Chapter 33: Side Effects

He'd expected it to get easier, but it never did. Rick stared at his seventh pill for a long time, trying to psych himself up to take it. Sometimes he tried to tell himself that it wasn't that bad, but he never really believed it. The pain from each one was just as agonizing as the last.

Keeping the pill held in his palm, Rick went through his full set of meditation and exercises again. Partially to delay, though he justified it by thinking that his motivation to do all that work would be significantly reduced after so much pain. Just enduring each one of the pills felt like all the work he should need to do for a day, but unlike his other work, he couldn't choose to stop the pill half-way.

Finally he forced himself to swallow it quickly. It didn't kick in right away, but he just lay down on the couch and waited for it.

Sometime later he found himself staring up at the ceiling. He hurt all over. Well, not precisely all over, more in all of his inner parts. Usually he was bruised everywhere, but his skin felt fine. It was more like he had twisted every muscle in his body. For a while he thought about how exactly he hurt, then he fell unconscious again.

When Rick woke up the second time, he had a feeling that something was wrong. It had never been this bad before, or this long. But had it been long? He wanted to get out his phone to check, but his arms wouldn't cooperate. Again he faded out.

The third time he ached a bit, but the pain was gone. There were also the sounds of movement and someone humming. He'd have panicked if he hadn't recognized Melissa's voice a second later. That was good, because getting up quickly might have split his head in half.

"Oh, you're up!" Melissa's head popped over the back of the couch. "You didn't seem well, so I decided to make you soup. I mean, it's ramen, but soup feels like the thing to make."

"Thanks, sis." He sat up, very slowly, and realized that he felt okay... except for a growing discomfort with how much time had passed. "How long was I out?"

"I have no idea, but I got home about 30 minutes ago."

He swallowed, trying to remember the exact time he'd gotten around to taking the pill. That meant he'd been barely conscious for several hours. Was something wrong with him, some unintended consequence of the pills? Granny Whitney had implied that it should feel the same every day, but she might have lied. Given the pain, that might have been a necessary lie.

Eventually Melissa brought him a bowl of soup. It was simple, but it felt good to get something hot in his stomach. He supposed that was a good sign, given that if his insides were in terrible shape, eating something would have made things worse.

Soon after, Melissa dropped down onto the couch with a bowl of her own, steam from it fogging up her glasses. "I thought about moving you to the bed, but I wasn't sure I could lift you. I was sure if I tried, I'd end up dropping you and whacking your head on something."

"I'm okay... there's no need for that."

"Yeah, but I'm enjoying it. It's nice to take care of you for once." She grinned, but then her expression became more serious. "Are you okay? Anything strange going on?"

"It's just those pills." He gestured at the unmarked bottle with his spoon. "They're involved with training, but they're pretty unpleasant. I don't recommend taking one."

Melissa's eyes went wide. "Do you mean that I shouldn't have eaten them all while you were asleep?"

"Ha. Ha. But seriously, people said good things about the work I've done on my foundation, and that's largely thanks to you."

"Oh, good. I'm not saying I'm sitting around moping about it, but I do wish I could do more to help you sometimes. Glad I didn't cause any harm somehow."

"If anything is causing harm, it's these pills. But I'll deal with it." Rick ate in silence for a while, watching himself carefully for any signs of something wrong, but he felt better the longer he was awake. "So, has anything special been going on with you lately?"

"Nothing actually special, but I do have one thing that's very, very 'special' if you know what I mean. It's amazing, you'll love it."

Melissa set aside her bowl and hopped up, running over to her backpack. She pulled out a DVD case and thrust it toward him like it was some great treasure. Rick blinked as he looked over the over-dramatic cover, poorly dressed actors horridly edited into random position. And based on the title... "Fist of the Sublime? What is this?"

"Basically the worst movie ever, or so I hear. They apparently had zero special effects budget, so they just got the best lucrim-users they had nearby - who weren't very good - to pretend to do all the fights. I hear you can see stuff catch on fire in some scenes. They actually end up getting arrested at one point, so a scene just cuts off abruptly and then starts again in a completely different location." His sister's eyes sparkled. "It sounds amazing."

"Heh, that does sound fun." He turned the case over to see if the back side mentioned how long it was, but it only talked about the "fist-pounding action" in oddly inconsistent fonts. "You're wanting to watch it sometime? How long is it?"

"About two hours, I think. I actually don't have time to watch it tonight because there's a ton of homework I've gotta do. But we can find the time, right? You're not too busy to manage a movie?"

Rick blinked, wondering if he really did seem that busy. Between work, training, and his matches, perhaps he was. Immediately he decided to make time for the movie, though it was just a question of when. "Let's definitely find the time. Friday evening I have to work late, though."

"Ugh, your job is the worst. Next week is going to be really busy for me, so it probably needs to be this weekend or the next one. I suppose you have to work both of them?"

"This weekend is busy except for Saturday morning. Next weekend I'll get off by Sunday evening, but..." Rick checked his phone and noted the reminder. "No, I have to meet Emily then."

He realized that was a mistake the next second, but it was too late. Melissa drew both hands to her mouth in mock surprise. "Oooh, Emily. I don't even know who that is, so I'm going to assume the worst possible things!"

"Yup, it's definitely whatever you're imagining."

"How scandalous! I think I might faint!"

Rick rolled his eyes. "Really, it's more training. This upcoming tournament thing is the entire reason Granny Whitney is pushing me through all this. If we win, then I can pay her back and we'll finally be even. Then the two of us can make our own decisions and figure out where we want to go."

"That sounds nice." Melissa drew her legs up against herself and wrapped her arms around them. "Are you completely sure that she'll let you go, after the tournament? Is it possible that she'll go back on her word or rope you into something else?"

"Yeah, I've thought about that, but I hope not. Everything with her is a double-edged sword, but she's not completely unreasonable. From what I've seen the reward for this event will be pretty substantial, plus I think it's an ego thing for her. If I help her win and surrender my winnings, she has no reason not to be favorably inclined toward me."

"Hopefully so."

"I do want to watch this gloriously dumb movie, though, so let's figure out a time." Rick thought about his schedule again and sighed. "And I might as well just preempt you on the joke, because the reason we can't watch it Saturday morning is my meeting with Lisa."

Melissa shed her concern and punched him playfully on the arm. "You literal canine!"

They took it easy the rest of the night, chatting with each other before they had to get back to their work. Melissa stayed close to take care of him if anything happened, but he felt better now that he'd gotten through the effects of the pill.

The fact that the seventh pill had been worse made him anxious about the eighth one. Just in case, he took it while Melissa was home, but this time he didn't fall unconscious. It did seem to last longer than the first six had, however. He also thought it might have been more painful, though that might have been just his imagination.

While doing his work, he did his best to look up what he could about the pills. There seemed to be several different formulations, which made it much more difficult to know for sure. Almost everyone seemed to say that this type of training was dangerous, which wasn't exactly comforting. The only people he found who approved of its use said that it was good for "cleansing spiritual toxins" and sold the pills for hundreds of dollars each, which just made him more anxious about it.

After that, the next pill was worse, he was sure of it. When he trained that day, he had significant muscular fatigue in his core. So it was getting worse.

But what could he actually do about it? If Granny Whitney wanted to kill him, she could find an easier way. If she had malicious non-lethal intentions, she would certainly have a way to find out if he was obeying her instructions. And if she was telling the truth, then taking the pills could actually save his life later when he fought an opponent who did damage to internal organs.

In the end, there wasn't much he could do except push forward and hope he wasn't moving toward a dead end.