Guild of Tokens: Trainee

Ticket to raid

The subway car was crowded. Beatrice hated riding the subway, and normally she wouldn't be caught dead riding it during the morning rush. But that wouldn't do for today's errand, as Beatrice had decided to bring Kate along to get her some on-the-ground training. She also wanted to see how the girl's skills measured up first-hand, to see how she was progressing.

They had met up near the W. 4th Street station, and it was two transfers in before the crowds thinned enough before Beatrice felt comfortable talking shop out in public.

"Today's raid should be simple," she said. "We get there, buy the requested items, and get the hell out of there before we run into anyone else."

"Why's it called a raid?" Kate asked. The girl's chipper demeanor had returned, and Beatrice suppressed the urge to roll her eyes before answering.

"Because it's meant for a group. The task is harder, but the reward greater. Also the members of the Council must have all played Everquest back in the day and they think they're being cute."

"What's Everquest? Some sort of match-3 puzzle?"

"Never mind. How is your research coming?"

She had sent Kate deep into the bowels of one of the NYU libraries, ostensibly for a paper for her American history class, but actually to transcribe a set of rare 18th century manuscripts. Beatrice had tried multiple times to get access to the same collection without any luck, but Kate's request had been granted within days. It was one of the reasons she now liked using college students as her trainees: no one took them that seriously. Plus they helped push her wares without her having to hang out in Washington Square Park all day.

"Good! I've been indexing the Valley Forge journals. The library's records are pretty terrible, so it's slow going, but after that's done I'll cross-reference those with the entries in Rita's diary and hopefully that should give us some insight into what-"

"Excellent progress," Beatrice said, cutting off the girl before she could start blabbing too much about the project. She wasn't the paranoid type, but she never liked discussing things of a sensitive nature out in public, in case this was the day that someone was actually stalking her again.

"When you've gotten a bit further, we can discuss in private."

"Oh, sure," said Kate, clearly disappointed that she wasn't going to get the chance to impress Beatrice with her meticulous research. "By the way, I took that buff you gave me the other day to help finish the research. Got the rest done in 20 minutes, then did a bunch of my friends' papers, then some random freshman's problem set, and then it was only 1 AM, so I-"

"Glad you liked it. Packs a punch, doesn't it?" Beatrice made a note to dilute the next batch she made. It wasn't supposed to cause such a strong reaction, but maybe Beatrice had misjudged how intense Kate was.

"Definitely. Umm, say, you wouldn't happen to have any more of those, would you?"

Red flag, red flag, thought Beatrice. The last thing she needed was her trainee to go on a bender and end up being fished out of the East River naked.

"You're in luck," Beatrice said, reaching into her bag and pulling out one of the "regular" buffs. "It's my last one. Waiting for some new raw materials to make another batch, so don't waste it."

She handed it to Kate who eyed it greedily before stuffing it in her own pocketbook. Beatrice regretted her generosity immediately, but the regular-strength version was only a hare better than a regular Adderall, so the girl wouldn't get in too much trouble. At least she hoped.

The train screeched to a halt at the elevated station, and Beatrice beckoned Kate to follow her. They climbed down the stairs in silence as Beatrice checked her watch. 1:10. They were going to be late, and late meant not only a squandered opportunity but a ding to her reputation on the Raid Board. She had come close to failing a raid, once, but repressed that memory. No need for unnecessary negativity.

"Come on, it's not much further," she said to Kate as she quickened her pace.

"Where are we going anyway?" asked Kate, who matched her brisk strides.

"The Requester wants us to procure certain items from an estate sale," Beatrice said.

"That's it? Couldn't they have gone themselves?"

"Sure, but when you're flush with tokens, why would you stoop to such labor yourself when you can sit back in your comfy chair and let others do the dirty work for you?"

When she first received access to the Raid Board, Beatrice was beyond ecstatic. Her years of fetch Quests would finally be over, and she pictured grander Quests uncovering ancient magical objects and the like. But her enthusiasm was tempered during that first visit to the Board, when all but a few of the raids were just more elaborate fetch Quests. Plus, she hadn't realized that the raids required more than one person.

That was when she had begun her trainee program, and it had mostly been an unmitigated disaster thus far. The hours Beatrice spent seeding the Quest Board in search of potential partners had been too many to count, and all she had gotten for her efforts was a handful of abject failures.

Her first attempt she could chalk up to inexperience. He was a dorky engineer, the kind that had littered her undergrad classes and who had quickly become infatuated with her to the point of obsession. Not that Beatrice was the second coming of Helen of Troy, but she had the rare combination of attractiveness and approachability that made all manner of nerd think they had a shot with her.

After that unfortunate ending, she had made a rule: women only. But her next attempts suffered from the wrong power dynamic - they were older women who came to the Quests later in life and didn't like taking orders from someone 20 years their junior. Most ended up going out on their own, which saved Beatrice from any real unpleasantries. Now she hoped she had identified the perfect candidate pool for future prospects, but the jury was still out on that.