Slum Online (16 page)

Tetsuo pushed through the double swinging doors of the JTS Saloon and stepped inside.

> Mineral water, my good man.

> Comin’ right up.

The glass came sliding at Tetsuo across the bar. He caught it in his right hand without missing a beat and moved toward the back of the saloon. Tetsuo picked his way between decrepit chairs, heading for the darkest spot in a dark room. He found Hashimoto there, sitting quietly at a round table.

> Hey.

> Once again we come up…empty-handed.

> Looks like.

Tetsuo caught the leg of a nearby chair with a middle roundhouse and sat down before continuing the conversation.

> These past three days I’ve started wishing the skeptics were right about Jack.

> You know better. You saw him with your own two eyes.

> I’m just starting to feel the downside of being a black wrist.

> We each have our cross to bear, whatever path we choose to walk.

> You always were a philosopher.

> I am ninja.

> Where’s Masumi at, anyway?

> She hasn’t arrived yet.

> It’s not like her to get here after me.

> Indeed.

Tetsuo and Hashimoto continued chatting about nothing. Hashimoto was a creature of the virtual world. The comings and goings in Shinjuku, a place that existed in RL, meant nothing to him. When I tried steering the conversation in that direction, I was met with a wall of silence as indifferent and unchanging as the textures on his face.

It wasn’t long before a drunken fist in a skin-tight purple suit walked through the doors. Masumi grabbed a glass off the counter without missing a step and headed toward the back of the saloon, just as Tetsuo had done a few minutes earlier. Hooking a chair with a middle roundhouse, she joined us at the table. Text bubbled overhead.

> You’re not gonna believe this.

> I’ve heard no whispers. What happened?

> He’s too good. Inhuman.

> You fought Jack.

> Fought and lost. Not just lost, wtfpwned lost.

The best drunken fist in Versus Town crossed her legs. Masumi had finished second place in the first season tournament. She’d entered her eagle claw character in the tournament, but she’d since grown disenchanted with fighting and switched to her current character. Now she was living out a self-proclaimed retirement in this saloon in Sanchōme. She hadn’t even signed up for the next tournament.

Compared to eagle claw, drunken fist was a weak school. In spite of that, Masumi could still go toe to toe with any of the top four. Text bubbled over her head again.

> None of my throws would connect.

> None of them?

> He throw-breaked every last one. One hundred percent.

> That’s impossible.

> It is a…difficult account to believe.

> Well it’s true. I wouldn’t joke about something like this.

> How did he break your throws?

Masumi had elevated throws to an art form. She specialized in baited throws, waiting for her opponent to throw a punch in an effort to hold her at bay and then stepping up for the throw as he retracted his arm.

It was technically possible to avoid a throw using a throw break, but Masumi positioned herself just a few pixels out of range when waiting for her moment. She was already so close she didn’t even need to speed-dash. There simply wasn’t enough time to throw-break.

Tetsuo had sparred with her once. She had thrown him five times out of five attempts. It was a street fight, so she stopped before his health went to zero, but if the fight had been real, there was no doubt Tetsuo would have lost badly.

> He must have read the opening throw animation.

> No way, Masumi.

> Well, I can’t think of what else it could be.

> Not even the computer could react at such speeds.

> It wasn’t a computer. I know it wasn’t.

The servers at Versus Town Networks, Inc., performed batch calculations on the polygons in the city. When a player input a command, it was converted to a signal that traveled through the network. After the game servers processed the command, they sent back information about the polygons that needed to be displayed on-screen. The only thing the game consoles sitting in every player’s home actually did was process the signals traveling in and out of the house and render the graphics onto the screen.

It took one-fifteenth of a second from the time a player input a command to the time the effects of that command could be seen on the screen. A throw break would only register in the quarter of a second immediately following a successful throw. If what Masumi said was true, Jack had split the difference. He had seen her throw coming and given the throw-break command in the smallest fraction of a second.

It didn’t sit right with me.

> I don’t think a human can react that fast.

> I’ve seen people press a button sixteen times a second. Who’s to say someone couldn’t read a throw coming that fast?

> Button-mashing and split-second decision-making are two different things.

> There are those who can reverse a slide kick with a dragon punch.

> Wrong game.

> I even tried a trick throw at the end.

> Not a tactic you would usually employ. You have always shunned the Dark Arts.

> I had to see how good he was. But even that didn’t work.

> That’s crazy.

> I wanted to get near one of Hashimoto’s lookouts, but he caught me in front of an E-rank wall. I never thought he’d attack in Itchōme.

> He outsmarted us.

> Even if I’d been on my eagle claw, I don’t know if I could have beaten him. When I first heard he beat Keith, I didn’t believe it. I do now.

Keith was as good as his reputation. But when I saw him face Jack in Sanchōme, it wasn’t even a contest. Jack was in a whole other league from the top four. To hear Masumi tell it, he was even better than that.

Maybe Hashimoto was right. If Tetsuo fought Jack, Tetsuo might lose. Pak too for that matter. Somewhere in the twisting alleys of Sanchōme, Jack was stalking his prey.

> What sort of man is he?

Hashimoto wouldn’t let any crumb of information fall through the cracks.

> I’d say he has a flair for the dramatic.

> How so?

> He asked why I changed to a drunken fist.

> And how did you respond?

> I told him I got tired of fighting in the arena, so I decided to hang out in Sanchōme instead. He said that made me the perfect enemy.

> What’s that supposed to mean?

> Who knows? That’s all he said.

> It would seem Jack has a philosophy of his own.

> You call that a philosophy?

> Ninja do not speak lies.

Hashimoto nodded sagely. Text appeared above Masumi’s head.

> Oh, I almost forgot. You made it through the first round, Tetsuo. You and the top four were the only ones to go undefeated.

> Whaddaya know.

The second season tournament was broken up into three rounds: two preliminary elimination rounds and the final tournament. In the first round, eight hundred plus characters faced each other in a handful of random matches, and the characters with the best records advanced to the second round. Only the top sixty made it. The second round would be tournament-style, with the top fifteen characters advancing to the finals. As the winner of the last tournament, Pak automatically qualified for the finals without participating in the preliminary rounds. Tetsuo had made it over the first hurdle.

Of the patrons of the JTS Saloon, only Ricky, Tetsuo, and three of the top four had entered the tournament. Masumi and the rest didn’t seem to care.

Even though most of the JTS regulars were skilled players who would win nine fights out of ten against lesser competitors, fighting didn’t interest them. They were content to gather in the saloon each night and pass the time with meaningless chatter. If they had entered the tournament, Tetsuo would rather face one of the so-called hardcore over the JTS crowd any day.

> Indeed. Congratulations.

> Thanks.

> One other thing.

Masumi shrugged—her signature move.

>Your first match is against Ricky.

The controller slipped out of my hand. Tetsuo lost his balance and tumbled out of the chair. I shouted a string of expletives at the screen.

The arena was spacious and vast.

Compared to the intricate meshes that formed the meandering streets of Sanchōme, the polygons in the arena were gigantic. The walls were covered with bright-colored textures that seemed oddly out of place. The only sound FX to be heard were punches, kicks, and counterhits. Absent were the low rumbles of rolling metal drums, the squeak from the hinges of wooden doors, the warble of glass sliding across a bar.

It was ten minutes before Tetsuo’s match with Ricky.

All of the matches in the tournament were one-game affairs. There was a time limit for the two preliminary rounds, but none for the finals. If you fell behind early in a preliminary match, it would be hard to come back. You could lose by stepping out of the ring, and there were no bumps or hollows in the ground. Otherwise, it was just like fighting anywhere else.

Keeping the action of the second round at the edge of the screen, I maneuvered Tetsuo around the periphery of the arena. I had made the circuit one and a half times when I spotted Ricky practicing on one of the training dummies. Tetsuo walked over to him.

> Hey.

Ricky remained facing the dummy while text bubbled over his head.

> What do you want?

> Nothing, really.

> You getting butterflies?

> A little.

> That doesn’t sound like you.

> Maybe not.

> Can’t say I blame you. I feel another perfect victory coming.

Ricky turned his head. His face was a mask, frozen forever in a faint smile. Even so, he looked nervous.

> There aren’t enough sounds here.

> What are you talking about?

> The sound FX all sound the same. It’s so flat.

> It’s the arena, what do you expect?

> Yeah, you’re right.

> Look, you’re a black wrist. You got that white headband on. The only reason to talk in the arena is to ask someone to fight. You should know that.

> Yeah.

> That’s all I got to say then. We’re gonna fight, and I’m gonna win again.

> Funny, I had the same idea. I just wanted to tell you something before the match.

> Spit it out.

> When we met, you said I wasn’t a wolf, I was a pig to the slaughter.

> Yeah, so? If you think I’m gonna take it back, think again.

> The way I see it, there are more than just wolves and pigs. The world’s not that simple. You and I aren’t wolves. No one in Versus Town is. Or if they are, it’s only because they role-play being wolves.

> What are you talking about?

My conversation with Lui had gotten me thinking. None of us was born to be a pig. We didn’t lead sheltered lives with nothing to do but gorge ourselves and grow fat. If anything, we were wayward sheep. Someday we would grow quiet, and when that time came we would bungee jump into a wilderness seething with wolves. For some, the cord might snap, leaving them to struggle on broken limbs as the wolves descended to feed. Others might find a way to survive in the wilderness, shedding their snow white wool to live as wolves. The next sheep to come bungee jumping in would be their first meal.

Most of the sheep would scurry back home with only fleeting memories of something dark and evil to commemorate their ordeal. Safe within their pens, they could dream of the world of adventure they had glimpsed.