Lianna and I went to practice with her new pistols in the safety of the arena. I set up the usual ring of targets while she stood in the center of the floor peering at the P2 in her hand like it was a poisonous toad. Apparently a modified crossbow was one thing, but holding something that looked and felt like a real gun was different, and it took her a while to get comfortable with the idea.

  The P2 may have looked a lot like an Earthly pistol, but there were some key differences. There was no recoil, for one thing. The ammo capacity was enormous for another. And a regular gun couldn’t heal you too.

  My intrepid Vice-Captain was annoyed at having to start over again with a new skill, but it took very little time to teach her Pistol. When it came time to reload, I showed her how to open the compartment in the grip and replace the mana crystal. Unlike most magical things on this world whose powers could be triggered with a thought I'd made this have a proper physical trigger, and accidents happen so I also explained the importance of setting the safety at all times except when she had the intent to shoot it.

  She leveled up to Competent scarily quickly, that fast learner Gift she had was something else. Once she felt like she could handle regular bullets she asked about the gun’s other powers. She liked the targeting laser and pouted when I told her she wasn’t allowed to use it until she got better at aiming without it, but she understood why: it wasn’t a good thing to rely on crutches before mastering the basics.

  She was curious about the taser function and surprised me by asking if I could test it on her. She wanted to know what it felt like before she used it on someone else. I took one of her pistols and aimed it at her.

  “Are you sure about this?” I said.

  “I was until you asked me that. Should I be worried?”

  “I'm not gonna lie, it's unpleasant, but it’ll be fine. I had the same idea as you, I wanted to know how it felt so I got Alice to tase me. It’s safe enough, but...unpleasant. Still wanna try?"

  She nodded.

  "Okay," I said. "Take off your shield ring first, though. Don’t want its auto-defense to trigger.”

  “Make sure you use the right power,” she said, tucking the ring into one of the many handy pockets in the catsuit’s utility belt. Then she stood rigid, face scrunched, eyes closed, braced for the unpleasantness.

  So I tased her.

  Don't Tase Me, Bro was a power I'd based on real-world tasers, or what I knew about them, at least. Like the pistol, I didn't need to know the nitty-gritty of how it worked, just going in with a clear idea of the effect I wanted was enough. At first, I'd thought about making it shoot dart-like projectiles that delivered the electric charge. This was not ideal, though. In this pseudo-medieval milieu we were in, a lot of people wore metal armor. Even if the darts managed to stick themselves into the armor, they lacked enough oomph to penetrate far enough to touch the clothing or skin underneath, meaning the current would get grounded in the armor itself and not the person wearing it. But then I remembered I wasn't tied down to physics, I had magic.

  I nixed the dart and just had it shoot a short pulse of electricity that scrambled the messages from the brain to the body, effectively paralyzing the target for a short period. A single taser shot used a lot more mana than the normal bullet, but having a non-lethal option was imperative.

  The electric pulse struck her and, well, you can picture what happened. Lianna's body convulsed and she dropped to the arena floor, twitching. The effect was brief, around three seconds.

  “Okay, not doing that again,” Lianna said, clambering back up onto her feet. Getting tased didn't hurt in the same way getting shot with a normal gun did (I wanted to know what it felt like so as a test I winged myself with a real bullet from the P2, so I know whereof I speak), but it still hurt like hell.

  “But you’d be okay shooting someone else with it?”

  “Beats killing them,” she said.

  “True dat. Honestly I doubt you’d be able to kill most Players with a single bullet,” I said, “but it's not worth the risk.”

  “What if you shot me with a bullet now?”

  “Well, you’re weaker than most Players, but only because you haven’t worked at toughening yourself up. We’ll fix that soon enough. But even still, one bullet shouldn’t take you out unless it hits something important.”

  “Okay then, let’s try it,” she said.

  “You seriously want me to shoot you?”

  “Yeah. I want to know. But, like, maybe just in the arm or leg. Wing me.”

  That's exactly what I said when I did it to myself. Working with Lianna was going to be even more fun than I'd thought.

  I flipped the switch from tase to bang. “You’re sure you want me to shoot you with a real bullet.”

  “Yeah. You can just shoot me with a healing bullet after, right?”

  “So I have your consent?"

  She smirked. "Yes. Now just put a bullet in me already."

  "If you say so.”

  I tried to hide the joy I felt inside upon realizing that she trusted me enough to let me do this; I didn't want her to misread things and think I was simply enjoying the prospect of shooting her.

  I turned on the laser target so she could see it was aimed at the top of her outer thigh, then pulled the trigger. She yelped and fell down again, clutching at her hip.

  “Ow, ow, ow, ow,” she moaned. Then she pulled her hands away to peek at the wound. There wasn’t one. The bullet hadn’t penetrated her armor, it didn’t even leave a mark on her bulletproof suit. She’d still taken damage from it, but not nearly as much as she would have with no protection.

  “How was that?” I said.

  “Shut up and heal me.”

  I gave her a healing shot. There was a flare of light where it struck her, and her health bar went back up to full.

  “Better?” I said.

  “Yeah, thanks,” she said and got back up again, rubbing her hip. "I don't think I need to know what it feels like if the bullet actually did go into me."

  “How do you like that suit now? Wanna try it with the different defenses on top? It won’t hurt as much.”

  She gave me a look of pure skeptecism, but the trust I'd earned so far was enough to overcome her concerns. “I should test them, I guess. I’ll put up the Healing Defense power.”

  Her entire body took on a slightly luminous quality as the power turned on. I shot her again with a normal bullet in her other leg. She squawked when it struck, and I barely had the chance to see her health drop for a fraction of a second before going back up to a mere sliver below full.

  “That’s not bad. It only hurt for, like, a split second,” she said. “Kinda like getting a flu shot, only in the leg. “Sigrid’s sword hurt more."

  She put the shield ring back on and triggered it. The luminosity of Healing Defense added a ghostly transluscent film about an inch or two away from her body as it turned the Holtzmann shield’s usual hazy shimmer into something more substantial.

  I shot her again and she didn’t even flinch when the bullet struck her. I couldn't even notice a difference in her health.

  She dropped both shields. "Now we're talking."

  “What’d that feel like?”

  She pondered for a moment, then reached up and flicked her own nose. "Kinda like that: annoying but harmless. Seriously though, thank you, Daniel. I feel a lot safer having all this.”

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  I started walking toward her to give her back the pistol when I felt a presence behind me, a familiar aura of power.

  “Hi Akari,” I said without looking.

  “You knew I was here? Boo, you’re getting too good,” Akari said, dropping the power she used to conceal herself. “Whatcha doin?”

  I stopped walking and looked at the P2 in my hand. Did I dare?

  “Wanna see for yourself?” I said, still looking ahead toward Lianna.

  “Sure,” Akari said in her usual carefree way.

  “You sure you’re sure?”

  I heard her sigh. “Just show me, nimrod.”

  “You asked for it.”

  I spun around fast and shot a taser round at her. She was faster. Even without superspeed, Akari’s reflexes were so honed she was still able to leap away before it hit her.

  “Ha!” she barked. “Missed me.”

  I shot again. And again. And she dodged it again and again.

  “This is fun,” she said as she bounced around the arena dodging shot after shot. The little light on the top of the P2 warned me it was running out of mana, so I made a new crystal appear in my free hand before dropping the compartment open, pushed the spent crystal out by slotting a fresh one in, then slammed the compartment closed and kept shooting at Akari. It took all of about a second.

  “You know I could hit you if I really wanted to,” I said, still shooting.

  “Superspeed would be cheating,” she said, still dodging.

  “Wasn’t it you who told me that in battle there’s no such thing as cheating, there’s only using everything you’ve got to win?”

  “I really hate that perfect memory of yours sometimes,” she said.

  The warning light was back on, meaning I had one, maybe two shots left. That would be enough.

  I flicked on superspeed and watched Akari. I tracked her with the gun’s muzzle then aimed a little bit in front of her and fired off a taser. The projectile struck her in the arm, but she just kept running. So not enough after all. Figures she'd be too tough for a single tase to work. But what about several?

  It was difficult to track her while standing still so I started chasing her around the arena, pumping a fresh mana crystal into the ammo chamber and firing off taser shots one after another at superspeed until there was enough current running through Akari to take down a wooly mammoth.

  I’m not proud of this, but I took immeasurable pleasure in watching her body get frazzled and drop to the floor in slow motion. She’d knocked me down to that same floor hundreds if not thousands of times, and this was the first time I managed to get her to taste dirt.

  Akari rolled over and sprawled on her back. “That was fun!”

  “Nice to know it can even take down an S-Ranker,” I said, casually reloading it with another fresh mana crystal.

  “I want one,” she said, hopping to her feet.

  “You thought getting taken down was fun?” Lianna said.

  “Heck yes. I don't know the last time I was humbled. It's good to be reminded I’m not invincible once in a while, just means I gotta work harder. You look incredible in that outfit, by the way. Great choice.”

  Lianna managed to mumble a thank you.

  “Don’t move,” I said, aiming the gun at Akari again.

  “What’s this, you want another go?” she said with a grin.

  “I wanna test something. Do you trust me?”

  “Of course,” she said without batting an eye. She stretched her arms out and stood there. “Hit me.”

  I switched from taser to real bullets and fired one into her thigh, the same place I’d shot Lianna.

  “What the what?” Akari said, looking down at the blood seeping from her injured leg. “Ow.”

  “I was curious what kind of damage one of these bullets could do to someone like you and luckily you weren't wearing your armor today."

  "Yeah," Akari said, "how fortunate."

  "Mmmm, very lucky," Lianna said, coming up beside me.

  "How would you compare that with being shot with an arrow?” I said, handing the pistol back to Lianna.

  She rubbed at the wound. “A bit worse, I’d say.”

  “Hmmmm. Just a bit, huh?”

  “That’s a neat toy,” Akari said, “now I really want one. What else can it do?”

  “Show her,” I said, and Lianna obligingly shot Akari with a healing round. The tiny tick of health she’d lost was erased and she was back to full.

  “Seriously? It can incapacitate, hurt, and heal?” Akari said, then came towards Lianna with her arms out, grabby fingers curling and uncurling. “Gimme.”

  I put my arm in her way. “I’ll make you one later, right now Lianna’s using them.”

  “Does she really need both?” Akari pouted.

  “Yes, now scram.”

  “Can I at least stay and watch?”

  “Suit yourself.”

  I set the arena to make the targets appear every few seconds in random spots around its perimeter and bounded up into the stands beside Akari to watch Lianna practice shooting them. I pulled out some toasted seeds -- a favorite snack of the elves -- and Akari and I shared them as we watched and gabbed.

  It was nice to just sit and relax, I couldn't remember the last time I'd just sat and done nothing. It helped that Akari is nothing if not interesting company, and she had some good ideas about what improvements I could make in the P3.

  When Lianna started picking off every target consistently I made them appear faster.

  “I leveled it up to Adept!” she said after a while.

  “Awesome. Now I want you to try dual wielding them.”

  She pulled the other from its holster and held one in each hand. “This is going to make reloading harder,” she said.

  “Yeah, but you’ll only need to reload half as often.”

  “That’s fair.”

  The targets started up again. With a P2 in each hand, each gun was able to cover one hemisphere of the target area, meaning she didn’t need to keep spinning around so much and could shoot even faster. But she was right, when it came time to reload it took a lot longer as she fumbled with not having a free hand.

  “I’ll work on a better reloading system in the next version,” I said. “Try the laser now.”

  A thin red beam appeared from each pistol and she started shooting again. Her accuracy was much better with the targeting, and soon she was accurately hitting every target with only a half-second delay between them popping up.

  “I gotta say, I feel pretty bad ass with these,” Lianna said when she finally stopped.

  “You look it, too. A lot of people are going to be very surprised the first time they see you fight.”

  She slid the P2s back into their holsters. “What’s next on the agenda?”

  “You’re going to the forest to learn how to use knives.”

  “Okay, but what about the kung fu.”

  “Keep training in it. Kung fu and the other martial arts you'll be learning will have lots of benefits for you, not the least of which is having something to fall back on if you find yourself weaponless and in a fight."

  "That’s a scary thought.”

  "But if you have your weapons, and for whatever reason using your guns is impractical, then for you the elven dual knife fighting skill is the best choice. Especially if we’re fighting together.”

  “Elven dual knife fighting. That’s what Petal’s going to teach Kay, right? Am I allowed to learn that?”

  “That won’t be a problem,” I said and called Petal by touching the nugget of jade on my Dick Tracy Communicator. She answered right away, a little projection of her face appearing over my bracelet. I told her that Lianna was coming back to the village and could she please teach her how to fight with knives.

  “It would be an honor,” she said. “I will prepare a set of blades for her.”

  “Would it be okay if I gave her my original set?”

  “That seems appropriate. Perhaps she will do a better job keeping them from being stolen," Petal said with a playful smile.

  “Goodbye Petal,” I sighed, and shut the connection.

  “Wow,” Lianna said, “even the NPCs tease you.”

  “Of course we do,” Akari said. “It’s just so much fun. You know they won't let me have one of those communicator thingies.”

  Lianna didn’t seem to catch that Akari just referred to herself as an NPC, something an NPC would never do. I chose not to mention it, although my curiosity about who or what the bright-haired sisters really were was burning hotter than ever.

  "That's because we don't want you calling us at all hours, which you know you would. You can't be trusted."

  Akari stuck out her tongue and blew me a raspberry. "Pthhh."

  The first set of knives I’d been given by the elves appeared in my hands. I used telekinesis to float them over to Lianna, then opened a portal to the elf village beside her down on the floor.

  Ordinarily I could only open a portal as far as an adjecent hex on the map, but using the power that increases the range of another power I could boost that to two hexes, far enough to reach the elves. The game may have limited how much I can level up my powers, but it also provided me with the means to often work around that in various nefarious ways.

  “Will I see you later?” she said.

  “Yeah. While you’re blowing Petal away with how quickly you learn to use the knives I’m going to go work on the upgraded P3. I want you as ready as possible in case this new quest involves combat, which I think it will.”

  “Is it bad that I’m excited about being in a fight?”

  “No, but I find your enthusiasm about it a little scary. I’ll come find you for dinner, then we can spend the night with the elves. I’d like them to get to know you better. And speaking of that, there’s one thing I’d like you to do before going.”

  “What’s that?” she said. “Oh! Why did I just get a new power and what’s Stop Staring At My Ears?”

  “It’s one of my powers that turns you into an elf and I’m loaning it to you. I’d like you to use it today, it’ll help them be more comfortable with you.”

  “O-kaaaay.”

  She turned into an elf. It goes without saying that it suited her very well.

  “How’s that?” Lianna said.

  “I can’t tell you how you look,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to get in trouble for sexual harassment.”

  “Yeah? It’s good?”

  “You look like an elf.”

  “Really?” she said, feeling her ears.

  “Go learn elf things,” I said.

  She grinned and stepped through the portal, leaving me alone with Akari.

  “I wasn’t sure about her at first,” Akari said, “but I like her.”

  “I know how to pick them,” I said.

  “Yes you do.”