And They're Always Glad You Came

“You can get him, Johnny! Throw a right hook! Throw a left hook! Throw another right hook!” Jenny called, watching Keith and John spar from the couch.

“Do you know what anything other than a hook is?” Kimberly asked as Keith’s fist collided with John’s face… or an Afterimage of it.

“Gotta be faster than that, Keith!” John called out, swinging a baseball bat of Mana Construct at the back of Keith’s head. John flipped back and found himself stuck in concrete quicksand.

“I do so!” Jenny replied as John was knocked off his feet by a haymaker from Keith. “That was called a haymaker! Oh…”

Keith’s steel fist would have shone with blood if Gamer’s Body had let it. Instead, John slowly got back up. I would’ve totally got knocked out there if I didn’t activate Living Tank at the last second. I better finish this quick! I don’t have any more uses of Reflex Mode or Mind Over Matter... nice and simple then.

Leaping back up, John took advantage of Keith’s surprise to charge up a Fist with one hundred mana. He tossed a haymaker Keith’s way as a retort, and his eyes widened when Keith caught it… unharmed. “You’ll have to wake up earlier than that to get me off guard.”

Keith proceeded to swing him around by the wrist, tossing him into the air and preparing to finish it. John fired a Mana Bolt at his face to distract him, blinding Keith for the moment John needed to reorient himself and manifest a block at his feet with Mana Construct. Kicking off it, he used the rest of his mana to charge up another Fist. “I woke up plenty early, Keith!”

“Not early enough!” Keith replied as in the same moment the cost of Living Tank took its toll and their fists collided.

John heard a loud buzzing in his ears as the barrier prevented him from going below zero health. “You did good, lad. I admit I was worried at the end there. Your bag of tricks nearly made up the difference in our levels nicely. You’re just too weak,” Keith explained as John realized he had been moved to the couch. Kimberly had apparently gone inside, and he was in Jenny’s arms.

“I wanna see you two fight!” John said, jumping up. Jenny hadn’t gotten her bass back yet, another delivery supposed to happen today. Instead, she had been using a Fender ‘62 Sunburst, modified to fit her magical fighting style. A present from John for their one month anniversary. It didn’t conduct magic nearly as well as her bass, but she made do with it.

“It wouldn’t count!” Jenny argued, getting up nonetheless. “I don’t have my real bass!” John used Advanced Spy on his girlfriend, who had grown quite a bit in levels since they had both started training.

John had noticed that she didn’t seem to grow one level at a time like he did. Instead, whenever they made a breakthrough on her bassist skills or physical training, she gained a few levels. Even though she was a higher level, it almost seemed that she was gaining levels faster than he was, despite seeing her plateau quite a few times already.

Turning to Keith, he used Advanced Spy on the large man, who had practically stagnated in levels. He had gained a couple since he started training Jenny, but John had a feeling that had nothing to do with them.

“You really want to, Jenny?” Keith asked, getting back up. He obviously still hadn’t totally recovered from his spar with John, but he looked ready to fight again either way.

“Sure! It’s been a while anyway!” Jenny replied, strumming her replacement bass. She danced further onto the roof.

“Throw a left hook!” John said from the couch in jest as Keith got into position. “Throw a right hook! Throw another left hook!”

Jenny tried to scowl at him but couldn’t keep it up and broke into a smile. Slipping earbuds he hadn’t seen before into her ears, she started playing the intro to a song even John knew as Keith tried to run at her, steeled up again. Her music restrained him, and he had to dig his feet into the concrete.

“Ever since I was a young girl, I played the silver ball. From Soho down to Brighton, I must’ve played them all!” Keith started to slowly advance, the sound waves bouncing off his metal body. Despite this, Jenny didn’t move at all, nor did she look worried. She tossed her crimson hair back and played on.

“But I ain’t seen nothing like him, in any amusement hall. That deaf-dumb-and-blind kid… sure plays a mean pinball!” The moment the music relented, Keith broke into a dead sprint toward her. He made to punch her, and she slipped just out of his reach. The music kicked back in, and she arched against him, back to back, before somersaulting around to let her riffs blast him.

Keith didn’t seem to take much damage but, in his unstable stance, was knocked to the edge of the roof. I thought for sure this would go similarly to our fight, since her main advantage is Agility, but she’s playing him like a fiddle… or a bass, John thought as she started singing again.

“He’s a pinball wizard there has to be a twist! A pinball wizard, s’got such a supple wrist.” As she said it, the sound waves once again oppressed Keith’s movement. Since she was closer to the song’s apex, they had grown more powerful. He began advancing once again, but much slower. She grew silent as her bass grew louder, going into an impromptu solo. Keith once again came to a stop.

I regret teaching her that immediately, Keith thought, grabbing a potion from his belt. Looking down, he was slightly surprised the newfound **** of her music hadn’t shattered the bottles. Winding up as a pitcher would, he threw the round bottle like a baseball toward her. It shot forward faster than he could, shattering on her hands. The snakeworm mucus which had worked so well against John during their first spar caused Jenny to fumble with her bass before it solidified, preventing her from playing.

“The bad news is that you won’t be able to hold anything until it hardens. The worse news is that when it does, you won’t be able to break it. Checkmate Jenny,” Keith explained, looking mighty proud of himself. He undid his steel form as he walked toward her. “Do you surrender?”

“Ew. Also, never!” came her defiant response as she leapt over him, kicking him in the face in the process. She struggled to break out of the substance that had hardened her hands together to no avail.

“Hey, Keith!” John called, distracting the man as David swooped down at top speed, breaking the binds on Jenny’s hands while Keith was distracted.

“What?” he asked, turning around for just a moment. By the time he looked back at her, David had gone invisible, leaving no trace of his intervention save for Jenny’s now free hands.

Still can’t move my fingers though… Jenny thought, moving to the edge of the roof. She had no hope of breaking through the mucus, so she switched to another tactic.

Keith charged at her as David flapped back to John. She sidestepped him at the last moment and kicked his back, though her weak blow did nothing to knock him off the roof.

“You know you aren’t strong enough to-” Keith started, turning back to her. His biggest mistake. The whites of her eyes shone a radiant gold, and she had him ensnared

“Why don’cha take a few steps backward, Keith?” Jenny asked, her voice smoother than silk. “Just a step or two. Enough to knock you out of the barrier, sure. Not enough to make you fall off though. You know I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

Jenny slowly walked toward him as Keith did his best not to follow her commands. He took a trembling step backward, and most of his left heel was off the roof. Jenny was directly in front of him now, not even a foot away. She gently placed a stiff finger on his chest as she continued in the same voice, “That’s it. Almost there. Just one more tiny step.”

Just then, Kimberly reentered the barrier with a bowl of popcorn, and seeing her shocked face was enough to break Keith out of his trance. Seizing Jenny’s wrist before she could realize he had snapped out of it, he dropped her off the side, onto the fire escape outside of the barrier.

“It almost worked!” Jenny insisted, resting snugly in John’s lap, one hand in the popcorn, the other in his pants.

“Better not mix those up,” Kimberly commented, “I don’t want dick-tasting popcorn.” Jenny stuck her tongue out at her as Keith walked in carrying a crate roughly the size of his torso.

“Here’s your order, lad. Fifteen health potions, twenty bottles of mana, five moderate regenerative elixirs, ten moderate magical regenerative elixirs, five essences of wind, two all-purpose antidotes, and three charm-breakers. Something I should start keeping on me from now on,” Keith finished with a growl in Jenny’s direction. “That was a cheap trick.”

“It didn’t even work!” she retorted. “How the hell did you break out of it! I had you!” She of course had no clue that Keith only won because Kimberly happened to walk back in. He wasn’t going to tell her that.

With a wink in his wife’s direction, Keith replied, “I guess I’m just that good.” Jenny’s grip on John’s shaft through his boxers tightened as she glared at Keith.

They were broken out of their argument by insistent tapping at their window from a familiar mail-delivery drone.

“Were you expecting anything, honey?” Kimberly asked, getting up to open the window and let the mail in.

“Don’t think so, no,” Keith replied, scratching his head. All negative feelings were sucked out of the room as John and Jenny realized at the same time.

“That means it’s either my guns or your bass!”
“That means it’s either my bass or your guns!”

They spoke in unison, bolting past Kimberly to open the window. John arrived slightly later, as Jenny dashed past him, sliding her hand out of his pants, gave him a nasty bit of cloth burn. The box the drone carried hardly fit, but it seemed much too big to be for John’s guns or Jenny’s bass. This didn’t deter either of them, and their ear-to-ear grins weren’t broken upon opening the box.