Montage a Trois 2

In the beginning, there was chaos, an unholy cacophony, a mockery of Dharmic practices. In place of a prayer wheel, there hung a bell, a brutal bell, that emptied the mind with every swing. The noise was palpable. Your teeth clenched. Your vision vibrated. Your stomach turned. It was not a wave but a whirlpool. It was not a song but a crisis. There was no pattern to grow accustomed to, just constant, frantic CLANG-ing and an increasingly worrisome wheezing from the studs and joists of the building.

Annie and I were on opposite ends of the bell’s pendulum. My Bell Battle Meditation was a microcosm of what it meant to live in and be forged by Black Harbor and its ceaseless aggression. Annie tanked the colossal weight with her chest and arms and then put her whole body into pushing it away. Normally, that was ‘all’ there was to the meditation – catch and push, catch and push, until the noise and pain swept away all conscious thought and left nothing within the mind, body, and soul but the very concept of FORCE. We were spicing it up this morning, though. Maki stood behind Annie, molding her front to her back and straddling her legs in a wide horse stance, her only orders to remain standing and try to mimic the movements of her partner. Against my advice, she'd Petitioned me for an increase to her physique, but even still, I wasn't sure she could survive the actual meditation in full.

In order to play an active role in the training and use my Teaching Feats, I stood across from my students. Each time the bell came near, I’d slam my skull into it and headbutt it back at them, half for Maki’s look of shock and horror, which was as funny as ever, and half as a nod to any of Pha Thet’s lethwei buddies if they happened to walk by. After last Friday, there’d been a steady trickle of Southeast Asians dropping off little gifts into the package pot by my door. It was harmless enough: no money, just small bags of rice, fruit, and vegetables. With how busy we’d been, I’d yet to catch someone in the act to thank them, but hopefully, the headbutts would let them feel seen. I wanted to encourage the behavior; it was a tenet of our style to never turn down a free meal.

They were treating me like a warrior monk, I think. Little bags of food were the sort of alms given to monks in a number of Asian countries, though usually it was done out on the street, and not deposited into an empty concrete planter with a crudely fashioned piece of plywood for a lid. I’d made that package pot to hide impulse purchases from potential porch pirates, not to receive donations. It was a reasonable conclusion for the Thets – more plausible, probably, than a youxia in their minds. They’d seen me exorcise Pha, had felt my Qi banish an evil spirit, and knew I had a working relationship with the Shinto Shrine. I could understand why they may have left our brief interaction with the impression that I was the Shrine's fighting monk, but it was a mystery to me as to how it caught on with anyone else. My Social and Special Feats were obviously doing some heavy lifting, but still, come on. James Li, a monk? I was a public degenerate, well-known pervert. I stole, I blew up cars, I fought constantly, and I had a great time doing so. My life was an exercise in extremes. In a single month, I'd managed to antagonize the Tiger Triads, the Crane Sect, some Yakuza family, one or more evil wizards, and probably some more people that I’d either forgotten or never noticed were there. I was about as far from the Middle Way as a man could get.

Maybe Granny Thet had harangued the rest of her family into paying respects, and there’d been a miscommunication along the way. The Thets brought food as a way of saying thank you along with some of their friends, who in turn told their friends and families, and the telephone-game nature of storytelling did the rest. ‘James Li sent Pha to the Shinto Shrine for his exorcism,’ became, ‘The Shinto Shrine sent James to exorcise Pha’. ‘He was like an angry Buddha,’ became, ‘He channeled a mighty Buddha to smite the demon.’ By this time next week, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I gave a stirring speech during the exorcism and dapped up a Boddhisatva after, instead of broadly threatening everyone in the vicinity and getting into an argument with a bike cop.

I suppose there was an observable parable within the Bell Battle Meditation that might have evoked something within the more deeply religious. If they were inclined to metaphors, one could hear Annie wrestling chaos into order.

A minute of this was as long as a lifetime. You had to stomach the pain, have true faith that it would end. Thoughts drowned in pure, patternless discord that persisted long past what mere hope could handle. But slowly, after a subjective eternity, a meter emerged. The rope from which the bell dangled no longer twisted wildly with every swing, and the two-hundred-pound iron ball at its center no longer smashed into the walls at random. CLANG-thu-thunk-thu-thunk! as Annie took the massive body blow and pushed the bell away. CLANG-thu-thunk-thu-thunk! as I slammed my head against the approaching rope-bound monstrosity. The magnitude of the noise was still jaw-clenching, and the creaking of the house still terrifying, but the ability to anticipate what was coming allowed a person to mentally brace for impact. Your anxiety didn’t lessen, but it no longer climbed. It simmered.

Twenty, thirty minutes of that, and the banging stopped, replaced by an eerie drone. The bell’s swings were even and controlled, Annie’s pushes and my headbutts perfectly in sync. The ball at the center of the bell no longer bounced off the walls, but rolled along them instead, creating a haunting hum that radiated through the joists and studs and rose into an almost mournful wail. The windows vibrated and rattled against their framing so fast that together, they sounded almost like a rainmaker.  For as horrible as every stage thus far had been, at the end, there was harmony – or Black City Kung Fu’s idea of it, at least.

By an unspoken agreement, Annie and I, as one, slowed the bell's swinging through joint telekinesis, our minds working as a unit to sap its momentum until it came to a rest between us. The absence of noise deafened, though ringing continued in my ears.

A wave of nausea washed over me as the system immediately forced a very hard Endurance roll against a concussion. I passed by what had to be a healthy margin, but was left with a 3 Dice penalty from turning my brain to jello. That was fair. I deserved worse. Nearly an hour of headbutting a swinging weight ought to have come with some consequences. My dumbass rightly should have had little birds and stars circling my head and a comically large bump.

“Looney Tunes-ass idea,” I groaned, massaging my temples. The room was spinning, and the windows were bright white with a migraine aura. “Why did I do that?” I used two Circular Breathing charges to heal the penalty, instantly doing away with the benefits of Bell Battle Meditation. “How are you holding up, ladies?”

Annie held up a finger to beg for a moment to catch her breath. She’d fallen to one knee, a mess of sweaty red hair half-obscuring a mask of pain. It was clear at a glance that she’d failed the Minor Feat’s required check against Damage and fatigue.

“That depends,” she said, panting. “Can I heal myself?” The 2 Bonus Dice from the Meditation only lasted until the next Recovery Check – the cost of gaining access to Qi-magic for only 25XP.

I wiped the sweat off my brow and found a spot of blood on the back of my hand. One of the thousand-plus headbutts must have been botched enough to cut through my Force Armor. “Your call. I won’t stop you.”

“No, I mean, will we be doing something with telekinesis later?”

“Who can say?” I said dreamily.

She narrowed her eyes. “You can. That’s why I asked.”

I grinned, strutting across the joist to join the girls in the humid bubble of heat surrounding Annie. “And you, Maki? Learn anything?”

The priestess was on her back, legs dangling off the edge of the plywood sheet, arms limply splayed to either side. She’d been knocked onto her ass enough times during the exercise that I was surprised she hadn’t vomited from the strain. “You people are insane.”

“Anything new,” I clarified. “You’ve been telling me that since the day we met.” I squatted down next to her, balancing on the balls of my feet astride two joists, and brushed some of her bangs out of her eyes. Cupping her cheek in my palm, I sent a quick burst of searching Qi through her body. Medically speaking, she would be…fine for now, though her body would soon pay the price for the power she’d Petitioned for. She could have gotten away with just channeling my Blessing for our warmup group session with the Greenes before they had to go to school, but her muscles, her nervous system, her Qi-network – none of them were conditioned to hold onto this kind of power for hours.

More worryingly, though, I could sense her spirit wavering. Maki had an iron will, but she was forcing herself to train like this against her preferences and personality for me, and when you were working hard enough to subconsciously engage your Qi, that mattered. In system terms, she’d be at risk of Willpower Damage and potentially Corruption if I let it go for too long. 

I leaned down to give her a chaste kiss and bought her a third Die in Endurance using the Experience she’d just made. “Just a bit more. You’re doing great. Today and tomorrow, that’s all I’m asking for.”

Maki pressed her cheek into my hand. “I’m fine. Don’t worry so much.”

“A little more, and then I’ll leave you to all the things I hate, like bargaining with spirits and calling up extended relatives for favors.”

“I’m fine, James, really. You’re supposed to be treating me like one of your students today. I can take it.” She reached up and used her thumb to rub away a smudge above my eye – some blood that I’d missed, I imagined. “Was that second wind I felt just now from your powers? That didn’t feel like your usual healing magic.”

“You mean you’re not impossibly horny? I can fix that if you’d like.” She flicked the tip of my nose. “Later, then.” I nodded. “That was my power, yeah. We’re going to improve your physical attributes and teach you a bit of self-defense, just enough to get you through another ‘Oh shit’ moment, like the one that happened in the storm drain during the Exorcism. I trust you to develop from there on your own.”

"I'm far from defenseless, James." I knew that. This was a world loosely based on fighting games, a genre where J-pop idols could fight devil-men with freestyle dance. Mikos were a staple archetype. And, of course, outside of meta considerations, Maki was better equipped than I was for most immaterial and spiritual enemies. But if she were to spend enough time around me, at some point, she'd have to throw down with something with a body. "Not that I'm suggesting we stop training. But, in light of what lies ahead in Crucifixion, perhaps it's best we postpone the physical to focus on the esoteric. You must have ways to teach Qi-magic that don't involve the auditory equivalent of a panic attack and playing chicken with a collapsed lung."

I chuckled. It seemed even Maki wasn’t immune to having second thoughts. “That sure sounds like a suggestion we stop.”

“Not at all.”

“You know, your father mentioned you used to hide when it was time for kendo lessons.”

“I was five!” Maki pushed herself up to her feet, wobbling for a moment before catching herself. “I’m not trying to skip gym class. I could do this all day. I’m just questioning our priorities considering the limited time.”

“Maki, it’s not a moral failing to want to stop doing something that hurts and you don’t enjoy. I have a strong grasp on physics, but I’d kill myself if you made me actually go through the process of getting a degree. You don’t have to feel bad about wanting to quit—”

“I don’t want—"

I talked over her. “You just have to get through this little orientation on fighting – dip your toes in the Martial World – and then you can take it from there. Right now, you’re an Easter Egg. You’re in the game, but you’re in the background watching the fight at the Shinto Shrine stage. We need to upgrade you to playable character material, and that means getting you to the bare minimum. You’re worrying about your Super when you don’t even have an HP bar.”

Maki shook her head, unamused, and turned to Annie. "Translate, please."

Annie gave her a sympathetic look. “He’s using a James-metaphor. He’s saying you need a foundation to build on. Shifu wants us to develop our own signature styles, but you can’t create a signature before you learn to write. Personally, I couldn’t visualize where I wanted to go with my Art until, well, when I woke up this morning, actually. But you aren’t a Black City practitioner, and you have more experience than I do, so you just need to be able to picture what it’s like to be in a fight and to be able to at least take a hit or two. Whatever we do this week will give you the ability and knowledge to continue on your own. Is that right, James?”

I was impressed. She’d really leveled up after all the excitement and Rewards from yesterday. “Well said, Annie! That’s exactly what I was getting at.”

She beamed with pride and tapped her temple. “The veil’s been lifted, Shifu. I can finally see the world like a martial artist.”

“Kami help us all,” muttered Maki. “The argument is sound, though. I can see the logic.” She sighed, the dawning realization of how much more pain she would have to endure sagging her shoulders. “I suppose it’ll get easier as I get stronger.”

“Nope. I’ll just push you harder.”

“Of course,” she said dryly. “Well. I wasn’t complaining. I’m not going to be defeated by a little discomfort.”

Annie put a hand on her shoulder. “If it helps, it feels great being stronger and faster than most men. And think about how much easier it’ll be to pull all-nighters with a fighter’s constitution.”

“Thank you. That does help.” She gave the redhead a weak but grateful smile. My plan to have them bond through shared pain and a common enemy – me – was well on its way to working. “You’ll be glad to hear that despite embarrassing myself physically, I was still able to monitor your spirit over the course of the meditation. You’re much more stable than the last time we met, even with your increased power. If the process of attuning your Qi to an unnatural Nature just now didn’t trigger any sudden conflagrations or medical emergencies, then I’d say you’re clear to learn techniques within your Fire Nature. On that note, why did you start her on Force first, James? I’d have thought you’d do the opposite until I was here to observe.”

I was skeptical. “It would have been less dangerous to start her with Fire?”

“Annie can’t learn to control her heat until she learns to control her heat. Her spirit wants to burn and roar. The fact that you’ve taught it to separate force from flame long enough to use telekinesis at all is remarkable. It speaks to your teaching abilities.”

“Ohhh,” said Annie. “That’s why I kept lighting my clothes on fire when I tried to move them!”

I was half-tempted to switch to Japanese, but I continued in English out of respect for my senior student. Annie was an adult; I wouldn’t coddle or shelter her from the facts. “No, I meant with her transformation. Leaning into her Fire-Nature is only going to supercharge it, and we still have no idea what’s happening.”

"What's there to be done, James? Like I said, she's more stable than last I saw her, though I can't speak to that on a biological level. Annie's soul might burn hot, but that doesn't mean she's doomed to become an inferno. There are volcanoes that erupt once in their lives, and there are calderas that bubble for centuries. If I had to guess, I'd say her stability is a reflection of your conversation yesterday and her newfound conviction rather than anything about her transformation. There are benefits to self-actualization, just as there are risks in pushing someone so hard against their nature. Eventually, whether mental, physical, or spiritual, there will be fractures. If the fact that she's still emitting a staggering heat minutes after the meditation isn't a sign of that, then I don't know what is."

“The fact that you can say all that with a straight face after insisting you can ‘do this all day’ is what’s staggering.” I put up a hand to cut off her affronted response. “But I was only after a second opinion, not an argument. Okay, Annie, after Maki passes out today, we can get started on working toward Fire techniques if you’d like. I came up with some progressions for future students.”

“Really?” She did an excited little jump. “Yes! I’m so ready. I’ve had this super cool idea for a technique spinning around my head that I think you’re going to love, James. It’s a surprise.”

I made a mental note to leave Annie some Experience tonight to repurpose organically in her sleep. “Neat. I can’t wait.”

Maki pouted. “You two seem to be taking it for granted that I’m going to pass out.”

“Maki,” I said. “Be serious.”

“I’m always serious.”

I rolled my eyes. “Realistic, then.”

“I can do this all day, James. I’m telling you, I feel fine.”

"Aaaaand she's asleep," I said, standing over the exhausted and unconscious form of my girlfriend. We were outside, enjoying the breeze and the unforgiving stone tiles of the backyard gym. Her lip was busted from a bad fall, and both shoulders were sporting rough bruises.

Annie groaned from nearby, clutching her ribs between sips of water. “Cut her some slack, Shifu. Even for you, this is heinous. I didn’t think you could still surprise me, but wow. Just,” she shuddered, “just awful.”

“Thanks! I call it Slapstick Sadism. Pretty inspired, right? I can’t wait to tell my family. Grandad is going to love this. He’s a big Tom and Jerry head.”

“Inspired by what, the Geneva Convention?”

"Hey, that's not a bad idea," I said, calling my water bottle to my hand. "I should take a look at that sometime."

I unscrewed the cap and dumped the contents onto Maki’s face. She came to life sputtering, eyes blinking off the sudden shower before settling into a hateful fury.

I returned the look with a cheery smile. God, so much of my childhood was falling into place. I finally understood the glee Ma felt every morning. “Rise and shine, Maki-chan! We’re only halfway through the lesson.”

She tried and failed to feebly kick my ankles. Her voice came out in a low rasp. “You don’t get to call me that, you psychotic bastard.”

“Oh, Maki-chan, those were pretty weak!” I said, faking surprise. “You wouldn’t happen to have lost your grasp on the power you borrowed from me, leaving you far more tired than you’d be normally?” She silently fumed at me, lacking the energy to do more. “Ah, man. If only someone had warned you this would happen, someone with a vast knowledge of the subject.”

“You don’t have to sound so smug about it.”

“Maki, I’m basically a willful moron about every topic other than the one you ignored my advice about. I’ll be as smug as I’d like.”

Her face was briefly more angry at herself than me, which was about as close to an admission that I was right as I could hope for at the moment. “A calculated risk, that’s all. If my concentration hadn’t lapsed, I’d still be standing. Now, give me your Blessing once more. I won’t fail twice.”

“No shot. Your body can’t take the strain. I need you walking tomorrow.”

“I’ve been learning quickly. This sadistic exercise of yours is annoyingly effective in that way. I’m sure if I slowly let your Qi leave me and consciously use the last of it to accelerate my healing, I’ll be…okay. Regular exhausted at worst.”

“You’re looking at cardiogenic shock at best if you fail,” I said, calling on my 5 Dice in Medicine.

“Then I won’t fail.”

“What is it about my training that drives students crazy?” I said ruefully. Annie whipped a pebble at the back of my head in response. Giggling, I continued unabated, “I can’t let you take that risk when I could just heal your exhaustion.”

She grimaced, her eyes flickering toward Annie, before giving me a pleading look. My particular brand of healing magic would leave her horny, perhaps desperately so. Her pride couldn’t bear the idea of potentially embarrassing herself like that around Annie.

I chuckled. “I’ll be nice about it, alright?” In Japanese, I added, “Your boyfriend’s an excellent wingman, Maki-chan. You should trust him.”

She blushed and responded in kind, hissing in Japanese, “Idiot, what are you saying? We’re not all so gormless as James Li.” Maki paused, fighting off a smile, before adding with a challenging smirk, “As if I’d need your help, anyway.” Returning to English, she said, “Give me ten minutes to find my own solution. Please.”

I held up my hand, fingers splayed out. “You can have five. And only because my neighbor’s clearly been dying to ask me something since we came out.”

I hopped over Maki's prone body and over to the ratty chain-link barrier between mine and Papes' backyards. He was already getting up as I approached, having been watching us quietly from where he'd been enjoying his usual breakfast of coffee and a Black & Mild cigarillo. Papes was a tall man, six-foot-five or so, and made a little taller by being the high-top fade's strongest warrior. He still rocked the haircut well into his early fifties, and got it shaped up twice a week at the trap house to the other side of my building. His wardrobe, from all I'd seen, was that of a man auditioning to be an extra in a late-80s Eddy Murphy movie. Today, he wore a half-buttoned Hawaiian shirt, loose linen pants, and deep bags under his eyes, looking like he was two days into a cocaine bender in Miami. Though to be fair to the man, this was a solid five hours before when he usually woke up.

“Morning, neighbor! Bit early for you, isn’t it?” He looked like he was contemplating decking me for that. I put my hands up in surrender. “Soundproofing is on the to-do list.”

Papes leaned on the fence and gave me a long look over his cup of coffee. “It’s a dog-shit way to wake up, James.”

“I know, but is it really that much worse than a jackhammer?” I asked, chagrinned. He wasn’t quite a friend, but I did like Papes, as much as I could a pimp and information broker.

“Yes.”

“Fair. I can train some of your girls to make up for it, if you’d like?”

He craned his head over my shoulder at the two half-delirious women behind me.

I waved it off. "Ah, they'll be fine. I can go easier, too. You see how I train the Greene kids."

He gestured skeptically with his eyes to the heavy steel bar I made the eighty-pound Shania Greene break stones with while digging out fence posts. There were some rust-like stains near the top from where she'd torn open some blisters this morning. I stepped slightly to the side to block it from his view.

"The younger Greene kids,” I clarified.

“I’ll let them know you offered, James.” His voice was more measured than I was used to hearing. I had a feeling we were about to discuss business for the first time since I’d moved in. Thus far in our relationship, Papes had used me as a much-needed outlet, a way to spend some time around someone who wanted nothing from him but his company. “Didn’t come out for that, anyway. I don’t know if I even want you to soundproof the building.”

“Sick, one less thing to do. You sure, though? I mean, no offense, Papes, but the bags under your eyes say differently.”

 “‘No offense, Papes, but you look like shit.’ Come on, man, don’t do me like that.” He shook his head. “How tall is this fence of yours going to be?”

“Eight feet-ish. Feels a little too much like I’m teaching yoga in the park right now, you know?”

“The girls’ll hate that. I’ll miss catching up with you like this, too. You should come over some, hang out. I just got an 8k TV. I know you want to see that in action.”

I smiled. “Stand on a milk crate. You’re tall as hell.” I generally avoided going inside Papes’ trap house. It wasn’t sleezy or dirty; on the contrary, it was a little too meticulously well-maintained. They kept it that way in case they were ever raided by the police, but it gave the whole place an air of artificiality that put me off. It was like hanging out in a hotel or an airport lounge. “You really don’t want me to soundproof the building, though? I would think the ringing was driving you crazy.”

"Nah. You're a bad man, James Li. There's a rumor going that anywhere in Harbor Hill where you can hear your bell is off-limits." He shrugged, a quick flash of pride telling me exactly who'd started said rumor. "Mad convenient for me. The girls are a lot more relaxed, which means they're a lot less of a fucking headache. Good for the neighborhood, too."

“Nice. If you give me a rough radius for how far that is, I’ll do a few sweeps at night.”

He nodded gratefully, pausing to nurse his cigarillo for a moment. A subtle shift came about in the air around him as he weighed his next words. “Listen, I didn’t mean to interrupt, and I’ll let you get back to it, but there’s been a trend of customers forgetting appointments or getting lost on the way here lately – not a lot, but it’s never happened before. You wouldn’t happen to know what’s going on there, would you?”

I immediately rolled a Deception for my reaction to the news – four Successes, an ambiguous result against the small-time but experienced criminal. With that in mind, I decided to play the situation differently.

I slid my hands into the pockets of my tiny athletic shorts and gave the man a smug, mischievous grin. “I might. Anything these customers have in common?”

"They're dirtbags?" Papes gave me a frustrated sigh, like he was annoyed about having to go through this. "Look, man, don't take this the wrong way, but I don't usually fuck with you Asian niggas. Doin' all sorts of freaky shit, throwing needles through concrete, poisoning people with pressure points and shit," he said, code-switching and with a look of intense disgust. "Ain't you people never heard of guns?"

I laughed loudly, already composing the text of this conversation to Cory. He’d love this. It would be a good way to break the ice between us. We hadn’t talked since the dinner at the Kingfisher.

“That’s hilarious.” What a delightfully specific form of racism. You had to love this world sometimes. “Well, you know, I appreciate that you fuck with me, Papes.”

He pointed at me and said emphatically, “I do fuck with you. I like you, James. I like having you as a neighbor, even with the noise and the fact that I watched you light yourself on fire fifty times around a bunch of wood piled up ten feet from my building.”

I coughed into my fist to hide a blush. “Ha, yeah…”

“The point is, I want to keep liking you, but you ain’t been making it easy. I’ve been sticking my neck out for you. People been hitting me up about you, and they don’t care when I tell ‘em I don’t fuck with Asian niggas!”

I laughed again. That was going to get me every time. “You should put that on your door underneath the no soliciting sign.”

He lowered his voice, whisper-yelling, "My neighbor has a two-million-dollar bounty, brother. Can you help me out a little bit? Goddamn."

“They upped the bounty. That’s neat. It was frankly insultingly low.”

“James.”

I held up a hand. “Papes, I like you, but you chose this life just like I did. With all due respect, man the fuck up, pussy. This is Jersey.” I grinned to take some of the bite out of the words, but the sentiment was very real. “You get plenty out of me anyway. Who’s going to start something at your place with me next door? You’d be covering for me regardless. Your building doesn’t survive the collateral damage from the fight if I have to actually defend myself on the block. As long as I live here, I’m the only thing you need to worry about, your Alpha and Omega. It’s on you to work around me. I don’t need to do shit.”

“I see. That’s how it’s going to be?”

“That’s how it is.” My tone was almost apologetic. Maybe I’d gone a little far, but Papes was the Underworld equivalent of a professional spy. This was a matter of business for him, and he was asking me for a handout. “A man like you didn’t live to your age by taking risks like me.”

Until recently, I might have been willing to take a chance with a little trust in Papes. He'd never given me a reason to distrust him before, and by all accounts, he was as inoffensive as a pimp could be, more a landlord charging for access to his rooms than a real flesh dealer. His real game was information, and, in general, you needed your informants to like and respect you if you wanted reliable, cheap intel. But after my experience with Uncle Hou, I was taking no chances.

“Damn. Cold as ice.” He sipped his teeth. As I’d expected, he was more disappointed than insulted. “Alright, that’s on me for thinking I could get shit for free. You know there’s a lot I could do for you, if you’d let me. We’ve been good neighbors; we’d be better friends. I see a lot of green in your future, James. You tricked a lot of smart people into thinking you’re dumb – that’s a damn fine position to be in. I could help you capitalize on it while it lasts.”

I smiled, using my earnest pleasure at being flattered to hide my suspicion. His behavior triggered a warning from my passive Insight. Something was off; everything I knew about Papes told me the man should have disengaged just then. He was too cautious to keep negotiating when I had the clear advantage and was unapologetically leveraging it. I actively rolled to dig deeper into his demeanor: six Successes, enough to point out all the little signs of duress. The bags under his eyes took on a different meaning. There was a touch of coffee liqueur in his mug, and from the smell, I thought that might have been his second Black & Mild for the day. He was spooked, and whatever was going on, there was enough on the line that Papes felt he couldn’t just walk away without getting what he needed.

“Can you? I asked you a question earlier. The customers of yours who keep no-showing?”

The man nodded his perfectly shaped high-top fade. “Most of them are transplants from Memphis, car thieves and gunrunners for the most part, still trying to carve out a territory in Black Harbor. They’re a remnant of a larger gang back in Tennessee. Call themselves the Deadboys, though the name’s not really sticking. Used to be a badass gang of Vodun in the neighborhood with the same name in the mid-Nineties, something these kids would know if they had any real roots here.”

"Mm. I guess I should probably do something about them." It was time to take a gamble. I gestured back to my building. "This place is warded. Among other defenses, people who try to come here intending to harm me tend to get lost on the way. Looks like it works on loopholes too, if it's affecting your customers."

It didn’t take a roll to read his reaction – Misery, with a capital-M, as if with that I’d just confirmed how far out of his depth he was. “Jesus. That’s…something.”

“Just imagine the poor, local assassins when the bell’s ringing, lost in alleys they’ve known they’re entire lives, hearing their destination but never growing closer to it – maddening. Puts a smile on your face, doesn’t it?”

Papes had a different priority, shaking his head and putting his discomfort to the side for now. “They’d really have fucked me like that? Use me to get to you?” There was genuine, venomous anger in his voice, enough to make me raise an eyebrow with interest. “I can’t let that stand. You down for a little mutually beneficial destruction?”

“Almost always.”

“Deadboys have a garage; give me a little and I’ll find it and get an eye on the block – find out how well it’s defended, how much firepower they have, exits, everything you’d need for a clean hit.”

That had ambush written all over it. I needed to add in a variable, something firmly under my control. "I've got a better idea. If they're hungry for my bounty, then why don't we lay out a little trap? I know just the rusted-out, isolated deathtrap for it."

Both women were sitting in the grass together, relatively well-rested and ready for more by the time Papes and I hashed out the details. Annie had finally used her Circular Breathing to recover from the Bell Battle – the correct decision. Ours was an improvisational art; there was no reason to hold off on healing yourself for some theoretical future problem.

“What was that about?” asked Annie, wisely waiting for Papes to disappear inside.

“Er. You know me, just scheming,” I said quickly, more concerned with what was happening with Maki. I felt twice observed when she turned her brown eyes toward me, with the second mind lightly emanating what could only be described as ‘murderous veneration,’ a bizarre union of worship and killing intent.

Maki stood up, brushing the grass off herself, and answered my unasked question. “It’s the proto-kami of your gym, still in its infancy. You’ve cared for this place daily and spilled enough of your sweat, blood, and, recently, seed to accelerate its formation. At the current rate, you’ll have a fully conscious spirit here within a year – other than Susy, that’s faster than anything even the Sunada could do. Well done.”

“Why’s it want to kill me?”

“It knows you,” she said plainly.

“Ouch. Hurtful but understandable, I suppose. Was it the lighting myself on fire or the filming porn? Because I had the former under control. Probably,” I added. “It’s still fire.”

She grinned. “No, James, it’s the spirit of this gym. It exists to challenge you.” Maki rolled her shoulders and stretched out her back, arms reaching for the sky, the movements smooth, confident, and familiar. It was like watching myself limber up in the mirror. “Hopefully without me holding Annie back as much this time, we’ll be able to manage that.”

“Are you going to be able to move in twenty minutes?”

“That depends on your definition of ‘move’.”

Annie kipped up to her feet and slapped her partner on the back. “Twenty minutes is more than enough time to beat your ass, James! My ribs were all crunchy before, but we’ve got this for sure now.”

“That’s right,” said Maki. “We have a plan this time.”

“But!” said Annie, holding up a finger. “We’re going to need an incentive!”

“Each.”

“If we land one solid hit on you, you have to post a thirst trap and a vaguely suggestive JinJin a day for a week.”

“And you need to explicitly get Susy to start engaging your likely cultists before we leave for Missouri. A phone call will do, but no 'I heavily implied.' You have to spell things out for Susy."

“Okay,” I said slowly, “I’m interested. What do I get if I win?”

The women gave each other a quick, verifying glance, some pink rising to their cheeks. Annie cleared her throat. “We’ll…you know, uh—”

“You can make a request of us,” cut in Maki.

I wagged my eyebrows lasciviously. “Oh, really? A request.”

“Yes. And we will agree, no questions asked,” she said, an element of regret pursing her lips as soon as the words were spoken.

I looked at Annie. “You good with that?”

She was almost giddy with repressed excitement, like a schoolgirl about to sneak out of the house for the first time. “Yep. I trust you.”

"Shit," I said, "no man could turn that down. It's a deal. If you land a hit, I'll do all the social media stuff and talk to Susy—"

“And explicitly empower her as your agent.”

“And make her do most of the cult stuff for me, yes.”

Maki hummed in consideration. “Acceptable.”

"And if you don't, we're getting into a police chase in the minivan on the way down to Crucifixion." I pumped my fist, genuinely beaming at this huge come-up. "Fuck yes! This is going to be so sick. I've always wanted to get into a police chase. It looks so fun."

It took a beat for the women to process what I’d said.

Maki sighed and face-palmed. “This is who I’m dating.”

“S-Sorry, can you repeat that?”

“You heard me! A motherfucking police chase in the minivan! Hell yes.” I shook my head in amazement. Being a common enemy was a blast. I needed to figure out a way to do this more often. “Man, I didn’t think there was any world in which I’d get you guys to agree to that. That’s crazy. You two really fucked this up for yourselves.”

Annie’s face was one of confused disbelief and concern. “James, it’s, it’s a minivan. How—”

“Uh-uh!” I wagged my finger. “No questions asked, remember?” I slid my foot under a bokken, a curved wooden training sword, on the ground and kicked it up into my hands. Both women winced as I whipped it around me three times, the sound of it cutting through the air chilling some of their fighting spirit. “Tie those ropes back on, ladies. We’re burning daylight. If you’re shooting for a road trip where we don’t have to do a high octane mano-a-mano with a highway patrolman, then you’d better be ready to go all out.”

“High octane? You don’t even know–I mean–Are you–Gah!” Annie sputtered. “I’d have to swap out all four tires. Even if we ran a ghost plate, they’d only have to look out for a beat-up, twenty-year-old minivan with racing tires carrying a conspicuously attractive Chinese man!”

Maki put a hand on the panicking redhead’s shoulder and visibly straightened her own back, returning to that calm confidence from earlier. The message was loud and clear. Annie nodded and snatched their shared training sword from the ground, levelling it at me. “Right, thanks, Maki. It won’t matter anyway because we’re not losing. Get ready to record a weirdly horny cooking vlog tonight, James.”

“You want me to erotically make chili? Are we sure that’s possible?”

“I don’t care! It’s going to be weirdly horny and you’re going to like it!”

The girls went through the awkward process of tying themselves together while I entertained myself by threading the end of my sword through an Olympic plate and doing wrist curls with the weight as close to the tip as possible. The conceit of our lesson was similar to that of the Meditation. Maki stood behind Annie, back pressed to her front and their wrists bound together, right to right, and left to right, by short pieces of rope. Annie’s task was ostensibly to spar me and show Maki how to fight with a sword in a sort of reverse Patrick Swayze in Ghost situation, but with the untrained and taller woman wrapped around her back, she’d spent as much time thus far trying not to trip over her partner as she had defending herself.

Maki was forced to lean forward and down, inherently off-balance, and not to mention at least turned on enough by the contact to trigger Sex Ed. Annie couldn’t take any sharp movements forward lest they topple forward, or back lest she slam her head into Maki’s cheek or chin. And worse for my empathetic and kind student, any strikes that would normally hit her arms or shoulders were more likely to hit Maki’s instead. The lifelong athlete had acclimated to her own pain and suffering during training long before she’d met me, but this was a fresh hell. Likewise, Maki was forced to endure guilt and humiliation every time I landed a hit on Annie, or her clumsiness caused them to fall.

It had seemed completely impossible for them in the first half of the lesson. I'd called for the break as much to let them recover emotionally as physically; Annie's lip had been quivering and her eyes watering. In honesty, I didn't expect them to succeed the first, second, or maybe even third time we did this. They would need almost perfect non-verbal communication just to remain standing for more than a few minutes, and would need to intimately know each other's limits and inclinations to actually hold their ground in the spar. I was hoping that between my teaching Feats and their own overachieving personalities, we could achieve that before we had to head into actual danger.

The girls shuffled slowly onto the stone tiles across from me, taking short steps to keep their balance. The sweat had dried from their bodies, leaving behind patches of dirt and grime and the odd strand of grass. They were battered and tired, but ready for round two. “Okay! Let’s do this!” shouted Annie. “Oh, wait.” She paused to turn her head and gave Maki a quick peck on the cheek. “Good luck! Alright, now we’re good.”

I flicked my wrist and sent the 45-pound plate flying off my sword and back onto the squat rack. In the last half of the lesson, I’d kept them on the back foot, harrying them with quick, light strokes. We'd be switching it up. "What are you waiting for?" I tapped the ground in front of me with my bokken, some fifteen feet away. "Come and get me."

Annie barked a laugh and knelt down slightly. “Ha! Thought so.”

“Yosh!” Maki hopped up and wrapped her legs around Annie’s waist.

Those hamstrings of Annie's were no joke; recently improved, they let her clear the distance in a flash, the added woman on her back no encumbrance. With one lunging step, she was in my guard. A sharp crack resounded through the chill Autumn air as I parried a lethal thrust to my throat aside. Maki's body and wrists were limp, providing nothing but a training weight, allowing the redhead to fight with almost her full abilities.

That wouldn't do. This was a teamwork exercise. I half-stepped, circling to the side of the women and snapped out a kick to the back of Annie's leg that should have sent the two of them flying onto her face. As they were going down, though, Maki, using her newly borrowed skills, rolled her body slightly and extended her leg, using it like a tripod to halt the fall. She wasn't strong enough to outright stop them, but Annie managed to use the slight pause to keep from tumbling fully, going to one knee and letting the other woman return to her mounted position.

The maneuver was stilted, and I could have punished it at multiple steps along the way if I'd wanted, but it was a marked improvement. I didn't want to outright crush their morale, either. This was a clever strategy, the sort of cooperation I was looking to reward.

“Somewhat against the spirit of things,” I said, “but if it works, it works.”

Annie stood back up, gritting her teeth as she swung back around to face me. Her knee was skinned, but she was using the Muscular Vascularity Feat to stem most of the bleeding. “We’re just getting started!”

It was tough talk, but even with me using less than half the total Dice I could roll in my Martial Arts + Agility pool, Annie's handicaps kept her from landing a hit. Maki's body was providing no active resistance, theoretically allowing enough range of motion for the redhead to threaten me with her sword, but it was still there. Annie had trained her eyes; she could tell when a coming strike could risk a cracked bone. All I had to do to interrupt her offense was to send a telegraphed, hard blow towards Maki's arms or shoulder, and my senior student was forced to defend. Her conscience and pride wouldn't allow anything less.

Or so I thought.

To keep from giving Annie's freakish hamstrings the room for another lightning-quick lunge, I stayed close, mostly using my sword for defense while I continually challenged their balance to force Maki to actually participate in the exercise as more than dead weight. I tested her ability to react by kneeing Annie in the ribs or checking the pair of them with my hips or shoulder. Maki proved to be mostly able to keep the pair more or less upright when I sent them spinning or crashing to one side, but the clock was ticking on her Blessing. Each reaction was a bit slower than the last, and she was visibly growing impatient. The girls obviously had a plan for a specific type of attack that I'd yet to throw at them.

I knew I'd found it when I went to test how she'd handle being sent straight back instead of diagonally to a side or forward. With one hand on the grip and the other further up along the back of the 'blade' of my bokken, I slid the weapon up Annie's forearms and into the ropes around her wrists. Using the ropes like a ledge, I pushed her arms up and forward, causing her to effectively double punch herself in the face. The move obscured the stuntwoman's expression, but Maki's behind her was triumphant.

They fell, but she was able to get her legs out from around Annie’s waist and under her. With Annie’s arms already up and back, Maki had the room to pull her elbows together and turn into a loose ball. She grunted with pain from the impact, but shouted, “Ready!”

Annie’s smile was wolfish and manic. She dropped their sword, grabbed onto the Japanese woman’s dainty wrists behind her head with both hands, and crouched down in a mirror of her partner, legs under her, ready to launch herself up.  “Now!”

Both women sprang forward, but Annie waited for Maki to move first and get her feet off the ground and weight more over the redhead's shoulders and neck. Annie's much stronger legs then carried the two up and straight at me. Her hands, still latched onto Maki's wrists, used the woman's momentum to pull her over her head and down on top of me like she was a single, massive, Miko-shaped flail.

I couldn’t help it – if I moved to dodge or parry, Annie would slam the relatively frail Maki directly into the hard stone tiles. I threw my sword away and opened my arms, catching my girlfriend by her waist and interposing myself between her and the ground, going flat to ensure her head landed on nothing harder than my thighs.

“Ah!” I gasped, the force of Maki’s back slamming my chest into the tiles driving the wind from me.

“Get him!” shouted Maki. Annie obeyed, dropping down to start kneeing me in the head.

I lay there for a good while, letting them whomp me as I wondered where I’d gone wrong. It was when I’d built a Harem Protagonist, I was pretty sure.

I blasted the women off of me with a shove, making sure to aim them towards the grass. “Utterly deranged,” I said, pushing myself to my feet. “Completely fucking psychotic, the both of you. What a goddamn nightmare. I’ve never been prouder.”

My statements fell on deaf ears. They were too busy celebrating.

Annie squealed with joy. She’d have gone for a hug, but their arms were crossed and trapped in the tangle of their bodies, so she nuzzled her face against a shoulder instead. “Eeee! Maki, you were so good! That was amazing!”

“Told you,” panted a proud Maki, “it would work. Well done. Excellent commitment.”

“Aw, thanks! Gosh, it’s going to be so fun training with you.”

No one to blame but ourselves, James old pal, came a musing from Alan’s psyche.

True, this was the life we chose. It was a shame about the police chase, though.

The system informed me that they’d earned their Experience for this lesson, so I decided it was my time for a break. I flopped back down to the ground and started thinking of how one made an erotically charged chili.

AN: My bad on the hiatus. It was unplanned and unavoidable. I should have posted a heads up, but I was too bummed out and in denial for how long it would be.