Hana set her plate down in the sink, only a few scraps of the egg sandwich she had eaten for breakfast remaining. Cleaning it right now would be the responsible thing to do but honestly she simply didn't feel like it plus she needed to have left five minutes ago. She grabbed the key to her car and headed out the door, pulling a jacket on over her sweater as she hurried through the hallway.

It had been two weeks since her second session with Lucio. Another two workouts plus massages, four more coaching sessions and a substantial amount of watching TV shows online. But today she wasn't headed back to the physical therapy clinic, her appointment was somewhere else.

The hospital that the MRI center was in stood high above the surrounding buildings, a towering block of glass windows with the internationally recognizable symbol of a cross affixed near its apex. Inside the building just beyond the glass doorways was the directory of all the suites in this place. Hana skimmed through it until she had found the office she was bound for.

After she had checked herself in at the office's front desk a male technician came out to escort her from the waiting room. As they walked down another hallway she could see the MRI machine through an open door, a giant white plastic bagel with a table that vaguely reminded her of a tongue protruding out from the hole in its middle. Before they got there though the tech stopped and turned around to face her while gesturing at another doorway.

"So this is our changing room, there'll be a gown in there for you to wear. If you're wearing any jewelry or piercings then you'll need to remove them now." He handed her a clipboard with a checklist of items on it. "Go through this list and let us know if you have any of the items on it."

Pacemaker, kidney disease, was Hana pregnant or breastfeeding? She ticked no next to each of them with the pen attached to the clipboard via coiled plastic cord. Vascular stent, heart valve replacement, brain surgery clips... "Breast expander?" she asked while raising an eyebrow at the technician.

He shrugged slightly. "If it causes problems with an MRI machine then it's on that list." Hana ran her finger down the page as she looked each item over in turn before eventually marking no next to all of them. She handed it back to him and started to turn around but he put up one hand as he pulled out a small flashlight with the other. "Hang on... one... second." She tried not to blink but the light shining into her eyes made that rather difficult to accomplish. "Okay, no metal in your eyes that I can see so you should be fine."

Hana stepped into the room and shut the door behind her before beginning to disrobe. There was a plastic bag for her clothes and pair of slippers waiting on the floor for her. She stuffed everything but her underwear into it before grabbing the dressing gown. The gown had clearly been meant for a bigger person, likely the technician had grabbed the wrong size, but the fact it was oversized meant the sleeves covered her elbows. Hana stepped into the slippers before leaving the changing room and making her way to where the MRI machine was waiting.

The technician was already there, standing by the sliding table with a tiny plastic bag. He handed to it her, a pair of foam ear plugs. "The machine is fairly noisy so we hand these out to people beforehand. Once you're ready just lay down on the table and try to keep still during the procedure. If you move around then it'll ruin the image and we'll have to start over."

She rolled the foam between her fingers squishing the plugs before sticking one in each ear where they expanded outwards to mute the outside world. Hana lay down on the table and after a few seconds it began to raise upwards then retract inwards until her body was inside the device. A moment later and she could faintly hear a muffled knocking sound from the machine as its magnets sketched a picture of the flesh and bone that lay beneath the skin of her arms and shoulders.

Half an hour later and the table was sliding back out, her magnetic photography session finished. As she was getting off the table the technician came back out from the little office that he operated the machine from. "So I just emailed the images to the lab and you should have an answer sometime tomorrow. Do you need me to escort you out Miss Song?"

Hana shook her head. "No, I know the way." Five minutes later and she was back in her junker heading back to her apartment.

"Okay, I still don't get how this works." stated Lucio. "Explain it to me again."

"It's all about the timing. When you tell the marines to attack the shooting animation lasts for a certain length of time. Once it's done they can do something else. So when you're trying to stutter-step you tell them to move while they're attacking. That queues up the move action to trigger immediately after they shoot once. Attack then move, attack then move."

"And you can do this with any ranged unit?"

"You can but it's better to do it with units that don't shoot quickly. Take hydras for example. You could stutter-step them but you're better off just a-moving and targeting specific units during a battle. Anyways keep doing the practice map until you can beat it."

Lucio turned back towards his screen as he loaded up the map in question, an unremarkable field of grass with a group of blue marines at the very center. A swarm of purple zerglings rushed out of the fog of war, intent on killing his virtual army. Intermittent bursts of machine gun fire started coming from his laptops speakers as his units haltingly marched across the screen in response to the movements of his corded mouse over a large black cloth pad.

Hana watched him try to micro in silence, the urge to shove him out of the way and do it herself not quite as strong as it had been during prior sessions. Still there though. Her phone vibrated in her pocket as an incoming call came in and she rose to her feet, heading for the kitchen before answering.

"Yes...yes... Is that really necessary? I've been wearing wrist splints at night and I've been doing exercises every... yes I know but that was supposed to be a last resort and it's only been a month... I don't know what that means... there's no other option?"

He could only hear half of the conversation but that was enough for him to guess at what the other person was saying. Lucio set his mouse aside, the practice map immediately forgotten as he got up and moved towards the kitchen. "Everything all right Hana?"

Her phone went flying across the room as she turned on the Brazilian. "No! Everything isn't fucking all right!" She screamed at him while her eyes started leaking. "You said you were going to fix me! That's why I came to you! You were supposed to make this go away! I trusted you damn it! Thanks for nothing!" Hana sank to the floor as she buried her head in her arms. Lucio crouched down next to her and tried to put a hand on her shoulder but she batted it aside and turned so she was looking away from him. "Leave me alone."

"Hana what did they say?"

"The doctor said my injuries were too severe physical therapy to work. They saw signs of severe RSI damage in my elbows and shoulders plus my carpal tunnel is really bad. The only thing they can do is to..." The last word got stuck in her throat, not wanting to be spoken but Hana swallowed and forced it out anyways. "... operate."

Lucio scratched at one of his cornrows as he tried to understand what was upsetting her so much. "Isn't that a good thing? It means you're getting the treatment you need."

"It means I'm finished." Hana held her arms up in front of her as she stared at the limbs that had betrayed her. "Wrists, elbows, shoulders. They have to operate on all of them. It'll take months to recover from surgery and my arms will never be the same again. This is the end of my career." Hana buried her face back into her forearms and her body started to shake. "I'm ruined."

"Hey, hey, hey. Don't be like that." Lucio put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him. "Sure you might need some surgery but modern medicine is pretty good and who knows? You could recover fully and go back to crushing people again at Starcraft in no time."

"Oh don't you dare try to feed me a bunch of peppy bullshit. I won't be able to ever play competitively again because of this. Do you have any idea what's that like? To know you can't do the thing you love because your body can't keep up anymore?"

Lucio closed his eyes for a moment letting the anger in her voice roll off him and he took a deep breath. "I want to show you something." He put a hand on the floor, using it to push himself up and waited for Hana to raise her head and look at him. Lucio leaned forward at the waist and bent his knees as he reached down to grab the fabric of each pant leg in a fist. He straightened up somewhat while pulling the fabric up to show what was underneath.

Where the man's calves and ankles should have been was something else altogether. Amalgamations of black carbon fiber and shining aluminum all the way up to where they tightly cupped his thighs in their embrace. Hana's eyes widened and the shock of seeing those prosthetic limbs caused up the tears she had been weeping to cease flowing. "What..."

"I've seen you compete in international tournaments before but they were all in places like America or Sweden or China. I really, really don't want to sound harsh but you've been sheltered your entire life. You get paid to play video games. I think it's awesome that's a thing but it means you haven't seen the ugly side of this world. Not everywhere is like Seoul." Lucio let his pants drop back down hiding his artificial legs beneath them as he sat back down and stared out the window overlooking the city.

"I was born and raised outside Rio de Janerio in a favela. It's sorta tricky to translate what that means, most people would say slum or shanty town but that's not right. I've seen the places poor people in Seoul live in and they're all better than what I knew. My home was 'built' from rotting pieces of plywood and the roof was made of rusted tin sheets stacked on top of each other." Lucio turned his head to look back at Hana. "We had a dirt floor because we couldn't afford to buy any rugs and I never knew what carpet felt like until I was at the airport in Rio on my way to Korea."

"How did..." Hana couldn't even finish the sentence.

"I lose my legs? The favela I lived in was one of the worst in Rio. It's been over a decade since I left and the police still don't go there." Lucio closed his eyes as he involuntarily drifted back to the streets where he had grown up. Hearing gunshots at all hours of the day, seeing people openly brandishing pistols or automatic weapons while eating lunch, that one time he had found a body in the dumpster in the alleyway behind his house.

"I never joined a gang or did drugs but I had friends that had. Everyone did, that's just the way it was. One of them crossed the wrong gang and it didn't matter that I was a civilian, that I wasn't involved in his gang. Just the fact that I was his friend was enough. I don't really remember what happened. We were hanging out at his place and then someone started shooting through the wall. I heard the door open and the next thing I woke up I was in some hospital minus parts of my leg." Lucio glanced down at his pants for a moment. "After that the doctors told me about an experimental prosthetic limbs project. One thing led to another and now me and my parents live here."

The cessation of her tears had only been temporary as they made their less than glorious return halfway through his narration of his past. Hana uncurled herself from a ball and threw herself onto Lucio's lap as she wrapped her arms around him. "Oh my god, I'm such an idiot. I had no idea. I'm so sorry, I'm sorry I'm so dumb. I never would have said anything if I had known. Please don't hate me."

Lucio dropped his head onto her shoulder as he returned the embrace twofold. "It's cool, it's cool. You didn't know because I hadn't told you. It's not something I like to talk about, people always treat me differently once they know."

Hana half laughed, half sobbed as she pulled back a little and ruffled his hair with one hand. "I guess that means I gotta keep flirting with you doesn't it?"

"Oh? I thought it meant you were trying to teach me how to be a scrub whose stuck in silver instead of a scrub who's stuck in bronze."

"What? I can't do both?" Hana moved her hand to the back of Lucio's head while her other rubbed at his back.

"Hana, you can do whatever you want. You know that right?"

She sighed and shook her head in disagreement. "Can I? I dropped out of school and never went to secondary because Starcraft. Now I'm too old to go back and there isn't a university in the country that'll look at me twice."

"I wouldn't say that. I didn't know how to read until I got to Korea and and I got into a university. If I can do that then you can manage. And I'll help you however I can."

"What?" Hana looked at Lucio surprised at his offer. "You'd do that?"

"Well yeah, what are friends for?" asked Lucio, a cheerful grin on his face.

"Just friends?"

Lucio just shook his head in mock disbelief. "Already? You're awful."