A Gamer's Guide To Beating The Tutorial

Whenever she had the strength to, be it daytime or nighttime, Myriam would sit by the window. It was hardly a large window, with the pane only barely sizeable enough to let in enough light to not require daytime illumination. Not to mention that since it sat facing the courtyard, and this was only the fourth floor of seven, it meant that she only really had direct sunlight during midday, when the sun was at its peak.

But that’s not why she sat there. And it certainly wasn’t why she had it open, despite the late-winter chill outside.

She glanced at the time.

<15:04:26

Day 1 101>

9:09:55:34>

They were late. Not by much, but…

“Sully!”

Her face snapped down to the courtyard below. Mole, Plus, Rat and Jazz smiled up at her. She met their smiles equally, waving at them.

Wasting no time for theatrics, Rat went down on one knee, shouting, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!”

Grinning, she undid her tight bun, letting her shoulder-length hair fall down. She would have loved to shout something funny back at him, maybe about how he might need to be a bit taller to climb, but the last time she’d met their shouts in turn, she’d been left voiceless for an entire day. Kitty—the eternal sadist—had used the opportunity to scold her harshly. Today, though, the responsibility of humor laid fully on Rat. Luckily, he had been a star student in clown school.

He tried to grab for invisible hair, made a show of trying to pull himself up, and then promptly fell on his ass. His party chuckled politely, Myriam laughed, and quickly remembered why she wasn’t supposed to do that as the strain and the frigid air caused her to have another coughing fit. When she got out of it, the look of concern on their faces sent a pang of guilt through her. She waved to try to show that she was fine. They didn’t seem to believe her. Thankfully, they were nice enough not to haunt her on the matter.

In the time it took her to recover, Rat had apparently returned to his feet. Striking a dramatic pose, he shouted once more, saying, “Rapunzel! Your hair—it’s too short! I’ll be back in the morrow, so you better use some formula or something!” Jazz elbowed him in the side and he cleared his throat. “Oh, and also get better!”

She sent down a thumbs up.

In the meantime, Mole handed something to Plus, who easily tossed it up to her. She caught it, finding it to be a napkin tied around something round and soft. She unfolded it to find a sweetbun with fruitberry filling—her favorite. She smiled and waved down at them, they smiled and waved back up, and then they left to the sound of well-wishing and promises of returning soon. It was only when they had all left, and all she could see was their backs, that she realized Kitty had been there, too. She just hadn’t noticed him.

The wind suddenly felt a lot colder than it had a minute ago. She closed the window.

A few hours later, Kitty arrived at the courtyard. She was watching for him from her window, but it was still hard to notice him once he showed up. It was eerie. If you looked right at him, he appeared more like a creature than a man; but from a distance, he didn’t look like anything. At least he wasn’t crawling everywhere anymore.

A few minutes after he entered the hospital, there was a knock at her door.

“Come in,” she said.

He entered the same way he always had, with the same look on his face, and the same questionable goop brought along on a tray.

“Put it on my desk.”

“Alright.” Obedient as always. Sometimes, she wondered if there was anything he’d refuse to do. Maybe if she asked, then he’d refuse more, but if Mole asked… She watched him as he put the tray down and mutely retreated a few steps. Yeah. If Mole asked, he’d do anything.

Standing up, she moved over to the desk. “So,” she said, grabbing her spoon. “How did it go?”

“So far, so good, I guess,” Kitty answered, intelligent as always. She nodded for him to continue. “The judges aren’t very happy with him, but he hasn’t done anything bad enough for them to demand a retrial or anything, so they’re stuck with him. A few of them are trying to make him, like, be more lax about things, but ever since he caught the guards at the eastern gate letting through carts of grain and stuff for the Fenix house, he’s gotten even stricter. He’s actually considering making Plus an honorary captain of the guards, just so he can have someone trustworthy at the gates.”

“Plus? A guard?” In light of her previous mistake, Myriam quelled a laugh. “That’s certainly an… interesting idea.” Bitterly, she remembered how neither of them had sent anything about this to her. Not even a peep. She shook it off. “What about Jazz and Rat? How are they holding up?”

“Same as usual,” Kitty said. “Rat has his hands full with stablekeeper duties, and Jazz is still working at the hospital, though with the renovation of the cathedral, she’s been really busy trying to pull things together.”

Myriam frowned at herself. If only she hadn’t gotten sick… If she’d been more careful, then…

“So far, though, things are going well, I guess,” he said, finally. An invisible smile tugged at his cheek. “Besides, I’ve got a feeling the dragon plague won’t be going on for much longer.”

Spoon halfway raised to her lips, Myriam paused. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Ah, uh…” He turned away. “Nothing.”

So far, her and Mole’s efforts in formulating a vaccine for the dragon plague had been fruitless at best, not that Mole had much time left over to work on it with her now that his duties as a mayor swallowed all his time. Deep inside, Myriam let her heart harden, trying her best to keep in mind that Kitty was not to be trusted.

“Right,” she said, turning back to her food. “Anything else?”

He thumbed his lip for a moment. “Not really. Work on the leather hazmat suits is still going slow. Getting the actual skin is pretty easy, and I’ve got most of it tanned, but the difficult part lies in creating the actual air-filtering mask part. So far, nobody on the forums has been able to make a perfect air mask, and the replacements are imperfect.”

“So, for the near future, you’re the only visitor I’ll ever have.”

“Something like that, yeah.”

Thankfully, with Kitty, there was no need for her to hide the contempt on her face. Unfortunately, she still wasn’t allowed to punch him, even though she was certain that would solve all of her issues forever. Boredom clawed at her insides. She had nothing more to say, he had nothing more to report, but this was her last visit for the day. There had to be something.

“Tell me,” she said, trying to keep the interest out of her voice, “why did you start playing video games?”

He tilted his head at her. Puppy. “It was fun?” He gave her a curious look. Keeping her silence, she forced him to talk. “Well, I guess… It started when I was in the first grade, and we had computer class. I finished quickly, so then I went out onto the internet and played flash games. Then I got a laptop at home, and my mum let me play video games… Only the math kind, of course. So I did that.”

“And then you moved onto heavier stuff?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Finally, Kitty sat down, placing himself at the edge of her bed. “Xbox 360. I loved it. Skyrim, GTA four… I really liked the Fable games, but I only played the second and third.”

“Fable two… I think I played that one. Isn’t that the one where you could look like a demon or angel depending on your actions in the game?”

“Yeah, exactly! I thought the demon version looked awesome, so I made my character sleep for days at a time until I got awesome horns and stuff. It was hilarious.”

“Seriously? That’s dumb. You’re meant to develop as a result of your choices—just randomly becoming a demon is idiotic.”

“Well, yeah, but…” His ears turned red. “It’s just that, in-game… I didn’t like doing the mean stuff. So if I went through the game normally, I’d end up all gross and angelic.”

She paused. “You didn’t like doing the evil storyline?”

“Yeah. Because then, you know… The characters… They’d get mad at you, right? Be all sad and whatever?”

She stared at him for a long moment.

“What?”

“No, no, I’m just… a bit surprised, that’s all.”

Frowning, he crossed his spindly arms. “Well, in GTA, I was a real menace! Honestly, I never even played the story mode. Ramming cool cars through light posts and people was enough for me.”

“I’ve never played it,” Myriam said. “I can’t see how that would be any fun.”

“You haven’t—” He made a face of pure confusion. “How can you even say that? It’s the best! You can run people over, and steal their money, and shoot people with a bazooka… How isn’t that the best game ever?”

“You know what I liked doing in Fable two?” she said. Not waiting for him to ask, she continued, “I liked getting married, and then cheating on them.”

“That’s horrible.”

“That’s horrible? Mister I-like-killing-hookers?”

“Killing NPCs is one thing—pretending you love them and then undoing all that is something completely different.”

“Oh, really? Tell me. How is hurting an NPCs artificial feelings worse than just straight-up murdering them?”

“Well, that’s… It—it just is, okay?”

“Right. It just is. I’m surprised Mole never mentioned how wise and insightful you are, Kitty.”

He wiped at his nose. “I don’t think Moleman’s the type to brag about other people.”

She leaned back a little. “Yeah, I suppose not.” There was a small pause. She let her eyes fall on the window, on the sky, painted purple by twilight. “Was it in the second or third game that there was that level with the inky darkness, and going blind or whatever?”

“I think that was the second one…”

“Yeah. That part was really cool.”

“Cool? I thought it was spooky!”

“Why?”

“I mean, all those monsters, and then your friend going blind…”

“As I said. Cool.”

“Spooky.”

“Cool.”