“I wanna hear about this girlfriend,” Jane said.

“Me too,” Sigrid said. “Who was she?”

“One of their older sisters.” I sighed. “Siobhan.”

Sigrid and I took a few steps before we realized Jane had stopped. We both turned to look at her.

“What?” I said.

“Say that again,” Jane said.

“Say what?”

“That name.”

“Siobhan?”

“No no, say it the way you said it before.”

“Siobhan.”

It was Jane’s turn to sigh.

“Ah. I heard it that time,” Sigrid said.

“What?” I said.

“Oh nothing,” Jane said. “It’s just...I wish someone would say my name like that someday.” She gave her head a shake sending red hair flowing, then started walking again. “Right. So, spill. Let’s hear about this girlfriend. Siobhan.”

She put a lot of emotion into saying the name. Was that really how I sounded when I said it?

“We went out for over a year,” I said. “Probably the best year of my life.”

“How’d it end?” Jane said.

“We broke up when I was in my last year of high school and she’d gone off to university. Long distance is a relationship killer.”

“Relationships are the real relationship killer,” Sigrid said.

“Ignore her,” Jane said. “How’d you drum up the nerve to ask out this Siobhan?”

“I didn’t. It was only after it ended that I learned it was Siobhan who’d set the wheels in motion and asked her sister and her friends to set us up. I thought it was strange that they’d want me to have a sleepover with them to teach them how to play D&D.”

"That is pretty sus," Sigrid said.

“Let me guess,” Jane said. “They ended up getting bored quickly but the older sister who just happened to be around was totally into it and you ended up spending the entire night playing that game with her.”

“I’m not even going to ask how you know that. It’s scarily accurate.”

“You were real dense back then,” Sigrid said.

“I did eventually figure out after it was all over that my friends hadn’t really wanted to play D&D.”

“That’s your take-away? You’re still dense.”

“That girl liked you, Daniel,” Jane said.

“I never believed she could. I mean, she was great: crazy smart, funny, just as pretty as her younger sister, and kind. And she loved games. A dream girl. So obviously I never could figure out why she was with me.”

“Let me guess,” Jane said. “She ended it.”

“Harsh!” Sigrid said.

“But true,” I said.

I was suddenly overwhelmed by a flood of sadness. That was normal for me, and was why I tried not to think about Siobhan too much. I know other people probably enjoy looking back and remembering wonderful times in their life, however fleeting they were, but all I felt was pain. Pain and loss and regret. You know the idea of purgatory, right? A place to suffer for your sins before being allowed into heaven? It’s like the reverse: being with Siobhan had given me a taste of heaven first, right before being sent to languish in purgatory forever. And don’t even get me started about what happened with my next and only other girlfriend.

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I took a deep breath, trying to chase away the melancholy. This had been a fun day with Jane and Sigrid, I didn’t want to ruin it by being, well, me. It wasn’t until this conversation that I’d made the connection that I was sliding back into old habits by glomming onto the cool girls again. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, all I knew was that I didn’t want to ruin it with Sigrid and Jane. I needed them. And despite myself, I liked them too.

We’d almost reached the middle of town when we saw a group of people gathered in a circle, mostly NPCs but also a few Players. A few quick evaluations told me their abilities were average. Poking our way through the crowd to see what they were looking at, we found three NPCs wearing red armbands, each paired up with another NPC wearing an orange one. They were sparring with each other out on the street. It didn’t look like a real fight, nobody was really trying to hurt the other, so I figured it must be some sort of friendly exhibition match. We were at the top of Bow Street, which I knew belonged to the Wolf Clan, so I assumed one side of them were in the Wolves.

We watched them, comparing their movements to what we knew about kung fu. The two sides had very different fighting styles. I was pretty sure that the red armband Wolves were using karate, but I didn’t know enough about martial arts then to recognize what the others were using. It was sort of similar but with a lot more kicking. After a while the System notifications appeared.

System: You know Karate

System: You know Tae Kwon Do

That’s cool. A little redundant since I already knew kung fu, but still cool.

“Pssst, Jane.”

“What?”

“Guess what.”

“What?”

“I just learned karate.”

“You’re hateful.”

“Psst. Guess what else.”

She groaned. “Don’t tell me.”

“I also learned tae kwon do.”

“Truly hateful. Say, I’ve been wondering something.”

“Hmm?”

“How can you learn an entire fighting style just by watching someone use it for a minute?”

“Magic,” I said.

“I’m serious,” she said.

“So am I.”

Honestly, that was a really good question. Even given Jack Of All Trades, how did I learn entire fighting styles so quickly, even moves I hadn’t seen? Magic was as good an explanation as any.

I learned from System some time later that the skills in our Statuses were derived from the compiled neural scans of several master practitioners. When a Player learns such a skill, the entirety of the skill is transferred, but higher level manifestations remain locked until the level of mastery is high enough. When you get good enough, you unlock the knowledge as well as the muscle memory required to perform advanced moves. So technically I knew as much karate as the highest degree black belt, I just didn’t realize it. It also explained every Player’s ability to advance more rapidly than you normally would through practice, training, and experience. With my one gift, I got better even faster, but with my other, I was never able to get that good, no matter how much I practiced.

Once the demonstration was over the fighters bowed to one another and the crowd dispersed.

Jane pouted. “I’m hungry,” she said.

“I know a good food vendor,” I said. “Feel up for some street meat?”

“Yes! I’ve been wanting to try that ever since we met yesterday,” Jane said, clapping her hands. She looked adorable, like a seal who’d just found a twenty dollar bill in the pocket of the coat they hadn’t worn since last year, or maybe an otter who’d just witnessed a rousing live performance.

“Ohhhhhh,” Sigrid said, as though a light bulb had just gone off over her head. “That’s why you called him your friend with the meat before.”

Jane laughed. “What did you think I’d meant?”

Sigrid gave her a look, and Jane laughed even harder. She pulled out her new gloves and put them on, wiggling her fingers in front of me.

“See? I even came with protection, just like you suggested, Daniel.”

“You won’t be disappointed, I said. “I promise.”

“You sure that’s the kind of protection he meant?” Sigrid said, and Jane laughed some more.

“Come on,” Jane said, grabbing my hand and dragging me up the street. “Let’s eat out.”