Chapter 17: Stepping Between Paths

"You're leaving?" Jimmy set down his magazine and gave a more irritable than average grunt. "This is a bad time. I need you to pull extra shifts next weekend because there's a fighter convention in town."

Rick just shook his head. "I'm serious about resigning. Thank you for years of employment, but I need to move on."

"Dammit, kid... I knew I shouldn't have let you get away with that crap with your sister. Don't show your face in here again."

"Oh, come on, Jimmy." It felt strange to call his boss by his first name, but Rick just pressed forward. "I didn't storm out like Henry, I'm giving you the notice you wanted. And I got Melissa working here and covering most of my clients. I don't see what else I could do other than work in your gym forever."

Jimmy stared at him for a long moment, then grunted. "The fact that it could be worse doesn't mean I have to like it. You ungrateful kid... get out of here and get beat up less often."

"I didn't expect you to get so sentimental on me."

"Bah. At least tell me how long your sister is going to stay."

"That's up to her, but..." Rick decided that it would be stupid to leave on bad terms with his old boss, even if he wasn't likely to need a reference given his current job. "She'll be taking exams in another two months. If I know anyone else interested I'll send them your way, but that's the best I can do."

"Oh, now you're getting uppity." Jimmy snorted and picked up his magazine again. That was the end of the conversation, so Rick turned and left the House of the Cosmic Fist.

For the last time... though not really. Most likely he'd visit Melissa a few times for one reason or another. But once she was gone, he had no real connections to the place. Even though the departure was overdue, it left him melancholy. He'd worked there for most of his life after high school graduation, and for all the negative parts of the job, it had built his foundation as a fighter.

All in all, he wasn't too sentimental. Shaking it off, Rick manifested his bike and headed out. Though he knew that he was unlikely to find another anomaly so quickly after the first, he wanted to throw himself into the new job. The previous day he'd visited the old man at the gas station again but hadn't gotten any specific leads.

Later, however, he'd expanded the same strategy and stumbled across something. On one of the local Branton websites there were a lot of requests for a fighter to help put down pests. It was the sort of temp job he had ignored before, but now he wondered if they weren't symptoms of a larger problem. Based on the request locations, they seemed to be concentrated near the southern suburbs, so he hoped that would be a good place to start.

Once he got there, he wasn't certain how he was going to start. But as it turned out, that didn't matter. He was still just biking south when he felt a huge disruption of lucrim. Rick stood up and pedaled harder to reach the disturbance.

It seemed to be on the edge of a golf course, of all things. Rick had no idea what to think of that, but almost all his attention was absorbed by the people involved: there were uniformed security officers on one side and a large bunch of fighters on the other. As he recognized some of them from the previous CSLA trials, Rick realized that it was more complicated than that: there were at least two groups of fighters and all three factions seemed angry with one another.

When he got near, he hopped off his bike and tucked it into his pocket. He was still too far away to hear anything about what was being said - at least without a sensory core, which seemed like a terrible investment given how many other things he needed urgently. So he stepped onto the grass and moved closer... until someone moved to intercept him.

"You can fuck off back where you came from." A wiry man stepped into his path with a glower. He wore a sleeveless shirt that revealed intricate tattoos snaking from his biceps all the way down to his fingers. His generation rate was about 35,000 lucrim, but he seemed to know what he was doing. "This place is ours."

"You think there's an anomaly there?" Rick asked, trying to look over the man's shoulder. The tattooed man stepped forward and shoved him in the chest.

"I said fuck off. Whoever gets credit, we're not going to let you sneak in and steal our find."

"Look, man, I'm really not trying to steal anything." Rick made himself not look at the golf course and instead just smiled at the tattooed man. "I'm guessing you guys saw the same thing I did in the local ads, but you got here way earlier. Whatever the problem is, I won't challenge you for anything. I'm really just curious about what's going on."

"I know you better than that, you smug little bastard." The man lowered his center of gravity and began to let aura flow down his arms. "You smile and act all nice now, but you'll cheat in the end."

Getting a bit nervous, Rick dropped into a defensive stance as well. "I seriously have no idea who you are. What is this about?"

"You beat the shit out of my little cousin in that big tournament. Worse, you were working for that icy bitch. If we were alone..." The man jerked two fingers across his neck. Despite the cliche threat, Rick swallowed. Apparently he'd made a real enemy at the tournament.

"Fine. If you feel that strongly, I'll go-"

"Maybe I won't let you after all."

Whoever the man was, he lunged forward. Not terribly fast, but there was aura burning down the tattoos on his arms to concentrate in his fist. Rick automatically shifted to the side, slapping the blow away from him with one hand.

To his shock, that hand hurt. An instant later, the man struck again with his other arm, this blow coming faster. Rick blocked with a raised forearm on instinct just before the burning fist connected.

A cry of pain tore itself from his lips and Rick staggered backward. For a moment he thought his arm might actually be broken, but what really stunned him was that his defensive core was actually cracked all the way through. How had there been so much power in that strike?

When the man came at him again, Rick leapt back with a Bunyan's Step. His opponent didn't seem to have an equally fast speed, but he ran at a good rate. How the hell did he have so much power? Rick's first estimate of 35,000 lucrim still seemed accurate, so the power must be from invested cores. Was this rough-looking tattooed man who would have fit in at the trailer park back home really capable of the kind of advanced investment Emily had hinted at?

"That's right, you little shit." The man grinned and advanced on him, his tattoos glowing fiercely. "You think you're the only one who's had a rough life? I bet I can beat the hell out of you before security gets here."

With that, he lunged, and Rick had to admit that the odds didn't look good. His opponent had an unknown amount of lucrim invested into strong cores and seemed to have the experience to back it up. Worse, he was speeding up the longer the battle went on. This wasn't an opponent like Mike who was fumbling around with his parents' lucrim.

It was the thought of Mike that saved him. When the man swiped out, aura burning, Rick ducked underneath his hand and hammered an elbow into his chest.

His opponent staggered and Rick used a Bunyan's Step to shoot back out of range before another blow hit him. Okay, so this guy had pretty good defenses, too. But that didn't matter because the security guards were beginning to notice their fight now. Whatever happened, the local security and other fighters wouldn't let him be murdered in the street.

So instead of dodging to run out the clock, Rick ran in. He managed to land a blow on his opponent by surprise before a fist hit his ribs. He hadn't even seen it, just felt the pain shoot through his torso. If not for his defensive core, he would have had several shattered ribs, and his core was in bad shape.

He could take it if the fight didn't last for long, though. Rick actually spent lucrim fueling his offensive core and kicked at his opponent's hip. He used a Bunyan's Step to add as much momentum as possible and felt the blow connect.

Somehow the tattooed man rolled with the force, spinning in place and backhanding him. Rick flew back, slamming into the ground and tasting blood all throughout his mouth.

"Now you'll pay!" The man advanced on him, drawing even more aura into his tattoos. Judging from his eyes, it looked like he might strike to kill even with everyone watching. Rick started to wonder if he'd made a mistake and scrambled backward, trying to pull together his defensive core in time.

Though he refused to give up and his mind was scrambling for ways to fight back, he had to admit it looked grim. His defensive core was basically shredded, so another blow would devastate his body. Not only was his opponent fast and tough, he was about as good at hand-to-hand combat. This wasn't a fight he could win... no, maybe he had already lost.

"Nice day for a round of golf, isn't it?"

The line came out of nowhere and both of them turned to stare at Damian, who was standing just to the side. He had definitely not been there a moment before. Currently he stood with a golf club leaning across his shoulders as if he really was just there to golf instead of stepping into the middle of a bloody fight.

"Stay out of this!" The tattooed man jabbed a hand at him, the aura in one finger intensifying even more. "Don't defend him, and don't even think about stealing the lucrim anomaly!"

"Is there an anomaly here?" Damian's eyes went wide and he turned to Rick with a look of exaggerated surprise. "I had no idea! I was just visiting my favorite country club when th-"

While Damian was looking away, the other man lunged for his throat. Yet Damian pulled the golf club off his shoulders with unnatural speed, whipping it around so that it hit his opponent in the face.

Unsupported by aura. The golf club crumpled against a defended opponent, more stunning him than doing any damage. Maybe that had been the point - the tattooed man stumbled to a halt in surprise, thrown off his assault.

By that time, security was moving closer and the other fighters were beginning to approach the tattooed man. Judging from their expressions, he wasn't supposed to have gone off picking fights. The man glowered at Rick one last time before letting the aura in his arms fade and stalking off with the others.

Rick pretended he wasn't so shaken and got to his feet. As he started to walk away, he took personal inventory and tried to tell himself that it had been worth it. Even if he had lost and come near to injury or death, he hadn't taken any actual injuries. It would take him a lot of time to repair his defensive core, but it would be stronger for the encounter. That would be good in general and potentially life-saving if this lunatic attacked him again.

"Just who was that?" Rick asked the question without really looking to see if Damian was there, because he was pretty sure the other man would follow.

"Goes by the name of Jack Ganess, I believe." Damian tapped the broken golf club against the ground as if it was a cane. "I marked him out as a dangerous one, but he had more offensive power than I had estimated."

"Sorry you ruined your golf club defending me."

"Oh, don't be. I stole this on the way here."

Rick stopped walking and stared at Damian. "Just what are you up to?"

"Eh. I saw there were too many people here to get the anomaly, so I just wanted to have some fun and check out the competition."

That actually sounded like it might be the truth, so Rick nodded in acceptance. Since he had the other man's attention, he decided it was worth asking a further question. "Do you know how he had that much raw strength? It was definitely more than a generation rate of 35,000 lucrim could support."

Damian eyed him coolly for an uncomfortably long moment, then turned away back to the golf course. "If you don't know, I'm not going to give you a remedial lecture. You look like you're used to being in over your head, but this time... maybe discretion is the better part of valor."

Though Rick wanted to demand more answers, at that moment Damian glowed with a soft red aura and sped away in a deceptively flowing movement. It was possible that he hadn't given up on stealing this anomaly from everyone else - Rick definitely wouldn't put it past him.

The encounter left him more than a little thrown off. For one, his plan to gather mundane information to find lucrim anomalies was clearly not as brilliant as he thought - tons of other people had already thought of it, and they'd be all over any other public information. The competition would only get worse from here, and that was before he considered that Damian wasn't really on his side.

But the worst part of it was obviously Jack and his aggressive attack. His words had sounded sincere, but Rick honestly had no idea who he was talking about. He'd fought a lot of people in the multi-tier tournament and didn't think that he'd particularly started any vendettas against anyone. Yet now he had a very dangerous person coming after him.

Add on top of that whatever power his opponent held... it was enough. His jacket, which had survived so many fights, was badly torn up. Rick had other plans for the day, but he put them off to go home and heal.