Finding Artemis
"Billy, when are we going to do something?" Sobek asked for what felt like the millionth time, but in reality was only the second time that day. Billy was determined to keep them underground in his base until they had absolutely positively had no choice but to leave. Sobek, on the other hand, was determined to achieve the opposite.
"I thought we agreed we'd compromise and use the L. I. C. H. E. N. to contact gods digitally and safely rather than confronting them in person and risking our personal physical safety." Replied Billy. Sobek didn't look angry; but he didn't look particularly happy either. Billy was a master at generating plausible excuses, and when the listener wouldn't take them, he was good at dodging questions or changing the subject in a subtle enough fashion so that his partner in conversation didn't notice. Sobek, however, never lost his focus.
"And I thought you'd agreed with me when I said we need to be training every day, but here we are doing not that." Said Sobek, with more than a hint of agitation in his voice. In Billy's opinion, he had been training every day, playing first-person shooters to improve his reflexes, hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness, and the ability to keep track of multiple enemies at once. Billy remembered a TED talk he had once watched: the average non-FPS gamer could only focus on six to nine moving objects at once, while an FPS gamer could focus on ten to thirteen. Also, FPS gamer's eyes were more sensitive to seeing a larger array of shades of gray.
All of this ran through Billy's mind as a way to argue to Sobek that gaming is training for him, because while college classwork and homework was something he also did, it didn't challenge Billy's intellect at all; it only gave him busy work. To some, this may have sounded vain or arrogant, but to Billy, college was a cake-walk compared to high school.
The fact that his migraines were now under control and he could attend all his classes was half the battle. Also, while college is supposedly meant to be harder than high school, the reduced amount of time actually spent in a physical brick-and-mortar school made it easier as well. Writing essays was a time-consuming task; but still not difficult. The simple fact of the matter was that Billy recognized the necessity of the clout a college degree would bring him, and knew he needed one if he ever wanted to teach at a college. Billy tried to reign in his mind and focus on the conversation at hand.
"Look, Sobek, I appreciate the fact that you want to go fight a battle with real stakes; you want there to be real danger. When we spar, there isn't. But that doesn't mean it's our best stratagem to employ right now. I'll remind you we still have the element of surprise, and every god we contact is one more god that could flip to Set and Morrigan's side." Sobek was looking more frustrated by the second.
"I understand that, I really do, but I think we ought to leave your base and begin physically travelling to meet the other gods. Don't you have any money? What's keeping us here?" Billy couldn't believe Sobek had guessed the real reason they were staying in Billy's base: Billy was broke.
Was Billy wealthy? Certainly. He owned a lot of material goods like books, DVD's, and videogames, as well as various gaming consoles that amounted to a lot a money in value. But his actual bank account was empty. He'd exhausted his funds constructing the underground base beneath his blood family's home in Florida.
"Not sure how you deduced that I'm broke, but yes, we aren't leaving because I don't own a car and we have no money to buy one. So unless you spent your immortal golden years accruing vast amounts of money or you know someone willing to just give us tens of thousands of dollars without asking for anything in return, we need to stay here. If we travel, we'll be forced to steal a car, then we'll be wanted felons, and we'll have to hunt wild game for sustenance, and I don't know how to skin and cook a rabbit. I know the general technique for starting a fire, but I've never needed to implement it." Sobek's expression had shifted from frustration to mounting incredulity to genuine amusement as Billy spoke. He burst out laughing, like really laughing. Like tears-coming-from-the-corners-of-his-eyes-unable-to-speak laughing.
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The Kid Lich Awakens
Aventura#2 In greatstories! (At it's highest ever point) Everything was normal for Billy, or at least, as normal as life gets when you're a sapient undead. But when an angry and suspicious god comes knocking, Billy has to face the consequences of his wanton...
