Chapter 17: The Ultimatest Job-Haver

One might think, at a glance, if that glance had somehow given one the full knowledge of his entire life from beginning to end and the ability to read his mind, that he would have forgotten he was currently employed.

That Rhett-niscient being, whomever they might be, would think ‘Oh, tee hee, this little goober has never worked before, he will surely be unused to the rigors of having to show up to work, and then do the job he asked to be hired for’.

They would then probably have an aneurysm from the fact that a glance somehow injected yottabytes of data into their mind in an instant.

The truth was, he did remember! He remembered explicitly because it was so surreal for him, that when he woke up from his midday nap, the very first thing he did was scream, run, jump and roll his way to Cop’s shop, in sheer panic rapturous, employed bliss.

Bursting through the tiny version of the door that Cop had installed on the door to her shop, a tiny version of the bell jingled with a tiny version of loud.

“Sorry I’m late! I fell asleep, and then I slept too long, and uhh, well, I-”

Cop laughed, waving him off. “What do you mean, late? You showed up before I locked up. Just get up on the shelf and get busy, ya goof,” she answered.

“...Oh, well that’s convenient.”

This world’s labor standards were kind of badass, Rhett had to admit.

Running up the Rhett-stairs, he was anxious and ready to show off his brand new way to slack off.

“Hey, Cop, check this out,“ he exclaimed, grabbing his rag and tossing it in the air like a pizza.

With a flicker of shifting existence, the Trick went through, and the spinning rag began buffing his first task on its own, whizzing like a top as it polished a long copper wand.

She laughed. “Not bad. How many times can you do that a day?” she asked.

“...Huh?” he blinked.

“Well, I might be wrong, but I thought you could only use those whatchamacallits a few times a day, or once every time you fight, or some other limit,” she wondered. “That’s why Smokes has so many knives. He uses em one at a time, as far as I’ve seen.”

She seemed to remember something “Oh, I actually have a few of his knives here!” She gestured to part of the shelf he hadn’t gotten to yet, where a bunch of differently shaped blades were all lined up in a row.

Concerned, Rhett held out his hand, as the whizzing rag leapt back at him once the job was done.

Trying the Trick again with the next one, he was relieved when it worked just as fine the second time.

While the rag went to work on a set of copper jingle bells, he couldn’t help but wonder why so many copper bells and whistles and chimes were here. Did that many of the villagers own some?

He shrugged it off, sitting by on the edge of the shelf and kicking his legs, relaxing and letting some of the adrenaline of his run wear off.

“It’s a good thing I didn’t wear my arm wraps, or my hat today. That run wore me out,” he answered, offering a bit of idle smalltalk. “This fur makes me lighter for some reason.”

“Keratin floats,” she remarked idly, actually working unlike him.

She didn’t seem too torn up about it though, glancing at his rag Trick with what looked to him like amusement, looking over from time to time as it swept over his pieces.

The door opened, and customers walked in.

“I think you’re ready,” she commented idly. Despite the levity in her tone, he felt a sudden chill run down his spine.

“Your true test… Begins now.”

The first customer, an elderly Orc with a long white beard, brought in a shield covered in hardened sludge.

“My boy got this all gunked up in the wreck. Can you do anything, deary?” he asked.

Without a word, she placed the shield on Rhett’s shelf. “Yeah, we can handle it,” she smiled back to the fellow, guiding him out just in time for the next customer.

This one, a teen elf carrying a stack of dishes, most of them covered in solid layers of charred white material.

“Can you polish these? Mom burnt the good stuff again,” he asked. Once more, she nodded, placing half the stack with Rhett, and half with her own pile.

Rhett held up his hand, and his rag snapped back into it. His eyes narrowed as he gazed upon his challenges.

The shield… He had an idea for that, but first, the dishes.

He couldn’t do much about the charred bone with his rag, but there was another way.

Pulling his overalls down to expose his back, he felt himself lighten, [Armor of the Ratbeast] taking effect. Hopefully, this would work like he thought.

Reaching under one of the dishes, he hefted, and managed to lift the heavy copper plate. Stumbling, he barely kept upright, managing to get his balance under him.

Before his eyes, the plate began to clean, now that it was held in his hands, and, therefore, “on his person”.

He grinned as even the hardened bone began to erode away, revealing… More bone?

He frowned, setting down the plate and scratching the surface that remained. He blinked as he realized this felt different.

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“Ivory. It makes a good coating for food, since Copper can poison you,” Cop called from across the shop, after he spent a little bit too long staring at it curiously.

Shrugging the extravagance away, Rhett turned his attention to the rest of his first trial.

As he cleaned them one by one, another customer came in.

Rhett felt something strange. An animal instinct that screamed at him to pay attention.

Looking over, he saw quite possibly the shortest Orc he had met who wasn’t a child.

No, it wasn’t that, he realized. The Orc was of a normal height, but his sheer presence made his physical body seem small, insignificant.

Wearing a khaki suit with a blue tie, the Orc hunched over as he walked forwards with help from a white, rectangular cane.

His shoes, mismatched for the formality of his outfit, were heavy leather, with small plates of shiny white metals on them, one of which he recognized as chrome.

Likewise, rather than the top-hat one such as this might have worn, the Orc instead had something of a sleazy, slick head of baubles and braids, his long hair tied up with various pieces of metal that jingled lightly like chains.

To complete the look, and forming the nexus of the presence that had warned Rhett so much, the Orc was missing an eye. There was no patch, or replacement.

He simply stared with a hollow pink gaze out of the hole, skin covering the back of the gaping pit. It was the look of someone who wanted you to accept the flaw.

See the sign of weakness, undiluted by the implicit messages of glass or patch.

His other eye made this difficult. An amber ringed black jewel that glinted as he slowly swept his gaze across the shop.

“M-Mayor!” Cop exclaimed, arms to her side immediately as she stood to attention.

“Don’t stand on my account. I’m simply here to have some work done,” he answered.

Putting his cane under his arm, his back straightened, and Rhett realized it was another means of lessening his presence, rather than something as banal as helping him walk. Without it holding him up, the presence magnified, and even he stopped working to not seem disrespectful.

Mayor Dry pulled a copper ring off of his hand, one shaped like several snakes woven together, various small animals mingling in-between them.

“Could you clean this? I’m having the darnedest time getting the dust out of the cracks,” he requested.

“Of course, sir. I’ll have it done in no time flat,” Cop promised.

He smiled. “No need for all that. It’s just a little ring, after all.”

Rather than her counter, he began to approach Rhett with a doddering, hesitant swagger, his cane tapping against the floor with each step.

Rhett tried his hardest not to look at the missing eye, and thankfully, Mayor Dry didn’t seem offended when he failed.

“I wanted to apologize, young man,” he began, setting the ring down in front of him. “As a newcomer to our little home, you should have gotten a proper greeting from the start,” he admitted.

“I think I would have crapped myself if I met you first,” Rhett’s words tumbled out. Cop let out a muffled scream from behind the Mayor, shaking her head frantically at him with the tiniest of motions.

The Mayor didn’t laugh. Nor did he scowl. Instead, he pouted. “Wow. that is certainly one way to hurt an old man’s feelings. I think I shall put this one in my diary,” he answered.

Rhett let out an aborted snort, face twitching at the sarcastic response.

“Welcome to Sunnymeat, Rhett Fency. I hope you take the time to try the jerky. Drow Rawcut is a delicacy, yes, but I find Price to be a bitter seasoning,” he admitted.

With that, he slowly walked his way out as he did walk in, taking the time to close the door behind him.

Rhett let out a breath he was fully aware he was holding, and Cop bonelessly deflated.

“Gods of Fuck! You really had to go and mouth off to the Mayor, didn’t ya, kid?” she exclaimed.

Rhett flushed. “I get toxic when I’m nervous!” he said, half-pleading. “What the hell was that, even?! He was like the elephant in the room, if the room was a gym, and its trunk was caked with creatine!”

Cop wiped her brow. “He’s a Mad Ecologist. Genius, but utterly mad,” she explained, before shaking her head, remembering herself.

“Look, I don’t know how it works where you come from, but around here, you don’t have a giggle at the Mayor’s expense!” she continued, her voice turning into a squeak halfway through.

Before she could continue, the door jingled again, and the Orc put on her best customer-face.

“Hello hun! What can I do for ya?” she asked, still a bit squeaky.

“Knives?” Knife-Axe-Sword-Smokebomb-Caltrop-Shuriken asked, his load of sheathed blades lighter than usual.

Before she could answer, he made his way over to where the knives were, Rhett running over to meet the elf.

“Sorry! Had a big backlog, I can do those now if you want!” Rhett said, throwing his rag at one of the blades, before starting to pick up some of the others, letting his passive cleaning take care of them.

The elf stared at Rhett’s rag, as it spun around polishing one of the knives. “Trick and Passive?” he asked.

Rhett nodded proudly. “Pretty clever, huh?”

The Elf just gave a “Mmm” of assent, already tapping his feet.

Thankfully, Rhett did manage to clean the knives in short order, handing them over one by one to Smokes.

“Thanks. They’re really clean. You might like Invocation. Do a Trick with one fancy thing. Wands are fun,” he replied, turning on the spot and leaving, sheathing the knives while he walked.

“That’s Smokes for you. Impatient as they come,” she shook her head.

Rhett smiled. “Well, I think he’s just efficient,” he said, recalling a similarly jam-packed, highly efficient and brusque individual.

Albeit, it was a fictional superhero, but still.

He turned to his plump source of exposition. “Invocation?”

Cop shrugged. “Dunno. I know it’s an old-school name for Acts, which are Magicians’ whole thing. There was a traveler who did a show here once, but we don’t have anyone in town that really focuses on that.”

Rhett hummed. His only lead was ‘Wands are fun’, and yet… Well, it was certainly three alluring words.

He thought as he cleaned, and thankfully, Cop seemed to have forgotten or repressed him making fun of the Mayor.

By the time he finished the rest of the dishes, and made his way to the giant muck-covered shield, yet another customer walked, or so the door slamming open implied.

“Nyah… Seems I found da place…” an Elf in a truly gargantuan, oversized fur coat said, walking in with a sway so bad he seemed almost drunk.

“Weell well well, if it ain’t da rat,” he said with a sneer, running his tongue over his teeth, a single fang glued to one of his own canines glinting almost as much as the occasional golden teeth framing it on either side.

“Hello? Who are you, sir?” Rhett asked, mostly confused at this… Character.

“Me? You ain’t heard of me? Typical newcomer… Well, I’ll enlighten yeh…”

He swept his coat wide, grinning snidely.

“I’m A-Guy-Who-Has-The-Ultimate-Job, and youse is messin’ with my bidness, nyeah?”

Rhett was shocked. Paralyzed. Only one thought managed to blossom in his mind, as the Elf loomed over him with the full force of his intimidating might.

Only one thought. Only one that managed to escape the morass of his mind under the individual’s verbal assault.

‘Who the fuck talks like that?’