Ok, so the first thing you're going to notice about this one is that it is in third-person omniscient point-of-view. There was a huge gap of time in between when I wrote parts 1 and 2, and then part 3, so I kind of forgot that they were supposed to be in first person.
So just forget about that and enjoy it!
---
“Prepare for atmospheric reentry,”
cooed the computer system onboard the escape pod which was plummeting towards
the surface of an Earth-like planet. The small, spherical, waiting room-like
craft began to rock violently as blue ocean turned into the whiteness of clouds
ripping past. Just as Steve grabbed at his seat’s harness in an attempt to
stabilize the status of his stomach, which was quickly approaching barf levels,
the pod announced in a waitressy tone:
“Enabling comfort protocols,” and
the thrashing suddenly ceased, the sound of rattling components replaced by
smooth jazz. The image of the ever-quickening approach of the planet’s surface
on the video screen over the shoulder of Steve’s robotic companion, JORDI,
turned into one of kittens playing.
“Coffee, sir?” asked JORDI,
extending in his metallic hand a plastic cup he’d retrieved fresh from a
dispenser on the wall.
“Sure, thanks,” obliged Steve,
noticing that JORDI was actually tapping his metal fingers against one knee to
the rhythm of the muzak. There was a soft thud underneath Steve’s feet not
unlike that of an elevator reaching ground floor, and the hatch slid open,
revealing a green countryside complete with picturesque village in the
distance.
“So up next is Harkenshire,” Steve
mused.
“You are familiar with this planet,
sir?” chirped JORDI, fiddling with an access panel on the side of the pod.
“You could say that. And I’m sure I
know which session this is too,” but before he could continue:
“Life forms! Seventy meters north!”
cried the metal man, and sure enough, a raiding party composed of equal parts
ogres and orcs, with a smattering of kobolds for good measure was approaching
the village, smashing their crude weapons together in anticipation as they came
nearer to the puny town gates.
“Calm down,” said Steve, easing
himself down onto the ramp produced by the empty pod. “There are enough heroes
at the inn in town to clean up that mess. Rob’s character has a new staff full
of charges to try out.”
The monsters in the distance were
joyfully ripping logs from the village’s shield wall, climbing over each other
for a chance at the terrified townsfolk. Helpless villagers. Then Steve
remembered exactly what was going to happen during this particular session.
He got up in a hurry, tossing away
his second cup of space-coffee. “JORDI, we have to go help them!” Without
question the android abandoned his maintenance work and was trotting alongside
his captain, restraining his hydraulic strides to match.
As they closed in on the dilapidated
gates they could see the fighting within. The meager untrained forces of the
town guard were being eaten alive (in some cases more literally than in
others), but in the center of the town square three warriors, obviously player
characters due to their ludicrous amount of costume and armor detail, fought
off the beasts in a triangle formation.
Reaching and passing through the
broken wall, Steve and his robot entered the fray, Steve staying behind JORDI
as he turned snarling, blunt instrument-wielding fiends into piles of dust with
his vaporizer. Bolts of arcane energy pierced through the abdomens and heads of
orcs, flying from the tip of a robed and bespectacled wizard’s staff. He was
smiling as a boy a quarter of his age, blasting away, flanked by an elven
huntress, loosing shimmering magical arrow after arrow while her enormous
cleavage attempted valiantly to escape its meager restraints.
On the other side was the character
Steve had played, a battle-hardened cleric smashing ogres with morning star and
enchanted shield alike. In the midst of the chaos Steve was searching, hoping
that the girl was still alive when he saw her: the spitting image of his first
girlfriend, Tracy, red hair, freckles and all in the grasp of a particularly bloodthirsty
orc by the back on her plain dress. Rob’s wizard was mopping up the remaining
opposition with some sort of vortex spell while the cleric finished the last
kobold with the sharp edge of his emblemized holy shield, and the huntress kept
an arrow knocked and trained on the final orc with his hostage.
Steve knew how it was about to go
down. He’d replayed it dozens of times in his head at night after the infamous
dumping after sixth period. The elf woman shouted for the monster to unhand
her, to whom it laughed and snorted, and when the glimmering arrow was
protruding from the back of the orc’s head, it had already yanked its axe
across the girl’s throat. And even though the cleric roared in dismay, her
wound too grave even for cure heavy wounds, the sixteen-year-old player who
held the dice chuckled and smirked.
But not this time.
“JORDI, now!” yelled Steve, and with
a speed even faster than that of the huntresses elvish reflexes, the robot
aimed and fired his arm-mounted cannon, the orc’s molecular structure
destabilizing, its axe falling in the dirt, and the girl unharmed save for a
healthy lifelong fear of all orckind.
“My, what a magnificent golem you
have there, young man!” exclaimed the wizard.
No comments:
Post a Comment