NewU Pt. 10a

It was a marked difference from the way I had edited myself. Even in those early days of my powers, when self-confidence had been a serious issue for me, I had changed myself to make me into something that other people would find more appealing. Yes, my confidence had grown, and the changes had worked. But for the first time, I was being confronted by the fact that the way I now looked was based almost entirely on what I thought other people wanted me to look like, what other people wanted to see, and very little, if anything, about my new physical appearance, had been influenced by what I had liked about myself.

No, there was nothing perfect about this woman in front of me, which is exactly what made her perfect to me.

"I... Errr..." I stammered a little, trying to retrieve my jaw from the floor. "Pete, It's nice to meet you," I said and held out my hand.

She took it with a smile, holding it softly. "Hi, Pete. I'm Faye. C'mon, I'll show you around and let these two VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE get back to doing whatever very important people do." She had almost shouted the 'very important people' part, making sure the teasing comment was heard by both Marco and Uri. My Mentor smiled, a little unease hiding behind his eyes. Uri pretended he hadn't heard her. For someone Marco had referred to as the great Uri, that man seemed like a little bit of a prick.

I smiled, nodded to Marco, ignored Uri, and let Faye drag me off into the crowd.

"Eucchhh," she shuddered as we got out of earshot, casting a look back at the bar. "Those are two men who take themselves way too seriously. It was funny to watch Uri squirm, though. Nice crack about the size thing, by the way." She laughed.

"I don't think he got it." I smiled back.

"Oh, he got it. I just don't think he knew how to act on being called out so quickly. It usually takes people minutes to realize he is a dick! At least an hour to call him one." She giggled and rolled her eyes before turning her attention back to me. "The fact you could squash him like a bug was probably a new one for him too. I'm pretty sure that guy has been the biggest little boy in the schoolyard all his life."

"You don't sound like a fan." I chuckled, following behind her and not failing to notice her hand was still holding onto mine.

"Oh, it's not that. He's helped a lot of us out when we've been in a jam, but he is a man who has been the top dog in an organization that is all about... how big your stick is." Another gorgeous giggle bounced musically from her lips. "We've all been wondering how he would act if you were as strong as we had heard. What makes it worse for him is that you are not like him. You are one of us." She grinned and nodded toward the rest of the room.

"Oh?"

"Aye. You're new." Her eyebrows bounced, and her grin stretched a little wider. It immediately took its rightful place as the most beautiful smile I had ever seen in my life. "There are already enough pompous asshats around, the world doesn't need any more of them. The rest of us have decided we are gonna keep you as one of us. So, we are gonna corrupt the shit outta ya."

Faye led me away from the bar and towards the corner of the room. The bar was laid out in a pretty typical working-mans club fashion. The bar was against the main back wall, but there was a gap on either side of it. One side had some more comfortable leather sofas, while the other side contained some gambling machines and arcade games. Not many, but enough to rob drunk people of their money. In front of the bar was a checkered-style hardwood floor containing the tables and chairs that the rest of the crowd were sitting on or standing around, and beyond them were the bathrooms. The main entrance had brought me in on the right-hand side of the room if you were looking out from the bar, and the doors were tucked into the corner between the comfy-looking corner and the wall holding the bathrooms. Its opposite number, the mandatorily required fire escape, was directly opposite it, halfway along the left-hand wall. The bathrooms didn't take up the whole length of the room, however, barely half of it, and the room widened as the wall ended. That recess contained more seats and two old and heavy-looking pool tables. For the same reason that there are never any windows in casinos, there were none here either. Drinking men didn't need to be reminded of the time. Knowing it was late and wives were waiting for them had the unprofitable habit of making them leave.

It was to the corner with the leather sofas that Faye led me to.

"You know Marco dragged him all this way from Eastern Europe to meet you, don't you?" Faye smirked

"Who?"

"Uri. I'm not sure he knew in advance, but the rest of us have our suspicions. Marco wanted you both to meet," she grinned playfully. "I'm not sure it went quite according to plan."

I cast a look back over my shoulder toward the bar, wondering if I should have been a little more polite. I knew my social graces were not quite what they should have been, nor did I give a shit about that as much as I probably should have. Still, if Marco had wanted me to meet Uri, there must have been a good reason for it. At least a better reason that my cynicism was letting me see. Faye arched an eyebrow at me with a giggle.

"You're gonna have to teach your face to use its inside voice around here, Darlin'." She grinned, latching onto my arm, and guiding me through the last few people and into the corner where the leather seats were. "Subtly is not your strong suit."

Sitting on, standing around, or leaning against these chairs were a group of people, all of whom looked roughly around my age - although, being Evos, their appearance probably had no correlation whatsoever to how old they actually were. What was odd, however, was that they were all sitting in complete silence with their eyes closed. I cast a confused-looking glance at Faye. "Do we... errr... need to call a Doctor or something?"

She giggled a little louder. "Oh, you really are brand new, aren't yeh? They're dueling. Have you not been shown that yet?"

I shook my head, quickly deciding that this was something I should be paying a little more attention to. Between Charlotte's brief and fairly vague description of what dueling was when we first unlocked my city, and Marco's cryptic references to self-defense and combat, I was sort of aware of what dueling was but had never even been able to imagine what it would look like in practice. "Do you wanna watch?" Faye grinned next to me, Giving me a look I couldn't quite translate.

"Umm... Sure. But... How exactly do I do that?"

She squeezed a little tighter around my arm, and her smile grew bigger. "Oh, you and I are going to have so much fun together. All you do is try to connect to one of their minds, and that'll pull you into the mindscape. The two who are dueling will be fairly obvious. Everyone else is usually on a high point in the middle, watching. Just come over and sit with us." She shook herself loose, smiled at me again, then closed her eyes. Within a few seconds, a completely calm, neutral, and vacant look washed over her face.

Is that what I look like when I'm in my bunker? How the fuck hasn't Jimmy noticed that? I bet I look like I'm having a stroke!

I cast another look over my shoulder to the rest of the bar. Marco and Uri were deep in conversation about something that looked fairly serious, but otherwise, the room looked much the same as any other bar would on a Saturday night. Groups of people talking, laughing, and drinking together. The only difference was that everyone, generally speaking, seemed to know everyone else. There were many instances of someone crossing the room, tapping someone on the shoulder, and having a quick chat before moving on, or the shrieking, gleeful squeals and two women hugging each other, clearly not having seen one another for a while and not having expected to see each other tonight either.

No, I was wrong. This was very different from a normal bar. This reminded me more of something like a wedding reception or a family celebration. It was more friendly, more intimate. It was just... more. I smiled to myself, deciding at that moment that I rather liked it.

I shrugged, closed my eyes, and reached out to the closest mind to mine: Faye's. And as it had done dozens of times before, existence melted away into nothingness.

********

The gloriously warm, sun-lit meadow of the mindscape looked the same as it always had done, with a few minor differences. Having only shared the mindscape with one other person at a time before, the group of people setting themselves up on chairs a little ahead of me made it seem positively crowded. The second difference, which I only discovered after a quick look around, was that my city was nowhere to be seen.

Instead, two unfamiliar-looking cities stood on opposite sides of the sprawling field before me. The group was on a slight rise, overlooking the halfway point between the two cities, and were in the process of conjuring up seats and drinks as I approached. Faye had pulled a luxurious-looking, cream leather sofa out of nothingness and immediately made it clear she wanted me to join her on it by patting the empty seat next to her.

I gave her a smile to answer her beaming grin and cast a look over the scene around me as I sat down. The two cities were remarkably similar in both terms of power and size. One looked like something out of a Chaucer novel, while the other looked like it belonged in the revolutionary era, but as Marco had told me, the actual physical appearance of the city was more or less irrelevant. With that in mind, I could now see that both opponents were pretty equally matched.

Of course, not having a clue how any of this worked, I didn't know if that was relevant either.

To my admittedly untrained eye, nothing seemed to be happening. Faye seemed to pick up on my confusion and leaned a little to the side to start telling me what was going on. "Okay, so, you need to think of this as a sport not totally unlike javelin throwing or fencing," she started, "In that, it is a contest that has developed out of a very real form of combat. Javelin throwing is like lobbing spears at an enemy, and fencing is basically sword fighting, right?" She waited for my nod. "Good. Now, Evos have been around forever, long before The Conclave came around. Before we were brought together back in the 1300s, our species were divided up into something like little city-states, small groups of us vying for power and position over the others. This combat that you are about to see was very real back then."

I nodded again, letting her continue.

"So Maria comes along, forms The Conclave, and most of the infighting stops. There are a few holdouts, but, for the most part, we all get to live in peace and learn the words to kumbaya. But just like the Javelin throw and fencing, some people thought that they needed to keep their fighting skills sharp in case The Conclave, and the peace it brought, didn't last. That is how Dueling was born."

"Makes sense," I nodded again. I seemed to be doing a lot of nodding, so I conjured up a beer in one hand and took a sip just to mix it up a little.

"I'm glad you think so," She grinned, leaning over, taking my beer and an equally large mouthful of it before handing it back with a moan. "Oof, you've got the taste of that down to an art! Anyway, the goal is to get into your opponent's city for long enough to theoretically be able to do some damage. The only way to really harm one of us, without the use of military hardware, is to damage or destroy either our Wells, our Palaces, or our Marketplaces. In dueling, we don't want to actually hurt someone, but simply getting inside someone's city doesn't mean anything. There is nothing to stop the owner of that city from just kicking you out again before you get a chance to do anything. So the generally accepted rules say that you either have to be in their city for a whole uninterrupted minute or kill your opponent whilst being within their walls."

"Wait... Kill??"

"Oh, right, yeah... new... Sorry. You can't actually hurt anyone in the mindscape without doing damage to those three targets I mentioned. You can literally do anything you want to someone in here, and there is no lasting damage. I mean, it's not the most comfortable experience in the world, but you're not going to actually harm anyone in dueling." A grin spread over her face. "Watch. Hey Jerry, think fast!"

The man I assumed to be Jerry, given that he answered to the name, turned in time to watch a sleek and dangerous-looking black Baretta fade into being in Faye's hand, pointed squarely at his head. She pulled the trigger. The back of Jerry's head exploded outwards as his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he slumped lifelessly to the floor. The rest of the group just chuckled and went back to their conversations. I jumped out of my seat and immediately started backing away. Faye giggled and held up her hand. "Wait for it."

A few seconds later, Jerry's body faded away. "Oh, for fuck's sake, Faye! I had a mouthful of beer and everything!" I spun around to watch an annoyed-looking Jerry walk over from the spot I had entered the mindscape and slump back onto his seat, reaching for his drink and taking a long pull from it while scratching the spot on his head where the bullet had hit him.

"The more damage you do to someone, the longer it takes them to respawn." Faye turned her attention back to me with a grin. "So when people are dueling, they try to do as much damage as they can to each other and then work on breaching their opponent's walls while that person is out."

"That seems... barbaric." I frowned, taking another look at Jerry as I sat back down.

"Yup." Faye grinned again. "But it is a helluva lot of fun!"

"So... Umm... What are the rules?" I asked hesitantly, my eyes flicking back to the cities. It still didn't look like anything was happening.

"Aside from having to admit defeat if the victory conditions are met, and generally not doing damage to anything inside an opponent's city once you are in there... Ummm... There aren't any real rules. Oh, you have to start the contest on top of your walls. That's about it." I arched an eyebrow. "Okay, think of a normal human sport. There are only ever two types of rules. One set dictates how the game should be played and how the score is kept. Players aren't allowed to move before the whistle, get the ball over the line to score, and so on. The rest of them are to make sure the game is played safely, and none of the players are injured, no holding around the neck, and the like. But here, there is only one point which you can get in any way you like. And provided you don't damage anything inside the other player's city, it's impossible to do any actual harm to your opponent, so... no holds are barred. That is what makes it so much fun."

The concept was starting to dawn on me, and once you overlooked the barbarity of it, it did actually sound like it could be a lot of fun.

"You are playing on more than one plane," Jerry added, now following the conversation. "Fiona there..." He pointed to the city on our left, "...could go in all guns blazing, full offense. But while she is doing that, she is not defending her own city. All Sterling would have to do...." Another nod to the player on the right, "... is knock her out or trap her, and her city is his. So they are both playing offense and defense at the same time, laying traps or setting up automated defenses, or perhaps they are building an army they can send off to the other city. Maybe even forming a hunting party that will seek out the other player. The first one who decides they are ready will then make their first move... and then the fun really begins."

"Sterling," Faye snorted, giving me that indecipherable look again. "That is the most English name ever invented."

"So it's offensive strategy, defensive strategy, and only your imagination to limit how those are implemented. Deception, stealth, distraction, attacks on multiple fronts...." Jerry went on before Faye interrupted him again.

"But, most important is balancing your power. Their wells can only hold a finite amount of power; they can refill pretty quickly, but you don't want to use too much and then run short when you need it most." She said, subtly leaning a little toward me. I nodded but chose not to mention my powerplants and the seemingly endless amounts of power I could generate.

"Exactly," Jerry added, getting more animated as he spoke. "One strategy is to let an opponent burn themselves dry before making your move. Another is to throw everything you have at them early on to use up all their reserves before attacking personally. Then you have the psychological aspect of it..."

I was getting a bit of a headache being bombarded by all this information at once, but Jerry didn't seem to notice.

"The first person to make their move is the more confident, but did the other player finish before you to lull you into a false sense of advantage? Making your move first exposes your hand, but it also gives your adversary less time to counter it. You may see your opponent on their walls, watching the battle, but is that really them, or is it a decoy? Are they really sneaking around you or even tunneling under you to attack where you least expect it..."

"Alright, Jerry," Faye laughed. "Too much information is a real thing. Let the lad just watch. He'll pick it up quick enough." Jerry chuckled and held up his hands with a nod. A few of the other girls giggled softly. I hadn't been introduced to them yet. "What?" Faye asked them with a smirk.

"I think someone has a bit of a crush." The one with the blonde hair said with a smirk of her own.

Faye laughed, looked back at me, and then shrugged. "Aye, you're not wrong. Now shut up. Looks like Sterling is ready to go."

There was a familiarity, or perhaps a comfort, to how close Faye was sitting to me. She wasn't leaning against me, she wasn't touching me, nor was she making any sort of attempt to change that. She was just close. The group had fallen silent, my eyes were the last to join the others on the field, but for a moment, I just looked at her.

I'm not sure I am ever going to be able to tell you how it felt, not in any meaningful way, at least, but for the briefest of moments, I saw something. A possibility. An almost perfect compatibility. Like my mind was trying to tell me that Faye could be something a lot more. The closeness of my relationship with Charlotte, coupled with the romance and intimacy that I would probably never find with my strawberry-blonde friend. The staggeringly good couple that would almost certainly never happen with her could potentially happen with Faye. In that single short moment, a lifetime of possibilities seemed to lay itself out in front of me. It was all so clear. What shone through it all was the realization that I may never, in the rest of my long life, find someone I was as compatible with as I was with Faye.

It was over in seconds, a spark of a feeling of an idea. Then it was gone. I'm not sure if she felt it too, it may have been a coincidence, but as I turned my attention to the battle in front of me, Faye's body inched itself a little closer to mine.

"Hey, quick question," I asked suddenly as a query popped into my head. The crowd all turned to look at me expectantly. "Has anyone ever felt something like wind, or even a breeze, while in the mindscape or in their city?"

A series of "nopes" and shaking heads was my reply. "I'm not sure that is possible," Jerry answered, turning back to the contest ahead of us. "Uri would be the best person to ask, though."