Chapter Thirteen: Payday
The slum shop owner had my cash ready exactly when he said he would, counted out in neat, worn bills that smelled faintly of the storage unit they'd probably been sitting in for years. More than I expected. Cores had apparently been running scarce that week, and a girl who didn't ask questions about buyers turned out to be worth a premium.
"Pleasure doing business," he said, sliding the joker card back across the counter to me. "Come back anytime."
I tucked the card and the cash away, and I was still doing math on it, rent, food, maybe finally fixing that refrigerator, when Wren caught up with me outside, practically vibrating.
"You need to sit down," she said.
"I'm walking."
"Sit down anyway, this is big."
I leaned against the shop's brick wall instead, which apparently counted. Wren turned her laptop around, screen full of numbers I didn't fully understand yet, and started talking fast enough that I had to ask her to slow down twice.
"Subscription button went live on the channel two days ago," she said. "I didn't want to say anything until I had real numbers, because I didn't want to jinx it, but." She took a breath. "We crossed eight thousand subs already. At the base tier alone. Plus ad revenue from the clips, plus a couple of smaller brand inquiries I turned down because you said no brand deals, but Val, this is real money. This is rent money. This is actual, stable, we do not have to worry about the lights getting shut off money."
I stared at the number on her screen for a long moment, doing the kind of quiet arithmetic you do when you've spent two years counting every dollar and suddenly don't have to anymore.
"Okay," I said finally, and something loosened in my chest that had been tight for longer than I wanted to admit. "Okay. Then today, we're spending some of it."
The shopping district near the guild towers catered mostly to sponsored climbers, which meant the storefronts were full of gear built for cameras as much as combat, sleek and expensive and exactly nothing like the secondhand jacket I'd been wearing since before Assignment Day.
I walked in like I belonged there for the first time in my life, and honestly, after breaking three testing records in one sitting, I figured I'd earned the right.
Heels first, because apparently my body had decided somewhere during the transformation that heels were simply how I moved now, and fighting that instinct felt like more effort than embracing it. I found a pair with reinforced soles, built for combat instead of just looks, laced knee high, the material listed as some kind of tower derived polymer that shrugged off a test slash from the shop's demo blade without so much as a scuff.
"Self repairing," the clerk explained, running a small charge through the material to demonstrate, watching a thin cut knit itself shut in seconds. "Core infused. Won't last forever against real damage, but it buys you time between fights instead of budgeting for new gear every week."
I bought two pairs on the spot, one laced in gold to match nothing in particular, one laced dark to match everything.
The rest came together piece by piece after that. A harness style top, black leather over reinforced panels in deep violet and burnished gold instead of the red and blue everyone already associated with my hair, because some small, stubborn part of me wanted at least one thing that was mine without doubling down on the joke. A matching skirt, layered and ruffled, cut for movement instead of show, the same self mending fabric worked into the seams so a torn hem could knit itself back together between fights instead of falling apart mid climb.
Thigh holsters came last, fitted snug over both legs, built to hold a blade on each side without shifting no matter how hard I moved. I tested them right there in the store, drawing and sheathing until the motion felt as natural as reaching for the hammer had that first night in the dungeon.
"You look like you're about to headline something," Wren said, watching me turn in front of a mirror, already several bags deep into her own pile of camera gear and a couple of things for herself she kept insisting she didn't really need.
"I am about to headline something," I said. "My whole life, apparently."
She laughed, and bought the boots she'd been eyeing without any more hesitation after that.
Reyna, invited along despite her protests that she "didn't really do shopping," ended up buying an absurd number of small glass vials and exactly one hoodie, which she wore out of the store immediately, sleeves pushed up to her elbows, grinning like she'd just won something.
The apartment search came last, and it was Wren who found the listing, a two bedroom above a quiet street on the edge of the district, big enough for a real workspace, sturdy enough that Reyna's experiments probably wouldn't bring the ceiling down on the neighbors below us this time.
The landlord recognized me the second we walked in for the viewing. I watched it happen in real time, the flicker of recognition, the half second of visible hesitation before he decided, apparently, that a tenant who could pay six months up front in cash was worth whatever reputation came attached to her.
"No parties," he said, sliding the lease across a folding table that served as his desk. "No structural damage."
Reyna made a small, guilty noise beside me that I chose not to address.
"We'll be quiet," I said, signing my name at the bottom in handwriting that still felt slightly unfamiliar, two colors of hair falling forward as I bent over the page.
We moved in that same week. Wren claimed the room with better lighting for her editing setup. Reyna claimed the smaller one, already eyeing the closet as potential lab space before her mattress had even arrived. I took whatever was left, which turned out to be the room with the best view of the towers in the distance, gold light spilling faintly off their peaks even at this hour, visible through a window I intended to leave uncovered most nights.
Standing there that first evening, boxes still half unpacked around me, new boots by the door, a hammer leaning in the corner exactly where it always ended up no matter which apartment I lived in, I thought about the girl who'd walked out of Administrative Services two years ago with nothing but a pamphlet and a name the System hadn't known what to do with.
She wouldn't have recognized any of this.
I wasn't sure I fully recognized it either. But for the first time in longer than I could measure, it felt like something worth getting used to.