She had her hand on the small of my back, but as soon as I noticed it was there, she pulled it away. “Cabins, remember, we want cabins.”

  “I remember,” I told her. “After we do some more catching, I promise we will spend some time at the Dojo.”

  “The goblin will do for now,” Aya finally told Iris as she turned away.

  Iris thrust her hand forward, sending a spiraling net toward the goblin.

  Spew Gorge was gone, we were up five tokens, and it still wasn't even 8 o’clock yet.

  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

  I activated the Monster Locator add-on and started looking around for our next catch. The add-on was interesting, as it turned the world before me into a grid with mythcrea locations highlighted by a light blue aura.

  I intended to get one of the upgraded versions in the future, because knowing what I was going after would definitely be helpful, and there were a ton of other stats that it would be useful to be able to see and utilize.

  But for now, there was the basic locator.

  I didn't quite like this constant need to upgrade, but that was what capitalism had become for many.

  Everything you bought in 2090 you bought so you could later upgrade it, be it iNet software, Proxima diving tech, vehicles or home purchases – hell, you could even buy tiered upgrade statuses at businesses like Krunkin’ Kronuts and McStarbucks.

  Purchases were made based on the fact that at some point you could turn it up a notch or tweak it.

  “Aren't you cold in your little jacket?” Aya asked me.

  I was in my military jacket and a beanie, which I usually kept in the front pocket just in case I needed it. She was right, it was cold out, but this was just the start of the winter season. “What makes you think I'm cold?”

  “I just don't think you eat enough meat, and meat keeps a man warm.”

  “Is that what Thuleans believe?”

  She shrugged, and took a few steps to get ahead of me, her long gait reminding me of the way a model walks.

  Half-dragon, half-woman, Thuleans were in a class of their own. They were aggressive, fit, and incredible warriors, but lacking when it came to emotional understanding.

  “Thuleans have many superstitions and folktales,” Lady C. said matter-of-factly. “I guess that doesn't make them very different from the locals in my home world of Unigaea, but since Thuleans have their own race, it only makes their beliefs and traditions more substantial. Right? Does what I just said make sense?”

  Iris laughed. “It’s nice to be able to hear your banter. To think, these were the types of things that you three were talking about back when I couldn't see you.”

  “That's not the only stuff we were talking about,” Lady C. told her. “And there are plenty of things that you didn't see, like the time in the bed when...”

  “Activity! I see some activity not too far from here,” I cut in.

  I don't know if Lady C. was trying to bust my balls or not, or if she was just naive, but for some reason it felt like the former.

  I pointed toward a group of trees not far from the entrance to the park. I could see very clearly, both from the sign and from the holographic image displayed on my iNet above the sign.

  The park would be closing soon.

  We came around the bend and I saw two trolls gathered around a crackling fire. Of course, a couple walking near us couldn't see these trolls or the fire, nor could their child, who was behind them on a tricycle.

  But Iris and I could see it, and as soon as we did, we got low alongside Lady C. and Aya.

  We were in the open, but keeping low would hopefully give us the cover we needed to avoid being spotted by the trolls.

  I was still able to see their base stats from my current location, and they were equally leveled, both at Level Four, and both worth selling.

  Iris and the Huntresses began moving toward the trolls, their weapons and Iris’ charging hand at the ready. Like Iris had done before, I took the role of researcher.

  Henkies were Scottish trolls of Gaelic lore, super aggressive and... They like music relating to their own names?

  “Weird,” I whispered as the thought occurred to me. Would it be the name of the species, or their individual names?

  “Iris,” I hissed, “hold off a sec.”

  Lady C. and Aya stopped, their hands on the hilts of their swords.

  We had a little cover from one of the trees nearby, but not a lot.

  If the trolls looked in our direction, they would definitely see us. But they seemed to be pretty occupied with digging in their noses and flicking boogers at the fire. One was humming while doing this, the other simply bobbing his head to the tune.

  The flickering fire accented their ugly faces. The fact that they each had a smorgasbord of scars, pockmarks, and long ridges cutting vertically and horizontally across their leathery faces only added to their grotesqueness.

  “So, they like music that features their name or their names?” Iris asked after I messaged her what I’d discovered.

  “That's what I can't figure out, you have anything?”

  Her eyes darted left and right as she began searching on GoogleFace. “Nope, nothing about the song itself. Which means...”

  “Play it by ear? Mythcrea mariachi?”

  Iris considered this for a moment. “What if we did a Row Your Boat type song with the word Henkie and at the same time we try to get their names?”

  “How about something re
petitive, something like: Henkie Henkie Henkie hen keeeey, Henkie Henkie hen keee …”

  “And the second part could be: What’s your name, please call it out, Henkie say your name!” I suggested.

  Iris shot me a crooked grin. “Yeah, let's try something like that, and you two can flank them,” she said to Aya and Lady C.

  “Ooo, that song is cute! It will be hard to stalk them if I want to dance along,” said Lady C.

  “Just, um, do your best!” I told her.

  “We should say the same to you,” Aya said as they began to fan out.

  Iris went for her Casio keyboard and decided against it.

  She returned it to her backpack and brought out her ukulele case. Bringing the instrument up to her ear, she very quietly checked its tuning. We messaged back and forth about the key we should play the song in, and after a muted practice run, we both stood.

  I started strumming a little intro, nothing too hard, and something easy to play as I was walking toward the two trolls.

  Naturally, they looked over at us, and as soon as they did, Iris started singing.

  “Henkie Henkie Henkie hen keeeey, Henkie Henkie hen keee. What’s your name, please call it out, Henkie say your name!”

  I sang it with her the second time around, just as she started playing a ukulele part.

  “Henkie Henkie Henkie hen keeeey, Henkie Henkie hen keee. What’s your name, please call it out, Henkie say your name!”

  The two trolls grunted, looked at each other, and stood. Both of them held clubs, and the one on the left also had a jagged little sword.

  Like a pair of idiot bards, Iris and I kept singing, upping our performance as we grew familiar with the repetitive song.

  The first troll stepped forward, growled, and dropped to one knee. We stopped playing immediately.

  “My name is Schnoogles,” he said, and as he did so, I saw Iris lower her instrument and return with a charged hand. “And thanks for asking.”

  The net of light wrapped around Schnoogles the troll, and he was gone.

  The second troll, the one with the two weapons, wasn't so easily convinced.