Thresholder

“Who is this?” asked Perry. His hand had gone to the sword at his hip. The woman’s needle-sword was still pointed at him. People in this world had a tendency to point weapons at him, except that she was pretty clearly from a different genre. His eyes were stuck on the tip of her sword. It really looked like a needle, and he couldn’t figure out what advantage that would give, if any. The edge was sharpened, but cleverly, so it was difficult to tell.

“I do not know,” said Luo Yanhua. She was sizing up the new girl in the same calm way.

“I assume fighting in the temple is frowned upon?” asked Perry.

“Yeah, where’s a good place for us to throw down?” asked the girl. Perry’s mind was saying ‘girl’, but she had smile lines, and not much in the way of baby fat. It might have been the sneakers or the bright clothes that made her read young, but there was a chance she was older than him.

“The Silver Fish Temple is dedicated to martial arts,” said Luo Yanhua. “Why wouldn’t it be a place for people to fight?”

“It’s a ‘to the death’ sort of thing, or at least ‘to the grievous maiming’,” said the girl. Her eyes were still on Perry.

“For what cause?” asked Luo Yanhua.

“Eh, it’s just sort of what we do,” said the girl. “Probably he’s an asshole, I don’t really need the details.”

“I’m not an asshole,” said Perry.

“Yeah, they all say that if you give them a chance to talk,” the girl said. “And then it turns out that we have different definitions of ‘asshole’.”

Perry drew his sword in a single smooth motion, and the girl didn’t so much as move. She was close enough that they could have touched the tips of their swords together, if just barely, and Perry felt better being able to offer a defense.

“If the fight can wait for a moment, I’ll clear space for your battle,” said Luo Yanhua.

“Fifteen minutes? More? Less?” asked the girl. Her eyes flicked to Luo Yanhua.

“Perhaps that,” said Luo Yanhua.

“Fine by me,” said the girl. “I’ve never had a proper fight before, all organized. That’s a first.”

“You may put your swords away until then,” said Luo Yanhua. “A battle between foes is not unheard of, but disruption to the routines of this temple will be punished.”

The girl shrugged, then put her sword away, which involved slipping it through a pair of grommets in her hoodie. She folded her arms and waited for Perry to disarm himself as well, which he did slowly, cautiously.

“You’re a thresholder,” said Perry as Luo Yanhua walked away.

“Yup,” said the girl.

“And you’re … speaking English?” asked Perry.

“Is this where you try to convince me we’ve got something in common?” she asked. “Because I’ve heard that rigamarole a few times now, and we can skip on down the line.”

“How long have you been here?” asked Perry. His eyes went to her black bracer. He wasn’t sure whether it was dangerous or not. Once he’d sized it up, he took in her hoodie, with its bright colors. The graphic design on it was wild, neo-punk, or maybe like the camouflage on a warship that was heading through garishly chemical oceans. It was also bulky enough to hide something under it, guns or worse.

“Week or so,” she said. “You?”

“Less than a day,” said Perry. “Is it serendipity that we’re meeting here?”

“Nah,” she said. “That’s not how it works. You don’t just chance on people, you seek them out. There are only five temples in this valley, split between two sects, we’d have found each other soon enough. How long have you been doing this?”

Perry looked over at where Luo Yanhua was in conversation with one of the second sphere men, the old guy who’d been leading what was probably not calisthenics. She kept gesturing to the pair of thresholders.

“I don’t say things that might give away tactical advantage,” said Perry.

“Smart or stupid, hard to tell which,” the girl said.

“What’s your name?” asked Perry.

“Maya,” she replied. “You?”

“Peregrin,” said Perry. “Like the bird. Call me Perry.”

“Perry,” said Maya. She pursed her lips. “Sure would like to know what kind of asshole you are before I kill you. Mostly for the sake of science.” She was looking at his armor. “You’re banged up.”

“‘Tis but a scratch,” said Perry.

“What’s the armor, techno or magic? Or both?” asked Maya.

“Nunya,” said Perry.

“Fine, whatever, not like it matters,” said Maya. “I’m going to clean your clock.”

“There’s power in this world,” said Perry. “Heaps of it. We’re both first sphere. Second sphere is a huge jump in power. We fight now, one of us goes home in a body bag, the other misses out on all that power. We fight later, one of us goes home in a body bag, the other comes out much stronger for it.”

“Ah, see, that’s what I wanted, just to know the flavor of asshole,” said Maya. “The incredible lust for power.” She gave him some jazz hands. “Kind of a cliche male fantasy, isn’t it?”

“No?” asked Perry. “I mean … no? We’ve read different books, I guess, but the cliche male fantasy is having power thrust upon you. Chasing power is for losers.”

“You’re a loser?” asked Maya. She shifted her stance slightly. Her sword was tucked away, more or less, but Perry thought she had probably rolled up with other weapons. How many worlds had she been to? At least three was his guess, but visibly the evidence was more toward two.

“The world — worlds — don’t work like in stories,” said Perry. “Standard story, at least where I come from, is unrealistic. The fantasy is to get incredible powers from doing nothing because it means that you don’t have to change, you don’t have to grow. The fantasy is that just by being you, you’ll get rewarded. If the transformation comes from within rather than from without, then it’s not a part of the fantasy. Because that would mean that the people who are trapped in their boring lives were capable of breaking out of them, right? And I mean … where I was from, mostly you couldn’t. Money, class, the grinding expectations, all that kind of thing made the fantasies flourish because the real world didn’t offer mobility.”

“So you’re a philosophical loser, huh?” asked Maya.

“I’ve had time to think,” said Perry. “Seeking power? Wanting to be strong? That’s a villain motivation where I’m from, unless you’re just going to do it in a montage in order to get revenge on the guy who killed your wife.”

Maya was giving him a funny look. “Montage.”

Perry waved a hand at her. “Whatever, looks like we’re five minutes away from a fight. I’m resigned to it.”

“Think about it this way,” she said. “Your idea about us getting stronger, and the winner walks away? Why would I want an asshole to walk away with more power?”

“You think you’ll lose?” asked Perry. He didn’t like his odds, but avoiding the fight seemed like it might be difficult. Maya knew where he was, and the likes of Luo Yanhua might not stop her from killing him.

“Nah,” said Maya. “I’m a shoo-in. I’d bet everything I had on me winning. But give us time here, and I’m not so sure. Your armor is beat to hell. Do I want to take the chance that it won’t be beaten to hell if we sit in this temple and train up together? You find some way to fix it, or it fixes itself. I still bet on me, in that case, but why risk it?” She briefly looked at the students, who had made space. “You know why we’ve been put into this thing, the fights, the worlds?”

“No,” said Perry. “Do you know?”

“It’s the assholes,” said Maya. “Every single thresholder I’ve met has been some unique flavor of asshole, and I’m here to kill them, do my part to reduce the number of assholes across the million and a half universes. The more I kill, the stronger I get, the stronger I face, the stronger I get to eliminate.”

Perry considered that. “You figure that no matter what world you arrive at, you’re going to be faced with someone who’s just absolutely the worst. And you figure that there’s some moral imperative to just blast through the worlds as fast as you can, killing them. Like … if you had a button that killed the worst person in the world, you’d just slam down on that thing?”

“Yup,” said Maya. “You wouldn’t?”

Perry thought about it. His first instinct was ‘no’, but the more he tried to imagine who the worst possible person in the world was, the more he thought ‘yes’. The button would have to be infallible though, which seemed like a stretch, if not a part of the thought experiment. Then again, the button was just a stand-in for the real situation that they actually found themselves in, and that real situation did have a whole host of caveats.

“It’s not like that,” said Perry.

“She’s calling us over,” said Maya. She shifted her weight and started walking without hesitation, drawing her needle as she went.

“You get that it’s not like that?” asked Perry. He walked after her, and she didn’t look behind her. “We’re not picked for ideological opposition, we’re picked for conflict, or at least that’s my running theory. And so maybe I’m not some asshole, maybe I’m just someone who you’ve decided you’re going to kill because you have this ‘kill the worst person’ thing, which isn’t necessarily wrong. But because you’re going to try to kill me no matter what, it doesn’t matter that I’m a good guy.”

“Hmm, fair point,” said Maya. She kept walking. “But I’ve been to — I guess I’ll just tell you — seven worlds now, and I’ve had talks with the other thresholders, and I’ve talked to a wizard who seemed to know his stuff, and yeah, I think we can skip the whole thing where I find out that you’re secretly awful, or maybe even not-so-secretly awful.” She whipped around, sword out, then turned to look at Luo Yanhua. “This fine?”

Perry drew his own sword.

“Is this to be a confined duel?” asked Luo Yanhua. “Limited in scope and space?”

“Yup,” said Maya. “We may want to kill each other, but we don’t want to cause much inconvenience.”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t want to kill you,” said Perry. His sword was raised. The batteries in the suit had recharged a bit, in part thanks to Perry just using his muscles to move the armor around, starting from after he’d finished the graves. He wasn’t sure it had been a good trade-off.

A part of him was worried that Maya was right. Maybe if they spent some time together, they would come to a mutual realization that the other person was awful. He kind of liked her, but he’d also kind of liked Cosme. He hadn’t liked Cosme enough not to throw acid in his face though …

“How many worlds for you?” asked Maya. “I told you mine.”

“This is number four,” said Perry. “Five if you count the world I started from.”

Maya had taken up a fencer’s stance, with one arm behind her back, needle fully extended. That made sense, since it was more of a poking weapon than a slicing weapon, but it wasn’t something he was familiar fighting against. She also probably had tricks up her sleeve, if she was going up against plate armor with a sword like that. Just being the other thresholder meant that she probably had tricks up her sleeve.

“Are you going to give us a countdown?” asked Maya, cocking her head at Luo Yanhua.

“A countdown?” the woman asked, puzzled.

“For when to start,” said Maya.

“The nature of a battle is such that its beginning is marked by intent, not the chiming of a bell,” said Luo Yanhuo.

“Meaning?” asked Maya.

“They think the fight has already started,” said Perry.

“Aw,” said Maya. “I was hoping for some ceremony, some rites, pomp and circumstance.”

“Marchand, countdown,” said Perry.

“Very good, sir,” said Marchand.

Perry had precious little from Earth. He’d brought his phone to Richter’s world, and Richter had been just about as fascinated with it as she’d been with him, but the phone itself hadn’t had much on it, just an album or two and a few scattered songs, along with cached webpages and some app data and photos. Everything being pushed to the cloud meant that he didn’t have whole backups of Wikipedia or anything like that. Richter had, with AI assistance, grabbed as much as she could, taking the unfamiliar formats and converting them over to her world’s versions of text, video, photo, music, or whatever.

Marchand did a voice for the countdown. It was taken from a favorite pre-workout song on Perry’s old phone, the Mortal Kombat theme song, “Techno Syndrome”.

“3 … 2 … 1 … Fight!” Marchand played through the speakers. Then the full theme song started playing, out loud, in front of everyone.

Richter must have done it. She must have. It was her sense of humor. They must have talked about it at some point, some idle conversation that hadn’t stuck enough in Perry’s mind that he’d remember it six months later, and she’d snuck in an easter egg. It wasn’t the time or place for it, and he thought it was mildly embarrassing, but he didn’t have time to be embarrassed, because Maya had gone on the attack.

She was slow compared to the nameless bandit that Perry had fought in the woods, but she was still faster than Perry was, at least without the suit. He needed to use some of its power to move himself into place for the parry, and their swords clashed. The battery levels dipped by an entire percentage point.

When Maya moved away, she slapped at her black bracer with her free hand, and the armor there, which he’d taken to be bulky carbon fiber something-or-other, sprang to life, moving like inky tar across her arm, wrapping itself around her hand and slithering down her arm beneath the colorful hoodie. It was a skintight glove, and a second later it had gone under her clothes, moving up the brown skin of her neck, into her hair. Perry struck out at her with a haymaker swing and she dodged it, flipping through the air.

When she came back down, she had no skin showing. The black stuff was covering her like a skin suit, save for her face, which was covered in a hard black bulge. The whole thing couldn’t have been more than a millimeter thick, and he could see where it was covering her shorts and socks. If it was armor, it looked like the weakest armor in the world, but Perry knew he was probably going to find out the hard way that it was better than it looked.

“I’ve detected an ultra-high frequency radio signal, sir,” said Marchand.

“Hack it,” said Perry. “Disrupt it.” The music was still going, pumping Perry up in spite of everything.

“I’m afraid I —” began March.

Maya attacked again, leaping forward with a flash of light that would have blinded Perry if he wasn’t looking at auto-adjusted video. He parried again, and this time, struck out with his fist, full power, punching her right in the solar plexus. She flew backward but was on her feet in an instant, rubbing her chest.

“Saw through that one, huh?” asked Maya. She was still rubbing her chest. “Ow.”

The martial arts students and masters, or whatever their relationship was, were watching with interest from the sidelines, speaking with each other in low voices. Perry was trying not to be distracted by them. March would be recording everything for later, not that they had the language cracked yet. It was weird, to be fighting to the death in front of an audience that seemed to accept that this was normal, and to be doing it with the music from Mortal Kombat playing.

“Next time she gets close, flash her,” Perry said to March.

It didn’t take long for it to happen. The needle came in fast, aimed straight for Perry’s chest, but Marchand flashed the suit’s lights at full brightness, trying to blind her, and it seemed to work, as she abandoned the attack and dodged backward. Perry was ready to follow her, and he swung hard at her, two-handed. She wasn’t fast enough to do a double dodge, and she was off her footing when the attack came in. The sword slammed into the side of her head, cutting through the hoodie but not the paper-thin black armor underneath. Instead, it sent her tumbling. She managed to land on her feet, hand going briefly to her head.

“That’s it?” she asked. Her voice was only slightly muffled by the bulbous black mask. She touched the side of her head again.

Perry was silent. That was it. He’d hit her nearly as hard as he could, and the sword hadn’t cut. Maybe if the armor dropped he’d be able to see a blooming bruise, but she was more than ready to keep fighting. He had the gun, which was currently non-functional, the drone, which was a distraction at best, and he could fly, which wasn’t going to do all that much good. There was a chance he could grab her and crush her, but she was faster than any normal person, however that was happening.

“No luck on the radio overload?” asked Perry.

“I have not made an attempt, but am skeptical that overwhelming power to the transmitter will —” March was cut off by another attack from Maya. It drowned out the steady words. She was being more fearless, attack after attack, with none of the bounding leaps backward, and when Perry slashed at her, she simply raised an arm to block it. It knocked her to the side, and whatever the hell her armor was made of, his sword — which could slice straight through bone and gouge hard metals — didn’t so much as leave a mark.

Her sword was doing work against his armor, leaving marks, and a particularly hard thrust flashed up warnings. She’d gone for a place where the armor was damaged on the chest, a mark that his own sword had left there during a fight with Cosme.

“March, I’m dead if you don’t jam the signal,” said Perry as he blocked another attack. His sword was still intact, at least. It was looking like it would be the death of a thousand cuts.

“Let me try something, sir,” said Marchand.

The black catsuit almost immediately began peeling away in strips, and Maya dashed backward to almost the edge of the informal combat arena to stare it. The strips weren’t falling to the ground, but rather, retracting down to coalesce with other pieces of itself.

“I seem to have initiated a reset of its functions, sir,” said Marchand. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that again.”

Perry didn’t need to be told twice that this was his moment, so he pushed the full strength of the suit into a leap that broke a stone tile beneath him. He let himself be carried by the sword for half a tick, just long enough that the float would surprise her, and she was only barely able to dodge out of the way with a burst of light pushing her into a sideways tumble. She was on her feet in just a moment and to Perry’s surprise, she went on the attack, swinging her sword with wild aggression. He could see her face now, and the anger there. She did have a red welt where he’d hit her, and she was sweating, facts that had been concealed by the armor.

Perry weathered the storm. She was tiring herself out, hoping that her attacks would finish the fight. She had no way of knowing that he was down to six percent in the batteries, that he had half a minute of exertion before the suit would be weighing him down. All he needed was another solid hit, one to the head or torso, and without the protection, she’d be finished.

She moved away, but the sword stayed, still making attacks against him. She wasn’t holding it, wasn’t even touching it, it was just moving of its own accord. It took Perry some time to realize that, then more time to figure out what to do about it, but he reached out and grabbed the sword, getting more gouges on his gauntlet in the process, until at last it was firmly in his grip. He was dual-wielding, his magic sword in one hand, her needle in the other, but she was doing something with her fingers. He flung his sword at her, but her fingers opened, heels of her palms together, and a blast of brilliant white light knocked the sword to the side at the same time it struck him in the chest.

“Recalibrating,” said Marchand, which wasn’t something that Perry wanted to hear in the middle of a fight. The screen had gone dark.

He called the sword back to him, but he was fighting blind, and even with two swords, that wasn’t where he wanted to be. Something yanked at the needle-sword, but his grip held it firm.

“March!” shouted Perry.

“Re-calibrating,” said Marchand again. “Audio only.”

The scene bloomed out in front of Perry again, but it was totally different, not video at all, just video as reconstructed from audio, the same thing that March had done before but without any kind of color or backdrop, nothing painted in.

Maya was in front of him, and moved out of the way when he swiped at her with her own sword. She was moving deftly, more deliberately. Did she know that he was partly blind? March’s reconstruction from audio wasn’t good enough for him to read her face. Hell, it was barely good enough that he could tell where she was, especially with her moving quickly. The sound of her sneakers seemed louder. He had both swords, but somehow still felt like he was at a disadvantage. The blast of light had come from her palms, which meant magic or something like it, a spell, wizardry, who-knew-what. She had more tricks, and he was basically out. He could try to escape, fly away, but she could move her sword with her mind, and there was a good chance she’d just follow. He was at a disadvantage in the air.

He went at her with the swords, both hers and his, and felt her sword leap around in his hand. It was a liability, and she seemed like she was faster, or putting on more speed. She was retreating toward the edge as he swung and the battery drained, but the arena wasn’t a true arena. Nothing would happen if they stepped outside the paved area they were in, away from the watchful eye of maybe thirty people who had a lot of interest in the struggle.

The music was playing on, and Perry couldn’t spare a moment to tell March to knock it off.

She ducked beneath him when he came at her, going under him. She gave a surprisingly spirited kick to the back of his knee, but it was nothing the suit couldn’t compensate for, and if she had super strength, it didn’t make her strong enough to take him down.

Perry saw, through the monochrome, scattered representation of Maya, something growing in her hand, a new blade of some kind that seemed to have come from nowhere. Now that she had some space, she was playing it more tactically.

He had no idea whether her armor was back. March had said ‘reset’, and Perry had no idea what that meant. How long did reset of some kind of ultra-advanced nanotech black goo carbon armor take? If it was ultra-advanced, did that mean more time or less?

The new blade was hard for Marchand to see, especially when it was still. March had some kind of ultrasonic echolocation thing going on to help with imaging, but it wasn’t enough, not when someone was moving with soft feet. A strike came in from the side, and the image adjusted only belatedly, showing that she’d moved and March had guessed wrong about where she was.

She went for his crotch, using the fact that she was shorter to her advantage. She stabbed at the joint several times, moving swiftly, not doing much damage, and Perry tried to bring the swords down on her, which she easily moved away from. She’d sped up somehow, either because of the adrenaline pumping through her system or because she was burning through reserves of some kind.

Perry’s eyes flicked up to where the battery charge was shown on the HUD. It had been red for a while, and was now at 1%. It was time to end the fight or fly away.

He threw his sword and lunged for her, hoping to wrap her in a crushing grab, leveraging the weight of the armor and the size difference between them. She slipped past him, slashing at him, another deep gouge in the armor, but he caught her with his foot as she went by, tripping her, and more or less fell on top of her. She was fast, but not fast enough to avoid him grabbing her by the arm, not when she was half-pinned beneath him. It was all done by feel more than sight, the blurry monochrome not really helping much.

He tried to crush her, to kick against her, bear down on her, but she wasn’t just flesh and blood, she was something more, even unarmored. He was holding onto her needle-sword, which meant that he only had her by a single point, and the ability of the armor to squeeze somehow wasn’t enough to break her humerus.

The world moved up around them, confusion on March’s part, because it felt like they were sinking down, into a pit. Perry had no idea what was actually happening, what was real, or magic, or a glitch in the system. He could trust video, but the audio reconstruction was a matter of interpretation, and March was the one doing the guesswork.

The sounds changed, the displayed reconstruction changed with them, positioning them up in the air, with the temple thirty feet below them. Perry had felt something happen, like she’d been pushed up into him, but he had no idea what was going on. Then, he was falling, falling while still holding onto her. They twisted around in the air, or March thought that’s what was happening, and he landed on his back with her on top of him. It was a hard hit that slammed him against the inside of the armor, though he kept her grip on her arm.

The suit’s battery dropped to 0%. It went into emergency mode, just showing visuals, not even running March. It was the absolute last backup, but the cameras were still not working, so he was totally blind, going by feel and sound. He had his hand around Maya’s arm, her sword in his hand, and he failed wildly, the bulk of the suit resisting him. Pain was radiating through his back where he’d landed, and he was dizzy, disoriented.

She slipped out of his grip. He had no idea how she did it, couldn’t see, only feel, but the hand should have been able to hold tight even without power, the mechanisms locking it in place.

Perry felt the sword pierce the armor at his neck, pushing straight through the flexible metal sheathing there. He tried to scramble back, but he was blind and disoriented, and the sword stayed where it was, stabbing into his flesh. He was seconds away from a mortal wound.

The sword retracted, and Perry had no idea whether he was going to bleed out or not, couldn’t tell whether it was just a nick or if she’d sliced into his artery.

Perry took the helmet off, spring to his feet as best he could in the depowered suit. He hated being without his helmet, but he couldn’t fight blind, not with March down for the count. He still didn’t know what had failed, only that it had followed from a blast of light.

Maya was standing there in her cut up hoodie, holding her needle-sword, looking at him. Perry’s hand went out in front of him, and his sword was recalled to it, though he wasn’t liking his chances. His other hand went up to his neck, almost involuntarily, and when he pulled it away, he was relieved to see only a smear of blood, not a drenching.

“Is that really all you have?” asked Maya.

“You caught me at a low point,” said Perry.

“Three worlds, you said,” said Maya.

“Yes,” said Perry. “You said seven.”

Maya clucked her tongue. She was playing it cool, but the welt on the side of her head was going to develop into a horrible bruise. The black stuff had surrounded her again, but her face didn’t have the reflective bubble.

“Alright,” she said. She adjusted her posture, dropping out of a fighting stance. “We can talk.”