> “The obvious road is almost always a fool’s road, and beware the Middle Roads, the roads of moderation, common sense and careful planning. However, there is a time for planning, moderation and common sense.”
>
> —William S. Burroughs, The Western Lands
Breakfast had been simple, consisting of hard-boiled eggs, coffee, and his wife’s sleepy but sweet company. She’d wished him luck as he scooted out the door on the way to Alex’s warehouse setup, not even mentioning his inebriated state. She’d seen him cycle back and forth from what must have seemed like incipient alcoholism, to the strict sobriety of a Quaker. Nothing seemed to faze her anymore.
Something troubled him on the way to the train, and it was several minutes before he figured out it was the silence. Muni advertising in public had been with him since he’d gotten the implant. He’d grown so accustomed to mentally pushing it aside, its absence created a strange, if ultimately welcome emptiness.
There was no visit from Ditto, which put him in a prickly mood. Now that he had urgent questions for the uncommonly self-aware bot—why he was showing up in his wife’s drawings—the damned thing was gone.
He arrived at the warehouse and proceeded to the SR Array. He’d shotgunned three more beers before he left—for good luck—and it made him stumble when he reached for the cable.
“Are you drunk?” Alex’s tone was cross.
“It takes more than this to get me drunk,” he said.
“How much more?” she asked. Then, “Do you always drink this early in the morning?”
He yawned and shook his head. “There’s a lot riding on this fight.”
“Yeah. Exactly.” She sighed. “Fuck, man.”
“Are there rules against intoxication? They even have a passive skill called “Drunk,” remember?”
“No, there’s no—” She interrupted herself. “Please don’t make me regret taking a chance on you.”
“Oh shit,” he said. “I gotta pee something fierce.”
Silence hung in the air, then, “You know where the alley is. Don’t get busted. Please.”
“You really don’t have a bathroo—”
“Alley. Go.”
Rick steadied himself with the hallway’s wall, then stepped outside. The megawatt brightness of the sun stabbed his eyes. “Ah!” He stumbled to a nearby dumpster and did his business, too relaxed to worry much about whether anyone saw him.
When he got back to the SR array, he sat with a heavy “whump” and winced as he jammed the cable into his implant. He silently raised his thumb in the air, indicating his readiness.
“Rick?” Alex asked.
“Yeah?”
“Please don’t ever drink this much again and show up in any tournament where I have skin in the game.” She waited, and when he didn’t answer, added, “Understand?”
Rick sighed. “I don’t know why the beers are hitting me so hard today. It feels like I drank some double-strength craft beer or something, but I swear, I didn’t.”
“Can’t be helped now,” she said, “but please—never again.”
He nodded. The array took over, and in a few short seconds, he was out again.
When he came back to himself, he was in yet another new starting area. Situated in a ring of small circles at the top of a low hill in a forest, he contemplated the four paths that led from where he stood.
The leftmost path was by far the most heavily tread, though that meant nothing in a game where the environment subtly re-configured itself with each new match. The foot traffic had likely been simulated as part of the world-construction algorithm.
The two paths in the middle looked innocent enough, but the one furthest right was nearly overgrown, looking like little more than the deer paths he wandered as a kid. The underbrush would certainly impede his way, as well as serving as cover for whatever players, or more likely, bots that lay in wait.
He chose the rightmost of the two middle paths, thinking the most-treaded and least-treaded led either to disaster or secrets. He couldn’t take the chance. The curiosity that had led him to the cliff temple and the stone monsters had been ill-considered. He was risking enough just by competing, and there was no room for further chances.
He jogged away at a comfortable pace, leaping the occasional log that had fallen over the track, scanning left and right in search of bots or combatants.
The first two came for him at the same time while he was crossing a small stream at the bottom of a ravine. Both were women, and both bots.
The taller of the two, who only topped the other by an inch or so, was a brunette with a long braid down her back. She wore red boxing shorts and had long limbs.
The other had more muscle tone and her skin-tight shorts might well have been painted on. She wore her red-brown hair in a short pixie cut. Both women were pale, though freckles dotted the red-haired woman’s skin, and she was by far the paler of the two. In places where the freckles were tightly grouped, her skin resembled milk flecked by tomato soup.
Rick shook his head. Weird thought.
Ponytail came for him first, and though Rick accounted for her long limbs, her reach was longer than he anticipated. The tail end of her kick caught his ribs, and he flinched involuntarily, forgetting completely that his avatar’s body didn’t have the same injured ribs his real body did.
The bot with the pixie cut took advantage of his distracted attention, striking him hard in the face and nearly landing a second punch before he deflected it at the last moment.
He hustled backward, and Ponytail followed until Rick launched unexpectedly forward and planted a heel in her solar plexus, not only stopping her, but causing Pixie to run into Ponytail’s shoulder at full tilt, knocking her down.
Rick rushed to kick the grounded fighter, but due to his inebriated state, he lost his balance and stumbled. Thinking quickly, he turned it into a duck, then a roll, as Ponytail’s long-legged kick sailed, though barely, over him.
As soon as he rose, they were after him, Ponytail in the lead again as Pixie brushed dirt and dead leaves from her shirt and sneered. He danced backward out of the range of Ponytail’s furious jab-straight crosses, but when he jumped away from her follow-up knee, he ran back-first into a tree, which caused him to twist over his feet.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
He fell facedown in the ferns, and before he could move, Pixie had leapt atop him. He panicked and pulled her reaching arm away from his neck.
Absurdly, Ponytail had already launched another kick at him, intending to strike him while he was down, but in his blind panic at twisting to dislodge Pixie’s arm, had accidentally lined her head up for Ponytail’s foot.
Something cracked when the taller woman’s foot struck the bowling-ball sized head of her sister in arms, and though Pixie went limp, it was Ponytail who danced on one leg holding her foot.
Hah! Broke it, did ya? He took advantage of Ponytail’s distraction by quickly standing as Pixie’s body faded.
Victory!
He stiffed and brushed the dirt off his gi. He approached again, but stumbled. Luckily, Ponytail was still in no condition to take advantage.
He stood straighter and took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t be this drunk. What the hell?”
Ponytail frowned at him, like a librarian trying to enforce a strict no talking policy.
“What?” Rick asked. “There’s nothing I’ve seen in the rules that says I can’t talk to—or around—bots.”
Ponytail winced as if in pain—likely as part of her reaction pattern programming. Then she surprised him, saying, “So few do, except to insult us. Words hurt.”
Rick nodded, then rushed her, knocking her down and choking her out in a matter of seconds.
Victory!
“The beer should be wearing off by now.” He swayed toward the icons Pixie’s defeated body had left him. Two orange icons and one blue awaited him. He reached for the orange ones.
Boost Points +2
He put one in stamina and one in speed.
Strength: 1
Speed: 2
Stamina: 2
Next, he examined the blue icon.
Active Skill Acquired!
Saint Luck: Unique Skill! Blocks exactly one otherwise unblockable move from an opponent. Skill can be activated only once, after which the skill is eliminated from player’s move set.
“Huh. Hail Mary, there.” He’d have to study more. If he placed—and he had to place—he could take it as one of his options to take with him to the next rank. If Alex was here, I could ask. Was it a waste to carry a one-shot skill, even one so potentially powerful? It’s gotta be more valuable than a Demon’s Horn.
Next, he examined the loot left by Ponytail, represented by three blues and a yellow.
Passive Skill Acquired!
Stamina Camel: Vastly decreases stamina use on non-attack moves like dodges and rolls.
Oh, thank fuck. Anything that helped with stamina and allowed him to put more points into speed was welcome.
Active Skill Acquired!
Detonate: A jab-jab-kick combo. If the player successfully lands the first two jabs, the kick gets extra power. 30 second cooldown.
Active Skill Acquired!
Snake Hold: Grappling move that can dislocate hips and shoulders if opponent’s strength is less than the players. 2 minute cooldown.
Cosmetic Item Acquired!
Trucker’s Hat: “You ain’t from around here, are ya?”
Rick threw the useless hat into his cosmetic inventory and practiced Detonate a few times to work out the timing. The speed boosts helped.
Though the elimination ring hadn’t yet reared its head, Rick started down the path at a pace. After all, more time was always better, and a ring-out was a bad way to disqualify, as far as he was concerned.
He came across a rock that looked out of place. Where most of the rocks were jagged, this one was smooth, as if it had been a river stone that had been relocated. He pushed it.
Cache found!
Boost Points +2
He hustled down the path as he considered where to place them, but the strength-based grappling move made him divert course from his usual, causing him to put a point each into strength and speed.
Strength: 2
Speed: 3
Stamina: 2
Impressed with his stat sheet, he completely missed seeing the incoming attack from the bot that had been stalking him. It clobbered him from behind and sent him sprawling into the bushes.
He sprang to his feet and examined his opponent. He rolled his eyes. Another Wild One.
The lizard creature wasn’t some spine-covered thing inspired by dinosaurs. Instead, it possessed a look more akin to a gecko lizard crossed with a frog, but with a humanoid two-legged stance and a man’s—or perhaps a gorilla’s—torso. It wore a loincloth and nothing else, a likely compromise to keep nudity out of the game, because nothing else about the creature seemed human.
Though he thought he was out of striking range, Rick had to think fast when the creature’s ridiculously long tongue snapped out for him. That’s new. He ran hard for the creature’s right side, and this time, when the tongue came, he was ready.
He snatched the beast’s “lingua longus” just as it lashed his left shoulder, then twisted and pulled hard, causing the creature to stumble toward him with very little control of its momentum. He kneed it hard, then applied the jab-jab part of Detonate to knock the lizard into strike range for the hard kick to its torso that completed the move.
The frog-lizard went down, but before Rick could press his advantage, the beast leapt away, grabbed a tree and swung around it, then came back toward him feet-first.
Whoa! Rick rolled out of the way and the frog-man whizzed over his head, coming up behind him. He barely had time to rise before the froggy bastard was after him again. Rick struggled with his balance, a lingering effect of the alcohol, but he blocked every blow. His stamina dropping from the blocks, he dashed back, then back again, careful not to back into a tree or a rock again.
Frog-boy was relentless. Rick tried to enter the fray again, but slipped on a gravel covered patch of the path and fell, as his legs unintentionally split wide until he fell all the way back on his ass. The lizard beast pelted him with fists until he rolled, barely avoiding getting arm-locked in the process.
When he stood, he breathed heavily in relief to discover the frog-man had also been forced to slow. Rick stepped forward and twisted his leg behind the frog beast, but when he pushed, the Wild One’s knees bent the other way, so that it backed into a reverse-kneeling position that would have been impossible for a human player or bot to achieve.
Froggy blasted him with a hard punch to his testicles, and his pain meter flipped immediately to ticklish, causing his limbs to lose all strength as he cackled.
He crawled away from the bot, but not quickly enough. The frog was atop him as he lay face down. The leaves of a fern tickled his nose, but it was nothing compared to the rubbery agony of electricity flooding his nervous system with the impulse to laugh.
“Get”—he tried and failed to twist out from under Froggy—“off me!” He shifted the other way, but the frog beast had him covered. Gradually, the ticklish feeling fled his limbs and his strength came back as he repeatedly dislodged the Wild One from getting around his throat.
In a twist of luck, he got the beast’s wrist bent backward and he pressed until the Froggy pulled away to relieve the pressure. When it did, Rick used the opportunity to get to his knees, and when his opponent tried to stand, he wrenched the wrist and pushed him back down, so that now it was the Wild One facedown in the dirt, with Rick atop him.
Here goes nothing. In his mind, all the moves for how to perform the Snake Hold came to him, and to his own astonishment, he bent the frog-man’s left arm and right leg up, then wrenched them in one violent motion.
The frog-bot cried out, its shoulder and hip dislocated, while Rick stood and swayed on his feet, panting. He shook his head and spit, then blinked when he saw it was bloody. “That’s realism. Damn.”
The Wild One looked up at him, a strangely blank look on its face, as if it were looking to him for guidance. Then, it smiled.
Rick kicked its head once, then again, and the bot went limp.
Victory!
In seconds, two floating icons—one orange and one blue—floated above where Froggy’s body had been.
Active Skill Acquired!
Roamin’ Cancel: Link Move. Although this skill causes no direct damage, it can be used to cancel any other move or skill to which the player has committed. Useful for frustrating an opponent’s timing, resetting a combination move, or abandoning a hold that has proven disadvantageous. Warning: This is a sophisticated skill and may take practice to perform adequately. It provides no protection from attacks. There is no cooldown.
Boost Points +1
He’d been lucky to put that point in strength; he likely only had one strength point more than the frog-man had, but it had been enough to win the fight. He shook his head and placed the next point in speed instead.
Strength: 2
Speed: 4
Stamina: 2
The stat point set, he leaned against a tree until he felt steady, then proceeded down the forest path. In the distance, a faint boom of thunder sounded.