265 - Alpha Deck 1: Puzzler

Lexie and Tate kept staring at each other until the food warmer dinged to let him know the pizza was ready. At almost the same time, Lexie received a text on her phone. 

It was from Doyle.

Doyle: Did you manage to meet him? Duru?

Lexie thought about her response before she typed it out.

Lexie: Yes. She was nice.

Doyle: She? Wait, the Dark Artist is a she?

Lexie: Yeah. Anyway, about that thing you asked me the last time you were here, about PR representation, the answer is yes. I’d like to work with you and your PR team if that’s possible. 

Doyle didn’t hesitate. He called her instantly. 

“Are you serious?” His voice was exploding with excitement over the phone, so much that Lexie had to lean back so his screech wouldn’t pierce her eardrums. “You want to work with us?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. I knew you would. Abernathy told me that you probably wouldn't take it because we're just starting out and we don't have any clients or even an office building yet, but I just knew that our friendship meant more to you than anything you would get from other big-shot PR agencies.”

“Uh, right.” Lexie didn’t want to tell him that she hadn’t gotten any deals from other PR agencies, likely thanks to her father and Vacek keeping them away from her. And also, the reason she was accepting his deal had only a little to do with their friendship. “So..what do we do now? Do we meet up?’

"Of course! Uh…hang on, I have to call the boss first. He’s going to be so excited he won’t even care that it's the middle of the night. I’ll call you back after, yeah?”

“Okay,” Lexie said as he hung up 

She noticed Tate giving her a look as he quietly ate his pizza. 

“What?”

“You’re getting a PR agency now?”

"How did you..." she noticed the mist hanging on her phone, and she glared at him."I told you to stop that."

He smirked.

She attempted to brush it off as she answered his question. "I figured that since people are already talking about me, I might as well take control of the narrative and craft my own image.”

“I guess. Whoever was on the phone sounds a little young to be a PR agent, though."

“That’s my friend Doyle. We went to elementary school together, and now he interns for an agency.” She further explained how he’d brought the deal to her and how he was the one who sent her the information about Duru. 

When she was done, Tate dusted his fingers and picked up another slice of pizza. “So, this agency? They're not established or anything?”

“According to what Doyle said, not yet. I think they're just starting out.”  But that was exactly what Lexie needed. Because a more established PR team would probably drop her the second they realized what it was that Lexie actually wanted to do with her newfound fame.

Doyle’s team seemed desperate enough that they would probably keep her on, and as long as his boss was skilled enough, he would help Lexie spin her scandals into a good thing.

They would make her someone worthy of being followed.

She would need a ton of followers and a really good spin if she wanted to take on the Fae.

Besides, Doyle seemed like a really resourceful person. The fact that he knew who'd sold Patriot the mechs, even when the rest of the heroes had no idea, and he’d been able to get her the contact information in less than a day, was enough evidence of his usefulness.

Lexie needed someone like that on her team, someone with 'ears on the ground' as Doyle put it.

“We’ll see how it goes,” she said as she hopped off the counter. “Now, back to your offer, are you sure you want to do this?”

He shrugged. “As I said, I have nothing to lose.”

“Yeah, but…” she sighed. “The way the cards work, you’d basically be forming a temporary soul bond with a tiny Eldritch creature. You would be in control of the bond, but I don’t know yet how it transforms your soul.”

Tate raised an eyebrow. “In a few months, I won’t even have a soul to be transformed anyway, so that’s beside the point.”

Lexie bit her lip. She instinctively felt like the right thing to do would be to turn him down. She still didn't feel great about this human experimentation thing, and Tate was probably taking this path out of desperation and hopelessness.

But Lexie didn’t have a choice.

She had to experiment on humans, and like it or not, Tate was a good choice for that, particularly because, even if she caused permanent damage, it wouldn't be anything worse than what he was going through anyway.

If she managed to make a healing card, she might even be able to help him, and at least he was close enough to her that if need be, she could probably mitigate the side effects. 

“Okay,” she said. ‘We can go tomorrow and get started.”

He nodded, then the front door opened and closed.

Uncle Max walked in, jerking to a stop when he saw them in the kitchen. 

“What are you two doing up?” he demanded. “It’s midnight. It’s past your bedtime.”

“We don’t have bedtime,” Tate pointed out.

“You do now."

“Where’s your gun?” Lexie asked, and Uncle Max looked down in surprise at his missing holster. 

“Damn it. I must have left it.”

“Left it where?”

“That’s none of your business. Now go to bed.”

“Why are you yelling at us when you were the one who was out all night? Where were you at? It’s pretty late.”

“And you left a while ago," Tate added.

“And what’s that on your neck? Did someone bite you?"

Uncle Max's entire face flushed.

“Bedtime, both of you!” he barked as he stomped up the stairs to his room. 

“Is it just me, or was his shirt buttoned weird?” Tate asked. 

They looked at each other, and the realization hit them at the same time. They made a face, shuddered, and resolved not to think about it again. 

***

Doyle did call Lexie back later that night, and they set up a meeting in Arcadia at 5:00 pm. Which worked out just fine since her morning was pretty full.

Lexie and Tate had to delay their plans to go out the next morning, thanks to the early arrival of Emma and Xena, who knocked on the door right as they were pouring out their bowl of cereal. 

Lexie opened the door to reveal the pair in matching sundresses, which Emma looked really excited about, and Xena appeared merely resigned to.

“It’s my first day off in forever,” Emma said, gesturing with her picnic basket. “And I got pastries delivered all the way from that Pinehill. They sent it by airmail.”

“Airmail?”

“Lexie, you don't know about airmail yet?"

"She was stuck in the dungeon when it came," Xena said.

"Oh, that's right. It’s wonderful. It’s this new delivery system that came that basically zips things through the system as long as they're coming from really far away. I can get a whole feast delivered within the blink of an eye. Isn't that amazing?"

"This new developer and engineer duo created it," Xena said. "They were all over the news for a bit."

“Cool.” Lexie knew that, in the past, food deliveries through the system were only allowed in cases of emergency, so she was curious as to how they managed it now.

“Anyway, we came to invite you three for a picnic by the lake." Emma glanced around. “Where’s Max?”

“Probably sleeping in. He had a um... a long night.”

“Doing what?"

Lexie and Tate shared a look, coming to a silent agreement as they said simultaneously, “We’d rather not talk about it.” 

Emma looked unsure, but she said, “Alright, well, then we can just have the picnic without him. That is, if you guys want to help us enjoy these delicious desserts together?”

“Sure,” Lexie said. She hadn’t spent time with Emma in a while, and besides, she was making it a point to hang out with Xena as much as possible, so the other girl wouldn't feel insecure about their friendship.

Lexie and Tate's experimentation could wait. “How about you, Tate? Picnic?”

He shrugged, which was just about the most enthusiastic response they could hope to get from him. Even though deep inside, he was probably looking forward to eating something that wasn’t cereal or pizza for the first time in days. 

Though Aiden had vouched for Uncle Max’s cooking skills, the other man hadn’t even attempted to make them a meal yet. He probably expected them to cook for themselves at their age, as was customary in Earth 9, where kids matured faster than normal.

Was Lexie supposed to know how to cook?

She'd never learned. Her father had always made stuff for her, and she guessed she’d just gotten spoiled.

Eitherway, Emma was here now with her baked goods, and they admittedly smelled good.

When they went out by the lake, Lexie noticed that Xena kept looking at Tate.

She distantly wondered if it was thanks to the memory orb, if Xena had watched the part where Tate had appeared at SJP.

Xena didn't say anything until they’d spread out the blanket and Emma had handed out sandwiches that were admittedly very good. Almost as good as Aiden's.

Lexie missed her dad. Good thing there were only like three or four days left until he got back. 

She should call him today. 

“Your name’s Tate, right?” Xena asked out of the blue, eyeing him.

“Yeah,” Tate said. “At least last I checked.”

Xena didn’t seem at all amused by his joke. “How did you meet Lexie?”

“At the AFC,” he responded without missing a beat.

“I told you that already,” Lexie reminded her friend. 

“Yeah, I know. It’s just weird that you guys got so close in such a short time and now you’re staying with her.”

“Xena...” Emma’s tone held a warning, and Xena rolled her eyes. 

“I’m not accusing him of anything, Mom. I’m just asking.” She turned back to Tate. “How did you guys become friends in the first place?”

Tate thought about it and answered with: “She stalked me.” 

Emma and Xena froze, and Lexie gaped. “I did not.”

“You kinda did. She followed me and pestered me and tried to bribe me with snickerdoodles until I agreed to be her friend.”

“Why?”

“Because she was curious about why a mundane would join the AFC and how I planned to fight. She thought it was pretty brave of me, I guess. She was also interested in my mechs and probably wanted to make cards out of them. Eventually, she wore me down, and we became friends.”

“Aww,” Ema said with her hand on her chest. “That’s so adorable.”

“No, it’s not," Lexie grumbled. It also wasn’t true, but of course, Lexie couldn't tell Xena the truth about why she’d been interested in Tate. And Tate knew it, which was why he’d crafted the ridiculous story.

She glared at him, and he gave her a smug look, eating the sandwich. 

“I still remember that first day you brought him to the hospital, Lex,” Emma continued. “He was so skinny and angry-looking. But I knew he liked you, just from the way he looked at you."

Tate immediately choked on his sandwich, and that sent him into a coughing fit.

It was Lexie's turn to give him a smug smile, as Emma patted his back and said, "You’ve come a long way from there, haven't you, Tate?”

Tate hacked to dislodge the bread from his windpipe. “I guess I have.”

“I’m her best friend, by the way,” Xena blurted out suddenly. “Dewie, Lexie, and I have been bestfriends since Elementary school. Three years. Might not seem like much, but that’s a quarter of our lives. So…yeah.”

“Great,” Tate said, and after an intense staring competition between the two, they went back to eating and enjoying the nice morning chill.

Xena talked about how her school year was going, and how she'd finally gotten a pass at simulations, when her team managed to save people from museum thieves, using an Eldritch gang disguised as paintings.

At some point, Frank and Merryweather passed by, and they talked to Emma at length about Frank's abscess on his left thigh. He even showed it to them, which made everyone except Lexie and Emma lose their appetite.

Glinda, Terry, and their crew of elderly hikers also passed by on the way to their nature walk, and they snagged some croissants on the way.

At the end of the meal, Xena and Lexie video-chatted with Dewie, who would be arriving home sometime today. His parents were picking him up from the train station, but he might be coming over to Xena's for dinner. 

After breakfast, Xena and Emma went on their shopping trip, and Lexie attempted to call her father.

Interplanetary calls were different. Expensive for one, and generally hard to make. It was said that only one out of every ten interplanetary calls would actually reach the receiver. So Lexie called him ten times, and when that didn't work, she figured he might have just missed it, and he would call her back at some point.

Just a few more days and he would be back home, safe and sound.

Later that morning, Lexie had a few books delivered, and after she got them, she finally went back to the dungeon with Tate.

Pvilycht was, of course, waiting for her, not looking any better than he had yesterday.

“Hey Pvilycht. I have something for you.”

“What is it?” he asked.

She handed it over. "The Self You Leave Behind: Between Past and Future. It has a four-point-eight-star rating online, and I thought it might help you with your predicament. But if it doesn't, I have a couple more we can try."

Pvilcht took the book from Lexie, while Tate asked, "Why did you get him a self-help book?

"Because he needs help discovering himself," she said. “ I think actualization is important, and it's a journey only he can go on. I can't help you discover who you really are, Pvilycht. But maybe, with some help, you can find that out on your own."

He nodded slowly, flipping the pages. "Thank you."

"No problem. Anyway, Tate here is going to be our first subject for the living cards. I want you to observe his soul as it is now, and record anything his baseline, so we know if anything changes."

"This is not his true body. Yes?"

"No. It's a golem. Which makes things complicated but not impossible to work with, since it's the same soul controlling it." Golems, from Lexie's research, were essentially like growing another arm and having it detached from your body. It was still attached to your brain and soul, and couldn't do anything else without you. And if you died, it died.

"I think I can work with it," he said.

"Okay." Lexie clapped and materialized a virtual journal where they would record everything they found. "Okay, so we're going to start here. Test Subject 1: Tate. He will be getting The Alpha Deck: Puzzler."

"Puzzler?"

"I'm not focusing on the names right now. I'm still trying to figure out what direction I want to go with the deck."

"What do you mean?"

"Obviously, I can’t create an infinite number of cards. Decks must be limited in number so as not to stress out the control components holding it all together. I would also love to have them play off each other, so I need to be selective about the cards and direction I want to go in." She sighed. "I wish I could talk to Elvira right now." They hadn't spoken in forever, and Lexie no longer had her number thanks to being shut out of the system.

She would go visit her if she were still on campus, but she had likely graduated by now, and Lexie didn't know where she lived.

Though she could probably find out if she tried hard enough. She wondered if she could convince Elvira to join her team.

It would help to have someone with experience working in an actual card academy or for a card company.

While Lexie knew how to create a deck for herself, it was a different ball game creating decks for other people. What would they want? What would be most useful for them? What would be safest?

From her studies about how mass-produced decks, card companies usually did surveys and performed ample research to answer those questions.  

Lexie didn't have that right now.

"If you're going to go from it from a safety angle," Tate said as though he could read her mind. "You should think, who is the most incompetent, weakest person who might use this card? What sort of mistakes would they make, and how would you stop them from making that mistake?"

Lexie bit her lip.

"The more powerful the card is, the more dangerous," she said. "So should I have a competency check then? Should we age-limit it?"

"Probably."

Lexie pursed her lips. She didn't like age limits.

"Okay, we'll put that away for now. Let me just show you the cards we already made yesterday, and you can try them out."

"Alright."

Lexie pulled out the four cards that she'd made and handed them to him.

"These are all in the puzzler deck. Upon activation, it will form a small link with your soul."

"What's the activation protocol?

"You hold the master card in the deck. Soul lock it. And then you say the card name."

"What's the card name?"

"Replay."

Tate wrinked his nose. "Boring. No one wants to buy a card with a boring name."

"Okay, naming's not my strong suit. We'll figure that out later. Just try it, okay. It's a card that helps you track aura movements to replay an event that happened in a space within a certain time."

Tate seemed impressed. "That's freaking amazing."

"Right? I spent all night crafting it. It's pretty complex, so it needed another card for support. I call the other one Archive."

"Also a boring name."

"I said I'll figure that out later, okay. Now come on, you have to soul lock it. When you hold it, a mini soul touch happens. You have to touch it back. It's a handshake for your soul."

He nodded, and then after some time, he jerked suddenly. Lexie guessed it had happened.

"How do you feel?" she asked anxiously.

"That was...weird.

"Weird good, or weird bad?"

"Weird, weird."

As Lexie was about to ask him to test it out, Lexie heard the ground rumble, and Tate jerked to alert, "What was that?"

Lexie sighed.

Not this again.

They were currently in the safe zone, but she didn't want to keep being scared to enter her own dungeon.

She squared her shoulders and said, "Actually, you two hold tight. I think it's time I talk to Neqal."