The Gamer 2

Buildings burned all around him, and John, a passive observer in his own body, watched himself jump into action as a passenger, sweeping a kick toward Wallace’s knee, but one massive hand caught his foot easily in its palm. A spike of pain seared through his crushed foot, but with a bright flash his foe’s arm fell off at the elbow. Blood wet the quickly healing wound as the goliath went on the defensive, fists surrounded by shadowy black power to swipe away the sword; both sought to erase the other from reality in totality, so neither could succeed.

Lucien emerged from the nearby besieged Rider-Waite skyscraper, bashing through friend and foe alike as he made a beeline for their group. Overhead, clouds swirled into a storm as unseen forces fought for control of the barrier. A bolt of white lightning came down, striking the top of the skyscraper and casting shadows all across its surface from the war below.

Good, with Lucien here I can focus on getting everybody to safety. Even the old Strength should struggle with them, John heard himself think, gaze shifting from the two fighting gods beside his group of friends emerging from the groaning skyscraper set ablaze beyond.

Jenny bore a tight scowl, blasting apart skeletons with her bass, though the sounds of the fighting drowned out her music. Amy and Grace helped Abigail on either side, an arm each around her shoulder as the brawler stumbled forward through the uneven, destroyed asphalt of the ravaged barrier. Pale, almost gray skin and sunken eyes hinted at the nature and depth of her injury. John’s blood boiled, though it could have been the other him. Mandruzzo and a flash of red hair in a cobbled together mech suit brought up the rear, protecting three blurry silhouettes as the Foreboding dream wavered in John’s awareness.

John spun a dial on a hand-sized rectangular device then threw it into the air; the apparent capsule broke into nine puzzle pieces. He activated Symphony of the Night to deafen the roars of aggression and magical explosions all around just as much as enhancing his vision, quickly switching his friends with one of each piece from the device he had scattered on the street around him. He fired a bullet toward the building and switched with it to retrieve his swapper after the pieces snapped back together. The giant paladin neared him, sword drawn and ready to fight.

“Hey, Lucien, what’s the situation like inside?” John called to his nearby ally, turning to rejoin his friends. John steeled himself for what might come next, but the dream snapped to black in an instant.

Frizzy hair tickled his nose and John stirred from his sleep, wrapping his arms tighter around the muscular stomach in front of him and hands around the softer hips below. He let the paranoia and panic from the nightmare subside along with his heart rate, snuggling into the neck of his warm companion under their blanket as an escape from the frigid air his cryo-unit provided as a relief from the hot July sun. He felt the absence of his redheaded companion by the lack of her weight behind him. The Gamer idly wondered where she could be, cracking an eye open only to see an achievement screen in front of him.

Achievement Unlocked: Survive a year in the Abyss. Since you were so brazen, I was unsure if you’d live through it this time.
1 Level
1 Divine Skill Evolution (Advanced Spy->Data Trace)
1 Skill Evolution Point
Cloak of Longevity

If you really know me, you’d know I had no real choice. In every life I can’t just do nothing. Besides, John brushed his thumb over the arm of his bedmate, sinking deeper into the enchanted cotton covers. With one lazy hand he tapped on his new skill. I’m pretty happy with how things have turned out.

Data Trace, Gamer Skill, Hybrid, Cost: 0 MP
Active: Bends an entity in the world to your perception as The Gamer. Others’ data is freely available to you. Passive: Greatly increased chance to see through illusions, invisibility, and any other false realities. Dreams within dreams are ineffective on the awoken.

The possibilities ran through his mind from the first notification, and another still awaited him. Before swiping the first away, he opened his inventory to Trace his new cloak from his inventory. No window. How’s Data Trace work? I want to know what the cloak does.

Cloak of Longevity
Unique Rarity, Champion Item. Soulbound.
An indestructible heavy black cloak that can take any form of clothing the user imagines as long as it’s black and cloth-based. When resting, it can be overlaid into the user’s aura to add a rich, warm glow. While wearing or bonded with this item, the user’s need for food, water, and air are reduced. Additionally, slows down the aging of the user by 90%. If this item is destroyed through reality altering abilities, it manifests in The Gamer’s aura within an hour. Half as effective on other people.

It shows me what I want. I bet if I wanted to know when Gaia made it… John thought, bringing his inventory window up again and activating Data Trace once more on the cloak.

Cloak of Longevity
Spontaneously created at midnight for the Gamer’s 19th birthday.

That’ll come in handy. Knowing what spells my enemies have, who touched something last, and I can read it quicker than the spy sheets, John reasoned, finally swiping away his inventory and the first achievement with a waggle of his finger.

Achievement Unlocked: Turn Nineteen. You have almost reached your physical prime! Make use of the cloak soon. You have reason to be happy with what you have done. I never regretted the choices I have made either. However, I do not envy you the road ahead.
+5% to Max Health, Max Mana, Mana Regeneration, and all Mental Stats.
+10% to all Physical Stats and Max Grit Points
+1 Inch above and below
Hat of Birthdays

No kidding. Prophetic dreams aside, the battle on the horizon has been a long time coming. Is it really going to be today? Is it unavoidable? John found himself asking, turning over to lie on his back and staring at the open doorway and ceiling. His chest rose and fell steadily while he listened intently for sounds of action in his Rider-Waite apartment. No longer could it be called a dormitory, not when his Ten of Swords living space took up a third of a floor. The enormous circular bed he had received as a move-in gift from Adelaide, who had become more attentive to his needs the closer he grew to her mistress.

Quest Complete: --Personal Relations or Guild Relations-- Personal Relations and Guild Relations.
You exceeded my expectations.
Complete: Recruit Phoebe Cross and convince her to ally with you! Bonus: Recruit Josephine Cross and convince her to ally with you! Recruit Jackie Anor and convince her to ally with you! Bonus: Convince Cerys Anaid to ally with you.
Failed: Recruit or convince Houndiira Myduis to ally with you (bond broken)! Recruit or convince Keith Rutherford to ally with you (amalgamated)!
Rewards: EXP Capped at 1,000,000 and Hidden Perk: Smooth Operator

Level up! Level up! Level up!

Smooth Operator: Discourages infighting when leading groups of 100 or less people. Others are inspired by your bold actions and consistent responsibility. Works best on individuals with high RP scores. Does not prevent genuine betrayal.

The dings signifying each level rang in his head and compelled him to rise from bed with a light grunt and a wide open yawn. He dumped the points mostly into Agility and Wisdom, then tapped the bracelet on his wrist to bring up its holographic display and the time. Abigail stirred behind him, and he pushed his bedroom door open with his non-braceleted hand. Damn, already ten o’clock. And it’s my birthday! I wonder if Jenny-

“Surprise!” A collection of friends, allies, and acquaintances greeted him, some just barely finishing with putting a gift into place on his far table or food on the nearby countertop that separated his living room from his kitchen.

“Sorry to surprise you so early, Johnny, it was the best way we could get to ya today before you went out on a mission.” Jenny smiled, sauntering up to him and taking one arm.

“And it was my idea! I was supposed to distract you if you woke up too early. Too bad, huh?” Abigail grinned suggestively, taking his other arm and looking impossible to be mad at with her genuine loving smile.

“I can’t really blame you,” John admitted, waving to Mandruzzo when the bubble mage walked through the door, one giant metallic box in his arms that he settled onto the ground next to John’s gift table.

“I know you’re not really the party and dance type like I am, John,” Jenny tucked a lock of crimson hair behind her ear and gestured to the semi-circle crowd coming together in his spacious den, “but there are a lot of people that love you, and we wanted to do something for you. Come look at everything we set up!”

The redhead pulled him along; the brunette behind him followed her lead and tugged him forward similarly, toward a setup of six chairs which resided in spherical gyro structures. “Happy birthday, John! These here are Rider-Waite training pods, repurposed for the day as the ultimate virtual reality gaming machines,” Olivia piped up, stepping out from behind the machines with her hands tucked behind her back. “Typically this technology is pretty restricted to **** situations because it can be addicting to use. Once in a while for people like us is okay though. With barrier magic and virtual technology, an hour in there is only a minute out here.”

“Good to see you Olivia.” John nodded, smiling at the mechanist before him in her familiar brown and blue mechanic outfit.

Olivia loaded a game for them onto the VR capsules, and John entered a spaceship with a city-wide sci-fi planet below. Jenny appeared in green mechanical armor with no helmet at the top of a nearby staircase and pointed her fingers at him like a gun, firing a laser blast from her fingertip that soared above his head.

“Warning shots are a bad idea!” John laughed, making the same motion with his hand and exploding her character in a shower of exaggerated pixels with a shot through the head. The beast tamer and the bubble mage appeared on either ends of the railed walkway John stood on, and the Gamer leapt into action.

Though all his friends teamed up on him, his out of practice gaming skills and his arduously gained combat skills easily won him the match. John pulled his hands from their place in the spherical pod, and shook his head and hair when he removed the sweaty helmet. His friends all followed suit. Abigail and Jenny quickly sidled up to him, but the other redhead on his mind entered his apartment.

“Isabelle, good. Not to put a damper on the mood, but do you think we could talk in private for a few minutes?” John asked, breaking free from his lovers’ embrace with a quick peck on both near cheeks.

“Of course. If you’re making a pass at me though… not even on your birthday.” The swordswoman laughed, putting an arm around the Gamer’s neck and leading him to the guest room he had converted into a storage room. John looked sidelong at his mentor with a smirk, unsure he’d ever heard her joke before.

“I wouldn’t mind it.” Abigail giggled, nodding at the amazonian woman’s body while she elbowed the rockstar at her side.

“That’d be something else.” Jenny laughed, a touch of disappointment on her cheeks as she watched her man retreat from the party. “Let’s try the food Mandruzzo and Isabelle brought! I haven’t eaten since we started the setup.”

“What’s this about?” Isabelle asked, flipping her hair out of her face and tying it back into a ponytail. “Something need takin’ care of?”

“Yes. Well, maybe,” John sighed, pacing back and forth while his mentor reclined back onto a nearby floating yellow cloud. “I hope not.”

“Spit it out then, what’s going on?” Isabelle asked, hand going to the sword belt at her side out of reflex. She shifted to put her hand on her knee, trying her best to look patient for her student.

“Sometimes I have prophetic dreams. Usually I make some choices that change what would happen, but the general events stay pretty consistent,” John began, half-expecting the restless swordswoman to roll her eyes at the divination he unconsciously performed, but to his relief, she listened with rapt attention. “I had one last night that a battle, maybe even a war, broke out tonight between us and Nairis. You were fighting the last Strength, and my friends were hurt. Our skyscraper was under siege, and I don’t think we were winning.”

“Well? Don’t leave anything out,” Isabelle demanded, rising from his puffball floating cushion and tightening her robe around herself, closing it fully and drawing her belt tighter.

“What’s going on in there?” Mandruzzo quietly asked the redhead with her ear against the door, causing Elizabeth to perk up and step back. She waved her hand back at him as if to silence him before resuming her eavesdropping. He summoned a bubble between his hands and molded it into a longer tube before putting it around both of their heads.

“Little trick I’ve known a while, they won’t hear us in here and their words can get in but not out,” the bubble mage explained, absently listening to John recount his prophetic dream. “Sounds like only one of us was there.”

“Yeah, I probably got out while the getting is good,” Elizabeth retorted, stepping away from the door and slowly dragging one of the cardboard cut-outs Grace had made for pictures in front of them. “If everything is going down tonight, we should all get out of here. The Rider-Waites should evacuate, scuttle the bases, and break the mirrors. Leave nothing for them to attack.”

“That won’t make the entity go away,” Mandruzzo sighed, crossing his arms and casting a sidelong gaze to the unperturbed clusters of people eating, gaming, and drinking. “What happens when it gets to DC? We’ve got an outpost there. What about the Manhattan base? It’s not just going to stop.”

“We know Nairis’ name, don’t be too afraid to use it,” Elizabeth countered. Letting out a frustrated puff of breath, she shuffled away from the door now that its occupants' voices carried through the bubble clearly.

“Unless I am going to act against it personally right now, I’d rather not let myself get too involved with the energy surrounding such a being’s true name. What if she can hear anyone who says it? I am being pragmatic. You are the one that wants to run.” He popped his bubble when John finished his recounting and began discussing what they should do with Isabelle. He left her with a whisper, “I trust John’s judgement. Knowledge like this could set some of these people into a panic, and I’m going to enjoy the party while it lasts.”

“Suit yourself,” Elizabeth mumbled, pressing her ear back to the door now that her aid left.

“I’m going to get The Magician and The Emperor together to discuss this, they’re both on reserve here. If all hell breaks loose, find me first. I’ve talked Astra into a joint birthday gift from us. It’s not something I can put on a table,” Isabelle explained, one hand on her sword as she straightened out, sifting through the hundreds of auras in the building in search of her colleagues. “Go have fun, be with the people in your life, you earned it. You don’t get chances like this every day.”

She disappeared before he could reply, and John sighed to himself, collecting the floating nimbus from his storage room into his inventory with a touch for potential gurney use later. He likewise took his motorcycle into his inventory, key in the ignition. Lastly, he opened a nearby drawer and scooped out a hodgepodge pile of stickers Grace had given him over the past few months, depositing them into his inventory then making his way through the cluttered storage room.

On his way out, he could have sworn he heard footsteps, and paranoia already overtook him as he craned his neck around the cardboard cutouts of heroes and orcs from his most recent game grind that Grace had painted for him. “Hello?”

“Hi John,” Elizabeth said, sounding **** and popping out from behind a bare chested fighter cutout. Her tone changed to enthusiasm when she continued, “I’ve been looking for you! The gift table was getting a little full, so I wanted to give you your gift directly.”

“Sure, thanks,” John said, nodding nonchalantly and looking behind her to see his girlfriends taking plates of steaming hot food from sturdy raised metal trays that glowed with swirls of orange heating runes. Eventually, he looked down at the empty-handed electromancer. “Where is it?”

“I left it on the table.” Elizabeth deflated, backing away toward the drink tables beyond the photo area.

“You thought the gift table was too full, so you came to give me your gift yourself, which you left on the gift table?” John repeated, eyes narrowing as he caught on to her true intentions. “Glad you could make it, Elizabeth.”