Ar'KendWorm (Worm LitRPG SI)

[Hell's Razer]

Bwahahahaha!
This was a hilarious chapter!
Thank you for improving my evening man.

 

[Aetheron]

And... suddenly this isn't funny any more.

=Taylor…= I whine into my cousin's head, keeping my smile fixed firmly in place as I continue shaking Theo's hand up and down. =I think I fucked up.=

I mean, sure Theo's cool, but if any of the other members of his family are around? I do not want to be responsible for bringing Aisha's existence to Kaiser's attention.

And… fudge-ical sticks! I can't even warn Aisha that we need to exit stage left without being obvious about it.

=Oh, really?= Taylor responds dryly. =You mean when you abandoned me!?"

The sense of amusement she sends alongside her response makes it clear she's mostly joking. But only mostly, and I'm reminded that this is the girl who was legitimately grumpled with me when I didn't bring her with me into fisticuffs range of a Gorilla.

Realizing my smile has gotten a touch forced as I come to grips with my cousin's… subscriptions… I drop it in favor of a low whistle. "Daaaammmmn…." I continue pumping Theo's hand up and down mechanically a few times while turning to stare at Ruth. "You don't aim low, do you?"

Distraction-grenade successfully yeeted into Ruth's lap, I let go of Theo's hand before it becomes awkward– Well, more awkward, anyway– and start scanning for threats for the second time today.

=No, Aisha abandoned you.= I joke back in 'protest' as I spin my Scry orbs around in a circle to try and look at everyone nearby. =I had faith in your power's ability to keep track of me.=

Okay, good news! Unlike the far more nebulously defined 'plainclothes Coil merc,' I can at least be reasonably certain that neither Max nor Kayden Anders are looming anywhere near by.

On which note, I take a moment to thank whichever god or goddess has dominion over tv news broadcasts for making sure I know what they look like out of costume.

And while I'm at it, I amend as Taylor answers with a wordless blast of doubt– =Rude!= –if whichever of you has dominion over Acne and the like happens to be listening, I'd appreciate it if you could just go ahead and piss all over Emma Barne's Cheerios for me. Because fuck her in particular. Thanks! Amen? Um… Bye?

"It ain't like that!" Ruth's growl pulls my focus back to my immediate surroundings, saving me from the realization that actually I have no idea how to end a prayer where there's technically at least a chance that something might be listening on the other end.

Wait, why does she look, like, super mad rather than embarass- Oh, script, I basically just called her a gold digger, didn't I? Whoops! Ah, well, I guess that explains why Aisha's laughing too hard to introduce herself. Win some. Lose some.

"Uh huh…" I give Ruth my most sarcastic 'I totally believe you' face as I start to course correct.

I do my best to just shove the idea that Ruth might have, like, actual gang ties and that I need to focus but also that I may need help with an exit plan at Taylor as fast as I can, hoping that if nothing else maybe QA can help her unpack it all or something.

"So..." I return to managing the situation. "You're saying you haven't been hiding a secret-boyfriend," I gesture at a slowly pinkening Theo, "from your best friends!?"

"Best-" Ruth blinks, splutters, and then… unfortunately rallies, jabbing a finger accusingly at Aisha. "I AM NOT FRIENDS WITH THAT!"

Oh for fucks sake… Even after being slapped in the face with the fact that she might be more than just a groupie, I still forgot to account for the racist nonsense part of dealing with Ruth.

Gods, that is such a stupid… Urrrg!

Woo... Sah… I just need to make sure that Aisha ends up a footnote at most in any stories Theo accidentally lets slip at the dinner table.

"Wow." Plastering a look of shocked befuddlement onto my face, I glance over at Aisha. "You were right, she really is, like, a whole 'nother person in public."

Aisha, for her part, doesn't miss a beat. "I told you." Her acting could use a little work; the helpless shrug was good, but there's a hint of malicious grin lurking in her expression that undercuts the look of innocent confusion on her face.

Not that Theo notices, given the speculative side eye he's shooting Ruth. Sorry dude, she's not actually a better person deep down or anything.

…Meh. He looks confused enough that he has to know what she's really like. It's probably fine.

I open my mouth, but Aisha beats me to the punch. "She's not usually that bad though." She manages to sound genuinely confused even as she lies through her teeth. "Do you think she's still mad about the song?"

"…Song?" Theo, bless his innocent heart, actually asks before Ruth can do more than inhale sharply.

"Oh yeah!" I agree quickly, blatantly dialing up the enthusiasm a notch before Aisha can call any more attention to herself. "They help me work out song lyrics for Rune in this thing I'm writing."

"No!" Ruth starts stomping towards me as I point briefly at Aisha before shirting my finger to point squarely at Ruth.

"But sometimes Ruth gets all weird about it. Like this one time…"

"Don't you dare!" Finger still pointing at her, I skip backwards just as Ruth lunges for me while making a strangling motion.

"He was a boy. She was a girl." I belt out, taking advantage of Ruth's momentary confusion as the words coming out my mouth aren't that Katy Perry song to dodge past her and put Theo between us. Sorry, Aisha, it was well set up, but I need today to be super awkward for Theo too. Enough so that he never wants to talk about any of this ever again, least of all to his dad. "Can I make it any more obvious?"

"He was a punk." I grab Theo lightly by the shoulders and use him as a human shield. "She did ballet. What more can I say?"

"He wanted her, and she'd never tell–" I lean around Theo to grin at Ruth. "–but secretly she wanted him as well!"

Ruth's ears are getting brighter and brighter pink, but she apparently decides to stop trying to wrestle the proverbial pig in the mud since she gives up on trying to get to me and just glares. "I told you, it ain't like that."

"Really?" Letting go of Theo, I step to the side a bit so I can properly glance back and forth at the pair of them as I willfully misinterpret her statement. "Hmmm… yeah, I see what you mean." I nod 'sagely' while gesturing at Theo's collared polo and dress pants. "He's not really a punk, is he?" I add, before Theo can look too hurt by my comment, presumably thinking I'm commenting on his… I don't know, his slightly pudgy build, maybe?

Then I turn back towards Ruth, and make an 'aha!' face as I eye her bright red hoodie-garbed self.. "She was a punk? He did ballet? What more can I… Oh no!"

Actually thinking about the song I'm singing was a mistake.

'She said see you later, boy' means the rest of the song agrees with Ruth! Which is a terrible precedent and now the only way out is-

"Oh no…"

With mounting horror, I recall what the rest of Skater Boi was actually about. Screw 'the only way out is through!' Reverse! Reverse!

"I'm sorry!" Spinning Theo around to face me, I look him in the eyes and continue to apologize . "I only just now remembered that song is basically Avril going 'neener neener, mine now!' at her boyfriend's almost-ex and I'm, like, super duper sorry if I accidentally gave you the impression I was hitting on you. Leading people on is wrong and I'm only, like, twelve and that's way too young for stuff like…" I ham the everloving script out of a 'trying not puke' face. "...flirting."

Theo blinks at me, either not having any idea how to handle a distraught girl clinging to his shirt or unsure what to do in the face of so much ham.

"Bitch, are you serious?" Ruth interrupts, looking kinda mad again when I glance over at her.

And now it's my turn to blink in confusion because for once I don't think I actually insulted– or even mentioned– her at all just now. "...What?"

"I'm twelve too, dipshit!"

"...you are?" I frown, letting go of Theo to squint at her.

"Yes!"

"Are you sur–" I cut myself off, shaking my head and taking a step back. "Stupid question." I acknowledge, opting to just roll with it. "In my defense, you people all kinda look the same to me so…" I shrug. "It can be kinda hard to tell."

Ruth looks at me. She starts to open her mouth, but then shakes her head and closes it.

A wise decision that goes to entirely waste since Theo and Aisha both ask the obvious question anyway, almost in unison even, albeit in very different tones of voice. "...You people?"

"Yeah, you know…" Ignoring Aisha's anticipatory amusement in favor of Theo's genuine seeming confusion, I lay my hand flat on the top of my head. "Tall folk?" I slide my hand forward, letting it 'slip' down along the way a bit so that I end up poking Theo's sternum. Not that the exaggeration is entirely necessary, Theo's almost as tall as Taylor. "All I can really see from down here is the insides of your noses." I shrug helplessly.

As I let my hand and shoulders drop, I realize Ruth handed me a perfect opportunity to make everything worse and I almost missed it!

"But!" I add quickly, before anyone else can say anything and ruin the flow. "More seriously." I turn back to Theo, so that I can do one of the 45 degree Japanese apology-bow things. I'm probably getting it egregiously wrong somehow, but I doubt Theo or Ruth know the actual rules to it either so whatever. "Mister Anders, I sincerely apologize for implying, accidentally or not, that you're a pedophile."

"Fucking… This!" I realize I lost track of Ruth when she jabs a finger at my face as I'm straightening up from my bow, damn near poking my eye out. Fortunately, this seems to be because she's looking at Theo while she flails in my general direction rather than a Taylor-level escalation in hostilities. "This is what I was talking about! And I have to deal with her all fucking day at school."

"Hey now." I protest, leaning back. "We only have, like, two class…es…" I trail off, grinning as I realize what she's just admitted to. "You... you talk about me with your friends!?"

On the one hand, her maybe having actual gang ties makes that vaguely worrisome.

On the other hand, 'today, Jane was Jane… again' makes any story Theo tells later way less interesting.

"More like I warn people tha-urk!" Ruth cuts off as I see an opportunity to exit stage left gracefully and grab it for all its worth, stepping forward and making sure to trap her arms under mine as I wrap her up in a bear hug.

'Eeeeeee!' I do my best tween girl squeal as I lift Ruth off the ground and twirl her around. I make sure to spin more than a full circle so that when I drop her she's no longer between Aisha and I.

Then, before Ruth can recover her balance, I make my escape by promptly skipping over to Aisha where I repeat the process except for replacing the squeal with a delighted shout. "I come with a warning label!"

"No shit." Aisha laughs as I set her down far more gently than Ruth, but also a few totally-just-momentum's-fault feet further away from Theo and Ruth than she started. "Of course you do."

"Anyway!" I wave goodbye, having finally reached a conversational point where us leaving isn't weird or suspicious. Or at least I hope it isn't. "This was fun but we need to get going if we're gonna to make it to the Ward's event."

"Wait." Ruth laughs dismissively. "You're actually going to that fucking thing?"

"Yup!" I agree, throwing my other arm around Aisha's shoulders and trying to nudge her into motion.

"Have fun meeting the… Heroes" Ruth makes a weird face, her attempt at what I assume, given her own leanings, was supposed to be disdainful sarcasm going kind of flat.

"Naw." I shake my head, trying not to re-engage this close to escaping despite my irritation. "That costs, like, money money. We–" I gesture at Aisha and myself. "-are just gonna go and watch to see if anything funny happens. Which, like I said, us shorties should really get to doing if we want to get there early enough to find somewhere to stand where we can actually see anything from."

Waving again, I pull Aisha with me as I about face and set off back out of the food court, only calling out a quick "bye!" over my shoulder once we're actively walking away.

"The fuck was that?" Aisha elbows me a moment later. "You kept shutting me out."

"Yeah." I hiss, as quietly as I can and still be heard over the general din of the mall. "Cause Theo's dad is, like–"

"Yo!" I hear Ruth yell from behind us, a quick swivel of my [Scry] eye showing her and Theo following after us. "Wait up!"

Taking a deep breath and shooting Aisha a look, I slowly turn around. "What?"

"Theo's buying us all tickets." Ruth says, pointing at him with a thumb as they catch up to us.

"...What?" I blink. "Why?"

"You seriously think I'm passing up a chance to see you be you at the Wards?"

Well… script.

 

[V01D]

"You seriously think I'm passing up a chance to see you be you at the Wards?"

Well… script.

Click to shrink...

"Well, now I feel challenged not to just to spite you"


(On the other hand, it's a good opportunity to Drop Hints about Sophia's misconduct.

"It's a shame none of you go to Winslow. Because if you did you'd have prevented my sister from being trapped in her locker for hours.")