Even though I had no chance, even though it would be soul-destroyingly futile, I had to try.

I'd managed to dawdle in exactly the right way as we all walked back from the dinner we had to buy the New Yorkers on account of losing, ending up next to her at the back of the group. It was now or never. I Enhanced, bringing my charisma up to thirty-four and indisputably superhuman.

"I really like you, Lily, would you like to go on a date with me?"

Lily's mouth fell open slightly, her eyebrows raising. It was nice to finally see her face, we'd all unmasked to each other after everyone was done sparring, even if I'd sat most of it out.

"I'm gay."

It took the seven and a half seconds for my mana to run out before I responded.

"Oh," I said. "Ok."

"I mean, I would if I weren't gay."

The scene played out in my mind. Old Greg lies in the shed, spouting inane gibberish he'd read on the internet, about his favourite Space Opera campaign, about how the government was brainwashing people with tinkertech cell phone towers, his waifu. I open the door and he makes to escape, asking me if I read litRPG's, but I raise the gun I hold clenched in my hand, jamming it against his forehead. I look into his big blue eyes and squeeze the trigger, ahegao jpgs spray out the back of his ruined skull, coating the shed floor.

"But you're gay," I said.

"Yeah," Lily gave a rueful little smile.

"That's alright," I grinned, energised, unfettered glee bubbling up inside my chest. "I completely understand."

+1 WIS!

+1 CHA!

"I don't mean for this to make things awkward but that's how I feel, and I couldn't let the chance slip by."

"It's cool," Lily smiled, a little awkwardly. "But you should have asked Savannah out, she said she thinks you're really cute."

My head spun like a whip, zeroing in on her. Her flight suit really didn't do her justice, she looked like she could be a future supermodel with a face to match. I'd rate her point nine five on the Victoria Dallon scale. I tore my eyes away from her skintight jeans.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah."

I watch as Old Greg gasps, scrabbling in the dirty straw like an animal. I squeeze the trigger again, blood sprays from his neck.

"I would, but she seems pretty rude, is she nice?"

"She's not rude," Lily frowned. "She's just a bit too over-focused, apparently it's a Tinker thing."

Old Greg slobbers on his own arterial spray, wheezing air and choking on blood I hear him faintly mumble about nofap and semen retention. I pull the trigger again.

"Armsmaster's like that, so maybe it is, yeah," I shrugged, eyeing her again. It wasn't true, given both Chris and Fred, but I might have just misunderstood her. "Maybe I'll talk to her some more."

"She can be… overly intense, granted, but she's really sweet. If you're ever in New York, ask her if she wants to go ice skating."

More excited glee welled up in my guts, my blood was burning in my brain. I barely managed to control my voice as it verged on cracking. "You're a really good wingman, you know?"

"I haven't managed to hook her up yet," she shook her head despairingly.

"You will," I said, and winked.

I watch as the colour drains from Old Greg and he vomits poorly drawn H-Manga drafts onto the straw, I jam the gun against his temple and grab him by the throat. Behind his eyes, hundreds of dollars of Warhammer figurines stand in regimented columns, painted and untouched. We don't cotton to freaks around these parts, I tell him coldly and pull the trigger a final time. He disintegrates into Nesquik and I walk out of the shed without looking back as it starts to burn.

I settled uncomfortably on the office chair, squirming, unsure of where to put my hands.

"I prefer Greg."

Doctor Kolhatkar smiled, leaning forward on his desk. "It's very nice to meet you, Greg. I understand your last session was with my colleague Dr Yamada?"

I nodded.

"And that was your first session with us here. Would you like to start where you left off with Dr Yamada?"

"Uh, nah, I um didn't say much to her. I kinda mostly wanted to talk about the PTSD I got from when the E Eighty-Eight tried to kill Armsmaster and me."

Kolhatkar's brows furrowed, he nodded seriously, "would you tell me about the experiences you've had since?"

"Yeah," I smiled weakly. "So one of the guys had a power that let him hide in reflections, so now every time I see a reflection I start feeling really stressed. I even covered up my mirror in my bathroom, and the one time I looked at it I hallucinated and blacked out for ten minutes and woke up in the PRT lobby fully dressed. And sometimes when I get stressed I can hear them talking, or feel where the guy stabbed me, and the other day in sparring I thought I was back on that road for a moment," I blurted this all out in a rush, my heart hammering in my throat.

"I see," said Kolhatkar, leaning even more forward. "Would you say that you're currently feeling stressed?"

I nodded.

"I think we should try a body scan. It's a meditative technique that helps bring awareness to your body and what you're feeling, helping you understand more about where specifically this stress is affecting you physically. From there we can work on relaxing those parts as we work up to talking about your experiences over the next fifty minutes."

"Sounds good," I shrugged, picking at the sleeve of my hoodie.

He smiled kindly over his big bushy moustache. "Is your chair comfortable enough? There's a lever if you want to recline."

I pulled the chair back and settled down, but I couldn't get fully relaxed. I was too stiff, I tried to let go but I was sure it looked affected.

"First, start to bring your attention to your breath," Doctor Kolhatkar said gently, scooting his chair out from behind his desk and around to get within distance of me. "Make room for whatever you are feeling, including any areas of tension, heaviness, or constriction."

I took a great big breath and focused on the sensation of air going in and out of my nose. My mediation ability gave me a sense of the basic techniques, not that I practised them much. I tried to clear my mind, focusing only on the feel of my breathing. I felt my racing heart begin to settle.

After about thirty seconds Doctor Kolhatkar continued "Now, bring your awareness to your feet, legs, and hips. Notice the sensations in your muscles and on your skin."

I traced my awareness up my legs, noticing my tensed ankles and the squeeze of my shoes on my feet. The soreness in my quads and hammies of having done some fucking heavy deadlifts earlier.

"Next, take a deep breath as you bring your attention into your torso, becoming aware of any sensations in your abdomen and lower back. Notice your spine and any sensations across your chest or upper back. Now, bring your awareness to your shoulders, arms, and hands. Notice any areas of tension or relaxation. Last, bring your attention to your neck, throat, and face. Notice your eyes, your mouth, and your tongue and the general sensations of your head. Take a final moment to notice your body as a whole."

I realised my back hurt, down in my shoulder-blades and up into the base of my neck, but it wasn't, like, workout soreness.

"Did you notice any unusual tension?"

"Yeah," I said, shifting slightly without opening my eyes. "Up in my back and neck"

"That's normal. Now we're going to try a relaxation exercise, I want you to, while breathing down deep into your belly, tense your neck and upper back as hard as you can for five seconds and then relax. It helps to visualise a time or place you're most relaxed as you do this."

I squeezed, counted, then let myself go loose as I tried my hardest to imagine I was at home. Dinnertime with mum and dad. Gaming with Sveta. Chilling with Amy. Playing Magic with Tyrone.

"Now move further down, tensing your shoulders and arms, five seconds, then release."

"And then continue all the way down your body."

I squeezed and waited and relaxed and squeezed and waited and relaxed and squeezed and waited and relaxed.

"Do you feel the tension subsiding?" Doctor Kolhatkar asked. "No? That's perfectly fine, let's give it one more go, shall we?"

I shifted uncomfortably and started with the exercise again.

"It's not really relaxing."

Kolhatkar hmmed, nodded, and shrugged. "That's ok too, I'd suggest you try it out in a place you feel more comfortable in."

I sat back up and stretched in my chair, twisting from side to side.

After a few moments of silence Doctor Kolhatkar realised I wasn't going to say anything without prompting.

"You brought up the time you were attacked, how about you tell me as much as you feel comfortable?"

"Yeah, ok," I said. "So, Nazi's, right? It's actually mostly this villain called Coil's fault, I think it's because he thinks he's going to come into contact with me and I'll find him out. I'm certain he got them to attack me somehow because I told Armsmaster who a couple of their capes were, which like, what the fuck do they expect? Bunch of cunts. Of course I'm going to tell people who they are to get them arrested! How can they be so fucking stupid? Because let me tell you, those pieces of shit flout their 'unwritten rules' all the god damn time if they think they can get away with it. Miserable hypocritical dickheads! I hate them so fucking much! I've read thousands of pages of crime reports and they think they can get away with me not telling?"

My right leg bounced rapidly, my hands deforming the metal inside the armrests.

"Just the fucking gall of it, and then they send people to kill me because I'm making it so they can't commit all the crimes they want! I didn't even leak the names, and the Protectorate doesn't do that! So they send these two literal fucking Germans, who aren't even a part of the Empire, because they're such pussy bitches Kaiser can't even come and kill a fifteen-year-old by himself, and I don't even know where I had the guts to stand up to them like that, because they were the ones behind this spree of murders where they blew these guys the fuck up! I still have nightmares about just going-"

I made a squelching noise with my mouth, twisting the remains of the right armrest in my hands.

"-all over and then I wake up in a cold sweat. I'm lucky I barely need to sleep anymore or I'd be exhausted. That guy wasn't even the worst one though, I fought his sidekick, the guy who could hide in reflections. That's why I hate them now, every time I look at something shiny I start thinking, 'maybe he's in there, just waiting to come back and finish the job'. I even think that when I look at Weld."

I tossed the armrest to the floor and started on the other.

"It's not his fault he's so shiny. I think he's noticed it too, how I won't look directly at him much, and when I do I cringe. Fuck, poor Weld. Anyway, it was that guy, Hans, I had to stay or else Armsmaster would have died, and for that, he starts trying to stab me! Eventually, I nearly kill the both of us, and fuck would I love to go back to that day like I am now. They wouldn't stand a fucking chance," I snarled, tossing the mangled armrest aside where it embedded in the wall. I clenched my fist and unclenched it rapidly.

"It would be so god damn easy now to just," I mimed a stab. "Shank the fucker back like he did me. I sometimes have dreams about that too, but they're better than the ones where they kill me. Anyway, so sometimes I have these really vivid hallucinations that I'm back there on that road."

I looked up, noticing that Kolhatkar had retreated to behind his desk again. Too late now, Greg has destroyed his cage. Yes. YES. Greg is out.

"And when we were doing those sparring sessions with New York, I really wanted to hurt someone. I was holding back because it was meant to be a team thing, and that gave me too much time to get worked up. I honestly think it would have gone perfectly fine if I just won as fast as I could, but I promised Weld-"

Quest 'Therapy II' complete!

Success: 50 000xp, 1 perk point

I had levelled up. After ignoring so many quests, not jerking Kolhatkar around like I had Yamada pushed me over the edge. Not that I did it for the quest, I did it for me. I was definitively a new Greg, capable of things the old Greg could never dream. And to prove that, definitively prove that, irrevocably prove that; I took the first WIS perk that opened up at fifteen points.

Meditation.

The effect was a simple boost to mana recovery and that it immediately kicked me into a meditative state of mind. I didn't have to sit there and do nothing with my eyes closed, though it was certainly much easier to do that, it was about focus. So long as I wasn't doing anything too distracting, and I was focusing, the meditation would stay.

Thus, I could attempt to create a fighting style that involved wielding seven swords and incorporated a rip off of Bangarang's break-dancing power which was more slide and glide than kinetic redirection, without having to worry about bottoming out on mana.

I hopped on one leg, using control object to shift the sword I had clenched behind one knee to the other. "Did you know Flechette is gay?"

"Hmm?" Tyrone looked up from where he was restructuring his Magic deck. "No, why? You asked her out didn't you?"

"Yeah, she shot me down though."

"The fuck've you been so cheery about then? She's so nice, if she shot me down I'd die of shame."

"Well," I hopped, with a twist of my leg, passing the sword to my other knee narrowly avoiding stabbing myself. "She told me Jetstar was into me."

Tyrone flicked the card he was holding a few times, eliciting sharp taps. "Lucky bastard."

"I'm thinking I might go for it, she can't be that annoying."

"Just stick it in, bro!"

I scoffed, shifting the sword back again. "I was thinking about it, she can't be that bad, right?"

"No way man, I'd have to tell everyone you were a fag if you said no."

"Man, didn't you just tell me that you didn't want to date this girl who might be into you at your school?"

"She's fat," said Tyrone.

I hacked out a bark of laughter, backflipped while passing the sword behind my other knee, landed on my hands and struck at an imaginary Nazi with the sword. Not much power behind it.

"And you're a skeleton, opposites attract."

"I'm svelte," Tyrone flicked one of his many cheap dupes at me like a ninja star, missing by millimetres.

"Ok," I vanished the sword and flipped back to my feet, moving to pick up the card. "Anyway, I have no idea what I should say to her. I was doing some reading on it and I figure I should just start a normal conversation, like, 'hey, what's up, do you like x-box? What're you tinkering on?'"

Tyrone shrugged, "I don't have a better idea. Tinker stuff is all I've ever heard her talk about, go with that."

I walked over to him and sat down, tossing his card back to him. "Maybe I should ask her to tinker-fix your shrimp dick."

"You'd like that."