Robert was surprised with how crowded the mall already was. Sure it was a Saturday, but it was eleven in the morning[1], and it wasn't a holiday weekend. Holidays were the only time the mall back in Deepwater ever got crowded. Then again, to compare that small shopping center back home to the Rale Valley Mall was a mistake. This thing was enormous.
Eli groaned as he exited the car and said, "Do you always have to park so far away?"
"These malls are littered with stupid high school drivers," Cory pointed out. "I don't want them dinging my car."
As Robert stepped out and stretched, he felt a hum with his extra sense. He paused and considered the sensation.[2] It was unlike anything he had felt before with his new sense. Then again, the only sensations he had felt that he understood the meaning of were the icy, chilling in his bones caused Polygal draining people and the annoying, consistent looming of his Stalker Stick.
He had experienced other sensations intermittently over the previous days, but nothing that was similar to this hum. Robert tried to focus on whatever was humming, but it was too far away to make out. It reminded him of a cricket's chirp because though he could tell that it was far away, the actual direction of the feeling was impossible to make out.
In any case, the humming didn't feel anywhere nearby or threatening, so he decided to not worry about it until one of those two conditions were met[3]. If he freaked out at every small tingle this new sense produced, he'd go insane. Instead, he's just enjoy hanging out with his friends. "Dude, weren't you a stupid high school driver not more than four months ago.?"
That got a chuckle out of Eli. Cory instead pointed at Robert. "I was never a stupid high school driver. No wrecks. No tickets. No dents. I have a perfect record.[4]" Cory puffed his chest out. "Besides, now that I'm a mature college driver I can look down on high school drivers."
Eli rolled his eyes. "The mature college driver said as he went to buy more Invoker cards."
"Hey!" Cory protested, "there are plenty of adults who play Invokers. You go to the same tournaments I do. You've seen them." Cory paused and then shrugged. "Besides, you're buying my Invokers cards this week as recompense for your trespasses."
"Trespass[5]. Singular. I only gave away one game system," Eli groaned.
Robert just shook his head and smiled. "I just can't believe you guys have a comic book store here in your mall. I had to drive to the next town over whenever I wanted to get the latest issue of Collider.[6]"
Eli looked surprised by that. "Next town over? Just how small is the town you're from?"
"Deepwater only has a little over ten-thousand people in it, and that was after the town boomed[7][8]," Robert said as he idly kicked a pebble across the parking lot. "Bremhaven is the big city near us. They got nearly a hundred-thousand people there. That's where I'd go to get comics and such. I think they had Invoker tournaments there too, though that was never my thing."
"Huh." Eli rested his arms behind his neck. "I guess I just didn't realize you lived that far in the boonies."
"I don't live in the boonies."[9]
"Compared to here you do," Eli chided. "I'm surprised your accent isn't thicker."
Cory raised a finger, "But onto the more interesting topic of Invokers. While it currently isn't your thing Robert, it could be your thing if you wanted[10]. Eli and I have enough cards that we no longer use that I'm sure you could build a decent deck of your own."
Robert held the door open for a pair of middle-aged women. They casually thanked him with a smile and Robert continued the conversation. "Yeah. While I'm interested in the game as a concept I'm really don't see me getting into it. I already spend enough money on Aspect Realms and comics as is. If I get into card games on top of those, I'm going to break my budget, I'm sure."[11]
Eli nodded. "I hear you. I'm not sure if I'm buying any of my own packs today. I'm saving up some cash in reserves in case I get lucky and Kara's willing to go on a date with me here soon."
"Must be nice to get back into a girl's good graces by giving away someone else's GameStation[12]," Cory groused.
Eli shook his head. "Dude, I said I'm sorry. You've been on about it since Thursday. I agreed to buy your booster packs today to make it up to you. Would you please let it go?"
Cory grinned. "You haven't actually bought me the booster packs yet though. That means I still have about fifteen or twenty minutes of justified belly-aching[13]."
"I really hate you sometimes."
Robert smirked. "You're going about this all wrong, Cory. By letting him buy the packs you're letting him off. I'd just loan Eli's computer out to Vivian for a month and see if that gets you back in her good graces."
"Really, Rob?" Eli sighed, "Don't you think he's hard enough to deal with right now without your help?"
Robert thought Cory would eat up a chance to plot against Eli like this; instead, he turned the conversation back to Vivian. "Yeah. I just don't know. She wouldn't even talk to me at class yesterday."
Eli put his hands in his pocket and shrugged. "We found out a secret of hers that she didn't want anyone to know. It must feel really invasive to her that you snuck behind her back and found it out."
"I didn't do it on purpose," Cory grumbled.
Eli nodded. "Preaching to the choir, but regardless of intention, we know something they didn't want us to know. They just aren't going to be okay with that. Especially since we weresneaking around doing[14] stuff they felt we shouldn't be doing."
"Yeah," Cory said as he shoved his hands into his pockets and trudged forward. Robert didn't like being around Cory when he got into these mopey moods. He couldn't blame Cory for being a bit depressed though. Cory had met a girl who seemed to be into all the same things as him, laughed at his jokes, and seemed just as interested in him as he was in her. But suddenly, due to the strangest of circumstances, she was giving him the cold shoulder.[15]
"So, not to change the subject," Robert said, trying to change the subject away from Vivian, "but you sure about this place having comics, right? I mean, you guys make it sound like its more of a board game, tabletop RPG, gaming type store. And if it's in a mall it can't be that big."
Eli smiled. "It's bigger than you'd think,[16] and, yeah, I'm pretty sure they'll have the Collider series. I mean, they might not have some of the more off-brand comics, but Collider, even I know who she is. You should be fine."
Cory nodded. "Yeah, I seem to remember they also had some super hero tabletop tournament something or other a while back where they were giving away comics for winning stuff."
"You know," Eli said with a grin, "it'll be interesting to go to the tournaments now that we aren't high schoolers. Aren't some of the guys who go to these Invokers tournaments attending SAU?"
Cory nodded. "That's a good point. I think there are. In fact, I know there are. I just don't remember their names. We should find out if..."
Robert let his mind wander away from Eli and Cory's conversation as he felt the Spirit Sti-- empathokinetic focus move again. He refused to call it a Spirit Stick even if it was easier to say.[17][18][19] As he honed his new sense in on the focus, he started to feel a little paranoid. Like there was another monster nearby that might attack him.[20]
Angela had explained that as he got used to having an empathokinetic sense, his mind would stop associating anything tripping his new sense with a monster attack, but, for now, the more he thought about the focus, the more he felt like a monster was nearby. Maybe that was why he had felt Polygal's presence despite not being a Spirit Guard. At that point, he hadn't had his focus to distract his empathokinetic sense. He'd need to remember to bring this up with Angela later to get her thoughts on it.
"Here we are," Eli announced.
Robert followed Angela's advice and pushed his worry aside. He needed to focus on the task at hand: buying Collider #187. The store didn't look very big to him. No bigger than your average mall storefront. Above the door hung the words "Dungeon Direct"[21] in gothic lettering. Robert thought the name was kind of silly for a gaming and comic book store, but, then again, the comic shop he went to back at home was simply named "Ben's Comic Book Shop."[22] At least this location was trying to have some kind of flavor.
As they walked in, Robert felt the stick teleport into the poster bin in front of the front counter[23]. Behind the counter was a cashier that had the body frame of a praying mantis. The cashier's eyes didn't move from the clipboard he was going over. "Hey boys. Looking for anything in particular today?"
Eli gave him a casual wave. "We'll be fine, Devon. Just going to the back to pick up some booster packs."
When he heard his name, Devon glanced up, and his eyes flashed with recognition. "Oh. You two."[24] Devon's eyes lingered on Robert for the briefest of moments before he corrected himself, "Er, three. That's new."[25][26] His eyes went straight back to the clipboard. If this Devon guy had any curiosity about Robert, it seemed rather limited. "Don't mind the mess back there. We had a big LoreThunder[27] event last night and we still haven't cleaned up. I'll be getting to that later today."
"When do you guys ever clean up back there?"[28] Cory chuckled.
Devon only responded with a grunt.[29]
Eli grinned and turned to Robert. "Devon's worked here for years. We’re pretty sure he can't remember which one of us is Cory or Eli, so he always just refers to us as 'you two' as if we were one entity.[30]"
Robert smirked. "It makes sense. At times I wonder that myself."[31] Robert glanced around. He didn't see a door to this mythical back area Devon had spoken of. Then he realized it was because their wasn't a door; just a wall divider that was open at the sides. It prevented whatever was in this back area was from being seen from the store entrance. Given how shy nerds tended to be and how sweaty they could get, Robert thought it was a good way to keep it open air without losing the privacy they'd all want.
Cory walked around the large divider to the back room. "Hardy har har. You're a regular comedian."[32]
Robert followed him and was greeted by more than just a bit of a mess. He had thought they hid this area for privacy, but he could now see it was because the back room was a pig pen.
Four tables had a mishmash of LoreThunder miniatures, paint, terrain, and food strewn about them. Rulebooks from a menagerie of different tabletop systems were piled in random stacks between the tables and forced Robert to step over them to get anywhere. Board game boxes were piled into corners without any hint of organization. And to top it all off, the floor was littered with enough crumbs and soda cans that you would have thought it was a kindergarten class room after snack time.
Robert shook his head. "Ugh! He wasn't kidding." The shelving in this room looked like a home improvement project that had been abandoned halfway through[33]. A lot of the shelves were sagging under the weight of the books they were holding up. Worst of all, the comic book section just had the comics in various cardboard boxes along a wall. Robert was going to feel lucky if they were in anything close to alphabetic order.
Eli shrugged. "This is how it normally looks after a big event."
"I'm not talking about just the food and the figurines," Robert clarified. "I mean, look at this." He pointed to the nearest sagging shelf. "You have Keeps and Kobolds rulebooks mixed in with Argentum adventure modules and a couple of Invokers card catalogs. How do you guys find anything?"
Cory and Eli looked at one another and just shrugged. "We don't do any of the tabletop or comic stuffs," Eli explained.
Cory nodded. "Yeah, we just get the stuff for Invokers here." He pointed towards the wall of various card decks. "They can't really mess up the things that just come in pre-packaged boxes."[34] He ran his index finger along the top of the Invokers selection of booster pack. "Now, to find which packs feel the most lucky."
Robert rolled his eyes with a smile as he trudged over to the comic book section while Cory and Eli argued. "Do we have to do this everytime?" Eli complained.
"Hush, Eli. My power to detect which packs have key cards is, indeed, potent, but I can't focus my power whilst I'm being nagged at.[35]"
"You don't have that power, and even if you did, it'd be the lamest power in the history of ever."[36]
Robert was used to comic books being aligned on the wall with their covers displayed proudly, separated by printing company, and organized in alphabetical order. Here, they were on a table all in cardboard boxes where you couldn't see the covers. They looked like they used to be in alphabetical order, but that had been abandoned over time.
After a frustrating search, Robert finally found the Collider section between the Knightmare and Portent comics. It did make sense in a strange way: both were heroes Collider had been romantically involved with at some point, though the Portent storyline had been dropped almost a decade ago. Knightmare was the better love interest anyway given how they both--
Robert felt the hum set off his extra sense once more.[37][38] It was closer than before but still distant. Though, as he examined the hum, maybe not as far as he originally thought. Could it be inside the mall? It felt too far away for that, but, then again, the mall was huge, and they were on the far north end.
He shrugged to himself and hoped that whatever had caused the humming was a non-issue.[39] He really didn't know what this extra sense was good for other than detecting monsters and feeling where his empathokinetic focus was. Were there other things that could set it off? If empathokenesis truly dealt with emotions, could those set it off? He really wished he had thought of those questions on Thursday when he was talking with Angela.
Robert decided to ignore it for now. Freezing ice didn't run down his spine like it had when Polygal had drained people at Loose Change. If it had involved a monster, Robert figured it would have been painful in some way. Once he convinced himself everything was fine, Robert grabbed his comic and walked out of the back room to the front desk.
Robert plopped down the copy of Collider #187 in front of Devon. The scruffy-faced cashier examined the comic for a moment before he put down his clipboard and finally scanned it. "I would have thought you'd be here for Invokers stuff."
"Not really my thing," Robert said as he fished for his wallet.
"You a friend of theirs? I've never seen those two come in with anyone else."
"I'm their new roommate," Robert explained. "When I asked about a place to buy the latest issue, they suggested we go here."
Devon glanced up with surprise in his eyes. "Wait, they're in college now?"
Robert handed over his debit card. "Well, I'm living in the dorms of SAU with them, so, yeah. Seems to be the case."
Devon shook his head and swiped the card. "Crazy. When I started here, they were the annoying junior high kids that always showed up to Invokers tournaments that everyone wanted to kick out for being annoying junior high kids.[40]Time flies, I guess.[41]"
"Guess so." Robert really wasn't sure what else he could say to that.
Devon handed Robert his card back along with his receipt. "You know, if you think you'll be doing this monthly, I could put the comic on hold for you so that when it comes in..."
Robert stopped listening to him as he heard a familiar voice outside the storefront. "...doesn't seem to be in this wing either. Did it move again?" He turned and saw Angela looking around the mall with Mallory by her side.
"Sorry," Robert apologized as he left Devon's sales pitch dangling[42], "but I just saw someone I recognized."
As he walked towards the exit Mallory caught sight of Robert. She sighed, "Please tell my brother is not in that store again."[43][44]