When I got back from work Maria was sitting in the middle of the living room on Dave’s meditation cushion. As he was busy doing homework he wouldn’t be needing it, so she had borrowed it. I walked to the kitchen to get a soda and heard Maria curse behind me.

  “Problem?” I said, bringing her one as well. The negative health effects of drinking soda were so minor that even just bracelet wearing Cleansing level people weren’t effected by it.

  “I cant’ seem to do the technique properly.” She said. “I’m trying the first Body Breakthrough technique you gave me, but I can’t seem to visualize my entire circulatory system at once, despite being a med student. Every time my focus slips, the technique fails and I have to spend the next several minutes gathering enough qi to try again.”

  I nodded. “Try the third one, then.”

  She pulled out her phone and looked at it. “But this is only rated three stars, while the first is rated five. Doesn't that mean it’s inferior?”

  “It does have disadvantages, like being much slower, but it also has a major benefit, it can be done in sections. It is basically the first technique split up into parts. This lets you cultivate meridians in one part of your body, then move on to another. Rather than trying to convert all of your blood vessels at once, you convert all of them in one arm, then the other, then each leg, then the head and neck, then the torso. If you are too slow with it, the cultivation will fade and you’ll have to do that section again, but this way you can take a week or so to break through rather than doing it in a few minutes or hours, like the first technique. Slow techniques aren’t very popular, though, so they often get down voted just for being slow, and this is one of the slowest ways to reach Gathering.”

  Maria thanked me, and said she would try the new technique. I didn’t have anything to do so, after listening to a few lectures and taking an exam so that I kept up with my online classes, I decided to cultivate some more. I pulled out my cushion and started spreading out my consciousness, the repeated the technique from yesterday.

  I got the vision again, and tried to look for more details. This time I realized slight differences between the dolphins, though nothing that seemed to be significant. The one that represented the lower subnode was male, and the one representing the node in my head seemed to not have a gender. Strangely, the mother was a hermaphrodite. Did that mean that in my heart I wasn’t a man? That didn’t seem quite right. Though I was by no means hyper-masculine, I also didn’t consider myself feminine. Maybe the sex of the dolphins were referring to something else.

  I had, of course, learned the eastern perspective on cultivation, as they had far more literature on it than the western world. In that perspective, qi could be affiliated with yin and yang, passive and active qi, or attracting and repelling. Yin was associated with the feminine, and Yang with the masculine. Is that what the vision was trying to tell me? Were my dantian and its subnodes creating or showing the characteristics of yin and yang? I thought the lower one was male because it was close to by reproductive organs, but what if it was more metaphysical? The dantian would therefore hold both yin and yang, both attraction and repulsion, both passive and active. Then what would that mean for the one in the head? Would the lack of a gender mean that those things weren’t a concern? I suppose I could be so logical sometimes that my decisions were neither active nor passive.

  Again, I was stuck not knowing what the symbols mean. I thought for a while more before deciding to end my meditation. When I came out of it, I noticed that there was a noise coming from Dave’s room. Right. Of course they would be doing that. I checked my phone and saw that it was 21:17. I had several missed calls and texts from Liza, so I picked up my phone and called her back, explaining that I had missed them due to being in meditation. We chatted for a few hours before I decided to say goodnight and go to bed, the sounds in the room beside me finally quieting enough to do so.

  For the next five days things were pretty normal. I did a few classes, went to work and meditated. Liza and I chatted every night, sometimes via texts, but usually on a call. That Friday she asked if I wanted to meet her at work so we could go eat when she got off. I would be getting off of work at 17:00 and her at 18:00, so I agreed and got the name of the business. When the time came I clocked out and left, flying directly there.

  I was now at about eight times the qi I had before breaking thorough, so the few minutes of flight were barely enough to feel, much less wear me out. I landed in front of the door of Tony’s Techniques and went inside.

  It was quite large for a non-franchise store. Before the discovery of qi it had been a book store, and sold books of every type, both fiction and non-fiction. Once qi was discovered most of the interest in books became books about qi, from scientific theory, to techniques, to formations, to talismans, to alchemy and medicine. The less popular sections were shrunken or eliminated, and a “mythical energy” section added. Over the next several years the traditional book sections were shrunken and the special section expanded, eventually being split into different sections for different categories.

  Then, five years ago, Tony Taverelli, the shrewd business man that he was, had realized a business opportunity. He bought the bookstore and shrunk the old book section to a single shelf of non-fiction books that might interest cultivators, then used the extra space to put in several extra services. There was a section that rented equipment like meditation pads, alchemy equipment, and special training equipment. The back storage area had been converted to a training section that worked like a gym, where you could come in for classes several times a day and be instructed in the specific techniques they were teaching. And now Tony was planning on partnering with an alchemist, a cultivation medicine practitioner, to buy common pills and elixirs that help with cultivation.

  And how did I know all of this history? I happened to meet Tony when browsing the shelf and commented on the size of the building. A minute after 18:00, though, Liza came over and said goodbye, and I left with her.

  “Sorry about that. Tony can be quite the chatterbox.” She said after we stepped outside.

  “Yeah, I gathered.” I giggled. “A bit self absorbed, too. Who refers to themselves as a ‘shrewd businessman’?”

  Liza shrugged. “Well, he might be a bit full of himself, but he’s a good boss, and from what I can tell the business is doing well. He has eight employees, whereas the bookstore only had two.”

  “Yeah, I think I recognized one of them. Wasn’t that technique trainer guy at the formation social?”

  “Yep,” she replied. “That’s Marcus. He was the one that punched the barrier to test it. Late Gathering, which was a good way to test a Gathering level barrier. He works here Monday, Wednesday, Friday, teaching classes, then at his dojo Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday teaching MMA.”

  “MMA? No wonder the dude has so much muscle.” Anyone that had qi in them would find it very difficult to be out of shape or not have some muscle, but if one didn’t work out they would look like me, having muscles which were toned at best and barely having more stamina than a professional athlete from before qi was discovered, BQ if you want to call it. “Maybe I should see if he’ll train me. I could use some exercise.” Compared to Dave, who wasn’t even half as built as Marcus, my muscles were basically atrophied.

  “Oh, I’m sure he’d be willing to teach you. Last I heard he only had three students and could only keep the place going because he inherited the building from his grandfather.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  She explained that all of the event coordinators at the formation social were her coworkers, as they had planned the event together. In about four weeks they would be holding another, but they hadn’t decided on the formation for it yet.

  “In that case, maybe I can help you find something. I admit that I’m not the best with formations, as I prefer techniques, but I’m pretty good at finding special techniques. Maybe I can find a special formation for next time so it’s more interesting.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t have many techniques.”

  “I said I didn’t have any good practice ones. I’m actually in college to learn to make them, so I have downloaded hundreds of techniques, they are just limited to cleansing and gathering level effects that have interesting parts to them, so I can study the theory. Since I didn’t pick them for effect or skill requirement, though, they don’t really train you once you can handle their one or two unique sections.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense. Sometimes I download weird formations that work, but must have been made by a madman, because they don’t make any sense with their layouts. Usually Deb and I, she’s the one at the rental equipment counter if you noticed her, will take them and rearrange them to work based on normal formation principles. Sometimes we improve them, but usually they end up much weaker. Apparently the creator was onto something.”

  That wasn’t exactly what I meant, but it was close enough. “So, did you want to go eat? I’m not getting the protein cravings any more, so we can go wherever you want.”

  “Actually,” Liza said, “There is somewhere I wanted to go first.” She started flying and I followed her across town.

  We landed at an arcade which had a giant Qi Tag sign on the front of it. Qi tag was a lot like the Laser Tag my dad took me to when I was a kid. The players were split into teams, which then fought each other to beat some objective. The difference was that instead of a laser pointer in a gun shaped case, you used qi blasts. Basically, anyone that tried to learn to manipulate qi would usually learn to form it into a ball in their hand and shoot it. This was called a qi blast, and was one of many Cleansing level effects one learned when just starting to cultivate. The arcade would rent you barrier bracelets which would both protect you from up to Gathering level attacks, a type of barrier that was fairly common due to its relatively affordable cost, and would keep track of how much qi hit it, sorted by qi signature. After your barrier took so much damage from qi, you would be required to return to the starting position and wait for one minute before returning to the fight. Of course, they would also rent you a device that threw qi blasts or allowed you to fly if you didn’t have those techniques as well.

  After learning that it was a game of capture-the-flag, where we needed to take their flag back to ours while ours was still in its holder in order to score a point, we signed up. After ten minutes the old game ended and we entered. Liza and I were on the blue team and, when the starting sound played, we both left.

  I had done something similar with my cousins a few years ago, so I started looking around every corner as I moved, firing off a qi blast at any red team members I saw. Occasionally I would fly to the second layer, where the field was more open, and shoot a few red team members before hoping back down to the ground floor. While I never got the flag, only seeing it once when the man that had it flew past me while being pursued by five red team people, I managed to have some fun.

  After the round was over, we returned our equipment. “Didn’t see you much out there.” Liza said.

  “Yeah, I think I got too caught up in hunting Reds. You want to stick together next time?”

  “No, it’s fine. We won, after all. And according to the scoreboard, you only got hit once, so you must be good at this.”

  “Yeah, red’s best guy managed to snipe me.” Usually qi was invisible, but once you reached Gathering you could learn to see it almost as if it was an extra color in the visible spectrum. “Couldn’t keep my qi sight up constantly, and when I stopped to rub my eyes he hit me. Thankfully I had enough cover that it didn’t take me out of the fight.”

  “You know, I didn’t think about using qi sight, but it makes sense. It would let me see where the others were as long as they were throwing or holding a blast. How did you think of that?”

  “Oh, my cousins and I used to do something similar around a decade ago, but with more powerful weapons.”

  “What, like paintball?”

  “No, mil-sims. Uncle thought that qi was a sign of the apocalypse or something, so he encouraged his sons to learn to use a gun. That was the most fun way to do it.”

  “So, what. You fired blanks? Targets?”

  “No, live rounds. A Condensation barrier can stop anything short of a 50 cal almost indefinitely, and even then it will take a few hits before breaking.” She looked surprised that anyone would let themselves be shot, even with a barrier. “Didn’t you realize that some of the people in the Qi Tag field were using blasts that were near the limit of what the field allows?” She nodded. “Those blast are basically the equivalent of a 22 pistol. What we used were AR15s, 223 rifles. You can get Formation bullets for them, but they aren’t allowed in a proper event.”

  “You’re joking with me.” she said in disbelief.

  “No, I’m serious.” I responded. “Haven’t done it in eight years, but my cousins still do it, so if you want to try, I can see if we can join them.”

  Liza thought about it. “I guess I can try it once, but if I don’t like it, don’t expect me to keep doing it.”

  “Fair enough.” I said. “I’ll send them a text and see when we can join them.”

  An hour later, as we sat at a Mexican restaurant, I got a text from Randy. He was going to an event next weekend, but if I wanted to introduce her to it, we could meet them tomorrow. I asked Liza about it, and, as she got off at 14:00 and I had the day off, we agreed to meet them tomorrow afternoon.

  I swung by Tony’s Techniques at 13:50 and waited for her until closing. I browsed through the books on barrier techniques, but didn’t find any I liked. Barriers were one of the things that tended to work better as formations, so most of the barrier techniques were much weaker than what you would get from a barrier item of the same rank. The one things that made me consider them, however, was that the Cleansing ones were free, the books on Gathering level ones were usually 20 to 30 dollars, and the ones on Condensation ones were 50 to 100 dollars. When I compared that to barrier devices, which ranged from 20 to 50 dollars for a Cleansing level one, 100-500 for a Gathering level one, and 1000 to 5000 for a Condensation level one, techniques were far more affordable to people like me.

  When she got off of work we left to meet Randy at the field. It was a failing police training facility until a decade ago, when extreme sports enthusiasts bought it and decided to start running training sessions and competitions there. While next weekend would be an entire scenario in which the two sides set up on alternate sided of the few city block area and tried to wipe the other side off of the field by ‘killing’ them each ten times, today’s challenge would be much easier. They needed to assassinate the other team’s leader.

  They borrowed Randy’s guns and equipment, including two $800 older model Condensation level barrier bracelets which could track impacts, similar to the ones at the Qi Tag arcade, they walked up to the staging area. The bullets, of course, were standard with no formations added, only they and sub-sonic non-enhanced being allowed in the competition. This insured that even a full mag dump into someone’s shield wouldn’t be enough to actually let a round through.

  After explaining to Liza that if you were hit you had to return to the spawn area and wait for a time determined by how hard you were hit, worse hits requiring longer penalty times, he showed us to one of the buildings. “Watch my back, OK?” he asked, before pulling out his hunting rifle. While actual sniper rifles were banned, hunting rifles were allowed, letting him play the roll of a sniper. “Everybody on comms?” he asked, and the others responded in the affirmative over the team chat channel on our phones. Randy was covered in military surplus fatigues and face paint, and even brought night vision goggles with him, even though the competition would be over before night got here. Maybe he was planning on staying for a night battle.

  I crouched at the top of a set of stairs which lead to the room he was in, and Liza was only three meters away, watching a hallway that the enemy might also approach from. Ten minutes later a horn sounded and soon after that we heard gun fire outside. “Here we go.” said Randy, and he pulled the trigger.

  Liza winced from the loud sound, but I new she wouldn’t go deaf from it. Even Randy, who was firing the gun and didn’t use hearing protection, wouldn’t get actual long term ear damage from the sound, though that was mostly because I convinced him to break through to Gathering when were were teenagers.

  A few minutes later Randy started cursing. “They got by me and into the building. Get ready.” He aimed out the window and fired two more rounds before I heard Liza spray the hallway beside her with seven or eight bullets. Of course Randy modded these for full auto. Even if it was legal, it was overkill.

  “I hit one of them.” Liza said, “But there’s at least three more, and it didn’t kill him.”

  “Shit.” said Randy, then dropped his rifle and drew his P90 to join her.

  Just as he moved, I saw someone enter the stairway and fired a singel round at them, hitting them in the center of the chest. Their barrier flashed red there and a buzzer sounded, and then the whole barrier turned red to indicate that they are dead, leaving them look like they were tinted red to show that they weren’t a valid target. His buddy swapped places with him, only to get one two rounds to his chest as well.

  They tried reaching around the corner and spraying bullets in my direction, but failed to hit me as I stepped off the top of the steps so they wouldn’t have a clear shot. When they stopped I sprayed the bottom of the staircase and head another buzzer along with a guy cussing.

  There was a buzzing sound nearby. “Shit,” said Liza. “I’m dead. Side of my head got clipped.” She slung her gun on her back and went over to a window before jumping out so that she could fly back to the respawn area, our team not having taken another one yet. While flying wasn’t against the rules, nor were the use of any non-attack type techniques, no one flew during the contest because it made you an easy target due to a lack of cover. When you aren’t a valid target anyway due to being ‘dead,’ though, there was no reason not to fly.

  I managed to get another three of the guy on the steps before one of them decided to throw a grenade up the steps and blasted me. Randy died a second later after the sound distracted him, leaving him open to a shot from down his own hallway. I slung my gun and congratulated the guy who threw the grenade before the two of us jumped out the window and flew back to respawn. Randy only had the Levitation technique, so he floated to the ground so that he could walk or run back, but I was able to properly fly.

  We played for another hour and a half until our side lost, then gave Randy back his equipment. He was planning on staying so that he could keep playing, but Liza wanted to leave, so we said goodbye.

  “Ok, it was pretty fun.” she said after buckling in. Until Golden Core a broken neck from a car crash would still kill you, so that was still required by law.

  We talked about the fight on our drive back to inner city, and when we were done we agreed to do the main contest the next Saturday. Both of us were off from work the entire day, so we decided to make an all day date of it.