The pair come to a small batch of tents built into half broken buildings with the biggest at the back. Each tent is decorated with chimes, trinkets, moss, and earthy tones all about.

“You weren’t kidding. We walked for five minutes at most.” Cass leans back, “I can still see the lake.”

“Yeah! How do you think I knew so much about Goose and the Pond Scum? See that big tent in the back, that’s Portobello’s tent. Good luck!” Crem shouts as he runs off.

“You were supposed to introduce me!” Cass fruitlessly shouts after him before heading toward the largest tent.

“Uh, excuse me?” Cass says before he enters the tent.

“Come on in.” 

Cass pushes past the door flap and finds a meditative dream world. Circles made of pillows and massive cushions and at its center was an extremely tall man with a massive mushroom cap. He towers over Cass at atleast eight feet tall, wearing nothing but a robe and decorative beads and tassels on his cap.

“What can I do for you?” He says as he pats a seat near him.

“Portobello, right?” Cass said as he sat down 

He nods.

“I was told by Crem that you may have knowledge about a spellbook. Can you tell me what you know?”

He ponders for a moment before answering. “I’ll do you one better. You are a multi, correct?”

“How. Yeah, I am.”

“I recently lost contact with a pod of my funguys. Six, to be exact, they delve into ruins of old medical buildings and such. If you retrieve them, you’ll find yourself in the possession of a spellbook..” 

“I’ll need to inform the guild but I can do that. Where were they last heard from?”

Portobello strokes his chin, “I believe they were around the HellsHounds bar. They needed permission to be in their territory. 

“That complicates things but is doable. You have yourself a deal.” Cass says as he extends his hand toward him. 

He looks at it, perplexed, then hands Cass a paper with the Troops identification information on it. “For the guild.” Then he returns to a meditative state.

Cass shrugs then leaves the tent. Crem is sitting in front with a few more funguys in various colored caps and robe-like clothes. “How did it go?”

Cass shows him the paper, “fairly well, I think. It’s hard to tell.”

Crem and the others all laugh. “Yeah, he is strange. The oldest and first. Though that goes without saying I suppose.”

“Well I’m headed out. I have to report back to the guild.” and with that, Cass begins the long trek back to Trash Heap. He occasionally tries to turn into his cheetah form but fails.

Smiley reappears, “I’d lay off for a day. You overloaded your system.”

“I get it. I’ll get a room at one of the motels when I get there.”

He doesn’t reach town until roughly midnight. The guards are posted at the gate. “Great.” Cass enters the town with little problem. Now logged into the system as a newbie Multi.

“Everything is closed already, thankfully the motel is still open.” Cass sleepily wanders into the motel office and pays for a single night room. “Thankfully I can buy stuff on loan with my card. I still haven’t been paid.”

 The room is a small, single bed. Calling it a room is generous. It’s a closet with a bathroom but Cass doesn’t care. His head hits the pillow and sleep takes him in an instant.

Cass stirs to distant booms. Louder and louder until he is fully awake and he realizes that noise is the front desk waking him up. 

“It’s nine in the morning! Time to go!”

“Yeah! Yeah! I’m going already.” Cass said as he rose from the bed. Fully refreshed and ready to go. 

He hurried over to the guild to hand in his herbs and complete the first half of his test. He arrives at the guild and sees the door is half open.

He slowly makes his way inside to find that a few multi’s are in the front room, looking at paperwork. Lila perks up at the sight of Cass.

“Welcome back! I trust you were successful?” Lila said as she held out her hands.

“I was. It proved to be more challenging than I had anticipated but nothing I couldn’t handle in the end.” he said as he placed the herbs in her hands.

She placed them in a guild marked bag and stuffed them under the desk. “It wouldn’t be multi work if it didn’t go awry at some point! Stone wanted to see you about your payment and the second job.”

Cass thanked her and headed back to Stone’s office. 

Stone perked up at Cass’ arrival. “I knew you’d do the job. Now for the payment. Hand me your card.”

Cass hands him the card and Stone places it on a floating holopad. He taps a few buttons on his personal screen and the holopad turns green. He grabs it and hands it back. “That should cover it and then some. You should get your hands on some new gear before you head to the second exam.”

“About that. Is it possible to wait a few days? I accepted a job from someone and it cannot wait.”

Stone looks unsurprised. “Yeah, it’s fine. The job I had lined up is an old one. Not too difficult but tricky. Did the client give you their information?”

“Yeah, right here.” Cass said as he pulled out the sheet Portobello gave him. “You seem unsurprised.”

“The funguys. Weird bunch. It’s extremely common for Multi’s to get jobs while on jobs. People can’t bother to come in but when you are standing right in front of them, bam!”

“That makes sense.” Cass said but thought, ‘that never happened to me. Was I not approachable before?’

Smiley chuckles, ‘no offense but you were rough to look at.’

Cass sighs, ‘fair enough.’

Stone hands the paper back to Cass, “Alright, all set. See you in a few days.”

“Hopefully sooner!” Cass called back as he left his office.  

Cass waves at Lila as he leaves and she happily waves back.

‘Okay. I need a new bike, new clothes, and I wanted to check out the SixShotSurplus.’  

Smiley pops in beside him. ‘The bike and clothes I get but why the gun store?’

Cass smirks, ‘I wanna test out a theory of mine. Each gun is made using their patented cyberware that generates bullets and constructs guns so I wanna see what happens if I try to assimilate some bullets.’

‘Not a bad idea.’

‘But first I need to call Omni-Rides about my bike.’ Cass says as he taps his ear but nothing happens. “Why is it not working?” 

Smiley looks confused until it hits him, ‘Oh! That implant behind your ear was a phone! I was wondering.’

Cass just looks at him annoyed.

‘When I built your new body, I left it out. Your new body shifts so constantly that it was impractical to keep any implants.’

Cass sighs, ‘that’s fair I suppose. Okay, first stop is a hand held phone then we’ll stop in at the Omni-Rides location here in town. They should have one.’ 

Cass turns back around and heads back into the guild. “Hey Lila! Do you happen to know where I can get a hand held phone? For reasons I don’t want to get into, I can’t get the implant.”

She pulls out a map and points him to the BeeHive. An all around internet and technology related store as well as the Omni-Rides building, the nearest SixShotSurplus, and a wasteland pantry to get some food.

Cass takes the back way to the Beehive. It’s a modest store but very nineteen eighties cyberpunk. Neon, purple, and dirty but somehow super clean. He goes into the store but there is no one working. The massive screen that takes up the whole wall behind the desk turns on and purple swirls appear and encircle a point on the desk.

The front desk is totally empty except for a phone. He picks it up and an eye appears, winks, and is replaced with the words ‘On the house, Cass. See you soon, Smiley.’

Smiley flickers into space. “BeeHive. Queen bee! I get it! That’s fun.”

Cass leaves the store with Smiley close behind. “What was that?”

“Queen! One of the A.I.’s. She’s playing hard to get but I’m sure we’ll see her again soon. She practically said as much.”

Cass stops, looks back at the store then back at Smiley. “You made it seem like this was gonna be way harder.”

“It will be for most of them but not all of them will be. A few are show offs to be honest.”

Cass rolls his eyes, “Anyway. Let’s link this phone to my number and see what we got.” Cass said as he turned on the phone. Starting slow but building quickly, the notifications start flooding in. dozens of missed calls and messages from Quinn. A few from other contacts and one from Necropolis.

Smiley stares at the phone. “Who is that?”

“Right now, it doesn’t matter. I’ll deal with it when we get back to my apartment in Necropolis.” Cass says as he walks off.

“Apartment? You live in the city?!” 

“Yeah but before you start. The same reason I need a new license is why I couldn’t get back there. New face, remember?”

Smiley floats alongside him, “right. It just caught me off guard. I was wondering where you live so this answers some questions.”

“Alright, let’s get to Omni-Rides.”