Page 2 of The Cauldronball Run
Chapter One
J.J.
J.J.Grimjaw heard the crack before he felt it.Another hospital door handle, broken.The seventh this month.He stared at the twisted titanium in his palm.The metal had bent like a pretzel where his fingers had gripped too tight.
Son of a bitch.He bit back the curse, glancing around.The last thing his career needed was another complaint about the orc EMT's attitude problem.Mercy General Hospital didn't care about his frustration, and neither did the universe that had made him too big for everything in it.
Everything broke when he touched it.Door handles.Office chairs.Blood pressure cuffs that were supposed to be industrial strength.That damn vending machine had eaten his dollar last week, so he'd tried to retrieve it gently, and somehow the entire front panel had buckled inward like aluminum foil.The maintenance guys had stopped being subtle about their frustration.This morning's note in his locker just said, "Stop touching things.”
He was a walking disaster in scrubs.
J.J.tossed the mangled handle into his toolbox.The reinforced steel box had originally been designed for storing car batteries because even his storage containers needed to be orc-proof.The irony wasn't lost on him that he was an orc trained to save lives, but he was hell-bent on destroying inanimate objects.
His ambulance sat in the lot like a monument to his refusal to be defeated by human engineering.The 2018 Ford Transit had been completely rebuilt from the frame up, every component modified or replaced to accommodate someone his size.Where other people saw a boxy emergency vehicle, J.J.saw the only space in his life where he actually fit.
The engine under the hood was his masterpiece.The 5.0L V8 definitely hadn't come from the factory.It was tuned to perfection and powerful enough to outrun anything on four wheels.He'd reinforced the suspension after the embarrassing incident last year when he'd bottomed out in front of half the nursing staff.The driver's seat was basically a La-Z-Boy recliner welded to steel plates and bolted down with hardware he'd borrowed from bridge construction.Even his door handles were custom-made from crane parts.
This is what I've been reduced to, he thought, running his fingers along the reinforced frame.Building a vehicle that only looked like an ambulance.It had a stretcher, medical equipment, oxygen tanks, but J.J.had made some creative modifications.The oxygen tanks could provide nitrous boost when needed.Some of the IV bags labeled "saline solution" contained custom fuel additives.
J.J.climbed into the driver's seat, which groaned under his weight despite all the reinforcement.Even his own vehicle complained about his existence.The engine started with a purr that would make Ferrari owners weep with envy.At least he was good at building things, even if he broke them afterward.
His phone looked like a children's toy in his hands.The screen was already cracked from when he'd accidentally squeezed too hard reading his overdue payment notices.The incoming text from his dragon friend Poppy made him sit up and take notice.
"Yo, Green Machine.The coordinator just posted the entry details for this year's Cauldronball Run."
J.J.had been training for months doing late-night practice runs between jobs, timing routes, perfecting his ambulance's performance.The Cauldronball Run represented everything he couldn't have in his normal life: speed, freedom, and the chance to use his skills for something bigger than just surviving paycheck to paycheck.
A quarter million gold.Winner takes all.Enough money to pay off his crushing medical school debt and maybe, finally, build a life where he wasn't constantly apologizing for taking up too much space.
The real reason he was desperate enough to consider this insanity sat in his glove compartment.The collection of past-due notices read like a catalog of his failures: thousands of gold in student loans at variable interest rates that kept climbing; the mortgage on his tiny condo that he could barely afford even with three jobs; credit cards maxed out from textbooks, uniforms, and the custom modifications his size required for everything from furniture to vehicles.
He'd graduated summa cum laude from one of the best paramedic programs in the country, scored in the top five percent on his licensing exams, and had letters of recommendation that made him sound like a medical superhero.But none of that mattered when you were an orc in a human-sized world where employers saw your tusks and green skin before they saw your credentials.
Three years of "we're going with a candidate who's a better cultural fit" and "we're concerned about patient comfort levels" had left him working for services that paid barely above minimum wage and treated him like a liability instead of an asset.
J.J.pulled into the parking lot of a 24-hour diner and opened his laptop.It was construction-grade because he'd murdered three regular ones.Clicking on Craigslist, he started his ad:
Medical transport driver needed - urgent
He typed.Deleted.Typed again.
Licensed paramedic needed for completely legitimate medical transport that is definitely not illegal street racing...
Zeus's hairy balls.Why not just add his social security number and a note saying, "Please arrest me."
Professional driver needed for time-sensitive medical emergency involving absolutely no federal crimes...
Worse.
The auto-correct wasn't helping, changing "discretion" to "destruction" and somehow turning "transport" into "transformer."After ten minutes of fighting with keys designed for normal-sized fingers, he settled on something that sounded almost believable:
