“I’m going after it.” He said, his skull mask flickering heroically in the disturbed lamplight. At least, I assumed it was a mask.
“Have fun. Once you spawn, what name shall I look for you under?” You see, the Game was a one-life system. If you smashed, you were dead. Your account was disconnected, and you had to start over from the beginning. It prevented a lot of pointless violence, and also meant that people, like me, were deathly afraid of losing their spots. My business would die. My inventory would be gone. My ratings. My customers. I’d likely be spawned months away from my shop, and by the time I got over here it’d be looted, and I’d have no way to even prove I was Nexo.
“I want you to come with me.”
“Brick, no.” I said, with what I hoped translated as definitiveness, not fear.
“We’ve been friends for a long time, Nexo…”
“No, we haven’t.” I said. “We’re not friends.”
He gave me a dead-eyed look. “Thanks pal. Real brave. Disowning me once I grow a backbone.”
“You were better off without one.” I said. “And we were never friends. I don’t have friends.”
“You gotta help me!” He pleaded. “I can’t pull this off by myself.”
“Have you asked your precious new guy?”
“No, but I will.” He stuck out his lower lip. He paused, a sly glint coming into his eyes. “I’d give you the ore. All of it.”
I tried to not be enticed, but it was hard to resist. I’d never worked with lore ore before. It was rumored to be the best forging material in the game, and it automatically added a certain tier to the weapon forged. All the most powerful weapons in the game were made from it. “It won’t do me any good if I’m dead.” I said slowly.
“Take a chance for once, Nexo!” He exclaimed. “You’ve been working this shop for way too long. You’ve forgotten, this is a game! This isn’t real life, you can come back! You can start over! But this, this is a once in a spawntime opportunity.”
He swore, his words coming out in bleeps and beeps because I had my filter turned on. Not because I minded the swearing, but because it was fun seeing big tough guys bleeping and beeping whenever they got mad.
**
“I’m sick of them getting everything!” He said.
“Actually, the Commonwealth ends up with most of it.” I said. “The Iron Guild just gets there first.”
“Bro, that was my ore!”
“You never even actually saw it.” I said, dubiously.
I spent the rest of the night working feverishly on my weapons, my tiny pounds and pricks into the metal like tiny bullet-points in my thoughts. I could die. I could get my hands on some lore ore. What would I do with it? I shouldn’t even be considering this.
How would we pull it off? We’d need more guys. I think I knew of a few who’d be interested. But I shouldn’t be dragging anybody else into this.
But what if it worked? Lore ore, stolen from right under the nose of the second most powerful faction in the game! They’d never stop looking for us. We’d be doomed.
Maybe, just maybe, it was worth the risks. Something about this venture made my blood pressure rise like it never had before. Maybe I hadn’t actually been playing the game. Maybe I was missing out on the best part.
I didn’t sleep at all that night. I wanted to get all my stuff in order before I smashed. I still had an order and a half to complete.
My head was not in the game tomorrow. I was just kind of sitting there, getting pummeled by Tacks in practice, floating around with my head in another dimension. My brain was elsewhere. I’d need supplies. I had weapons stored up, I could distribute those. That might attract a few more people to the quest.
Tacks whacked me in the side of the head. I barely bobbed.
Would anybody answer the call? I’d never asked anybody for anything before. I wasn’t sure if some of them would even remember me. I wasn’t a very memorable person. If I died on this mission, nobody would mourn me. Nobody would miss me. I’d be just another name on the kill count, closer to the bottom than the top. You don’t pick up much XP just forging weapons.
Tacks whacked me in the side. Without thinking, I whipped around, and slammed my elbow into the small of her back. As she collapsed I wrapped my arm around her throat, and just like that I had her in a chokehold, and I didn’t even know how I’d done it. She gurgled a bit. DeadBeat and Argo stared at me like they’d never seen me before. I dropped my arms to my side, and Tacks slowly stood up, gasping for air. She turned to face me. I cringed.
“That was better.” She said. “Again.”
It didn’t happen again. I didn’t even try. What was that? I’d never fought in my life. I didn’t like the rush it’d given me. It was unsettling. This sport was unsettling. We were training to kill. The violence disgusted me.
I just walked off a while later, muttering something about meditation. I needed to think. And I didn’t want to think about what had just happened.
I got my first tardy the next day. My new kid status had officially worn off. I’d be on time from now on. Argo leaned over conspiratorially. “How’d you do that?”
“I showed up to class late.” I said. “It’s not hard.”
“No, the chokehold. Where’d that come from?”
“I have as much of a clue as you do.” I said, facing forward. “I just hope it doesn’t repeat.”
“C’mon, you could be good!” She exclaimed, loud enough for the next three rows to hear. I was glad we were in the back. A few people glared back at us.
I grabbed my notebook, and studiously wrote down “shut up,” and showed it to her. She frowned. I proceeded to ignore her, and took notes. Not on class, of course, but on the beginnings of a plan I was forming. I still hadn’t committed, this was still totally not going to happen. But hypothetically…I’d do it this way.
Argo leaned over my shoulder. “That’s really good. We should use that next match!”
I glanced at her, wondering just what the bricks she was thinking. Oh. The Echelon. I glanced at my sheet again. It could almost be mistaken for an advance plan.
“There’s only four of us, though.” She pointed out.
“I know.” I added another person dot just to spite her, and continued my rough sketching.
~<>~
I used up one of my weekly practice absences that afternoon, electing to instead read ebooks on medieval war strategy. I somehow ended up watching “Lord of the Rings” an hour later. Still, it was more productive then getting pummeled in the arena again. And I really didn’t want to see the beast inside me rear up again. What had that been? I hated violence.
And yet here I was planning a mining raid that was guaranteed to leave a few bloody carcasses behind. I was so hypocritical. And also unprepared. Years of playing the game non-violently hadn’t exactly enhanced my moves.
I still had a couple days. I started taking notes on Aragorn’s moves.
![[derp]](http://storage.proboards.com/6672327/images/YqNTPqyQUocVMYXZgUAI.png)
![[y]](http://storage.proboards.com/6672327/images/WYWPH2VRo26pOFDid7QZ.png)
I know the feeling. 
![[fp]](http://storage.proboards.com/6672327/images/FlzjtkKuxHFGotrSEITs.png)
