The first rapping at my door was a portent that shook my home like the cavernous echo from the tolling of a church bell at a beloved friend's funeral. Bending the blinds, I peered at the figure on my stoop. The agent was dressed in a brown trenchcoat, a fedora pulled down to obscure most of the details of his face. He clinched a cigarette in his yellowed teeth. As he took a draw, the red embers of his Camel cast a subtle glow over a strong chin, which bore a deep scar surrounded by an ocean of stubble.
"Come on, Retreater," he snarled. "We just want to have a chat about those posts on ENWorld."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out something with a glint. Brass knuckles? A knife? A revolver? I couldn't be sure what fate the agent was planning to dole out. I had to stay one step ahead of this hired muscle.
A heavy force pressed against my leg and nearly toppled me off balance. I glanced down to see the gray and black banded stripes of Fox, my pudgy cat and feline companion of the past decade. She sensed my unease and mewed loudly in an attempt to comfort me, but it wasn't helping.
The agent lifted a thick eyebrow in awareness. A milky eye darted its gaze to the window where I was looking out the blinds.
"Guess it's the hard way, pal," he growled.
The nearby flicking of cardboard in the living room grabbed my attention. It sounded like someone was shuffling cards. Impossible, since I was alone in my house - except for Fox. Her fur stood up, like quills, and she hissed at the coffee table. Normally she was well-behaved around furniture, but something was amiss tonight.
The agent had stopped knocking. I checked out the window. He was gone. I returned my attention to the table, where my deck of Magic: The Gathering cards started - on their own accord - to place themselves as if preparing for battle.
The Pinkerton agent stepped out of the card, manifesting in my living room. "Portals to the imagination!" he shouted, brandishing a pair of brass knuckles that crackled with arcane energy.
Several other cards began to glow, as if starting to summon other agents. Fox howled and leapt on the coffee table. She sashayed across the playmat, kicking off the cards. They plummeted to the floor with a dull thud as the agents in the midst of their teleports were unceremoniously crushed on the hardwood like cockroaches.
"Good girl," I said to Fox. She turned to me and yowled with disapproval. "Evil girl," I corrected.
The agent snickered. "Your cat won't save you from the corporation." He spat out his cigarette and squashed it on the floor under a heavy boot. "They will take your games. They will force you to play awful, recycled dreck that has been spat out by AI that you have to pay for monthly."
He rushed at me. An arc of magical electricity sparked near my face, and my nose stung with the smell of ionization - and probably the stinge of burnt nose hairs. Too close.
I grabbed my copy of the 1st edition AD&D Player's Handbook with the orange spine and swung it at the guy, but missed greatly.
He laughed and taunted me. "You should've known that the attack matrix isn't in the Player's Book." He punched the tome, and it exploded in scorched confetti. "Also it has notoriously weak binding."
"Weak binding?" I retorted. "You referring to the summoning that your corporate overlords did to enchant you?"
He gritted his teeth and began recharging his arcane fist. He lunged forward. In a blur of motion, I ducked and snagged the coffee mug on my end table, which contained the paint water from my night of miniature painting. I splashed the murky water on his gauntlet, which began to sputter and crackle. Blue-gray tendrils shot from the glove and up his arm, into his chest and across his other limbs. Then, a bright flash. The man had vaporized into a pile of fine powder.
"Thanks for enabling content sharing for the Drops."
Fox was already approaching the pile. "No. That's not your litter box."
This wasn't going to end anytime soon.
