Streamers of light swish, and her hair comes down in a cascading galactic spiral. The girl made of stars whoops as she twirls off into the sky, and her two sisters follow, trailing a tittering helical triplet of foxfire into the sable heavens.

Active Quests

1. A Taste for Battle (easy): Defeat first enemy of the Tutorial. Reward: Limitless' Charity Blooming-Promise Berry (1)

Todd cranes his neck up to watch, until a new display panel appears, and his dropped jaw finds its way back into place. Then he mouths the words and lets his attention fall back down to the terrestrial. The new panel fades.

“She doesn’t mean, like fight, fight,” He blinks dumbly, looking at Randall for reassurance. “Right?”

Hundreds of other people shuffle uncomfortably, in similar states of doubt. A low rumble of nervous inquiries and indignant exhortations swells in volume. Folks are confused. Folks are pissed.

An undignified cry snatches Todd’s attention, and he looks to see the crabby tomato-faced man from his earlier shoving match land backwards on his ass with a dazed thump. Then he glares in chagrin at the line of the red ring, which encloses him and the older hispanic woman in the floral dress. In fact, Todd notices that nearly everyone has been paired off and enclosed by the dull matte rings. There are hundreds of them.

His brain starts to churn, trying to make the sums into sense, to math out some kind of alternate to an ‘f’ shaped word he knows one unwelcome meaning to. Meanwhile Randall stares on, thoughtfully upwards. Todd’s friend has never been a serious sort; always been that stout, geeky goof kind of guy that’s a hoot to bring to parties and suicide to bring on double-dates. The kind of guy that measures his legacy in the high score rankings on arcade machines and Tuesday night trivia championship cups. Kind of guy that’d die before talking dirty to his friend’s back, but find the grave twice over before he’d talk clean to a vicar’s front. That kind of guy.

Randall stirs after a long moment, coming back from that faraway distance. The two young men meet eyes. Todd’s wild, shaky with questions. Randall’s still, with the calm serene of a man with answers.

“Randall?” Todd manages to squeak pathetically, as a thick meaty fist crosses the distance between them and clips him right in the eyebrow.

Todd leans back at the last possible moment, missing most of the impact and stumbling backwards until a dense elastic pressure thumps into his tailpipe and he gets his feet right and under him again. A cry of alarm pipes out from nearby, but it’s apiece to getting wailed on, so Todd puts it low on his priority.

“What the fuck, man?” Todd cries, putting a hand to his abused face. Then his eyes bulge with alarm as Randall’s other fist hoops in from the other side and Todd ducks and staggers leftways, warding off the blow awkwardly with his raised wrist. “Cut it out!”

Backing up to make some distance, Todd hits the pressure wall again, and spares a half glance behind him to find nothing but empty air and the line of the red ring. “The hell?” He says, but can’t spare the cycles as Randall advances carefully in a clumsy boxer’s stance. The thing that’s hardest for Todd to process is the jaunty, dweeby grin that his friend has smeared all over his traitor face. It’s making it hard for him to work his way up to angry, even though a gut-deep survival instinct is trying to tell him it’s high time to kick Randall’s ass. He clenches his teeth and warily raises his fists up in front of him.

“What the hell Randall?!” Screams Candra from one ring over. Randall flinches but ignores her, trying to keep his bulky body moving, bouncing as light on his feet as his ankles will let him. Then dips to the side a bit, looking for a better opening.

“Yo! Dickweed! Whattaya DOING!” Hollers Joe, raising his hands palm up in the international gesture of ‘what the fuck’.

Cringing again, Randall tosses off an exploratory jab. Todd slaps the hand away and is forced back into the force-cushion wall of the ring. Tired of taking hits by this point, Todd lunges forward with a low kick and jams his cleats at Randall’s shin. It lands on his guard with a plasticky clack, but the big guy yelps anyway and stumbles back a bit. “Ow,” he says, frowning.

“Whaddya mean, OW,” Todd snorts, shuffling closer. He taps his fingers against the warm sanguine off his eyebrow, then pulls his fists in tighter to his face. By this point he’s gone red with embarrassment, practically too blush to bleed, at the center of hundreds of stares. As Randall resumes his stance and the two begin to circle each other, it’s clear the fat boy is feeling that same pressure of attention. Even though his eyes’ve got the bleary glisten of an incoming cry, Randall hunkers down anyway. Shuts it all out, intent on the fight.

“None of them understand,” he mutters softly, striking out with a groping palm to bat at Todd’s guard. They struggle for a moment in the grip, other arm in a wild flapping exchange before Todd delivers a sharp two knuckle strike into the meat of Randall’s bicep. “Fucking ow,” he says again. The fight is driven apart, and Randall gets his turn to experience the impregnable bound of the ring.

“They don’t,” he huffs, “understand?” Todd shakes his head, “Clue me in, Sherlock -” he grunts, striking at Randall’s guarding forearm, then bringing the other fist round to hammer on his elbow and taking it on the sharp. “Goddammit,” the both of them curse, as the second cradles his elbow, and the first kneads at the blade of his hand.

“None of them understands,” Randall insists again, this time full on his way to breaking into tears. It doesn’t stop him lumping forward a step to make an attempt at a revengeful shin kick. Todd shirks it with a fadeback, then punishes the overextension with a bullish haymaker. It’s half blocked by a raised arm, but still curls around a bit to thump Randall in the side of his ribs. “This,” he grunts, clubbing back furiously at Todd once, twice, thrice, before losing steam. “Is some fantasy shit,” he wheezes.

Battered out of a good lungful of air, Todd gulps up another. The bruising drum of pain throbs along with his heartbeat, but he grits his teeth and shoves a palm strike, which they wrestle over, as he mashingly blots at Randall's sweaty face. When the return thumb gets too close to Todd's eye, they break apart again.

Full body, wracking breaths stagger every word. "This. Is. Some. Narnia-ass. Shit," Randal throws an exhausted windmill and whiffs it.

“Yea?”

“You. Know. You,” another wide, easily dodged swing. “Get it.” Randall wipes sweat whole handedly off his face and it doesn’t seem to help.

“Yea.” Todd says. And he does, he really really does. He swats at his friend’s outstretched hand again.

“I’m. Not,” the other says, landing a punch on Todd’s ulna-bone. “Gonna. Screw this. Up.” His face streams with tears, blotchy all the way up to his hairline and down to his collar.

“Fuckin’ magic,” Todd admits aloud, then winces as his arm twinges.

Randall nods, as only his friend, his fellow nerd can understand. “Fuck’n. magic,” he whispers. Then he bellows unintelligibly, and charges with everything he has left.

Todd backpedals, a reckless but tactical stumble. His center rocks past the limit of balance, his shoes clatter uncontrolledly against the tile. Then, when he hits the force at the ring he doesn’t fight it, he rebounds. Bringing his arm in and center, he lines up his right fist and cold-cocks Randall full in the cheek, dropping him onto his ass in a daze.