Buster

by Caleb Huett

  Skyler came out of Roll the Ice’s front door as we approached it, blocking our way.

  “Hey,” she said. “I just wanted you to know, before you go inside, that I tried to talk them out of it, but it’s what they always do for the finals, so …”

  “What?” Tonio asked, trying to look around her into the store. “Talk them out of what?”

  She kicked her leg back onto the door. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you can do this. And, just in case, I’m sorry.”

  Her vagueness was starting to scare me, too. What had they done in there?

  Skyler pushed the door open with her foot so she could keep an eye on him. Tonio walked inside past her …

  … and then he turned around and tried to walk back out. I sat on the ground to make that a little harder—his wrist caught on the leash and he didn’t even try to pull me, just stopped halfway out the door with his arm outstretched. “No. No way.”

  I took a look inside.

  All the tables had been pushed to the edges of the room, and all the chairs were arranged in a wide circle.

  Except for one table.

  Except for three chairs.

  Phil was already sitting in one of them, shuffling his deck.

  “I’m sorry,” Skyler repeated. And then Devon and Mia were there, talking over each other.

  “Remember what we talked about! You have to take him down quick—”

  “But keep in mind what he’s doing, and don’t use up all your strong cards early—”

  “And don’t be too predictable, because you need to make him nervous—”

  “Just have fun!”

  “But also win.”

  Tonio, standing, was as tall as Phil sitting down.

  “We getting started or what, kid?” Phil hollered.

  Mia finally seemed to notice how scared Tonio looked. She lowered her voice and stepped in the way of his view of Phil. “What’s your problem?”

  “What do you think?!” Tonio hissed out with uncharacteristic harshness, and gestured to the room.

  Mia grinned, unbothered by his intensity. “I know. I was just messing with you.”

  “That’s not nice!!!”

  She shrugged. “Well, earlier, someone told me that I’m better than nice.” Tonio didn’t answer. She continued, more seriously. “I didn’t want to leave my room today. Or, like, ever. But I’m glad I’m here right now. And you’ll be glad when you wreck this guy’s whole deal with Principia’s Mirror Blast!”

  “Plus,” Devon said, “it’s okay if you don’t win.”

  “But there’s a prize!” Tonio protested.

  “Yeah, but it’s just three hundred dollars. Who cares?” The skin could have been melting off his face, judging by the looks Tonio and Mia gave him. “Okay, never mind. But it’s a game. Don’t stress so much about it.”

  Mia considered Tonio’s expression and shrugged in vague agreement. “Yeah, that’s true, I guess. And I already lost, so I guess it doesn’t matter if you do, too.”

  Phil yelled, “This round was supposed to start three minutes ago! I won’t be forced into a tie just because you stalled over time.”

  Mia stuck her tongue out at Phil as Tonio sat down at the table. All the other adults—about twenty had stuck around to watch—settled into chairs around the room that were too far to really see the cards, as far as I could tell. Mia and Devon sat together, which was a small victory on its own. They scooted their chairs up closer than everyone else’s.

  I couldn’t risk saying anything—there was a clear view from the front windows—but I nudged Tonio and he looked down. I shook my whole body out like I was covered in water. Not Underspeak, not human—just Tonio-Buster speak. He smiled and shook out his hair back at me.

  Let’s do this.

  “That chair is for Combuster!” Skyler explained. I hopped up. On the chairs, Tonio and I were about the same height, which was funny. I sniffed at his ear with my wet nose, and he shoved me away with a tickled giggle before he remembered to be nervous.

  “AND NOW,” Skyler announced, “for the FINAL MATCH! SuperPhil versus Malbrain and Combuster!”

  A few adults let out small woos for us.

  “Oh, great,” Phil grumbled. “So now if I win, I’m the jerk who beat the kid and his dog.”

  “Lose and it won’t matter!” Mia suggested loudly.

  Tonio grabbed the box holding his cards and wiggled them out into his other hand. He shuffled systematically, laying cards down neatly across six different stacks and shuffling those gradually together. (Bridge shuffling would be faster, but this was easier for Tonio’s smallish hands.)

  After three of these moves, the weight of Phil’s impatient stare made it clear they were as shuffled as they were going to be. Tonio placed his deck next to Phil’s, and their hands crossed over each other’s decks to cut them: each placing the top half to the side, then the bottom half back on top. An honorable gesture, that ensured neither was cheating with their shuffle.

  Phil flipped a coin. “Call it,” he said. Tonio wasn’t expecting this, so he stumbled over an answer.

  “Tail—or, he— I—” He didn’t answer before it clattered to the table. Heads. “Sorry.”

  Phil sighed, exasperated, and tried again.

  “Heads!” Tonio called out.

  The coin landed. It was tails. Seven cards for each of them; Phil played first.

  And, listen, no one would love to go into the minute details of this match more than me, but I don’t want to waste everyone’s time. I would love to tell you about the first back-and-forth of this match, because it was really important to the next five turns, and basically Tonio and Phil froze each other’s first Manabytes with stasis, which would seem like it equaled out, but Phil’s turn advantage plus two turns of Tonio drawing no new Manabytes meant Phil got ahead pretty fast in terms of resources—but then he kept playing Manabytes, so it seemed like maybe he was overcharged, which is what Blademasters say when they draw too many Manabytes and not enough heroes, spells, or tech. I thought this might ruin the game for him, but then he drew a black hole and wiped the board, which—

  … I guess I did end up telling you about most of it, but for the Court’s purposes, the card-by-card details don’t really matter. Mia was right; Phil’s deck was like Tonio’s, but where Tonio’s deck stalled, stabilized, and balanced, Phil’s deck destroyed. Over and over. Phil removed any cards Tonio placed on the field, even at the expense of his own. Black hole, black hole, black hole. No movement.

  He was stalling very effectively, and Tonio was starting to get frustrated. They played in total silence save for brief descriptions of what they were doing and Mia’s opinions on the sidelines.

  At the moment everything started to go bad, Phil was actually down one Spirit Battery (Tonio’d gotten an early hit in, like Mia suggested) and was sitting on a couple of good backup heroes (like Devon wanted him to).

  And then he played Om, the Martian Dragon.

  The monster’s foil face, which I thought seemed beautiful before, was suddenly a lot more intimidating. Tonio froze when he saw it. Phil just smirked.

  “Did you get this from a booster pack?” Tonio asked.

  “No,” Phil said, “I bought it here.”

  “At Roll the Ice?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was it the only one?”

  Phil shrugged. “I think so.”

  Tonio frowned. Dang. In all the commotion about Mia and Devon, I forgot that Tonio wanted something, too. The only card he couldn’t draw himself. But Phil had gotten there first.

  “His power lets me pull black holes back from the AfterFile once per turn, and—”

  “He’s got Grav immunity,” Tonio realized. “So he won’t be affected by them. Or my stasis fields.”

  “Right.”

  Tonio tried to play Cordurboy, but he was sucked into a black hole immediately, and then the next turn Om took out one of Tonio’s Spirit Batteries like it was nothing.

&nbs
p; Devon gave a little wail. “It’s not over,” Mia assured him. “There’s still two more!”

  In the time it took her to say that, Tonio had lost another one. His heart was pounding and sweat was trickling from his armpits as he stared, tunnel vision, at the battlefield, racking his brain for anything he could do.

  I wasn’t in his head, as much as I sometimes wanted to be, and this wasn’t his room. He wouldn’t feel comfortable talking to me in front of all these people, and I wasn’t supposed to talk back to a human, anyway. But I could guess how he was feeling, and that guess told me he was giving up.

  I could imagine Tonio thinking there was nothing on the field, nothing useful in his hand, and no plan he could think of to win. If he lost, he couldn’t split the money with Mia—and wasn’t that why she was still there? When that was gone, one of his only friends would be gone. And then she’d stop talking to Devon, and Tonio would move, and Devon would be alone and bullied. And Devon mostly talked to Tonio about Beamblade, anyway, right? What if Devon didn’t want to be friends with a loser like Tonio once he saw that Tonio really was a loser?

  “Tonio? Are you okay?” Skyler asked.

  And it wasn’t just those two. Everyone in Roll was watching him, and at least one of the adults was rooting for him. And everyone he’d beaten that day, and even me, Buster. He’d feel he was letting us all down if he didn’t do exactly the right thing, in that moment, to win the match. And he didn’t know the right thing, so he’d believe he already ruined everything, wouldn’t he?

  I hope by now you can understand what it must have been like to be in his head.

  All the lies he was telling himself.

  All the pressure he was putting on himself.

  “Do you need to go outside? Tonio?”

  Most of those thoughts were nonsense. They were wrong. It was anxiety; that’s what it does! You accept one thing that’s not exactly true, and then that convinces you to believe something that’s mostly not true, and before you know it, you believe something completely false. But once you let yourself believe the first one, it’s frozen. It’s a rule—a law—in your brain. And unless you ask questions of those thoughts, search through the mystery for the lies, you keep moving forward believing things—often horrible things—that all try to convince you the only right move is not to play.

  Phil spoke up. “Official Beamblade tournament rules say a player cannot go more than two minutes without making a move. He’s definitely already past half that.”

  “Are you serious, Phil?” Skyler asked.

  “I’m just trying to play by the rules, unlike some people here.”

  Tonio’s breath was staggering, and his eyes were welling up with tears. He stared straight at the table and tried to make his panic attack as small as he could, tried not to make a scene, but the adults were starting to get nervous that he wasn’t moving at all.

  “Could you just chill out, for one second, Phil?” Skyler said.

  “Sure, I can chill out for exactly thirty more seconds.”

  Tonio needed a break. He needed time to do the work, solve the mystery, and investigate his thoughts.

  “Come on, buddy,” Skyler said. “You can do it.”

  I realized, suddenly, what I could do.

  We were a team, after all.

  “Ten seconds,” Phil grunted.

  “ARF!” I barked, to grab everyone’s attention. I threw my paw up on top of Tonio’s deck and pulled a card off it.

  “What’s that dog doing?” someone called out.

  “Buster?” Mia said.

  I wedged the card between my nose and paw and flipped it over my paw so Phil couldn’t see it. Tonio’s eyes moved, finally, to me, with a stressed and confused expression. Bad brain, I posed. Play along. I licked his forehead quickly and sloppily to add something like Don’t worry onto that, and grabbed a card from the hand he was holding up. I tossed the card—a Suspended Manabyte—onto the table, and used all his Manabytes to summon the hero I just drew:

  Principia, the Galaxy’s Reflection, landed on the battlefield, featureless metal skin under a flowing mirror dress. She was an extremely lucky draw, especially for this moment. She copied the abilities of another hero on the field, which meant she could borrow Om’s Grav immunity. She’d be safe from those annoying black holes.

  The rest of the room, and probably everyone here in court, was more concerned with the fact that I had played a card than that a good card was played. Everyone was staring at me, and I tried to ignore them and focus on what mattered: Tonio, and the game.

  His breath was the loudest thing in the room—I’d bought him another two minutes, but he wasn’t calming down. His knuckles dug into his leg as he finally dragged his eyes up from the table and saw everyone staring at us. With great effort, he lifted his fist onto the table and twisted his knuckles in a paw gesture to me.

  Why? he asked. Trouble, he added, using his other hand, too. I was relieved—talking was always hard for him when he was having difficulty breathing, but it seemed like he could underspeak, at least a little.

  I glanced toward the window but thought better of looking for the officers. Whatever. I’d made my choice, and if I’m honest with myself, I know I made the choice back when I first played Beamblade. Tonio was worth it.

  Still, I didn’t really want to be responsible for changing everyone’s view of the world forever just because of a card game. So for the sake of the room, I had to put on a little bit of a show. I pretended like Tonio’s knuckle movements were training gestures, and I pushed Principia forward, then turned the Manabytes to show they were used. I tapped the table twice with my paw and let out a little bark to try to say pass.

  The first person to talk was Phil, whose interest in winning overrode his surprise at my decision. “That doesn’t count,” he protested. “Only the person who signed up can play.”

  I didn’t look, but Mia sounded stunned when she said, “Buster’s a service dog. If Tonio trained him to help play, then he’s just doing his job.” She paused. “But I didn’t know he’d trained him this well.”

  Devon sounded as chill as ever. “And, you know, he kind of is signed up. His name’s in there and everything.”

  No one else said anything for a good ten seconds.

  Until Phil said, “But—”

  “No buts,” Skyler cut him off. “He’s a dog, Phil. Are you about to really argue he’s smart enough to play on his own?”

  “Of course not, but—”

  “Then shut up about the rules,” Keegan pleaded from the audience, “and blade!”

  “Against a dog?”

  “Against Tonio with a dog’s help.” Mia was sounding like herself again. “And, uh, isn’t it your turn? Beep beep beep, my watch says it’s been about two minutes.”

  “…” Phil glared at me.

  I wagged my tail.

  “Fine.”

  Phil couldn’t play as quickly now—the black hole wouldn’t knock out Principia—and our two heroes had inverted strengths. She had defense where Om had power, and if they fought directly, they’d cancel out and both fall. But now Phil had something he didn’t want to lose, so he started playing more carefully.

  “Tick, tock!” Mia chimed.

  “Quiet!” Phil snapped. His face was flushed—we’d thrown him off balance. He couldn’t do anything except resurrect another black hole, so on the next turn, I drew another card and set it in Tonio’s hand, grateful that the plastic sleeves protected them from my slobber.

  Phil’s whole deck was built around black holes, so there was nothing he could do if they were reflected back at him harmlessly. His cards were reduced to a bunch of big, scary nothings. Still, the holes could eat up weaker cards, so I had to keep passing and drawing until we had something to break the stalemate.

  Mia? Tonio asked.

  Likes you. Likes Beamblade. I gestured with my nose over to Mia and Devon, who were watching the game and cheering him on when they could. Maybe likes Devon.

  T
onio took a slow breath. I drew a card and passed the turn.

  Devon? Tonio asked.

  Likes you. Likes Beamblade, I repeated. Very … calm. I didn’t have a good way to say chill in Underspeak.

  He nodded and tapped a card to suggest I play it. I drew, did, and passed.

  Game … bad? I took that to mean he was asking about losing.

  Nothing, I answered.

  Nothing?! he repeated, alarmed. I wished his vocabulary was better.

  Nothing bad, I clarified.

  He wiped his eyes with the back of his arm. Phil tested attacking with a smaller hero—Tonio followed with his eyes as I dropped a bubble and slid it forward with my paw, capturing Phil’s hero and leaving it too weak to get past Principia.

  You! Tonio realized. I gave him a sideways look and dipped my head in a shrug.

  Good/Bad, I said, trying to cover everything I felt about the situation in one simple and completely clear thought. Helping!

  He wasn’t totally satisfied with that answer, but he was relaxing. I drew another card.

  The Gray Beamblade. We both knew as soon as we saw it that it could turn the game around. The Beamblade gained power for every gray card on the field, and since Phil was also playing a gray deck, it could leech gravity from everything on both sides and arm Principia with a hyper-dense, ultra-powerful weapon of pure … dark matter, I think? The lore actually isn’t totally clear about that.

  I looked up at Tonio, and he nodded. “Good boy, Buster,” he said out loud. I saw Skyler relax with relief—she’d been tensed and ready to spring forward to bail Tonio out any second. “Have a treat … little puppy dog,” he added, less convincing. But he did get a treat out of his pouch and toss it up in the air for me to catch.

  I wasn’t going to not eat it.

  They’re delicious.

  Tonio finally lifted his eyes up to Phil. “I’m gonna, uh, I’m gonna equip Principia with the Gray Beamblade.” He put it down on the table.

  Phil stared at it. The crowd leaned forward in their chairs. Did he have something to counter it? A Bug? Some surprise card slipped in from another color?