The building gave a great groan that sent shivers down my spine as I wondered how high up in the cathedral we really were. The next moment, the world settled back into something that looked less like code and more like a world. Most of the world. The floor, on the other hand, collapsed. That was good, but it took me with it.
I fell nimbly, allowing my dexterity to show off with a little slide and flip. No, really, I squealed like a little girl for a moment before I remembered that I wasn’t in my fat old body, but in this new nimble tumbler body. Then I did a little dancing over the falling debris before I settled down onto the rubble pile that I’d caused. Fizzbarren, in Kat’s even more nimble body, and yet even less used to the difference from his usual form, rose from his side of the rubble, angrily dusting the worst of the splintered wood out of Kat’s hair.
My heart skipped a moment, belying my belief that I didn’t see Kat on this arrogant old man. In real life, we’d done it all together, understanding each other as only those who had fought in the trenches together could. Both autistic with bodies that didn’t want to do our bidding and pain that we hid behind benevolent smiles, only we knew what it cost each other to even get out of bed. I shoved it all down behind another mask and asked my mind to win one more fight against the injustice created by ableist minds with entitled standards that didn’t apply to themselves.
We’d fallen into the cathedral where he’d taken me out last time. I watched a little dash of grey and white as it skittered down one of the dramatic columns that ran along the aisle of the church’s main theater. I stood with my back to the massive podium that stood next to the elaborate, white, marble altar. Light from the stained-glass windows sparkled down on the still circling dust that our descent had sent into the air of the large room. It made such an amazing rainbow of colored sprinkles that it felt like the time Kat had lined the ceiling fan of our living room with rainbow glitter. I wanted to stand and stare as I had when we’d turned on that fan, but instead I just let the memory settle my heart.
One more fight and it could be over. A lifetime of suffering at the hands of people like Fizzbarren who were so sure that they were the victims of life that they had to disqualify anyone who was more of a victim than they were. It could be over, if I could win the world away from Fizzbarren. I could make a fair world out of the madman’s mistakes.
“I’m so sick of people like you,” I ground out, interrupting whatever he’d been saying as he beat the dust from Kat’s pants.
“And I of people like you,” Fizzbarren growled back, and a part of me knew that we were the same. His frustration had turned him bitter, but he had been dealing with it for centuries longer than I had.
“I didn’t have to be your enemy,” I found myself saying and I wasn’t sure why I would admit it to him. I knew that he couldn’t understand. No one ever did. Now, in Fizzbarren, I was seeing that centuries of lessons and wisdom couldn’t bring down the barrier of bitterness once it had set in a heart.
“I was never your enemy!” Fizzbarren threw up Kat’s hands, and I goggled at his proclamation. “I was trying to make things better!”
“Well, you SUCKED at it!” I shouted back at him. “This world is totally out of balance!”
“There is nothing wrong with my world,” Fizzbarren shot back at me, and I was floored.
“Unbelievable!” I muttered, and it was like there was a physical weight on my chest.
“You’re just complaining because nothing could ever satisfy you,” he spat out the words that I was struggling to keep inside, only he was throwing them at me. “You justify stealing my invention and my magic by saying that I’m a hack, but you didn’t bother to create a world!”
“I’ve created several worlds for my books,” I breathed out, fighting back the bile as I considered his words and wondered if he had a point. How did it all seem so turned around so easily.
“And you’ve made money off these books?” Fizzbarren challenged me.
“No,” I admitted. “You know the publishing world. I don’t have a following of any sort anywhere, so no one wants to publish a new writer without a following.”
“And you say that I am the one who is filled with hubris?” he drove his point forward with a cast of a spell that my God Bubble blocked. Fizzbarren stood in the midst of several crushed pews, but he might as well have been preaching from the pulpit. “You haven’t had any more success with your writing than I have with mine and yet you claim to know that my writing is inferior to yours!”
“It breaks the rules!” I told him, casting a Fireball and Lightning spell at him. “Your writing uses far too much alliteration. Your world is unbalanced.”
Kat level 22 (Health 16,164/20,105) (Mana 18,155/21,660) Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“There is nothing wrong with the balance of my world,” Fizzbarren growled at me, ducking behind pews that took most of the damage. At least he got hit with the splinters.
“Professions blow out the balance of leveling,” I grasped at what my mind fumbled to find. I’d lived the unbalanced shit in this world, and I knew that I wanted to balance it, but in the heat of having to provide specific proof, my mind stalled out. Suddenly, I didn’t know what was wrong with his world.
“Would you rather that people uninterested in fighting were forced to live out their lives at health so low that an earl could sneeze and kill them?” Fizzbarren threw out with a set of Fireballs.
“No, but there’s a middle ground,” I insisted, knowing I was right but having trouble expressing it. I let loose a Poison Cloud with another Lightning. “And the health points are so bloated out of proportion at this level that someone who has exploited this loophole is almost unkillable.”
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Health -20 (21,602/23,517) Shielded
Kat level 22 (Health 15,894/20,105) (Mana 17,835/21,660) Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“I guess you’d rather have half the health?” Fizzbarren argued and he sounded so frustratingly reasonable just like all those professors who insisted that I wasn’t professional while they lost their minds, and I couldn’t say a single sentence that could be twisted into disrespect.
“I’d rather have spells go up in damage in proportion to how health goes up, so these fights don’t take forever,” I felt like I sounded petulant rather than logical. How did these people find ways to make me feel so inadequate? I let my frustration saturate the storm clouds I called in over his head as I healed myself. They always did this. I’d make perfectly rational discoveries with obvious solutions, and they would twist it into scurrilous complaints of a child.
Health +100 (21,702/23,517) Shielded
Kat level 22 (Health 15,809/20,105) (Mana 17,835/21,660) Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“You want to be able to kill me with one hit, but then if we stay balanced then I could do the same to you,” he reasoned, and I had no trouble adding a little extra umph to the next set of Fireballs.
“You did,” I snapped at him and had to repeat myself as my voice was drowned out by the battle. “You had a spell that took me down to one health, even though I had over double your stats! It takes me a fucking hour to grind you down and even then, your god card ended the fight in an instant.”
“You’d just rather have been the one with the power,” Fizzbarren insisted, spittle flying even as the Fireballs that surrounded both of us dried it up. “You want to be the one in charge? Build your own damn world!”
Kat level 22 (Health 15,654/20,105) (Mana 17,835/21,660) Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“I was!” I retorted, just as angrily. I knew it was a bad idea to lose my temper but there is a limit on every person and a lifetime of this type of justification was my line. “I was making a life with my family, and you tore me out of it to play games in your world!”
“That world is more awful and unjust than this one,” Fizzbarren argued, flinging poison at me that my Bubble dimmed like all the rest.
“Yeah, and I’ve fought against it all my life!” I shouted over the Lightning blasts. “When the college tried to expel me for passing out, I dragged my shaking body to class and still got an A in that class!” Another Lightning bolt because that was how I felt. “When they tried to flunk me out of lab for daring to ask for the microscopes lowered so I could view them from my wheelchair, I showed up for the final and passed despite them.”
Health -10 (21,692/23,517) Shielded
Kat level 22 (Health 15,339/20,105) (Mana 17,515/21,660) Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“I agree that it’s an awful world I saved you from,” he started that comment, but I was beyond reason now. Kat’s already unruly curly mop had become an afro that would rival Bob Ross from all the static.
“SHUT UP!” I yelled over the top of him punctuating my long list of complaints with bolt after bolt of Lightning. “When they said I couldn’t go to Ethics Bowl without cramming myself into a claustrophobic bus, I jumped through every,” blast, “single,” blast, “illegal hoop of controlling bullshit to drive my own damn car.”
Kat level 22 (Health 15,024/20,105) (Mana 17,515/21,660) Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“And,” he blustered, unconcerned with my words but starting to get concerned about my bolts of Lightning and his inability to penetrate my newest OP spell.
“And when they tried to bully me out of the program in Organic Chemistry by saying that my grades were a reflection of my inability to handle medical school and a profession as a doctor,” blast, “I,” blast, “aced every test so that whatever they graded my papers, they couldn’t flunk me.”
Kat level 22 (Health 14,709/20,105) (Mana 17,515/21,660) Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“Aren’t,” he kept it up, but I was done listening. Fizzbarren healed himself.
“And when they sent yet another Code of Conduct accusation, I documented an entire timeline of every emailed,” blast, “discriminatory,” blast, “illegal way they tried to cut down my grades and sent it all in a nice neat little package to the federal Title IX office, who said I had a great case.”
Kat level 22 (Health 14,494/20,105) (Mana 17,355/21,660) Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
Fizzbarren tossed out more fizzling Fireballs. It was getting to a point that my anger was sucking all the magic out of the very air around me such that I was taking almost no damage while Terra had nearly hamstrung Fizzbarren with her cat version of backstabs.
“That’s why I made a better world!” Fizzbarren still had the nerve to be arguing with me. Idiot.
“And when that case took more time than I spent in that backwater state university trying to complete pre-med classes,” blast, “I tried to hire a lawyer,” blast, “but no one wanted to go against our illustrious state university because half of them graduated from it!”
Health -5 (21,687/23,517) Shielded
Kat level 22 (Health 14,113/20,105) (Mana 17,035/21,660) Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“But,” Fizzbarren shook out his fingers like that would make the magic work as well for him as it was for me.
“And when I tried to get a reporter to report on it, most of them had graduated from,” blast, “you guessed it,” blast, “most of them had graduated from MY school!”
Kat level 22 (Health 13,798/20,105) (Mana 17,035/21,660) Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“That’s not me!” Fizzbarren was finally getting the idea that maybe he wasn’t going to win this fight.
“But it is!” I insisted with renewed poison and a Dust Devil just to switch things up, since my own hair had started spreading out like my God Bubble was a plasma ball. “It is your world! It’s every world!”
Kat level 22 (Health 13,635/20,105) (Mana 17,035/21,660) Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“You’ve gone mad!” he shouted, edging back behind a column that wouldn’t save him. Lightning came from above.
I backed up to the altar, irreverently leaning against it as if we were discussing politics at a local bar instead of how utterly screwed up my life was. “And now!” blast, “You bring me to another world where I’m supposed to be grateful,” blast “that you’ve destroyed my life and my future and the future of my daughter who was right next to me the whole way!”
Kat level 22 (Health 13,200/20,105) (Mana 17,035/21,660) Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“That,” he was saying, his back to the column that didn’t save him any more than his heals could keep up with my damage.
“You,” blast, “let me watch,” blast.
Kat level 22 (Health 12,885/20,105) (Mana 17,035/21,660) Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“Wasn’t…”
“My daughter,” blast, “my reason for living, DIE!” blast, “in front of my eyes!”
Kat level 22 (Health 12,570/20,105) (Mana 17,035/21,660) Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“My…”
“And then I lived for years under the thumb of another corrupt UNLV,” blast, “alone,” blast.
Kat level 22 (Health 12,255/20,105) (Mana 17,035/21,660) Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“Fault!”
“And you think you can twist,” blast, “this all around so you’re not the villain?” blast.
Kat level 22 (Health 11,940/20,105) (Mana 17,035/21,660) Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“Not my fault!” he tried to yell out with her voice.
“Unbelievable!” Double blast.
Kat level 22 (Health 11,625/20,105) (Mana 17,035/21,660) Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
“This is my world!” he yelled out.
“Not anymore,” the fury left my soul.
Kat level 22 (Health 11,310/20,105) (Mana 17,035/21,660) Poisoned (-75/5 seconds)
Lightning +25 (to catch up… what did I miss while I was repairing the world you’re trying to destroy?)
Exp +250 (3,156,715/5,985,462)