[Fixer+ | Draft] Chapter 223 - Paranoia (Patreon)

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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Welcome to the draft release of Chapter 223 - Paranoia for y'all.

As always, a quick reminder that this chapter is still in the process of being workshopped by me and that this is simply the first-draft.

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Is our Sera a little paranoid, perchance...?

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dIvqm3z5pMCIqGgEyTQwbkMUoCSFY5AtdZrW1hC2bMg/edit?usp=sharing

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Chapter 223 - Paranoia

I stood there for a long moment, which stretched several seconds too long to look all-natural. 

The echo of Miss K’s whisper was still ricocheting around the inside of my skull, while four sets of eyes settled onto me with varying degrees of expectation. 

My mind, however, was kind of busy right now—like very busy. 

It was trying to catalogue what the actual fuck had just happened, what it meant for me going forward and how much truth had been in Miss K’s words altogether—the question of whether there was any, wasn’t even in the room, of course, given that it was Miss K.

She never missed on these things, I’d long since internalized.

The audience was waiting nevertheless, and standing frozen any longer would probably be more awkward to explain than any sword-based demonstration would be.

So I let [{Anima Razor}] take the wheel.

The Skill flowed through my body the moment I asked it to, my feet shifting into the simplest of the sword stances I knew—the plain, neutral one. 

The “blade” was angled forward at my mid-line, grip relaxed, with my weight balanced evenly across my body to move in any direction without delay. It was not particularly flashy, essentially the vanilla ice cream equivalent of sword stances—and I did always love me some good vanilla ice cream.

“This is essentially the most basic stance there is,” I heard myself begin mechanically, my voice more natural and steady than it had any right to be. “It’s the first one you learn and is considered the default option to take at the start of every fight. Its main job isn’t allowing any particular type of attack or defense at all, really. Instead, its primary job is to be used to quickly transition into almost any other stance with the least amount of time wasted. You use it when you’re initially feeling out an opponent and trying to gauge what their level of danger might actually be. The downside to it is that it’s kinda of a jack of all trades—it does nothing particularly well, so against somebody already committed—”

Halfway through the sentence, I reached inward and flipped my Ego switch for the first time in quite a while.

The Attribute engaged with its familiar dousing blanket—my emotions deadened and the active layer of me partitioned off, handed over with a simple standing order that I gave it: “Use [{Anima Razor}]’s Knowledge and Muscle Memory and keep the demonstration going.” 

Which was exactly what it did, seamlessly as always.

Ego-me finished the sentence exactly as I would have, without requiring any of my input. 

The rest of my body continued to move through the first stance’s details on autopilot, before cleanly transitioning to the second stance, while I took the time to finally do some much-needed thinking.

The most uncomfortable part of all this was, as always, that Miss K had never, ever been wrong about me, whenever she’d taken me aside like this. Every read she’d ever made about me—my control issues, my rapid progress, the Anima “upgrade,” the whole situation with [Murder], and so forth—every single one she’d easily called like I was an open book to her. 

Not to mention, she was a Grandmaster of Martial Arts, which was a whole different category of human being whose unilateral understanding and judgment about training, growth and everything around those things operated at levels I couldn’t even begin to fathom from where I stood—not truly, at least. 

I could probably take some educated guesses, based on what I knew from the game and especially Kill Joy’s character in it, but they just be that: Guesses.

So when that kind of entity told me, no holds barred, that I was actively nerfing myself and even endangering the others with my sandbagging… It was something that deserved to be taken beyond seriously—even if “sandbagging” had never been the intent and I was vehemently opposed to that particular kind of phrasing. 

‘It’s not like I was trying to stunt on people or anything…’

It had always been more about… Concealment. Sort of an insurance, even. A way to keep my actual capabilities hidden in case one of these smiling, ever-friendly and competitive training partners ever turned out to actually be a Corpo-knife pointed at my back.

Yet no matter how I looked at it, twisted it around or tried to warp it, the analysis of Miss K’s words kept returning results I didn’t particularly enjoy.

‘I’m hindering my own progress by holding back like this, huh…? I guess that’s true enough for literally anything, isn’t it… Muscle training only works if you push muscles to their breaking point, at least to some degree—micro-tears that heal back stronger is what muscle gain actually is, fundamentally speaking. Simply training at eighty percent forever will have you plateau at eighty percent, too. There’s no version of growth that doesn’t require going to the edge and beyond...’

I wasn’t entirely sure why I was approaching this from a biological-medical standpoint of all things—possibly a Skill-download-adjacent side effect of some sort, possibly just my brain reaching for whatever framework was easily at hand—but I didn’t exactly have the luxury of meta-analyzing that as well, given that I was already two-timing my own consciousness as it was.

‘So why am I holding back like this again…?’

Somewhere out front, in the meantime, Ego had moved my body through the second stance and was now demonstrating the third—some form of high, ready position, with the blade raised and my frame deliberately expanded wide: It was intended to make your reach look as far-reaching and committed as possible to pressure an enemy into either backing off or going for a decisive strike.

The absolute worst part about all this examination of Miss K’s words, however, was that I couldn’t even explain why I’d been doing it in the first place—despite several very valiant deployments of my tried-and-tested and ever-reliable method of complete, utter self-delusion. 

‘I could say I was hiding from the Corpo scions… But even I can’t delude myself into truly believing that. Mystery is something that makes you more of a target in Corpo-culture, not less—an unknown quantity is a potential threat to be dealt with, not ignored. So—What’s the actual tactical value here…? The extra twenty percent I’ve been sitting on is nowhere near enough to beat back whatever agents their families have access to, so who exactly am I even planning to surprise with this shit? It’s not like Tom, if he ever genuinely wanted me dead, would come do it personally—unless he’s feeling real emotional that day or whatever. He’d just make a damn call. And the twenty percent sure-as-fuck don’t matter against a call.’

If Ego hadn’t been holding the reins, I would have facepalmed here—quite hard, even. As it was, the impulse simply got logged and subsequently declined, while my voice simply carried on, ever-serene and textbook-like, about reach-pressure.

Which left me alone with the reality of the situation: I had no actual explanation for my Arkion Dojo attempts—bad attempts, according to Miss K—at staying under the radar… A verdict I couldn’t exactly dispute either, given that any time I got anywhere close to losing in here, I just pulled some seemingly complete bullshit out of my ass and won anyway. 

Even Jin, as self-centered as his observations generally ran, had likely picked up on the fact that I wasn’t really giving it my all most of the time—especially after that [Flow] layout I’d delivered just, oh, twenty minutes ago?

There was straight up no coherent threat model underneath my behavior at all, was there? Just some vague version of “hide, be small, don’t be seen” that I’d simply decided was my go-to strategy and had never once questioned before.

‘Am I maybe a bit too paranoid for my own good…? Or is Miss K wrong here, for once, and I’m actually exactly as paranoid as I should be?’

And that—that was a genuinely difficult question to answer, because I was not Miss K.

I wasn’t a Grandmaster of Martial Arts with gods-knew-what kind of insane augments humming away inside her body, who could simply afford to be wrong about people, because no plausible betrayal could ever actually reach her in the first place.

I didn’t have that kind of margin—not even close.

If I started showing my true capabilities at all times and my read on this room turned out to be entirely wrong—if Tom or Jin suddenly re-categorized me from “curiosity” to “threat”—then I sure-as-fuck wouldn’t be able to fend off whatever came next. 

What if my current, slightly-nerfed presentation was the exact thing keeping me in the passable zone with them, and revealing anything more on a regular basis was the proverbial last straw that broke the Sera’s back—quite literally?

The last Corpo agents I’d crossed paths with had almost killed my entire family—me included. And that was with Valeria herself there to defend us with tooth, nail and apparently fucking gigantic Spirit-Snake summons—yet it had still cost her half her damn body and left Oliver and Gabriel practically dead.

If somebody like that picked me off in some random street, alone? There was absolutely no version of that where I survived that kind of encounter—absolutely none. 

I’d just die in an alley somewhere, and the twenty percent wouldn’t matter there either, and—

‘…I’m being far too paranoid about this, aren’t I.’

The self-interrupt came from somewhere halfway sensible, cutting the spiral off mid-plunge, as I finally caught sight of what I was actually doing here: Conjuring up elaborate assassination scenarios out of absolutely nothing.

If Ego had allowed it, a heavy, full-body sigh would have emptied out of me right then and there. As it was, the impulse simply got shunted away the same way the earlier facepalm had been, while I heard my own voice wrapping up its extolment of the high-ready stance’s virtues.

“—good explanations, Sera,” Miss K picked up seamlessly the moment I finished, strolling back into my field of view with her hands clasped loosely behind her. “Let me throw in a few extra remarks on this one: That stance is as much theater as it is actual swordsmanship. Hold it too long and your shoulders are rather quickly going to start to feel the actual weight of that sword; it’s easily one of the most tiring stances out there, which means a patient opponent can quite simply wait you out of it. To counter it, simply circle, feint and stall the swordsman. Either force them to make a move or, after around thirty seconds of nothing, that big, scary reach starts drooping all on its own.”

She mimed a sagging high-stance with a cheeky smile on her face.

“So, quite simply: When somebody takes a stance like this against you, what they’re really trying to force you into is a quick decision. Deny them the quick part, and they’ll have to play at your speeds. Also—that stance quite loudly announces training. Nobody unschooled would ever pull out a stance like this. So the moment some Scav or Ganger squares up into anything even resembling what Sera’s showing you right now, you should immediately be aware that you’re facing somebody with actual training in the weapon that they’re holding—and so should your answer to them. Which, as per the first and holiest technique of this curriculum, is…?”

“Run,” all four of us chorused, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

“Music to my ears, dearest pupils!” She offered with a big smile. 

”Now, we’ll stop the little presentation right there,” Miss K declared, clapping her hands together once. “I’m quite certain our demonstrator has a few more stances where those came from to show us—”

Her eyes landed on me and stayed there, expectant. 

Unable to talk in this state, I reached inward and flipped Ego back off, the emotional dousing blanket lifting away and the full, unfiltered weight of four people’s attention landing right back on me—before I gave her a small nod of confirmation. 

The smile that earned me looked genuinely pleased, which sent small frissons down my spine and made me immediately regret having gotten rid of Ego.

“—but there’s really no point in lecturing any of you further without some first-hand experience to anchor it all to. Theory without experience is just trivia with extra steps.” She started a slow walk along the line-up. “Now… I am not a weapons master, by any means. I’ve merely reached a passing proficiency with all manner of weapons over the years, so I won’t be teaching you in-depth on how to use them—that would not do for the level of training I am known for.”

‘…A “passing proficiency,” she says.’ I quietly questioned what a damn Grandmaster of Martial Arts considered passing, exactly, because that phrasing felt extremely sandbaggy to me, coming from her of all people. ‘Pot, kettle, and all that… At least I’m apparently in good company, huh?’

“What I will teach you, however,” she continued, “is how to face off against them. Which is the most important part anyways, as it is what will keep you alive out there. And luckily for all of us—” a hand gestured my way with entirely too much excitement, “—Sera’s here to take over the sword portion to start us off with. So, here’s what we’ll do: Each of you goes up against her, one-on-one. Your goal is simple—touch her. Sera, you try to hit them with that ‘sword’ of yours. If it touches them, they die. If they touch you, they win—consider it ‘disarming’. Light contact only, my dears.” 

Her eyes flicked between Kenzie and me. “That should be doable for the both of you, battered and fools as you are, yes?”

We both nodded. 

This was definitely no full-contact sparring. 

More… Touch-tag with extra sword-cutting-flavored stakes, basically—so our thoroughly abused bodies wouldn’t be too limited here… Or so I hoped, at least.

“Good. Now… Who wants the first round?”

“I will go, Master.” Jin had volunteered before the question had even fully finished leaving her mouth, already stepping forward and rolling his cybernetic shoulders, eyes locked onto me with that ever-familiar intensity of his.

As he walked up, I took a deep breath and made a decision I’d technically already made several minutes ago, inside my own head, mid-Ego demonstration.

It was time to trust Miss K. 

And… Yes. I’d told myself that exact sentence several times before already—yet had never once truly internalized it all the way. And, knowing me, probably wouldn’t fully manage it today either, if I was being entirely honest with myself for once. 

But every step was a small step forward, in my eyes, so I opened my mouth before the paranoid part of my brain could conjure up yet another hidden assassination plot against me.

“I’m actually more experienced with knives, Miss K,” I admitted, out loud, in front of everybody.

One of her eyebrows rose, ever so slightly in response.

“I would very much like to learn more about swords, so I’ll gladly take part in this with the shinai—especially if you can give me some pointers along the way, maybe. But… I figured I should mention it. In case we want to do any knife-specific work as well, at some point.”

I tried my absolute best not to let my eyes wander as I said it, but I couldn’t help noting how all three of the others were suddenly regarding me with sharply heightened interest, which sent a shiver crawling straight down my back. 

With Jin looking downright confused—even stutter-stepping for a brief second on his way over—Kenzie simply surprised and Tom, especially, looking like he’d just swallowed a particularly nasty frog—a substantial frown making itself known on his face as he stared at me from the other side of the mat.

“Thank you for that, Sera,” Miss K replied smoothly, not missing half a beat. “I will keep it in mind. And we will definitely be doing knife-work—I can promise you that much already. What shape that takes, exactly… I’ll have to reconsider now, with that new information in mind.”

The way she leaned on the word “new” in that sentence made one thing immediately clear to me once again: She’d already known that one, too—somehow.

‘Actually… It’s probably from the way I carry the RaZ around with me fucking everywhere to begin with—she’d likely noticed it on me on day one…’ I immediately provided myself the answer, because of course she would have. 

“Now then,” Miss K stepped back, clearing the space between Jin and me. “Are we all ready here? Rules clear for everybody?”

“Yes, Master.” Jin supplied immediately.

I settled into Stance One, just as I’d demonstrated it earlier, then took one more deep breath, and let the last of my hesitation drain out with it.

“Ready…”

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