After I finished my business behind a convenient tree, I stood in the gloom of the underbrush looking back into the light of the clearing. The conversation I’d just had with the kid had upset me, and I wanted to take a few to figure out why I was feeling that way and what would have to happen to get my head back on straight. Leaving nothing to fickle memory, I reviewed the past few minutes in my RECORD, and then considered what had been said compared to how it all made me feel.

On the surface, I hadn’t been nearly as rough on the kid as I’d felt I had. That made me wonder again why the whole thing hit me so hard. Maybe I was just tired, God knows I had enough reason to be, but that didn’t ring true deep inside where it counted.

I think I knew, but I was reluctant to look at the situation straight on: Memories were starting to trickle back in. Not full-blown, ‘this is who I am; that is what I do’, kind of memories, but bits and pieces of how I felt about things, how I normally reacted to things, and it wasn’t pretty: I was probably not a very nice person. I think I was a better person without my memories, with no baggage weighing me down, but in my former life, I think I might have been an asshole.

A realization like that about yourself is right up there with your dad telling you about sex with your mom or finding out your gramma lied to you. You never want to hear that kind of stuff. People are basically selfish jerks, even the best of us. We tend to think that the world revolves around us, that everyone is basically like us, and that our thoughts, emotions, actions, and reactions are normal, for whatever given value of normal that may be. We value our own experiences above those of others, and that allows us to come up with wild ideas about the world, and God, and humanity, and what a “good” person should and should not be.

But the truth is, we aren’t the center of the universe. Our thoughts and actions may be within the norm, but there’s a lot of wiggle room in there. We think that the things that are important to us are actually important, that everyone should agree that they’re important. That God should agree that they’re important. And when God, the world, or life or whatever doesn’t agree, then that causes us to come to all kinds of wild conclusions. Because something bad happened to me, there is no God, or people suck, or the universe hates me, lies like that.

I didn’t know for sure, but I had a strong impression that I believed in God, but that I couldn’t really be bothered with organized religion. Scratch that, it wasn’t the organized part of it that I couldn’t be bothered with, I couldn’t be bothered with hypocrites, or fakes.

Or people.

I really did not like being around other people; I was sure I had been a loner, and I felt certain that I was not a hail-fellow-well-met kind of guy. I guess the world takes all kinds, so why did that bother me, so much?

I don’t know.

And what was I going to do about it?

Don’t know that, either.

I saw that the group with the practice swords or wooden batons were starting to place them neatly in a row near where they’d been working out, and that our trainer and the Squid guy had finished talking and Sgt. Asshole was moving back over towards where our group sat still recovering from our run.

Oh good! I don’t have to deal with any of this, right now.

I jogged over to the group and stood waiting for our beloved trainer, while the rest of the group climbed wearily to their feet. Not at attention, though. I’ll be damned if I act like I’m in anyone’s army, again!

“All right ladies,” Tusk face shouted, “this is what’s going to happen. You’re going to run over to those batons on the ground over there, you’re going to pick one up, and you’re going to run back over here. You are NOT going to try to pick the best one, because they are all the same. You are going to pick up the FIRST one, and then you are going to run back here. NOW MOVE!”

In short order, we were back in place with the Sarge only having to yell at the kid once for trying to switch out one baton for another. Since I had been farthest from where the other group had left them, there had only been one left, so even if I’d been that kind of guy, it wouldn’t have mattered.

Each baton was, as the trainer said, an identical length of hard wood about a yard long and about 2 inches thick. It was heavier than I had expected, and the size made it unwieldy so, I settled on a two-handed grip. Risking a glance to the side, I saw the gnome guys having a rough time keeping theirs off the ground. The elf girl solved the problem by planting one end on the ground in front of her, but the surprise of the day was the kid, who struck a confident, wide-legged stand and held his baton out in front of him with both hands, almost parallel to the ground, with the tip angled just slightly up. He saw my look of surprise and shot me another one of his smug grins.

“LARPing for the save!”

I didn’t have a chance to even ask what the hell that was before we were being barked at, again.

“Now, this is how things are going to go. We start you out with wooden batons instead of real swords because SCHEMA in their great wisdom did not supply us with a priest and ain’t nobody got time to wait around for you to respawn!” I thought he looked a little disappointed at that. “I am going to teach you the eight basic movements for striking an opponent with a melee weapon, and then you are going to practice those swings EXACTLY AS I HAVE INSTRUCTED until you hear that lovely little ding! that lets you know that you have learned the SKILL MELEE STRIKE! DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?”

Not waiting—probably not even caring—to find out if we understood, he reached up and pulled a baton of his own out of thin air. I guess that’s what it looks like when you equip a weapon from your inventory, I thought.

“Now! Pay attention!”

Then he showed each of us how to find the balance point of our batons based on our mass. Mine was to choke up a little less than a third of the length until the tip of the baton didn’t feel like it wanted to plant itself in the dirt, like it had when I had tried to hold it closer to the end. Next, he worked with us to widen our stance until we didn’t stumble and fall when he shoved on us from any direction. He didn’t show any surprise that the kid already seemed to know what he was doing, but I thought he might have put a little extra muscle into his shoves with him, but the kid handled it like a pro. I’ll just be impressed for the both of us. Once we knew how to stand and hold our batons without falling or dropping them, he showed us the pattern of swings we had to follow.

Beginning with the tip pointed forward and angled down to our right, we swung diagonally up to our left. Arcing around and downward to our left, we mirrored the first swing diagonally up to our right. Crossing over, he slashed in a straight horizontal like from right to left, and then brought the tip of the baton down and into a vertical upward slash parallel with our bodies. That was the first four.

The next four exactly mirrored the first. Starting from the upper left, diagonal slash to the lower right, angle to the upper right and slash diagonally downwards to the lower left, up to waist height with the vertical slash from left to right, and then the downwards stroke from head to toe.

Rinse and repeat.

We were spaced out in two rows with plenty of air in between so we wouldn’t be knocking each other in the head. I was on the leftmost end of the front row with the kid to my right. The elf girl, who also seemed to know what she was doing (though she struggled with the weight of the baton), and a blue-skinned (but otherwise human looking) guy anchoring the other end. Directly behind the kid and I were the two gnomes and two other male elf types who didn’t seem near as comfortable with their weapons as their female counterpart.

As we worked to swing our heavy batons through the forms, the trainer moved through the lines correcting grips and kicking feet further apart and questioning the legitimacy of our parentage based on the exactness of the angle of our swings. He was as demanding of perfection as I might have thought, but I soon had no energy to pay any attention to anything but myself. I vaguely recall feeling his catcher’s mitt sized hands moving an elbow, or twisting a shoulder back into line, but even with the extra STRENGTH and larger STAMINA pool the laps had provided, the workout quickly became a contest between my screaming muscles and my will not to give in.

I don’t know how many notification chimes later, I realized that my movements had become an odd combination of machine-like precision and a dancer’s fluidity. Up from right to left, from left to right, across, pull the weight of the world from my feet up and then start it over again from the other direction. Gradually, my arms stopped screaming at me to stop, and the swings became more natural and I didn’t have to think about angles or direction, I just flowed from one swing gracefully into the next.

“LARPing is like playing a character in a video game but acting it out in real life.”

It took me a second to realize that the words were not in my head, but that the kid was talking to me. Even though my STRENGTH and DEXTERITY must have taken some jumps, I could only manage a non-committal grunt in response. Taking that for assent, he continued:

“Me and my friends used to meet in Central Park on the weekends and live-action role play our characters. Some of us took some classes in historical weapon styles. Two-handed greatswords were my character’s favorite.”

“All right, slackers!” Asshole shouted, “If you have energy to talk, we need to work you harder! Predictability will get you killed, now we’re going to learn to switch it up!”

He proceeded to show us another pattern of swings, instead of all the swings going from bottom to top for the first four, and top to bottom for the next, he alternated bottom right to top left, top right to bottom left, and so on. The same eight swings but in a different pattern which started up my muscles complaining again. After we had that one down, he changed it up again, putting the horizontal strikes in between every stroke, and and changed it again, having us repeat the same strokes various numbers of swings until we stopped fumbling to remember which pattern we were supposed to be following.

“All right, lower your batons and check your notifications!”

CONGRATULATIONS! +1 STRENGTH

CONGRATULATIONS! +1 DEXTERITY

CONGRATULATIONS! +1 STRENGTH

CONGRATULATIONS! +1 STRENGTH

CONGRATULATIONS! +1 STRENGTH

CONGRATULATIONS! You have learned the SKILL BLUNT WEAPONS!

CONGRATULATIONS! +1 DEXTERITY

CONGRATULATIONS! You have learned the SKILL MEELEE STRIKE!

Huh. Blunt weapons. I thought we were supposed to be learning swords, but I guess it makes sense, since we have yet to pick up anything with a blade.

“NOW COMES THE FUN PART!” He shouted, “You will pair up with the person to your right and we will begin to BUILD YOUR CONSTITUTION!” His brutish greenish face took on an eviler-than-usual grin that showed all of his yellow teeth. “When I say ‘fun’, I mean FUN FOR ME! Tell me, crybaby…” here he whipped up his baton one-handed until it was an inch from the kid’s nose, and then laughed as the kid stumbled backwards.

“GET BACK INTO LINE AND ANSWER THE QUESTION!” Asshole shouted, losing all pretense of mirth.

The kid scrambled back into place but couldn’t answer the question.

“What about you?” The baton missed slashing across my check by the width of a scream, but I had been half expecting it, and barely flinched. “How do we build up CONSTITUTION?”

No clue.

“I’ll tell you how!” He continued, not even giving me space to respond, “We build up CONSTITUTION by BEATING THE EVER-LOVING CRAP OUT OF EACH OTHER, THAT’S HOW!” He laughed again, a sound I hope to never hear again outside of a nightmare, “I told you this was the fun part! Fun for ME!”

He pulled the kid out of the line, but before he demonstrated the first set of strikes; he reached up and pulled a heavy chain necklace with a good-sized round medallion out of the air. “This here is how SCHEMA has determined that we are supposed to coddle you weak little babies! This is a shield amulet. It will not block the strikes, but it will link up with your CHARACTER SHEETS and calculate the force of each strike so that you won’t die!

"Oh, but not all the news is bad! Since the point is to build your CONSTITUTION as much as it is to teach you to apply your forms with an opponent, the hits will still hurt like you would not believe! Never you fear!” He handed the kid the amulet, and while the kid juggled holding is sword without dropping it and putting the amulet over his head, he pulled several more out of the air and tossed them all to me to hand out.

Then, he demonstrated on the kid in slow motion how he wanted the exercise to go. First he had the kid play attacker while he blocked, then he switched roles. He went from his lower left and moved to slash diagonally upwards from the kid’s right hip upwards to his left shoulder, with the kid trying to come downward from over his left shoulder to block the trainer’s baton before it could reach his hip. Then from the other directions.

After each rotation, he sped the next one up. From one side, then from the other side, then top down, and bottom up, all the while with the kid trying unsuccessfully to keep the trainer from bashing his hips, head, shoulders, legs, and most importantly, the family jewels.

As the kid lay curled in the fetal position cradling his junk, his brutalizer quickly paired us off, me waiting for the kid to recover and trying not to gloat at how inept the trainer had made him look, the elf lady and the blue-skin were faced off, the two gnomes, and then the other two elves. While I waited, the rest of the group began to half-heartedly attempt to strike or block each other, the kid’s pain fresh on their minds.

Much yelling that such wimpy strikes would not raise a flea’s CONSTITUTION and threats to take over the job himself if we did not PUT YOUR BACK INTO IT later, the kid was back on his feet and paying me back for every single unflattering thought I’d ever had about him.

With interest.

The kid handed me my black and blue ass, over and over again. After the first time he made me see stars, I wondered if I’d gotten a defective shield amulet, but I didn’t have time to worry about it before I was doing my time rolling on the ground cradling my boys and whimpering like a kicked puppy.

And again.

And again.

It wasn’t all one-sided. I could at least say that I blocked the occasional strike, or returned the rare hit, but there was no mistaking who was the better fighter. By the end, I was actually beginning to think that there was a universe, somewhere, where I had a chance of handling my own with the kid. Not winning. No, I never got to that point, even in my head, but maybe not exactly losing, either.

Then the trainer switched it up, again. First singly, and then in pairs, he showed us different ways to thrust the tip of the baton, preparing us to use the tip of a sword and not just the edge.

That opened up new vistas of pain. Whereas the slashes struck over a longer area, the tips concentrated all that goodness into one tiny spot, and we each tried to learn how to block the strikes while the other tried to punch the tip completely through our arms, thighs, heads, chests, and jelly soft guts.

Making our point, so to speak.

It was equal parts humiliating and instructive, interspersed with red-tube LIFE and green-tube STAMINA potions. I don’t know who was handing them out, there was nobody in the clearing but the trainers and our two groups, but whenever I thought ‘this is it; this is the one that kills me,’ here would come a hand with divine salvation in a bottle. Judging by my notifications when Sgt. Asshole finally allowed us to stop, the potions must have brought me back from death’s door

Over, and over again.

CONGRATULATIONS! +1 CONSTITUTION

CONGRATULATIONS! +1 CONSTITUTION

CONGRATULATIONS! +1 CONSTITUTION

CONGRATULATIONS! +1 CONSTITUTION

CONGRATIULATIONS! You have learned the ABILITY BLOCK!

CONGRATULATIONS! +1 CONSTITUTION

CONGRATULATIONS! +1 DEXTERITY

CONGRATULATIONS! You have learned the ABILITY PARRY!

“Shit!” I exclaimed, “We worked every bit as much, and I didn’t get a single STRENGTH, and only one DEXTERITY point!”

“Yeah, I didn’t even get any besides the CON bumps and the two new ABILITIES,” the kid panted from the ground next to me, “after the first few levels, it takes more and more to raise your skills until you get to a point where you think they’re never going to go up ever again. Same with levels. Your first few will probably come virtually one on top of the other, but at some point the number of XPs it will take to reach the next level becomes prohibitive. That’s why games stopped even bothering with artificial level caps, they just raised the experience requirements until it became the next thing to impossible.

“Look,” he continued, forestalling my obvious objection, “I know this isn’t a game, believe me,” and he pointed down in the general direction of his crotch, “I know this is real, but that doesn’t mean that this new reality isn’t following game mechanics. There might be some differences, but I still have an advantage in that I have a better idea for how something might play out.”

“And a disadvantage when it doesn’t do what you expected it to do,” I shot back.

“ALL RIGHT LADIES, EVERYBODY UP!” Asshole shouted. When the last of us (the gnomes) had staggered to his or her respective feet, he continued. “Now is the time when you get to put all of this into practice,” and giving elf girl a wicked look, “and finally get to earn your lunch!” at which point he indicated the Squid’s group, gathered at the other end of the field.

I hadn’t had the energy or attention to pay those guys any mind, but now that I did, I could smell the sweet aroma of grilling meat drifting over, making my mouth water, and bringing back the delayed growls from my stomach.

With a vengeance.

“Your fellow trainees are just finishing up with theirs, and as soon as they do, we’ll switch places. They’ll come down here and gain the SKILL RANGED WEAPONS with bows, while we work on killing us some nice little rats to put on a stick!”

Yeah, the kid didn’t even try not to shoot me that look of triumph.