Part 2: Next Level / Chapter 23

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Was the notion of a potentially fatal game of Rochambeau beyond ridiculous? Yes.

But that’s the way the cookie had crumbled. And I needed to get strategic. As established, it was in large part a game of chance. But there was more to it than that. There was psychology at work. Becky had already thrown rock and paper. Would she cycle through scissors or double back?

I looked into her blackened soul and knew the answer.

“Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!” we both cried as we pounded our fists into our palms and threw down our chosen weapons.

Becky’s eyes went wide, as they scanned from her still-fisted hand over to my open palm. I’d read her right. A primitive little bully like her would always favor a blunt instrument like rock. A sheet of binder paper flew through the air and sliced across her left thigh just below her hip. A small geyser of blood shot out like ketchup from a squeeze bottle, spattering across the faces of the kids in the first row. I expected them to recoil in disgust but they screamed in ecstasy along with the rest of the class.

It didn’t matter if it was me or Becky taking the shots. As long as somebody was getting hurt, they were happy. Really happy. My third-grade classmates had indeed egged Becky on with their laughter back in the day. But as far as I could recall, they hadn’t been indiscriminate, blood-lusting lunatics. So either my memory was hazy or RIP had taken some liberties, designing these NPC doppelgangers to suit the scenario better.

The crowd’s reaction aside, the paper cut had only taken two points off of Becky’s Life-O-Meter. The fact that my attacks were doing literally half the damage of hers might have demoralized me—but I’d seen it coming and I didn’t lose my stride.

“Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!” we cried again. This time I threw scissors and she threw paper. I’d had a hunch that she’d try to give me a dose of my own medicine and it paid off. A pair of blue-handled scissors materialized over my shoulder and rocketed past her head. A chunk of her ear fell away and plopped down on the floor as blood streamed down the side of her face.

She bellowed in rage and raised her fist again, but her revenge was going to have to wait.

Ding! The bell sounded again, signifying the end of the second round. I stumbled back to my corner to find Nancy’s mom sitting on one of the student’s desks. None of the glassy-eyed carnage mongers even seemed to notice her there.

I was dizzy and unsteady on my feet, as I lowered myself onto my stool beside her. I’d escaped this round unscathed, but the wounds from the first round were still weighing heavily upon me.

“I don’t know if I can keep this up.”

“No question,” she replied. “You’re super lucky to have made it this far.”

“What?”

“I’m just saying.”

“What happened to your whole ‘knock her block off’ schtick?”

“Eh. Got boring.”

I shook my head and rolled my eyes. Having someone in my corner had been good while it lasted.

I assessed my progress. The scissors had hit Becky a bit harder than the paper, but my total attacks had only added up to six points, leaving her Life-O-Meter at seventy-nine, compared to my own which sat at a dismal forty. Meanwhile, I was still losing a lot of blood from my shoulder and my head was still aching.

“Now, given your odds of not being around for much longer,” Nancy’s mom said, “this may be our only chance to talk about the green suit.”

“Not now.”

“A bold choice for a boy carrying a load of extra weight.”

“Shut up.”

“You look like a leprechaun and an Oompa Loompa had a baby.”

“Shut up.”

“You look like a Keebler Elf that’s visiting from corporate.”

“Shut up.”

“You look like if Mike Wazowski got a job in accounting.”

“Shut up!”

Ding! The bell rang and Becky lunged up from her stool. I rose to meet her.

“Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!” we yelled in unison.

The round break had knocked me out of my rhythm and I was throwing without rationale. I went with paper. So did Becky. Not the best outcome but not the worst. The class gave an audible sigh of disappointment at the lack of bloodshed, the little monsters.

“Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!”

After a Rochambeau standoff, people often play the same thing again because it seems unpredictable. That would have meant playing paper. However, a smart player sees that coming and plays the choice that trumps it, which would have been scissors. Then again an even smarter player plays the choice that trumps the trump, which would have been rock. But a super, super smart player plays the original choice to trump the trump trumper.

In any event, I was too smart for my own good. I played paper and Becky played scissors.

Whoosh! Snip! A stab of fiery pain, and a gash was opened in my right abdomen. It wasn’t a critical hit. I didn’t see any intestines uncoiling onto the floor. But a stream of blood poured forth, running down my right leg.

“Good one, Becky! Good one!” Warren shouted as an insane cheer rose up from the rest of the jackals.

Then . . . ding! The third round was over.

###

Several rounds followed. I don’t remember just how many, as they went by in a blur, with me making the wrong choice in far too many of the exchanges. I was consumed by overthinking—desperately trying to guess what Becky would guess I was going to do, so I could do the opposite.

On more than one occasion, I found myself resenting the absurdity of it all. Again, I thought nobody wants to get killed, but being Rochambeau-ed to death? It had an off-the-charts insult-to-injury quotient.

Amidst the maniacal cheering of my wild-eyed classmates, my injuries mounted. I took two or three more rocks to the head, and had enough paper cuts to make me look like I’d tried to kiss a wolverine. But the biggest problem was a scissor shot to the inner thigh that must have nicked my femoral artery, because I was bleeding like an open faucet. The injury marked a pivotal point in the action as the round came to a close.

Ding!

“Blimey, you’re looking poorly,” Nancy’s mom commented casually as I limped back to my corner, now barely able to keep my feet. “You can’t have much left on your Life-O-Meter.”

“Shut up!” I barked for perhaps the millionth time.

“Shut up yourself, you grump,” she responded.

Of course, she was right. My Life-O-Meter was at eight now—lower than when I’d first woken up into this nightmare back in my apartment.

“Relax, you probably won’t zero out,” she went on encouragingly. “At least not while you’re conscious.”

“What?”

“Oh, yeah, from the looks of you, you’ll pass out at any moment. So you won’t feel the last of it.”

Ding!

“Time for the lightning round!” she called out and shoved me back off my stool.

Lightning round? I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I suspected it wasn’t good. Because in RIP, nothing was ever good. But I had to put that aside, along with the intense wooziness substantiating Nancy’s mom’s prediction that I’d pass out at any moment.

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And as I pondered my Life-O-Meter, the news got worse. I’d worked out that Becky could do four damage with paper, six with rock, and eight with scissors. Only now did it dawn on me that if I took a shot from rock or paper I could still be standing, but scissors would be all she wrote.

“Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!”

I guessed Becky knew it’d only take one shot from scissors to finish me. I guessed right. She threw scissors, I threw rock. A wave of relief flooded through me as a rock blinked into existence over my shoulder and surged forward, smashing into Becky’s forehead.

She roared in agony and stumbled back several yards. But she kept her feet and raised her fist again. I didn’t think she’d think I’d think she’d throw scissors again. So I thought she’d think that doing just that would be crafty. She thought wrong.

“Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!” my rock beat her scissors again. Crack! She took another rock to the forehead.

The only thing crazier than throwing scissors twice in a row after I’d clearly figured her out would be to throw scissors a third time. Who would do that? No one! So it was arguably the thing for her to do.

“Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!” Another rock to the cranium for Becky!

But wait. Where was the bell? Based on the cadence so far, the round should have ended after the second exchange. But it hadn’t. It hadn’t because this was the lightning round. And maybe, just maybe that wasn’t a bad thing after all.

“Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!”

I threw rock yet again, and Becky threw scissors yet again, earning her another stone to the dome.

I was on an unprecedented roll. She was trapped in a loop. The more she threw scissors and lost, the more irrational it was that she’d do it again—which made her confident that I wouldn’t see it coming. Add to that the eagerness to finish me off in one shot and she was completely off the rails.

As her Life-O-Meter spiraled into a freefall, I started to think I just might have a chance here. I started to think she might never see through her rage fog and figure out that I had to defend against scissors no matter what. And when her Life-O-Meter fell even with mine at eight, I became convinced of it.

But no.

On the next exchange, her posture changed ever so slightly. I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t.

She threw paper.

Staring down at my closed fist, I knew what was coming. A paper shot wouldn’t finish me, but it would put me very close to the end. In my desperation, I wondered for the first time why I’d just stood there taking my lumps this whole time.

Then I looked over at the crazed faces of the NPC spectators packed like sardines into the classroom to my right and an idea began to take shape. I knew they were immune to my RIP enhancements, just as Dean Merrick had been. But were they immune to Becky’s attacks? What would happen if I put them between me and in-coming damage? It was worth a try.

As the sheet of paper popped into being beside Becky, I dived over the desks to my right and burrowed into the crowd. The paper followed me in, slashing its way through several kids and leaving an artful blood spatter across the world map pinned to the wall. When it finally reached me, it inflicted a nasty scratch. But it barely broke the skin, bleeding my Life-O-Meter for a mere two points and leaving me with six.

The paper had spent fully half of its damage on its earlier targets—who were now balled up on the floor, wailing in agony. Their compatriots stared on in shock for a moment and then . . . manic grins stretched across their faces and a frenzied cry went up from them as if they’d never known such rapture.

Suffering succotash. These kids were messed up. They made the children in Lord of the Flies look like the von Trapp siblings.

As I stared around at the rabid, hooting and hollering masses, I saw them flicker and shiver ever so slightly. At least I thought I did. It was really, really hard to concentrate at this point. I was down at least a pint and a half of blood and the reality that I was very near losing consciousness was harder to deny than ever.

“I think . . . I think you broke them,” I heard Nancy’s mom mumble.

Alright then. I wasn’t seeing things. The kids really had flickered. Apparently, I’d exploited a loophole of some kind. Would it make this glitch-fest even glitchier? Would the game crash and kick me from the instance? I didn’t know and I didn’t have time to think about it. Because as I looked over at Becky, I could see she was more furious than ever. And she wasn’t backing down. I’d already learned the hard way that her attack would count whether I participated or not. So I fumbled to synchronize with her fist pumps as she resumed the showdown.

“Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!”

With no time for analysis, I picked paper at random. She tried rock. I’d gotten lucky. But not as lucky as I’d like. Because Becky grabbed Warren by the shirtfront and yanked him over in front of her.

It seemed his programming didn’t account for the betrayal as he looked around the room with an expression that said “does not compute.” But he tried to cobble together a response with the limited lexicon he had to work with.

“Bad one, Becky . . . Bad one!”

The rock careened through the air and carved a chunk out of his scalp before crashing into the side of Becky’s head.

Blood spewed out of Warren’s wound as he dropped to the ground, howling in pain. His deal with the devil had gone about as well as they usually do.

Becky’s Life-O-Meter registered just a two-point loss. She was now at six, once more even with me. Alas, she hit twice as hard as I did, and the human shield trick that had saved my skin was apparently now fair game for us both. That had to be what the flickering had been about. The game had been processing and integrating the new dynamic. It was like a dungeon master following the “rule of cool,” to allow anything that makes the game more interesting.

“Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!”

I went with scissors and breathed a sigh of relief, as I saw Becky throw down paper.

A pair of scissors hurtled through space toward her and she yanked Warren up by the collar and crouched behind him again.

“Bad one, Becky! Bad one!” he cried again helplessly, as the scissors plunged into his shoulder, travelling out the other side to scrape lightly across Becky’s temple.

The crazed crowd screamed in excitement. Even the kids who had taken collateral damage had bounced back to thrill at the carnage—their behavioral range limited by their bare bones programming.

However, having taken a second round of fire, Warren was decidedly less enthusiastic about the proceedings. He fell back to the ground, roaring in pain. I couldn’t get a read on his Life-O-Meter. Come to think of it, I couldn’t get a read on anyone’s Life-O-Meter, aside from Becky’s. I supposed that jibed with the half-baked aura coming off of my other classmates.

As I squared off against Becky again, I sensed that the most recent scissor shot had only hit her for a single point. I knew I’d have to land four or five more shots before she landed one or two. And I seriously doubted I’d be able to get her stuck in another loop. Of course, even if I could, I probably wouldn’t be able to maintain consciousness long enough to go the distance. My blood loss and general wooziness were wearing on me at a new level. I’d faint at any second and then Becky would have the free shot she needed to end me. Once again, I lamented the busted game dynamics that could allow me to pass out before my Life-O-Meter zeroed out.

But my fate wasn’t my focus. A new lightning strike memory tore through my mind: the devastated look in my sister’s eyes as she’d given me the latest prognosis for Robbie. I thought of his courage in the face of that prognosis. I thought of her hiding in the bathroom down the hall so he wouldn’t hear her crying. If I came up short here, his life would be forfeit and she would be lost. They had one chance. And this was it.

“Rock!” Becky and I cried.

I cursed myself for wasting time running around with Darla when I should have been finding more ways to collect XP.

“Paper!”

Becky’s Life-O-Meter was lower than mine at this point and if I’d grinded more—if my stats were closer to hers I would have been able to . . .

“Scissors!”

Wait. If my stats were closer to hers. That was it! I suddenly knew what to do.

“Shoot!”

Clawing my way through my dizziness, I clambered over the desks between me and Becky and landed in front of her on my knees. As she threw scissors, I threw . . . “Rock on.” You know, a fist with just the pinky and index finger up? I’d briefly considered flipping her off, but that lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. Of course, in the end, I could have thrown up “Hang loose.” It didn’t matter, as long as I lost.

I watched her hateful face contort as she puzzled at my non-regulation devil’s horns, confused by my apparent forfeit. Then I grabbed her still-extended fist and yanked her down over me as I balled up on the floor like a pill bug.

I didn’t know if my gambit would work. As I clung to consciousness, my foggy brain churned on my chances. Even if the game let me squeeze through another loophole and turn Becky’s attack against her, it would all come down to our stats and the damage dynamics. Were Becky’s attacks doing more damage than mine simply because her Muscles stat was higher? Or was it because my Skin Thickness stat was lower? Or both? If it was all about Muscles, the scissors she’d just thrown would do eight points of damage. Taking the brunt of that could do her in. But if Skin Thickness was a factor, the damage could be reduced. She may shrug off the shot and stand up to find me passed out beneath her.

I didn’t see the scissors, but I heard them. They connected with Becky’s lower back with a wet thump. Then they burrowed through to gouge into my side.

I gasped and felt my Life-O-Meter fall to just three points. But Becky’s? Becky’s was done. She slid off of me and slumped to the floor as the life drained from her malevolent face.

I was dimly aware of the crowd going absolutely wild. But instead of bounding up and pumping a fist in triumph, I celebrated my big win by blacking out from blood loss.

###

I suppose my hyper-healing kicked in quickly enough for me to come to just a few moments later, surrounded by the now-familiar blue lightning that had accompanied my flight back through time. Assuming I was now making the same trip in reverse, I reasoned that I’d been unconscious as I bounced across various locations at various points of my history. Now I was just spinning head over heels through space, faster and faster as I tilted ever-upward into a raging, swirling body of water. Up and up and round and round I went until I was launched into the air as if being ejected from an erupting volcano.

I collided with a ceiling and fell back down, landing roughly in a puddle on my bathroom floor. Apparently, the exit from the hotel’s toilet vortex was another toilet. In my apartment.

The door burst open and Darla was standing there. She looked down at me and cried, “He’s not dead!”