A weight left the house when the kids left with Father Gabriel. A small one, not one that would be noticed by any there, but that left a feeling of realness in its void. Tess suddenly remembered that she was very, very upset.
"We need to talk." Her tone was heavy with unspoken meaning that needed no further explanation for Zavier.
"I know Tess," he sighed.
"You know what?"
"Look, I screwed up!"
"What were you even thinking?? You almost died in that tub, and for what? What did I see? Why were you doing that to yourself? What in the nine hells was going through your head??"
Zavier held both his hands up at the onslaught of questions. "Tess, let me answer!" They both stopped and stared at each other for a moment before he continued. "I've been, well, useless lately." He held up his hand to forestall her objections. "I know what you're going to say, I do. But it's true. You are all leveling up and getting stronger for each other and I'm just sitting here doing nothing to help out. I thought if I could understand the human body - TRULY understand it - then I could pick up a healing skill. I thought that if I spent enough time exploring every single part of it then I would be able to understand how healing works. I thought I was taking all the right precautions. I had all the healing pills and the numbing oil from the butterflies. I really thought it would work." He hung his head as that last part was said in a whisper.
"Well?"
"Well what?" Zavier didn't understand the question.
"Did it work?"
He sighed again. "No. I got nothing."
Tess's ire rose even more. "That's because you don't remember your own damned skills! Or at the very least you're thinking that there's some new way for you to cheat the system. You said that you can't learn new skills from The System. It isn't going to hand them to you, you have to learn them yourself and craft them. But you can't do that while you're locked out!"
He could only nod at that. "You're right. I know that. But I thought maybe I could find a way."
"That's your problem, Z," she said. "You keep thinking that you have to find some weird, cool, gamified way of doing what the rest of us are doing with hard work. You just have to be so unique that you aren't doing what needs to be done."
Zavier felt himself getting frustrated at that. Not doing the hard work? Not doing what needed to be done? "What the hell are you talking about, Tess? You don't think I've been doing the work? I've been putting myself on the line alongside you all without any of the skills to back it up! I fucking BLED night after night after night to try pick up a skill!"
"And how many times have you been out hunting with us? How many points have you put into agility or strength? You may think that our ways are boring but they're WORKING Zavier. If you really want to contribute to our fights then LEARN TO FIGHT. Stop trying for all these esoteric answers when the true answers are right in front of your face!"
Zavier took a deep, calming breath. How to make her understand? "Tess, I get what you're saying. You're not wrong - in the short term. I could become a stronger fighter or copy what you three are doing. But that's not what we NEED." He looked into her eyes and tried to reach for her hands but she pulled away. He continued with another sigh. "Please, let me finish before interrupting."
"We already have three different types of fighters. You all are becoming survivors and strong warriors. At the rate you're going I'd put you up against anything that comes against us as you all continue to level. But at some point there's going to be something or someone stronger. Something that is immune to weapons or gauntlet shots. Something that a shield can't block. Something that is incorporeal or too strong to damage or… I don't know! But there WILL be something. And when that time comes we need to have another skillset that can handle that. Something you three can't offer."
"So what is it?" Tess crossed her arms over her chest.
Zavier threw up his hands in frustration. "I DON'T KNOW! I don't know what's coming. I don't know what the threat will be or when it will appear. I just know that it WILL. And when it does I need to understand. Not just be familiar with The System or have a bunch of skills, I need to be able to truly, fully, deeply UNDERSTAND The System and how it works. I need to be able to adapt to whatever it is. I'm a nerd, Tess. I know fantasy and sci-fi and superheroes, and if there's one truism amongst all of them it's that at some point there's something too strong for sharp swords, strong arms, or fast bullets to handle. At that point you need magic or brains to solve it. I don't know exactly what I need to be right now, I just know that I either need to be the best magician or the single most expert on The System on this planet. If not, we could all die from one encounter that we're not well matched for."
He leaned back and spread his arms. "That's it, T. That's all I have. I need to get smarter."
Tess turned her head to the side and considered what he said. After a minute of silence she looked back to him. "Fine. I get it. I don't like it, but I get it. But that doesn't solve the problem of you surviving until then. How many levels do you have left until your connection to The System is back?"
Zavier reviewed his character sheet. "It looks like three levels to get back to baseline, possibly a fourth if they make me pass my previous level."
"And is there any benefit to adding more points to intelligence over that one point?"
Zavier didn't like where this was going. "No," he said hesitantly.
"Okay then, here's what we're going to do. You're going to hunt with me every night until you've got the four levels. You're going to put one point in Intelligence and the rest into Strength and Agility." Zavier started to protest but she interrupted him. "I'm serious, Z! You want to contribute? Do it the old fashioned way; by pulling your weight. You can do your other mumbo-jumbo System hacking after that, but until then you are going to learn to fight. And you are going to get so damned good at that whip chain that it overcomes that stupid skill of yours that lowers your skill every time you use something."
"Come on Tess, that is just going to make me worse at it."
"No! It'll just bring you down to a normal, human-level skill. That means that instead of relying on The System to make you better at it you're going to just have to get good at it the old fashioned way - practice. You're going to become the best whip-chain wielder on the planet."
"I don't know about that, Tess."
She reached out then and put her hand on his arm, her voice going gentle. "It'll be hard work, I know. Maybe you won't become the best ever but you WILL get good at it. Remember when you learned how to solve all the different sizes of Rubik's Cubes? Remember how hard it was at the beginning? But what impressed me so much - what always impresses me about you - is that you just kept trying. Every night in front of the TV you practiced over and over and over. You got so good at it that you didn't even look at the Cube by the end. You just glanced down once in a while and solved it before the commercials were over."
He smiled at that. He knew it was flattery but he also knew she was telling the truth. She teased him about his hobbies and his obsessive nature with them, but she loved watching him doggedly pursue each one until he'd mastered it. Failing over and over - and over again - but never stopping until he'd become an expert. Everyone always looked at him like he was crazy when he did it, but they didn't understand. Most people didn't step outside of their comfort box. Most people stopped when they failed.
Not him. He failed in every way that it was possible to fail, because that was the only way to identify everything he needed to master. And that was why he did things they couldn't. He was willing to keep going, keep learning and experimenting - long after everyone else had given up.
"And if you remember," she said as she stood up and leaned closer, "it always turned me on."
At that, it was decided. He would become fucking Indiana Jones with his whip no matter how many squirrels he had to kill doing it.