Nikki was frustratingly unhelpful when Michelle asked her to do anything like clarifying Jerry's nonsense or asking about his secrets. When she opened up about the incident in the Run lobby, though, she looked a little serious.

  "Oh, those guys." She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. "He gets harsh when it comes to them. They can be a little blunt, and a little stupid. Jenna tried confronting them once, because Jerry was complaining. They were really interested in talking with her about theory, and really uninterested in talking about normal things." She shrugged. "I mean, I guess it makes sense. They hope there's some hidden secret that will give them the power to change the world. From a certain perspective, it looks like Jerry's story proves it's possible, though I think that's the wrong way to look at it. Not that I really know."

  Michelle considered that, silently, for a long time, enough that eventually Nikki broke in.

  "Okay, but seriously, I came here for Run stuff." She stood up. "Since we're gonna go over a lot of the easy, early meta stuff tomorrow with your friends, but I'm interested to see you fight. What level's your Avatar, from your run?"

  Michelle didn't mind that the question disrupted her train of thought. In truth, she had been... well. Not so much thinking, really, as dwelling on something she couldn't really understand. She pulled out her deck and tugged out the card, while also trying to remember. "70... 76?"

  "Eh. Pretty random number. If you don't mind, can we try a duel at level 1?" Nikki seemed to quickly get lost in her own thoughts as well.

  "Sure." When she focused on the avatar card, she quickly saw a list of possible overlays, and mentally tagged in the fully reset card. "I only have the one set of Takes, though."

  "I imagine it's a set you'll stick with anyway. I just want to see where you are." Nikki seemed to make a theatrical gesture, like a practice back-fist strike, when she appeared her Deck, and in the same moment, she had a card in hand. It was a level of finesse that could have just come from her high stats, but Michelle couldn't help imagining the woman had practiced it a number of times.

  She was already standing up herself, of course, and the two headed for the field entrance door. This was the first time Michelle got to see the mechanism work on someone else; each player's entrance was independent, at the start of the Run. There wasn't anything to see, though; Nikki touched the card to the plate by the entrance and walked through the door, which closed behind her. A moment later, one of the stone closets at the back of the room ground quickly shut, and the sign above it went from "VACANT" to "SEALED". There was no moment where Nikki's body was exposed inside, though.

  She followed a moment later, coming out in the Parlay Pavilion. Nikki's avatar was suited up in black cloth, with a long, aggressively curved saber at her waist. For whatever reason, she'd toned down the breasts on her avatar to almost flat, and her disguise showed almost no skin.

  Michelle nodded, left hand finding her sheath instinctively, but the other woman just nodded and moved away, out into the grass.

  "Oh... do we need an assistant to help with respawning or anything?" Michelle hadn't thought about the logistics of a duel.

  Nikki silently shook her head, and Michelle just nodded, drawing her katana and stepping out into the grass after her. She was just about to make conversation, when the other woman suddenly lunged, her sword coming straight out of the sheath in an arc towards her neck.

  Michelle had enough of a combat instinct, even in this kind of situation, to stumble backwards, but with her lowered intelligence and agility, she could only dive out of the way, in what she realized late was much further than necessary. Worse, it forced her to take her eyes off of the other woman, and when she looked back, Nikki had gone.

  Or, not gone, but it was suddenly harder to focus on her. With both of them suddenly at the same level, Michelle could recognize the effect for what it was and fight it. Even so, Nikki managed a series of motions that took full advantage of the mind-blurring effect, and Michelle had to draw her sword and set a defensive stance, focusing everything she had on finding the other woman.

  A blur to her right, and Michelle stepped back, feeling just a tickle as she ended up right at the end of the range of Nikki's saber, enough to just barely touch her pool of hitpoints. At the same moment, though, Nikki's stealth broke as her MP bottomed out.

  Michelle wanted to push into an immediate counter, but her footwork wasn't good enough. The step back had brought up her center of mass, and she couldn't immediately push off her back foot. She hesitated long enough that the moment was lost, and she reset her defensive stance - just in time, because Nikki pressed the attack.

  Michelle was not used to fighting other real people, and she felt that lack over the next few minutes. She could hear, time and time again, Jerry telling her to survive.

  Idiot! Survive first. Survive! Your first job is to survive. Your first job is always to survive, before anything else! The words hurt each time, though it was less of a sharp pain than it had been.

  It took three minutes and a good fifteen dodges before Michelle managed to bring her stress back under control and stabilize her movements. In that time, she started to get a better appreciation for Nikki's curved saber; it controlled space around her opponent differently than her less-curved katana, and she used it somewhat more nimbly. Finally, she saw an opportunity, and when Nikki made a more aggressive cut towards her head, Michelle dodged back at an angle, but lower, so that she could immediately explode out from her back leg, sword already thrusting, aura igniting around its leading edge.

  At the same moment, Nikki re-engaged her stealth skill and pivoted. Her center of gravity was a bit high, so the motion was a little slowed, and the point of Michelle's katana cut into her torso, aura burning brilliantly.

  Michele was already moving back and trying to get into a guard, and she got a sense that Nikki was already releasing her own quick counter, though she was overextended and the motion was clumsy. In the end, though, Nikki had a lot more experience fighting at this low level than Michelle did, and she felt the saber cutting into her offhand arm.

  If there was a time to stop worrying about martial arts, this probably wasn't it, but Michelle couldn't help the moment of panic. She flicked her arm out to try to knock the weapon away, and encountered more of Nikki's saber blade than she expected. The motion did knock it away, and Michelle tried to follow up with a thrust across her body, but it was so unpracticed that she almost caught her own arm with the blade.

  She did, however, manage to pierce Nikki's sword arm with it, causing the other woman to drop her stealth. The last dregs of her MP went into another instant of aura before her skill, too, flickered out, but on a desperate instinct, Michelle pulled her blade at an angle, trying to wound or cripple Nikki's arm... which might have worked, on a regular human. But Nikki's Dungeoneer body, or at least her avatar, didn't register it as a critical hit, nor a devastating enough blow to cause any status effect on its own.

  Nikki did take a step back, as though surprised, and Michelle used the moment to step forward, the surge of adrenaline making her trying to combo her hit. Nikki tried and failed to step back far enough to avoid the blow...

  ...but at the same time, Nikki had somehow brought the blade behind her back into her off-hand, and it came up at Michelle's face.

  If Michelle had another moment's worth of MP to ignite the blade aura again, it might have gone differently, but she felt the sword cleave directly into her nose, and then nothing.

  A moment later, though, she was standing back in the Parlay Pavilion, sword once again sheathed, clearly having respawned. She blinked, then turned towards where she knew Nikki must be, but the woman had fallen down and was sitting in the grass.

  "Good." The sound of Nikki's voice was a little odd, deeper. "Given your limited practice-at-level, that was an incredible fight, well done."

  Michelle turned her head, but only for a moment. "Thanks," she said, refocusing. "I... for a moment, when I realized that we were the same level, I thought could probably take you. As though us having equal stats was all it would take."

  "It isn't all it takes, and our stats aren't equal. I can tell your build is a little glass cannon-y, but I went a lot further with mine. I consider myself a decent dodge tank, and you still landed two hits." Nikki grunted, and sprung back to her feet. "I also have high magic res, though, to soak area effects, so your aura did a lot less than you might have expected."

  She considered the feel of her blade as it had cut. It definitely wasn't ineffective, though it might have been lesser. "Maybe," she said, "but the damage was still there."

  "It was! That first cut really hurt. Though, I'm curious how you're so certain." Nikki gestured to the air like she was pushing buttons in her interface.

  "At this level, it's all I can do to focus the blade aura as a separate cutting edge right at the blade itself. The strain of the hit is different depending on whether the aura or the blade actually does the cutting. I felt it more on my mental stats more than my physical ones, so the aura cut your flesh before the blade got to it."

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  Nikki seemed to pause at that. "You can feel that level of feedback through your skill?"

  Michelle looked at the other woman, wondering why she thought that mattered. "I mean, I did rebuild it."

  "Yeah. Hm." Nikki rubbed her chin... Michelle tried not to frown at the gesture. "Your friend said you can be serious about weird things. I think I get what she meant by that."

  Michelle just kept staring at her.

  "Don't give me that look." Nikki shook her head. "I can sometimes tell how hard I hit people from the feedback of the blow on my own body, but only when I have higher stats. Without that, I genuinely don't know how to process what my body is telling me. If you can do the same thing at this level, without the extra stats, that says you understand your body and spirit better than I do. Which, like..." she gestured. "Fits with the psychic stuff, maybe? But you also didn't flinch back from the impact. I would expect most sensitive people to find that kind of violence jarring, like I do."

  "It's jarring," Michelle admitted after a moment. "But you have to focus in order to survive. That's something that Jerry taught me."

  It was Nikki's turn to contemplate what she said in silence for a long moment.

  "Except..." Nikki's voice was surprisingly hesitant. "Your life isn't actually in danger here, Chelle. I mean, you just lost. Sword-through-your-brain lost. That much should be obvious."

  Some part of her rebelled at the idea, but she couldn't quite manage to put her objection into words.

  "I get it," Nikki continued with hardly any pause. "We shouldn't really be taking that for granted. We should always be fighting like our life is on the line. But most of the people I've met at my level, and especially at my... level of experience, with the Run, you know... we've all gotten tired of caring about each death. Too often, we take an intentional death because it will be useful or convenient, or we make gambles we know are bad. Sometimes, those even work out for the better. We couldn't do that if surviving was at the forefront of our thoughts."

  "Isn't that just the difference between a soldier and a warrior?" Michelle wasn't sure exactly where the thought came from, or why it came with an angry heat in her chest. "I'm not a lane mob. I'm not going to just march off blindly to war, to die because someone else said so. In war, it may be a given that we'll die, but we can't—shouldn't—just give our lives up cheaply. If we do have to die, we should decide what we're dying for."

  "Even if you say that's your ideal, living like that is tough. That's all I'm trying to say." Nikki shrugged, like she was loosening her shoulders, and raised the saber. "Again?"

  During the next fight, Michelle couldn't help but be preoccupied with the thought that there was something odd about not wanting to die. It was distracting enough that she lost quickly and to an attack she should have seen coming. The little moment of death, though, was enough to reset her mind, and she won the next fight.

  Ironically, Nikki should have seen it coming.

  Michelle had been making it clear time and time again that she was able to keep track of Nikki while she was in stealth, and yet the other woman still charged forwards, using a sidestepping trick that Michelle was quickly getting used to, and this time, Michelle lashed out at where she was moving just as she got within range, flaring the aura and aiming right for the heart. Not only did it land, she had enough time to quickly adjust the aura cutting surface as she was pulling the sword back out, leaving a nasty exit wound.

  She was winding up to make another cut when she realized her opponent had respawned.

  "Ow." Nikki shook herself, and reached up to pull off her mask... confirming what Michelle had thought. "Okay, you had a better sense of where I was then I thought."

  "Only because you did it over and over. Once you're in position, you move straight at me, so I know about where you start that motion." Michelle looked back to where Nikki had died, and sheathed her sword.

  "Fair enough. Nikki considered, then moved to sit at one of the picnic tables. "Not going to ask?"

  "Should I? Does it matter?" Michelle moved up to the edge of the pavilion to get a better look at Nikki's avatar. In the end, she—they?—seemed to wear this face as naturally as the one she knew.

  "If you don't think it matters, that matters to me. As Jenna said, you pass." Nikki took a deep breath, and released it as a sigh. "My sister... didn't."

  "Ah." Personal matters, right. "I don't care, unless you want me to treat you differently?"

  "No. Treat me like you have been." Nikki pulled the black cloth mask back over her face. "Most of my avatars are like this, just because it's how I learned, though I expect I'll use newer ones in most of the fights moving forward. They're subtly different, and I need to relearn old habits, so low-tier fights are an ideal excuse. And... let me be the one to introduce the topic to your friends, if you don't mind."

  Michelle considered, but shrugged. "Okay," she said, not really giving a damn. "I don't think Nin will care anyway. Do you want to go again?"

  "Of course," Nikki nodded and moved forward. "I'm not going to make the same mistake again, though."

  And she didn't.

  Michelle lost the next two fights, both by relatively narrow margins. Absent any distractions, it was just a question of who was learning the other's combat style faster. Nikki clearly leaned on her stealth skill, and once she knew that she had to mix up the footwork, she was back to being effective with it; but at level 1, her MP pool was as small as Michelle's. As long as she could dodge the initial attack or two, it became a more straightforward duel for a little while, and then Nikki would vanish again. Michelle suspected, though she wasn't sure, at the other woman was waiting until well after she got her MP back, even after her gauge fully filled, and choosing random moments so that she wouldn't become predictable.

  The next fight, Michelle won hands down.

  "You're most predictable when you try to attack from stealth," she said when Nikki had respawned. "You--"

  "I know, I know. I come right at people." Nikki sighed and sat at one of the picnic tables, again. "I'm more comfortable moving around inside someone else's range once I have some more stats to back me up. Especially for someone like you who is able to track me a little bit, I just know that I'm vulnerable to big sweeping motions once I'm in range. I can block, but I don't have a good pattern down for a block and counter under those circumstances. Especially not if I want to end up with a critical hit."

  "If you block, you at least won't get hit," Michelle countered, sheathing her sword.

  "I know. But there's also an intimidation factor to someone invisible coming for your head. In my experience, an average person will be less scared if they know they can interrupt the attack. If I'm fully committed, they'll prefer to block themselves instead, which keeps them on the back foot." Nikki shook her head. "You, on the other hand, are a stone-cold killer. Nothing I did to intimidate you seemed to work, so you found the weakness in my attack and tore me open." Nikki's mask moved like she was probably grinning. "Which is pretty bad-ass."

  "Thanks?" Michelle could accept that was a compliment, especially since that all described what she was trying to do, but stone-cold killer was still not a phrase she wanted to view as a compliment. Was that just how life was going to be from now on? But then... was there any reason to think it wouldn't be? It definitely wasn't the kind of tone her group had been striking.

  "All of that said," she stood up, and held up her own Deck, looking at it meaningfully. "Next, you said you were working with one of your minions? Bring them out."

  Michelle frowned, but summoned her deck and brought out Hikari. By the time she had, Nikki was standing next to a minion that was, suspiciously, almost identical in shape and clothing. She paused, calculating, but if Nikki's minion was anything like her own...

  "We'll be sparring then, master?" Hikari drew out her sword and did her best to settle into a sword stance, though it was still not great.

  "Nn. Hang on, though." She frowned. "Nikki..."

  Instead of talking, the two dark-clad figures dashed towards them. She could feel the moment both engaged their stealth skills, and each dodged in different ways.

  "Shit." She backed away, but Hikari was still standing there. "Hikari..."

  Predictably, her minion went down a moment later to two saber strikes, and then the two figures came for her.

  Michelle had fought uneven fights in the Dungeon and in her last run, but this was different. She had only barely matched Nikki, now there were two figures for her to try to concentrate in. One flickered out of stealth, and Michelle immediately pegged that one as the minion, searching for the other.

  In the end, she went down without actually being aware of the blow that killed her.

  When she respawned, Hikari was there as well, and she gave an exasperated sigh. "Okay," she said, in the general direction of the two assassins who stood in the field. "I get the whole, always be on guard, you don't get to say when we start thing. But I've never fought with this version of Hikari, and I needed to give her orders."

  The two figures didn't move or speak. Michelle realized it after a moment.

  "Oh... you're trying to see if I can tell which is which." she pointed at the figure on the right. "You should be Nikki."

  "Figures a psychic could tell." Both figures relaxed. "But not in the heat of the moment, apparently."

  She frowned. "You were the one who dropped your stealth? And then got me from behind?"

  "There are all sorts of mind games you can play. Honestly, you're so straightforward it hurts." Nikki pulled off her mask again, and so did the other. Her NPC matched her 'old' face almost exactly, but had a scar on their forehead, in the shape of a roman numeral III. "In a match, I won't be coming at you for a duel. I won't be coming at a shield tank from the front, or engaging a commander's army. I'll stab a ranged fighter in the back, and kite an armor tank while we shoot them from range. If you leave your minion guarding something important, I'll take them out, and if you leave a resource unguarded, I'll take it. If you're winning a duel against my ally, I'll show up and shank your ass, then laugh at you from the shadows while my ally takes advantage of the opportunity."

  "Playing stealth in the midfield means making the entire enemy team fear that I'm right around the corner. To give that impression, I focus a lot on training my minions. If two of them can give the impression that it's me plus one, and I can make an enemy's mobs or sheep vanish from under their noses, all the better. It goes beyond playing to win, and is more like the rules of war. If you leave something exposed, shame on you, not on the person who takes advantage of it." She shrugged. "There's things that do come down to sportsmanship. Not breaking agreements, unless the other side broke them first. And for people like me and Jenna, not lording over other people because of the gap in real practical experience. We could smurf the hell out of the kind of people you'll be fighting, but we won't. Jerry'll keep an eye on us and even give us a handicap as necessary."

  "But the big rule of fighting other real people is to expect the worst. Backstabbing. Abuse. If they can break you psychologically, bad on you for being weak. If they can catch you unawares, find a hole in your defenses, find a hole in your logic, your brain, anything, they will. Maybe not this opponent, maybe not the next, but someone will. Dungeons have deathtraps, but the worst that can happen there is you're gone for good. Humans can bring endless humiliation. Or at least, they can try."

  There was a darkness and an intensity behind Nikki's voice, and Michelle couldn't help the heaviness that settled in her gut, but she also couldn't stop the steely will that straightened her back, the hot and cold energy that coursed up and down her arms, each feeling like a repressed flinch.

  She knew she had no right to say it, and that she wasn't nearly this brave or determined, but she heard her own voice answer, "But that's just war, isn't it?"

  "It is," Nikki answered with a nod. "The real question is, are you ready? And are your friends?"