Apartment 6B of 252 E 45th Street was nothing impressive. It had a bedroom and a bathroom, both of which had doors, and the living room window opened onto a large fire escape platform. It came with appliances in the kitchen — fridge, oven, dishwasher, microwave — and a bed and desk in the bedroom. The living room contained a standing lamp, a small mounted bookshelf, a second-hand CRT TV and a fold-out couch. The bathroom featured an ancient clawfoot tub with shower attachments, but no actual shower, and the walls there were heavily stained with what might be mold.
It was, in short, a standard crappy apartment. Yet, compared to sleeping on the streets with the griefers and mobs out for blood, it felt more like a safe haven. Almost like a home.
Soon as the door was shut and the locks were checked, Robin took off her mask, sank onto the couch and rolled her aching neck with a groan.
“Stiff?” Tisha asked, perching gracefully on the arm beside her. She and the boys had also switched to Civilian Mode, leaving her uniform and Will’s greatcoat as the only remarkable clothes among them. “If you take off your shirt I can…”
She turned both hands palm-down, curled her fingers into a loose ‘C’, and made circular motions while rolling her thumbs. It took a few circles before the offer of a shoulder massage clicked in Robin’s mind.
“Oh. Yeah, that sounds amazing. Thanks.”
She took an extra breath to steel her nerves before unzipping and shedding her red hoodie. Beneath it was a plain black t-shirt, fitted to her curves but otherwise unremarkable. Still, as she cast it aside, she caught Tisha sucking a sharp gasp through her teeth.
“What?”
“Your neck…”
Tisha’s fingers drifted to the hollow of her own throat. Robin mirrored the motion, recalling the slow, agonizing saw of the knife-blade until the meaning clicked. Since she, obviously, couldn’t look at her own neck, she yanked her shirt collar and right bra-strap aside to expose the bare skin.
The pale flesh was marred by a jagged scar, half-twisted back on itself like the start of a knot.
“Ooh,” said Will from across the room, a sound half-way between curiosity and a sympathetic groan. “I take it that’s new?”
“Very.” Robin touched the twisted scar with her fingers. It looked slightly raised but didn’t feel all that different from the surrounding skin. Thus, it seemed to be well-healed, as though the wound had been delivered a years ago instead of hours.
This hadn’t happened in the old game. There’d been a death penalty of losing experience points, money and items from your inventory, but the only scars offered had been purely cosmetic. She wondered if every death would be recorded thus, or if it was only a lingering reminder of the last one.
Tisha nudged her hand away and motioned for her to turn around, which Robin did. A strong yet gentle touch settled on her shoulders. Soon, Tisha was rubbing circles into her aching joints. The slow, gradual release of tension felt like the sinking into a hot spring after a long day.
“Carter,” Tisha said, turning her head to address the boy hovering nearby. “How ‘bout you go wash up? First your turn in the bath, then Will’s, then mine. Then we’ll get a nice late dinner ready while Robin soaks her aching muscles. Okay?”
They’d stopped by a drug store on the walk over to pick up the essentials — food, shampoo, toilet paper, etc. That was one of the perks of a Golden City residence. Since most of the town was a newbie zone, the apartments were mostly small, cheap and shabby, but on the upside the crime rate was low enough to support 24-hour businesses. That wasn’t true in other cities, but they all came with their own flaws, personalities and benefits.
Carter accepted the instruction with a simple, “Okay” and took the plastic bag of toiletries into the bathroom. Will likewise excused himself to the bedroom, which he had called dibs on as the highest-level player with, quote, “The most junk to dump out of the inventory.”
Robin certainly wouldn’t complain. At best, she’d expected to spend tonight laid out on a hard floor with only her hoodie and backpack for comfort. The couch was lumpy, its cushions were threadbare, and its corners had been ravaged by cats. Yet, with the attention Tisha was giving her neck and shoulders, she wanted only to melt into its lumpy embrace.
“You’re really good at this.”
“Comes with the territory. I took two years of sports med before switching tracks.”
“Oh, nice. Switched to what?”
“Early childhood education. With a focus on kids of special needs.”
That explained a lot. Like the hold she’d used on Carter in the alley and the easy way she’d talked him down.
“What about you?”
“Ah…undecided. Second year undergrad.”
“You’ve got time.”
“So they tell— ah, there.”
“I got it.”
Tisha ground the heel of her thumb into the knot, which came undone under her ministrations. The release of tension brought a groan from Robin. She felt more than she saw Tisha’s grin.
“Just relax. I’ve got everything under control.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Robin took her at her word, closing her eyes and letting her mind wander…
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The first place they’d gone after reaching their tentative agreement was back to Assembly Tower. There’d been no where else to go; the only location where you could establish and register a new Team was the local I.A.H. branch, and only Teams were permitted to share the Headquarters resource.
Of course, that wasn’t the only role the I.A.H. buildings served, especially not the central hub of the Tower. As the first location all players stepped into after character creation, the extravagant ground-floor lobby had to make a strong first impression. The floor was shiny black marble, inlaid with gold. The walls and pillars were pure white, lit by delicate crystal chandeliers. The entire front of the massive space was made of solid windows, their mirrored exteriors turned towards the park, and there were dozens of specialized command terminals in nice hardwood cases lining the walls. Overhead, a number of hanging flat-screens flickered through news broadcasts from around the world.
In the center of it all was a large round service desk manned by NPCs. Between that desk and the doors stood a statue of Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders. The statue was classical, in a very literal sense — it had, according to the lore, been donated by Lady Justice, reconstructed using Shadowman’s funds, and installed by the Beacon himself. Inscribed on its modern platform was two words in Latin: Memento ferre. “Remember what you bear.”
Standing there, amid all the grandeur, filling out digital forms on an automated terminal, made nostalgia swell in Robin’s breast. Technically, “Team” was the in-game term for a player guild or clan, similar to the standard in any MMORPG. But the casual lexicon made a distinction between the prominent, publicly-active Teams with a large membership and the smaller, more intimate bands of friends who came together to take advantage of the player cooperation systems. The former, like the Silver Sentinels, were informally known as Guilds, while the latter — like the Sentinels’ own Core — was what most players referred to when using the word Teams.
It had been years outside the game, and even longer in it, but Robin could still recall forming her first Team. Then, as now, the process was simple: she filled out a few questions about its location and purpose, registered the ID numbers of those who would consider themselves Founders, and paused at the final step: choosing a name.
.
“Looks like everyone’s got the same idea. Silver League, Silver Assembly, Silver Avengers…you sure you wanna go with that?”
“Fuck yeah. We’ll just have to show them all who really deserves the title.”
.
A soft thunk beside her scared off the ghost of her past. Will had planted his Sidereal Staff near her foot and leaned his whole weight against it as he scrolled through a seemingly endless list on his phone. The Staff stayed rooted to the spot and never so much as trembled.
“Gonna be tough to find a unique Team name after six years,” he said, which made Robin realize that he had pulled up the Help Wanted app’s list of Teams looking for members. “I’d suggest a key-smash, but something tells me that isn’t your style.”
Robin frowned. Yes, to be fair, that would be easier, especially since they might not stick together once they’d all leveled enough to get places of their own. But it felt wrong. Even when this place had been a game, she’d caught herself judging the people who filled in their character or Team names with random gibberish. What was the point, she thought, of joining a role-playing game if you weren’t even going to try playing your role?
“Well then,” said Will, making a show out of thinking as hard as he could. “Seeing as Lightboy and I are kinda carrying this low-level show, how about…” He flashed a wicked grin and gestured to his long coat. “50 Tints of Gray?”
Tisha smacked his arm before Robin had a chance to. “Child. Right there. Too young.”
“What’s a tint?” asked Carter, oblivious to their concern.
Tisha shifted straight into teacher-mode, softening her voice into an impromptu lecture. “It’s when you add white to a color to make it lighter. Like, if we mixed my purple and your white, we could get tints called orchid, periwinkle, lavender…”
Robin snapped her fingers. “Magenta.” She started typing. “Red plus purple plus white makes magenta. Add in a neutral gray and you get—”
“MagentaTone,” Will read over her shoulder. “Nice ring to it. Though it does sound more like printer repair shop than a hero team.”
“It’s not like we’re planning to go public.”
Will opened his mouth as though to object, but seemed thought better of it at the last second. He shut his gob, returned her shrug, and answered, “Fair enough. MagentaTone it is.”
With a final fingerprint scan from each of them, the name was locked in.
Thus, the hero team MagentaTone was born.
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Hm…maybe we should have thought of a better name...
By the time Carter finished washing, Robin had been worked to a lazy, boneless relaxation and laid out on the couch. She watched the others come and go, unsure if being left out of the home-making to recover made her feel more like a crippled invalid or a bread-winner being rewarded after a trying day. That thought and those of their “Team Founding” lingered only until she dozed off.
Tisha woke her an hour later and shooed her into the bath, promising that their meal (canned tomato soup and grilled cheese) would keep until she finished. Robin accepted the offer of a fresh-bought towel and closed herself into the washroom. But, instead of getting right in, she let the water run for a bit and stood before the cheap mirror that hung over the sink.
As Tisha had said, her pale throat was marred by a jagged, strawberry-pink scar that looked like a second smile. Exactly like; it was a wide, twisted mockery of the clown’s rictus red grin. It couldn’t have been an accident. “Delirious Ramesses” had practiced the move. He was trying to make his mark.
The thought made Robin’s stomach twist. They’d been in this world less than a day. When did he start his experiments? And who with?
She pushed the disgust down and dove head-first into a different kind of fear, one tinged with trepidation and excitement. She the gripped the back of her shirt and, with one move too quick for her nerves to stop, yanked it up, over her head, and off.
Beneath, as she’d expected, was a plain black sports bra. Its strap half-concealed the new scar on her shoulder. She added her jeans to the clothes pile and stood in the matching set of unremarkable cotton undies, turning and twisting to examine herself from every angle.
Her new body was small and compact. It had what magazines would describe as a “boyish” figure, with nothing particularly defined about her hips or bust-line. Her waist tapered slightly, with the hint of abs starting to rise from the baby-fat, and when she stood still she found it easier to balance with her feet closer together.
It was, in short, a totally normal girl’s body. Its only scarring was that of her recent death. Every curve and detail was utterly mundane, and utterly perfect.
A grin split her face. She twirled, admiring the twist of muscles down her backside and the way her hair fluttered. Joy burst out of her in a giggle, which echoed off the cheap tile and surprised her with its high pitch. She cupped her hands over her mouth and laughed into her palm, so her friends wouldn’t hear and think she’d lost her mind.
Stripping off the final layers and climbing into a nice, hot bath would be forever etched in her memory as one of the best experiences of her life.
As she re-emerged later, dressed in the miraculously clean t-shirt and unbuttoned jeans, she resolved to herself that enough was enough. She padded to where her new friends were still gathered around the couch and took a final deep breath to steady her nerves.
“Hey guys? I need to tell you something. About me.”