Third Heist: Jewelry Store Japes- Epilogue

  --- Joshua Durand ---

  Once a safe distance away from The Tides of Fluff and sure that he wasn’t being followed by anyone else, he stashed his ill gotten goods in the cabaret basement before taking a commercial break and making his way towards the malice doc’s warehouse.

  Which in turn led to him spending about thirty minutes sitting in an office chair seeing how long he could make himself spin in circles for. “Wheeeee!”

  At which point the warehouse door was slowly opened and a black van entered, the Malice Doc and his guard exiting the vehicle once it was parked.

  “So, what’s up doc?” He asked, stopping himself by placing his shoes on their meeting table.

  “A number of things, but at the moment mostly my disappointment.” The doc confessed.

  “Uh, is this because I picked a fight with a kid?” He grimaced, feet slipping off the table. “Because honestly that was not part of the plan.”

  “No, it’s more that you ran from a child thus undermining our goal of increasing the response the hero guild musters whenever you act.” His Malice Dealer glared taking his own seat. “Which is an additional annoyance after you pulled your heist a day in advance with minimal warning for us to work around.”

  “Counter argument A: Did you know she could summon an entire horde of those little eldritch abominations?” He asked, before presenting his follow up excuse of, “And B: I was showing initiative like you also suggested when telling me I could decide my own heist!”

  “A jewelry store robbery does not constitute a heist.” The doc shut down before admitting, “That said, we did not know that her Flufflepuff was capable of self-replicating to that scale. Most evidence within our system showed simple Asexual reproduction, what she did to hers was unexpected for us as well.”

  “Going to agree to disagree on that first one, and for the second: See, you can’t get mad at me for discovering heroic variables that you yourself were unaware of.” Joshua smugly noted.

  The Malice Dealer gave him an unimpressed look, before eventually just shaking his head. “The discussion on her summons does bring us to a topic that I’ve been wanting to ask you about for a moment as well.”

  (I don’t like the sound of that…)

  The Doc brought up a set of videos on a tablet before sliding it in front of Joshua.

  On the screen he saw a 2D cartoon version of himself putting on his previous two shows at the Mall and Museum.

  “I… have no idea how I’m doing this bit.” He half-lied, fairly certain the answer was ‘Madness’ even if he didn’t know the exact specifics. “Like seriously how is my power doing this to the video?”

  “Possible perception manipulation induced via Malicious corruption of your unrealized Madness gene. Such things were the very reason why we wanted you as a test subject, and is why we’re currently unloading a variety of camera equipment to study this phenomenon.” The Doc explained with a gesture towards the guard and several black boxes being unloaded from the van.

  “Oh… Fun…” He frowned, before letting out a sigh and giving the scientist a shrug. “Well, so long as you get my good size I guess it doesn’t matter.”

  “Your opinion wasn’t a concern, but your cooperation will be appreciated.” The doc assured him, before reaching across the table and rewinding the video a few moments. “That said, what actually meant was this.”

  Turning his attention back to the screen, Joshua watched as the museum video of himself spat out Fishy Friend, while the mall video of him summoned Blobby. A third image popped when the doc tapped the screen also showing off Doodle.

  “Ah, that…” He noted, not really sure what to say, but (I need an excuse, I need an excuse.)

  His Dreams were his main backup, and with the Cabaret growing he was only going to get more of them, but if he admitted they were Dreams then he’d be outing himself as a Wonderlander. The one semi-hidden ace he had up his sleeve as it gave him a whole direction of power growth not dependent on the Malice Doc’s drug and in turn giving him enough room to one day slip his leash. (If everything works the way I want…)

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  “Yes, while creating Constructs is not an unheard of ability it is unique enough to warrant interest. Especially if we can properly study one of them.” The doc told him.

  (Meaning you want to dissect my dreams on a lab table?!) He thought, doing everything in his power to suppress the sheer hate he felt for the doc at the moment. The idea of (murder) not seeming too insane despite his preference towards more show than substance in his criminal acts.

  “Well, unfortunately that won’t work too well given how they tend to burst a few moments after I make them if I don’t keep a steady flow of power going.” He admitted, before explaining that. “The power I use to twist and warp things when I cover it in my Ink, also works on my Ink, but like with the base power it’s got a time limit I’m working on.”

  “One that you should be able to extend by maintaining contact and supplying a steady flow of ink into the constructs.” The (monster) pointed out, taking the tablet back and beginning to write several theories down with a stylus pen. “Meaning with a vial of malice or two, we should be able to get a proper study done with a bit of preparation.”

  “Maybe, but the constructs are also fragile.” He tried to argue. “Honestly, if Flufflepuffs weren’t so…” (Get through it. It’s for your Dreams. You can stomach it.) “harmless, then my blob would’ve popped a lot sooner. The fish only lasted so long because it caught the heroes off guard and I didn’t throw it as hard as I could. You take a knife to see what's inside any of them and they’ll burst like a water balloon.”

  “Which for all purposes they may be.” The doc nodded, buying it. “Then we’ll have to use less invasive tests until you improve their durability.”

  “Right.” He agreed, unable to help the way his eyes narrowed ever so slightly. (He’s onto me.)

  (We can get through non-invasive tests. It won’t be fun, but it won’t hurt them either.)

  Repressing his plan to (murder the doc at a later day) he decided to forcibly change the subject by pulling out his bag of loot and dumping it on the table. “Of course, if you want to do those tests then you’re going to have to keep your half of this little arrangement.”

  “Ah, good.” The doc smirked, picking up a golden necklace. “You didn’t forget to actually rob the place this time.”

  Letting the jab pass him by -(Given how it doesn’t even matter compared to the threats against my fucking Dreams.)- he gave the doc a nod and the smuggest grin he could as he leaned back in his seat. “Yep, which of course means I’ll be expecting the big bucks here.”

  The doc continued to inspect the jewelry for a moment before telling him, “Three grand.”

  “What.” He could not have heard that right.

  “I’ll give you three grand for the lot of it.” The doc elaborated, a smug grin on his face now.

  “You’ve got to be joking, if I melted all of this down it’d be worth at least ten times that!” He practically yelled, before pulling out his phone. “In fact, hold up I’m going to pull up a gold weight to cash calculator and prove you’re wrong.”

  “Half of these pieces are fake, and if you tried to sell the half that isn’t even split amongst all of the city’s gold dealers and pawnshops you’d be bringing too much heat for anyone to buy them off of you.” The Doc pointed out. “Meaning unless you want to burn several afternoons over the next few months on this, this is the best deal you’re getting.”

  Joshua glared at the doc for a moment before looking down at the pile and deciding, (If he’s going to rip me off then there’s no reason not to keep some for myself.)

  He reached out and grabbed a couple pieces he thought that someone he knew would have to like. “I’m keeping this then.”

  “Sure, but the price drops by two-fifty.” The Doc warned him, before seemingly smirking at his reaction. “Make that Two-Sixty.”

  “Fuck you.” He spat.

  “I guess you don’t want your next batch of Malice then?” The doc asked, setting five vials on the table.

  He didn’t say anything.

  “That’s what I thought.” The Malice Dealer nodded, taking Joshua’s silence as his win, rather than a reaffirmation that (I need to get away from these assholes as soon as I can.) like he did.

  “Just tell me when the next job is.” He growled, grabbing the vials before the doc could change his mind.

  “There won’t be one in December.” The Doc told him.

  “What? Scared to get on Santa’s naughty list?” He huffed.

  The Doc gave Joshua a serious look over his glasses. “The last thing you want to be is on his Naughty List during the Holidays. I will not let you jeopardize our operation by making us a target of the Holiday Run, and will shoot you if you attempt it.”

  “Wait, what?” He couldn’t help but blink.

  “Come on, now we’re going to figure out how this camera power of yours works before you leave.” The Doc told him, getting up from the table.

  “Wait, hold on!” He cried, scrambling to his feet. “Are you saying Santa Claus is real?!”

  For anyone who may be interested… Here's an audit of my writing for the Seventh Year Anniversary.

  Today marks the seven year anniversary of when I first started Deviant’s Masquerade and I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for following along this far and post a chapter for each of my stories. (Note: Was going to write Black Briar’s today but stuff got in the way.)

  Additionally, I also try to do something semi-special each anniversary and while I do not have a new quest or game what I do have… is an audit.

  You see about a year or so ago I saw this meme, the uncle iroh one, where it was asking writers ‘do you actually have plot or are you just going off of vibes’ and that sort of stuck with me.

  Namely because I realized how many of my stories are just going off of vibes rather than plot. Which is part of why for my seventh year as a writer I am doing a sort of self-audit as it were for this past year to see what I can do to improve each story partially by re-reading a lot of my previous stuff. (Note: This excludes the various chapters I am releasing today and tomorrow.)

  Hacking Reality

  -Age: 5.5 Years

  -Word Count: 263k

  -Word Average: 47.8k per year

  -Last Year: 14.4k

  -The original idea was just for a mad scientist protagonist, and as one of my early stories I didn’t actually have a big bad beyond the kidnapping group. (Which has sort of been forgotten about.) As such most of the plot has been sort of slap dash with things going through frequent slow patches because most stuff is made up as I go with this story while using humor and Maya’s insanity to cover it all up.

  In reality, we’ve a few small plot points that are sort of pushed to the side for a in game month until we eventually do something about them. Which in turn means there are no clear ‘arcs’ or ‘books’ that I can divide things by.

  So, Plot to Vibes= 3/7

  The Huntsman’s Quest

  -Age: 5.5 Years

  -Word Count: 370k (Excluding 25k for the preboot)

  -Word Average: 67k

  -Last Year: 17.1k

  -The original likely would’ve had similar issues as Hacking Reality, but at the same time Jon being more reactive than proactive in the reboot makes it easier for him to have events every month that he has to face and overcome over the course of that month. None of which quite make for an overarching plot.

  From there I’ve currently got two maybe three events outside of December/Christmas stuff which can form a sort of ‘monthly novel’ sort of approach. Though after December I’ll probably have six dead months as far as plot goes given the remaining time for ‘a year in the life’. (I have however had the ending more or less planned for years, with it being flexible enough to match our choices.)

  Plot to Vibes=6/4

  Get Ink’d

  -Age: 5 years

  -Word Count: 189k

  -Word Average: 37.5k per year

  -Last Year: 14.3k

  -From the very beginning we’ve had a general plan of ‘break away from the syndicate’ and ‘reopen the cabaret’ with one or two tasks a month giving us the most clear direction of my first three quests.

  Based on my timings I see us finishing the first Act mid-december (in story) while the second act of actually building a gang and escaping the syndicate taking two or three more months. After that though, I have no idea what to do for a final act unless I wrap things up at the end of Act Two, which again would fall short of the ‘a year in the life’ goal. (I do not actually have an ending planned though.)

  Plot to Vibes=7/3

  And All The Sinners, Saints

  -Age: 4 years

  -Word Count: 115k

  -Word Average: 18.75k per year

  -Last Year: 10.4k

  -This quest started out because I had an idea for a cool cast of characters (half of whom are batman expies) forming a found family and wanted to write a story about them. Unfortunately, even if the characters are cool, cool characters alone do not make a plot. Hence why things tend to slow down mid ‘sin’ while ‘sinless days’ progress so much faster.

  I do however have plans for two/three more kids to be adopted as well as further exploration of things with the vigils. That said, I might need to make ‘sins’ less of big overarching events outside of the children because of how much its slowing things down. (Basically if I can’t do an ‘event’ in less than 10 chapters, I probably shouldn’t.)

  Plot to Vibes=4/6

  Hex City Devils

  -Age: 2 Years (Upon finishing Act 1)

  -Word Count: 131k

  -Average Yearly Count: 65.5k

  -Word Count Since March: 8.3k

  -A national writing month challenge, the idea here was to write a certain amount every day for a whole month. In order to do so I slapped together a bunch of cool character ideas and threw them into a city together as it went to crisis/quarantine, each of which I had three ‘acts’ for.

  Unfortunately, I misjudged how hard it would be to stitch all of these stories together into something coherent, while also explaining why things were bad enough for a quarantine. The later of which I hadn’t actually considered and in turn made me grind the plot to a halt as I tried to fix things. And after finally wrapping up most character’s act one this story is going to need an overhaul with a lot of clean up to make it work after how bad I fumbled everything.

  Plot to Vibes= -5/5 (because there was a plot, too much of a plot honestly.)

  Smile Like You Mean It

  -Age: 2 Years (If we count Patron Time)

  -Word Count: 121k

  -Word Average: 60k

  -Last Year: 40.4k

  -This quest similar to the one above began with me taking one cool character and wanting to write a story exploring them in an interesting setting. Except I actually planned out a massive backstory for that one character that creates a sort of overarching plot as we explore the setting.

  Which when combined with the four contract children, the three hell children, the four family members, and the sin cadre all having their own interlaced plot points makes me confident that while a bit of long haul I will be able to write out an entire open and closed by the time we explore all 28 districts of hell.

  Plot to Vibes=8/2

  Black Briar Library

  -Age: 2 Year (If we include patron start time, and ignore a 5 month hiatus for SLYMI)

  -Word Count: 81k

  -Word Average: 40.5k per year

  -Last Year: 31.1k

  -Inspired as a sort of ‘anthology’ this was meant to be a story following a large cast of characters across numerous stories in what I now realize would’ve been a highly flexible but poorly thought out plot based on an episodic nature.

  That said, the story focuses so much on Fischer’s slow opening up and dealing with his guilt, that realistically I could consider his overarching plot finished by the end of Book 4. Which would just leave the plots of his co-librarians which we have not explored at all, and who at this point are far less thought out due to me wanting to maintain flexibility within the story.

  Plot to Vibes=6/4 for now, 5/5 overall

  Daemon Daze

  -Age: 7 months

  -Word Count: 94k

  -Word Average: N/A

  -Last Year: Total

  -This one is meant to be an exploration of the days of the Voodoo Wars, a sort of prequel time period to the rest of the setting while also letting me engage in a sort of creature collectathon.

  For the actual plot I have three overarching and intersecting ‘plots’ that I want to try and tie together. (Pennyworth, Helena, the Families. And the Daemons as a sort of side-story thing.) The cases themselves are meant as a sort of narrative vehicle for those plots, but admittedly I need to plan them out more to keep the cases more interesting for what will probably be 10-ish, novellas. (500k-ish words at the current rate.)

  Plot to Vibes= 7/3

  ---

  Now moving onto planned or unrealized quests that have been up for votes:

  -The Devil’s Due Casino: (3k Written) I had a cool character duo with three important plot points, and a small cast around him. I probably could have turned this into a duology type of book but in reality things were nowhere near planned enough to do a proper story putting it on the Hacking Reality level.

  -The Legendary Travelers: (3.7k) A cool idea following several interesting characters, each having a sort of cool plot. Could be a precursor idea to the BBL, as of now I probably could not create a good story intersecting them all as a cast so will cannibalize them for other stories each better fits within.

  -Sanctuary Rosemary Branch: (0k, memo side story) This one would have revolved around the relationship between Nicholas Stone and Caleb Cross, as well as Cross’s various misadventures and Stone’s clean up. In truth I had very little in the way of an overarching plot, but several cool characters. This one probably would have ended up somewhere around AATSS as far as plot to vibe, but stuttering out since there was no connecting plotlines between everything.

  -Simon Lorde, The Overlord: (13k) Another cool character prompts a story idea, with me having vague ideas for six different cities each of which having a character to tie back to Simon. While I had a cool overarching plot idea, the internal plot of each city/location was fairly lacking so it would probably end up in a similar space plot to vibe wise as BBL rather than SLYMI.

  -Soul Stitcher Quest: Looking back, this one was a quest born of a hyperfixation idea between Sinners and South of Midnight. I had a couple of cool characters and a decent setting idea, but in reality there was no ‘motivation’ to the plot beyond ‘you have the power, use it’ which would likely put this plot to vibe score on the same level as Hacking Reality.

  -Horror Survival Quest: This one plot wise was actually fairly straight forward, kill several demon bosses and their cultists before getting out of the sealed off town. And would actually be fairly easy to build an overarching plot for… but I’m a little unsure if it would be better as a quest than a video game. If done it would probably be a ton of sub-1000 word chapters while also being fairly game-y in nature which makes me a little iffy on writing it.

  -Drone Civ Quest: This idea, while technically not a previous vote, is one I’m considering for my next quest. The idea being that we play two competing factions, one a middle manager trying to reclaim a death world the corporation they’re a serf to lost control of and the other the drones working to maintain their freedom. While an interesting premise… I’ve realized aside from mechanically exploring vaults I don’t have an actual plot outline beyond the beginning.

  -Monster Hunting Quest: I’ve an idea for a sort of overarching plot line to tie things together, but the majority of the story would’ve been exploring several locations and hunting monsters with a colorful cast of characters. I have several overarching goals and several interesting boss monsters/quests for forming a pattern similar to Daemon Daze in structure and likely eventual Plot to Vibe in scoring with each ‘plague’ having its own plotline.

  -Vandergeist: Another next quest idea, but one where I have an interesting city with multiple clashing factions and several heroes for each that could make an interesting civ quest with the protagonist having a focused goal to carry things through several phases. And despite thinking it was a hyperobsession I have enough plot planned to safely put it with Daemon Daze on plot level if with a longer overall story.

  ---

  Now for the actual numerical values of my Stats as an author:

  Time Active: 7 Years

  Total Word Count For Anthology: 219k over 1.25 years, for an average of: 175.2k yearly

  Total Quest Word Count: 1231k over 5.5 years, for an average of 223.8k per year

  Quest Word Count of the last Year: 240k

  Side Story Word Count: 115.4k over 2.25 years, for an average of: 51.1k per year

  Unrealized Story Count: 19.7k + 25 k for the Huntsman flop.

  Total Overall Word Count: 1,611,500 Words, for an average of 230k per year

  Past Year’s Word Count:

  Total Page Count: Roughly 5800 Pages of story, 852 of which are from the last year

  (325 Page) Books Written: Roughly 17.84 (Ignore my books being closer to 425 pages for 13.64.)

  ---

  So, all in all I’m actually up on my yearly average if only because of how quickly I’ve been writing Daemon Daze. (Which I can so easily write due to not being bound by my usual OCD rules, which is a whole other topic.)

  At the same time, while often experimental I feel like I’m learning enough with each story written that my skill as a writer is slowly improving. (Especially after reading the first dozen chapters of Hacking Reality and the Huntsman’s Quest.)

  Still if you read all of this, or any of my stories really, I just want to take one last moment to thank you for reading and following along for as long as you have.