[Vol. 10 pt. 9]

Serra, who was sneakily watching the scene unfold from the distance, sighed and shook her head when she saw the two women just awkwardly sitting at the table not saying anything else.

That was the problem with putting two bottoms together. Neither one knew how to take the lead.

Something needed to be done.

But at the same time, Serra didn’t want to hold Saya’s hand. At least, not metaphorically. She would gladly hold Saya’s actual hand or any other part of her body, but Saya needed to seduce the others without her help!

Serra wasn’t sure what to do, but she needed to think of something before the situation got any more awkward than it already was.

Meanwhile, underground at the secret location for the submarine, Fenrir and Tabitha sat next to each other while eating the sandwiches that he went to pick up.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” Fenrir said before taking another bite of his sandwich, “but I’m curious since we’ve never really talked about our lives before.”

Tabitha took a bite out of her own sandwich before tilting her head a bit and saying, “You’re gonna have to be more specific about what you wanna know.”

“I don’t know. Just, anything you feel like sharing. I feel like I know you the least out of everybody despite how much time we spend together.”

“You’re really puttin’ me on the spot by bein’ that vague. Come on, don’t you have anythin’ even slightly more focused to ask?”

“Uh… how uh… how about…”

“Come on, dog boy.”

“Listen, you’re putting me on the spot here.”

“I’m puttin’ you on the spot?!”

“Fine! How about what got you into engineering? Or just making stuff in general?”

“Heh. There you go. Now that’s a good question. Anyways, my mom and dad are both the tinkerin’ types. Always makin’ stuff and tryin’ to invent new things. Soon as I was big enough, they started tossin’ buildin’ bricks in front of me to put stuff together. Then the first games I played were all focused on craftin’ and makin’ stuff. Then they started teachin’ me about actually makin’ stuff in the real world that wasn’t just a bunch of buildin’ bricks connected to each other. Won every science fair I ever took part of. Stopped takin’ part because it just wasn’t fair to the other kids and got borin’. Oh, I’ve got a story. Ended up with me in the hospital.”

“Considering everything you’ve said leading up to that, I’m worried about how you ended up there. Let me guess before you say anything else. An explosion.”

“You got it! Wanted to try makin’ a bomb for fun. It worked. Just uh, you know, it kind of blew up before it was supposed to, meanin’ before I could get it to a safe spot away from me. Lost a few fingers and my hands got all messed up. It was real ugly. Thankfully, the doctors were pretty amazing at what they do. Ended up getting everythin’ back to lookin’ how it’s supposed to. Still got some scars all over my hands, but I like how they look. Makes me look pretty badass if I may say so myself.”

“Did it blow up while you were holding it or something?”

“Yep! One of my thumbs went flying into the neighbor’s yard. The cat picked it up and took it inside to the little girl who lived there. Honestly, I think that girl got more traumatized by her cat droppin’ my bloody thumb onto her than I was by accidentally blowin’ my hands up.”

Fenrir couldn’t help but to laugh while in the middle of taking another bite of his sandwich when he heard that. “I feel bad for her, but that’s hilarious. I can’t imagine how I would react if I was a kid and I had a pet drop a human’s bloody thumb onto me out of nowhere.”

“I wish I coulda seen her face. My parents ended up payin’ for her therapy since they felt so bad for her. The poor girl couldn’t even look at her own hands without cryin’ for a few weeks.”

“Alright, when you say all that, I start to feel a bit more bad than amused.”

“Wanna find it hilarious again?”

“Sure.”

“A couple years later she was in her front yard and I just got home, so she called out and asked me how I was. Just to be a friendly neighbor and all. You know what I did?”

“What?”

“I flashed her a thumbs-up. You should’ve seen the color drain from her face!”

Surely enough, Fenrir was laughing again at the idea of some little girl being so traumatized that she got her PTSD triggered by receiving a thumbs-up. “I—I’m a horrible person for finding that so funny.”

“I’d call you a liar if you didn’t find it funny.”

“Honestly, I can’t imagine anybody other than her and her parents not finding that funny.”

“Oh, her parents were on the front porch. They found it hilarious, too. They had to try and look like they weren’t laughin’ when she turned to look at them.”

“I don’t know if that makes them good or bad parents.”

“They were really good parents from my understandin’. They just… you know, also found the humor in their traumatized daughter gettin’ triggered over a thumbs-up. Besides, they knew I wasn’t purposely tryin’ to upset her or anythin’.”

Fenrir sighed and shook his head. “That’s a great story.”

Tabitha nodded and sighed herself. “Those were the good ol’ days. Even thought about dressin’ up as a severed thumb for Halloween one year, but I resisted. That woulda been too mean.”

“Mean, but also hilarious. But probably more mean than hilarious unless you had any other reason for doing it.”

“Nope. Just thought it would be funny to see her face.”

“See, this is why we get along. We’ve both got the heart of a troll in us.”

“I will admit that I do like me a bit of trollin’ here and there. But I’m not as merciless as you about it, and I don’t mean to destroy somebody’s entire joy in somethin’.”

“You wanted to dress up as a giant, severed thumb to trigger your neighbor’s PTSD. Don’t act like you’re not just as horrible if not worse than me. All I’ve ever done is screw with people in games, and I would never even think about abusing somebody’s PTSD.”

“Alright. Maybe we’re equally bad, just in different ways. But at least I never actually went and did it.”

“Would you have done it if she was a horrible person?”

“Probably not.”

“Alright. Well, I don’t know if it makes me a better or worse person than you, but I would have done it if she was somebody I considered a bad person.”

The two went back to eating their sandwiches in silence for a few moments before Tabitha figured it was her turn to ask a question. “What about you? What got you into trollin’ and all that?”

“Hmm.” Fenrir tilted his head from side to side as he thought about what to tell her. “You want a serious, introspective answer, or just the easy answer?”

“The latter. Then the former.”

“Pft. Alright. The easy answer is because I just thought it was fun to put people who thought they were untouchable in their place. The more serious answer is… I joined a guild in a game when I was younger and staying with some foster parents. After my parents died. I didn’t really open up about my feelings to anybody because I figured nobody would care. But… I felt comfortable in the guild, and none of them knew who I really was, so I opened up about it. Well, for a bit more backstory, there was a girl in the guild who I really got along with who was my age. The guild leader, who was an adult, had a thing for her despite her being underage. It’s… really creepy, and the leader had a ton of things wrong with him looking back at it. Anyways, me and the girl always talked and the guild leader was jealous of that. So when I opened up in the guild chat, since the conversation led to it, about my parents dying, he started making fun of me for it. Now, everybody else in the guild called him out on it and thought he was a huge asshole. He played it off as being drunk and made sure to publicly ‘apologize’ to me the next day. But I knew he wasn’t drunk and that he was only apologizing to save face.”

“What an arse.”

“Honestly, I could spend an hour shit talking him and it wouldn’t be enough to really get the point across just how much of a douche he was. But everybody else in the guild was great. Anyways, me and the girl were pissed at the leader and wanted to get revenge. He thought he was untouchable and acted like nothing was wrong. So, me and the girl pretended to get into a fight that led to me leaving the guild. She then went to the leader talking about how hurt she was and all that and used his disturbing attraction to her against him. Got promoted up the ranks and basically agreed to ‘date’ him in secret. Now, a bit more backstory.”

“This has got layers to it.”

“It does. So, the guild had a rival guild. The guild leaders absolutely hated each other. I got in touch with the rival guild’s leader and promised him that he’d get to gank my former guild’s leader and make him look like an idiot. Back to the girl. She asked to go on an in-game ‘date’ with the leader. He was glad to go exactly where she wanted, all alone with her, promising her that he would protect her from any other players or mobs that might try attacking her since it was a pretty dangerous zone with PvP forced on. While he was getting ready for the date, she went and cleaned out the guild’s bank by putting everything in her personal inventory. There was nobody else on at the time who would notice what she was doing to the guild bank. Anyways, she cleared out the bank then had the guild leader take her to the spot we set up. It was a really pretty spot with some romantic lore built into it. Then, right after they got there… the rival guild leader showed up with some friends and ganked him. They left her alive so that the leader would come back to try and rescue her, but he kept dying over, and over, and over again, making himself look like an idiot throwing himself against a brick wall. Then she and the other guild leader acted like they were flirting, she left the guild, and joined the rival’s guild.”

“Dang. I’d almost feel bad for the guy if he wasn’t a creepy pedo. Wait, he did know she was underage, right?”

“Oh, yeah, he knew. He talked all the time about how young and innocent she was.”

Tabitha shivered and acted like she was about to throw up. “Disgustin’.”

“Seriously. Anyways, that really screwed the leader up and he went into full meltdown over it. Then she traded me everything that she got from the guild bank, so I took a screenshot of my inventory and sent a picture of it to him. It was only then that he finally understood what happened. He had such a meltdown that everybody else ended up quitting the guild because nobody could tolerate him, he became a laughingstock and everybody accused him of being a pedo, and he eventually just deleted his character. No idea what happened to him after that.”

“Huh. So, that’s how you got started on trollin’.”

“Yeah. There was something incredibly satisfying about pulling that all off. Still best friends with the girl even now.”

“You are? She too busy to play games or somethin’ these days? Never seen her around, unless she’s one of your girlfriends without me knowin’ about it.”

“You know her. You’re even friends with her.”

Tabitha tilted her head. “Huh?”

“Oh, right.” Fenrir smiled. “I’m forgetting to tell you one of the most important things about her.”

“What is it?”

“She was never a real girl. Also, she—he, goes by Oleander now.”

Tabitha smacked Fenrir in the arm while wearing an amazed expression. “Seriously?!”

“Seriously. That’s how we met. It’s basically our origin story and what set us down the path of trolling everybody together. Also, Olly ended up flirting with the rival guild’s leader to basically do the exact same thing, albeit with less drama. We ended up changing our names and transferring servers after that with all of our new wealth. Got a reputation as a duo of scumbags going around seducing guild leaders and cleaning their banks out. Every guild leader in the game became paranoid of any girl who tried to flirt with them. Had to move games after we instilled enough paranoia.”

“Well, that’s… definitely one way to lay the foundations for a friendship.”

“Yep. Also, I didn’t find out that he was really a he until I tried flirting with him myself. He let me know that he was actually a dude. Said he’d be happy to return my flirting and start dating since he liked me, but… yeah. Not exactly into guys. Still wanted to stay friends with him even though I felt stupid and embarrassed for kind of falling for him.”

“I bet there’s an alternate reality out there somewhere where you two are married and causin’ all sorts of trouble in games.”

“I wouldn’t doubt that for a second. I’d try stealing him from Corwin in a heartbeat if I liked dick. Well, I wouldn’t actually. I’m not evil enough to cuck somebody. Unless that somebody is Nell and it’s part of some kinky roleplay where I’m not actually cucking her.”

“That girl ain’t right.”

“Are any of us?”

“Nope.”

The two chuckled together and finished their sandwiches. With those done, it was time to get back to work on their submarine.

“Think of a name for her yet?” Tabitha asked, looking the submarine’s hull over.

“Not yet,” Fenrir answered. “I’ll probably leave that up to you unless you’d rather not. Wait. Maybe that’s it. Could name her the Tabitha. Or the Tabinator.”

“The Tabinator? Seriously? That’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. I love it.”

“Then that’s what we’ll name this girl. Our submarine capable of mass destruction and long-distance trolling. The Tabinator.”

Tabitha stretched her arms above her head before slapping her cheeks and smiling. “Well, if she’s gonna be named after me, I guess now I’ve really gotta make sure she’s the best darn fantasy submarine to ever exist!”

“I believe in you. But give me a minute. I’m going to go check on the ferrets, make sure they have water and stuff, and then I’ll be back.”

“Take your time, dog boy.”

With that, Fenrir woke from virtual reality and Tabitha got back to work.

As for Saya and Azalabulia…

Serra couldn’t believe what she was seeing.