Apocalypse: Fairy System by Macronomicon (fox in socks read aloud txt) 📕

Being saddled with that debt is, on the surface, a negative drain on your Impact.”

“But not a big one?” Jeb asked, eyeing the fairy.

She shook her head wildly. “Tiny.”

“Fine, the deal continues.”

“Whoo!” Smartass fist-pumped.

“So you gain more power from screwing people over on deals. How? What does that look like?”

“Well, you’ve already seen the stats The System uses. Body, Myst, and Nerve. They are representative of the three kinds of Deals you can make with another creature, and each falls into one of those categories.”

“How so?” Jeb asked, folding his hands over his stomach as he watched Smartass pace back and forth.

“Well, any Deal involving a transfer of tangible goods will give you Body. It is by far the most common Deal.”

“Okay.”

“If you were to trade for information or social power, you would be in the Nerve category.”

“So if I took someone’s…blueprints for a machine, or traded a service for their seat on a council or something? That would give me Nerve?”

“Yes. Well…mostly.”

“What do you mean by ‘mostly’?” Jeb asked.

“It’s far more art than science,” Smartass said. “Every successful Deal will give you a complex mixture of thousands of different tiny improvements throughout your body. The three categories of Body, Myst and Nerve are a simplification created by The System. It could be a little of this, a little of that, it could improve one aspect of your body more than another; there’s really no way to tell.”

“But on average…”

“Yes, on average, that’s what the Deals will do: raise your Body, Myst and Nerve.”

“What about Myst? How do I raise that?”

“If you can convince people to pay you with things that are key to their emotions and identity—such as their appearance, objects that hold great sentimental value, their relationships, or their memories.”

“Acorn got Myst when he took Jessica’s hair, didn’t he?”

Smartass giggled, nodding, and Jeb frowned in thought.

“What if a man’s seat on a council was key to his self-image?” Often, that was the case.

“That’s why this is an art. You would get a mixture of Nerve and Myst, should you convince him to part with it.”

“So let me get this straight,” Jeb said, raising his hands.

“Okay.”

“Your method is outlandishly slower than just killing things and taking their Impact via The System,” Jeb said, ticking off his finger. A person couldn’t go around making bad deals at the same speed someone could go around killing monsters. Not even close. People wouldn’t enter a bad deal unless they were desperate, and you couldn’t even lie to them about it, either.

“It’s got arbitrary rules that force you to adhere to a weird, fae model of behavior,” Jeb said, ticking off another finger.

“And there’s no way to accurately control what kind of power you get when you do successfully manage to enforce one of these bad deals.” Jeb ticked another finger.

“Which people will actively try to get out of paying, obviously.” Jeb ticked the last finger on his hand.

“All true,” Smartass said, kicking her feet off the edge of Jeb’s stone cot.

“What’s the upside here?” Jeb asked.

“First,” Smartass said, copying him by holding up a finger. “You don’t have a choice. You’ve been blacklisted from The System.

“And second, and perhaps more importantly,” she said, ticking off her middle finger at him. “No one, under any circumstances, can take the power you gain in this way from you without your permission, short of killing you. Not even the gods.”

Jeb held his breath, considering the ramifications.

“Sold.” Fuck those guys.

“You know, this is all assuming you survive the year,” Smartass said, kicking her heels again. “You’re not exactly on track for that, given the current circumstances.”

“Blow me.”

“Excuse me?” a keegan deputy asked as he stepped inside the holding cells. “Is my translator working properly, or did you just ask me to perform oral sex on you? What on Pharos is oral sex?”

Open mouth, insert foot. Gotta make something up.

“It’s an—” Jeb choked off a reflexive lie. Smartass gave him a thumbs-up.

“I wasn’t talking to you, deputy, and I apologize for any misunderstanding. I meant no disrespect, and I have the exact amount of respect for you that the situation dictates.”

And not an iota more.

The skull-faced alien scanned the empty room, eyebrows raised.

“Oookay,” he said with a shrug and a headshake. “Humans.”

The deputy unlocked Jeb’s cell and motioned for him to come out. “You’re free to go. You can pick up your shit at Zlesk’s desk.”

Jeb was tempted to ask for a cane or something, but he didn’t want to say a word that might irritate someone who was likely already a bit miffed.

Instead, Jeb leaned on the wall as he hopped his way down to the main lobby, where he saw Zlesk processing paperwork before retiring for the night. The bureaucratic bastard glanced up and waved Jeb over, digging around in his desk for something.

“Jeb, it’s your lucky day. Mr. Grenore is too busy to press charges against you, so the matter’s been dropped. The man owns half the city, so he could’ve had you killed, were he inclined. Count your blessings,” Zlesk said, pulling out Jeb’s pegleg and setting it down on his desk.

“Here’s your prosthetic, your coppers, and your…sharpened spoon,” he said, pushing them forward as Jeb gratefully sat down.

“You’ll just have to fill out this paperwork,” Zlesk continued, pulling out a set of papers and straightening them before setting them in front of Jeb and offering him a battered fountain pen.

Jeb’s stomach twisted as he saw the wriggling nonsense lines stamped across the paper.

“I can’t read this,” Jeb said.

“What do you mean, you can’t read that?” Zlesk asked.

“Just what I said. I can’t read it.”

Zlesk rolled his eyes. “Please. Anyone who learned to read their native tongue can read