Chương 191: B2 Chapter 190: Triple Positive

There was no paper note, and Thorn was much more interested in the pictures on Rina's phone than anything useful, so Meno kept the screen angled away from him while he worked through her journal. Most of it was exactly what he expected: gym schedules, diet adjustments, content dates, outfit ideas, VR appointments, and meal ideas for Meno that looked suspicious. Nothing explained why she had left. Meno scrolled faster until he reached the newest entry. Need to relax. Quit again. Food rotation must not be disrupted.

Meno stopped scrolling. Relax immediately pointed at JustrelaxPete. Rina's brother had built his whole online identity around the name, and quit again made the message even harder to read normally. Meno checked when she had written the note against the exact time Veyrath went offline. Bingo. The note came later. Pete could not have quit Veyrath again when Veyrath no longer existed. Then there was food rotation. Rina talked about nutrition constantly, but that phrase belonged to Meno.

Pizza days, steak-burger days, the carefully maintained cycle she kept trying to grief with vegetables. His brain got hit with the boss clear notification at once. Pete had been taken. Whoever had him was using that to control Rina, and she was telling Meno not to break rotation. Keep doing what he normally did. Do not suddenly come looking for her. Meno ran the whole decode past Thorn. The bodybuilder scratched at his beard as he listened.

"You sure? Sounds like basic gym stuff. She didn't finish her set because of stress and had to force herself to stick to the diet. Even if what you are saying is true, she clearly tells you to stay away."

"No, no, this is where the decode gets good. She wrote quit again. Two quits." Meno raised the phone between them.

"One quit is Pete. The second quit applies to must not in the next line, so they cancel out. That means the food rotation must be disrupted." Thorn's fingers slowed in his beard.

"Think about the cost," Meno said.

"Rina knows I don't break rotation. If she is telling me to do it anyway, that means emergency. So the message is obvious: relax the food rotation, help me get Pete to un-quit, because something disrupted him." Thorn finally stopped scratching.

"I am lost. The only thing double negative is your IQ." Technically, that made Meno's IQ positive, but arguing the point would waste Thorn's remaining brainjuice. Meno needed him functional for City Hall. Sneaking inside would be griefing themselves. That was the intended dungeon route: enter where expected, trigger the security checks, deal with guards, then slowly work toward the objective while everyone in the building got more time to notice them. Meno had no intention of clearing City Hall properly.

"Anyway, Grandpa needs my phone close to the servers underneath City Hall. Once he gets access to the heartbeat network, he can track where Rina was taken."

"I am not sneaking into a government facility in shorts wearing a rubber mask," Thorn said.

"You can wear whatever you want. We're not sneaking in. That's dumb. We're skipping the dungeon." Thorn narrowed his eyes.

"You want to blow it up? You lost it?"

"What!? No." Meno pocketed Rina's phone and pulled out his own.

"I'm calling Aurelia. Her father has at least one government inspector in his pocket. Carl kidnapped me, I got his penthouse raided from the sky, and our relationship has been slightly negative ever since, but they only told him to leave me alone. Nobody said I have to leave him alone." If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

"You got kidnapped?!" Thorn said.

"You are spiking me, PBG. Yesterday I was pumping the Crucible dungeon, feel like today I am the one that's about to get pumped."

"Relax. This is a no-pump run."

"That sounds like another double negative." Meno let Thorn fight that battle alone and called Aurelia. This call had terrible matchup history. They had not spoken since the mess with Carl, and the last time Aurelia appeared on Meno's stream, she had been melting down while trying to warn him about her father. After that, she had buried herself in Veyrath hard enough to stay near the top of the ladder for a long time. Meno put the chance of this starting normally at 1%. Aurelia picked up.

"What do you want, Meno?" Meno sighed. Almost everybody he called today had decided hello was optional.

"Hello, Aurelia. Have you been well? I saw your ranking. You were doing great."

"I was, until you powerleveled three people past me, then ruined everything and made all my work pointless. I can no longer log in. I have been staring at the capsule all morning. Do you realize this is all I have been doing? And you took it away from me. I could have caught up. I was so close. I would have taken your rank one eventually. You deserved it. You are an asshole." Okay. Aurelia was skipping phases. Meno had never heard her talk like this before.

She sounded completely cooked, with just enough anger left to keep the build running. Karmabeast would have called her delulu for thinking she was ever taking rank one. Meno had more tact than that. The claim still showed severe ego debuff, because Heavy Striker trying to race Swing Master was peak troll. Aurelia could have played perfectly and Meno still would not have considered his rank threatened. None of that helped Rina.

"Anyway, can you send me your father's number? I need to talk to him." Aurelia went quiet for several seconds.

"You?" Her voice tightened.

"I know what happened, Meno. He told me everything. I don't think you have anything to discuss. Even though he was in the wrong, he is still my father. I don't want you to endanger him."

"Fine. You talk to him for us. Tell him I owe him a tiny favor. Extremely tiny. Basically microscopic, but technically above zero." Meno thought about that for another second.

"Actually, no. I'm the injured party. He owes me. Tell him this removes a small amount of kidnapping debt."

"Can you stop flip-flopping and get to the point?" Thorn asked. Aurelia took a second.

"What do you want?"

"We're shooting Thorn's first music video." Thorn whipped toward him.

"WHAT?!" Meno ignored the interruption.

"We need the City Hall basement with the servers in the background. The song is called Maximum Pump: Veyrath on Fire. We're streamers, the Veyrath shutdown is hot right now, and this kind of content has a release window. Green screen is trash, and replacing a government server room digitally might count as a deepfake anyway, which is banned. So technically the law wants us to film the real thing."

"What does this have to do with my father?" Aurelia asked.

"He has government connections. I need one of them to get us inside today, not after three weeks of forms and some guy deciding whether Thorn's music has cultural value." Meno remembered the inspector Carl had used to fake-arrest him. Terrible encounter, useful NPC.

"Your boss has way more government access than my father," Aurelia said.

"Do you want me to call him myself and ask for a music video? Please, Aurelia. Just do it. Your father gets to erase a tiny amount of kidnapping debt. He should be thrilled."

"How did you go from owing him a favor to him paying off debt?" Thorn asked.

"This is double negative taken to triple positive."

"Can you shut up? Triple positive isn't even a thing," Meno said.

"Say hi to Thorn for me," Aurelia said.

"Fine. I'll call him and see what can be arranged. Vernova City Hall basement, server racks, music video. Suuure. Okay, Meno. I have no idea what you're doing, but I'm coming too."

"You really don't need to," Meno said.

"Why? Am I not pretty enough for your muuusic video?"

"I want her in," Thorn said.

"Never seen a music video without dancers. I'm not releasing some low-effort crap because you're busy building your Chain while everyone else is trying to survive the mechanic. If I pump, I pump hard. This better be the best music video ever made." Meno had invented a fake music video thirty seconds ago, and Thorn was already worried about production quality.

"Fine. You're in."

"I'll arrange it and be at The Pearl in half an hour," Aurelia said, then hung up. Meno turned to Thorn.

"You seriously want to release this? The whole point was getting my phone close to the servers while you distracted everyone." Thorn grabbed his beard.

"Man, we are involving the government. They're going to check whether the video actually comes out. Also, I could use the shoutout from your Connect." Right. The best music video ever made had survived exactly until Thorn remembered Meno had a larger audience. Meno could not even judge Thorn properly because the idea had content value. A government-approved music video filmed beside restricted City Hall server racks, starring Thorn immediately after the largest VRMMO shutdown in history, had high DPS potential.

The more ridiculous it was, the harder it would spread. Disease mechanics.

"Have you ever sung anything before? What about lyrics, any ideas?" Thorn took one step back and spread his arms wide, committing fully to the performance before he had even produced a song. He drew in a huge breath and started riffing. Maximum pump, maximum gain Break the limit, break the chain Chest on Monday, legs someday If the crew pumps, I lead the way Meno had heard enough.

"We are so in."