Hallway Brawl

‘This is getting ridiculous’

John stifled a yawn while he thought that, and set about Observing everyone present. He had arrived at an outdoor seating area with some benches in the school courtyard some 15 minutes ago. As one of the main social gathering spots, it seemed like a good place to spot a potential Abyssal clique trying to blend in.

The yawn itself wasn’t what was getting ridiculous, though it was certainly related. Rather, John had lost count of the amount of times today where he had been slower to notice or realize something than he should have.

This time, he had spent the past quarter of his free period watching the people present for signs of being a possible Abyssal clique. But on account of classes, few enough people were here that he could have Observed everyone by now and been on with it.

Somewhere between five and ten minutes later, he had done exactly that and found no new Abyssals. He even checked the Quest counter to make sure he didn’t hit one that looked unassuming even in the Observe info.

Next stop was the school cafeteria, or rather the vending machines in the hallway just outside the cafeteria. Clearly, the little adrenaline stunt he had pulled in the morning wasn’t enough to deal with the sleepiness of the day. Caffeine was needed, and the vending machine in question had energy drinks as well as regular soft drinks.

‘TASTE!’ was a weird name for a brand of energy drink. Like other energy drinks without a specific flavor, it tasted highly synthetic and with a hint of something that was to citrus what medieval paintings of cats were to actual cats. In other words, not a pleasant taste by any measure John would consider reasonable.

He wasn’t drinking it for the taste, though, so whatever. John felt the effects hit unusually fast, but since it coincided with a little buff icon showing up on his HUD, he had strong suspicion why. The tooltip not only confirmed it, but also came with the nice surprise that this apparently counted as an Elixir and thus got a duration buff from Low Alchemy.

Beverage in hand, he ventured inside the cafeteria. Being the second of the two areas where the majority of students hung out when not busy, he needed to check it out for all of the same reasons why he checked out the outdoor area before.

Happily, he noted that neither Frank nor Vanessa was in sight. Them being in neither of the main hangouts strongly suggested he didn’t share this free period with them.

Sweeping the cafeteria took about ten minutes. In that time, he had found no Abyssals and gotten halfway through his energy drink. He had also ended up dredging up a few mildly unpleasant memories.

The reason was that one small group in the cafeteria that stood out were a group of nerds who had RP in the 20-30 range rather than the usual 0-ish for most guys. Those guys had been his friends in Middle School, but when they started High School and Vanessa entered the equation, they had been told to ditch John or be specifically targeted as bullying victims along with him.

They had chosen the former, and offered to be secret friends outside of school time. John had more or less told them to get bent, and that was that. In retrospect, what they did was probably the least shitty way to go about bending the proverbial knee. That didn’t mean John was going to ask if the offer was still open.

With more than half the free period gone, John couldn’t make it to more than one or two possible loner spots if he wanted to be in sociology class on time. Which he kind of didn’t, but he wanted to not get in trouble for skipping it more than he wanted to skip.

The library seemed like the best place to start with those, and then continue from there until he ran out of time. Heading decided, he quickly gulped down the rest of his energy drink, tossed the can in the trash and got moving.

The first interesting target of that trip was a short girl with shoulder-length blonde hair and an interesting bit of text above her head.

Tricia “Danielle Kislev” Gorbachev
Lvl 9, Scythian Healer
Drone Jockey
18 years old
RP: 0
Guild: Gorbachev Opekuny [GO]
Guild Rank: Member

Before meeting Qhila, he would have classified Tricia as small. For a grown human she definitely was, standing more than a head shorter than John’s almost precisely average height. But for all John knew, she could be of a different species and perfectly normal size, or even uncommonly big, for her kind.

In any case, she joined Kim in being a girl who fell well outside John’s usual tastes but whom he found highly attractive regardless. Tricia/Danielle, or whatever name he ‘should’ think of her as, was slanted a lot more towards cute than sexy, though. John idly wondered if attractiveness was just a universal trait of young women in the Abyss.

For her part, she paid him only the barest minimum of attention needed to not bump into him in passing.

Rather than ponder the potential implications of her Observe info, John decided to stay the course and cover as much ground as he could before lunch instead. Which paid off almost immediately, from an unexpected source.

Dr. David Enkleman
Lvl 34, Illusionist
On Wentworth’s Leash
143 years old
RP: 6
Guild: None
Guild Rank: N/A

Mr. Enkleman, or Dr. Enkleman apparently, was just about the last person John would have expected to have any Abyssal connection. As far as John had known previously, Enkleman was more or less tied with Mrs. Flung for the title of ‘most boring human alive’.

Obviously, that one now went to Flung uncontested. In fact, John now wondered if the ultra boring fossil of a history teacher impression was an entirely fabricated facade. If so, Enkleman was doing an admirable job of going to near-excessive lengths without it coming across as ****.

The tweed-clad wrinkle of a man, meanwhile, only reacted to John with a brief glance, which might have been just looking to see who entered, and went back to saying something to the librarian. Without further ado, John set about Observing whoever else was in the library.

John had managed to check the library and the one computer lab that was open to the students when it wasn’t used for a class. He hadn’t found anyone after Enkleman, but given that most of the school was busy with classes, finding two during his free period was probably pretty good.

Then he had gone to the usual rabid misandry sermon that was sociology class with Ms. Stanfield.

He was running a little later for the lunch rush than he had hoped, though, as the hardline feminist teacher had worked herself into enough of a furor over the alleged evils of men that she didn’t notice that class was supposed to be over until one of the girls pointed it out to her.

Being late for the lunch rush wasn’t an issue in terms of food, since he had both chicken tenders and leftovers from yesterday sitting in his inventory. The issue was that a lot of people took their food out of the cafeteria to eat somewhere else, and at least some of those would’ve come and gone without him being there to Observe.

A shift in the student noise up ahead told John that someone was getting publicly humiliated. John instinctively set about figuring out the best way to go around it, but stopped in his tracks when he reached the top of the stairs down to ground level.

As it happened, the debacle was happening right at the bottom of those stairs, thus giving John a clear view despite the gathering crowd. That alone wouldn’t have made him stop, he generally thought poorly of gawking while someone got bullied.

Rather, he stopped because he was appalled by watching Frank sink to a new low. The meathead jock was circling Christie, poking her with her pilfered white cane and jeering at her when she was inevitably unable to grab it.

Maybe it was because he had killed the rat ogre, maybe it was an ember of the fury that had brought him to draw the rat ogre’s attention in the first place, maybe it was courage born from having increased his physical stats by a lot, and maybe it was a combination of all three.

Whatever it was, letting this stand unchallenged was absolute anathema to John. He cast Enhance Muscle for more STR in his arms, cursing the 10 second cast time for forcing him to stall all the while, and called out.

“Frank! Just ‘cause your surname matches your dad’s hobby doesn’t mean you get to steal from the blind.”

John was utterly certain that Frank didn’t understand the insult. Between John’s derisive tone and the wave of poorly suppressed snickers passing through the crowd, he didn’t need to in order to decide that John was in need of a beating.

With a roar that might have been a particularly poorly articulated ‘NEWMAN’, Frank rushed up the stairs, knocking people aside as he went. The goon had a brief moment of surprise on his face when John didn’t immediately turn tail and run, but once Frank realized that his target wasn’t running, it only seemed to anger him further.

When he got to the top, Frank opened with a very predictable gut punch. The difference between the last several dozen times John was on the receiving end of it and now was that now John had the strength necessary to deflect it.

5 blunt damage

John countered with a punch while the bully was too off balance from the hasty strike to react. Punching Frank’s chest felt like hitting a tree, but the brief flinch on the jock’s face and the damage notification both told John he was still getting somewhere.

Getting punched harder than he had expected John capable of didn’t do anything to deter Frank, though. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that it didn’t do enough. As soon as he had recovered his balance, Frank continued swinging at John with unbridled aggression, but throughout his offense he didn’t once overstep his balance again.

-1 HP

-2 HP

-1 HP

-0 HP

John managed to keep his defense up, but he could find no opportunity to counter attack without being guaranteed to immediately suffer for it. Worse yet, every 3 or 4 attacks he blocked poorly enough to take minor damage still.

How things were going led John to two unpleasant realizations. One was that all he had really achieved with the decent-ish punch he landed was to make Frank take him seriously as a physical threat. The other, more troubling one was that even with Enhance Muscle, Frank was still stronger.

All that John’s growth so far had done to the matchup was make it a fight at all, rather than a curb stomp. That it was even that much was probably only the case because John kept a mostly level head while Frank didn’t, and because Frank’s experience with fist fights overwhelmingly consisted of delivering one-sided beatdowns.

-0 HP

-2 HP

-1 HP

Something had to change, or this was a losing battle. And since John would definitely start to wear out first, it had to change fast. But what? And how? Nothing in his inventory was a solution. Neither the healing potions nor the biker jacket would solve the fatigue issue, and as much as John detested the jock, he wasn’t going to try to **** Frank with the Alchemist’s Fire.

-1 HP

-2 HP

-1 HP

John was already starting to slow down a tiny bit. The punches that did minor damage were now close to being every other one. Could he do something with the surroundings perhaps? Baiting Frank into falling down the stairs was out due to the risk of killing him. The wall maybe?

Frank wasn’t punching ‘deep’ enough to hit a wall behind John if John got out of the way. If he had been, he’d have over extended his balance a bunch anyway and given John openings that way. But maybe if John could provoke Frank further and get him to over extend and punch a wall, he could finish this as fast as he needed.

-3 HP

-1 HP

-2 HP

“That all you’ve got?” John put on his cockiest, most mocking tone. Hopefully, between his recent CHA increases, Bluff, and Frank already being riled up and stupid besides, the bully wouldn’t realize that John was mildly ****. “I thought you were supposed to be impressive, but my grandma packs more punch.”

-2 HP

Another bad block from John, but that punch wasn’t overextending either. John needed to up the taunting game. Unfortunately, the only way he could think of was going to hurt. John took a big step back and held his arms out wide, completely open. This surprised Frank and made him hesitate for a moment, which John seized to pile on the taunts.

“Come on, give it your best shot. Show me if there’s less air in your biceps than there is in your skull.”

Again, the words probably went mostly over Frank’s head, but the tone certainly didn’t.

-19 HP

Ouch! That hurt more than expected. John was somewhat braced for it, though, keeping him from crying out. And the pain subsided quickly as Gamer’s Body repaired the damage in the blink of an eye. Recovering quickly from the gut punch made it look like it hadn't been much of a hit, exactly as planned.

Standing up straight, and adjusting his position to stand by the wall opposite the stairs, John put every last iota of disdain for his bully of more than a decade into a single word. “Pathetic”

Veins popped on Frank’s neck and forehead, and he audibly ground his teeth together before charging at John. Only, he wasn’t going for a punch this time. He was going for a full body tackle.

That was okay, John got some practice dodging those yesterday.

-13 HP

-27 HP

John’s dodge got him not far enough, not fast enough. As the inside of Frank’s left elbow caught him by the face and the brute slammed both of them into the wall, John realized that during that practice yesterday it was his legs that were buffed, and his attacker had been drunk off its ass. Neither of which were true now.

-5 HP

To make matters worse, Frank recovered slightly faster. As John raised his head off the floor, Frank threw a punch at the back of his head to keep him down. Thankfully, the jock did so from halfway through rising himself, and the bad angle and balance robbed the hit of most of its ****. Which was very good because John’s HP were in the single digits now.

John’s second attempt at getting up was thwarted by Frank grabbing his leg and hauling him towards the stairs. For a moment, John was afraid that the brute would toss him over the railing and into a fall to the floor below.

Frank didn’t do that, instead letting go when they got to the stairs. He then picked up Christie’s white cane that he had foolishly dropped when he began swinging wildly after John landed the one punch.

Just as Frank raised the cane to strike, the voice of Mrs. Wentworth cut through the air unexpectedly. “Fighting in the hallways is strictly prohibited. You will cease this childish nonsense at once.”

It was testament to how thoroughly John had pissed Frank off that he struck anyway.

“Mr. Dickinson. My office, immediately.” How she had said all that in time for Frank to stop mid-swing was a mystery. But she had, and she had spoken not only with the ire of a strict teacher disciplining an unruly student. Her tone carried the same undercurrent of danger as in her barrier, when John had spoken not to his civics teacher but to a mage so powerful her level was a skull symbol.

Frank had frozen mid-swing and noticeably turned a shade paler, but it still took a moment before he complied. Turning to stomp off behind Wentworth, the jock flung Christie’s cane in John’s general direction and snarled,