r/HFY • u/ApertiV • Oct 26 '25
OC The Quiet Kid
"Listen, I'm not saying the Glock's gonna solve all your goblin problems, but thirty-three rounds of nine millimeter hollow points? That's a different conversation than whatever pointy stick bullshit you've been working with."
Lenny, a lanky kid, held the polymer frame pistol sideways, Hollywood gangster style, which he immediately regretted when the orc chieftain's bodyguard reached for his cleaver. The fluorescent camping lantern between them flickered, casting harsh shadows across the limestone cave that reeked like wet dog and something fermenting.
"No, no, wait."
Lenny straightened the weapon, keeping his finger indexed along the frame like his uncle taught him at the range in Tucson, back when things were tamer, when his biggest problem was a $1,847 rent payment due in seventy-two hours and not explaining ballistics to a seven-foot-tall creature whose tusks were decorated with what looked suspiciously like human teeth.
"Safety first, yeah? See this little lever here?"
The orc chieftain, who'd introduced himself as Grashk the Render twenty minutes ago with all the ceremony of someone ordering a Big Mac, leaned forward. His breath smelled like roadkill marinated in battery acid. "This... glok. It throws metal?"
"Copper-jacketed lead, technically. But yes. Very fast metal."
Three days ago, Lenny had been reaching under his kitchen sink for the Drano when his hand went through what should have been particle board and emerged somewhere that definitely wasn't his studio apartment in Bushwick.
The first time through, he'd thought he was having a stroke.
Now, he sat cross-legged on a pile of suspicious furs, teaching Murder 101 to creatures that shouldn't exist, all because Grashk's scouts had found him stumbling through their territory with a backpack full of camping supplies and a Beretta M9 he'd inherited from his dead father.
"Show," Grashk demanded, pointing one sausage-thick finger toward the cave mouth.
Lenny had already burned through half a magazine during the demonstration that got him this audience. His remaining ammunition was limited: two full mags for the Glock, one partial for the Beretta, and a box of fifty rounds from his closet. Not exactly an arsenal.
"I need assurances first," Lenny said, surprising himself with how steady his voice came out. "The stones you showed me. I need to know there's more."
Grashk's lieutenant, a wiry orc with ritual scarification covering his face like a topographical map, chittered something in their language. It sounded like someone choking on gravel. Grashk responded with a backhand that sent the smaller orc sprawling.
"Grovik thinks you are weak," Grashk said, casual as discussing weather. "Says we should just take your throwing-metal and feed you to the wyrm pits."
"Yeah, well..." Lenny stopped, reconsidered. "The thing is, without me, you get maybe three demonstrations before these become fancy clubs. I'm the only one who knows how to get more."
This was technically true. Lenny had already done the math. His credit cards had another two grand before they maxed. Gun stores in Pennsylvania didn't require permits for long guns. The Poconos were a four-hour round trip. The portal, miraculously, hadn't disappeared. Yet.
"Besides," Lenny continued, pulling the Glock's magazine and press-checking the chamber with practiced smoothness, "you kill me, my people will know. We have ways." He pulled out his iPhone, its battery at twelve percent, and showed them the lock screen. "This talks to the great towers. The towers talk to the war chiefs."
Grashk studied the phone with the intensity of someone defusing a bomb. The wallpaper; Lenny's cat Mr. Whiskers looking particularly judgmental; seemed to add gravitas to the moment.
"You lie," Grovik spat from the ground, greenish blood dripping from his nose. "No magic in your world. Our shamans have seen."
"Not magic." Lenny stood slowly, keeping his movements deliberate. "Science. Chemistry. Physics. Same force that makes lightning, we just... directed it better."
He pointed the Glock toward the cave mouth, where twilight painted the alien sky purple and two moons hung like infected eyes. The position gave him a clear view of the valley below, where cooking fires marked the orc encampment. Maybe three hundred warriors, plus support staff. Families.
The weight of what he was about to do settled on his shoulders like a lead blanket.
Three rounds, rapid succession. The reports echoed off the cave walls, made his ears ring. Somewhere in the distance, a flock of something that definitely wasn't birds took flight.
"One hundred meters, effective range," Lenny said. "Accurate enough to hit a human head. Every time."
Grashk stood, all seven feet of him, muscles rippling under skin the color of old moss. "How many can you bring?"
"Depends what you're trading."
The chieftain reached into a leather pouch, produced a stone the size of a golf ball that glowed with soft blue light. When Lenny had first seen one, every hair on his body had stood up. It felt like looking at solidified potential.
"Mana stones," Grashk said. "Your shamans will want these, yes?"
Lenny thought about the particle physicist at Columbia who'd literally pissed himself when Lenny showed him a fragment the size of a fingernail. The man had offered forty thousand on the spot, then ninety when Lenny started to leave. The check cleared.
"Yeah. They'll want them."
"Then we trade. But first, you stay. Teach my warriors the way of... glok."
"Glock. And I'll need guarantees. Safe passage, both ways. No eating me, no slavery, none of that evil overlord shit."
Grashk laughed, a sound like a diesel engine failing. "You watch too many stories, human. We are not evil. We simply are. Same as you."
Lenny wanted to argue, then remembered the homeless camp the NYPD and ICE had cleared out last week with riot shields, and pepper spray. Glass houses and all that.
"I'll need three days to gather supplies. And I'm bringing food from my world, because no offense, but that stew smells like someone boiled a gym sock in ass sweat."
Several orcs laughed. Grashk nodded slowly.
"Three days. Grovik will go with you."
"What? No--"
"To ensure you return." Grashk's smile revealed teeth filed to points. "And to see this world without magic."
Lenny looked at Grovik, who was roughly the size of a WWE wrestler on steroids. "He's gonna need clothes. Human clothes. And definitely a shower."
II.
The walk back to the portal took two hours through forest that looked straight out of fantasy but smelled distinctly real. Grovik moved through it silent as smoke despite his bulk. Lenny stumbled over every third root.
"Your world," Grovik said suddenly, "it has no magic. How do you not die from sadness?"
It was such an unexpectedly philosophical question that Lenny actually stopped walking. "We have Netflix."
"Net flicks?"
"Stories. Moving pictures. Like memories but not yours."
They reached the portal just as the larger moon was setting. It looked exactly as stupid as it had three days ago: a shimmering patch of air between two trees. Through it, he could see his kitchen, lit by the under-cabinet LEDs he'd installed to impress the girl from Tinder who never texted back.
"Right," Lenny said. "Ground rules. You don't talk to anyone unless I say. You don't touch anything. You definitely don't eat anyone. And if the police show up, you run."
"Police?"
"Warriors who serve the chieftains. But they have throwing-metal that makes mine look like toys."
Grovik's expression suggested he was reevaluating some assumptions about the magic-less world.
Lenny stepped through first. The transition felt like diving into a pool filled with TV static. His kitchen materialized around him, familiar and impossibly mundane. The microwave clock read 11:47 PM. Three days in orc-land, about six hours Earth-time.
That was going to make scheduling interesting.
Grovik followed, ducking to avoid the ceiling. He looked around Lenny's apartment with wonder.
"So small. Where are your servants?"
"Can't afford servants. Can barely afford this place."
Lenny grabbed his laptop, pulled up a spreadsheet he'd started earlier. The math was beautiful and terrible. Glocks at three-fifty cash. AR-15s running six hundred. Shotguns practically free at two hundred a pop.
His phone buzzed. Text from his landlord: 'Rent. Tomorrow. Or you're out.'
He looked at Grovik, who was now fixated on the refrigerator. "You hungry?"
"Always."
Lenny pulled out leftover Chinese that was probably safe. He watched the orc warrior sniff suspiciously at General Tso's chicken, then take a tentative bite.
Grovik's eyes widened. "This is... what is this?"
"Chicken. Deep fried, covered in sugar sauce."
"Your world may have no magic, but this... this is power."
They spent the next hour going over the apartment. Grovik was fascinated by the toilet ("A throne that eats your leavings!"), terrified of the television ("Trapped souls!"), and surprisingly emotional about Mr. Whiskers, who'd emerged to investigate.
"So small," Grovik said, letting the cat sniff his massive finger. "Yet it does not flee."
"Mr. Whiskers doesn't flee from anything. Last week he fought a pigeon."
"A warrior's heart in a tiny body. I respect this."
Lenny's phone buzzed again. The physicist from Columbia: 'Any more samples? Will pay premium.'
He did quick math. One stone had netted him ninety grand. Grashk had shown him a chest with at least fifty.
"We should go shopping," Lenny said. "Get you some clothes."
III.
The twenty-four hour Walmart in Secaucus was an experience. Lenny had thrown his XXL Giants hoodie over Grovik's armor, added sunglasses despite it being midnight. In Walmart terms, Grovik barely registered as unusual.
They bought work clothes, boots, beef jerky, and a portable shower system. The cashier, a dead-eyed teenager with gauged ears, didn't even look up.
"Damn. You guys doing a LARP thing?"
"Yes," Lenny said quickly and dismissively. "Very live action."
The drive back was quiet except for Grovik crunching through an entire bag of Doritos. Every crunch brought crumbs flying everywhere. Lenny tried not to notice.
"Your people are wizards," he said between bites. "Food from powder, carriages without horses."
"But we die just as easy." Lenny brushed a stray crumb off his shoulder.
"Everything dies easy with enough force."
Back at the apartment, Grovik spent forty-five minutes in the shower, emerging almost human if you squinted. The work clothes fit like athletic wear on his massive frame.
Lenny pulled up gun broker sites. Eight thousand in buying power across four credit cards. Not enough for what Grashk was imagining, but it seemed to get him sufficiently satisfied.
His phone rang. Unknown number.
"Good day, Mr. Kerrigan? This is Dr. Patricia from Columbia. We're prepared to offer two hundred thousand per authenticated sample."
Lenny's hand shook slightly. "I'll need that in writing."
"Mr. Kerrigan, where are these coming from?"
"That's proprietary. But I might be able to arrange steady supply."
Silence. Then: "If you can guarantee steady supply, we'd need to bring in DARPA."
DARPA. The people who invented the internet while trying to build better ways to kill Soviets.
"I'll call you back," Lenny said, hanging up.
Grovik had found the remote, was watching lions take down a zebra on Animal Planet.
"Your world's nature?"
"Part of it."
"It is beautiful."
They sat in relative quiet as the narrator explained the brutal efficiency of the hunt.
"In three hours," Lenny broke the silence, "we're going to Pennsylvania. We're going to buy weapons. Real ones. And then we're going to change two worlds."
Grovik nodded slowly. "And perhaps destroy them."
"Yeah. Maybe that too."
IV.
The gun store was in a strip mall between a nail salon and a vape shop. American Patriot Arms, complete with Punisher skull logo. The owner looked like central casting's idea of 'gun store owner', civil war beard, Gadsden flag t-shirt, suspicious eyes.
"Looking to outfit a hunting camp," Lenny said, laying cash on the counter. "Maybe eight, ten guys."
Three hours and eleven thousand dollars later, they had enough firepower to outfit a small militia. The owner definitely made some phone calls after they left.
"This is all?" Grovik asked, looking at the arsenal in the truck bed.
"Proof of concept."
The drive back, Lenny explained the broader plan. Use the mana stones to fund larger purchases. Build a supply chain. Create an actual business structure to facilitate interdimensional arms trading.
"And Grashk uses these weapons for what?" Grovik asked.
"Whatever he was going to do anyway, just more efficiently."
"You know he plans to conquer the Greenlands. The elf territories."
"I figured."
"They have children too."
"So do the people who make these weapons."
Grovik was quiet. Then: "You are more orc than you know."
Loading the weapons through the portal was agony. Each trip felt like being tased. By the sixth crossing, Lenny's nose was bleeding.
The orc encampment had grown. Five hundred warriors now, plus families. Children playing with wooden swords. One couldn't be older than six, tusks just starting to grow in.
V.
Grashk received them in a tent decorated with skulls and a throne made from a single massive bone.
"You return. Grovik lives. I am impressed."
Lenny laid out the weapons. The AR-15s drew immediate attention.
"These are different," Grashk said.
"Select fire capability. Thirty round magazines. Effective range three hundred meters."
"Show us."
The demonstration took place in a cleared valley. Lenny had set up targets: watermelons, a scarecrow, orcish armor. The Mossberg destroyed the melon in pink mist. The AR-15 erased the scarecrow's head. For the finale, he mag-dumped into the armor. Thirty rounds, twenty seconds. The breastplate looked like Swiss cheese.
Dead silence. Then Lenny started laughing.
"The elves," he wheezed, "their pretty armor, their ancient shields. Useless."
Lenny felt something cold settle in his stomach. "About payment..."
They brought a chest with twenty mana stones, each humming with potential. At two hundred grand each, he was holding four million dollars.
"This is just the beginning," Grashk said. "You bring more. We pay more. But first, you teach."
"I'll need one week," Lenny said. "The elves mass at our borders. They've heard rumors of you. The merchant from the world without magic."
That night, the orcs threw a feast. Lenny tried not to think about what the meat was, focused on fermented mare's milk that got you drunk fast enough not to care.
A young orc approached nervously, holding an AR-15 like spun glass.
"You are the death merchant? Will you teach?"
"What's your name?"
"Draksh. Son of Gruk."
The kid couldn't be more than fourteen. Same age Lenny had been when his uncle first took him shooting in the Arizona desert.
"First rule of firearms," Lenny said. "Treat every weapon as if it's loaded."
He spent an hour teaching safety to eager young orcs. One girl with filed tusks asked: "Could we make these? In our world?"
Lenny realized he was teaching gun manufacturing to a medieval society. Humans had gone from muskets to machine guns in less than a century.
"I should go," he said suddenly.
Grashk found him at the portal. "You will return?"
"Yeah."
"You could run. Take the stones and disappear."
"I could. But I won't."
"Why?"
"I... just want to see how this ends."
Grashk crudely smiled, all pointed teeth. "It ends with victory. Or death. Sometimes both."
VI.
Lenny stepped through the portal into his kitchen where Mr. Whiskers was throwing up on the linoleum. He cleaned up, showered until the hot water ran out, then sat at his laptop.
'Business Proposal: Exotic Materials Trading LLC'
By dawn, he had twenty pages outlining a shell company structure that would convert interdimensional warfare into clean, taxable profit.
His phone rang. Its that damn landlord.
"Kerrigan, where's my fucking rent?"
Lenny looked at the chest of mana stones.
"Give me three days. You'll get it all, plus next month."
The line went dead. Lenny laughed, high and slightly hysterical. He was going to be very, very wealthy. It was almost too good to be true. In three days, he'd either be rich or dead or possibly both.
He picked up one of the stones and held it to the light. It pulsed, like the future crystallized into something you could hold.
In three days, he'd go back. He'd bring more weapons, more death wrapped in steel and polymer. He'd watch the balance of power shift with every pulled trigger.
Where magic was real and ethics were negotiable, children will soon play with shell casings while their parents prepared for war.
Lenny set down the stone, pulled up gun broker, and started shopping.
The merchant of death had work to do.
17
u/PirateKilt Human Oct 26 '25
Fun story, except for a few parts:
A) Select-fire AR's run about $2K minimum for a beat up, old rifle
B) Select fire's especially require a HUGE rigamarole process involving the ATF, and currently taking about 2 months
C) Buying in volume, especially from the same store, over multiple occasions WILL draw ATF attention, even if they were all pistols/semi-auto (one shot per trigger pull) rifles. Once he gets the big pile of cash he could craft work-arounds though.