The Prison

AN: Yes, we all know this is the same set up for Sword Art Online. Martial arts with some ki/spirit energy crap thrown in: Dragon Ball and YuYu Hakusho for 300. I think I'll take location names from Breathe of the Wild as well. And while I'm at it, the stupidly vague stats title from Shadow Tower for the PS1. Shadow Tower was actually made by From Software, of Dark Souls acclaim. I'm guessing the stupid stat titles in that game was the reason they put easy to understand stats like "Bleed/Poison/Fire/Shock Resist" in later titles. Also, I don't practice martial arts. Can you tell? One more chapter to go and my little Self vs. Self series is complete.

Live long and prosper.

[1]

Marie woke up in Double D's dorm before he did, which was often the case every given week. His classes for Tuesday and Thursday didn't start until noon.

Marie, however, needed to be at work in 45 minutes.

If she wanted to be a fucking bitch, she could yank the covers off Double D and leave the door open, so Roger would see him in the buff on the way to the bathroom. But she didn't feel like being a bitch, and hadn't for the past three years. Double D had that kind of effect on you.

There was a rumbling sound: her cell phone on the nightstand. It was her mama, so she didn't see the point in answering it. Mama Kanker never felt like calling any of them, except to either ask them for money or to bitch about whoever she was slipping it to her with this week. She went to Double D's bathroom, washed up, and came out with a towel. Instead of blue, she now had pink highlights running through her black hair.

Double D's dorm mate, Roger, was in the living room. He had a glass of malt liquor in one hand and was cooking something on the stove with the other. His eyes were bloodshot.

"Sup." Marie said. "You look like hammered shit."

"Please stop yelling." Roger muttered. He looked like he was about to cry. That made her snicker.

"Get off that shit, Rog." Marie said. "You're a fucking mess."

"Fuck off, Marie." Roger said, and went back to cooking his food.

Marie could have wiggled the knife a bit more. It might even do him some good. She didn't like Roger, but he was running himself into the ground. Summer semester was nearly over and he'd barely attended his classes at all. A failed class was wasted tuition, and wasting money was practically a sin. Eddy and Marie didn't agree on much of anything…but they could agree on that.

But Roger didn't look like he was in a "listening" kind of mood. He wanted to feel bad for himself. Marie let him. She went back to Double D's bedroom. She got some clean clothes out of the dresser and picked up her phone. It was rumbling again. It was her mom again.

Better get this over with, Marie thought, and pressed the green button.

[2]

May's eyes were wide with terror.

The sky had suddenly turned red, and there was a giant tumor in the sky.

It had no face, but all across its body were ruined slashes filled with razor sharp teeth. Tentacles of various shapes and sizes protruded out from cancerous flesh.

She was in Eldin Village, surrounded by hundreds of other players. She was out in the Eldin Foothills when she realized that there was no option to exit the game in the pause menu. It obviously had to be a mistake or she just missed where it was on the interface, and she came back to town to see if anyone had any info on it. But when she talked to the first player she saw RC1985, the man said he couldn't find "exit game" option either.

A mistake obviously. A bug.

Then the Elder Demon appeared in the sky, dwarfing any of the buildings around them. It spoke with a hundred voices, male and female, human and demonic. None of its mouths were synched with the voices. It spoke into their minds:

"I am Xe Tang Le, the designer of Sacred Fist. There are currently 6 million fighters on the planet of Tal, all using the Synapse Reactor Gear that is required to play the game. It is a genius device, the Reactor Gear. It attaches conductors to your body. You will not…you cannot exit this game. I have forbidden it. The rules of the game are simple. If your life bar is completely depleted, for any reason, you die in this world. If you die in this world, the Reactor Gear will send 500,000 volts of electricity coursing through your body in the real world, and will not stop until you have expired. If someone attempts to physically remove the gear from you, it will have the same result. To release the Reactor Gear, you must journey to Lanayru, the cursed central region of the kingdom. One of you must slay the archdemon, the Princess of the Moon. When she expires, the game will be permanently over, and the Reactor Gear will shut down, waking you up and releasing you from your…session. Until then…the game will continue. But first, I'll take away the barrier between all of you. The barrier of illusion."

The demon suddenly shined with fiery red light.

Everyone hit the deck, thinking it would explode or something.

But no, it was merely gone in a flash of intense light, nearly blinding may even though she had her eyes closed.

When the burning stopped, she finally opened them. Got up, looked around. Something was different. The people looked different. They had all changed appearances.

May took out her mirror, which all players came equipped with. She looked into it. She had made her in-game appearance quite different from her real-life one. She no buckteeth or freckles. She'd given herself dark skin and platinum-white hair. She wanted to look like the rabbit people from Final Fantasy.

Now, she looked just like she did in real life, buckteeth and freckles and all. The only traits that had stayed were the horns and yellow eyes, to show she was a half-demon.

"Oh…" May said. "This is really bad."

All around her, people were beginning to scream.

[3]

"Marie…" Double D warned.

"Shut the fuck up."

"We're going to get pulled over."

"Shut the fuck up!"

They were flying down the highway, going at least 90.

Marie was driving Double D's Chevy Cobalt. Even though it was his, Marie was usually the one driving it. Double D merely had to walk from the dorms to the campus, while Marie had to drive to the news station five sometimes, six days a week.

Marie driving right now didn't make much sense, but it was happening just the same. Her hands were trembling on the wheel. Tears were running down her eyes and she kept taking both hands off the wheel to wipe them off. It was driving him fucking insane, but any warning just earned him the exact same result:

"Marie, if the police…"

"Double D!" she screamed, looking at him for far too long. "Please just stop talking. Okay? Just shut the fuck up until we get there."

But the warnings Double D kept saying, the ones she kept ignoring, turned out to be true. There was a cop car parked in the emergency lane. Even if Marie had started slowing down, it would have been too late. Except she didn't. She never saw it at all.

The police car turned on the sirens and turned out. Then something silly happened. The second the police car turned out, a pickup truck rear-ended it.

What they didn't know then, they knew now. The pickup truck driver had been in the news. His name was Peter Proctor. He was an attorney for Farm Bureau. He had two kids and one stepkid. The stepkid had gotten Sacred Fist as a birthday yesterday. The mom tried to wake him up, but he wasn't responding. She had nearly tried pulling the Reactor Gear off him, but something told her not to. She went downstairs and looked at the news, and saw the exact same shit that Ms. Kanker did. She'd called Peter away from a deposition he had been taking on a witness injured in an auto accident.

The police car nearly flipped over. It went careening into another car and started a pile up.

"Oh dear…" Double D said.

"Not our problem." Marie said coldly.

It was so wrong to feel this way, but Double D felt it just the same—he was glad.

Then a miracle happened, Marie calmed down a little bit. She brought the Cobalt down to a much more sensible 80. They still might get pulled over, but she knew for a fact that some cops in this state just ignored that.

They made it to Peach Creek, made it to the trailer park.

They got out and raced for the door. It was left unlocked and ajar. There was some loud bullshit going on inside. Marie kicked the door open. The sounds were coming from the bedroom. Marie ran and kicked that door open too.

In front of them was the back of the boyfriend of the week, a real brick shit house of a human being. He had a blue wife beater on and camo cargo pants. His head almost touched the ceiling. His name was Karl with a K.

Barely in view, Ms. Kanker stood between Karl and May.

"I want her off that fucking machine!"

"Karl we can't. It'll kill her!"

"What kind of horseshit sense does that make?!"

"It's rigged Karl. It's a trap!"

"Fucking bullshit!"

"Just listen to me for three seconds—"

He backhanded her to the ground. Double D took the stun gun from his pocket. Marie took her brass knuckles out from hers.

"No, you fucking listen to me, you dumb bitch! We kill ourselves working double shifts at different jobs. She does nothing! This is ridiculous!"

Ms. Kanker sat up. Her lip was bleeding. Double D noticed she had a black eye too.

"I'm sorry, Karl! Jesus Christ!"

Karl said: "A hard-working man gets up in the morning, he wants some damn breakfast. Not cereal. Not Pop Tarts. Good fucking stuff to eat! That's her responsibility! That's what she should be fucking doing instead of playing these damn video games and I want her fucking off it right now!"

"She goes to college too!" Ms. Kanker said.

Double D barely stifled his laughter, even though he knew it wasn't really appropriate.

"College?" Karl said, sputtering laughter. "Don't make me fucking laugh! With those commie teachers? That's the reason kids these days are a bunch of godless pussies that don't stand up for the flag. That's the reason boys these days are walking around with fucking dresses!"

"It matches my makeup." Double D said evenly.

Karl turned around and was met with two metal prongs digging into his flesh. Immediately, he got buzzed with a few volts. Double D thought he'd need to shock the man again. He wouldn't. Karl dropped like a sack of potatoes. He convulsed and jittered on the floor. He was big but nowhere near as tough as he thought he was, just like most loudmouths.

"Oh my God, Karl!" Ms. Kanker said. She ran to him. The man was drooling from one corner of his mouth. Well, more than he usually was anyway.

"The fuck you do that for?!" she cried. She was a heavy-set woman, with dyed-pink hair and pink acrylic nails. She wore a yellow dress.

"How'd you get that black-eye, mama?" Marie asked conversationally.

"I fell down some—"

Marie cut her off. "No, no, no. Don't worry about it. No problem. I got it."

She walked over to Karl's shaking body. She held out one arm, made an L-shape with it. She fell over, directly onto Karl, dropping her elbow right into his groin.

A small bird-cry escaped from Karl. His squinting eyes popped open like balloons.

"Stop!" Ms. Kanker said, but she didn't do anything. She was just sitting on the floor, sobbing.

Double D just stood there, arms crossed, face calm. This was a movie he had watched a few too many times. It had gotten past the point of being tragic. Now, it was just tiring.

Now Act 3 of the movie, Marie just beating on Mom's Boyfriend. It was tough shit and sometimes he wondered if Marie took it too far. But they needed some guarantees. The Vengeful Ex-Boyfriend Coming Back was shit you saw on Matlock and Law and Order, but it happened in real life too.

When she was done, Marie got up to a crouching position. She knocked off Karl's stupid ball cap with the flag on it and yanked the man up by his bushy hair. He had two black eyes, missing teeth and his nose was bleeding. Marie's knuckles were bleeding. She was grinning, showing a few teeth.

"There's a couple other things we gotta straighten out, Carl with a C." Marie said in a low, steady voice. "You listening?"

Karl just sobbed.

"You and mama? That's over and done with. You were one of mama's, so my standards for you were pretty damn low. I don't give a shit that you're an Oakie piece of chicken-fried crap. I don't fucking care if you stand for the flag or kneel for the cross. I don't care if you think the beaners are stealing all the jobs, the niggers are robbing all the houses, or the kikes own all the banks."

"But you hit mama. We both know you've done it more than once. And you were about to kill my sister whether you knew it or not. You gotta go. But before you do, I need you to understand something. We have guns here. I have a gun right now."

She didn't but whatever.

"I catch you touch mama again, if I catch you touch May, I will kill you. You will fucking die that very same day. You understand me?"

"You fucking…bitch…" Karl grunted. "I'll…"

"DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!" Marie shrieked.

Karl nodded violently.

"Good."

And with that, she dragged Ms. Kanker's ex-boyfriend to the front door and threw him out.

[4]

May's choices for character creation in Sacred Fist had been pretty simple.

Her name, of course, was Love#Machine yet again. She knew people would be making jokes about it and that was just fine.

The races to choose from were human, half-breed and demon.

Half-human/demons had balanced stats and growth in all areas. They could be every alignment that wasn't Lawful because half-demons were outlaws. They could enter any villages they wanted but not the main capital of the region, Faron City.

Humans had the weakest starting stats, and their physical growth was poor, but the devs kept hinting that they had access to some type of spirit energy that none of the other races had. They wouldn't give any more info than that, so a lot of people weren't buying into it—May included. Their Morality alignment could be anything and they were legally able to go anywhere.

Demons were naturally gifted in all areas compared to everyone else, but their Morality alignment could only be Neutral or Evil. Which meant some actions in the game (like healing your teammate for no personal gain) simply couldn't be done because it just wasn't what Demons did. They also couldn't enter any villages or cities at all.

May tried selecting Demon, but the button didn't work. It would later turn out there was another catch too. Only a few people in the player population even had the option of picking Demon because in the game world, "There weren't that many full-blooded Demons left."

A fourth race was Spirits…as in ghosts. But ghosts were just NPCs and couldn't be picked.

May's in-game race was half demon/human. Until level 25, she would only be able to use normal Spirit Energy for her attacks. After level 25, she would get access to Demon Energy and the name of a particular stat would reflect that.

The stats went like this:

Vitality: for health

Strength: for damage with fists and physical weapons.

Speed: your ability to move on the ground and in the air

Defense: resistance to physical attacks.

Balance: resistance to attacks canceling out yours. Has no effect on grapple moves.

Spirit: The total amount of "mana" you have.

Focus: how fast your stamina bar recovers.

Harmony: how fast your spirit energy recovers

Purity: how fast you recover from status ailments.

Melting: affects spirit damage

Particle: affects spirit defense

Soul: your alignment. The typical chart is used with Morality as Good, Neutral, and Evil; and Discipline as Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic.

There were also weapon stats: Smash, Pierce, and Slash. The weapons they affect are about what anyone would expect. These only affected physical weapons, not Spirit ones.

As a half-demon, May's choices were the fiery region of the Eldin Province, near Death Mountain or the snowy Hebra Territories all the way on the other side of the world map. May picked Eldin, which only affected her choice of starting gear and first few quests, as well as enemies. The martial discipline choices were the same either way.

The main options for that were the general terms boxing, kickboxing, combat wrestling. You could further specialize into the different types of martial arts. May chose kickboxing, which meant blocking with the hands while attacking and counterattacking with the legs. That specialization just meant doing the acts that the art in question was known for. Neck clinches and knee strikes meant being considered a Muay Thai fighter and so on.

Spirit Energy Specialization was a bit harder. There were Spirit Bullets, Weapons and Shields. Using the last two drained your Spirit at a constant rate. There were also items you could put Spirit Energy into, but that cost much less. May put her starting points into Bullets, to give her something for long range.

Once she spawned into Rudania Village, it seemed like most other people had done the same.

May talked to a few Spirit NPCs, got her first missions, which were simple fetch quests for things just outside of town. She went out into the lush landscape. The graphics were so detailed she could make out the blades of grass on the ground, and the ripples in the water. The sky was such a deep blue that it was almost alien.

She threw some punches and kicks, which drained her stamina bar. The recovery was moderately fast. She pointed her finger up at the sky. Spirit Energy immediately glowed at the tip of her finger. She said, "Bang!" Which fired off a tiny little laser. Which drained half of her spirit bar. The spirit bar didn't seem to be recovering at all. That was simply how the game was. It would be hours in-game before it was back to 100. The items to make the gauge restore faster were very rare.

May went out into the Eldin foothills. She fought some wild animals, punching and kicking the shit out of them. She pointed her finger at a bigger Salamander thing and did a Spirit Gun, which blew the poor little shit stain into a tree, making her laugh. That brought her up one level, which gave three skill points. May put two into vitality and one into spirit. Leveling up didn't restore your health or spirit energy like in some RPGs. Oh well…

She had a good time…for all of two hours anyway.

Then she opened her pause menu to look for the exit option that wasn't there.

[5]

"Is there anything you can do for her, baby?" Marie asked.

They were sitting on foot of the bed. Ms. Kanker was in the kitchen having a mixed drink or ten to calm down.

"I wish there was." Double D said. "My major is medicine. I still tinker with engineering from time to time. Computer science was never something I got too deep into. I'm not a hacker. Even if I was, Marie, we both know I couldn't risk it."

He grabbed her hand and squeezed it.

"Not with family." he said.

She hugged him.

Then his phone rang. It was Sarah and she was hysterical.

Double D was gripped by terror. Oh fuck. Please, no.

"Double D! It's my stupid brother! That stupid VR shit! That game that people can't get out of!"

"Please…no…"

"ED IS IN THE GAME TOO!"