“Oh my biggest, bestest boy. What did they do to you?”

Peter came to in the infirmary, his mother's voice ringing in his ears. Or maybe it was just that his ears were ringing. For some reason his ribs hurt too, and he couldn't feel his face at all.

Cracking one pain filled eye granted him a view of the curtained off cubicle he was lying in. His mother's face loomed large in his restricted vision, far closer than he was comfortable with. “Mum! You're embarrassing me!” Peter attempted to squirm out of the hug his mother was trying to give, eliciting another sharp stab of pain from his chest. “Ow. You're squashing my chest.”

The nurse intervened for him. “Mrs Fuller, please don't put pressure on Peter's chest. Apparently another student decided it would be a good idea to show their loyalty to a bully by adding a few extra bruises whilst your son was on the ground.”

Peter's mum looked shocked. “Why is this menace still allowed to roam the halls then?”

“Because, you see, he and his friends always make sure they don't throw the first punch, at least where anyone but them can see. That way they can claim self-defence.”

“How could kicking someone on the ground be called self-defence?”

“They're saying that Peter was getting up to hit the ringleader from behind. Nobody's going to come forward to contest the story, I guarantee.” The nurse sighed wearily.

“But aren't there cameras? Security?”

“I'm sorry Mr Fuller, this is a school. Recording devices are prohibited.”

“I'm sorry Mum, I sorta started it,” Peter croaked. “I walked straight into him when I wasn't looking where I was going. And I shouldn’t have said what I did about his mum, even if it's true.”

“Well, we'll see about that. In the meantime, I'm taking you home. I can take him home, can't I?”

The nurse nodded. “In fact, I recommend it. He doesn't have a concussion; he'll just have a nasty black eye for a bit and some bruises on his chest. Here's a note from me recommending a week's rest. If you drop it in at the office on the way out then they can take care of the paperwork.” She winked at Peter. “You earned it. I see too many of his victims in here and there's nothing I can do about it.”

Peter slid off the bed gingerly and accepted the note with an astonished “Thanks miss!”

Peter's mother shouldered his bag for him and gestured for him to lead the way. She paused outside the door and tapped her ear, her gesture for initiating a phone call, then sighed in disgust. Probably trying to get through to Dad and Dad wasn't answering. Unsurprising, really, given how their phone calls went these days.

The pathways were deserted now, with everyone else in class and it took only a few minutes to reach the office. As they walked his mother asked what he's said to earn such a beating and he told her the whole story. He even admitted to tossing the sandwiches. On any other day that would have earned him a scolding, but he was pretty sure his mother felt he'd received enough punishment for the day.

At the office the man behind the reception counter accepted the nurse's note and instructed him to place his tablet in the slot on the counter. The man's eyes took on the thousand yard stare of someone interacting with the virtual for a moment, then he blinked as his attention was dragged back to the real world. “You may now take your tablet, it has been uploaded with the next week's lessons and quizzes. See that you keep up with your classwork.” It sounded like he was reading from a script, and quite probably was. Peter withdrew his tablet, took his bag from his mother and slipped it inside. As he slipped the strap over his shoulder the bag bumped against his abused ribs sending a fresh pang arcing through his body.

“Come one, Petey. Let's get you home,” his mother said, leading the way to the car.

The ride home was mostly silent, though they stopped into Peter's favourite burger joint to pick up a replacement lunch. The accompanying “Don't think I'm rewarding you for fighting at school, Peter. We're going to have a long talk when your father gets home” soured the taste somewhat though.

Arriving home after such an awkward trip was a relief. Peter hung his bag by the door as normal and padded down the hall to the bathroom. His mother busied herself in the kitchen whilst she tried to call his dad again.

In the bathroom Peter stripped off his uniform, and was surprised to notice that his shirt had a tear on the same arm as the one he'd damaged last night. “Weird” he thought to himself. As he started the shower running he checked himself in the mirror. He had bruises darkening all over his body, some much darker than others, and the whole left side of his face was swelling and darkening. Clearly he needed to choose his words better.

Climbing into the shower was an exercise in frustration, the bruises ached and several small cuts that had gone unnoticed until now made their protests as he soaped up. “One benefit,” he thought to himself, “if my eye swells shut I can surf the web on that side and no-one will know.” Still, after a few minutes the sting began to fade, as did the aches.

He was just beginning to relax and enjoy the shower when his mother called from the kitchen. “Oi you, don't use all the hot water. Others need to shower tonight too.”

“Sorry Mum!” With a sigh Peter stepped out and towelled off. Then, tying the towel around his waist he stepped across the hall into his bedroom. He dropped the towel on the floor and dressed in an old baggy shirt and tracksuit pants that wouldn't put pressure on his injuries.

He'd only just finished pulling up his pants when his mother leaned around the door. “I need to pop out for a... Hey! What've I told you about leaving your towel on the floor? Hang it up this minute!” She watched like a hawk as he scooped up the offending item and trudged back into the bathroom to hang it up. “Now, as I was saying, I need to pop out for a few minutes. You need to get started on your studies. I'm not having you sitting around the house slacking for the next week. Do you understand?”

“Yes Mum.”

“Good, here's your tablet. Get a move on.” She held out the device for him to take.

Peter accepted the device with what little grace as he could muster. He slouched down the hall and into the family's modest lounge room. In a tradition that has lasted since the first teenager stepped into the first lounge room, he threw himself into the first armchair and immediately kicked his feet up onto the coffee table. His mother, as much a slave to tradition as he, knocked his feet straight back onto the floor. She kept on out the door with a “Love you, see you later,” and was gone. Peter completed the ritual with a massive stretch that elicited protests from his abused body and kicked his feet back up onto the table again.

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Stuffing the tablet down between the cushion and the arm of the chair, he accessed the net with a thought. Beside the web page that opened he pulled up the note he'd made at school and started navigating the game's wiki. Entering “item durability” into the search bar, he ticked off the item on the list while the page loaded. There was plenty of information on item rarity and how it affected durability, how percentage of durability remaining changed the appearance of an item and how it influenced the effect the item had. Brand new items looked clean and shiny, and worked as advertised. An item with less than 5% left had a chance of breaking entirely and even if it didn't it could fail catastrophically in other ways. The one class of items exempt from this was character underwear. Since it was a game that allows minors to play, in the event that an avatar's armour was destroyed they would be left with an undershirt and boxers or bloomers depending on the gender of the avatar. These could be darkened or dirtied to indicate their damaged status, but never removed or destroyed. Peter sighed with relief. He didn't want to be running about the countryside in his underoos, but it was better than the alternative.

He cast a quick eye over the crafting page that linked from “items” but it appeared to be a very complex subject. His initial impression was that improvisation was encouraged, and refinement rewarded. Sharpen a stick and you've got a spear. Forge an iron blade for your spear and you've got a pike. More work and better materials and you could have a mithril lance that could kill a dragon. But it all started from the sharp stick.

The “skills” page linked on from the crafting one. Crafting skills made up a significant portion of the discovered skills, but a disclaimer at the top claims that even now – years on from launch – not all of the skills had been discovered. There were combat skills and magic skills and hunting skills. People had discovered skills that helped them run shops and guilds, like “haggling” and “appraise”. Peter frowned and tapped the “character” tab at the top of the screen as a thought struck him.

The lack of an interface or character sheet in his first play time had him wondering how people even knew what these skills were. A few paragraphs down showed him what he'd missed. Your character “sheet” as such was displayed on your left arm. He'd been wearing a long sleeve shirt and unable to see it. The images on the page showed that your numerical scores could be called up and navigated via what looked like a touch sensitive tattoo. It sounded unwieldy for a combat focussed character to stop and roll up their sleeve in the middle of a fight to check their health points. He'd have to see how people dealt with it in game, there wasn't much here on that.

Peter jotted down the notes on the subjects that he wanted to keep and closed the page and notepad app and pulled the tablet out from down the side of the chair.. His mother had been gone a while and he was getting nervous that she'd come back to find him surfing the web and not having done any of the schoolwork he'd promised to do. He didn't think he could face maths homework at the moment so he tabbed across to the English section and began reading the next play. Mrs Easton had kept to the theme of “the lies we tell” with Macbeth. Glancing at the options for the assessment, Peter thought he'd give recreating the story in a modern setting a try. Instead of a kingdom, perhaps a MegaCorporation. The biggest companies these days were often handed from father to son, like the ancient monarchies. Companies were always trying to take over each other's customers, and whilst there may not be as many sword battles in boardrooms, he could imagine a firefight between two rivals to a CEO position, or maybe MacDuff could be the policeman charged with arresting Macbeth for conspiracy to murder. It would take some thinking about.

And so it was that Peter's parents arrived home to find him, to their surprise, actually doing his homework. To Peter's complete lack of surprise, they were fighting again.

“You need to get in there and talk to your son about fighting at school.”

“Didn't you already speak to him about it? And I thought you said it wasn't his fault anyway?”

“It doesn't matter if it was his fault. There's a bully at school who's going to be targeting him now. You need to have the man to son talk about it being ok to find a teacher and report the bully. I won't have my baby boy coming home covered in bruises again.”

Peter looked up at the two red faced adults trying to enter the apartment, doing that yelling-in-a-whisper thing adults do when they're pissed at each other in public and you know that they'd rather be screaming but have to keep it down. Peter's dad was balancing a pair of pizza boxes on one arm and carrying a bottle of soft drink in the other. Peter's mother had one of those weird healthy fast food cardboard cartons and a blended juice cup.

“Hi honey. Your dad is going to have a chat with you about how you're doing at school. I'm just going to have my dinner in the lounge and give you some space.” Peter's mum bustled off with the forced cheeriness that had become the hallmark of their conversations recently.

Peter's dad placed the boxes on the table and opened them up. “We got a supreme for you, champ, and a meat lovers with jalapeno for me. You can have some, but watch the peppers, they're hot.”

When his dad turned to the cupboard to grab cups Peter pulled a face at his back. Peter had been enjoying chilli and curries that would have melted his father's face off for a while now. Jalapenos wouldn't even register for him. It saddened him that his father knew him so little, but not so sad that he couldn't enjoy a decent supreme.

“Ok champ, what's this I hear about you standing up to a bully at school?” Peter's dad took a slice and put it on a plate. “Some big...” he glanced around the corner, but his mum was wearing the watching-something-virtual face, “bastard who likes to pick on guys smaller than him?”

Peter chewed thoughtfully while he considered his next words carefully. “Dad, I really didn't do much. I walked into him accidentally, and when he called me the ever-so-witty name of 'scar-boy', I made fun of his mum. I really shouldn't have. I'm sure she's a lovely lady.”

“You're sure that's all it was? Your mum made it sound like a Battle Royale went down in the halls of learning. I was hoping for a stirring tale of derring-do and even some swashbuckling. Well, if that's all it was, some harsh words and you fell over, I guess it's over. That is all that happened, yes?” An arched eyebrow accompanied the question.

Peter choked a little on his food. “Well. Ah. He sorta hit me for what I said about his mum. And apparently I passed out and one of his friends kicked me in the ribs a little bit.”

The inquiring eyebrow rose even higher. “So how does one get kicked in the ribs 'a little bit'? These are bad kids we're talking about here. They're going to keep picking on you now that they've found what they think is a soft target. What your mum wants me to tell you to do is run and find a teacher. That's exactly what I'm suggesting you do,” his dad held up a finger and looked around the corner at his mum again. Apart from being almost finished her dinner, little had changed. “Right after you kick him in the nads,” he finished.

This time Peter had to spit his food out or he would have properly choked on it. “Wha-!”

“Peter, bullies will keep picking on anyone they see as a victim. You have to change the way they see you. The only unfair fight is the one you lose. Now, what are we going to tell your mum we talked about?”

“You said I need to find a teacher or another adult the next time I'm threatened.”

“That's my champ. Now finish up your dinner. I think an early night might be in order.”

The rest of dinner was consumed in short order and in relative silence. The boxes were thrown in the recycling and cups washed and left on the drainer. Peter brushed his teeth and jumped into bed. Despite his dad's suggestion, he was excited to return the world of the Age of Steam and Sorcery.

Just as he was about to hit the login button, he heard his mother's shrill voice penetrate his bedroom door. “Of course I bloody heard what you said to him. Did you think I wouldn't be listening? Do you think I'm an idiot? Of course you bloody do. You think everyone's an idiot except you.”

Peter jabbed his virtual finger at the button with all the will he could muster. Were it a physical object, it probably would have shattered.