Infinity Legends

Chapter 17: The Three Beanbags

Friday, 8:37PM.

Barry had talked to Sarah as soon as him and Luca returned from their trip on Sunday, and for the rest of the week he had dived headfirst into the universe of Fantasy Stars.

If Barry had learned one thing, it was that five years were a very long time in a galaxy as dynamic as Fantasy Stars’. Updates, new classes, new enemies, new places, new skills, even new rules for Fantasy Star Legends itself, and Barry had to go through it all. Understand it all.

On Monday, he had gone to bed at eight o’clock. On Tuesday, he only realized it was past bedtime when the clock reached nine and a quarter, forcing him to interrupt his studies on time-bending skills. On Wednesday, Luca had offered to help with catching up on the structural changes to the competition itself, and that had led them well past ten o’clock. At first Barry had not assumed to gain much with Luca as backup, but having a law student read rules and regulations proved way more productive than expected. Therefore they replicated the joint study on Thursday going clean past midnight.

As Luca had said, the following day was Friday. You have the right to be tired on Friday.

As soon as Barry returned from his last class on said Friday, he absolutely felt the lack of sleep from the previous night. He crashed on his bed for an hour or so, then jumped to his feet and sat down to run simulations on the TOPAS. Now, having himself as Spawn-Master, Gummybear as a healer and Sarah’s Serry as a combat mage, he had a solid enough base to map players with potential synergies and who would better complement the already selected gamers’ strengths and weaknesses.

The System was more effective than Barry recalled, which made him unsure of how to feel. Someone had clearly tinkered with his software, his System, his creation! On one hand, it had become incredibly more accurate and intuitive, but that did not stop a hint of jealousy from creeping up onto Barry’s gut. He would also need to relearn some of the finer details of how to get the best out of the System, but he was slowly getting there, and some of the simulations returned really interesting results.

A few hours into his study, Luca had come in, still smelling of chlorine, grabbed the stack of papers with the updated FSL rules and perched himself onto his bed, eventually commenting a point or two of the guidelines with Barry. The more experienced player already knew about most of the points Luca brought up, but every now and then he would be surprised by a new or rarely known rule.

It was 8:37PM when Luca brought up one such clause.

“You know since you’re forming a new team you’ll be in a sea of noobs, right?” Luca said still laying on the top mattress of the bunkbed.

“What do you mean?” Barry looked away from the TOPAS for the first time in more than an hour.

“Says here all teams registered on Fantasy Stars Legends League must start at remote ranked competitions until they rack up enough points to join League D,” Luca explained. “Each year the three best teams of League D move to League C, so on so forth until you reach League A, which is where the big kids play.”

“What?” Barry frowned. “I never played in B League!”

“That’s because you were recruited directly into the Star Rangers,” Luca said. “They were probably already one of the best.”

“Makes sense,” Barry muttered. “So, that means…”

“Yeah. You’d need at least five years to get conventionally back to the top.”

Barry squeezed his fist and closed his eyes to mentally count to ten. Playing ranked matches? League D? What a waste of time! Counting to ten obviously had not worked, as he roared and slammed a closed fist onto the desk in front of him, making markers bounce off their aligned positions.

“Woah, easy tiger! There are options!” Luca spun in bed and dropped to the ground. “Considering you were a ranked player, and apparently so was Sarah, if you get another couple ranked players you can file a motion with the League’s board to start directly from League C.”

“Three years instead of five? Big change,” Barry dragged his words under the weight of sarcasm.

“Well, before you assault your desk again, there is one last possibility, kind of a long shot…”

Barry crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow, granting Luca permission to pitch his bypass on the regulations.

“Wildcards!” Luca slammed the stack of papers on the desk in front of Barry, green highlights indicating a specific section of the regulations. “Every year, two rookie, unranked teams can be selected by popular vote to participate directly in the pro-league.”

“League A?” Barry asked.

“Exactly. All said team needs to have is at least two ranked players…”

“Check.”

“…at least five players total with an overall power score of 10,000 or more…”

“We can reach that.”

“…and a total social score of positive 250,000 reputation points across all players.”

Barry blinked.

Luca smiled.

Barry blinked again.

Luca’s smiled diminished.

Barry blinked twice more.

“Your reputation points stink, don’t they?” Luca asked.

“I don’t have reputation points,” Barry replied. “And I just analyzed Sarah. She has a negative reputation.”

“Oh boy,” Luca flopped onto the green beanbag chair.

“Wait, wait. Not all is lost,” Barry turned back to his laptop, the System still running on the screen. “I spent the whole day screening tanks for our team, but I haven’t gotten very far. Still too many possibilities. But if I can use the System to locate someone with a high reputation, they can outweigh our low score!”

“Seriously, I don’t get it,” Luca grumbled from his seat. “How can you be famous and have no reputation points?”

“You get reputation points by making friends, helping others and making people laugh and enjoy themselves,” Barry explained. “I never do that. Too busy practicing. Oh… Oh no.”

Barry cursed under his breath as the System returned the most powerful players with reputation scores above 200,000 points, and the news were bad: they were nearly all bards. The System rolled up a list of names and locations. Bard, bard, bard, battle bard, healing bard, thief with bard skills…

Barry Watson was a rational man. He knew when he was biased, and he was definitely biased against bards, with their colorful clothes, always making stupid rhymes and carrying banjos into battle. The worst part was that said bias was very much justified given his previous experiences with bard teammates and enemies. They were always the first to mess up, more often for not taking things seriously than for not having the necessary skills to survive, but usually for combining both aspects.

But if a bard was what it took to skip three years of playing against noobs, that was a sacrifice Barry would be willing to make.

He opened his mouth to voice his concerns to Luca, when the one window in the room exploded. Barry and Luca jumped from their respective seats as shards of glass flooded the apartment and a cool night breeze invaded the dorm. Right in the middle of the triangle formed by the three beanbags, rested the rock responsible for the destruction, no smaller than a baseball.

The roommates exchanged a confused glance, both of them pale. Barry retreated a few steps to the safety of his bed, while Luca approached the broken window step-by-step. As the night air billowed his hair, Luca poked his head out, looking down to the poorly lit area behind the dorm building. They were on the third floor, facing a reserve area separated from the building by a tall fence, and between the fence and the building there was usually nothing.

Except for that night. That night, there was a woman between the fence and the building.

“Sarah?” Luca whispered.

“Oh, right!” Barry checked his watch. “It’s time for our training session. But what’s she doing here?”

“She’s…” Luca squinted, as if trying to see her gestures. “She’s telling us to be quiet. Oh, what the…!”

Luca stumbled back, and a second later a thick black rope flew through the destroyed window. The rope dropped to the ground like a dead snake. Luca and Barry stared at the rope, unsure of what to do until Sarah lightly tugged the rope twice.

“I think she wants to come up,” Luca said.

“You think so?” Barry asked. “Come one, help me tie the rope to the bed.”

***

“Ouf! Nice place you guys have here!” Sarah said after sneaking through the window, a pink backpack strapped to her shoulders, entirely dissonating from her all-black burglar attire.

“You should see it when there’s not broken glass everywhere,” Luca quipped. “We also used to have a nice window not long ago.”

“Sorry about that,” Sarah blushed. “Tried to do it like the movies, you know?”

“In the movies they throw pebbles,” Barry pointed the rock on the center of the room. “That? That’s closer to a boulder.”

“Or you can text, you know?” Luca said.

“And leave digital evidence I’m hanging with you dorks?” Sarah raised an eyebrow. “No thanks.”

“And that’s the next question,” Barry said. “What’re you doing here?”

“I can’t play dork games in the sorority,” Sarah explained. “It would be like bringing food to the underwater caverns of Hidroxilon V.”

“Oh, I learned that the hard way,” Luca said pacing to the small cooler on the corner of the room, from where he retrieved a bag of chips and a can of soda. “Since we’re all here, anyone wants snacks?”

“You got diet soda?” Sarah asked and Luca immediately lobbied a can to her. She then proceeded to brush some glass shards out of the red beanbag to claim that as her seat. “So, Luca, is it? Fancy meeting you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” Luca said, cleaning the green beanbag and collapsing on it with his own snacks. “Barry tells me you rescued my tactical journal from Emma. Thanks.”

“No probs! Are you part of Barry’s dream team too?” Sarah asked between sips of soda.

“Jury’s still out on that,” Luca replied. “I have a lot on my plate with studying and swimming, but I help how I can.”

“Consider Luca our legal consultant for League regulations, for the time being,” Barry said, joining the others by sitting on the blue beanbag. “He’s also kind of my advisor.”

“I see myself more as an emotional coach and guru to the team,” Luca intervened.

“So, who’s the team so far?” Sarah asked. “You and me?”

“We have a healer too,” Barry informed. “You’ll meet her tonight at practice. I’m also looking into other potential recruits, but our next member might need to be a bard!”

“That’s good,” Sarah said.

“Good?” Barry frowned.

“Yes! If you get a good bard, a really good bard, you can get awesome boosts for your spellcasters, such as myself,” Sarah jabbed a thumb into her black sweater. “I always pitched recruiting a bard to my old team, by those airheads just looked at the stereotypical goofy bards and shot me down every time. Glad to see this team’s different!”

“Yeah…” Barry’s cheeks were burning hot. Had she just inadvertently called him an airhead? “We’re different. But enough about bards. Tonight’s about testing you and our healer in combat.”

“I’m excited!” Sarah smiled. “Though I must admit I’m a bit rusty… I haven’t been playing much lately.”

“You better unrust yourself, then,” Luca said, pulling his gaming rig from behind his beanbag. “Barry told be what he’s got planned for tonight, and trust me… You’re gonna hate it!

“Now, shall we begin?”