Special Delivery For Miss Sheridan

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Job Sign-Up: Page 18, Post Number 434

-Sabertooth Guild Hall, Victoria's Room-

Sitting at her wooden desk wearing her white Steel Matron t-shirt and black skirt, Victoria was using her shiny new Daggerbook to browse the Lacrimanet for bartending schools that she could go to so that she could become an "official" bartender. She was doing just fine as a part-time bartender for Red Dragon Inn and a Sabertooth mage as her main job, but she had a feeling that her career as a mage would not last forever. Lately she had gotten involved in demon slaying and Whack-A-Cult and demon cults were not enemies to be taken lightly. Zupazu's Executioners would be looking for revenge for her driving them out of the Haunted Guild and Silent Cemetery bases and they likely had some sinister means of revenge ready to go.

Victoria wanted to have a backup plan of some sort in case she sustained a career-ending injury at some point and she figured that bartending was a very good backup plan. She already knew some drink recipes and knew how to chat up patrons, so the brunette had a solid foundation. She just needed to make it "official" with a bartending certificate from a school and a license so that she could make a career for herself if her mage career ever came to a premature end.

Victoria had found a few schools in various locations across Earthland. One was located in Capital Crocus and offered a curriculum based around learning to prepare and serve high-class drinks in an upscale environment. Another was in Clover Town and had a curriculum focused on preparing and serving a wide variety of drinks both high-class and down-to-earth. A third option was in Magnolia Town and was more of a down-to-earth kind of place with an emphasis on common bar drinks. The brunette was not sure what option she wanted to pursue.

Capital Crocus had a certain appeal as far as bartending went. The country's elite tended to gather there and drink. At big parties the alcohol flowed like water. If Victoria could get in on that action she would never go hungry as long as she had a job. However, her old negative feelings about Capital Crocus and its self-absorbed elite flared up.

Did she really want to spend the rest of her days serving that entitled group of astoundingly arrogant individuals?

If it kept the lights on, she would grin and bear working in Capital Crocus. But as long as she had other options she would pursue them first. Her eyes darted down to the school in Clover Town and she thought about going to school there. Learning to make a wide variety of drinks was a good skill for a bartender to acquire. In her opinion a bartender needed to know how to make both common and esoteric drinks; Victoria strongly considered going to that school just to expand her repertoire of drinks.

Victoria would have kept looking at the bartending schools if she had not received a brown manila envelope slipped under her door. The curious brunette approached it with caution and picked it up, then carefully opened it and found a letter written to her by someone introducing themselves as a family friend. Victoria blinked.

The brunette set the letter on her desk along with the envelope. She shut down her Daggerbook. She then went for a brief trip to Red Dragon Inn to buy a bottle of vodka. She was going to need a bottle of Slatheron for this.

[Post Word Count: 585]
[Total Word Count: 585/1,500]

-Victoria's Room, twenty minutes later-

Armed with a bottle of recently purchased and unopened Slatheron vodka, Victoria was now ready to read the letter from the alleged "family friend" who had sent her the letter that was now sitting on her desk. The brunette closed her Daggerbook and put it on her bed to make sure that the electronic device did not get fried if she spilled any of her vodka while reading the letter. Once the Daggerbook was safely closed and placed in the middle of her bed Victoria turned back to the letter that had been slipped under her door around twenty minutes earlier.

Victoria had a lot of questions that needed answers. Chief among them was how the person found out which guild Victoria was part of. The next was how they knew her name. If they were really a family friend and not just a cultist who was out for revenge, Victoria wanted to find out how they had gotten her name.

Walking over over to her desk, Victoria opened the bottle of vodka and sat down to read the letter. She took a swig before picking up the letter in her left hand.

"Dear Victoria Sheridan:

I'm Thomas Montgomery, an old friend of your father's. I know that it sounds strange and rather suspicious for me to contact you now, but it's only just now that you've come to my attention. I've heard reports of a green-eyed brunette with long hair who was part of Sabertooth and had been involved in some particularly dangerous jobs lately, jobs that involved demon slaying and rescuing people from cults. You've also helped me without knowing it... until this point." The letter started out. Victoria took another swig of vodka and narrowed her eyes. She wondered how this guy had learned about her dangerous work with the Order of Lightbringers and her fights with Zupazu's Executioners.

"You came to my attention when my daughters Allie and Alex told me about a green-eyed brunette who was one of the mages who had rescued them from a cult based out of the Haunted Guild. They also mentioned that her name was Victoria. If you're really Victoria Sheridan, I'd like to meet you in person to thank you for your part in rescuing my daughters... and to tell you about your family." The letter continued. The brunette took another swig of vodka. So he had learned about her from those two girls Allie and Alex, the pair who had ventured to the Haunted Guild to find a cookbook that had once belonged to a master chef who had cooked for the King of Fiore. She wondered why she had not come to Thomas' attention sooner when she had rescued Alex from Lycan Woods. She then realized that she had made that rescue back in her shorter, less feminine form.

"If you're interested, meet me at 1780 King's Court in Capital Crocus. I look forward to your visit.

Sincerely,

Thomas Montgomery" The letter concluded, but not before giving her an address in case she wanted to take him up on the offer to meet in person.

Victoria set the letter down and took another swig of vodka, then looked at the bottle. She was a quarter of the way through it and was feeling nothing. She thanked her adopted father Lawrence Sheridan for introducing her to the drink at an early age and thus allowing her to build up a tolerance to it. She set the bottle down to the right of the letter and pondered what she had just read.

If the offer of a meeting was real and not just part of an elaborate setup, Victoria would finally found out about her birth family. Maybe she would finally learn why they had thrown her out on the streets at the tender age of six years old. Even though they were long dead and there was nothing she could do to ghosts, the brunette hoped that her birth family had a very good reason for doing what they had done to her.

[Post Word Count: 680]
[Total Word Count: 1,265/1,500]

-Victoria's Room, thirty minutes later-

After reading and re-reading the letter, Victoria had come to the conclusion that it was more or less real and the offer was genuine. It was a bold conclusion to make for a letter from someone who she had never heard of until today, but whatever. She would tell a guild staff member where she was going and would leave a note with them to send a team to investigate if she did not return from Capital Crocus in a week's time. That was the best she could do as far as precautions were concerned. If she was meant to survive, she would come back to Sabertooth Guild Hall and continue her work for the guild.

If it really was a setup and she died at the hands of her enemies, then she supposed that would be it for the story of Victoria Sheridan.

Victoria picked up the bottle of vodka and took a long drink from it, drinking until it was down to the halfway point before gently setting it down on her desk. She had made it this far on a combination of luck, preparation, and the judicious application of overwhelming firepower against her enemies. She was sure that she had a long way to go before she left the mortal coil, but part of her was not sure of that. The brunette lived a life that was full of physical risks and the occasional bout of binge drinking. If her enemies did not get her first, her preference for strong drink just might.

Whatever.

Victoria might not be destined for a particularly long life, but it was certainly going to be an interesting life. That was about all a former street kid who was now the second-most powerful mage in Sabertooth could really ask for. That and enough Jewels to live comfortably and buy the occasional bottle of good vodka. Sometimes it was the simple things in life that mattered the most.

Victoria picked up the bottle of Slatheron and drained it, then gently set it back on the desk. She was not feeling a thing because her tolerance for alcohol was so high that Slatheron might as well be tap water. Only CEIL or Albino Gander vodka could really give her a buzz anymore, but that was only because they were both strong vodkas. CEIL was the cheap vodka that packed a punch... a common joke was that it was named CEIL because a first-time drinker would be knocked on their back and be staring at the ceiling after one shot. Albino Gander was a good brand that was expensive but was well worth the price because it was a better grade of vodka than CEIL or Slatheron.

Once the bottle was empty Victoria put the cap back on it and left it on the desk but put the letter in the desk drawer so that it did not get lost. She then moved her Daggerbook from the middle of her bed to the middle of her desk. She then flopped onto her bed and stared at the ceiling until she could go to sleep, which was about an hour later.

Soon Victoria would be on her way to Capital Crocus to meet a friend of her family and find out about her parents.

[Post Word Count: 553]
[Total Word Count: 1,816/1,500]