Sages of the Underpass

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

  “Days, weeks, months, years, they’ve been okay. I think I’m the problem.” Niko sat. “So, that’s why I want to hear your story.” He felt himself grin. “What do they say in the Artist fables? Oh, yes, give me wisdom, master.”

  Danette sniffed. “I’m supposed to say something very cryptic, like, the way of the Artist is the way of fire and ice, and the Artist is neither too cold nor too hot but just right.”

  “I think that’s from Goldilocks.”

  “Maybe there is great wisdom there.” Danette relaxed some. “My story can’t compete with porridge.”

  Niko waited on her.

  “I was the mama bear,” Danette said. “I’ll skip all the stuff about reading A Princess of the Changing Winds, dreaming of being Alabama Betty, and all that stuff.”

  Her choice of Artists was interesting. Olivia Cowler had been a force to be reckoned with in the 1970s, but the woman of the hour in the ’80s was Alabama Betty, an African-American Battle Artist that won title after title.

  Danette smiled sadly. “Don’t marry another Battle Artist, Niko. It might seem like a good idea. It wasn’t for me. I met Diego when I was about your age. We both had agents, we were going to change the world, or at least beat the hell out of it.”

  Niko sat, turned toward her. She faced straight ahead, eyes on the ramparts of the overpass above North Ciudad Road.

  “Diego’s agent retired, and his replacement soon after released all of his Artists to join Vannix House. My agent turned out to be a real bastard. He took a bunch of money and left the U.S. for Mexico. I bet he’s still there, living on a beach. If you stay in this game long enough, you see people come and go, and the shysters either get caught or they get rich. Either way, being a Battle Artist agent is as hard as being an Artist.

  “Diego and I talked long and hard. We needed money. He got a part-time job, which turned into a full-time career. And the fire for the Arts waned in him. Maybe he was the smart one.” A frown curved her lips. “He was able to let it go. Most people can. Life wears us out, one minute at a time.”

  That echoed so many things—Evelyn’s words and Niko’s quoting The Pranad, conquering a mountain one pebble at a time.

  Another wistful smile from Danette. “I didn’t want to give it up. Then I got pregnant. Once, twice, three times, and if you have three kids, you might as well have four. They know what causes that now. We were poor. And that kind of entertainment seems free, only you pay those bills with time, sleep, and energy.

  “I was willing to give up the actual matches when my kids were little. I’d still cycle every day, and I kept to my spiritual practice, even with all the dirty diapers, midnight feedings, and the constant cries of Mama, Mama, Mama. I’m going to sigh a lot. So here’s one.” She exhaled. “I was in my mid-thirties when I finally got back into the game. Ten years, I sat out. I couldn’t let the fire go out, it was hard, but with babies, there is always something to do.”

  “That’s when you met Andrew?”

  “Then I met him. He promised contacts, and help, and some private training. He was a bigger deal back then. The Andrew J. Coffey we know and love now isn’t what he used to be. He knows it.”

  She fell quiet.

  “Yes, I cheated on Diego. He never found out.” After a long beat, her voice came out rough. “I could’ve said no to Andrew. It wasn’t rape. And yet, was it consensual? He was in a position of power, and he lorded that power over our every conversation. I wanted to get ahead, and I was afraid of what he’d do if I said no. So I played along a few times. By that time, it didn’t matter.”

  She glanced at Niko, then looked away. “Diego and I had drifted apart. He couldn’t fight on the tiles, so he decided to fight me, every day, every inch of the way. He wanted me to give up the dream and get a real job. I refused. We lost this house soon after. That’s what did it. That and the infidelity. I quit. Out of guilt. Out of disgust at how the industry works. Oh, I had a billion reasons. It’s just easier. When you get a taste of a Battle Artist’s real life, the fantasies can’t measure up, and you realize the dream is just a dream.”

  Niko could relate. “Did you ever think about getting a divorce?”

  “Every minute of every day. But marriage cements people together. Even bad ones. I couldn’t imagine leaving Diego. I couldn’t get it into my imagination. It was just my lot in life. You probably can’t understand.”

  “I can.” Aleksy had offered to help, and Niko couldn’t picture how that was even possible. It was beyond his imagination, like Danette had said.

  “I got the job at the elementary school, which was convenient, since my schedule matched my kids’. I stopped cycling. I stopped watching matches. I took my kids to their Battle Arts lessons, dropped them off and picked them up, but I never stayed. I’d drink wine before their matches because being around an Arena, even a kiddie Arena, hurt. And the years went by. Isn’t there a poem about a dream deferred? And what happens to it?”

  “I never went to college. I don’t know.” Niko did seem to recall a poem he’d been forced to read in high school, but back then, school wasn’t on his mind much, other than the matches.

  “I crumbled inside and went numb.” Danette made a noise in the back of her throat. “Diego got cancer. I took care of him because I was a good wife and mother. He died. The kids were about grown, or close enough for government work. I found myself free. I wasn’t going to play the games I did in my twenties or my thirties. I didn’t have the time. I was going to be the kind of Battle Artist I wanted to be, and I had to do it as soon as possible. So I joined the ranks of the Unrepresented, and I read blog posts by Artists who weren’t interested in a corporate gig but wanted to maximize their powers. And so, the Sages were born, or the first iteration. The people who bought this house from us foreclosed, and it’s sat empty. We met here. Those Artists fell away, like Evelyn, like Pax, and I kept my ear to the ground, looking for talent. And so, here we are.”

  A car drove by, ticking and whining. The drode in the engine was about done. He smelled the sizzling stink of it.

  “Does that help at all?” she asked.

  Niko had to laugh. “It makes me feel like an ass. I’ve had it far easier.”

  “No, you’ve had your own problems. We all do. But, Niko, you’re young, and starting young is such a gift. If you can take advantage of your run of good luck, you’ll have enough time to do things I never could do.”

  Niko could feel the truth in her words, and yet, he didn’t like this whole young versus old thing. Danette could do things a woman half her age wouldn’t even dream of doing. He wasn’t about to argue with her. Instead he asked a question he already knew the answer to. “What if your husband had offered to help you after all those years of wanting you to stop?”

  Danette burst out laughing. “I would’ve said yes, please, and thank you. In this business, if you can find help, you take it. Unless you have to sell your soul or unless you’re dealing with a vile backstabbing douchebag. Oh, there are a number of those. As for selling your soul, once you start, it’s hard to stop. Best not to start.”

  Niko was going to have to put in a very uncomfortable call to Aleksy. He’d made a mistake the night before, a bad one. He hoped it wasn’t too late.

  Danette patted his leg. “Can we start training now? Or do you want more wisdom?” She thought for a moment. “When you are choosing your career, you can’t find one that is too hard, and you can’t find one that is too soft. You have to choose one that is just right.”

  “Do I even get a choice?” Niko asked.

  “Always. At every step, you can choose the people you want in your corner, you can choose who you do business with, and you get to choose your events.”

  Niko had chosen the Sages over the Premiers. He’d chosen to help Maddy out at the MudCon, which had proved critical to his comeback. Yes, he had chosen, again and again.

  Each choice was one more pebble on the mountain he was climbing.

  “I want to fight Andrew J. C
offey at Fright Night.” Niko nodded. “I don’t have to win. Hell, he can beat me senseless. It won’t matter. But I want him alone on the tiles with me.”

  Danette stood and stuck out a hand. She pulled Niko up. “You work on Coffey. I’ll work on Barton. In the end, I think we can make it happen.”

  “What do you mean work on?” Niko asked.

  “Work on Andrew’s ego. Message him back. Say he’s afraid. Make it clear you can’t beat him, but you can embarrass him. He’s supposed to be a professional, which is ironic, since he’s only a Terran Belt. He should be more. He’s not. Sure, his technique is flawless, but he hasn’t pushed himself in years.”

  Niko nodded. If Coffey could troll him, Niko could troll him right back. Wasn’t that one of the very first rules of the internet?

  Niko and Danette stretched and ran to the park alongside the Guadalupe River, where he’d first run their obstacle course.

  Being there again, without Evelyn and Pax, felt wrong.

  Danette set herself up in front of the park. “Come at me. Use whatever you did with Marjory in the Triumvirate with me.”

  While the last three days had been emotionally draining, his body felt strong, even with missing a night of sleep. His prana wasn’t the crippled, cracked thing it had been. His technique wasn’t all there, no, and he had a long way to go, but he was making progress.

  He reached out with an immature version of Awareness. Her core was solid, her prana and sharira at a hundred percent. He saw the interplay of the energy, the spark, filling her.

  He approached her, and then, he tweaked her prana. It wasn’t like with Marjory, who’d had an imbalance, more prana than sharira.

  Still, he heard Evelyn hiss. She winced.

  Triggering his Second Study, he whipped past her and sped onto the playground’s spongey surface.

  Danette turned. “Yes, I felt that. It is shocking, and I was even ready for it. We’ll try it again, only, this time, I’ll try and get past you. Keep working on it. You have Inversion, the Radiance Study. You just don’t know how to use it. We can work on that.”

  Niko wiped the sweat off his forehead. “If I can do Inversion, maybe I can do Darkfist. Or a Radiance Second Study. It’s similar. Can you imagine if I can swap First and Second Studies? I could go into every match as a wild card.”

  “Is this the cusp that was so certain he had to stick to Quintessence?” Danette smiled.

  That was the thing. He was a cusp between Quintessence and Luna. And yet, the Radiance Studies felt so natural. He didn’t know how that was possible. And it made him wonder what the cambion had been, all those years ago.

  Daemon energy didn’t align with any one of the Battle Signs. Usually. That cambion all those years ago hadn’t been anything usual. What he had thought was the end of his career now felt like the beginning.

  It was all falling into place. He just needed to get Andrew J. Coffey on the tiles at Fright Night.

  He didn’t get a call that Tuesday night, training with Danette. It felt like a great omen.

  The Stranger

  ANDREW COULDN’T REMEMBER her name.

  They’d met in the bar of the Angel City Marriott near the airport. They had drinks, he’d had some fine wine, which at a hotel bar meant it was basically red-colored hooch. He suggested a nightcap in his room. She agreed, because, after all, she’d heard of him. Andrew Johnson McCaffrey.

  She’d confused him with Bulldog Johnson, a Battle Artist turned actor who managed a reoccurring role on Zodiac Overmen, the Electric River show. Her confusion was all right. It got her into his bed.

  He was drunk enough to shrug off the insult to his ego. The Pranad warned against intoxicating liquors. They were a quick way to fragile peace—pour in enough, and they cracked you. Wine was far easier than cycling. If you were drunk enough, you could easily let go of the constant monkey chatter of the human mind.

  The stranger was in the bed, wearing his dress shirt, and watching him. Her perfume would linger in the room after she was gone. It was better than the generic smells of the typical hotel room. He’d smelled enough of them. Better the nothing odor than a stench. On his way up, the crappy hotels had outnumbered the nice ones, ten to one.

  Life on the road. He had to check his phone to see which city he was in. Angel City, yes. He’d taken off on the road, hitting agencies, calling up old friends, and networking his ass off. No wife, he was free to sleep with whoever he wanted. No agent, he was caged by his failing career.

  The stranger was a quiet woman, pretty in a small kind of way. From the little she’d told him, she was a sales rep for a drug company, visiting hospitals. From her personality, it was definitely inside sales.

  Her taciturn nature was okay. He would do the talking. “Have you ever been at a crossroads in your life?”

  “Yes.”

  Ah, the queen of the one-word answer.

  “I’m at a crossroads, with my past behind me and the future in front of me. I just need to find the right road to take. It’s thrilling.” He didn’t mention the creeping fear. He didn’t want to admit that to her. He could barely admit it to himself. “There’s a new agent working the Angel City Battle cons. She’s hungry. Her contacts at Vannix House are iffy, but we’re both hoping my name still means something.”

  “I hope it works out.”

  Five words from her. He liked her better when she moaned and sweated.

  “It will work out. If not here, then there’s the Latin America leagues. Javier Ramirez is an old friend. Not sure I want to go south of the border, but if worse comes to worst, I wouldn’t be the first one. Then there’s the Pacific Rim Artists. The competition is fierce, but I have friends there as well.”

  A long awkward silence. They were both sobering up. That wasn’t good. It would cost him, but there was the minibar. “Can I make you a drink?”

  “Yes. Vodka and cranberry juice.”

  He started mixing drinks. He clinked ice into the glasses the hotel provided by the sink. He’d have a bourbon, just enough to keep his buzz going.

  “I have a powerful cambion. Once I get my future locked down, I’m going to cycle it. I found an old witch doctor that will set me up.”

  “Isn’t that risky?” the stranger asked.

  “It’s all risk. It’s the Battle Arts. I’ve cycled lesser daemons before. It’s not easy. Don’t let anyone fool you. Even drodes are an unknown quantity. The corporations want us to believe they know all about how the daemons work, but they don’t know much.” He stirred her drink. “To think, our entire society is built on unknown technology. It does make one pause. That just goes to show you how uncertain the world is. You know that, though.”

  He had to look up to see her shrug.

  His phone beeped on the bedside table. A message. He wondered if it was another barb from the kid, Niko Black. He was goading him. Attacking him. What did the kids call it nowadays? Trolling. Niko was trolling him.

  He was inconsequential. A small little nobody.

  Barton, on the other hand, wasn’t. His agent hadn’t severed ties with him officially in the press. It made Andrew’s dealings a bit more difficult, but agents were used to being approached by nearly everybody, looking for a bigger, better deal.

  Andrew also hadn’t come out publicly that he was a free agent. He should. But that niggling fear kept him in check. If Barton came crawling back, Andrew could set the terms. What if Barton reached out to fix things? Andrew would forgive him. And that was another thing the drinking kept at bay. He’d held onto most of his pride through the long decades of fighting on the tiles. Going back would be a surrender. He didn’t want that word in his vocabulary.

  He gave the woman her drink, then sat down on the bed. He checked his phone. It was just a message from a fan, someone he didn’t know. It could wait.

  He saw an email notification from his son, who was asking, once again, what was going on with his parents. Like Barton, his wife hadn’t filed for divorce yet. If she asked for a reunion? He
would make her work for it. At least there, he was in a position of power.

  He sipped his bourbon, enjoying the bite.

  “You’re not Bulldog Johnson,” the stranger said softly.

  “I’m not. I’m better.” Andrew grinned. “In the 2012 Grand Tournament, I fought in the Zodiac. I got knocked out in the second round, but it was a sacrifice play. It won SoulFire the title. I got a huge write-up because I was a key player, and it was a key play. I took out two key Artists, Eunice Battlestar, a really good Forge, and Hank Youn, a pretty terrible Sunfire, but he did have a raging left hook. That won’t be the pinnacle of my career, though. Artists get better with age.”

  She stared into his face. “I’ve not heard of you. I’m sorry.”

  If he wasn’t mostly drunk, her words, that look, might’ve hurt. As it was, he could shrug them off. “That’s okay. The fame is nice. Bulldog sold out because it’s easier to memorize lines than to practice the Arts. I had dinner with him. He was pretty, I’ll give him that. But his prana is crap, and I think he knew it. He worked for the Zodiac Overmen deal. I’ll give him that as well. Even if he never fights again, he’ll get a big paycheck. The Battle Arts are a cruel business. I’d understand it more if it was just about talent. It’s not. You get two or more people together, and there’s politics. You throw in money, and you get evil politics. Add an element of status, and you get chaos. My old agent has the political power, the money, the status, and he uses it. I guess I don’t blame him.” Andrew laughed. “Yes I do. He wanted me to be his puppet. That didn’t happen. It won’t happen.”

  His next laugh came out bitter. The truth was more complicated.

  He finished his drink, the ice hitting his lips. He leaned in close. She turned away. “I should be going.”

  Yes, because she’d sleep with Bulldog Johnson. She wasn’t too hot on Andrew J. Coffey.

  He sat back. “You know, if I did get Niko Black onto the tiles, I could toy with him, I could hurt him, over and over.”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  Andrew ignored her. “I could let Niko Black think his tricks would work on me, and all the while, I would make him bleed. I would go after him, end him. Most Artists don’t go in for the kill, the crippling blow. It makes for bad press, unless that’s your gimmick. Like Miles Demon, he fights dirty. His fans love it. After a while, though, you can’t get anyone to fight you.”