It was a short walk from the Maroon Sports Bar — the Garcia’s bar — to the Fighting Center just down the street. Rafiq, Carmen, and Daniel led the way with Mr. Stone close behind, walking with a cane. When Oda Takahara, his thought-to-be-dead student returned to attack the dojo and kill him, the wound she had inflicted left him with a slight limp on his left leg, let alone never being able to Fight again.
Before long, they reached the Fighting Center, a large building wide and square like a massive gym with a fist sign right above the double glass doors. As cars moved through the parking lot, people constantly went in and out of the automatic sliding doors.
In the main lobby, a glass statue of two Fighters duking it out hung ceremoniously over the two doors heading in different directions. One line was filled with people from every walk of life, from older people to families to even young adults and other Fighters. The other line, meanwhile, was only Fighters.
They followed the line of Fighters to the hallway on the right, but that’s where they had to split. Mr. Stone, Rafiq, and Carmen followed most of the traffic to the gym to warm up before their ranked matches, while Daniel entered the Administrative Wing. He hadn’t been here since a little over a month ago, when he and Carmen first became Fighters, yet it was still dramatically quieter than the rest of the bombastic building.
Around the corner, a digital plaque displayed the current rankings for the top fifty Fighters in the entire world. Daniel’s eyes scanned the list. The One was at the very top, just as they apparently had been for the past hundred years, as Carmen once told him. Towards the very bottom, though, there were some familiar names. When Oda Takahara had attacked the dojo a month ago, she brought ten of the Fifty with her, too: everyone from ranks 39 to 48, and Daniel challenged them all in a one versus eleven.
But, the name at rank 40 was different. Synapse had been bumped up to rank 40, because the previous 40th ranked Fighter — West Gale — sacrificed himself to save Daniel.
Daniel chuckled to himself as he waited in the line to the help desk. The stories that came out to cover up that day were hilarious. Apparently, the battle between Daniel and Apex’s ten allies was an attempt to film the final battle of an upcoming blockbuster. But, while trying to film a different scene of West Gale training, the atmospheric disturbance of their filming location caused his powers to go haywire, and he died in a tragic accident. As such, the production of the entire movie had been shut down before it could even be announced, and a funeral for West Gale was to be scheduled soon.
If he wanted, he could easily disprove it with the facts of his own — that Apex had arrived that day to burn down the dojo and murder all four of them. But, Carmen warned against it, fearing retaliation against her parents if they were to go public. Causing the death of her parents wasn’t preferable, so Daniel agreed.
At least people don’t recognize me.
But, as he neared the front of the line to the help desk, a young boy peeking out from a room further down the hallway squinted at him, cocking his head slightly. Daniel’s stomach dropped. He shook his head, but the boy still rubbed a hand along his chin.
“Hey, you look familiar,” the boy said, stepping out of the room. “Weren’t you on TV?”
“No, what? Me?” Daniel chuckled. “No, no, I’m just—”
“Wait a second!” The woman behind him in line exclaimed. “You do look familiar! Weren’t you the kid on TV fighting all those members of the Fifty a little bit ago?”
“Chase! That was your name! You’re Chase!” the boy exclaimed.
The ambient conversations down the hallway ceased, and their attention shifted towards him like the red dot sights of a firing squad. Soon after, whoops and shouts came like rapid-fire from the people in line peeking over each other’s shoulders for even a chance at a response.
“Did they really cancel the movie?” one asked.
“What happened to West Gale? You totally gotta know!” shouted another.
“How much did they pay you?” came a different voice.
Another time, Daniel would’ve enjoyed the attention, but this wasn’t built off something he actually did, like—
“Didn’t you win the Beginner’s Tournament, too?”
Daniel perked up. “Who said that? Yeah, that was totally me!”
But, behind him, the lady at the desk cleared her throat. “Sir.”
He jumped in surprise; the people ahead of him had been helped, leaving a few feet between him and the grumpy old lady behind the desk.
“While I’m sure you’re enjoying the attention, I have a line to clear. You aren’t here to become a Fighter, I assume.”
“Oh, sorry. No, I’m actually here to break my stats!”
With a permanent frown dragging her face down amidst the excited questions and chatter, she checked the menu she had open. “There’s an empty seat. You can go on.”
She gestured him to the room behind her: a massive classroom with rows and rows of empty tables. Some had folded pieces of paper in front of the chairs, to mark what was really an empty seat and what was someone returning soon. Right after he walked in, a woman phased back into existence in the front row, her face elated and excited.
“Yes! A Rushdown — just like I wanted!”
The proctor dressed in a suit standing in front of him nodded, smiling as he directed her out of the room. He noticed Daniel at the door, and guided him to an actually empty chair. “Good morning,” he said. “Can I have your name?”
“Daniel Chase. Recognize me?”
The proctor stared at him for a moment, squinting. “Mmm, afraid not. But, looks like we already have your ID on file. Are you here to Break your stats?”
“Yes,” Daniel said, his shoulders slumping in disappointment.
The proctor tapped a few more times on his menu that he had open. “Alright, I’ve opened it. Check your menu!”
Daniel swiped his menu open, and a new button appeared at the top, pulsing and yellow with an exclamation mark. Once he tapped it, a white menu appeared in front of him, a single line with two buttons for each option.
Begin Fighter Stat Modification?
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“The System doesn’t allow Fighters to unbreak Stats,” the proctor said. “So choose wisely, Chase.”
Daniel gasped. “So you do remember!”
The proctor smiled. “Working in customer service, do you know what’s even better than the excitement people have when you recognize them?”
“What?”
“The disappointment when you pretend like you don’t. Good luck.”
Daniel chuckled, and tapped the green button to start. The System had a strange way of teleporting people to and from certain special areas. Around him, a black haze swallowed the entire testing room, plunging the world into darkness. But, suddenly Daniel felt like his eyes were closed, though he never remembered closing them in the first place.
The System brought him to an infinite black void, with a tiled gray grid for the floor and a single spotlight shining from nowhere, lighting his immediate area. Ahead, a menu displaying his stats floated in the air.
[https://i.imgur.com/ft4jtj2.png]
Daniel casually placed his hands on his hips, whistling, listening to it echo into the nothingness. At random, he pinched the point at his High Speed. His fingertips went cold, like he was touching a small metal ball. He pulled outwards, and the label for Speed shifted to Gold as the orange chart stretched outside of the boundary.
But, red text with a background of white appeared above the stat chart. “Warning: Stats imbalanced. Please choose a stat to sacrifice.”
Daniel raised an eyebrow — sacrifice was a bold word, but he couldn’t say it wasn’t accurate. On a whim, he pinched his Health stat. He barely pulled it inward, but it suddenly shot completely to the center of the chart.
“Dramatically enhance physical speed and reaction time. Successful Counters completely stop time,” the chart read. But, the sentence below it sat outlined in red. “Die in one hit.”
Two buttons below it gave him the options to either reroll, reset, confirm his choice. Daniel reset, and instead tried Breaking his Combo-Potential in exchange for dropping his Long-Range. On hit, he could instantly cancel an attack into another by a thought, but Hard Punch would no longer fire a blast of wind pressure. It would be unstoppable at Close-Range, but without the ability to contest at farther ranges, someone who could keep him away would easily always win.
He noticed the arrow beside his stat chart, and when he tapped it, the menu expanded for even more options. He could modify or sacrifice his Meter Gain, too, and even entire special moves or Ultimates. But, his options were slim, with only one special move — his Counter — and one Ultimate.
At that moment, staring at the menu with a world’s worth of options in front of him, a lightbulb went off in his brain, brightening the void.
Daniel pressed the button to Reset and dragged his Damage outwards, Breaking it in exchange for lowering his Long-Range. “Dramatically increase Hard Punch’s damage. Hard Punch no longer fires a projectile.”
It was great, but it wasn’t enough — it wasn’t what he was hoping was possible. He rerolled the modifier, chose again, and gasped at the words on display.
“Counter will now store the damage of countered attacks, infinitely stackable. Hard Punch no longer fires projectiles.”
Daniel smiled like a child on christmas morning. While Hard Punch’s wind pressure blasts were awesome and flashy, his Counter was the heart of his kit, and nothing would be better than focusing on that.
Without hesitation, he pressed the button to confirm. Again, a second dialogue box asked him to confirm confirming the final decision. A slow, thundering rumble grew to a roar, shaking the entire void before it flipped to blinding white. Energy coursed through his veins, gleaming blue at the edge of his vision, tensing every muscle in his body.
And it faded as fast as it came. The blinding white light mellowed out into absolute darkness, and Daniel’s fet met tile, his heart still pounding in his chest.
In front of him, the choice had been finalized.
[https://i.imgur.com/RkVYXJj.png]
A new button had appeared alongside the options to reroll or confirm, asking if he was done Breaking stats. But, he had one last idea, and raised his Meter gain in exchange for lowering his Combo Potential.
“Dramatically increase Meter gained from successful attacks and Counters. Combos are limited to only two hits.”
“Worth it,” Daniel said to himself, nodding happily. If he could gain Meter faster, he could use Hard Punch more often. If he could hit harder with each individual blow, he didn’t need long combos like Carmen or Rex.
He pressed the button to confirm, and white light filled the void as power raged through Daniel’s body like a storm once again. Once it faded, he couldn’t wipe the smile from his face as he pressed the button to finish Breaking his stats. Sure, he could’ve just messed up his stats so badly that he’d never have a chance at winning or getting home again.
But he may have also just unlocked the key to victory.
“Preparing demonstration…” a menu said.
Ahead, two dummies flashed into existence, facing each other underneath a second spotlight. They were like mannequins, with skin as gray as the tiled floor, but the one on the left wore a puffy yellow jacket with black shoulder-length dreads, just like Daniel himself.
Another menu appeared in front of him. “Counter’s damage now scales based on the attack countered,” it said. “Countering weak attacks will result in a weak Counter, because the strength of Countered attacks is now stored within your fists.”
Ahead, the dummy wearing a jacket — Dummy Daniel, as he called it — easily countered a blockstring. Afterwards, blue energy gathered around his glowing fists.
“Stored Damage empowers the next successful attack with the damage of previously-countered attacks, including both Normals and Ultimates.”
Dummy Daniel countered a spinning roundhouse kick, and the glow in his fists intensified before he delivered a cross right into the other dummy’s chest. In a single hit, he knocked the other dummy to the floor.
“Damage stored by Counter stacks infinitely. Repeatedly Counter attacks to strengthen your retaliation.”
In the next demonstration, the other dummy went for a full combo and even fired a gigantic fireball ultimate, but Dummy Daniel countered it all, countering multiple times to dispel the fireball with no damage taken. After acting out the commands for Hard Punch, Dummy Daniel swung for the other dummy’s jaw, launching him far into the darkness.
“However, while Counter infinitely stores damage, a single unsuccessful attempt will release all stored Damage.”
Daniel’s jaw dropped. The next demonstration was similar; Dummy Daniel countered an entire combo’s worth of damage. The other dummy came in with another telegraphed punch, and he tried to Counter, but his opponent paused at the last moment. The blue glow around his body faded along with the gleam in his fists, and Dummy Daniel’s shoulders humorously dropped.
Daniel chuckled, but his face fell to seriousness as he rested a hand on his chin. His kit was already high risk, high reward — just as he thought, this just took it to another level. A Hard Punch charged with multiple bars of Meter, enhanced by his Counter with an entire round’s worth of stored damage would likely one-shot anyone. But, if he got too Counter-hungry, he could easily leave himself open to eating entire combos over and over.
A double-edged sword. But, a sword with two edges gave him two different ways to cut. This was exactly what he needed to get home — to win and reach number one.
“Demonstration over. Return to reality?”
Daniel tapped Yes, and closed his eyes as the dark void faded to a deeper blackness.