Tisha insisted on feeding Robin before she spoke, so she polished off half a sandwich and most of the soup as she gathered her thoughts. Will had produced a camping chair from his inventory (which baffled Robin - who bought camping chairs in an MMO?) and set it up near the couch for himself, while Carter seemed content on the floor with the last of his soup and a bowl of fish-shaped crackers. Without his mask, it was easier to judge his age — around eight, by Robin’s guess — and, now that he’d calmed down, she could tell that he was a sweet, quiet kid. Maybe too quiet. Compared to how he’d been as Lightboy…
“Carter.” He startled as he looked up, as though it surprised him to be addressed. Robin smiled, and hoped it came across as warm. “What do you know about the Silver Sentinels?”
The kid lit up, like he’d just been told that tomorrow would be a surprise Christmas. “I know they’re the coolest team on the server! They fought off an alien invasion!”
“Translation,” said Will, perhaps for Tisha’s benefit. “They took point organizing player response to the first-anniversary event, when the Dread Lord Chiron of the Outer Rings invaded with a Venusian slave army.”
“They did other things too!” Carter pouted, his cheeks ballooning out like a squirrel. His hands flew and shook as he listed off all the “awesome” things the Sentinels had done over the years: how they’d rescued an entire skyscraper full of people from the wrath of the Winter King, uncovered a cult conspiracy to topple the rightful ruler of Atlantis, developed the cure for a plague of plant-based zombies, and more.
Perched on the couch beside Robin, Tisha listened intently to the boy’s ramblings until he stopped for breath. “It’s amazing you know all that, Carter. But if you like the Sentinels so much, how come you didn’t join up for the free bed?”
“That’d be cheating!” Carter looked appalled at the very suggestion. “I don’t wanna join just ‘cause they’re nice, I wanna earn it!”
After their big coming out with the Chiron invasion, the Sentinels had been forced to employ an application system for their new members. These days, they only extended invitations to the best of the best. Or at least, they had before it all became too real for their conscience to leave newbies out in the cold.
“Which means you must know about The Core, right?” Robin prompted further.
“Of course!” Carter sucked in a big, deep breath that filled his little lungs to capacity before rattling off, “Dike and Valac and Wiz Kid and Zippy and The Red Lion and Knightblade, duh! They’re the ones in-charge. The best players in the entire game.”
Despite herself, Robin's face began to burn. “That’s debatable.”
“Perhaps,” said Will, lounging back as much as his cheap chair would allow. “But they’re in the running for sure. They’ve all done remarkable things: server firsts, killing blows, winning PVP tournaments, finding legendary gear, reaching the level cap without any powers…”
“And!” Carter gasped, looking ready to vibrate out of his skin. “They got to train. With the Golden Trio.”
Ah, yes. That had been the Core’s reward for leading the raid that cleared Lord Chiron’s Mother-Ship. The Golden Trio — Shadowman, Lady Justice, and the Beacon — were the central leadership of the I.A.H., the most prominent NPC heroes in the game, and the walking representations of its unofficial factions. In the aftermath of the Invasion, they’d summoned the triumphant young heroes to a ceremony broadcast live from their Outpost moon-base, congratulated them on leading the home-front defense, and announced to the world that they would be taking a personal hand in shaping the new generation. The Sentinel’s Core had been the first to train in new skills unique to the Trio. Other players in other teams had earned similiar rewards since, but they had been the first to even learn it was possible.
“And yet,” drawled Will, giving Robin a long and knowing side-eye. “Rumor has it no one’s seen or heard a lick from Knightblade since we all got here. Of course, it’s only been a day.” He shrugged. “But with the Sentinels already using their infrastructure so widely, it’s weird to have their Face be so quiet.”
“It is,” said Robin softly. She rubbed the sweat from her palms onto her jeans, letting the circular friction focus her on the moment. Nerves threatened to close her throat. She forced through a confident smile instead.
“What if I told you…I am Knightblade?”
Tisha’s mouth fell into a small ‘o’ shape. Will nodded, looking pleased as a cat who’d caught the canary. Carter gasped.
“…but you’re a girl.”
Robin gave the kid a sad smile and ruffled his blond hair. “I am now. Or at least, I wanted to be.”
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She pulled back to gather her thoughts and settled, finally, at the beginning.
“I started playing when I was fourteen. The game was brand new. My mom kept an eye on it at first, but she backed off after a few days. Then it was just me and Zip, meeting up every afternoon to work closer and closer to our goals.” She turned her head onto its side to meet Tisha’s gaze. “You know about the Trio Factions, right?”
Tisha nodded. In the same way The Golden Age didn’t allow villains, it also didn’t have an official, coded-in faction system for PVP competition. But within the first year, unofficial factions had arisen within the community based on broad play-styles. Those who fully accepted the Beacon’s gifts and built their characters around them were in one faction, those who took The Drink and committed to Shadowman’s path of training and gadgets formed another. The third followed the lead of Lady Justice, who challenged players without Beacon’s gifts to long and/or hard quests, the rewards for which were magical boons or powerful Artifacts — like Will’s Staff — that granted various abilities.
Players were encouraged to use their multiple characters to get a taste of every path, but that didn’t stop the drama between factions in the fandom. Hard-core power-gamers extolled the raw challenge of the Shadowman path while sneering at the Beacon faction for taking “the easy route.” Meanwhile, devoted Beacon players regarded Shadowman’s faction as bunch of no-fun try-hards who missed out on the best part of the game in an attempt to look cool.
But more important than the thematic differences was that of difficulty. Though each play-style had its own way of scaling, going up against literal and figurative gods as a mere mortal was designed to be hard. It required systems knowledge, research, honed reflexes and hours upon hours of training to hone both the character’s skills and the player’s to match. Which was why, after six years, there had only ever been about a hundred characters who made it to the level cap without acquiring some kind of superpower.
“When I started playing, the only people even close to the level cap were beta-testers who’d developed powers early on. Back then, people said it was impossible to clear the game as a powerless player. That the end-game content was too strong, and that Shadowman and Lady Justice were just two sides of the same faction, one for lower tiers and one for the higher.” Robin shrugged, threading, un-threading and re-threading her fingers to give her anxious hands something to do. “But, I’d always liked a challenge and I was a dumb kid in a hick town that thought I was rich. I had nothing better to do. So I decided prove them wrong.”
And so, just fourteen months after the Chiron Invasion, Knightblade had been the first player to hit the level 200 cap without the aid of powers or Artifacts. And then, when the cap was raised to 250 a year later, he’d raced against countless rivals and his own teammates to do it again.
Robin smiled at the memory. Even if she lived to be a hundred, she hoped that those times would stay with her, golden and good. That’s part of why she was so afraid.
“I’m proud of that. Don’t get me wrong — I’ll never regret a single moment that I spent as Knightblade. But…” Her face fell and she averted her eyes, picking at loose thread in the couch. “I went to college last year. Big move to the big city. And I started hearing about things the people back home just don’t talk about. Learning about possibilities I’d never imagined. And, eventually, I caught myself staring at a girl across the cafeteria and thinking, ‘I want that.’ Not that I wanted her, but that I wanted to be her.
“So I made this character. I just wanted to feel what it was like, to be a girl. And found out that…I liked it.”
She stared at her hands, at the legs beyond them and the arms to which they were attached. This small, cute and compact body, everything her tall, gangly self in the real world had never been. Everything she hadn’t known she’d wanted.
“I liked it a lot. So I’m not upset that I’m like this, here. But…I’m not who I was before. Literally. And I just don’t know how the Sentinels will take that.”
She risked a glance up. Tisha and Will were exchanging a wordless look, her expression concerned while his seemed satisfied, like he’d been hoping to hear exactly that. Between them on the floor, Carter looked confused, and was chewing absently on the knuckle of one finger.
“Robin,” said Tisha softly, once the silence had gone one long enough. “If they’re really your friends, they’ll love you no matter what.”
“But what if they don’t?” Robin clenched her right hand over the other fist. Admitting her fear felt like ripping open her ribcage to show them all the meaty truth of her heart. “Zippy’s real name is Rudy Geiger. He’s been my best friend since we were five. If he freaks out…” She shook her head. “I don’t think I could take that. I’m just not ready.”
Tisha leaned into her side, eased her hands away from trying to strangle each other, and took the closest in both of her own. Her thumb rolled soothing circles against Robin’s palm.
“Thank you for telling us.”
Robin nodded, feeling a bit emotionally strained, but in a good way. Like the burn after a good workout. “Figured you deserved to know.”
“Oh, bullshit,” said Will with a snort. He swung his legs out of his chair and rose onto his feet in the same motion. “You don’t owe us jack. What’s important is, you got it off your chest and you can trust us to keep it secret as long as you need. Right, kiddo?”
Despite the crude and careless way he spoke, Robin sensed an acceptance from him, which touched her a little. He’d been the one she was most braced against telling, expecting him to blow her off or make a crude joke. Instead, he grinned down at Carter as though mentally preparing a talk about keeping promises and the bonds between men, to steer the kid in the right direction.
Said kid gnawed at his thumbnail and narrowed his gaze at Robin suspiciously. “You’re really Knightblade?”
“Really really.” Robin tried to sound light, but her throat was closing up again. Kids picked up their parents’ beliefs and, from the way he’d been acting, she couldn’t imagine that Carter’s home-life was a tolerant one.
Will leaned down, using his Staff for support as he stage-whispered, “It’s her secret identity.”
Carter’s blue eyes lit up with a wide, genuine smile. “That’s so cool! Will you show me some tricks sometime, huh, please? I wanna learn how to do those jumps!”
“Later,” said Tisha, sparing Robin the need to choke through her gratitude. “For now, we’re all up much too late. It’s time for bed.”