The shocked look on his face when I dropped out of character and went straight into the mundane was wonderful. He’d seen the pizza get delivered earlier and watched us talk to SandB. Now to take it a step further. I stood and took a slow step toward him.

  “Li-chen. Stand up and do your best to hit my hand.” I held it out my right hand, palm up. “Fist, kick, head butt…don’t care. You have five seconds to do it.”

  I stretched out my left arm so I could see my watch. “From now. Begin!”

  “This is where it’s going to get tricky.” He looked shocked.

  “One!” I shouted.

  He launched himself from his kneeling position on the pillow into a standing martial stance. Pivoting on his left foot, he swept his right foot high toward my hand.

  “Two!” I barked.

  A small, circular disk of light blue MANA flared into being, forming a shield in front of my hand as it started to turn to meet the kick. His heel hit hard. My hand moved, but not much. The shield absorbed most of the blow. He spun through the motion and stepped closer.

  “Three!” I called out.

  I let the shield evaporate. The look on his face said he didn’t know if he should stop or continue.

  “Four!” I shouted louder.

  He spun again, this time backhanding my palm as he finished the move. His strike hit a new shield just as I finished saying the number.

  “Five! Stop!”

  He froze mid-motion, caught between one breath and the next. His eyes were wide, still processing what just happened.

  “You were slow and not ready. Your strikes were on target. You were thinking, not fighting. Sit.” I pointed to the cushion. He sat. I returned to my chair, and sat. Blaze looked a little stunned.

  When we were all seated again and he’d wiped the beads of sweat from his face, I steepled my hands in front of my chest, just below my chin, and stared at him.

  “You teach martial arts.” It wasn’t a question.

  Li-chen nodded.

  “Speak. Don’t bob your head,” I told him, keeping my tone firm but not harsh. I was doing to him what he’d probably done to a hundred students. His face shifted, and the faintest smile appeared. He understood.

  “Yes. First with my parents in their dojo, then later in my own.”

  “You took the school’s signs off your van. Why?” I asked, guessing at the missing lettering I’d seen.

  “I am here on my own, not for my school.”

  “You hit hard once you got moving. Why did I test you this way? What did you learn?”

  He adjusted himself on the cushion, taking his time to think. I waited. He was back on his home ground now…thinking like a teacher.

  Two, maybe three minutes passed before he met my eyes again. “First, you wanted to test me…to see what I’d do in an unexpected situation. Second, you wanted to see if I’d follow your directions. Third, you wanted to know if I could hit the target. I did.”

  He paused, then added, “Last, you wanted to show me what you could do. How fast you can erect a shield. I didn’t expect one that quick. No one I’ve worked with could do it that fast.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. I’m Level 12. I expect most of the people you trained with weren’t over Level 4 or 5. It gets easier and faster the higher level you are…and the more points you’ve stacked into the spell.”

  Smiling, I said, “And I’m an old rapier fighter and teacher. We learned to strike fast and accurate. I replaced using a buckler with my MANA SHIELD about the same size as one I used. It’s a drill I’ve done hundreds of times, both sides of it. Only difference is…I didn’t change bucklers between hits.”

  Li-chen smiled. “We used padded targets. Same drill.”

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  “I know. I’ve seen pictures and videos,” I said, smiling back. “Most of what I’ve seen from the Game so far…I’ve seen or read before. Or something close. Whatever’s behind this has been studying humans for who knows how long.”

  Pausing again, I thought it through. “Maybe we just reached a point where what it is…or how it works…is close enough to our own games and stories that it synced up. Like an algorithm searching the internet, pulling from everything it can to create what we see now.”

  Li-chen nodded thoughtfully. “Some of my students talked about that idea. I never played games much. My parents wouldn’t let me, but I read a lot.”

  We both smiled at that.

  Blaze sat quietly on her cushion, out of the line of fire…or line of attacks and defenses, more like. “Fire is her line," I thought, amused.

  Then Li-chen asked, “You don’t know how to cultivate MANA, do you?”

  “No, I don’t,” I said. “I’ve read some cultivation stories, but I don’t know if the two systems are compatible. I’ve been thinking about it.”

  “If you can feel MANA…and you can…then why can’t you move it within you?”

  “I don’t know. I asked myself that while you were out there in the rain earlier. The Game Rules don’t mention it anywhere I’ve looked, even in the Library of Congress version.”

  He nodded slowly. Blaze took a sip of coffee, watching us. Then her expression changed. She smiled.

  “I have an idea,” she said.

  “What idea?” I asked, looking down at her where she leaned against the sofa.

  “We can feel MANA going in and out,” she said. “I don’t feel it quite like you’re describing, but it’s starting. I think we sense it more as we get stronger…and level up.”

  “Could be,” I said. “That was true for me. Once I learned both the MANA TRANSFER and DETECT MANA spells, that’s when I started feeling it…especially moving through Ley Lines. So how does that lead to cultivation?”

  “Like anything else. You have to train it,” Blaze said. “I saw how fast you put up those shields. One second up, one second down. You were counting. We talked about that with the President…how fast you could throw up a shield or a MANA BOLT. You’re faster now. I’m faster with my FIRE BOLTs, too.”

  Li-chen and I both looked at her. She wasn’t wrong. We nodded almost in unison.

  “I think you nailed it,” I said. “We can’t do it because we aren’t ready yet.”

  “If we were ready,” Li-chen said, pausing to collect his thoughts, “we’d already be doing it. Cultivation means learning your body. Visualizing the Meridians and Dantians.”

  “Dantians?” I thought there was only one.”

  He shook his head. “No. There are three. The Lower Dantian holds the Chi…about three fingers below the navel and two fingers inside. The Middle Dantian is near the heart. Between the nipples on a man, between the breasts on a woman. The Upper Dantian is behind the forehead, just above the eyes.”

  He touched each point as he spoke.

  “That’s where the Third Eye” is supposed to be,” he added.

  “Chi’s stored in the Lower Dantian?” Blaze asked. “Is that where you feel full of MANA, like you described?”

  We both nodded.

  Another thunderclap shook the building, and a flash of lightning lit the living room white-blue-white. It was close…too close. The air coming in from outside had that heavy ozone scent again. The wind hammered rain against the windows in steady sheets even with my porch roof.

  “Another strike on the old sign?” I wondered. We hadn’t been looking that way.

  “The Lower Dantian is also the body’s balance point,” Li-chen said. “Center of mass or gravity, whatever you want to call it. It’s one of the first things we teach in martial arts.”

  “In western martial arts as well.” I added. “Dance. In lots of things. So that means forcing it to go there instead of wherever it goes?

  Li-chen nodded. Blaze did too.

  “Alright,” I said. “Now that we’ve solved that problem…how do we do it?”

  They both looked at me like I’d suddenly turned purple, or grown a second head. Maybe horns and wings?

  “You’re the masterly MANA master,” Blaze said before bursting into laughter. “You tell us.”

  Li-chen didn’t laugh, but his mouth twitched. “Mind if I get that piece of pizza you offered? I’m hungry. This may take a while.”

  “Plates are in the cabinet left of the sink,” Blaze said. “Coffee’s still in the pot. If Will hasn’t drained it yet. Soda on the counter.”

  He thanked her and headed into the kitchen, moving with that smooth, controlled grace martial artists always seemed to have. “Guess that’s a real thing, not just movie hype.”

  I looked back at Blaze. “So, how do we do this? You’re the one who figured it out. Got anything that doesn’t involve sitting on a mat meditating for hours? I’ve got a math book to edit, and the sooner I finish, the sooner I get paid.”

  “I thought you were good for money,” she said. “Didn’t you have a lot saved?”

  “Most of it’s in investments for the dividends,” I said. “I haven’t checked them since all this started. I usually reinvest the quarterlies. I was doing fine before the Game. Saved the investments for big-ticket things.”

  “Got any plans for it?”

  “Haven’t thought about it,” I said. “If things go bad, maybe a used EV van. Something like the hybrid Pacifica. With solar, I could recharge both our cars.”

  “You like vans that much?”

  “Been driving them since college. My first was a near-junker, and I just kept trading up.”

  “I got the Prius for the gas mileage,” she said. “And because it’s quiet. Good for police work.”

  “Ever need it?

  “Couple times. Not much. But it blends in, so that helps.”

  I nodded, understanding completely.

  That’s when Li-chen came back out, plate in hand. One slice and a half…he was chewing on the missing half.

  “Good pee-za,” he managed through a mouthful.

  “OK… back to the question at hand,” I said, grinning. “Blaze. How do we do this? Your idea, you figure it out and tell us.”

  I shouldn’t have said it while Blaze was drinking. She sputtered and grabbed the towel Li-chen had left behind, wiping up what she’d sprayed onto the floor.

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