“Fuck,” Todd complains, shaking out his fist. He knows that you’re not supposed to punch with a closed hand, but how the heck else are you supposed to do it? Fighting sucks, Todd decides. Why would anyone choose to do this if it means so much hurting both during and after?

Todd looks up, then around, ears burning in abashment. He finds himself in the center of a whole lot of silence, and a whole lot of judgement. He tries to turn away, but there’s no place for private when public and player are, (each and all) captives of the stage.

“He came at me,” he says to no one in particular, voice cracking.

Worst part is the way Joe and Candra are looking at him. Worst with a capital everything. He might have had their sympathy at the start of this mess, but he’d lost it in winning. Now Todd’s just a psycho with a short fuse and a sloppy left hook.

He tries to mumble another apology and an explanation but they both come out at the same time, so it jumbles up into nonsense. Without another avenue, he turns to look at the floor instead. The floor doesn’t take sides.

Breath. Oxygen is his solace, respiration his benediction. There are voices calling for his attention, but he tunes them out. They can’t touch him in this long moment. He holds it longer than a second should last and just for himself. On the edge of his vision he sees a lock of his hair slip loose, in the center-blind of his vision he sees the blur of his nose. A bead of sweat breaks loose from his hair. Pink, run down the length of his nose, breaks loose from its tip. Two drops, falling to spatter against the blue of stone.

They leave their mark in raining: salt and blood.

Todd pauses. Come to think of it, maybe the floor does take sides. He looks over at Randall, who’s slumped in a seated position and reeling from the final strike. He’s breathing though, breathing and conscious.

Active Quests

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

Simply thinking about the outcome of the fight somehow seems to be enough to bring the prompt tracking his brawl back into view. The people around him have started to pepper him with questions and rebukes, so he tries to shut them out. Panting heavily, he closes his eyes and moderates his breathing. God he feels awful. God, he feels kind of great. Once his head clears a little more, and his huffing comes from wheeze and back down to puffing, he opens his eyes. The question is, how will the quest thing respond to his victory?

Active Quests

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

It hasn’t changed. Todd narrows his eyes. That’s not right. He flashes a concerned glance over at Randall, who’s starting to shake the Ks and Os out of his noggin and rejoin the living. The poor guy lets out a prolonged and woeful moan.

Todd focuses on the prompt again. Then back to his recovering friend. There’s a thought that’s brewing, one that doesn’t have a shape yet. The idea of it, the thought of even thinking it, is so far beyond reprehensible that his waking mind refuses it utterly.

Then , chimes the prompt, and a wave of relief floods through Todd; from his crown, on down to his gut.

Active Quests

1. A Taste for Battle (easy): Defeat first enemy of the Tutorial. (Complete)

He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and steps up to Randall with an open hand held out.

At that moment, the red line which had held them prisoner dissipates into stone, like ink into ocean. Solid to cloud to gone. Todd presents his hand again and more assertively. Randall, with his expression coming back into focus, sees it, then looks up.

“Why are you so strong,” Randall grunts dejectedly, raising his arm in concession.

Todd shakes his head, reaching out and grabbing his friend’s hand. With a heaving noise, he hauls Randall up and to a wobbling upright.

“Come on. You never do the push-ups, man,” Todd chuckles, patting Randall consolingly on his shoulder.

“Oh thank God,” Candra’s voice finally makes its way to the front of Todd’s attention and a slurry of things he’d been ignoring too. “Is he okay?” She asks, in real concern.

“I think he’s mostly alright,” Todd calls out, and Randall reluctantly confirms it while gently prodding at the promise of a nasty looking bruise.

His neighbors haven’t been quiet. Far from it, dozens of them are clamoring.

“- Is he okay?”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Are you okay?”

“It’s all the electronic screens, making their heads sick.”

“Hit him again!”

Everybody seems to have an opinion or a question, but they’re dangerously missing the point.

Joe had been grave quiet but, among the many, his question catches Todd right away. “Did it work?” he asks; expression like the point of a surgeon’s needle.

“Yea, we’re out,” Todd replies, heavy in knowing what’s coming. He walks over to Joe and Candra’s ring. “Think I can get through?” he asks.

“No, no, no,” Candra mutters, looking at the ring and back at Joe. She understands. “I can’t do that. I’m not going to do that.”

“Just,” Joe raises a hand to reassure her. “Wait a second. Maybe Drips can help us get out from his side.”

Doubting it will be that easy, Todd makes an affirming noise anyway. He probes his hand against the empty space of the boundary. As he does, it reacts immediately to his palm, like a smooth pane of solid glass.

“No,” he shakes his head. “It’s going to be even stronger from this side.”

“You sure?” Joe sighs.

“… No. But yes.” Todd looks around, trying to continue ignoring the rest of the crowd. They’ve noticed he’s free. They’ve noticed how he got free. Denial’s not going to keep them long from connecting the dots.

“It doesn’t make sense though,” Todd continues, feeling like he’s missing something. “People are going to try to wait this out. They won’t be pushed around this easy.”

“Didn’t take much for you and Randall to come out swinging.”

That doesn’t count, though. “Sure, and it’ll work for a few other people too. But not most, not half. I doubt a tenth of regular people are nuts enough to start a fight with a stranger for no reason.”

While thoughtful and optimistic, Todd’s assessment comes with poor timing. Three hundred scarlet rings thrum and glow all at once, then very delicately shrink an inch or two in radius.

That makes more sense, Todd thinks with a chill.

The shouting starts. So does the second fight.

–

Feeling a little recovered by this point, Todd braces himself. He plants his left foot down, and then kicks solidly forward with his right. His heel thumps against the steel-hard force, and grunts out in pain.

Just about ten fights have resolved by this point, and the rings have shrunk a second time. The freed participants have been mostly civil after their brawls, but this first wave has generally been younger, and more evenly matched. That means long, tough, mean fights.

It helps that they’ve been negotiated in good faith, and in the hope that the freed fighters might be able to save the others. In fact, that’s been Todd’s focus for a good number of minutes. He and seven others have gathered around a ring holding an elderly man and a young woman. It’s a fight that no one wants to see happen, so they count loudly to three as a group and batter against the ring as one.

If someone had a weapon, something truly heavy, maybe it would be different; but Todd's guess about weapons being denied entry had proven true. They had to rely on their own bodies. They’d also tried slipping low and trying to damage the ring directly at the floor with a ring of car keys, but the color seems to be just as much a part of the floor as the surrounding blue, and refuses to be altered.

The glow of the ring precedes a third, tightening reduction. One of the young men helping in the effort is starting to cry, and he is comforted by the gentle words of the grey haired man they’re trying to save.

If Todd was worried the fights would start, before. Now he’s starting to consider what happens if people continued to refuse. Would the rings shrink until they crushed their occupants against each other? Would they stop once there was no more room left to move? Or would they continue on and juice their victims dry, just to prove a point.

“Okay, I’m coming to help,” Joe shouts from a few rings over.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” shouts Candra. She sounds frightened, strained.

Todd abandons the rescue effort and runs to help his friends. Randall is there already, but is still in poor shape, and looks powerlessly at Todd.

But their worry ends up being unfounded. Joe opens up his arms wide, walking slowly forward to Candra. She does back away, but Joe’s calm attitude unnerves her, and the wall blocks her. Then he wraps her in a bear hug, and slumps.

“What the hell,” Candra says, her arms pinned to her sides. Joe’s heavy, but not heavy enough to bring her down. Not as long as she can keep her balance – no, she fell.

“Get off of me, goddammit.”

Joe doesn’t say anything, just holds on tight as Candra fights to get loose. She tries to swing a leg loose, but she’s got no good angle to kick while she’s on the floor and underneath a body.

“You’re such an asshole,” Candra grumbles, losing steam. She’s still squirming, but Joe’s hold is so tight, it looks like it hurts to fight it.

“Can you move?” Joe asks, after a half minute.

“Fuck you.”

“Can you move?” He insists.

“No.”

Joe lets go of Candra, and picks himself up. He looks for a second like he will offer her a hand, but her anger is so fresh, he omits the help.

He ought to apologize, but instead he declares, “I won.” He says it clear and loud.

The ring hesitates, Todd is sure of it. He can’t imagine it can like to be cheated like this. Neither can he mark the minute he decided to believe a floor could have a criminal motive.

But fair is fair. The color of the ring sinks murkily into the tile and Joe steps across the newly liberated space. He grabs Todd’s hand firmly and shakes it, then does the same for Randall.

“We can do this,” the young man says, smiling broadly. “We can win on our own terms.”