Rick winced as Alex let him have it as they stood in front of the server wall. This time, there was only one server available.
“Where the fuck were you? You can’t be playing around with this shit, Rick. What are you, a fucking child? Are you a fucking child?”
“It happened again,” he said.
“What happened?”
“Ditto.”
She frowned. “We might have to get your head checked.”
“For what?” he asked.
“I dunno. Cancer… or mental illness, or—”
“I don’t think a brain scan’s gonna find what’s wrong with me. I’ve taken a lot of headshots, but they checked me out back in…” Prison, but he didn’t say it.
She grunted. “Not like we have the money for it yet, anyway—but as soon as we can, I think we need to get your implant checked.”
Rick said nothing. The white box around the server’s name lit up.
“That’s your cue,” she said.
Rick stepped up to the wall and extended his hand, but before he touched it, he glanced back at Alex, who regarded him with a blank look.
“Good luck,” she said.
********************************************************
Rick smiled at the coincidence: He’d materialized in the same cave he had when his journey with Ruckus Online began all those weeks ago.
What he didn’t expect was that he’d have company.
It was the sound from behind that alerted him first, and as he jumped away, barely avoiding the strike aimed at his head, he struggled to orient himself in the attacker’s direction.
The player—the tag indicated it was a player—was a skinny, black woman wearing only shoes, shorts, and a sports bra. In Ruckus Online, it was never wise to discount someone’s ability based on their avatar’s physical presence. Rick had gotten his ass handed to him by people who looked less physically powerful.
She threw a flurry of punches he blocked before she tagged him with a lightning-fast, tentative kick. He stepped back to reset the encounter, but when he stepped back in again, she did, too. That put her much closer to him than he expected, which barely gave him time to interrupt her hip throw.
He grasped her shoulder and pushed her away violently. “Nice to meet you, too.” She lost her footing in the deep sand and he performed a hard forward kick to her bent torso, setting her right again for an instant before he drove a right straight into her unprotected face.
The woman dropped and rolled away, but he didn’t give her a chance to make a space. As she tried to rise, he delivered a powerful knee strike. The woman blocked the attack, but it interrupted her momentum, sending her back down to the sandy floor of the cave.
She grunted, then swore and put her arms up as if expecting a follow-up, but Rick’s stamina was too low.
The woman stood and panted, then wiped her mouth. “You’re good.”
Rick gave her a small nod, then sent a low left kick at her shin. She danced aside and delivered a hard frontal kick to the underside of Rick’s still-extended left leg, clubbing his hamstring. Involuntarily, his muscle contracted, throwing his balance forward before he could lift the leg and rotate out of the way. The move was only minimally affective; the woman drove a hard elbow into Rick’s spine, sending a queer sensation to the base of his neck and shooting him into the ground. He tumbled and rolled, until his stamina bar flashed, forcing him to rest facedown in the dirt.
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The woman’s heel barely missed him as he lay helpless. Rick’s heart pounded like an engine in his chest, demanding he do something—anything—to escape her unrelenting assault. He ignored the fear, making slow, stamina-friendly movements to avoid her kicks.
His stamina had just passed half-full when a shadow in the corner of his eye alerted him the woman had given up waiting for him to rise and was instead taking the fracas to the ground.
Without years of practice and prize fights, he’d have been at her mercy, but he invested the whole of his attention into his senses. As soon as the sounds of breathing and the slightest ripple of her impending grasp reached his awareness, he bolted away in a half-roll, then rose halfway to standing as he swung his head to find her.
Without standing all the way up, he pushed himself over her prone body before locking her head and neck. Over the course of the next forty seconds, she struggled, successfully elbowing him twice in the ribs. He didn’t lessen his grip, nor move much at all, looking every bit the constricting snake patiently crushing its victim.
I… need… this…
She got hold of his inner thigh and pinched, but her strength had already waned, and after a few short seconds more, she went out.
He stood and panted, then stretched his tired hands and arms as the woman’s inert body transformed into four boxes—two orange, one blue, and one yellow.
Victory!
They resolved into icons as he brushed dirt from his trunks and pulled the waistband to shake away the grains of sand that had gotten into his pants.
Boost Points +2
He placed one in stamina and one in speed, causing his translucent stat window to appear:
Strength: 1
Speed: 2
Stamina: 2
He’d had the most experience coming from the cave starting point, and though the game subtly reorganized itself with every round, basic landmarks remained the same. He’d only once encountered an early shortcut with a strength stat check when coming from the cave.
Active Skill Acquired!
Iron Fist: Unblockable hammer strike that can be used alone or at the end of a combo. One minute cooldown.
Rick couldn’t believe his luck at running into the skill again so soon, and his instinct to pour points into speed had been fortunate. With enough points, he could probably shorten the preparatory telegraph of the move, giving him a better chance to pull it off on an unsuspecting opponent. If he cleared the preliminaries, this was the skill he’d take with him into the finals. He could work on boosting his speed and strength as he moved up the ranks.
The yellow icon remained, and though his initial predilection was always to leave cosmetics behind, the value of the completed Demon’s Horn set served as a powerful counterargument. Reluctantly, he reached for the icon.
Cosmetic Item Acquired!
Black Leather Belt: this simple leather belt accentuates any outfit. Wearing with brown shoes not recommended.
He stowed the belt—it would look ridiculous with his boxer’s shorts and form-fitting athletic shirt. It looked strangely plain in his inventory next to all the tribal tattoos, assorted athletic shorts in various colors, and hats. Who wears a hat to a fight?
He stepped out from the cave as a peel of thunder boomed in the distance. The fight with the woman—he hadn’t even noted her game handle—had slowed his start, but now that he wasn’t carrying a highly valued set of cosmetic items, he no longer had a target on his specific back. How big a part of winning these matches is simply keeping a low profile?
He jogged down the dirt path into the deciduous forest, determined to make the most of his early stat and skill gains. With each breath and step, he panned left and right, alert for movement. That most players were audacious and used the cosmetic items made them easier to see coming. It also made it easier to tell the difference between bots and players. The bots were far more restrained than the…
Wait. He thought about Esposito and his relative lack of adornment. Fight-punk? What if I make myself look more like a bot?
That would require a more thoughtful approach to his clothes and shoes. Part of how he knew the black woman was a player opponent—aside from the fact she spawned right behind him—was that she erred on the other side of the spectrum. Shorts, shoes, and a sports bra were too simple for a bot to wear, as the AI-driven bots usually had some sort of theme to indicate their fighting styles.
He stopped, then switched out his boxer’s shorts for a grey gi. He replaced his athletic shoes with a simpler set of flat shoes resembling the sort a kung fu devotee might wear, then topped the look off with a red headband.
His costuming settled, he set off again, choosing the left fork of the path twice in rapid succession. It wasn’t long before he happened upon his next opponent.