Play Test: Stuck in Another World as a Reality TV Contestant

The camera hung motionless outside a fogged window forty feet above the cracked sidewalk. Below was blemished and broken concrete, free of any unwilling or unknowing extras. People avoided my block when they could, and when they couldn't, they preferred to cross on the other side of the street. Fear or respect pushed most away, a psychic bubble around my gym and the two trap houses to either side of me. It was fine by me. I was just glad not to have gawkers by the windows; I still hadn't installed curtains.

I wiped the glass of condensation, revealing my amused face to the camera before opening the window and sitting down on the sill, my leg half outside the building. The little multipurpose rectangle recording me was Annie's pride and joy, a brand new Iji8500 that cost twice her monthly rent and was our only device capable of shooting in 8k – a shame, really. I almost felt bad for her, but it was a rite of passage at this point. This was Annie's first day with telekinesis, and as far as I knew, it was impossible, maybe even illegal, to go through your first day without breaking some of your shit; best we rip the band-aid off now, in controlled circumstances.

We would edit in Annie's heavy breathing and whatever song we ended up going with as the window opened in post. Everything else would be in-camera, but neither of us had the tech or know-how to mic the scene properly. The song – we were thinking something with that early 00's triphop feel – would start faint and distorted, as though playing from a cheap wireless speaker before rising into a proper backing track with the action.

"Jeez, Shine, you're fogging up this place worse than a sauna." I was cool and collected with my mug of steaming hot coffee, eyes twinkling with mirth. A viewer would only need one look at my face to get the tone for the scene – a mischievous master chiding his student.

I took an actual sip of coffee, not merely miming it this time. We were on our sixth and final take; the last two had been more than good enough for amateurs. This one was ostensibly just for the sake of professionalism, though I had my own hidden intentions.

Annie sat up, panting with mock effort as she played to a wide-angle lens under my control. The shot framed both her and I in our gym's stud and joist exposed fourth floor, lit with the ample natural light afforded to this place by its lack of interior walls. "Sorry, Shifu."

The current plan was to cut to the wide a few times in the beginning before switching back to the Iji for the rest of the scene as it swooped in behind me – a little surprise one-shot long-take. We'd set up the expectation for a cut back to the wide to hide a tricky transition, but said cut would never come. There were no hidden transitions needed when your camera was telekinetically controlled. It was probably more artistry than was called for in the world of amateur softcore martial arts erotica, but it made us happy, and that was all that mattered in the end. Why make anything if you weren't having fun with it?

I yawned. "It's alright; just a sign we should call it for today."

"What!? No way! I almost had you."

"'Almost' is doing heavy lifting there.

She pouted. "What happened to 'no lunch until you hit me?'"

"Oho. I didn't say we were calling it for lunch, did I? Pizza is for winners, Annie. But don't worry; I'm not a cruel master. You can have some crackers, if you'd like. Let's say…three?" I dramatically savored another sip of coffee. "Yeah. That's a good sub-lunch number."

"Three? Three individual crackers?"

I scratched my chin. "Maybe a couple of grapes, too."

Annie pushed herself to her feet and into a square Southern Boxing stance, effortlessly balancing on two narrow joists. "I demand one more chance, Shifu!"

"Hmm, I don't know. I'm kind of attached to the idea of eating the whole pie myself now."

"It wasn't a request!" Annie started running straight at me. "Death or pizza!" she yelled, launching herself into a wild flying kick.

I half-stepped to the side, letting her pass almost all the way through the open window before arresting her movement with a hand on her shoulder and some tactile telekinesis. There was a Looney Tunes moment where Annie was straight as an arrow while held motionless above the sidewalk, eyes wide and panicked for the Iji's benefit. With an exaggerated jerk, I yanked her back inside and threw her to the far side of the room, making sure to grab hold of her sports bra as I did. Midair, Annie masterfully twisted to make it look uncontrolled and natural, finding a way to stick her arms over her head as she did for my benefit.

She hit the joists convincingly hard and did a handspring back to her feet, bouncing off the studs behind her. Wobbling and shaking her head as though thrown for a loop, she took a few steps forward before looking down at her now bare breasts and then back at me, now spinning her sports bra around my finger.

"Hey!" She yelled, covering her chest with an arm. Her acting wasn't great, but there was plenty to distract the viewer in the scene.

I smirked. "Going to try me one-handed? Don't know about that, Annie."

"Give it back, James!"

"Nah. But, tell you what, we can change up the rules a bit. Make me spill even a drop of my coffee, and we'll call it your win."

Annie growled and raised her arms back into a fighting stance. "You're on."

"Ha! Now that's the sort of fighting spirit I love to see."

I threw her bra behind me out the window and darted forward. The camera panned down to catch its long fall to the ground below, showcasing just how high we were before swooping inside mid-duel.

What followed was a painstakingly choreographed acrobatic extravaganza designed to showcase both our bodies and art with every move. Annie took full advantage of the space, putting her new Rule of Cool and Improvised Brawler Feats to the test as she darted under and through the joists. She was thin enough to easily drop through the floor and strong enough to catch a joist and fling herself back up behind or over me, attacking my balance and the hand holding the coffee mug at every conceivable angle. Meanwhile, I demonstrated the casual and entrancing defense of the Candle Shadow Dance, flowing and weaving through the attacks unpredictably. She snapped out her strikes like the cracking of a whip, and I was ethereal, ephemeral, never still, never knowable. Despite the absence of floor, we were never off-balance, more confident in these extremes than most were on flat ground.

Eroticism coursed undeniably throughout the many-minutes-long fight scene, though there was never anything overt – anything too overt, at least. I flicked her nipples here and there and laid brief pecks on her arms and legs with some near misses, but those were more taunting than teasing. As the skit progressed, that distinction became less clear. Our naked torsos kept in increasingly more frequent contact as I rolled off her strikes and attempts to grapple me, my hands occasionally lashing out to poke the various pleasure points distributed across her body. At one point, I started to taunt her by keeping my chest glued to her back and my coffee cup directly in front of her face. Shortly after that, Annie started to 'forget' the purpose of the exercise, often missing a punch to goose my butt and using kicks as paper-thin excuses to maximize how much time her inner thighs spent in direct contact with me.

The fight was supposed to end with Annie molding her body to my front, pulling me into a long kiss, and then, when I was distracted, using her elbow to tip the cup in my hand. I would then shrug, cast it aside, and use both hands to grab her ass.

This time when we kissed, I rolled an opposed Sensuality + Seduction check against her Willpower + Telekinesis, deliberately trying to break her concentration through non-magical pleasure alone.

Annie moaned into my mouth, forgetting herself and the scene to wrap her arms around my neck. She'd had little chance to succeed. I had ample bonuses, and she was new to telekinesis and had already endured hours of teasing.

The sound of the Iji8500's plastic shell hitting the ground floor snapped her out of it.

"Shit," she hissed, breaking off the kiss.

"Hm?" I played dumb. Annie would forgive me for the trick after she had a new functioning camera; until then, I was saying nothing.

"The Iji. Fuck." She reached her hand down and screwed up her face. It had taken us an hour of working together, and a very good Teaching roll on my part to get her to be able to smoothly move the camera through the air for the scene. Even then, she'd essentially constructed remembered 'rails' to run the box along in her mind. This was unrehearsed telekinesis.

The little box clipped three joists as it whipped its way up to her, making Annie wince each time. Incredibly, though, the red recording light was visible, and the little screen on the back was not only still on but hadn't even cracked. Nor did the lens on the front appear damaged. Apart from a few superficial chips on the hard plastic edges, you wouldn't have been able to tell anything had happened to the camera at all.

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Annie navigated through its menus, testing everything before sagging with relief and breathing out a long breath. "God, I love this thing. It's totally fine. And we got our best blooper to date! So cool."

My jaw dropped. This could not be. It was supposed to be a rite of passage, damn it. "You're shitting me."

She grinned. "Why do you sound disappointed?"

I shook my head. "You dropped that fifty feet and hit three joists pulling it back. The first thing I did with telekinesis was shatter my phone, and that was in my living room."

"Huh. Maybe I'm just lucky."

"Or maybe I'm cursed," I grumbled. "Whatever. I actually am pretty hungry. Let's call it there."

"Sure! We had it last take anyway. Plus, we should check on Smoothie. I don't know if I can trust a kitten that can read to be on his own, James."

"It's not the reading. It's the etiquette. Little man knows just enough about how he ought to behave to be an intentional menace. Tiny orange psychopath."

"Cute tiny orange psychopath," she corrected.

"True. True."

We took our time clambering down, enjoying the open monkey-gym nature of the building while we could. The first pallets of floorboards and lath strips arrived today, which meant that the fun would soon be over. I'd have Annie start palm striking and stomping nails into place after dark. She couldn't get it all done in a night, and even the final design wouldn't see all the holes in the floors covered, but regardless, the place wouldn't be the same janky mess that I'd come to love after.

Actually, thinking about it, there was a chance she could do it all in one night. Her growth had been absurd. I'd have to sit down tonight and figure out exactly what I wanted the interior part of the building to look like. This was our precious gym, after all. I didn't want to leave it all up to Base Tokens and the Producers to design for the same reason I didn't want to leave my relationships entirely up to them. It was a matter of pride and dignity.

Smoothie was laying on his side in the living room, gnawing on a dirty sock when we came in through the mudroom door. He froze, upper-body motionless as his lower legs kicked the sock underneath the couch.

"Smoothie!" I chided. "In what world would that work on me, young man?"

He pretended not to hear me and started gnawing on his paw while laying in the same position as if that was what he'd been up to the whole time, and I had merely hallucinated his mischief.

"Oh, okay, sure. Well, guess what? If I check the hamper before dinner tonight and anything's missing, you're not getting a single treat."

The kitten made an annoyed sound and rolled to his feet, scooping out the sock from under the couch. Ears flat and back, he sulked back to the bathroom sock in mouth.

Annie hid a laugh behind her hand. "I don't think I'll ever get used to that. You two are too cute."

"Hmph. Don't encourage him," I said, heading for the kitchen. "What are you feeling for lunch, by the way? You want something lighter or are you down to break into the protein pizza? I got a hankering after that scene, but the longer the dough cold proofs, the better it'll be."

"Something lighter for sure; my core is already killing me. I can't add a full stomach into the mix." Annie sped up and stepped in front of me to get to the fridge. "Oh, I've got a perfect quick snack!"

I picked her up by the waist and put her down behind me. "Come on, Annie. Sit down, relax. Not even the Shaolin make their students cook their own meals."

The system demanded a Deception from me. The redhead was eager to woo me via my stomach and had brought ingredients with her under the pretense of not wanting them to spoil while she was away from her apartment. Last night, I'd been curious to see how her Attribute gains would affect her cooking and let her cover dinner, but, unfortunately, an improved Finesse score could do nothing to fix a truly awful recipe. Annie made mustard ham and egg salad open-face sandwiches on untoasted sourdough and kale topped with avocado and hot maple syrup. It was like she'd taken 70 years of midwestern white woman cooking and condensed it into a singular assault on the taste buds. It bordered on a hate crime. The French would have executed her.

"Aww, alright. But tomorrow, though. I don't know how long the anchovies will last in the refrigerator."

I stopped myself from responding and went with the good old smile and nod. Fresh anchovies – I'd assumed they were for soup stock when she'd brought them, but, soup? As a quick, in between work-outs snack?

We talked about everything and nothing while I prepared tacos, dicing up fresh pico de gallo to go with the pulled chicken I'd prepped ahead of time. Annie was buzzing from excitement, floating a napkin in front of her and making it dance as she flitted from topic to topic. She had a childlike wonder about learning Qi sorcery that I found charming and relatable. If I wasn't spoiled for powers by the system, I'd have been right there with her.

More than once, my student sucked in a breath to ask a question before changing her mind and moving to a safe topic. The invisible tension that had hovered between us since I told her about Maki still lingered, but fortunately or unfortunately, it had changed since her private training with Ma. I don't know what my mother told her, but Annie seemed more content with the existing status quo. The distance between us remained, and our silences could still verge on the awkward, but I got the impression that I could probably let it go – whatever 'it' was – for months without worry.

That was, of course, a trap. No, I didn't know what relationship advice Ma gave her, but the thought that it could be reasonable was laughable. Lily Li had at one point in her life decided to marry John Chang, a professional scoundrel, and currently found it funny to flirt with her own son. She was a proud murderer with an incoherent range of totally immovable principles; the only reason she was able to exist as she did in modern society was because of her strength and gleeful willingness for violence. I needed to intervene. Even beyond the Producers' meddling, I could not allow Ma's takes on life and romance to settle in my senior student's mind unmoderated by my altogether more sensible opinions.

I would resolve 'it' today, after we finished our training. Maki texted last night to say she needed another day in the BHU library – she'd found a lead on Crucifixion, Missouri. I'd initially been disappointed that she wouldn't be here to watch over Annie's ongoing and rapid metaphysical evolution, but perhaps it was for the best. It gave me time to have the talk.

I was going to tell Annie about the system - let her in on the secret as I had Maki. Not everything – I still felt a sinking pit of distinctly foreign dread anytime I thought about telling someone about the reality show – but it felt too much like stringing her along to not let her in on the origin of most of my powers, especially after her own huge Quest Rewards yesterday. Besides, if I was right about Victor being at St. Christopher's, then I would, sometime soon, have to explain why I was so interested in this total stranger. I only had the name of Annie's hometown to base that conclusion off of, but I'd played enough RPGs that I was confident I'd run into my old friend soon after reaching Crucifixion.

Annie stretched, arms overhead and back arched, in a way that made me consider running my tongue across her abs for dessert. "Sauna time, James?" she asked, tone hopeful, using a bit of seduction to buy herself an extended break. Just a day and a half into the training montage and she was already flagging – good. Kung fu is life. Life is suffering.

"Tonight. You have to earn the sauna. No, but I do have something lighter and less Qi intensive for you. I'm sure your meridians could do with a rest after this morning."

She put a palm over her belly and frowned. "Is that what that is? I did notice feeling…heavier."

"I've got just the solution." I smiled at the image of what I had in mind for her and made another Deception roll. "If there's one thing I know, your feet are never lighter than when your pockets are full of cash. How about we do a few Runr deliveries before heading to the beach? It'll be nostalgic; a lot of our art was developed while running across roofs, and I've been meditating to the sound of waves since I was a kid."

"Aww, that's so nice. I'd be honored if you'd share that with me. Thanks, James."

"Don't thank me just yet. It's still going to be training."

"Of course, of course. I know what I'm getting into."