I nudge Marie with my leg, and when she looks at me, I point down at the Quickie Stop Mart bag then kick the bag a little towards her. Her eyes light up in recognition of the essential feminine hygiene products within. She gives me a quick smile and mouths the word ‘thanks.’
My mom finishes up cleaning the kitchen and doing the dishes before giving my sister and I a kiss goodbye and leaving for her day job. Once done eating, I make sure Marie has everything she’s going to need for school and head towards my room. That is, until Marie reminds me that I need to call her principal to straighten out this whole ‘fighting at school’ thing.
It’s late enough that the principal is already at his desk when I call and the two of us have a nice chat about appropriate behavior for young ladies. I assure him that Marie will be dutifully punished for hitting that girl. However, I also make it clear that Marie was acting to defend another person. The principal for his part assures me that the other girls involved will also receive punishment.
When I hang up the phone, I see an angry looking Marie staring at me with her hands on her hips. “What do you mean you’ll ‘dutifully punish me’? I didn’t do anything wrong! All I did was hit that smack talking tramp Suzy in her lying mouth.”
I wave my hands at her to stem the tide of righteous teen anger coming. “Calm down, kid. I told the principal you’d be punished. I didn’t say what I’d do.” Before she can react to my statement, I start to ruffle her hair and tickle her. She isn’t prepared for my tickle attack and starts to squirm and laugh. By the time I’m done with my punishment, she’s a giggling, laughing mess.
“There, you’ve been dutifully punished,” I tell her as I sit down at the kitchen table to catch my breath. I motion for her to sit down at the table as she gets up. “Marie, you know you have to figure out a way to deal with this girl at school without using violence, right? I mean, I get that she attacked your friend and you were right to defend her. But that isn’t going to solve your problem with her. She’s going to come after you again. Maybe not with fists but with words and rumors.”
Marie puts her head on the table and sighs dejectedly. “I know. But what am I supposed to do?”
“I honestly don’t know. The rules for boys are different than they are for girls. If some guy had a problem with me, we’d meet somewhere private, fight it out, and that would be that. I don’t think that’s how it works with girls though. You’ll have to figure out how to deal with this. You can choose to turn the other cheek and ignore her, or you can go on the offensive and start your own verbal attacks. Though the last choice would make you as bad a person as she is.”
“That’s your advice?”
I smile and shrug. “Sorry. That’s the best I have for dealing with teenage girl problems. Not ever having been one myself, I lack experience dealing with those kinds of situations.”
Marie gets up from the table and goes back to her room. It’s amazing how she can make even her walk look sulky. I know she’ll get herself ready for school and get a ride with Becky’s mom. So, I head off to my room.
Chapter 13
Walking into my room, I close the door behind me and lock it to make sure I’m not disturbed while I look through the book Lillian gave me—The Idiot’s Guide to the System. Vol. 1. I change out of my work uniform and sit on the edge of my twin sized bed. I take the book out of my pants pocket and flip to the table of contents. Where to start? I guess I’ll have to learn about it all at some point, but I’m not the type of guy who reads game manuals.
Sighing, I decide to start at the beginning with ‘What is the System?’. Reading the first chapter almost puts me to sleep. It’s a lengthy description of what Lillian already told me except that it has the full, complicated details, including footnotes. I’m surprised by the length of the text. It has to be at least 30 pages long. When I look at the book itself, it doesn’t look that long.
Before I fall asleep, I skip ahead to the next section, ‘Your Character sheet and You’. This one is at least a bit more manageable.
Your Character Sheet and You
So, you’ve finally gotten bored with the section on the System? Don’t worry, everyone does. Here’s the good stuff—your character sheet. To call it up, you just have to think or say out loud “Character Sheet” with the intent to pull yours up. The intent is the key with the System. After all, you don’t want a bunch of blue screens popping up when you say System words during your everyday speech. Go on, try it now.
Well, this parts at least a bit more interesting than the section on the System. I do as the guide suggests and say out loud, “Character Sheet.” Just like the guide said, mine pops up.
Anthony Tinoco
Level 1
Unspent stat points: 4
Unspent skill points: 10
Health 80
Mana120
TP100
Strength8 +
Dexterity8 +
Constitution 7 +
Intelligence11+
Wisdom9 +
Charisma9 +
From the few RPG games I remember playing, that’s a character sheet all right. If I recall correctly, Health is my life force, and if it reaches zero I die. Mana is some kind of magical energy. Does that mean that I can cast spells? I don’t have any idea what TP is though. The words below that are my stats—The numerical representation of my physical and mental traits. I wonder how health, mana, and TP are calculated in relation to those stats. Instead of guessing, I continue to read the section of the manual.
By now you’ve opened up your character sheet. Congratulations. You’ll be looking here often, especially as you level and get new equipment. If you haven’t already done so, remember to distribute any unspent stat points that you have. Just press the little plus sign next to the stat you want to improve. Feel free to play around with the distribution of points. It won’t save until you think or say ‘Save Character Sheet.'
I read the next section as it explains what each stat represents. It’s all relatively straightforward and as expected. I note that TP stands for Tech Points and is the technological equivalent of mana, fueling technological-based abilities. There aren’t any examples in this section, but it does suggest that I see the Abilities section for more information.
Instead of jumping into another section, I play around with the unspent stat points. I add a point to a stat, then another just to see if there’s any change to the health, mana, or TP count. As far as I’m able to tell, every point added to constitution adds ten points to my health. Intelligence adds ten to my mana, and wisdom adds ten to TP for every point added to it. The rest of the stats don’t seem to have any effect that I can discern right now, so I add two points to the constitution, one point to intelligence, and one point to wisdom. When I say ‘Save Character Sheet,’ I see the changes made.
Anthony Tinoco
Level 1
Unspent stat points: 0
Unspent skill points: 10
Health 100
Mana 130
TP 110