Parlor Tricks

Elias had never made his dislike for his father a secret. Ruined family dinners, awkward times with relatives, scornful public outings and more flashed across his mind as the words he had just heard echoed. 'Playground?', Elias thought as he approached the kitchen, 'Does he think I'm doing this for glory? For fun?!' Fury tightened across his face like a lattice of twine being drawn into a knot. His features became gaunt and devilish. One of few things he could thank his father for was his natural ability to intimidate, and he planned to use it. Already standing at five foot six and able to bench press some two hundred pounds, Elias was a tank at eleven years old. Thinking to his virtual and real-world martial arts training, he worked out the odds of a win, or at least a humiliating blow that would leave a mark, Elias decided that it was worth butting in. If Dad decided to get physical with him, he would pay dearly.

"You call me pathetic, but you've been in the same position at work for five years, and you just come home to drink and use me as a toy!", Lydia shouted, finding her inner flame. "And where the hell is the anger at the circumstances, here, Rudeus?! I'm dying! I am dying! And I'm only thirty-nine years old! Where is your drive to do something about it?!" Elias' father was laughing as the boy turned the corner and stumbled onto the scene. "What, you want me to work my ass off and stretch our budget to pay for some experimental nonsense that'll probably leave you worse off than you are now? Is that what you're saying?" Elias announced his presence with one word. "Exactly." Lydia blinked, then her eyes shot to her son, radiating menace and pulsing with the muscle that ran in the Mora bloodline. She realized what was about to happen, but knew that words alone wouldn't be enough to stop it. The alienation and resentment between father and son had been building ever since her diagnosis, and now it was finally ready to come to a boiling point.

Rudeus turned on his son and marched right up to him. Though he towered over the boy at six foot eight, Elias refused to back down. "You're a damn fool, kid! You and your mother both!" He drew his hand back, and Elias braced himself. Lydia flinched as the slap made contact, rocking Elias on his feet. The boy wouldn't give an inch, and returned his father's stone-faced glare. "You're the fool. You're turning your back on a wonderful woman and a wonderful family. You're rolling over and giving up when there's a fighting chance to save her! What kind of husband are you?! Don't you care about her at all? Don't you care about the fact that I'm going to have to grow up without a mother?!" Rudeus raised his hand again, and Elias readied himself. Time slowed to a straggling crawl. His mind raised the alarm, and the adrenaline poured into his system. He struggled to gather his thoughts. After what seemed like an eternity, everything was clear. The air was charged, and those particles made a leap. Another slap descended, and Elias caught his father's wrist flawlessly and turned his hips with the flow of the force, just like his sensei had taught him.

The man was caught off guard and went to the ground in a heap. In a flash, he was back on his feet and squaring up. "You little squirt!", he spat at his son, "If you want to make this a case of might makes right, I'll show you just how weak you are!" Without another word, he lunged with his front foot and launched a hard left hook at Elias. His form was perfect. He had never stepped into a dojo, but his loud mouth had gotten him into enough fights to turn him into an experienced scrapper. The boy dodged the hook and weaved to avoid a subsequent uppercut, but that iron left hand took him in the ear as he clocked his father right under the chin. Both staggered back, and when the world came back into focus, Elias saw his father charging at him. The man came on like a locomotive, a moving mountain of fury. Again, Elias' fear tried to raise an alarm he didn't need to hear. Instead, he focused on his father's fist. He stepped aside and put out a foot, and when Rudeus crashed to the floor, he put a knee into his back and hammered both his temples with bone-crunching punches as the man squirmed and thrashed. Lydia screamed as her husband's face and her son's knuckles both began to tear, oozing blood onto the kitchen floor. Elias couldn't feel the skin rupturing, couldn't feel the bones creaking and the blood vessels giving way. His hatred was all he could feel in that moment, and it took over. Gone was the careful martial artist who had logged thousands of hours of lessons. Elias was a killing machine, and his methods changed to match his new madness. With one hand on his father's throat, he grabbed a fistful of hair and began slamming his face on the cold floor. Once. Again. A third time. A desperate Rudeus finally slid out and flipped himself up from under Elias, and the two were at their feet again.

The pair locked their eyes simultaneously on Lydia, who had placed herself in the middle of the fight. "Don't!", she screeched, her voice piercing the cacophony of their loud breathing. Choking on sobs, she turned to Elias and took him in her arms. "Please, baby, don't. Your dad is a good man, he's just..." Her voice broke. Elias was stunned at what he heard. "He's just... having a rough time..." Elias' vision went red. Not only had Rudeus become an abusive, manipulative, selfish piece of work in the span of a few short years, he had also brainwashed his mother. The woman meant the world to Elias, and he was terrified and mortified to see how far her strong will had fallen.

"Don't you dare defend him, mom!", Elias spat as he tore loose from his mother's grip. "Listen to the man! He doesn't give a damn about you, or about me! How much clearer can he make it?!" Rudeus scoffed. "I don't have to stand here and listen to this garbage.", he hissed, grabbing his wallet and keys off a nearby hook stand and making for the door. The heavy wooden door slammed shut. Mother and son heard a car starting, then rolling away. Lydia sank to her knees and wept bitterly. She wept for the years she had given the man. She wept for the future they could never have. She wept for her son's psychological suffering. Elias gathered her in his arms and kissed her forehead. "It's okay, mom.", he sighed, "With or without dad... we're... we're headed toward a brighter future." Full of uncertainty and remorse, Elias dropped to his knees and hugged his mother. The pair cried together for a few minutes, until all their tears were dried up. "I promise you, mom...", Elias said quietly as he rose, his voice rock-solid and unwavering, "I promise you that life will get better."

Elias spent the rest of the night with his mother, and when she finally went to bed, he made his way to his room. His VR headset provided the only light in the room, aside from the barely-visible glow of a clock radio. The time read 00:32. Elias knew that he should get some rest, but his emotions raged like a river of lava inside his head. Sleep was a faraway dream right now, as remote as the far shore of Japan. He decided, instead, to see how the game world was doing. The tension of the confrontation with his father bled from his frame as he settled onto his chair, then finally dissipated entirely when the headset covered his eyes and worked its magic. Slowly, the real world gave way. The smell of Spanish cooking, the distant sound of babies crying, and even the feeling of rawness in his muscles ceded their place in his reality, replaced by the thick rainforest where he had left his avatar.

EmoryEdge materializes from the aether, and immediately pops erect. His left hand holds a grappling hook and rope. His right holds three blades. He whips his head around and quickly takes in his surroundings. The forest is at peace. Only the game world's odd animals are here right now. Predictably, the sparse edges of the island aren't an ideal place for players. Many of them seek to hoard resources, and there are scant few here to be found. The mob that had broken off to seek out EmoryEdge is nowhere to be found, and a cursory glance about with the Scan Traps ability shows that they didn't make much of an effort to give him a hard time leaving the woods. Using a flame dagger to cook up a piece of armatro meat, he begins his trek to the center of the island and his inevitable confrontation with the top players.

Tree gives way to tree, and yet another takes its place. EmoryEdge isn't sure how long he's been walking, but he is sure that he's well past the amount of distance covered that it took him to get to where he had awakened. He activates Scan Trap and Detect Magic. Nothing is out of the ordinary, by all accounts. EmoryEdge is still suspicious, and decides to cast a ward on himself just in case. The shimmering bubble of magic feels like the plush inside of a warm fur coat. Safely in its embrace, he stops to check his map. Though he can only see areas that he's been to, he can see how far he is from the center of the map. The indication is that he's not lost, but rather, he's moving directly toward the center in a diagonal line from where he was. Comforted by the explanation for his long trek, EmoryEdge journeys on.

An uneventful hour wears by, and then another. According to the map, EmoryEdge is well on his way to the bustling center of the island. Thousands of red dots bustle about the screen, indicating other players. Most are in the far center zone, away from the territory that EmoryEdge is trudging through, but one is startlingly close. He knows that the other player may well have the rare Detect Lifeform skill in their roster, and he checks his inventory to ensure he's ready for a scuffle. During his brief stop, the indicator gets 1,000 meters closer in a split second. EmoryEdge readies a few EM bombs and ten daggers tipped with anti-magic fluid. However this other player is teleporting, he knows that the fight will be a lost cause without putting a stop to that parlor trick.

EmoryEdge is confronted by a shock of pink hair descending from the side of a stout-looking helmet and visor. The rest of the girl's armor looks just as tanky, and her movements seem to reflect that. PartyPistol steps within range, and EmoryEdge detonates the EM bomb. Although some of his own equipment is disabled by the blast, he pounces on his gamble and tosses an anti-magic knife at her. The blade is soaring directly at a chink in her armor, near the neck joint, and then it's sailing through empty air. His gamble on her teleportation being tech-based is officially a bad call, and he braces for a sudden blow.

The magical girl's bullets flee their cozy home inside her magazines to pursue a promising career in execution, hissing their protests through massive silencers. EmoryEdge eats the first volley and jukes to the left just in time to see a flurry of gunshots smacking the ground where he was. Now that he knows she's firing from above, he switches his ward's position. He figures she doesn't know that he can expand that ward in all directions, which means that it's only a matter of time until she makes a deadly mistake, if he continues guarding.

EmoryEdge is caught by surprise, his expectations shattered and his nerves rattled, when his foe pops out of the ground behind him and blasts a few hit points away before disappearing. The kickback from the four bullets knocks him to the ground, leaving him a sitting duck for attack from anywhere but above. EmoryEdge guesses that his enemy sees him as wounded prey, and won't anticipate his surprise trick.

She pops up from the ground again, leveling a charged shot at him from the side. She doesn't expect him to drop his ward down to nearly ground level in an instant. His command of magic wins him an instant of surprise as her powerful bullet ricochets into the sky, Though the continued use of mana is sapping his technical points at an alarming rate, EmoryEdge has enough stored back for one desperate Spiral Grappler. He activates the skill, and his body spins of its own volition, grappling hook taking a wide and fast arc.

Snared by the ankle, PartyPistol is dragged a short distance before EmoryEdge gets to his feet. Before she can draw her knife to begin working on the rope, she's slammed into the side of a nearby tree, and as the foliage cracks and falls, so does her breastplate. EmoryEdge has never seen a target quite as visible and loud as the bright yellow and pink t-shirt that PartyPistol was hiding under her armor. The shot on his disoriented opponent is all too easy. Before PartyPistol even hits the ground, she's no longer able to use magic and is bleeding from her stomach.

EmoryEdge freezes in anticipation of another trick when PartyPistol doesn't pop right back up. Instead, she gets up slowly, then strips off her armor to reveal glowing pink eyes, black jeans and bare feet with toenails that couldn't be any other color but pink. "I'm a chivalrous girl," she calls across the expanse, "Let's settle this up close and personal." From somewhere, she produces a pair of pink daggers, both dripping a poison that fizzes on the grass and exposes bare soil. EmoryEdge shakes his head. "Nothing personal, but I'm in this for way more than just money. If I lose, somebody close to me dies." He readies a volley of exploding knives to finish her off. PartyPistol takes a few steps closer. "Don't bullshit me.", she says flatly. "I'm in this tournament to pay for a custom vehicle for my disabled uncle. Rethink your fake sob story, or I won't show any mercy." Her avatar picks up her emotion and scowls fiercely. EmoryEdge smiles in return. "I'm actually perfectly serious, but think what you want. I'm going to blow you to Hell either way."

The first volley misses its mark when PartyPistol ducks, then flips backward. "If you're for real, then we'll settle this next time. I'm going to prepare for you." Another volley, followed by a swing of the hook. She dives to the ground to avoid the daggers, then leaps to avoid the hook. "You think there's going to be a next time?", EmoryEdge calls. PartyPistol gives him a wink emote. "It's been 30 seconds, hot shot. I can teleport again." With those words, she vanishes, and a notification comes up on EmoryEdge's HUD. A picture from the front door camera jumps into his field of view, showing his drunk father on the porch, home from whatever adventures had taken place after their fight. Enraged, EmoryEdge slams his fist on the ground and signs out in a hurry.