Didn't feel like it. Guys like Benboy made me feel like a greenie.
It never does. Those guys I never would have dreamed of talking to, they were just under mods. I never could understand how people would get on Skul's stories and meanly demand and push to be in them. XD
Yeah, and them Community Helpers...I still don't fully understand what all they did. I never asked to be in stories unless people were looking for characters...I still ended up in a lot.
I thought I had been kidding when I said I was out of shape. It was closer to the truth than I had imagined. I was breathless and gasping just moving in.
Tacks thought I was bluffing, which was perfectly understandable and simultaneously infuriating. “No, I cannot go any faster.” I assured her.
“You’re pathetic! A four-star sniper could pick you off with a longbow.” She egged me on, running at my heels.
“How much would it hurt?” I asked.
“Longbows inflict some of the most excruciating wounds in the game. They’re the psychopath’s go-to weapon.”
“My go-to is going to be a shield.” I said, tripping on my own two feet and almost face-planting into the uninviting grey pixelated floor. I caught myself, but not before Tacks gave me a harsh shove forwards. I staggered back into my stride.
“Figures.” She said. “They would assign us a coward.”
I finally just collapsed. She kicked at me for a while, but I ignored her. I kind of lay on my metallic parts and tried to remember some old breathing exercises from back when I got panic attacks. I had found a couple online, after I almost passed out from asphyxiation the last time.
Take a deep breath through the nose. Hold it for three seconds. Slow exhale.
“Hey, Tacks, I don’t think he’s doing so good. “Argo stood over me. “He’s breathing funny.”
“Go kick some studs.” I wheezed.
“He either lives or dies.” Tacks said. “I’m not going to state my preference.”
“I had such wonderful retirement plans though.” I managed to force out, finally sitting up.
“Ready for round two?” Tacks said, touching her back with the flat of her foot.
“Y’know, I’m not really feeling it.” I said, climbing painfully to my feet. “How do I get out of here?”
Surprisingly, Tacks pointed to the door. I didn’t question my good fortune, and made good my escape. The elevator worked and everything. I found my clothes, stuffed my suit back into the hole whence it came, and went to the library to play games on my reading tablet thingy till August showed up.
It was too easy. She just let me go.
This was going to come around and bite me, wasn’t it?
Right on time. “Hey Mom.” I said to August, in a tone that let her know I was totally kidding. I clambered into the back, cause that’s where I belong.
“Hey bro.” December said. “How’s the Echelon?”
“Oh, it’s great.” I said. “I just can’t really appreciate it from the inside.” She was way too excited about all this.
“Did you meet your squad?”
“Yeah, love ‘em. Wish ‘em all the best. Wish they would all just go away.” I sulked in my seat.
“Nate, you gotta make some friends.” August said, flipped her seat around to face the back. She put on her best “tough mom” face. “You need other people.”
“I actually have this theory that we are in fact, not social animals. It goes like this: I instinctively can’t stand other people, and hence other people are not necessary for survival of the species.”
“You like us, right?” December asked, a concerned look on her face.
“You’re great, January.” I said, still looking out the window. “Fam is important.”
“Your squad should be like family.” She sounded like she was reading a bricking manual.
“They’re like those uncles and aunts you detest.” I said. “Circumstances obligate you all to keep running into each other.”
“Are any of them cute?”
“NO!” I shook my head vehemently. “We’re not going there.”
“I’m gonna come to your practice tomorrow.” She raised a triumphant eyebrow.
“Good, can you cover for me?” I started drawing in the fog my breath had created on the window.
She put on a pouty face.
“No? Okay, I’m trying to flunk out anyways. Nothing worse than absences, right?”
She gave me the same look of disappointment, and it didn’t feel so great this time.
The rest of the week played out like a bad nightmare. I showed up to training (most of the time) and left early (every time). I slept restlessly. I roved the Game like I didn’t have two projects coming right up. This couldn’t go on forever. I’d lose my reputation in-game. I’d go insane. I’d eat cardboard.
Friday night was the worst. We had our first match-up tomorrow. I was sitting before the downstairs TV, shoveling pizza into my mouth. One piece. Two pieces. Two more pieces as a sandwich. I hadn’t eaten since Thursday morning.
December glanced at the box. “Good thing I wasn’t hungry.”
“I’m gonna need everything to get through tomorrow.” I said.
“I’m sure half a greasy pizza is going to help out a lot.” December calmly sucked on her smoothie.
I glanced down at the box. “Five-eighths.”
“Is that detail really that important?” She switched movies. She kept switching movies. My head was spinning trying to keep up with all of them.
“Focusing on particulars helps distract my overactive mind from obsessing over things I have no control over.” I said. “They didn’t cut the pizza quite right. I think it was more like eleven-sixteenths.”
For the sake of argument, she replied. “Totally three-fifths.”
“I left you the pepper.” I said.
“That’s so kind of you.” She flipped channels again and I swapped channels too, grasping at what little information I retained about this film.
“Are you going to eat it or not?”
“Hardly.”
I grabbed it and took a bite out of it. I crunched it up, and swallowed. “For my first pepper ever, this isn’t half-good.”
“You never had a pepper?”
“Vegetables were for the rich. They were the only people stupid enough to waste money on them.”
“Shouldn’t you have scurvy or something?”
“I have a bolstered immune system. My body overreacts to disease. I’ll wake up drained one morning and realize I probably just handled the Scarlet fever that was going around.”
“There’s some pluses to that extra arm.”
“I also have a constant source of metal poisoning in my blood stream.” I said. “They had to install extra filters and fans that aren’t calibrated properly.”
“Does it hurt?” She asked, referring more to the implants in general than my pathetic little fans.
Okay, since I've had so many probs with Word lately, I'm going to post a bunch while I'm here at a library computer.
Chapter 8: Squad #81
I was halfway through the lunch line when I heard my name announced on the loudspeaker. I stood to attention.
“We have a new student. Nathan Piedstock from no school given is now part of our school family.”
I felt like gagging, but it’d be a bit conspicuous right now. People were actually paying attention to this preprogrammed monologue.
“He is entering the Echelon with a ranking of three, on squad #81.”
I don’t know why, but something about being rank three made me really happy. Despite my physical appearance, they had to face the fact I was lackluster. I was three whole slots beneath a slim, slightly-dorky girl. It was an achievement of sorts.
Conversations around me renewed with vigor.
“Man, they screwed eighty-one over.”
“This dude’s either three-hundred pounds or a weeb.”
“Tacks ain’t gonna be happy.”
“Yeah, she’s gonna take the tar out of this guy.”
“He’ll be a four or dead by next week.”
My smile faded away. All of a sudden, I was filled with a sense of dreaded apprehension. Somehow I felt that maybe, after all, the Game Master was getting the last laugh.
~<>~
I slid back into my seat, seventeen minutes late. I was conducting an experiment, seeing just how far I could take this before I got a reprimand. I’d tone it back slowly from there, drawing out this new kid exception thing for as long as possible.
“Three?” Argo looked at me with a mixture of disgust and disbelief.
“I warned you, honey.” I settled back into my chair, my smugness returned.
“What are you, a bricking invalid?” She shook her head. “You’ve got all your limbs. You should be able to make a five at least.”
“Hey, why you taking this so personally?” I asked. “Not your problem.”
“I’m on squad #81.” She flicked her hair. “You are my problem.”
Of course, I can't speak for anyone else. 
![[h]](http://storage.proboards.com/6672327/images/ViYqJCSzllPBNSUjmmad.png)
