The God of Ruin’s Pocket Change

CHAPTER 2: The Logic of Ants

The scream didn't stop.

Usually, when you hear a scream in a dark alley, it tapers off. It hits a peak of terror and then fades into a gurgle or silence. That’s the natural order of things.

But this scream was sustaining itself. It was joined by another. Then a chorus. Then a cacophony that sounded less like a street fight and more like a religious schism.

I stopped walking. I was about twenty paces away from the skewer stall, still chewing on the piece of charred rat meat. It tasted like burnt rubber and regret, but it was calories, and my divine vessel needed fuel to keep from collapsing.

I turned around, annoyed.

"What now?" I grumbled, wiping a streak of grease from my lip. "Did the meat come back to life?"

The scene behind me was chaos.

The crowd, which had been a shuffling, grey mass of depressed mortals just moments ago had transformed into a violent, writhing ocean. They were pressing in on Old Jenk’s stall, climbing over each other, clawing at the pavement, their eyes wide and bloodshot.

Jenk was on the ground, curled into a fetal ball, shielding the greasy counter with his body.

"Back!" Jenk shrieked, his voice cracking. "Back, you vultures! It was given to me! It’s mine! The Great One blessed me!"

"Share the wealth!" a man in rags yelled, diving for Jenk’s legs. "Just a rubbing! Let me touch the copper! Just one touch!"

"He’s hoarding the Divine Disc!" a woman screamed, tearing at her own hair. "The Economy has shifted! The balance is broken!"

I watched, baffled.

They were fighting over a penny. A dirty, oxidized, scratched-up penny that I had found next to a piece of lint in my pocket.

"Pathetic," I muttered. "Is the metal shortage that bad down here?"

I took another step, intending to leave them to their madness, but a ripple went through the crowd. Someone pointed a trembling finger at me.

"HE STOPS!" the pointer yelled.

The ocean of bodies froze. Hundreds of heads snapped in my direction. The violence evaporated instantly, replaced by a suffocating, heavy silence.

They stared at me.

I stared back, holding my half-eaten rat stick.

"Is there a problem?" I called out, my voice carrying easily over the damp street.

A man in the front, the one who had tried to tackle Jenk swallowed hard. He was trembling so violently his teeth chattered. He dropped to his knees, scraping his forehead against the filth of the road.

"Great... Great Lord," the man stammered. "You... you stopped."

"I did," I said. "I’m waiting for an explanation. Why are you assaulting the cook? The food is terrible, but he doesn't deserve death for it."

Jenk peeked out from behind his cart. He looked like he had gone ten rounds with a hurricane. He scrambled to his knees, clutching the penny to his chest with both hands.

"Excellency!" Jenk wept. "They... they don't believe! They think I stole it! They think a being of your... your radiance... couldn't possibly pay with a Whole One!"

I frowned. My eyebrows knitted together.

"A Whole One?" I repeated. "It's one cent. It's the smallest denomination of currency in existence. What did you expect me to do? Cut it in half?"

The crowd gasped. A collective intake of breath that sucked the oxygen out of the street.

"Cut it... in half?" someone whispered in horror. "Split the atom of wealth?"

I was starting to get irritated. My patience, never my strong suit even when I was a God, was fraying.

I assumed they were mocking me. That had to be it. They saw my rags and they were playing some kind of sick joke. They were pretending my trash money was a fortune to humiliate me for being poor.

"Listen," I said, my voice dropping an octave. I didn't mean to channel my divine aura, but my irritation leaked out. The air around me grew heavy. The neon lights overhead flickered and buzzed angrily.

"I don't have time for games. If the penny isn't enough to cover the cost of this..." I waved the rat stick, "...culinary disaster, then say so."

I reached into my pocket again.

The movement was subtle, but the reaction was catastrophic.

The people in the front row threw themselves backward, scrambling on their hands and knees to get away from me.

"No!" Jenk screamed, extending a hand as if to stop a bullet. "Mercy! No more! The market can't take it!"

"Oh, shut up," I snapped.

I pulled out a Nickel.

It was larger than the penny. Silver-toned. Thicker. Thomas Jefferson looked dignified on the face.

I held it up between my thumb and forefinger. It caught the reflection of a flickering pink neon sign, gleaming with a dull, matte luster.

"I have this," I said, showing it to the mob. "Five cents. A nickel. If you're going to fight over copper, I assume this silverish alloy is what you really want?"

The effect was instantaneous.

A woman in the second row rolled her eyes back into her head and collapsed, foaming at the mouth.

"A Moon Disc!" someone shrieked. "He holds a Moon Disc!"

"Five times the power!" another wailed. "It’s enough to buy Sector Z! It’s enough to buy the atmosphere!"

The man who had been kneeling clawed at his own face. "My eyes! I’m not worthy to look at the silver! It burns!"

I looked at the nickel. Then at the crowd.

They weren't mocking me.

The fear in their eyes was primal. It was the way a rabbit looks at a wolf. It was the way a mortal looks at an avalanche. They were terrified.

I finally understood. Or at least, I thought I did.

They’re not greedy, I realized. They’re broke. Destitute. This planet is so resource-deprived that a nickel is considered a weapon of mass destruction.

It was pitiful. It was hilarious.

"Put it away!" Jenk begged, burying his face in the mud. "Please! If you drop that, the local gangs will descend! The Warlords will come! We’ll all be slaughtered for the change!"

"You people are dramatic," I sighed.

I slipped the nickel back into my pocket.

The tension in the street snapped. People slumped over, panting as if they had just run a marathon.

"Keep the penny," I told Jenk. "Consider it a tip. Or hazard pay. Whatever."

I took another bite of the rat meat, turned on my heel, and started walking.

This time, nobody stopped me.

The crowd parted. It was like Moses splitting the Red Sea, if the Red Sea was made of filthy, malnourished peasants. They scrambled to the sides, pressing themselves against the crumbling brick walls to give me a ten-foot berth.

They didn't look me in the eye. They looked at my pocket. The pocket that held the nickel. The pocket that held the Ten Dollar Bill.

I walked through the silence, the only sound the crunch of my boots on the broken pavement.

[SYSTEM ALERT]

The blue box popped up again, hovering over the heads of the cowering masses.

[XP GAINED: +500]

[REPUTATION: NEUTRAL -> REVERED (SECTOR Z LOCAL)]

[TITLE UNLOCKED: THE WALKING BANK.]

[NOTE: PLEASE REFRAIN FROM FLASHLIGHTING HIGH-VALUE ASSETS. THE SERVER IS UNSTABLE.]

"The server is unstable," I read aloud, scoffing. "This whole world is unstable."

I dismissed the notification with a swipe of my hand.

I needed a place to think. I needed to figure out exactly how much value I was carrying. If a penny caused a riot, and a nickel caused mass hysteria, then my ten-dollar bill was essentially a nuclear warhead.

I turned a corner, leaving the mob behind. The alleyway here was darker, narrower. The neon lights didn't reach this deep.

I tossed the empty skewer stick into a pile of trash.

"So," I whispered to the darkness. "I'm rich. In a world of beggars, the man with ten dollars is King."

It should have felt good. Who doesn't want to be rich?

But it felt... wrong.

I remembered the look in Jenk’s single eye. It wasn't just greed. It was desperation. A desperate, starving hunger for survival.

"Whatever," I told myself, shoving my hands into my hoodie pockets. "Not my planet. Not my problem. I just need a nap."

I took three steps before I felt it.

A shift in the air. A vibration in the ground.

It wasn't divine energy. It was intent.

Someone was behind me.

Not the mob. They were too loud, too clumsy. This was quiet. Precise.

I didn't turn around immediately. I kept my pace steady, listening.

Soft soles against wet concrete. Lightweight. Fast.

A pickpocket.

I suppressed a smirk.

The audacity, I thought. Trying to rob the God of Excess?

I waited. I let them get closer. I could practically feel their breath, the heat of their body as they closed the distance, their eyes locked on the bulge in my pocket.

Just as I felt the ghostly touch of fingers brushing against my denim, I moved.

I didn't use magic. I didn't need it. My reflexes were hard-wired into my soul, not my body.

I spun around, my hand shooting out like a cobra strike.

I grabbed a wrist. Thin. Bonier than I expected.

"Gotcha," I said.

I yanked the intruder out of the shadows and slammed them against the brick wall—gently, by my standards, but enough to knock the wind out of them.

"Let go!" a voice hissed.

I blinked.

It wasn't a gang member. It wasn't a hulking brute.

It was a girl.

She looked like she had been dragged through a chimney and then rolled in ash. Short, chopped blonde hair that was matted with grime. Her face was smudged with soot, highlighting eyes that were a startling, piercing grey.

She wasn't scared. That was the first thing I noticed.

The mob had been terrified. Jenk had been pathetic.

But this girl? She was glaring at me. She bared her teeth like a cornered feral cat. She kicked at my shin with a heavy boot.

"Ow," I said flatly. It didn't hurt, but the principle of the thing was insulting.

"Let go, you tourist!" she spat.

I held her wrist firm, lifting her slightly so her heels hovered off the ground. She was light. Malnourished. But her grip on the knife in her other hand was white-knuckled.

"A knife?" I raised an eyebrow. "You were going to stab me for pocket change?"

"You're walking around Sector Z with your hands in your pockets like you own the place," she hissed, struggling against my grip. "You're flashing copper like it’s candy. You’re asking to be robbed. I’m just answering the call."

"I have ten dollars," I said calmly. "Hardly a fortune."

The girl froze.

She stopped kicking. She stopped struggling. Her knife hand lowered.

She stared at me, her grey eyes widening, searching my face for the lie.

"Ten... dollars?" she whispered.

"Yeah," I said. "And some loose change. Now, are you going to stab me, or can I drop you?"

She didn't answer. She looked at my pocket, then back at my face. The calculation in her eyes was rapid, terrifyingly intelligent.

"You're not from here," she said. It wasn't a question.

"No," I pointed a finger upward. "I'm from... Up North."

She narrowed her eyes. "Nobody comes from North. North is the wasteland. Or the Sky Cities."

She leaned in, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.

"You have ten dollars," she said slowly, testing the words. "And you're walking alone. Without guards. Without a convoy."

"I don't like entourages," I said. "They breathe too loudly."

She let out a short, sharp laugh. It sounded like glass breaking.

"You're either a liar," she said, "or the most dangerous man in the world."

"I'm Russ," I said, finally releasing her wrist. She dropped to her feet but didn't run. "And honestly? I'm mostly just bored."

She rubbed her wrist, watching me warily. She sheathed her knife in a rapid, practiced motion.

"I'm Anya," she said.

She took a step closer, invading my personal space, sniffing the air around me.

"You smell like rain," she said suspiciously. "Real rain. Not the acid stuff."

"I shower," I lied.

"Russ," she repeated my name, tasting it. Then she looked at the end of the alleyway, where the mob was still wailing over the penny.

"You made a mistake back there," she said. "Showing the nickel."

"I didn't spend it."

"Doesn't matter. You showed it. Word travels fast in the Sector. The Iron Skulls will know within ten minutes. The Guild within twenty."

She looked at me, her expression shifting from hostility to a predatory kind of partnership.

"You need a guide," she declared.

"I didn't hire you."

"You don't have a choice," Anya said, crossing her arms. "You have a target on your back the size of the moon. You walk three more blocks, and you'll be dead. Or worse, debt-slaved."

She pointed a dirty finger at my chest.

"I can get you underground. I can hide the signal of your wealth. For a price."

I looked at her. She was tiny, dirty, and rude.

But she hadn't bowed.

"What's your price?" I asked, amused.

"Don't flick pennies at people," she said seriously. "It draws too much attention. And..." She hesitated, biting her lip. "...if we survive the night? You buy me dinner. Real dinner. Not rat."

I smirked.

"Deal," I said. "Lead the way, thief."

She turned and sprinted into the darkness.

"Keep up, Moneybags!" she called over her shoulder. "Try not to buy anything on the way!"

I followed her, shaking my head.

Things were finally starting to get interesting.