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

(Part 2)​

I hopped over the ledge onto one of Harbor Hill's finest spots from a rusted-out fire escape. Wind swept the ragged top of the building in gusts, kicking up gravel and decayed slivers of tar paper over a narrow ledge, and rattling the bolts and dangling supports of an ancient water tower like chimes. It was chilly, and the gulls were making an awful racket, but nothing could dampen my spirits. Below, the streets were defined by grim, industrial brutalism, brick and concrete structures towering on either side dotted with broken windows wide enough to see shadows playing in the gutted interiors. The walls were still stained with soot from the kerosene and coal that had lit and powered the long-forgotten factories, their painted logos blasted away by salty ocean storms or covered by decades of graffiti.

The skies above were all the more beautiful by comparison. The sun shone freely, unfettered by skyscrapers or hills, and the biting air was absent the stench of mold and mildew and rotting trash. We were in the heart of the neighborhood but far beyond its chaos and misery. No gang made plays for buildings like this, those where the insides were in total ruin and the roofs were only accessible via dangerous climbs. There were drifters and the despondent dregs of society in the surrounding alleys, but none stayed for long, ousted by ambient violence and rain. Even a drizzle could flood the old streets; water had carved large divots into the ground, and the centuries-old drains had been clogged with the refuse and scum of decades prior.

You were relatively safe, though, once you could navigate your way to a roof. Not many had the skills and courage to do so, particularly with the way the damp lingered in the ever-shaded alleys. Parkour with wet shoes was asking for trouble. But if you spent some time exploring or had someone explain to you the best way up, it wasn't too bad, and the danger created a natural exclusivity. I was on a first/nickname basis with almost everyone who made use of the spot, and even if I were to encounter one of my many enemies here, they would be at a severe disadvantage. I was king crocodile of this swamp. This three-dimensional tangle of broken glass and rusted concrete was my domain. Every inch of this place, every jagged edge, every gaping hole, every sharp drop and blind corner, was both spear and shield for a master of Black City Kung Fu.

I pulled out my phone to check for deliveries and called out behind me. "Keep up, Shine! You won't qualify for bronze jobs at this pace!"

I'd been hoping to introduce Annie to some fellow freerunners, but we were unfortunately alone on the roof today. It was important to me that in the future, Black City practitioners would be known for their neighborliness. That meant taking the time for outreach and actively involving ourselves in the goings-on around us, especially as we grew more aloof by virtue of our strength and fame.

"Aaagh! Jeez!"

Clanks, clangs, and loud groans of exertion announced Annie's arrival. Triceps straining and chains dangling from her shoulders and waist, she pushed herself over the ledge, hooked an ankle under the lip, and rolled over onto her back.

"Hah…hah…lighter, he said. Lighter," she grumbled.

"They're only half the weight—"

"Don't," she interrupted, one finger pointing accusatorily in my direction, "you dare."

"Less Qi intensive, at least."

"It's not less anything intensive, you madman! For the love of God, can we at least take off the nipple chains? They're killing me, James."

"Sure, alright."

"Huh?" Annie snapped her head up to look at me confused. "R-Really?"

"Yeah, why not." I shrugged. "I mean, look at you, all pathetic and helpless like that. You look like a flipped-over turtle. I probably have been going too hard on you, hm?"

She narrowed her eyes and rolled onto her front. With a grunt, she pushed herself to her feet and stomped over to me. I'd wrapped her in thick metal chains that I'd threaded through several kettlebells of varying weights now hanging from her hips. While I was equipped with a shoulder-slung messenger bag, Annie had only room for a small fanny pack underneath it all. "Bastard. You're worse than your mother."

I laughed, pinching her nose between my index and middle finger. "Aww, forgive me. You're too cute to not bully."

Annie puffed up her cheeks and pouted, trying to win points with her puppy dog eyes. It might have worked if I couldn't see the embers sparking in her irises. "Can I at least get a kiss, then? I'm in so much pain."

"If you insist," I said to more than just her request.

I leaned down for a quick peck. The second our lips met, her erotic sorcery spell, a tightly wound packet of Qi and lust energy, shot into me. With a flick of my tongue, I caught her amateurish attempt at a sensitivity curse and sent it back into her, watching it split and wrap itself around her nipples.

She yelped and fell forward, catching herself on my chest and resting her head against me as she rode out the spike of pleasure. I patted her shoulder condescendingly.

"Good effort, Shine. I liked the curse, very Greek mythology of you, a punishment to fit the crime."

"…thanks," she said weakly.

I returned my attention to the Runr app, sifting through the meager pickings. There were never many jobs in the neighborhood, and fewer if you weren't willing to take those that were obviously criminal. You'd think that due to how often bike messengers got shot, robbed, or run over in Harbor Hill, that us freerunners would see more work, but the demand for high-end deliveries just wasn't great enough. Despite the population density of the Hill, most of the residents worked elsewhere in the city, and the majority of businesses that were here could get by off the postal service alone. Typically, back when this was my primary means of income, I'd spend eight to ten hours to make between two and four hundred dollars running jobs for clinics, the hospital, and a handful of law offices.

That was going to be a little awkward today. I'd either be leaving Annie covered in chains and weights out on the sidewalk, or bringing her inside with me, and neither was ideal. We could have just jumped around training parkour on our own, but I found that the time limits, rewards, and unexpected problems inherent to every Runr job couldn't be replicated. Parkour deliveries put a bounty on creativity and execution that made them perfect for pushing yourself.

A '1' popped up on the Diamond Run tab before vanishing instantly, which was fast even for the tier. I tapped the tab, more curious to see who was working the neighborhood than anything else. If Tips was still in town and he'd just sniped a Diamond job off me, then the fool had a scheduled ass beating to look forward to. You couldn't let a man make a mockery of your mercy in the Martial World. Giving someone reprieve after they earned your ire had to mean something, or no one would respect the act. I didn't want people I let off with a warning for their behavior to think they were free to do it again when I wasn't watching, nor did I want my allies to seek retribution on my behalf. Mercy was both promise and expectation, hence why it was rare in the Underworld. Things were simpler by half if you just beat the shit out of whoever wronged you right there and then.

"Huh." This had the stink of Producer influence all over it. "Flagged for suspicious activity – Accept at your own risk. I don't think I've seen that before…"

I read through the job description and shook my head, not sure if I should be annoyed or not. It sure seemed like a little side quest for Annie's benefit, but at the same time, I'd only brought her out for a grueling but otherwise normal day on the roofs.

"Thousand dollars plus a cash tip for eight Neapolitan three-scoop ice cream cones delivered to the corner of Monroe and—" I clicked my tongue at the location, an area of the neighborhood known for its heroin problem. "This is so obviously some sort of trap or set-up."

Annie looked up from my chest. She'd recovered but was using the excuse to continue clinging to me regardless. "For you?"

"For anyone but me, I think. I haven't done any Runr deliveries in weeks, and even before I had a habit of breaking my phones, I was known for forgetting and ignoring them. I don't know – what do you think? This is all for your benefit anyway."

"Oh, gosh. Well, um, a thousand dollars would cover the gas to Missouri, and if someone is stirring trouble nearby, we should do something about it?" She phrased it like a question, perhaps assuming I'd been testing her. "Does it say who posted the job?"

"Just some guy, which is weird. Even the drug dealers will put in a nonsense LLC. Though, this could be fake too; it's, like, crazy douchey, maybe the douchiest name I've ever seen." I turned the phone around to show her.

Annie gagged. "Ew, gross. Braxton Chads? What's that little wiener doing in Black Harbor?"

"He's a real guy? Who looks at a baby and says, 'That's a Braxton, alright?'"

She rolled her eyes. "I'm sure his parents are as bad as he is. It takes a special breed to raise such a shitheel. I'm surprised you've never heard of him; he has like twelve million followers. He's one of those ragebait streamers, the kind of people who give influencers a bad name."

I looked skeptical. "The average influencer is the kind of person who gives influencers a bad name. No offense, of course."

"No offense? James, you had fifteen thousand followers before we ever met."

"Yeah, but those were like friends of friends of friends, though, I'm pretty sure."

"What? How many people do you think—" Annie shook her head. "Never mind. Anyway, we should totally go beat up Braxton and his bodyguards. He's got it coming, and it'll earn us major brownie points across the internet; everyone who isn't an asshole has been manifesting it for years. I bet he's up to no good right now."

A dickhead streamer causing trouble in the neighborhood – Oh, yeah, this was definitely an Annie side quest.

I shrugged. "Alright, sure. Let's go fuck 'em up."

She winced, instantly conflicted, clearly not having expected immediate and full-throated agreement. "Wait, really? Just like that?"

"Yeah. Why not? If you of all people think a dude deserves a beating, then he for sure deserves a beating."

Annie waved her hands back and forth. "I-I think I was just venting, though, James. I mean, Braxton's just some guy, an annoying one, but still, we can't just show up and start a fight."

"What are you talking about? Of course we can. We're martial artists. That's like ninety-nine percent of what we do."

"James, I'm serious!"

"So am I! We're youxia. We're allowed to find entirely arbitrary reasons to beat the shit out of assholes. Why do you think no one with any power likes us? We're ungovernable."

She paused, mouth pursed, trying to find any way to rebut that.

I put my hands on her shoulders. "Annie, trust your instincts. Venting or not, this was your idea for a reason. This world, society, those with power – they're all going to try to use your kindness against you, make you second guess yourself, tell you what's obvious is actually ridiculous. They don't want you to throw a bottle of champagne through your boss's fancy car because she stole your wages! They're going to say things like, 'Hey, that's totally unhinged behavior. What an insane way to address a problem. You should have just done this or that reasonable thing instead.' You know why? Because they don't want to be treated the way they treat others. They're afraid of feeling weak, because they know how they treat those weaker than them. Those supposedly 'reasonable' suggestions are just smokescreens and obstacles they construct to keep them from getting what they deserve. But guess what?"

I slapped my chest and smiled proudly. "I am unhinged. I'm free. I'm loose. A martial artist's privilege is being able to tell the powers that be, you might define me as crazy, but it doesn't matter because that's your problem, not mine. You feel me?"

Annie waffled her head. "I guess. It's not like I disagree that some people deserve a punch to the mouth. But, I mean, it's like, if I saw a video of you breaking Braxton Chads' jaw, I'd think, 'Awesome. Maybe he'll actually shut up now.' But if I saw a video of me breaking Braxton Chads' jaw, I'd think, "Aaaa! What did I do!? So mean!' I know that's silly, but…"

"It is silly, I won't lie." Annie flushed red as I continued. "Don't worry, as you get used to the Martial World, you'll get less squeamish about this sort of thing. I was going to let you take lead today—"

"Oh God, please no."

I nodded. "All good. We're going to play it real easy, alright? We'll head over, see what's up, and take it from there. If he's as dumb and annoying as you say he is, he'll probably do something to deserve a beatdown anyway. If not then, hey, it's whatever." And by whatever, I meant I would probably contrive an excuse to smack him around for a bit, but Annie didn't need to hear that at the moment. "All you've got to do is act in a manner befitting Black City Kung Fu. Got it?"

She nodded seriously. "Yes, shifu."

"Good." I tapped accept on the job, starting the timer on the delivery. "I'm sure we can find a deli on Monroe that sells ice cream by the scoop, and I doubt this dumbass will be able to tell it apart from the specific store he requested on the other side of the neighborhood." For obvious legal reasons, Runr never added any GPS tracking. The app almost necessitated criminal trespassing.

"You're doing the delivery?"

"Of course. It's a choice between Option 1 and Option 1 except we also get paid a thousand dollars plus cash tip. Come on. Try to keep up, or I'll make you add the jade egg as a forfeit for next time we're training in public."

"Right!"

I wasn't concerned about breaking any speed records here; we weren't very far away from Monroe Avenue, and considering we were planning on scamming Chads, it was probably better that we take our time. If this had been a normal job, I'd have pushed Annie to do the real route for the sake of training, but I didn't want her totally exhausted for her debut as a youxia. This had all the hallmarks of a Quest made for her specifically – there was a loathsome imitator to her chosen profession, a moral quandary she was struggling with, and it had happened with convenient timing. I was all but certain there was a fight waiting for her at the end of the delivery, and if not, I was sure I could start one.

At least, for Braxton Chads' sake, I really hoped this was an Annie Shine Quest and not a James Li one. If a ragebait streamer roped me into yet another weeks-long migraine, I would turn his bones to ash out of principle.

Annie looped her heavy chain through a gutted window and out through another, grabbing onto the loose end. By carefully unwinding the chain from around her, she rappelled down the old factory until she was able to safely jump to the ground in a dive roll, surging to her feet to frantically dodge the falling chain and kettlebells. The steel links and iron weights shattered and chipped the old concrete pavers with bone-crushing force, narrowly missing her skull and shoulders multiple times.

I stuck my feet to the wall with telekinesis and walked down while whistling to myself. She was still wrapping the chains back around her as I hopped down and immediately up to the top of a telephone pole. From there, I strode from pole to pole as I made my way out of this section of retired factories and collapsing warehouses, using Scoposthesia – my new sense for when someone was watching me – to make sure I was never outside of Annie's line of sight. There was a lot of 'noise' from the sense while out and about in a city like Black Harbor, but it was easy to shut out, and as long as I focused on the feeling of Annie's gaze, I had no trouble keeping track of her.

We kept up that pace for a minute or two. The former Queen of the Beam's training had pushed her balance to just under the walking on falling leaves level. As I hopped casually from roof to roof, making sure to cross diagonally over streets and alleys to ensure she couldn't just sprint on the ground, Annie kept up by running along telephone, power, and even drying lines. It was an impossibly beautiful sight to me, better than a sunset. Through the power of martial arts and human ingenuity, the slight woman could dance across strings while carrying more than her body weight. Her feet would grace a wire for a fraction of a second, and before the force could fully transfer, she would be moving, skipping over it like a stone over water. Forget casting spells or bargaining with Gods, that was effortlessly cool in ways that other disciplines could only aspire to.

"Oh, thank God," she said after she landed on Monroe Avenue. All of her limbs were trembling, her hair was matted with sweat, and her recently improved Presence Attribute could do nothing to hide the crushing exhaustion in the bags under her eyes. She'd made it look easy in motion, but stopping let the pain catch up to her. "Can I – oof," she clutched her side, oblique cramping, "Can I heal myself?"

"Of course. I think the workout's hard enough, don't you?"

"More than." Annie put her hands on her hips and inhaled, burning a Circular Breathing charge – in her case, somewhat literally. Humid heat wafted off of her in a great wave, condensing on the nearby shop windows. She stood an inch taller, shoulders unstooped and head up and proud. "Ahhh, amazing. I hesitate to say this out loud, but that feeling really does make the brutality worth it."

I grinned. "Noted. I'll remind you of that next time you're cursing me."

We slowed down, jogging down the avenue away from our destination so I could pop my head into every deli we passed. Unfortunately, Braxton Chads had set himself up right in the center of the worst of Monroe, where anything that was sold had to fit through a narrow hole in a floor to ceiling bullet-resistant glass wall. At least it gave me an opportunity to check on the results of the sex magic ritual atop Gardens B. Something had definitely happened. We got more stares, smiles, and nods than I'd ever gotten in Harbor Hill before, and even some polite BDSM-related razzing about the chains. For a neighborhood known for its strict unspoken head-down, no eye contact rules, that was huge. We also crossed the fifteen blocks it took to find ice cream without being catcalled once, something that was borderline miraculous anywhere in Black Harbor.

I told Annie to clamber her way up to the rooftops while I picked up the scam order. Chads had asked for eight ice cream cones like a total asshole. It wasn't unheard of for extremely fancy restaurants in higher trafficked areas to put in orders for ingredients, but I'd never seen someone ask for anything ready to eat. Runr was an app for rapid parcel service. The cost when compared to food delivery apps was prohibitive on the customer side, and only the boldest or most deranged freerunner would take the jobs if they did come through. For most, there simply weren't that many meals one could safely transport without damaging when sprinting full speed at roof gaps, and enough damaged parcels would get you banned from the app entirely. Regardless, for a thousand dollars, I could see a more desperate runner taking the job for the money; four cones in two separate cardboard drink holders – it was just in that range of possibility that could get you killed.

I stuck each three-scoop cone one by one to my head and shoulders, making myself a noble Neopolitan crown and mantle with my force pythons, and for style points, bought me and Annie a pair of single scoops as well. Icy treats had become much more satisfying the higher my body temperature got, and the redhead burned at near 120 Fahrenheit judging by touch.

My student was frowning at her phone as I crested the roof ledge.

"Whatcha watching?" I asked.

Her frown vanished at the sight of me, replaced by a mischievous smile. "Wow. Looking cool, James." Annie giggled at her own pun.

"Fuck yeah. That's exactly the tier of joke I want you to make during our road trip. Maki will love those. Chocolate or strawberry, by the way?" I held out our personal cones.

"Chocolate, of course, but we might want to hold off and get a move on. Braxton is doing a," she did air quotes, "'Sneaker stream in the hood.'"

Annie flipped her phone toward me. I squinted at it, confused. James never caught the taste for livestreams, and Alan had viewed them as a vacuous form of media forever inferior to edited content. "I have no idea what I'm watching."

The cameraman was comically inept, and it all looked like chaos to me. There seemed to be an endless entourage of very pretty influencers dressed in designer clothes surrounded by hulking bodyguards. The former were buzzing with the energy of clueless and sheltered teens doing something they knew they shouldn't, and the latter wore blank expressions exclusive to the shockingly stupid. Despite the fact that the influencers couldn't have been much younger than me and Annie, there was something to their obvious ignorance of the world that gave the impression of extreme youth.

Both groups orbited around a classically handsome white kid in a collared shirt I assumed was Braxton. In my mind, I had pictured him as a twigish and insecure manchild, but instead he was tall and well built, with a natural gift for athleticism that had been cultivated both in the gym and a boxing ring. A quirk of villains in this world, I guessed, was that they had to at least be able to survive a few rounds of combat. Some of his brash confidence was likely the result of being able to embarrass the majority of his fratboy peers in a fight.

"Braxton is offering cash, like hundreds of dollars, to people if they take off their shoes and sell them to him on the street. Mostly, I think, he just uses it as an excuse to corner and harass people who look poor. Right now they're being 'confronted by thugs,' but I'm like ninety percent sure that it's faked." She sipped her teeth. "If the camera would freaking pan back."

Christ, this universe had depths to its depravity that consistently shocked me, all of Alan's Earth's problems turned up to ten. It would have been fine, fun even, if he'd been on a university campus or downtown, but on Monroe, where the streets were exclusively full of the destitute, it was impossibly callous. "Ew, faking 'in the hood' videos? What decade is it?"

"I know, right? A hack and a loser—oh, there we go. See?"

The cameraman finally turned to the group of men confronting them, and sure enough, I recognized the man in front immediately.

"Hey, it's Twinkletoes – that guy who's always talking about how he went to Juilliard for dance." I shook my head. "That's a real shame. I'd say avoid breaking his legs, but fuck him. He should have thought of that before he took the job."

Annie pursed her lips and furrowed her brow. "Wait, you don't mean—"

"You're beating the shit out of these guys? Yep. Got to do it to them. This is completely unacceptable behavior. Not only are they harassing people, they're making a mockery out of our city and neighborhood."

Her eyes went wide. "Me specifically?"

"Well, duh. It's not my training week, is it?"

"James, I—"

"Annie." I gestured with my elbow to her phone, hands still full with the ice cream cones. "Watch three seconds of that and tell me they don't have it coming. Ignoring the cringe fake shit, they're buying the shoes off addicts' feet in an open-air drug market just as the weather is turning. There's broken glass and dirty needles all over the place, and it's supposed to rain tonight; someone is going to lose a foot." I didn't care as much about the money as I did leaving the homeless shoeless; if someone wanted to spend their cash on drugs, that was between them and their Gods. It was the cruel exploitation of it all that was spiking my blood pressure. To make money off the suffering of those at their lowest – disgusting. "I don't know about you, but just thinking about it makes me want to end some careers."

She glanced down at the screen and made a face. "Even the girls? They're built like stick figures with tits, and, I mean, unless they're great actors, I don't think they're in on the fakery. They might have just been dragged along."

"Yeah…" I took a harder look at some of the women. Most were clearly charged with adrenaline, but at least one seemed on the verge of a panic attack. That's fair. Still shitty, but maybe just knock their ice cream cones onto their shirts or something – oh, also, wait for me to finish the delivery. It'll be funnier if we do it after he pays us. Remember, Black City Kung Fu is a profoundly disrespectful martial art."

Annie kept watching the screen in silence for a few more seconds before closing her eyes and exhaling, breathing out her petty concerns and worries. When her eyes opened again, they had all the warrior's resolve that I'd spent hours beating into her from day one. I let out a mental sigh of relief. Hesitation was death in a fight.

She nodded and cracked her knuckles. "Okay. You're right; they've got it coming, and this is what I signed up for."

I returned her nod seriously. A droplet of melted strawberry ice cream fell from my dairy crown onto my eyebrow. "Let's do this. Remember, Rule of Cool, make it look good, and the rest will follow."

"Right." Annie slipped her phone back into her fanny pack. The dangling hamster charm on the zipper glinted in the sunlight. "We've got this."

"You've got this."

We turned as one to start roof-hopping our way over when the crack of two quick gunshots rang out in the distance. The sounds bounced off the streets and buildings, making it all but impossible to tell where they were coming from. The echoes defeated even my three Success Perception roll, but common sense and narrative reasoning had me certain that they had originated at our destination.

Annie reached for her fanny pack. "Check the stream?"

I responded by dropping our personal cones and scooping her into my arms, chains, kettlebells, and all. "This will be faster."

I jumped down onto the center of the street below in a low squat, coiled my Qi in my legs, and leaped, blasting the ground with the full might of Lance Pressure to send us rocketing into the air at ludicrous speeds. The pavement cratered, a line of dust following in our wake. I'd have felt bad doing that to a roof, but the middle of the road was where cars drove.

Annie white-knuckle gripped the front of my shirt but had no other reaction, a stark comparison to Aminah and Shania's terrified screams from last week. There was a hint of battle spirit emanating through her skin; nothing compared to a seasoned warrior's, but it was more than I'd ever felt from someone who had yet to have her first proper fight.

At the top of our arc, I sent my Sash out to grab the brick corner of a building and pulled us down and forward. An invisible cloud of prickling, hateful stares from barely-there spirits registered on both Smells Blood and Scoposthesia. The Misery lingered here in number, hovering above and about the addicts who stooped and shuffled in slow motion below us along Monroe Avenue. The spirits felt undirected, almost as if they were as listless as the humans they were feeding on, but I was keenly aware of how fast that could turn.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Three quick bounding strides saw us to the edge of a roof overlooking the scene. I landed softly, placing Annie down and crouching at the ledge. The Misery's presence here complicated things, though perhaps for the best. As much as I might have wanted to go in hot, we needed to deescalate some before we started meting out justice. I could feel the spirits buzzing with mindless hunger like a swarm of flies. If, as Maki had theorized, they needed to be commanded to work together, then all it would take was a snap of their master's fingers for this to turn into a nightmare scenario. Hopefully, whatever dark wizard or consortium in control of them wasn't a fan of twenty-year-old livestreamers.

We had arrived in well under a minute since the shots, which must have been fired into the air or ground as warnings since no one appeared to have been hit – by a bullet, at least. It was chaos on the street, but I could sense no killing intent from the attackers, so took the time to observe.

There were five new men here, actual gangsters in full balaclavas, who I hadn't seen on stream. They were professionals as well judging by their demeanor and the fact that they'd perfectly pinned Braxton's luxury SUV, pulling their two beat-up cars half on the sidewalk, one pressed into its front bumper and the other its rear. Underneath one of the beaters was a bodyguard who'd been run over in the initial attack, the old Ford's tire crushing his knee; a masked man had his foot on the bodyguard's neck to keep his screams down to choked gasps without outright suffocating him. One of Braxton's hired actors had been pistol-whipped in the face but was still alive, rolling on the ground in agony, his stage gun kicked into the middle of the road. Thankfully, those appeared to be the only injuries as of yet.

The gangsters were yelling at Braxton and his entourage to get on the ground, and Braxton, who was half obliging by kneeling, was yelling at his cameraman to keep filming. He was a true clout demon; you kind of had to admire that, I suppose.

I leaned over to Annie. "Unfortunately, for reasons I'll explain later, we're going to have to keep it light-hearted and goofy."

"Sure, no problem. What's the plan?"

I scratched under my chin. With a little tweaking on my end, this could still be a fun side quest for Annie's big debut. "Let me take care of the guys with guns first, and then I'll cue your entrance." The key difference between a side quest for my sidekick and an actual headache for me was that ideally, I wouldn't have to think about the former at all once it was over. I figured so long as no one got shot, it would be fine.

"Got it." To herself, she added quietly, "Light-hearted and goofy, you've got this."

I hoped that I wasn't asking too much from her. Even if I took out the armed men, I was still leaving Annie: Braxton, his three uninjured bodyguards, his cameraman, the three male influencers of various athletic ability, and the four uninjured actors, two of whom I knew had some grounding in basic martial arts – and all of that while avoiding the overwhelming brutality our art was known for.

No, she'd be fine. As her master, I had to believe in my student.

Before the doubts could metastasize in my mind, I leaped into the fray, soaring into the air and landing facing away from the group in a double-legged stomp onto the hood of the beater that didn't have a bodyguard pinned beneath it. I put all my physical might into the stomp, rolling a Strength + Martial Arts instead of anything mystical and pre-marking any extra Successes for raw Damage. I wanted it to be known that just because there were ice cream cones stuck conspicuously to my head with Qi sorcery, I was still a fighter before I was a wizard. For good measure, I used the Strength Special Feat Full Power, taking six points of Damage for the equivalent in extra Dice.

A double critical on top of a healthy handful of other Successes folded the car in half with a horrific rending of steel, punched the engine block through the frame into the sidewalk below, sent two of the wheels flying off, glass shards into the air, and lit what remained of the vehicle on fire as sparks ignited a plume of flammable vapor that erupted around me. I turned around slowly and let off a quick burst of killing intent, brown eyes flashing gold momentarily through the cloud of black smoke.

With a snap and an Elemental Control roll, I quelled the flames before hopping out of the wreckage. Fireproof had thankfully preserved both my clothes and the ice cream cones; I really didn't want to break my perfect delivery streak for this of all jobs.

"Boy howdy," I said, smiling heartily, hands on my hips, "I sure do love destroying cars."

One of the attackers immediately threw his gun down on the ground and dropped to his knees, the rest following suit after a moment's pause. "It's not what it looks like!" he said quickly.

"Really? Because it looks like a well-coordinated armed robbery."

He opened and closed his mouth. "Uh—"

One of his compatriots cut in, "It's Robin Hood shit! These kids were being mad disrespectful. You got to believe us – We all live in the Gardens!"

The first man added, pointing at his gun, "Yeah, and they're blanks anyway! We were just trying to, uh, you know, make the neighborhood better and shit." His voice cracked at the end as if he couldn't believe his own words. Still, if they really were running off the effects of the hope spell, then it was plausible enough. This kind of misguided do-goodery was in the realm of unfortunate side effects that I'd been expecting.

"Not sure what the Gardens has to do with it." I cleared my throat, hoping they'd get the message. "But I suppose there's an easy way to tell if you're lying." I called the gun to my hand with telekinesis; there were gasps from all, Braxton's entourage's sounding surprised, and the Gardens men sounding reverent. "How do I check the bullets on one of these things?"

"Put the safety on, and then there's a button—" I held the gun to my temple and fired it. The blank sent a deadly burst of superheated gas harmlessly into my Force Armor. "Jesus Christ! What the fuck!"

"Huh." I examined the gun in my hand with obvious disdain, playing it up for the camera. "That one might have been a dud, though."

Putting the gun back to my temple, I pulled the trigger six more times until it clicked, firing the remaining blanks in quick succession. My audience looked increasingly and appropriately aghast.

"Alright, guess you were telling the truth. That's nice. What a pleasant surprise." I grinned and crushed the gun in my hand with ease, chucking it behind me dismissively.

"Mine are real bullets," said the masked man who had his foot on the injured bodyguard's neck. "Please don't do that with mine."

I waved off his worry. "Nah, you guys are chill. I disagree with the method, but your hearts were in the right place. We can get to that, though. Got business to settle first."

I lifted my eyes to Braxton's, and, to my annoyance, he started to stand up with a sigh of relief.

"Goddamn, bro, you got no idea how glad I am to see your—hk."

The handsome blonde's legs gave out from under him as I hit him with my unadulterated killing intent. This motherfucker should have been thanking his stars for the Misery's continued surveillance. If it had been solely up to me and fate, I'd have peeled that pretty face of his right off his empty clout-poisoned skull.

I clamped down on the hatred, consciously reminding myself of the Bleached Bone Blade's constant influence on my decision-making process. That impulse was…unbecoming. There were more fitting ways to destroy a man than flaying his face in the Twenty First Century. I just had to be a little more creative about it.

Focus on looking cool, James, and the rest will come.

With eight quick twitches of my fingers, I floated the ice cream cones to each of the influencers, noting with contempt that Braxton hadn't ordered any for his bodyguards or his cameraman – classless little shit. I flickered in front of the kneeling loser and pulled my phone out from my messenger bag where it was sitting in a bundle of rolled up towels for added safety.

"There, delivery complete. I need you to open up Runr then tap the back of your phone to mine to denote satisfactory service."

A bead of sweat rolled down the man's forehead. I'd pulled back on the killing intent, but there was still enough canine in my smile to let him know that it was bubbling under the surface. He obliged quickly. "Yeah. No – no problem, bro. We're all good."

I quirked my head. "Are we? There was also a cash tip promised."

"Ha. Uh, yeah, forgot. My bad." He pulled out an enormous wad of hundred-dollar bills, peeled off three, and held them out to me. The wad looked undiminished; there must have been multiple tens of thousands of dollars all combined. "Here."

The balls on this man – the absolute fucking balls on this man. The Hakkotsu no Ha started itching under my skin, practically begging me to tear it free and decapitate the worm. My killing intent had begun to leak out freely; I couldn't help it, nor did I particularly want to.

"Braxton," hissed a petite blonde girl. I recognized her as the one who'd been close to a panic attack earlier. "What in the fuck is wrong with you?"

"What?" he said defiantly. "Babe, it's a thirty percent tip. I'm sure James is cool with it." He directed the latter half to me and half to the camera, trying to tip the scale by making me come across as unreasonable to his audience of live viewers. I said nothing and did nothing, allowing my feelings to exist as they were, untampered by this man's weaponized constructs of shame and pride.

"Braxton, I swear to God. Give. Him. The. Money."

You know, I had to give the man some credit. It took a special kind of petulance to stand up to how much killing intent I was emitting. "Babe. Don't be stupid. This is the entire week's production budget."

I threw my head back and barked a laugh, the sound of it unnaturally harsh and loud, almost halfway to a shotgun blast. "Production budget? You call this a production? Hey, Twinkletoes."

My old colleague, a tall black man with a dancer's body, whispered a "Fuck" to himself. He looked up at me with a crooked and wobbling smile. "Oh, hey, James. What's uh, what's up, man?"

"How much are you guys being paid for this job?"

He gulped and had the decency to at least look ashamed of himself. "Aw, man." He took a deep breath. "Two hundred dollars each."

Braxton shot his cameraman a sharp look and mouthed the word 'Mute.' I watched what button the man pressed on his camera and tapped it again telekinetically; thankfully, he was too distracted to notice.

"Two hundred dollars, Twinkletoes! To humiliate yourself and Black Harbor with a modern-day minstrel show!? I should—" I stopped myself before I could finish the sentence. The Misery were swirling. I could hear them in my head, gnawing at reality, eager to take form via possession.

Braxton's presumed girlfriend reared her head back as if slapped. "What!? Braxton, what – why – I, Jesus, I thought we were going to die!"

"Kayce, relax, I didn't hire the guys with guns, Jesus. The first dudes were just supposed to chase us into the car to end the stream. It was going to be sick."

Her jaw dropped. "Are you crazy!? Why wouldn't you tell me ahead of time? I have asthma, you psycho!" She glanced around for support. The other influencers were avoiding eye contact and wearing distinctly guilty expressions. "Oh. My. God. You, you told everyone but me? You…I…" She trailed off in disbelief, tears welling in her eyes.

"Baby, don't be like that. I only didn't tell you because you're a bad actor, alright. It's nothing personal, Kaycey. Goddamn."

My killing intent had vanished, and my smile had become genuine, though it was more from shock than amusement. I, like Braxton's girlfriend, could not believe what I was witnessing. "Dude, I am routinely suicidally stupid, and even I–actually, you know what, I'm not saying shit. Good luck, idiot."

Tears were flowing freely down Kacey's face. In between controlled, slow breaths, she said, "Braxton, you are going to give the man his money, and then we are going to leave. Now."

"Ka—"

"Braxton! Do what I say, or I will ruin your life!"

There was a pregnant pause in which the blonde couple simply stared at each other in silence. They had that weird 'could be siblings' thing to them that always creeped me out. His face was cold, sociopathic calculation, and hers was a hate that put what I had been feeling moments ago to shame. Finally, he snapped his face to mine with a scowl and slapped the entire wad of bills into my hand. "Fine, whatever. Sorry about her, man," he said to me, shaking his broccoli curls at me. "She's all jacked up and shit."

"Wow. There is something genuinely wrong with your brain." I took his money and clapped my hands loudly. "Alright, everyone, you can stand up, but if you get in that SUV, I'm lighting it on fire with you inside!" To the weeping blonde teen, I added, "Except for you, darling. Feel free to ignore anything I say. I'll get you wherever you need to be safely after this is done. But first!"

I walked over to the man whose gun I'd emptied at my temple and handed him the cash. "Take this, buy anyone who sold this doofus shoes a pair of new ones, then use the rest to get boots for the homeless. You know—"

"Robin Hood shit," he finished for me. "Thanks, dog. And I got to say, whatever you did on the roof—"

"Don't mention it," I said forcefully. "Sorry about the car. Well, not really, but, you know, it is what it is, I guess."

"It's cool. It was stolen anyway."

I sighed. "Come on, man. I'm really trying here."

"Sorry. We'll, uh, get on that shoe thing, yeah?"

He nodded to his boys, and they quickly piled into their remaining car and peeled off to, I had to hope, a discount shoe warehouse. The bodyguard that had been trapped under the tire screamed as the blood began to flow back into his leg, bringing the pain with it.

I ignored him, shouting over the man's agony. The rest of them, sans girlfriend and the pistol-whipped actor, were standing up shakily and looking at me with no small amount of fear. "As for the rest of you bastards, it's your lucky day! You exploited the lowest of the low in Harbor Hill, and normally that would mean I would cripple and maim all of you!" They cringed, taking a step away from me. "But, as a new shifu, I'm too busy and locked in on training my gorgeous and talented senior student to engage in such idle forms of relaxation, and so are you, as it turns out." I put my fingers in my mouth and whistled loudly.

On cue, Annie leaped from the roof she'd been perched onto a power line, running across it and jumping down into a dive roll. Popping up at my side, she gave the camera a peace sign and said, "Hello! It's me, the gorgeous and talented Annie Shine!" She flexed her biceps. "And boy, you guys really did get lucky. I thought James was going to turn the block into cinders for a second there!" She giggled menacingly. "What's the plan, Shifu? Are these guys going to help me train as punishment for their terrible content?"

I shivered a little. Goodness, Annie's grin was vicious. You could have transposed that smile onto Ma's face one-to-one without it looking out of place. For some reason, I had to remind my brain that was horrifying and not at all sexy, like, not even a little bit.

Well, maybe a little bi—

Shut up, brain. "That's right, Annie. By being shitty people and worse content creators, these guys have volunteered to help you with your first street fight. If they land enough good, solid hits on you, then I won't rip out any of their eyes!"

Braxton was stunned by the turn of events. "Unmute that shit, bro," he said to his cameraman, turning to me before he could see his employee's face as he realized that the stream had, in fact, been uploading audio the entire time. "What the hell, bro! I gave you a twenty-five thousand dollar tip, and now you're going to make me fight a chick? That's like, really misogynistic of you, man."

"Hey, first off, congrats, that's a big word for you. Secondly, you're talking to the wrong person." I jabbed my thumb at Annie. "It's in my student's deadly, well-manicured hands, now."

Annie waved at him. "I'm going to pulp your balls, Braxton!"

"What the fuck. This is bullshit." He looked to his bodyguards for support. One of the braver, dumber ones took a step forward, but the rest stood still, maybe hoping we'd forget about them if they pretended to be statues.

One of the girls, a young Filipina who couldn't have been five feet if she was an inch, raised her hand. "Wait, us too?"

Annie licked her canine. "How long have you known Kaycey?"

"Uh—"

"Two years," yelled the blonde from the ground, wiping the snot off her face with the back of her hand. She had continued to ugly cry in relative silence the entire time.

"Yeah, bitch," said Annie, not breaking eye contact with the Filipina, "You too. You're all getting it."

I snapped. "Oh, hang on. We got to let the camera guy be."

She nodded. "True. It's a noble and thankless profession."

"Yes. That and I don't know how to operate that rig. It's like, hooked up to a backpack." I pointed at the man. "But you'd better film the shit out of this fight."

"Yes, sir," he squeaked. God, up close, he may have been an actual minor.

Annie leaned up to me and whispered, "You should steal that, by the way. It's commercial grade, same as they use on cable news. They're like forty thousand dollars."

"No kidding, really? Good tip." I slapped her on the ass. "Okay! Get to it, Shine! Feel free to drop the weights, too. It's your first real fight."

"No thanks!" she said cheerily before breaking into a sprint.

It would not be her first real fight, unfortunately. The group was too stunned to react; Annie moved like lightning, and they had just, between the attack and my rescue, had two extremely jarring experiences. I knew that would be the case but had assumed they'd get it together once a few of them took hits. Too bad, then, that those first hits were so alarmingly brutal that none of the amateurs managed to get their footing.

Still moving full speed, faster than anyone but Braxton and his bodyguards could react, Annie grabbed the end of the chain slung over her shoulder and lashed it out in a wide arc. The man in question darted behind his boys and bodyguards, who bravely put themselves in the way, but she was familiar enough with his content to see that coming. The end of the chain slashed at waist height, striking two bodyguards and one of the male influencers across the tips of their dicks.

I winced. "Oof." Well, that one was one interpretation of light-hearted and goofy.

As the men bent over, grabbing their wounded penises in agony, Annie jumped over them, hand dropping to the thirty-pound kettlebell at her waist, eyes only for Braxton Chads. I felt my stomach drop in anticipation, already seeing her twisted vision.

The boxer acted off pure adrenaline and training. He feinted with a left hook, stepped in, and went for a straight right cross aimed at her chin. But she had, in the Black City way, left the opening for him very intentionally, her feet already positioning themselves to dodge., She ducked the punch and, with impeccable ankle mobility, placed the outer edge of her right foot along his back left's. Then, checking her hip into his, she spun around him, rolling her side around his and tipping him off balance.

The full contact between their legs and hips allowed Annie to feel his body placement and reactions in those milliseconds when her eyes could no longer track him. Using the momentum and the information gained from her touch and kinesthesia, she put everything she had into an upward strike, sending the kettlebell between his legs just as she had promised.

Annie was still wrapped in over a hundred pounds of metal, of which the kettlebell was less than a third. The blow was awful – immaculately placed and planned – but just fucking awful. Every gram of her was perfectly sent up into him. Braxton was lifted off the ground, the air driven from his lungs as the metal slammed into his dick and balls with gut-wrenching force. There was also, in that instant, a flash of white light, though I doubted anyone but I had caught it. He hit the ground and immediately started vomiting and convulsing, hips bucking back and forth with both pain and—

I've created a monster.

Annie kicked the man in the side hard enough to roll him over onto his back and, in a display of extremely mediocre acting, looked surprised and disgusted at what she saw. Pointing at his junk, she yelled for the camera's benefit, "Oh my God, he's cumming! Braxton Chads is cumming his brains out from getting his balls smashed! Talk about a nut shot!"

I pinched the bridge of my nose, somewhere between extraordinarily proud of her and embarrassed. I felt like a parent watching his daughter take her first steps only to then immediately full-force soccer kick the neighbor's child.

My senior student looked around with a wild menace but paused and frowned. One of the girls had turned around to vomit, and not one of the men dared take a step closer.

Turning to me, Annie shouted, "Aww, man. Shifu, I don't think they want to fight."

"Just tear out my eyes, bro," said one of Braxton's boys. "Seriously."

I gave her a big thumbs up. "You've crushed their spirits completely, Annie, more so than a mere maiming could have ever done! Good job! We can let them go now, I think. I can see the seeds of doubt taking root in their souls – they're rethinking their entire lives and how they ended up in this position."

Braxton's entourage, those capable of doing more than rolling around in pain at least, stood in silence, faces marred with terror as my words bounced back and forth inside their hollow heads. Morons each of them may have been, but they were all intuitively aware that this – this clip, this scene, this story – would forever be their legacy on the internet. They would be the nameless, stunned onlookers in the memes about that one-time Braxton Chads came after getting his nuts pulverized by a kettlebell.

I didn't steal the streaming backpack. I didn't have the mercy in my heart to take it off the cameraboy as he shuffled after Braxton into the SUV. The kid, in a display of either professionalism or profound stupidity, kept filming and streaming, even as his boss babbled and whimpered in wordless pain.

I made a bodyguard grab the pistol-whipped man to take with them into the SUV and to a hospital, but the rest of the amateur actors did not go with the influencers in their SUV. Half had been driven here by a wife of one of the men, and the rest had taken the bus.

Twinkletoes approached Annie and me after the fight. He, too, was crushed, eyes locked to the ground, though it had nothing to do with the fight and everything to do with his legacy. The man had gone to Juilliard, for God's sake.

He rubbed the back of his head. "James, I…I don't know what to say."

I sighed and patted him on the shoulder. Now that my anger had been thoroughly deflated, I was glad I hadn't broken his legs. From what little I'd seen, he was a good dancer. "It's alright, Devon. We all fuck up. Everyone wants the dream, to get paid to do what they love. People have done worse to pursue that."

"No, there's no excuse. Minstrel show…God, my parents would be ashamed. They'd be right, too. I knew it was wrong. I should have had the strength of conviction to turn it down. Two hundred dollars…" He shook his head.

That wouldn't do. Regardless of my personal thoughts on the matter, I could sense the spirits of the Misery turning their eyes away from me and, I assumed, to the tall dancer.

I chuckled and rolled a Charisma + Persuasion; these Social rolls felt much more justified when it was to help someone. "Dude, fuck conviction. You should have believed in yourself enough to know that a better job would come through. You don't need to slum it like this, Devon. You went to Juilliard, bro. You never shut up about it. If you're going to be so fucking annoying about that shit, you might as well stand on it."

Twinkletoes and I had never gotten along for a variety of reasons, mostly due to the fundamental incompatibility in vibes and aesthetics. But he smiled, and some of the tension in his shoulders relaxed a bit – a first for our passing relationship. "Thank you, James. You're not wrong. I did go to Juilliard."

"Ha! That's the spirit."

"Do you have a pep talk for me, too?" asked Kaycey after the dancer had left. She'd stopped crying, but her eyes were puffy, and she seemed smaller than ever.

"Not unless you also went to Juilliard," I joked.

"I dropped out of high school to make JinJins and then fell in love with a sociopathic narcissist."

I exhaled a long breath and looked to Annie for help. This was more her sphere of the world.

The redhead slung her arm over the shorter girl's shoulders. "Where are we taking you, sweetheart? I'm sure James and I can improvise something on the way."

"We all rented a penthouse for the week. My stuff's there, but I can't really imagine looking at any of them right now."

Annie bounced on her heels, still running off the high of her performance, enthusiasm infectious. "That's alright! We were headed towards the boardwalk. I'm sure James can find you somewhere nice to stay around there. He knows everywhere that's anywhere in Black Harbor. Isn't that right, Shifu?"

"For sure. We can even stop by for some funnel cake and fries. Nothing like greasy food to cheer you up after a breakup. Plus," I added pointedly, "Annie's great at keeping things light-hearted and goofy."

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, you know you loved it."

"Light-hearted and goofy."

"Nut shots are funny!"

"You opened the fight by whipping their dicks with a steel chain! I swear, you train once with my mother and this happens."

"You loved it and you know it," she sing-songed. That got a small smile from Kaycey.

"Tch. True, but that doesn't make it okay, damn it." A cool ocean breeze ruffled my hair, making wind chimes of the chains hanging off Annie. "Decent little side quest, though, I'd say."

"Side quest?"

"Later. First, you've got a very special time with some fries to look forward to."

"Thank God. I'm starving."