Rick breathed more easily and released his grip, as the branch on which he stood was wide and stretched out before him with only occasional gentle inclines, dips, and curves. He didn’t look down as he stepped forward and bounced. The branch remained firm, so he jumped higher. Again, though there was some vibration, it was no more than any wooden surface might have.
The path stretched out before him, tangling with smaller ones here and there, or bending to accommodate the trunk of other, smaller trees. He took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of earthy deciduous trees, mixed with a far-off smell of pine pitch. In the corner of his vision, as if part of a classic HUD, the number of competitors dropped away in uneven bursts. 378-77-75-72, 365, 364…
He jogged as he went, slowing to duck beneath a crossing branch or navigate a sharper than usual curve. He scanned back and forth, looking for movement from the hidden crooks in other branches. There were more places for an opponent to hide, including hollowed areas in the trunks. Rick shuddered. What size bird, worm, or whatever created holes that large?
He passed a smaller tree, from behind which rose a shadow he saw barely in time to roll forward, out of reach of the strike aimed at his head. He turned as he rolled, coming up facing back the way he came. Before he had time to rise, he let loose with the Iron Fist. He raised his fist high, and it held there, though he didn’t will it to.
Rick winced. Really? Unblockable moves still take so long? After what felt like a full second transpired, long after the bulky male player stepped back, Rick blasted his fist downward, unable to cancel the move.
Crack! Pieces of the branch flew away where his fist landed, nearly depleting his stamina in one go, not counting the somersault he performed instinctively to get out of striking rang. He stepped back when he stood as the bulky male player, a shaved, shirtless man wearing bike shorts and little else but shoes, jumped over the divot Rick had created in the branch. Rick waited for the strike to come, unable to quickly do anything from lack of stamina.
Crack!
What? What was—
The branch shook, then creaked and dipped.
In unison, Rick and the bulky man looked down at the fissure that had formed in the center of the branch. In heaves and starts, the line widened and spread. He stepped back, looking for the end of the fissure while the other man was stunned.
Rick and his opponent glanced at one another at the same time. Rick twisted in slow-motion, as if the air had turned to syrup, frantically searching for any available path away from the deathtrap he’d inadvertently created.
He made it two steps before he forced himself to slow to a pace that wouldn’t deplete his stamina. Ahead of him, dangling like a promise, was a branch that crossed just over the path. The crack in the branch snaked beneath him in the direction of the intersecting branch, and the branch on which he stood began to drop.
He lost all sense of where his opponent was as he leapt and activated his Dash skill at an angle, hoping against hope it would get him to the top of the new branch. In a flash, he zipped forward.
His dash stopped just shy of the branch. “Ahhh!” He reached for an edge of the rough bark. Come on!
Time sped up again as his palm contacted the bark and his grip held. He scrambled to find a handhold for his other hand. All around him, a cacophony of sounds rose with tremendous force, vibrating the air with the magnitude of their seismic portent—all except for the player’s scream, which weaved through the larger, more powerful sounds like a tiny audible pine needle in a waterfall, seeming pitiful and strange.
The opponent’s name—“Miller-Final2”—flashed above him as a brick-like chunk of the branch struck his head, causing damage. Both the scream and the man dropped away as the last shakes and cracks of the falling branch reached their natural nadir. The enormous branch didn’t separate. Instead, it hung, broken, from the area near where Rick had struck it. Stringy, wet wood extended from both sides of the break.
He caught his breath, but within moments, it turned to laughter, weakening his grip. His heart leapt into his throat, cutting the laughter and allowing him to restore his grip.
Note to self: Iron Fist is OP as hell. He stifled more laughter before it could rise again and threaten his hold on the bark. His stamina still had a needle of green, but it wouldn’t recover. Slowly, he searched for the next possible handhold, but when he found it, his grip slipped and the stamina bar flashed.
He grunted. Not enough. In the distance, thunder cracked, and he groaned.
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Then, blobs of color rose to meet him. Rick shrank against branch, wondering what fresh hell came to assault him. Was it a trio of hummingbird Wild Ones he hadn’t yet stumbled across?
Victory!
“Ha!” He smiled. His opponent must have hit the ground, or did the game boot you before something like that happened? Either way, his view of the orange blobs resolved into three orange icons. Stat boosts.
He had a plan now. At least one of the boosts would have to go to stamina; that was certain. He reached for the closest two icons.
Boost Points +2
He placed two points into Stamina, hopeful it would be enough.
Strength: 2
Speed: 1
Stamina: 3
Here goes nothing. He took a deep breath before contracting his muscles, storing as much kinetic force as he could in the rubbery tissue of his muscles and tendons, before blasting forward toward the last icon. He twisted to face the tree and collided with the final boost. It struck him in the back.
Boost Points +1
Rick ignored the notification, mentally firing the dash back toward the branch, but aiming higher, in order to reach the safety of the top of it.
The needle in the stamina bar had expanded to the thickness of a nail, but it flashed. He didn’t have enough stamina. As he began, he quickly willed the last boost into stamina as well.
Strength: 2
Speed: 1
Stamina: 4
He fired off Dash again, and this time, he zipped forward instantaneously, draining the stamina completely, so the entire outline of its empty shell flashed in his HUD.
When his waist cleared the top of the branch, the Dash skill wore off. “Whoa!” He grasped the top and scrambled as each new handhold gave him only a second’s worth of grip, flailing hands and legs until he hooked his toe on an edge and, miraculously, balanced himself against the gentle slope of the enormous branch. He lay as still as he could, panting evenly so as not to tip himself off the ridged, bark-covered slope.
For the first time since he’d begun fighting again, a sense of peace rippled through him.
Before he killed that man in the bar, before he lost his shot at the greatness he’d envisioned for himself, fighting had begun to lose its thrill. Instead of giving him the excitement of rising up the ranks, every fight had become more and more a struggle to retain what he had, and his upward trajectory had become shallower and shallower.
Others in the business had warned him, but he’d convinced himself he was different. His mind flashed to that night in the bar. Why was he so wound up that night?
He’d beaten his opponent, a relatively young fighter named Kreske, but it had been harder than Rick had expected. Through all the horror of re-conditioning, through the hours of exhausting revulsion triggered by the aversion training, Rick had held on to the myth that he hadn’t meant to kill anyone.
But he had. Some unknown part of himself had always fought him, never allowing the insight to surface, but lying there, staring down at the rough bark, acceptance came to him. He sighed. He rose.
Slowly at first, he crawled to the top, then turned onto his back to look at the dreamlike sky. The thunder in the distance was closer, but it didn’t scare him. For the first time in nearly ten years, his hopes had taken on the shape something more ambitious that survival.
Though he’d screwed up in his fight with Esposito, he’d proven himself to Alex—a trainer who’d thrown everything and the sink at him. He’d thought the game was simply difficult, but it flashed into his mind—his entire Simulated Reality training at Hector’s warehouse.
He gasped as he stood. It had all been bent to one purpose. Each step had seemed impossible, but he’d overcome it, if only barely. Then, before he could breathe, let alone mind-fuck himself into some state of self-doubt, she’d thrown him into the next challenge with no further whats, whys, or maybes. Though the weeks were brief, they’d torn away his self-denial and given him something new on which to fasten.
As if summoned, Alex’s voice echoed in his head. “Hey Rick, you there?”
He jumped. “Jesus!” Laughter trickled from him like water from a fountain, and she added hers to his. He put his hand to his chest. Though he knew he wouldn’t see her avatar, he couldn’t stop himself from searching the sky. Some primitive part of him truly expected to see her shapely form, though only empty air greeted his gaze.
When her laughter ebbed, she asked, “How do you like the Branches? Pretty friggin’ cool, right?”
“It’s awesome.”
“There aren’t a lot of heights in the game, but I wanted to make sure you had experience with it.”
Of course she did. It fit her MO perfectly. Rick looked around, letting her voice fade into an indistinct, musical resonance occasionally punctured by the epithets “shit” and “fuck.” He bounced on his feet, lighter and more nimble than any five-year-old boy.
“Rick. Did you hear me? What the fuck are you—”
“I love it here.” He giggled. “Let’s stay.”
“Stop fucking around, man. I put the Demon’s Horns on CosFind, but I haven’t…” She faded out. “Wait, what the fuck is this?”
Rick bounced and smiled, waiting for more.
“Holy shit, Rick. There’s a VR enthusiast streamer on the net who’s raving about… uh… you.”
He stopped bouncing. “Okay?”
“Oh my God!” Alex squealed. “What did you do while I was gone?”
Thunder barked in the distance. “I uh, survived.” He shrugged. “Are you in the game?”
“I can’t join a game in session, dumbass. Oh my God!” she said again. You broke a branch-path? How did you… Wait, I’m rewinding the footage…”
“Is that weird?”
Rick winced when Alex yelled loud enough that her voice distorted in his mind.
“Ow” He gripped his ears. “That’s… kinda shrill.”
“Oh God! I’m sorry,” she said. “Rick?”
“Yeah?”
“You better run. Right now.”
He pulled his hands from his ears and glanced back at the lightning ring. “It’s not close enough to be a problem yet.”
“No, you don’t understand. Everyone who’s seen this is telling everyone else, and it’s starting to get around within the game. You have a target on your back. Everyone’s gonna want to prove themselves by beating you.”
“I don’t underst—”
“Three players just arrived at the tree portal.”
Rick sighed. “Fuck.”
Then, he ran.