Hector wasn’t alone. Alex’s avatar was there, too.

“Whatever you’re planning to do, I’d reconsider.” Hector’s voice oozed a calm menace.

Mentally, Rick reached out to Ditto. Send it. Send it now. And the info about that that facility he has with the—

Got it, Ditto replied.

“Who the fuck is that?” R3D_Button asked.

It was a fair question. The dark-haired player hadn’t met Hector, though if he had, he’d have recognized the man. Hector’s avatar was more powerfully built and taller, and some imperfections in the symmetry of the man’s face had been corrected. Other than that, he was recognizably Hector.

Any question of Alex’s resemblance to her avatar was as murky as ever, but it was recognizable. Several other were with them, and it took a half second for Rick to understand they were bots.

Again with the bots?

There was a sound from the direction of the warp portal, and soon after, more bots entered the garden. In less than a minute, it had become crowded, and Rick and R3D_Button had stepped back.

Rick squinted. “You couldn’t kill me at the shop so you came here? Not sure what you expect to accomplish in a practice instance.”

Hector cracked his knuckles and the look on Alex’s face was apologetic. “Pain control is off. Exit protocols are disabled.” He pointed at Ditto. “And he’s…”

In a blink, Ditto disappeared.

Hector smiled. “Unnecessary.”

Oh fuck. The bots closed in on them. He glanced at R3D_Button. “I’m sorry I got you into this.”

R3D_Button said nothing, but his eyes went wide with fear. He called out to Hector. “Hey man.” He pointed at Rick. “I don’t have anything to do with whatever your trouble is with him.”

Hector shrugged. “You run with garbage, you get the same outcome. You need to associate with winners. Avoid fuck-ups.”

A desperate plan had begun to spin up in Rick’s mind, and as Hector’s insult registered, it completed. He perked up as though a bell had rung within his mind. He called out to R3D_Button. “Follow me!”

R3D_Button squinted and gave him a look akin to disgust, and Rick didn’t look to see if the dark-haired player had taken his advice or not. He dashed toward the temple building, then around it. The sound of feet and yelling followed, and when he finally did look back, R3D_Button was behind him. Behind R3D_Button was a mob of pugilistic bots bent on their discomfort.

He expected the bots would come from all sides, and he wasn’t disappointed. When he ran down the trail into the valley behind the temple, a lizard-like Wild One stepped out from behind a rock and barred his path. Rick leapt, then Air Dashed at the exact moment the bot tried to close in him. He blasted past, then turned to see how R3D_Button would handle it.

Not well. The dark-haired player collided with the Wild One, who grabbed R3D_Button and threw him to the ground.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Rick did an about-face and dashed back toward the Wild One as it tried to leap atop R3D_Button. He slid, going for the lizardman’s legs, tangling them up at the exact moment the beast had tried to jump. The scuffle had kicked up dust, but gazing through the haze, he noted the Wild One had fallen short and R3D_Button was already on his feet again. Rick stood. The lizardman caught R3D_Button’s leg in one of its claws.

Rick delivered a punter’s kick to the lizard’s head.

Victory!

Two blue and an orange box floated above the Wild One’s fading corpse. He dashed in to grab the boosts and skills.

Boost Points +2

Hastily, Rick threw both into stamina.

R3D_Button drew close. “What, we’re not sharing anymore?”

Rick shot him a puzzled look. “All you did was get thrown to the ground, and a minute ago, you wanted to bail.”

“What the hell did you do to piss him off so bad he wants to murder you?”

Rick ignored the question and reached for the blue icon.

Active Skill Acquired!

Flying Knee: An airborne knee that hits high. Fast move with little preparatory delay. No cooldown.

Huh. Weird to get a duplicate. Nonetheless, the skill would come in handy, especially with no cooldown.

The mob rapidly approached. “Let’s go,” he said.

“Where are we going?” R3D_Button called out as Rick fled.

Rick didn’t answer. Instead, he only kept running. There’d be no opportunity to breathe, and given enough time, the game and its bots would defeat him. He held out only one hope: that Ditto would get the data out about Hector’s cheats and Dokutan would start the update immediately.

*************************

Fifty feet down the dusty path, the Flying Knee came in handy. Rick blasted through the defenses of a bot dressed like a wrestler—a true wrestler like you might find in a high school match. The bot wore a unitard and a headband, and it came as a surprise that Rick so easily jammed his knee through the bot’s grasp as it attempted to grab him. He activated Air Dash after he connected, which drove his knee into the bot’s head, then past.

When he landed, Rick checked behind. R3D_Button had simply kept running, pushing the bot to the side as he blasted past.

A few yards afterward, the dark-haired player stopped and panted.

It took Rick a half second to understand what had happened. Though Rick had attacked, he’d gotten far enough ahead that when R3D_Button engaged the bot with his push, it changed the focus of the battle to the dark-haired fighter, and once in battle, the stamina system had kicked in.

“We have to find a way to not engage before we get to the barn,” he said.

“Right,” R3D_Button said between ragged breaths. “The barn?” The man swallowed. “He’s got my stamina.”

The mob caught up to the wrestler, who, still on the ground, promptly got trampled.

“Oh shit. Never mind. That solved it.” R3D_Button frowned and broke into a run, catching up to Rick as they both ran unencumbered by a stamina stat.

Rick slowed as he approached the barn door. From his training with Ditto, he’d experienced that things got less and less stable the further into the barn he went. If they were going to have a chance, they’d have to go all the way to the other side.

He worried about R3D_Button. The first few days Rick had trained with Ditto at the edge of the game, he’d struggled to keep his wits about him. He’d gotten used to it, but it had taken time. “Things are gonna get—”

“Is that a hammer with wings?” R3D_Button asked.

Rick slowed down. The winged hammer, seeming to sense their attention, fluttered and took off toward the door to the other side. “Yeah, shit’s kinda strange here.”

“Why are you wearing a dress?” the dark-haired player asked.

Rick looked down and frowned. He was wearing a dress. He shook his head and transformed back into athletic shorts and a shirt. “Stop doing that.” He trudged toward the rear exit of the barn. Motes of dust and kicked up straw hung in the air.

R3D_Button followed, though the scuffing sound of his boots on the concrete floor of the barn were slow. The crowd reached the entrance of the barn a hundred yards away. Rick glanced at R3D_Button and nodded toward the door. The dark-haired player’s outfit kept changing as he walked. Wonder if mine’s doing that, too. He checked, and it seemed his clothing stayed the same. With a deep breath, he crossed the threshold, and when he got twenty feet out amid a wide field with lots of room to maneuver, he and R3D_Button turned.