“Janet’s got watch and I want to try some stuff on magic, then I’ve got to do some kata’s to try and get some martial arts skills or abilities,” I said. “I haven’t even started on my martial arts stuff. Plus, you Tanya should be trying to level your spells and learn new ones. I have five spells that you should be trying to learn: Fog, Detect Magic, Light Heal, Create Water, and Earth Bolt. I also should be trying to learn the four spells you have that I don’t: Charm, Shield, Firebolt and Earth Dart Burst. Janet, after watch I’d suggest you try to gain similar spells to the ones that we have since we know that they exist. I’m not sure what the difference is between a cleric’s and a mage’s magic? It didn’t seem like you prayed to Them, but they were definitely a part of the way that you received your spells. I’d try to firm that up and get some more spells, especially healing spells. It’d be nice if in a fight you could heal someone across the room. I realize it was my fault for pulling away from you, but fights are chaotic. I can’t depend on staying next to you, it’s not like we’re in a shield wall. I have to be able to move and so do you. We just need to be better on our positioning.”

“Sounds good,” said Tanya.

“So bossy!” I heard Janet mutter, but she started watching. Tanya went inside the Teepee, while I sat down on one of the log seats that they’d salvaged from the diorama inside Maxes. I thought about what I needed to do, magic then martial arts. I needed to become more powerful in both if I, no we, are going to survive. I wondered about my mom and Derek, about Dogleg, Mixerbeast, Slogger, Twilight, and Egirl. Especially about Big Mike and his family. I hoped they were all doing alright, but I didn’t have any way to help them right now, so I had to set aside those thoughts and just concentrate on my own survival, our survival. I thought about what Janet had done, starting with meditation and then just basically asking for the spells and wondered if she’d hit on something there. It wasn’t like any of the spells I was trying to receive were high level or complicated. Plus I knew from Tanya sharing of her system windows exactly how to cast it, all of the damage that it caused, the gestures, the words, about the only thing I didn’t have was experience casting it, so why not try?

I closed my eyes, focused on my mana and then concentrated on the Earth Bolt spell Tanya had shown me earlier. I repeated everything I knew about it, its sphere, rank, mana cost, damage, everything that I’d seen on Tanya’s blue screen. I tried to, I guess for lack of a better word, to yearn for it. To want it. To need it. I tried to think how right it was that I should have it, that I already knew it, I just needed the confirmation, I just needed the words in my spell screen. And it worked. About ten minutes into the process, I got the notification I was hoping for:

You’ve got spell!

Earth Dart Burst

Casting Time: 2 seconds

Somatic: Pointing at target

Verbal: Earth Darts

Range: 10 meters + 5 per level

Damage: 2-5 (+1 stage)(X3)

Cool Down: none

Duration: Permanent

Spell Resistance: Resist

MP: 10

Once cast, an earth dart bolt almost always hits. A new dart is gained at every rank. At later stages, multiple targets are possible.

Level 1, (2/25)

I tried it again with the Firebolt spell and it worked too. About 10 minutes is all it took and I got another notification. But when I tried to do the same with the Charm spell, I wasn’t able to. I spent about 30 minutes before I gave up on it. I didn’t get a notification that it wasn’t going to work, but I didn’t get that sense of building towards something that I got with the other two spells. I just heard myself basically talking to myself… in my head. So evidently, having the stats of the spell was a key component in the accelerated process. At least for mages. It looks like you could either discover spells yourself, doing the whole mana meditation thing which takes a lot of time, effort and is quite possibly risky, or you can get some other mage to pass you the CliffsNotes version. Good to know. Time to get the CliffsNotes.

I stood up and walked to the opening of the Teepee and looked inside. Tanya was sitting in the Sukhasana yoga pose with her hands in the Gyana Mudra position on top of her legs.

“How’s it coming?” I asked, ducking inside.

“It was coming pretty well, ‘til somebody interrupted me,” she said, kind of snarkily.

“Yeah,” I said. “I just finished my second spell, so I thought I’d take a break.”

“What!” she exclaimed. “No friggin way! Pull the other one. There’s no way that you got two spells already. It’s been what, 40 minutes? No way?”

“Oh yeah?” I said. “Check these bad boy’s out!” and I shared my new spells with her.

Spells

Earth Dart Burst

Casting Time: 2 seconds

Somatic: Pointing at target

Verbal: Earth Darts

Range: 10 meters + 5 per level

Damage: 2-5 (+1 stage)(X3)

Cool Down: none

Duration: Permanent

Spell Resistance: Resist

MP: 10

Once cast, an earth dart bolt almost always hits. A new dart is gained at every rank. At later stages, multiple targets are possible.

Level 1, (2/25) Firebolt

Rank: Bronze

Elemental Sphere: Fire

Casting Time: 2 seconds

Somatic: Pointing at target

Verbal: Firebolt

Range: 10 meters + 5 per level

Damage: 1-10 (+1 per level)(+2 fire damage)

Cool Down: none

Duration: Permanent

Spell Resistance: Resist

MP: 20

Once cast, a firebolt almost always hits. Every rank it gets another bolt.

Level 1, (2/25)

“Holy crap!” she said. “What’d you do? Come on spill!”

“Nothing,” I said “I just used my superior intelligence and it took me half the time. It’s the benefit of being smarter.”

“Really?” she asked. “No, no way! I’m not buying it. You figured something out. Spill! white boy!”

“You realize that when you call me white boy, standing there in all your blondness, it’s a little ironic?”

“Yeah, yeah. If you’re gonna talk, tell me something I want to hear. You realize that with the God Box, I could be green if I wanted to be? Now, how’d you do it?”

“I started thinking about what Janet said. She said she basically just asked for it, but in the process, she meditated and brought out all of the information that she had on the spell that she wanted and concentrated on it. I’d done an OK job of describing the spell, it sounded as if she took it a little further and succeeded. I wondered if it was a cleric thing or maybe she tapped into the way spells were supposed to be learned. So I did what she did, I meditated on my mana, then I thought about the spell description you’d given me for both of those spells. I really concentrated and tried to, I know this sounds stupid, but I tried to yearn for the spell and deserve it since I already basically knew it. And it worked, after about 10 minutes, I got the first spell, another 10 and I got the second spell.”

“But you spent about 40 minutes. What did you do with the rest of the time?” she asked.

“I tried to do the same thing, but using Charm instead. It turns out that it’s probably likely that the more that you know about the spell, the more likely your success will be and the less effort you’ll have to put in to learn it. I finally gave up and came in here.”

“I overheard. I’m pretty awesome, aren’t I?” said Janet, sticking her head into the tent. “I know, back to watching, but, well, yea me! By the way, not that I don’t appreciate your blondness, but you might look good with some color. A light green could do good things for you!” and she withdrew. Outside we could hear her laughing.

Tanya shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Anyway, so, meditate, review the information, and want it? Is that it?” she asked.

“I think so,” I said. “But you have to start with the blue screen info. Otherwise, it may not work. I can’t tell if Janet did a great job of imagining the spell or if she got a cleric bonus. Plus review the info means really use your imagination on it, try to ‘feel’ the spell, imagine it happening.”

“Ok,” she said. “Let me try!”

“Wait, wait,” I said. “Before you do, let’s share blue screens about spells that we want. It will help, I’m almost sure of it.” She agreed and so I shared with her the spells I hadn’t shared already: Fog, Detect Magic, Light Heal, Create Water. I also received the two spells that Janet hadn’t already shared with us: Charm, Shield. Of course, we included Janet in all of this sharing so that she could try to gain the spells later when she was off watch.

I moved outside again and sat down on my log seat and started trying to repeat my earlier success. After about ten minutes I got Charm according to the notification, and ten minutes after that, I got shield too. Shortly after I got Charm, I heard Tanya yell, “Who’s bad!” and about every ten minutes after that, I heard her yelling.

After I finished gaining all of the spells that we shared between us, I thought about what else I could try to do. I remembered the Light Bolt spell that Janet had shared with us earlier and decided to try for that one too. It seemed a little more difficult, but after about 15 minutes, I gained it too.

“Hey,” I said to the wall of the teepee. “Be sure to try for the Light Bolt spell that Janet got too. I was able to get it so I don’t think this new world separates out magic into cleric piles and mage piles. I may be wrong, but it doesn’t seem like it.”

I heard Tanya say, “OK, I’ll try.”

I wondered briefly what separated a cleric from a mage if it wasn’t their spells, but I had other things to get done, so I pulled my mind back to my task list. ‘Hey, I must be getting better at planning.’ I thought about trying for some more spells, but the only way I knew to do that was the full-on meditation route and I kind of scared myself a little bit with my talk about spell backlash. ‘Was it real?’ I thought. I pictured myself, seated, meditating and then my head exploding into this oily, red cloud with my neck spurting out blood ala Monty Python, ‘yeah,’ I thought, ‘let’s wait on that for a while. Try to figure out some way to minimize the whole head explody thing.’

So that left martial arts. I had a couple of black belts, one in Aikido, one in Krav Maga. Neither one of the systems really do katas, practice yes, kata’s no, well maybe a little bit in Aikido, not so much that you had this choreographed set of actions that you could follow, but a more limited set of actions that you’d used to practice various techniques, so I couldn’t practice katas and prove my knowledge to the System, and really that is what this whole training session was about, getting the skills ‘registered’ and then developing them into Qi abilities. If skills were the potatoes, abilities were the meat.

I’d also had training in Wing Chun, a lot, but hadn’t really tried to level it up. I had a Sifu that came and taught me during my homeschooled period. He came directly from Hong Kong and was in the direct lineage of Ip Man. He trained my mother and I, worked with Derek and, in the meantime, founded a martial arts movement, I guess. He basically had only two belts, the first, white belt, the second, black belt. White belt meant beginner, black belt meant advanced student. Someone worth teaching. He broke down eventually and let people put color bands on their white belt though. “Americans need levels”, he’d say.

Our Sifu, Ting Fong, had a rough childhood and wanted to bring the benefits of martial arts, which he saw as dedication, practice, health, honor and the ability to defend themselves, to kids that didn’t have a great childhood and my Mom was all about that. She created a foundation, created a gym/training hall in North Tulsa, which was historically a poor side of town, and basically started a movement that was really starting to gather speed.

Instead of gangs, they came up with this concept of practice groups. Each student was assigned to a practice group of five when they joined. They were encouraged to bond within their group, to really support each other. Each practice session had a group check-in before each martial arts session and a review session after the practice. The idea was to get these kids some stability in their lives. If their parents couldn’t or wouldn’t raise them, then give them the tools to raise themselves. Each group had an older mentor that would check-in too, show them how to hold meetings, be respectful, open up and talk in-group, act as an arbitrator if there was a group conflict. The mentor was someone that had been training under Sifu for a longer time. My mom also worked in, quietly, health care, mental health care and counseling, and some aid, if needed, and it was needed a lot of the time. She also worked in tutoring, she is big on education. She called these kids, ‘Sifu’s Army,’ but not, of course, where anyone in a position of authority could hear.

She and Sifu even got the police involved, the police got training in a martial art for free and, in return, acted as a mentor to the kids. The kids got the opportunity to not see the police as, well, the police, but as just another human, trying to survive. One of the things that she and sifu stressed was community involvement. Each practice group was required to have an organized event once a month, things like painting old people’s houses, lawn care, picking up trash, babysitting, community gardening, you name it, it got done. In return for each community event, they got two meals catered in, breakfast and a late lunch. Each student that participated got points and points could be exchanged for items at a store called “Sifu’s Store.” Logo'd Nike, Under Armour and other top brands of clothing, shoes, etc. The prices were fairly low, the idea was to both get the kids the clothes they needed and also to create a sense of belonging, a group identity. Also, the only way that you could get the items was to spend points. Can you say bragging rights? It was pretty cool. Kind of like a corporate store, only instead of a company logos, they had the training hall’s logo on them.

The whole concept was really working. It had been in operation for about 12 years now, the city of Tulsa had got behind it, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Schusterman Foundation, two big charity foundations in Tulsa had got on board, there was talk about starting a charter school, multiple kids had graduated from the program and college, it had even expanded out of north Tulsa in to other regions of Tulsa and the surrounding area.

Anyway, I was almost at a black belt in sifu’s version of ‘Wing Chun.’ Alright, I was ready for it, but I hadn’t gone through the testing yet. It required a couple of black belts to be present and there was some politics about it and I kind of liked my white belt. I was close enough that I’d learned all of the forms and was able to demonstrate them without sifu hitting my head. Sifu had this habit of, when he watched someone do something poorly, he’d show them how to do it right and then smack them on the head to make sure it stuck, kind of a cross between a faith healer and Gibbs on NCIS. Everyone around him just got used to it, heck, he’d even slap my mom. Brave man.

Basically, Wing Chun has three forms plus a couple of others - weapons forms, but the first of the forms is Siu Nim Tao, or translated, The Little Idea for Beginning. It covers pretty much all of the basics of the martial art with the exception of kicks. It can take anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes to complete. I’ve been doing it for 12 years, basically, it’s become how I wake up in the morning. I roll out of bed and then start doing the form. Sometimes I do one of the other two forms or even the weapons forms, but for some reason, they don’t speak to me the same way that the first form does. And, as I practiced more over the years, the time that I took me to complete the form grew, now it takes me every bit of 45 minutes, especially if I run through it twice, maybe even a little longer. It isn’t quite as beautiful looking at Tai Chi, but probably a bit more functional.

I checked the time and saw that I had about 50 minutes left before my turn to watch came up, so I got started. It probably looks a little funny to people not used to the forms, a man standing with his knees and feet bent inward, moving his arms, twisting his wrists, but once you realize what the motions are representative of, and how they can brutalize an opponent, the forms become a lot less funny.

I finally finished and got the notification that I was expecting, well hoping for:

You go, boy! You’ve got skillz!

Martial Arts (Wing Chun)

Rank: Copper

Elemental Sphere: Earth

Range: self

Damage: variable

Cool Down: none

Duration: Permanent

Spell Resistance: none

SP: 10 per minute - fighting, 10 per 10 minutes, forms or other training.

A martial art skill created from the Chinese Kung Fu Wing Chun

This is a martial art that emphasizes close in skills against humanoid opponents. It also has a lesser focus on weapons, primarily long poles, swords, and knives. It provides no ranged capabilities.

Level 5, (453/800)

‘That’s interesting,’ I thought. ‘It gave me Wing Chun, but then added that phrase, ‘against humanoid opponents.’ Did that mean that it wouldn’t work against giant rats? Also, it didn’t say what it did? I mean the spells gave damage, this didn’t. It also gave a stamina points cost but didn’t say what the stamina points cost for melee would be without the skill. I’m assuming it would be more, but I don’t know. Also, would the damage be impacted with my sword now? Argh! Always questions. For each step forward, two steps backward!’

‘How the heck am I going to get Aikido or Krav Maga skills?’ I thought. ‘I guess it’ll have to wait until I I fight someone and use the skills. Maybe I can create a kata that defines enough skills to grant me the skill?’ I looked up and saw Janet watching me. “Hmm!” she said. “What was that?” she asked.

“It was the first form of Wing Chun, a form of Chinese kung fu or wushu,” I said. “I studied it under my sifu, Ting Fong. He’s pretty excellent! Sifu means, well, master, I guess.”

“Huh,” she said. “Did you get a skill? Any Qi abilities?”

“I got a skill, but no Qi abilities. I’m not sure how to get them. I’m also not sure if there’s a limit on skills or abilities or spells,” I said. “I just thought about that. What if there’s a limit to the number of spells you can learn and you discover this really great one. Maybe you’ve filled your limit with rank one spells and you discover a copper or even an iron rank skill. And you can’t learn it. That would bite!”

“I don’t think there is,” said Janet. “I think that if you can learn it, you can cast it or do it, provided you have the mana or stamina points to spend.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said. “It sounds logical, more real world-y than having some arbitrary limit. But this whole new world seems composed of arbitrary limits.”

“Well,” she said, “we had plenty of limits in the old world too. Green means go, gravity pulls down, the sun rises in the east, you drive on the right unless your British or Australian. Plenty of limits there.”

“Hmm,” I kind of laughed. “You got me there.”

“So you going to teach us this Wing Chun in the morning?” she asked.

“Yes!” I said, having a eureka moment, “and I’ll be teaching you Krav Maga and Aikido too! ‘Genius,’ I thought. ‘It’s the perfect way to demonstrate a skill, teaching it to someone else. And demonstrating a skill means that you have it and, booya! new skill on the skills screen!”

“What’s that look you suddenly got?” she asked.

“Well,” I was wondering how to get my Krav Maga and Aikido skills to register as new-Earth skills, and then I thought, train someone else in them! So that’s what I’m going to do. The new-Earth economy, giving skills to someone else, helps you get them yourself.” ‘Hmm!’ I wondered, ‘does training give you skill points? I bet it does. I bet the more people you train the more skill points you get.’ Suddenly, my mind flashed to those old martial arts movies, like ‘Enter the Dragon’ where you had this lawn full of people all training in the same art, at the same time, following the person up on stage. ‘Sweet Niblets! Think of the points!’ I must admit, I was drooling a little bit!

I had a thought I wanted to get checked out. “Hey imu,” I said. “I didn’t get any experience for getting the skill. And it was copper. What happened to my experience points for all the spell levels I gained??”

“You do not receive experience for knowledge that you already possess. The new skills you received are simply the System acknowledging your existing capabilities. Only by increasing those capabilities will the System reward you,” and, of course, the little guy vanished.

‘’Well, crap, I thought. ‘I want my 22,725 experience points!’

“And, my watch is done, you’re up,” said Janet. “Remember, don’t stare at the fire or practice, your job is to keep watch!” she smirked and then ducked into the teepee with Tanya.

I watched until one then ducked inside the tent and roused Tanya. Janet was meditating, but Tanya had been sleeping. I decided that I’d try to sleep and snuggled up in the space that she left. I must have succeeded because I was awakened the next morning by the sounds of birdsong and light coming in the open flap of the teepee. I looked over to where Janet was last night and she wasn’t there, so I stumbled out of the tent. It was about 10 after five in the morning according to ‘the clock in muh head’.