DE Vol. 1 pt. 75

I never felt more tired than I did after sitting through Zira teaching me about her game’s mechanics. It somehow managed to be both mentally and physically exhausting, but she drilled it into me until I understood it with perfect clarity. She wanted to make sure that I was good enough to be a “rules lawyer,” whatever that meant, and… she probably succeeded. By the end of the night, I was able to recite exactly what each rule said and what page in her book it could be found on.

Then we had a trial session between the two of us where she put me through a combat encounter just to make sure that I knew how to play, and that went pretty good… until a couple of goblins got lucky rolls against me and shanked my character. He didn’t last for much longer after that, but that just meant I got experience with death saves as well.

Death saves that I failed.

My first ever TTRPG character only survived for about twenty minutes in total, but I would never forget him. He died like a true American would: by telling his killers to go fish some tea out of the harbor.

By the time our training session was over, I finally got to go to sleep and ended up dreaming about Zira dressed up as a teacher swinging a ruler around at me making me pay attention to her in class. When I refused, because a true American did not bend over to authoritative figures just because they demanded authority, she began undressing to show more and more of her body off in an attempt at getting me to obey her.

That worked.

Now, while a true American might not obey authority that demands authority for no reason… a true American would also obey authority when that authority gave good reason for it, such as seeing some skin.

A government official or police officer demanding respect just because of the position they hold? Pathetic.

A stripper demanding respect while showing off her tits? American beauty.

Alright. That might have been stereotyping me and my fellow countrymen a bit too much and potentially negatively, but it was true. I would sooner respect a stripper than a cop or politician.

Capitalism is all about give and take. Politicians and cops take, but don’t give. Strippers take money but give tits. In other words, strippers were what true capitalism was all about.

…

That dream did some pretty strange things to me considering that I couldn’t get strippers out of my head first thing after waking up in the morning. I wasn’t even a fan of strip clubs. I went to one once and it wasn’t my thing in the slightest. Power to the people working those jobs, but it just wasn’t for me.

“Strippers, steak, biased discrimination against tea—I really am a stereotype, aren’t I?” I asked myself, staring up at the ceiling of my tent before getting out of bed with a yawn. “Well, to be fair… I love tea, it’s just too much effort to make. Then again, that’s probably because we’re the only country who doesn’t believe in the utility of electric kettles.”

“E-electric kettles?” Enna asked, standing near my tent’s entrance.

“Oh, morning.”

“Good—good morning! I… see that you are talking to yourself first thing in the day?”

“Yeah, about strippers and electric kettles.”

Enna stayed silently blinking for a few moments before saying, “I… I see.”

“Because capitalism.”

“I see.”

“Really. The whole point of strippers is to strip for money, and the whole reason behind America not having electric kettles is… honestly, I don’t remember, but there’s probably something capitalist behind it like some company convincing us that we didn’t need them and to buy microwaves instead.”

“Clay… I always enjoy listening to you talk, but… it’s too early to listen to you talk about capitalism and America.”

“That’s fair. Anything to report?”

Enna shook her head. “Not yet! Well, other than Zira already being awake and gathering, as she put it, ‘the usual crowd,’ for a public campaign of the game she made. She also wants to do it at the pavilion where everybody will be able to watch, including the game’s spectators.”

“I didn’t hear about any of that. What’s her reason?”

“Well, she believes it would be a good way of gathering support for us! To show everybody that we’re here having fun and creating things despite the situation we are in. Not to mention that even if we win… she believes we will need support from other members of the Divine Pantheon, and endearing them to us with such a method may work.”

“Those sound like good reasons to me. A game, created here, put on for people to watch, with players from my world, yours, and the Volcano Hounds’. A good show of unity and camaraderie even in a situation where our lives and futures are up for grabs.”

Enna nodded along to what I said. “Exactly!”

“And it’s possible we’ll not just endear random people to us, but members of the Divine Pantheon as well. Thinking about what comes after all of this is probably a good idea. Even if I win, it’s not like I’m a god. Having a powerful ally to help us out to make sure nobody tries to bully our worlds again would be a good idea.”

“At least… for the minor faction worlds, yes.”

I looked at Enna and noticed a frown.

I forgot about that. Even though Enna and the other Demons were fighting with us, their home, Hell, was already under control by a member of the Divine Pantheon. Their world already belonged to a higher power and wasn’t up for grabs. Even if we won, Hell would remain under Lucy’s control.

Once things were over, if there wasn’t some sort of protection in place for the Demons with us, they would all be sent back to Hell and likely imprisoned or executed for publicly defying Lucy.

Even so, they worked their hardest every day and never stopped smiling and being friendly with one another.

I stood up and walked over to Enna, placing my hand on her shoulder. “I’ll do everything in my power to protect you and give an opportunity to those who would see Hell change. Maybe once this is over, I’ll be able to open up Earth to any and all Demons who want to come and live with us. You could even help me take over the American government to show the people what it’s like to have true democracy again… wait.”

“What—what is it?”

“I just realized I’m basically wanting to be the antichrist.”

“The… the antichrist?”

“You don’t know about that?”

“I cannot say I do.”

“Well, I’ve never been too religious, but, basically, the antichrist is supposed to be some charismatic person who convinces everybody that he’s like the second coming of Jesus or something, unites the world under one global order, and does all these wonderful things that makes everybody happy and love him, and then… uh, the world ends because of it becoming terrible.”

“But… you just made it sound like he would make the world a wonderful place where everybody is happy. Why would the world end from it being terrible if that’s true?”

I shrugged. “Like I said, I’m not a religious man, so I don’t know. I probably butchered the story a bit. I know there’s also something about barcodes being the mark of the beast or whatever, because apparently the antichrist and evil overlords need to put barcodes on people to track them.”

“That sounds inefficient.”

“Right? Besides, I would think our social security numbers are already doing the exact same job and way more evil, but it is what it is. Anyways, you going to join us for our game?”

“I… might as well. I am a bit nervous, but… it would be fun to play with you! Perhaps even… perhaps our characters could even… be—become a couple! Because, while it would be inappropriate for us to officially date, it would be alright if our characters do!”

“Enna.”

“Y-yes?”

“You realize you’re basically already my girlfriend, right?”

“But—but not officially!”

“You’re officially my girlfriend as of now.”

“O-oh.”

“As for our characters, I don’t think you’ll want yours to hook up with the one I have in mind.”

“That… makes me nervous.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, smugly proud of the idea I came up with. “His name is Lucy, an incompetent, fallen angel with a daddy fetish who wishes he could fuck God and everything he does is to try and get God’s attention.”

Enna’s eyes went wide when she heard that, and she ended up placing her hands against her face. “We’re all going to be executed for heresy.”

“Also, he’s a warlock with a talking baby as a patron.”

“A… a talking baby?”

“Don’t question it. He’s also got a grudge against George Washington because God loves George Washington more than him, so he is always getting cucked by America.”

“Clay… this all sounds horrible.”

“I ran it by Zira last night. She thought it was hilarious and was perfectly alright with it whenever she wasn’t talking about how we’re all going to die because of me.”

“I think Zira broke…”

“Probably. Anyways, I don’t know what sort of character you planned on playing, but you might want to consider making them pretty… jokey. It’s probably going to be hard for anything to be taken seriously while I’m roleplaying as Lucy.”

“I’m both incredibly scared… but also kind of excited to see what you are going to do.”

“Expect cringe. Lots of cringe.”

Enna sighed and nodded. “Very well. I will rethink the character I had in mind. Do you… have any suggestions?”

“Yes, actually.”

Enna blinked a couple of times, not expecting me to answer her positively so quickly. “Like—like what?”

“An angel girl who is obsessed with Lucy and madly in love with him, and gets extremely jealous and murderous toward anybody else who even looks at him. If another woman so much as looks at him, she’ll try to kill her, which really makes no sense considering that Lucy only has eyes for God, another man, and not any woman, including the angel girl.”

“Clay… you are ridiculous. And… you came up with this before you even knew we would be showing it to everybody?”

“Right. Now that I know everybody will get to watch us, it makes me want to play up the stupid Lucy act even more than I was planning. Actually, given that I told Zira about this last night, and now this morning she came up with the plan of doing it publicly so everybody can watch… she’s probably hoping for that.”

It made sense. Given what I learned about her and how she truly felt about her father… she was probably hoping that he would find out about our show. And if we could endear ourselves to anybody else who didn’t like her father, that would be pretty good for us as well.

If there was one easy way to make friends, it was to look at the enemies of your enemies. So whoever was enemies with Lucy was a top candidate for becoming my friend, just like how America made friends to screw over the British.

“Would you like to go over now then? I do believe everything is ready for us!” Enna said.

“Ah, one minute. I still need to deal with the system. Make sure everything is being built, check up on technologies, and make sure that there isn’t anything wrong with our scouts exploring the map,” I answered. “I should also probably put a shirt on.”

Enna actually frowned a little when she heard that.

“What? You want me to walk around shirtless all day and be eye candy for you?”

And that made her cheeks turn bright red. “That—that wasn’t what I was thinking! It was—it was just a natural response! You should put a shirt on!”

“You know, just like how I have permission to touch you however I want in private, you have permission to touch me however you want when we’re alone. Especially considering that you’re officially my girlfriend.”

“You… did—did you really mean that bit about being your girlfriend?”

“I did. I was a bit nervous about that sort of thing before, but with how things are between us… I mean, we basically already are. No reason not to give our relationship an official title, not that it needs one in the first place. I just like the sound of it.”

Enna looked like she was trying to hold back a wide smile, but she was clearly failing to do so. “And… I can touch you however I want?”

“Yep.”

Slowly and carefully, as if afraid of actually doing it, Enna reached out a single finger to poke my abdomen with. Her finger stayed there for a few seconds as her face grew a brighter and brighter shade of red until she couldn’t handle it anymore, pulled her finger away, and rushed out of my tent.

“And she called me ridiculous.”