Kalli had a vacant look in her eyes when she leaned in to kiss me. The absence of a smile on her face made the whole thing feel wrong somehow. I stopped her with a finger to the lips and quickly examined her to find the source of the effect.

Mind Break

There it was!

DELETE

She blinked a few times before snapping out of it. Without warning, she smacked me across my cheek. Don’t ever force me to kiss you. I mean, you can always ask for one but I don’t think I’ll ever want to be forced to do that. Don’t feel bad. I know you were just testing the magic but I felt helpless when you commanded me to kiss you and it still makes me feel sick even now.

I backed away, horrified that I’d made her feel that way.

I…I’m sorry…

Kalli stroked my cheek where she’d smacked me, sending shivers down my spine. She then cupped my face in her hands and kissed me, the smile that made my legs turn to jelly back on her face. See, it’s so much better when it’s by choice. Anyhow, I don’t think I ever want to be shot with that again, it felt like I was suffocating.

Wanting to see what it felt like, as well as discover whether I could break the effect, Kalli shot me with the turn-based ray. The moment it hit me I saw stars, and my head felt like it had been dunked in a bucket of ice water. As hard as I tried to concentrate, Kalli had me marching circles around her in no time. Even after she was satisfied with how it worked, she couldn’t think of a way to break the effect. She ended up commanding me to sit before trying to talk me back to consciousness. My thoughts swam for what felt like an eternity as I fought to regain control of my free will. It may have been five minutes or an hour but eventually, I recovered enough of myself to pull up a menu. My vision blurred as I scanned the traits until I found the one I was looking for.

Mind Break

The words blurred as my eyes tried to focus. It took every ounce of willpower that I had to squeeze my eyes shut. Once I got them closed, the menu appeared much sharper in the darkness. Normally, seeing menus when my eyes were closed was annoying. The bright light in the darkness made them water. However, under the effect of the turn-based ray, removing distractions from the outside world helped me focus.

DELETE

When I opened my eyes, I was myself again. Kalli beamed at me and immediately threw her arms over my shoulders. Good job! I know you could beat it.

How long was I under?

She frowned, looking up at the sky. Not long. Less than an hour for sure.

I frowned, realizing Kalli didn’t have a watch and probably wasn’t as good at telling time as people were on Earth. Our conversation got Zofia’s attention and she muttered at me while tapping more results into the datapad. “Did you break free by yourself or did the effect wear off?”

“I broke it,” I replied, proud of myself.

“Subject managed to break out of turn-based in one-hundred-thirty-seven minutes.” Zofia continued her report, before turning to me and asking. “Do you think you can do it faster if she shoots you again?”

I shrugged, thinking about the process I went through before turning back to Kalli.

Actually, do you mind if I use it on you one more time?

Kalli frowned. I don’t mind but why?

I’m going to command you to break the effect in mate chat.

Moments later, Kalli looked at me with the same lifeless eyes as the previous time.

I command you to free yourself from the effect.

She didn’t do anything.

Free yourself from Mind Break.

Still nothing.

Can you hear me?

Kalli nodded. That was a good sign at least.

Can you use the DELETE command?

She shook her head and I groaned.

I guess that doesn’t work.

DELETE

Kalli let out a deep breath I didn’t know she’d been holding. Okay, that gets worse every time I go through it. I heard everything you said but nothing I did worked.

I sighed, sagging slightly in frustration.

I know and I’m sorry for putting you through that.

Kalli gave me a weak smile. It’s fine. At least we know, right?

I handed her the PING.

Okay, shoot me again.

She frowned. Are you sure?

Yeah. This time I want you to tell me to remove the effect.

Kalli leveled the PING as me and once again I saw stars. The world faded once again but this time Kalli was there with me in my head. Melvin, I want you to break out of this. Come back to me.

Part of me wanted to go to her, to hold her in my arms. That wasn’t right. What good would it do? There was something I needed to do first. Something important. I fought the fog in my brain as I tried to remember what it was. Then Kalli continued. You need to delete the effect I put on you with the PING.

That was it! I remembered what I needed to do and how I needed to do it.

DELETE

Zofia looked up from her datapad when Kalli kissed me as a reward. “Did he break it already or are you just having your way with him?”

“I would never!” Kalli protested, turning bright red. “Melvin woke himself all on his own.”

I kissed her back.

You had something to do with it. I just followed your voice.

She smiled. No. That was all you.

I lulled my head to the side with a sloppy grin on my face, “Kalli is my master and has ordered me to kiss her?”

Kalli gasped and slapped me. Fortunately, she didn’t use half the force she had the first time and it hardly hurt. “Stop playing around!”

I chuckled at my joke and turned to Zofia. “How long was I under that time?”

“Five minutes,” she answered.

Put me under again.

Kalli took a step back and frowned. What? Why? Haven’t you figured it out?

Now I want to see how long it takes without your help. Just tell me to sit down and I’ll do the rest.

While she didn’t like the idea, she agreed to do it. The second solo attempt took longer than the first. When I finally gasped for breath, Zofia yawned and said, “Two hours, twenty-nine minutes.”

“Again!” I yelled out loud.

It wasn’t until the eighth try that I finally got the hang of it. Even through the fog, I knew what I had to do. Actually, it was a series of things I had to do.

Close my eyes.

Close my mind.

See the system.

DELETE

Zofia whistled when I opened them and stood up. “Wow, a minute and a half. Impressive.”

“Really?” I replied, not believing her words. “That felt like forever.”

She raised an eyebrow as she typed my response into the datapad. “What did it feel like when you took two hours to get out of it?”

“Well, forever,” I admitted sheepishly. “That was different though. The other times I had to figure out what to do. This time I knew and it still took forever to close my eyes and close my mind. I was concentrating so hard I thought I might pass out.”

“A minute is very good.” Kalli complimented me with a smile.

I shook my head. “If we were in a fight, I’d be dead if I took that long to break out of it. Especially if someone was giving me a command. Like to kill you, for example.”

Kalli shuddered at the thought. While I was a little curious about what one of us would do if issued a command like that, I didn’t want to test it. Something terrible might happen. Kalli read my thought and asked a question in mate chat. Are you sure this is a good idea? Maybe we should ask Zofia to remove that one.

She was right of course, but…

Think about it. Just one hit and the fight with Rasputin will be over before it starts.

In the end, we decided to keep the effect on our PINGs and have Zofia remove them from the ones we provided the army. It was just too dangerous to hand out to just anyone. Zofia walked down the line of crates running her hand over the sealed containers as she went. When she got back to us, she announced, “There, it’s done.”

“You took that part out of every one of them?” Kalli asked. “There must be thousands of them.”

Zofia shrugged, looking smug. “There’s seven hundred ninety-five. I just disabled the setting. Nobody will be able to make them use the ray except me. Well, unless you find another magically awakened technician but then they wouldn’t need my PING. They could just make their own.”

The next setting Zofia showed off was called BANG (Big Angry Negative-Resistance Gun). She took us outside the camp and pointed her PING at a nearby rock. The PING buzzed as it seemed to charge up before emitting what looked like a bolt of lightning. The attack was rather lackluster when it hit, fizzing out against the stone with little more than a burn mark as evidence of a hit.

Zofia smiled and said, “That attack uses a lot of mana, so you need to make sure any PINGs assigned to use it don’t miss.”

“But it didn’t do anything.” Kalli pointed out wearily.

Zofia smirked. “That, my friends, is because the rock didn’t have any electronics inside of it. If you hit a tank or a computer with that setting, you can pretty much make it stop working. The BANG works by reducing the charge in any device to effectively nothing. I originally came up with it as a self-destruct method for a certain computer of mine but I later found out that it’s rather effective against any electronic. And trust me when I say, practically everything from Earth has it now.”

To test the BANG I edited the same rock Zofia shot into a fully functional computer. To turn it on I had to also create a power bank. Zofia smirked at me when she saw it and asked, “Why did you make it Linux?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t. I just called it Cheap PC (Edited) and that’s what came out. I guess the system knows what it’s doing.”

She leveled the PING and fired again. This time we were greeted by a shower of sparks and a clearly non-functional computer. I even tried rebooting to be sure. Both the PC and the power bank didn’t work. Satisfied with the results, I DELETED both of them.

The final setting was some kind of plasma projectile. Zofia giggled like a schoolgirl when explaining how it worked. “Have you ever set your phasers to stun? While this isn’t a continuous beam, it will stun any biological life form, awakened or not. It works by interacting with your nervous system and temporarily stops your body from responding to your brain. I’ve shot more than a few obnoxious mages with this.”

To demonstrate, Zofia wanted to shoot me with it but I didn’t know how I felt about that. In the end, I turned to Kalli. “You do it.”

Kalli frowned. She was doing that a lot lately. “Do I have to?”

“You’re the only one I trust to shoot me,” I replied, trying to sound brave.

“How adorable,” Zofia replied, rolling her eyes.

“Alright,” Kalli said, leveling the PING at me once again. “Here goes nothing. Don’t blame me if this hurts.”

An angry red bold shot out of the PING and reminded me of a blaster from Star Wars. Instead of my head being doused in ice water, my body was instead. I dropped to the ground and started to twitch as Zofia said, “Oh, I probably should have told you to sit down for this. Now, just focus on breathing until you get through it.”

I wanted to laugh at her comment but unfortunately, I couldn’t breathe. Whatever the PING did, my body wasn’t responding at all. It was like being punched in the solar plexus while underwater. Just when I thought I was going to black out, my body started to react and I gasped for breath. The rest of me took a bit longer to come around.

Once I finally managed to regain control of my extremities, I stood up. Zofia nodded and tapped her screen. “About forty-five seconds. You appear to have responded just a little faster than anybody else.”

“Ugh,” I groaned, taking deep breaths that still weren’t enough. “I spaced and forgot to see what the effect was.”

Kalli saved the day by whispering in my head through mate chat. I saw it. It’s called “stunned”.

Once I was back to myself, Kalli insisted on taking a shot of the stunner herself. I advised against it but she scrunched up her face and said, I have to get used to it too. While I sort of felt it through the connection, I need to be ready for it if one hits me in battle.

But nobody is going to shoot at you.

She shoved her PING in my hands. What if Rasputin or one of his cronies get their hands on one?

In the end, I shot my girlfriend…again. It was agony watching her writhe on the ground from the pain I’d inflicted. I knew what she was going through because I could feel it. In the end, she got up just a little faster than me. Zofia smiled at her and showed her the timer on the datapad. “One minute eleven seconds.”

Kalli cheered before turning to me. “Now there’s just one thing left to do.”

“What’s that?” I asked, dreading the answer.

Kalli had a grave look on her face when she answered. No sign of the former elation was left on her face. “We have to find Rasputin and kick that son of a kronkey off our planet.”

“And rescue your parents,” I added.

Kalli nodded, a smile starting to tug at her lips. “Yes! And save my parents.”