by Bryan Bliss
Mr. Bruns looked at them briefly. The Great Mandolini sat back and began dutifully taking notes. Once Mr. Bruns looked away again, a folded piece of paper dropped onto Brezzen’s desk.
He looked at the note, wondering if he needed to roll before opening it. He tried to remember the Great Mandolini’s alignment. He remembered him being good, which was rare for most players their age—the desire to actually follow the rules.
Still.
He fished the d20 out of his pocket and tried to roll as quietly as possible, which failed on two counts. First he threw a catastrophe—one—and then Mr. Bruns called his name, asking what the hell he thought he was doing, a question he couldn’t answer. So he sat there, hoping the moment would pass.
It did not.
Mr. Bruns strode to Brezzen’s desk and before Brezzen could stop him, the teacher had the d20 in his hands. He held it up to the light, the way a jeweler studies a precious stone.
“Well, this isn’t going to help you learn about how trickle-down economics has mortgaged the future of the lower class for generations, is it?”
Brezzen didn’t respond. Didn’t move. Mr. Bruns gave the d20 one more look. For a moment he thought the teacher would give it back, a lesson learned. Instead, he pocketed it and picked up the note, drawing a groan from the Great Mandolini.
Mr. Bruns unfolded the piece of paper and read it for the entire class.
“‘I don’t think I have your cell anymore, but you should come to my house this afternoon. Are you sure you’re okay?’”
A couple of guys hooted and hollered across the classroom and, for a moment, Mr. Bruns forgot the note and gave them a long, hard stare.
“Mr. Masterson,” he said to the Great Mandolini. “You know the rules. No games. No phones. And, I’m going all the way back to nineteen ninety-five for this rule: no notes. Instruct your friend.”
One of those same boys whispered, “Boyfriend . . .” and people laughed, which was enough to finally get Mr. Bruns away from Brezzen and to the front of the room again.
“Really? That’s the extent of your humor, Mr. Matthews? It’s lacking. Now, go see if Vice Principal Gallagher finds your witty repartee amusing.”
“Are you serious?”
But Mr. Bruns was already back to teaching, the pivot happening at a speed that Brezzen—nobody in that room—saw coming.
“Okay, so President Ronald Reagan. American hero or modern manifestation of Mephistopheles? Discuss.”
Brezzen was a statue for the rest of class, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t panicking inside. Every time Mr. Bruns moved, the d20 bounced in his shirt pocket. Brezzen’s anxiety rose with every passing second. He had two other dice—a six-side and a ten-side—and he could pretend they worked the same. Could figure out the calculations for comparable rolls, if necessary. But there was always a chance that he was one or two points shy of what he needed. And one or two points on a roll could mean the difference between a crit and a big old whiff.
When the bell rang, the Great Mandolini stood up and waited for Brezzen.
“He’s not giving it back to you,” he said. “The guy is a psychopath.”
Brezzen nodded. “I understand.”
But the panic had gripped something inside his brain, reaching down to his feet and now he was having trouble standing up. As other kids started coming into the classroom, he forced himself to stand.
Mr. Bruns said his name before he reached the door.
“Are we going to have a problem?” he asked.
Brezzen shook his head, stepping forward to avoid a group of kids who weren’t paying attention. Mr. Bruns gave them a tired look and then turned back to Brezzen.
“What edition do you play?”
The question surprised Brezzen. He wished he had his d20, so he could roll to see what Bruns might be playing at. However, if the Great Mandolini was to be believed, this guy was certainly chaotic evil, the kind of loose cannon that nobody wanted to spend a few hours with and, in Brezzen’s experience, was only played by actual psychopaths.
Bruns was staring at him, ignoring the room full of students, waiting for an answer.
“Fifth edition. But first, sometimes, when we’re feeling nostalgic.”
The briefest hint of a smile crossed Mr. Bruns’s lips. “Nostalgic.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled the d20 out, once again giving it a long, hard look. When he turned back to Brezzen, he didn’t say anything at first. Just put the die on his desk.
Then he said, “Don’t roll that thing in my classroom anymore. There aren’t any monsters here.”
Chapter Three
BREZZEN DIDN’T ROLL FOR INITIATIVE IN HIS NEXT two classes, mostly because they blew past him at a speed he could barely comprehend. He hadn’t exactly been studious in his homeschooling, figuring out way after way to study only things he wanted to study—the velocity of Iron Man’s flying (math), the possibility of mutants (science), and reading various graphic novels, which was better than anything he’d done in a language arts class in years.
Of course, everyone else had been in school for months at this point, so some catch-up time was expected. But it wasn’t just the information. It was the timing of everything around him. Knowing when a teacher was going to speak or expected him to speak. Interpreting the smiles of the people he’d known for years but who acted like they’d never seen him before.
As the day progressed, he retreated into himself until he was barely nodding when somebody said hello. So when the Great Mandolini walked them to their next class, which turned out to be an empty computer lab, Brezzen’s entire body relaxed.
“So, technically we’re TA’s for Mr. Childers, the computer science teacher,” he explained. “But we can use this time to basically do whatever we want. Homework. Sleep. Or—”
Before the Great Mandolini could finish his sentence, the door flew open and Brezzen nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Brendan! Holy crap! What’s up, man!”
Brezzen had pushed himself back against the bank of computers at first, but now that he saw Bork, an orc who had eschewed his culture’s warmongering in favor of living the life of a monk, intent on using his considerable brain power to heal, he took a step forward.
“Bork. A pleasure.”
Bork looked at the Great Mandolini, who just shrugged and shook his head—go with it, he was saying.
“Well, uh, it’s great to see you. Are you in this class?”
The Great Mandolini answered for him. “Yes. I was telling him he could do homework or sleep or play a little . . .”
At this point, both Bork and the Great Mandolini sang out the same word together.
“Interdiction!”
They gave each other a high five and then Bork went to work booting up three computers while the Great Mandolini explained.
“So, you fly across the map on a transport plane and at a certain point, the game just pushes you out—you don’t get to choose where you land.”
Brezzen watched the screens come to life behind the Great Mandolini. He’d played video games, of course, but they’d never been the primary source of entertainment for any of them. There were just too many RPGs, too many tabletop games that required so much more thought, strategy, and teamwork than simply turning on a computer and pushing random keys over and over again.
“And once you land, you learn your mission. You might be on the rebels. Or you might be on the interdiction team. So you have to figure out where you’re at, what supplies you need, and how to link up with the rest of your team.”
“Basically, it’s brilliant,” Bork said.
“Everybody is playing,” added the Great Mandolini. “Like, even the guys who used to give us shit for playing Wizards & Warriors. They’re all into this game and I want to be like, ‘Oh, you’re not too good for this?’ But I don’t, because, you know.”
“They’re all built like an elder titan?” Bork said, laughing at his joke—a joke Brezzen actually understood. “Do yo
u remember the time we were all stuck in that dungeon and Brendan put the elder titan figure down onto the map, all casual like it wasn’t a big deal?”
“Yeah,” the Great Mandolini said. “You stood up and said, ‘Nope.’ And then you left. Like, left the whole house.”
Brezzen was laughing with them.
The campaigns had gotten them through middle school. And nearly the first year of high school, until the shooting. Brezzen wasn’t against the idea of playing Interdiction, but would it ever yield the same sort of story three years later? The kind of thing that could break through all the shit and make them laugh together?
“He got in trouble,” Brezzen said.
“What?” the Great Mandolini said, still laughing.
“He got in trouble because he went to the park,” Brezzen clarified. “After curfew.”
“Oh, shit. That’s right!” The Great Mandolini was laughing even harder now. “Who gets taken home by the police for riding swings at eleven p.m.?”
“Me, I guess.” Bork typed a password into the last computer. “Anyway, I just set you up an account, B. So you can play with us.”
And just like that, both the Great Mandolini and Bork sat down and started typing. They laughed at the same time, and that’s when Bork leaned over to Brezzen and pointed out the chat window.
“We obviously can’t use mics at school, so most of the action happens in the chat window. It’s hard to keep up with at first, but you’ll get it eventually.”
The computer screen went dark and then came back to life, asking for a screen name.
Brezzen, he typed.
And then the screen went dark again.
This time, when it came back, Brezzen was on a plane.
He wasn’t wearing any clothes, just a nondescript pair of black briefs, which was momentarily embarrassing until he saw the other players lined up on all sides of him. There was a clown. A soldier straight from an eighties’ action movie with tall hair, bulging muscles, and a cigar poking from his snarled lips. In the far corner of the plane, a yellow cat holding a piece of cake waved at him. Brezzen looked above the cat’s head and saw TheGreatMandolini_69. Across the plane, Bork—it said That_Borkin_Man above his head—gave him a thumbs-up. Before Brezzen could respond, Bork disappeared. When he looked for an explanation from the Great Mandolini, he was gone, too.
One by one, the other people on the plane disappeared—pop, pop, pop—and when Brezzen tried to move, he couldn’t. His hand was attached to a piece of green webbing on the plane’s ceiling.
He felt it in his stomach first, the distinct feeling that the insides of his body were being pulled through his mouth. A flash of light. A quick ringing. And then complete darkness.
Brezzen landed in the jungle, and every breath was flooded by the humidity. His eyes blinked into the heavy sun. All around him towered trees and vines.
He started running.
There was a map, but it was useless. Just a random circle with a collection of blue and red dots moving in different directions. Ahead of him, something glowed bright like fire and he ran toward it. As soon as he was close, the item—a comically large, nickel-plated revolver—flew toward him and he felt the weight of it in his hand.
Behind him, he heard gunfire.
The whiz of bullets shot past his body.
Plants and trees exploded all around him as he ran, harder than he’d ever run before. This time there was no place to hide. No staircase to get thrown under and wait for the screaming and the shooting to end.
He turned and saw the dopey yellow cat firing a large rifle at a group of people below him. Brezzen realized they were standing on a ridge, that there was an entirely different biome below them—desert, with a lush forest in the distance—and for a moment he stopped running and just stood there, staring.
The Great Mandolini fired his rifle indiscriminately. Brezzen felt every shot echo in his chest. When the players below returned fire, Brezzen jumped to the side and, in his haste, fell off the cliff.
“Oh, shit,” Bork yelled from the other computer. “Did you really fall off the cliff and die?”
“Noob,” the Great Mandolini said, smiling at Brezzen quickly before going back to his own screen.
“Did you even fire a shot?” Bork asked.
Brezzen’s fingers were still on the keyboard, and he probably looked like everything was fine, but he couldn’t catch his breath. He couldn’t get the humidity out of his lungs or get his body to release the fear that clenched every muscle like a vise. He wanted to get up and run, to hide, but he couldn’t move, and even if he could, where would he go this time?
“Shit.” Bork said. “Shit.”
Bork threw his hands off the keyboard and watched the Great Mandolini finish the round. When the Great Mandolini hit the computer table in frustration, it broke whatever trance Brezzen was in and he looked at both of them, his eyes wild with panic.
His friends misinterpreted the terror as fascination.
“One more match,” Bork said.
“We probably don’t have time,” the Great Mandolini said. “Especially because I need to make sure Brendan gets to his next class on time. Meet the teacher. All that.”
Brezzen nodded, wanting to get out of the room as quickly as he could.
“Well, tomorrow,” Bork said, standing up. The Great Mandolini stood, too, and they both looked down at Brezzen, who joined them, purely an act of muscle memory, because his legs were nothing but dead logs underneath his body.
“Hey,” Bork reached out and put a hand on Brezzen’s shoulder. “It was good to see you, man. I’m glad you’re back.”
Both of his parents were waiting in the parking lot when he walked through the doors of the school and into the afternoon sunlight. As soon as he was in the car, they wanted to know everything.
The last three classes had been challenging, at best. He desperately needed to roll, but every time he would pull the d20 from his pocket there would be a teacher, or the Great Mandolini—somebody—staring at him. The entire school was a building of eyes and ears. So he went to the classes and kept every emotion under wraps until that exact moment.
And then he lost it, right in the backseat of his parents’ car.
“I can’t go back,” he said, the tears he didn’t know he was holding back, finally coming out.
“Dr. Ivy said this would happen,” his dad said. “It’s normal to have a period of readjustment.”
Brezzen shook his head. He pulled out his d20 to roll, hoping it would help him convince his parents and Iaophos—everybody—that going back was not a good idea. He could just stay home until he was ready, no matter how many years it took. No matter if it was the rest of his life. What was wrong with feeling safe and being happy?
He rolled a three and it made him cuss. His mom and dad gave him a look, but he didn’t care. There was nothing else to do but sit in the backseat and resign himself to a fate that seemed to be sealed.
Iaophos said she knew he’d be in a world of shit when he got done with school, but it didn’t make Brezzen feel any better as he sat there, holding his d20 and trying to pay attention to what she was saying.
“You’ve run into trouble before,” Iaophos said. “You’re, what, a level fifteen now?”
“I’m level eighteen. C’mon.”
Iaophos laughed and held up her hands. “Yes, of course. I forgot. What I’m saying is, you’ve spent a lot time preparing. But that doesn’t mean you won’t run into tricky encounters. It also means that you’re stronger than you think you are.”
Brezzen looked at the map of the school he’d drawn, which Iaophos had asked to see and was now flattened out on the table in front of them. They would get to the campaign soon enough. Iaophos always liked to have little chats beforehand. When he would GM, he’d sometimes give Bork and the Great Mandolini a brief background story—something to really whet their appetites. To let them know the stakes. As he stared at his map, he realized he’d significantly underestimated the st
akes.
Most dungeons were two-dimensional, something you played top-down, able to see the scope—even if you weren’t exactly sure what you were looking at in the start. Today had been an entirely different experience. Every class turned out to be a mini dungeon, a relentless test of strength, endurance, and mental agility that was not only impossible to solve but started over every time the bell rang.
Even the lunchroom was too much, forcing him to sit in the hallway with the Great Mandolini, who was obviously uncomfortable with the way he kept rolling his d20 on the polished school floors over and over again.
Brezzen dropped his d20 onto Iaophos’s desk and hit a natural twenty, a straight crit roll that had to mean something. He stared at it as she asked him if anything specific had triggered him.
“All of it,” he said without thinking. “I think it would be better if I could just stay home and come here and meet with you.”
“Better?”
“Yes,” Brezzen said, with as much confidence as he could muster.
“Hmm.” Iaophos pulled out her GM guide and paged through the book until she found something she liked, something Brezzen was certain would also make his life immeasurably more difficult.
“Roll for initiative.”
Brezzen pointed at the twenty sitting on her desk, and she actually laughed.
“I’m not accepting that cheat roll.”
“Cheat roll?!”
“You heard me. Roll again.”
Brezzen grumbled for a second, suddenly wishing he’d taken the path of a mage or some kind of mind-controlling wizard. Something that would allow him to tap into a deep well of mana and make Iaophos reconsider what had obviously been a fully legal roll—even if he’d made it before she asked him for initiative.
Or maybe he could wave his fingers casually across the air. A Jedi mind trick. The sort of power move he and his friends would spend countless hours debating—weighing the pros and cons of its real-world application.