11/13/2022 NaNoWriMo, BANSHEE BEACH: 675/30558.

That number will likely change later: I’m about to go play some D&D. But, just in case: that’s my current number for the month. 50% done!

I don’t know how to ride a surfboard. I mean, I know: lie down on the board, get on your knees, stand up, keep from falling over. Easy enough? — Oh, hell, everybody knows it can’t be that easy, and it ain’t. It’d take me at least a week to get to the point where I could handle anything more than a swell. That’s why the bad guys were doing the ritual out on the water: without a way of me getting out there, I might as well be back in Cin City.
The thing was, I didn’t know how to ride a surfboard. A hover-board, though? Like the ones I rode, in my misspent youth?

Yeah, I can manage that.

Come, I will conceal nothing from you (to quote the Lore): I grabbed a board from the most entitled-looking brat looking on from Poor Boy’s Point. I almost got away without him even seeing me do it, but the kid had a nose for property rights. I could hear the falsetto shrieks of “Stop! Thief!” rise behind me as I pushed off on the board as hard as I could getting just enough speed to hop the board up and clear the handrail keeping people away from the churning seas below.

I was half-expecting somebody to try to stop me from going over the side, which would have been a real problem unless I was willing to let my brass knuckles do the explaining. People hate it when you steal from kids. I swear there was a reason for it, besides social commentary and/or karmic comeuppance: I needed something waterproof and absolutely forgiving of mistakes, and a rich kid’s extravagant toy looked like my best bet. It was a long shot, but so was everything else about this rescue.

Nobody in the crowd stopped me. Maybe they saw the Shamus hat. Maybe they all quietly agreed that the kid was the most entitled-looking brat on the boardwalk. Probably they just wanted to see a grown man fly a hoverboard off a wharf and into the drink. I mean, wouldn’t you?