“Alright, chickenshits,” Bawkman said as he removed his shirt, exposing a rippled breast that would have made the purveyor of any fried chicken establishment drool from the thought of the potential profits. “Since I flushed the king smartass out on day one, you morons are going to get your first lesson in Close Combat early. And I was bloody serious about those thank-you cards, so get the cluck on that.”

I rolled my eyes. I felt like I had been doing a lot of that lately. This guy was pure ham.

Bawkman grunted, then threw his shirt to the ground. He flexed his wings, the cybernetic one making a whirring noise as the motors inside pumped up his synthetic bicep. The noise cut out as he brought his thumbs to rest on his hips and scratched at the dirt with his gleaming spur. Bawkman sucked in a breath, and barked out a crow that had to be amplified by one of his many after market modifications. “Cock-a-doodle-do!”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I belted back my best duck mating call. “Honk!”

Bawkman raised a mechanical eyebrow and glared at me with that blazing red eye of his. “Holy bloody shit, Merganser. Did your egg roll out the basket and crack its shell before you hatched? We’re here to fight, not cluck!”

“Are you trying to get us killed? Think before you do something stupid like that!” Dumbass squealed. “He’s level 45! Look at him, he’s like the Universal Soldier of chickens! He's avian Jean-Claude Van Damme! He’ll destroy us!”

“Something tells me he’s just trying to make an example out of us, Dumbass.” I examined the guy as he strutted and clucked over there, damn near kicking up a dust storm as he did. My call must have wound up some latent mating instincts inside the guy or something. He looked he was about to defend his territory with everything he had, and an icy shiver ran down my spine. “But yeah, maybe I should think before I act or something. You got any pointers?”

“Um… maybe… yeah, no. No clue how to help you with this one, pal. Try not to get hit, I guess?”

My mind floated back to the description of my Saurianskin Duster, and the faint edges of a dumb idea formed in my mind. “Okay, get hit. Got it.”

“That's not what I said you mor—”

I howled and rushed towards Bawkman, hoping to catch him off guard while he did that stupid dance of his. He didn’t seem to notice me coming at him. As I closed in for the attack, I pulled my combat spur from my inventory and raised it above my head, ready to bring it down in a sweeping strike.

Right before I was about to rip a gash through Bawkman, he sidestepped my charge and I went flying headfirst into his cloud of dirt. I couldn't see anything. Bawkman drove a sharp kick into my hand while I was airborne, jabbing me with his spur and causing my health bar to flash red. I lost the grip on my combat spur as I hit the ground, and it went skittering across the gravel until it landed at Bawkman’s feet.

The entire group erupted into laughter around me.

“Well, well,” said Bawkman in his gravelly voice as he picked up my combat spur. “Looks like Merganser thinks he already knows enough about Close Combat to use a weapon against me. A highly illegal one at that. For you, that is.” He leaned down and waved my spur in front of my face. “I better hold on to this for the time being. What kind of chicken would I be if I let a non-Gallic use such a weapon?”

The combat spur faded away right in front of my face. “Hey! What the cluck?!

Bawkman laughed. “Finders keepers, Earthling.”

“That's a pretty neat trick, Bawkman,” I said, trying to keep my composure. “You must get your rocks off picking on poor, under leveled chickenshits like us.”

“You know what, chickenshits? Merganser is bloody right.” Bawkman pulled his real forearm up and swiped across a black bracer. A holographic interface popped up, and he typed a few commands. Bawkman seemed to glow white for a moment, then he turned back to his normal color. “What kind of clucking lesson would this be if I weren’t on the same level as my opponent, eh? Shit, Merganser here is going to need all the help he can get, so I did him a favor and lowered myself to Level 1. That’s one below your fellow smartass chickenshit, if the rest of you bloody morons can't do the maths.”

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“Can he do that?” I asked Dumbass.

“Yes, there’s a field around this Training Level that allows Bawkman to manipulate the simulation and any devices that have access to it. That’s why he could hear your thoughts earlier. He isn’t always listening—he has to make a conscious effort, but he can do it.”

“Good to know.” I took a step back from the Training Master.

“Ba-kawk!” Bawkman clucked. He drove his metal fist into the palm of his other hand and ground it like was trying to turn wheat into flour. “Listen closely, chickenshit. This may be the most important bloody damn lesson I teach you: in the Trials, the highest leveled player doesn’t always win. Watch closely, Trainees. This will be over quick. The key to unarmed Close Combat is to hit hard, hit fast, and hit often. And most importantly, never, ever—”

I leapt at Bawkman and kicked out toward his head with my webbed foot. He easily swatted it away, ducked and drove a fist up into my ribcage. Air rushed out of my lungs as the blow compressed my chest, and I let out a croaking wheeze as a quarter of my health disappeared.

New Milestone: Winded!

Congratulations! You have just had the wind knocked out of you! Good luck trying to breathe for the next few seconds as your diaphragm spasms like the back of a fat construction worker after twenty years on the job. Just use proper lifting techniques, people. It’s not that hard to ask for help.

Before my health bar could even start to regenerate, Bawkman grabbed me by my shirt and threw me through the air like a rag doll. He pummeled my chest with a flurry of lightning quick strikes as I went over his head, then hit me with a kick that sent me soaring even further upward. As I flew through the air, I instinctively flapped my arms, despite knowing I couldn’t fly anymore, and even though I didn’t exactly take off, I generated enough lift to get my feet under me as I hit the ground, my feet throwing up a wave of gravel as I slid to a stop.

A new indicator appeared on the left side of my vision. A vertical bar, not unlike my health one, only blue. It was full all the way to the top and flashed white every half second or so.

Dumbass told me what it was before I could even ask. “That’s the energy meter for your equipped skill, Blink. You can activate it by clenching both of your fists as hard as you can at the same time. Focus your mind on where you want to teleport before you do, though. Otherwise it will be random and that's usually never good.”

"Thanks, Dumbass." I drew in a breath and stepped forward, raising both of my fists like I was about to box the clucking madman, then focused on space directly behind him. I cocked my right arm back and squeezed my fists like I was trying to turn a rock to dust. The next thing I knew, I was standing directly behind Bawkman, looking right at the back of his head. So I drove my fist into the combination of chicken and metal as hard as I could.

There a loud ping noise as I connected, and I felt a searing pain shoot up my arm and into my elbow. I howled in agony and saw that my stupid idea for an attack had actually lowered my own health.

Bawkman didn't make a sound. He spun around and grabbed me by the neck. “Where did you...”

“Haha!” I laughed nervously. “What can I say, Bawkman? A duck’s got skills.”

He roared and threw me to the ground, then drove a series of kicks into my gut that sent my health plummeting into the red. I felt like I was about to throw up everything I had ever eaten in my life—every fish, worm, every plastic six-pack yoke I had ever swallowed by accident. Those were absolute hell on the way out, by the way. Felt like you were shitting a never ending pile of grocery bags.

By the time Bawkman had finished getting all his anger out on my abdomen, frothy spittle dripped from his beak like a waterfall, and my health so low my vision had taken on a red hue. But, my skill bar was full again. I was never one to back down from a fight back when I was pond duck, so I squeezed my fists and went for one last attack.

I blinked out of existence, and reappeared exactly where I had aimed, except Bawkman was nowhere to be found. I spun around to look for him in a panic. And lo-and-behold, he was standing ten feet away from me with cyborg fist raised at my head.

“You think you’re the only one that knows that trick, Merganser,” he snarled. Then a flash of flame erupted right behind his wrist, sending his metal hand rocketing across the distance between us. It flew right into my chest with a sicking thud. I fell to the ground, my vision blinking black, as the hand reattached itself to Bawkman's arm.

He flexed it as he looked down at me and grinned. He spoke in a low tone that only I could hear. "You got spunk, Merganser, I'll give you that. But you got a lot to bloody learn if you're going to save Earth."

I tried to say something in response, but all I could manage was a sick gurgle.

As my vision slowly faded to black, I heard Bawkman bellow, “Now that Merganser can’t interrupt my bloody lesson anymore, I can finish what I was telling you chickenshits.” He looked down at me with his crazed eyes and said, “Even though you may specialize in Close Combat or Ranged Weapons or Particle Manipulation, always take the opportunity to learn a bloody skill in one of the other specializations. You never, ever want to be the fighter that dies because they put all their eggs in one basket.”