Bella had been in the ring shadowboxing, prepping for her morning training session when the desk phone rang. She let it go to voicemail since the gym didn’t open for another thirty minutes. The only people who would be calling would be her members or her debt collectors, though the latter probably wouldn’t be calling at three-thirty. She went over to the speed bag and unleashed a flurry of blows speeding up as she went until the bag was a blur. Then she moved onto the heavy bag and unleashed attacked with power and precision as she worked around it; throwing basic one-two combos and working her way up to savage unrealistic combos that were designed to attack the monsters her gaming characters fought, she ended with a leaping punch that would’ve knocked an orc unconscious. She was breathing heavily and the bag was gyrating erratically from her strikes. In the office the voicemail finally picked up the call.
“Hey Bella, I’m under the weather and I won’t be able to make it in today. Tell Emily I’m sorry and we’ll just have to spar again next time if she wants to take her shot at beating me.” The voice was interrupted by some very wet coughing. “Yeah, I’m not doing so hot this morning. I’ll see you next week.”
“Damn,” Bella muttered. The voicemail meant she would be late on the rent, again, which meant she might actually lose the gym to that rich fucker who wanted to turn it into a chic bar. “Damn, damn, damn.” Bella went back and kicked the heavy bag hard with a roundhouse. The seams, which had barely held up under her initial assault, split and sand began pouring all over her floor. “Fuck!”
The phone rang again, “What now,” Bella growled. Tugging at her braid in vexation.
She answered the phone, “Trailblazer Gym.”
“Hey Bella, I’m running a little late. I had a long day at the office,” she stretched out the word long, “so I’m headed straight from there. You really should come do an interview. I guarantee that you will be more than happy with the job I have in mind.”
“I’ll take you up on that. I think today’s gonna be the last sesh her anyway. Bill is down for the count with a flu or something and I’m not gonna be able to get the landlord the rent on time. Which means I will take whatever life line your offering since I sleep here.”
“I’ll make sure you get the hook-up, you’ve always been good to me.”
“If you weren’t so cute I might not have been,” Bella laughed.
“I knew you were attracted to me. Bill owes me $20,” Emily shouted into the phone.
“You guys are terrible. But I thought I was hiding it pretty well. I’m not one to get involved with my clients.”
“You did fine most of the time, but when I would catch you staring, sometimes you would blush. And’ I’m pretty sure you never hit me as hard as you hit Bill.”
“Haha, nah. I don’t pull my punches, not even for you. But, since you’re one the way let’s chat more about that job when you get here.”
She hung up the phone and began sweeping the sand up. After she got it into a pile she pulled the punching bag down and began to refill it. Time seemed to pass in a strange manner. The individual seconds seemed to take hours, but the minutes flew past, the clock was playing tricks on her. She looked around the warehouse turned gym. The wooden beams giving a certain charm, much preferable to iron supports. This one felt like it had been pulled from a different era, specifically for her. The boxing ring in the middle was a relic she had painstakingly restored, vintage it would be called. She had bought it from a failing gym that didn’t care to train fighters anymore. The ring reminded her of her grandfather, a boxing coach from Brooklyn who retired in Los Angeles after training some actors for a boxing movie. It was time, she guessed, to find a legacy of her own. This dream of hers was clearly not a viable way to live, it was time to put down the gloves.
By the time Emily arrived the punching bag had been set-up again and no trace of Bella’s earlier outburst remained. She was collected and ready to move on and definitely interested in what Emily was offering. Still, that would come after the training.
Drenched in sweat, the two women sat at a counter at a local coffee shop. “Bella, I’d really like you to come in and do an interview at Allied Realms, the pay and benefits are great and if I recall from an earlier conversation you used to love playing rpgs with your parents as a kid, this will be right up that alley.”
“What kind of job would pay me to play rpgs? I haven’t touched a rule book or picked up a video game version in years. The only thing I’m good at anymore is punching, and I’m not even good enough at that to earn rent.”
“This is a different kind of opportunity. We’re looking for people from all backgrounds who enjoy role playing games to test our new virtual reality game. You’ll only get the one character if you do it so you better make it a character you can feel comfortable playing, but if you get the job you won’t have to worry about rent or health care or any of that. We provide housing in one of the sublevels of our office building. Just swing by around ten this morning after you shower and get changed. Ask for Henry, he’s our interviewer,” Emily slid a card over to Bella. “The address is there and my office number is also listed in case you are running late, give me a call.”
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“Thanks Emily, I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”
Bella arrived at the address on the card it was nondescript as far as skyscrapers went. There were no external indicators for who owned it and it wasn’t a fancy shape. Just a tall building nestled in amongst other tall buildings. She took the elevator to the top floor and was surprised at the cool displays they had in the lobby. There were scenes of epic battles being played out on monitors and a few cool statues of heroes fighting monsters or posing dramatically. It took her back to the days with her family.
Her interview was strange it started out with a large group, but then by the end only two people remained. People getting up and leaving midway through was disconcerting , but the questions were nothing at all like she was expecting. They all revolved around strategies for playing role-playing games and what her behavior would be. It was very different and very bizarre.
She went back to her gym and began listing the various items for sale. She had scant few things left to sell as this wasn’t the first time she needed to come up with rent money at the last minute. Still it pained her to sell any of it. It felt like she was abandoning her grandfather’s legacy. In the end she managed to get enough from selling the boxing ring to a props department to get a hotel room for a couple of nights since she her landlord finally had enough and kicked her out. Still, it would be a couple of days, according to Emily, to get fully hired, so she made the best of it.
She finally got a call from Emily to come back to the studio a couple of days later. She went through the tour she was shown her room, which apparently she would be sharing a common area with a few other people. There were only two guys there, one named James she caught checking her out and he seemed sleazy from that moment, the other introduced himself as Eric and he looked at her like he was assessing a threat. He nodded a greeting and turned back to the meal he was cooking. There was only one bedroom left and it was nestled in between two others. James kept stealing glances at one of the doors, but it never opened. She used her new employee badge to register the room as hers before Emily escorted her to the office that she was assigned.
“Just a heads up, we’ve already had an issue with James harassing one of the other girls. I know you can handle him, but because of the unique environment I’d appreciate it if you kept an eye on him. I don’t want him causing problems. It isn’t your job to rehabilitate him, we have a therapist who, if he doesn’t start behaving, will come in and help get him back on track. Don’t hesitate to use force if you have to but obviously try not to inflict any permanent damage.”
“Thanks for the heads up. You mentioned before that I’ll be locked into the character I create, any tips you can give me on that front?”
“Nope. That is all secret information. But I’m sure you’ll be fine. Trust your gut and you can’t go wrong.”
“You’re so very helpful, thanks,” Bella deadpanned.
“You know me, I am to please,” Emily shot right back.
They made it to the office with only a few more jokes cracked between them. This is where you’ll be spending a lot of your time in the near future you have your own private bathroom through the door on the far side, all of the data and reporting that needs to be done is handled automatically your job is to generate the data by playing the game. In case of emergency medical is down the hall through the double doors. Mostly it is there in case you are suffering from disorientation or nausea from playing the game too long, but there are doctors for all other emergencies on hand just in case. But I’ll introduce you to Dr. Wi so we can get started with calibration.”
Bella sat through the spiel and was strapped into the chair, “This may feel weird at first, but once it gets calibrated you should be fine,” Dr. Wi said as she put the helmet on Bella’s head.
Character creation was a breeze since Bella was focused on four stats Strength, Agility, Endurance, and Luck. Her stats ended up:
STR: 18
AGI: 18
END: 14
INT: 10
WIS: 8
CRM: 10
LCK: 16
She was going to be a dodgy puncher for sure. Though she would eventually need to bring her endurance up more and likely get rid of the wisdom handicap that she gave herself, but still for a melee focused character she liked her stats well enough. Picking a race was harder because she wanted something that had better Agility and Endurance, but also that gave her options for escaping situations that she inevitably misjudged. Most of the races were either fast or hardy, but sifting through the dross she found a gem-- Flurry Troll. Flurry Troll was a species of troll that gave her attacks more power and let her hit faster and the troll regeneration, sure it would take her a little longer to level up but she was fine with the trade offs. Plus with a little tweaking she gave her character denser bones at the cost of claws making her look more humanoid. She couldn’t do anything about the color of her skin, not that she would, the midnight-blue was cool and she added darker splotches to it giving her a sort of camouflage if she were in shadow. She did her best to reign in her maw getting her teeth to look somewhat aligned and shaped the actual tusks that she had so that they would stab into her when she closed her mouth all the way. She ended up being on the smaller side for a troll as her specific subrace was smaller and but that didn’t bother. She didn’t want to crouch in every building and just over six feet gave her arms plenty of reach. With her character finalized she moved on to weapon selection. One of her exes had been into historical swordsmanship and had shown her various sword forms, but she wasn’t feeling a sword, she stayed true to her nature-- punching things --and picked up a spiked gauntlet. The spikes were short allowing her to open and close her hand, but still wicked looking along the fingers. It was well made and looked like it had been designed by someone who knew how to throw a punch to maximize damage. The thing was practically calling her name by the time she grabbed it. Her proficiency was locked into punching weapons which was interesting as she could’ve chosen the pair of brass knuckles to the left and probably received the same. Still, it was open ended enough to give her future flexibility.
With her choice she also received a notification saying calibration was complete. She was pulled from the system and fought a wave of nausea as the color drained from the world around her and reverted to the inside of the helmet. Her retching and struggling against the straps holding her down alerted Dr. Wi in time to pull the helmet off and get a trashcan next to Bella’s mouth.
“So graceful, as always there Bella,” Emily joked.
“Are you sure you want to go down that road?” Bella said once she had finished dry heaving.
“Good point.”
“You should take it easy for the rest of the day. Get some rest while I take a look at the charts to see if we can prevent you from being sick when you log out in the future,” Dr. Wi said to Bella.
“Good idea doc, please hurry. I’ll suffer through it if I have too, but I’d rather not.”
“Agreed, I’ll make it my top priority. Since you’re the last one in my group I don’t have to worry about any other candidates coming in and getting calibrated.”