Chapter One - Good Investments

Was spending some precious points on a kiddy pool a good investment?

No.

Did I do it anyway?

Yes.

Was I currently sitting in my brand-new pre-inflated kiddy pool, shirtless and with only some panties on while watching the news with some 500%-daily-sugar-intake drink in hand?

Also yes.

When I gave Lucy a bunch of resources and told her to furnish up the house, that had apparently included getting a TV wide enough that even sitting across the room from it, I had to turn my head to see the entirety of it. It was very extra and I loved it.

Exactly the kind of stuff I expected some super-rich celebrity to have in their house and that I’d dreamed of having one day.

Now all I was missing was a useless private jet, and a butler. Or maybe some maids? I could get a maid uniform for Lucy, she’d love that.

The door to the room opened and I prepared to chuck my can in case it was a kitten walking in. Instead, it was Lucy with a tablet held up to her chest. She paused halfway in to read the little door-hanger sign I’d left hooked to the door. “Don’t Tits Open Inside?” she read.

“What? No, you’re supposed to read it from the top down, then left to right,” I said with a demonstrative wiggle of my can. “Don’t open, tits inside.”

“And that’s supposed to keep people away?” Lucy asked.

I shrugged, then grinned as I noticed Lucy’s attention straying downwards. Hell yeah. “What’s up?” I asked.

She closed the door with a click and moved over. “Why are you in a kiddy pool naked--”

“I’m not naked,” I interrupted.

“--Without me?” she continued.

“But I could be with very little persuasion,” I said. “I was just relaxing, watching the news. The whole world got messed up pretty bad you know, it’s my job to keep up with all of that.”

“While mostly naked in a kiddy pool?”

“The job description never included any details about how I should keep informed. Or that I should bother at all. Actually, my job comes with very little by means of instructions, which is great because I’m iffy with those.”

Lucy pulled a chair over from next to this little make-up table tucked in what had become ‘her’ side of the room. She set it next to the pool, took off her shoes and socks, and dipped her feet into the pool. “Oh, that’s cold!”

I scooted over and placed her feet on my stomach, then started stretching the muscle in the arch of her foot. “It’s meant to be a chill-out pool,” I said.

“We’re not actually leaving this here, are we?” she asked. Her eyes went half-lidded, as they usually did when I put some effort into a massage. “Because it doesn’t fit the decor at all. Also, while I’m totally down for trashy-chic, a pool in the bedroom’s a bit weird.”

“If it’s inflatable, it’s deflatable too,” I said. “Rac can toss it into the matter reconfiguration machine later, get some exotic plastics out of it or whatever. What’s with the tablet?”

“I was doing some homework,” Lucy said with a knowing smile. "Have you done yours?”

I sank a bit deeper into the pool until the water was up to my nose and I had an excuse not to open my mouth.

“Cat,” Lucy whined. “Come on, it’s not that hard, is it?”

I pushed myself up a bit. “But it’s homework. Come on, we’re too old for that.”

“No we’re not. We’re basically college-aged. Plenty of people our age have homework to do. I’ve done mine.” She wiggled her tablet for emphasis.

“But it’s so boring,” I said.

Lucy sniffed. “I’ll tell Grasshopper,” she said. “Can you imagine how disappointed she’d be? Not even angry or pissed off, just like, sad. She’ll look you in the eye and be like ‘I understand, it’s okay.’ But deep down you’ll know she’s sad because you didn’t even take the effort to try.” I glared up at Lucy until she broke down into a cruel cackling fit. “Okay, okay, I’ll stop. But you really should do your homework.”

I pushed myself up until I was sitting on the end of the pool, legs pulling back until my feet splashed. Grasshopper had spent the evening with the kittens, going over lessons that we were probably all supposed to get if we had ever had a proper education. She was... actually a pretty good teacher.

Her weirdness helped. So did her ability to liberally spend points to summon up teaching aids. It was one part lesson, one part live comedy show, and the kittens had eaten it up. So had Lucy and I, admittedly.

Then the lessons ended, Grasshopper gave us all homework, and she left without a hint as to when she’d return, but only the ominous promise that she would.

My homework was in two parts. One was a set of questions meant for someone in early high school, covering things like chemistry and math. Grasshopper left a note saying I could cheat as long as I understood how the cheating worked... I didn’t know what that meant, exactly. The second part was a link to a matrix-location where there was an online shooting arena.

I think my bad aim had offended her, somehow.

I had been planning on working on that for a while anyway, so no harm in actually trying. “I’ll get to it,” I said. I let my hands drop with a pair of dismissive splashes. Was I being a petulant little shit? Yes, yes I was. It was nearly noon, on my only day off in a long while, and I had planned on doing nothing of import all day.

I’d even set some rules for myself, such as the ‘you can only wear less clothes, not more’ which had so far served to make the day passively entertaining and relaxing.

“I’ll make sure you do,” Lucy said. “If I wasn’t so sore I’d make a game of it or something.”

I nodded. Grasshopper had kind of blueballed us yesterday. The making up of that afterwards was great, but I wasn’t ready for more just yet. Maybe in an hour or three. “I need to go over my purchases too. Can’t just spend everything on cool furniture.”

Lucy nodded. “You should. Your armour looked a bit... cooked last night. You’ll need something better.”

“Yeah, that’s on the list. I’m thinking of getting something big too. For moving around.” I gestured to the TV. “Looks like things around New Montreal are cooling down. Literally and otherwise.”

That massive heat bomb Gomorrah and I had dropped next to the city had made the news. Some environmentalists were whining about it, others were complaining that it was a massive and unnecessary destruction of property and infrastructure. But most commentators were happy that they hadn't been eaten by plant monsters overnight, so the mood was pretty grateful overall.

Other cities weren’t able to complain as much, with the media people being on the same menu as everyone else as far as the antithesis were concerned. Some places had come out of it better than we had. Other places had gotten utterly screwed. The full tally wasn’t out yet, but it seemed that even just a couple of days into it, this global incursion was probably one of the biggest losses of human life in a short span since the first world war.

Then the news cut out to an ad for burgers with free at-home delivery.

“Okay, I’m gonna get this training shit out of the way, we can do the rest of this homework stuff later, alright?”

Lucy pulled her feet out of the water and wiggled them dry. “Sure,” she said. “Want help with that? Either part?”

“Uh, yeah, I can’t remember where I put that matrix stuff. I probably shouldn’t shell out for another when I still have one that’s perfectly usable.”

“Oh, I know where it is, give me a minute!” Lucy darted out of the room, slipped on wet feet, then caught herself with a giggle by the door. “Running’s complicated, you know.”

I nodded, then waited for the door to click shut before I started to stand up. Now, where could I find a towel?

I think I was supposed to feel a bit guilty about relaxing at home while the world burned, but it felt so distant. The people dying were far from home, and I had a whole heap of little distractions to deal with between now and then.

I’d feel guilty about it later, when it became my problem to fix all of the world’s many, many issues. For now, I was busy debating on whether or not to wear a shirt.

***