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CHAPTER ONE
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“Oh! This looks like an interesting game!” Jasmine flipped the game box around; seeing new retro games in the wild was weird. She scanned the back of the box rather quickly. It was about an anthropomorphic crow that could fly fast that had skates on the bottom of his shoes, and the name of the game was Skate; Jasmine swore she had heard that title before.
On the front cover, it had the main character doing a peace sign, and behind him was a metropolis-looking area called Darkcrest– a weird name, Jasmine thought, and the game did look a little dark. How did one play it when you got it home?
You could dump the ROM and put it on an Everdrive. It also looked like you could use emulators too. It was strange that it could be played via an emulator, but Jasmine didn’t really care about that.
Jasmine laughed. “To think GameWorld would have games like this.”
She smiled as she waited in line to pay for her new game. She also noticed that there were plushies of other well-known video game characters for sale, but she ignored them. She was ready to go home and play this game.
Was this a clone or a parody? She didn’t know and didn’t care. The line seemed to go on forever, and Jasmine was annoyed. Only two more people were left in the line, and then it would be her turn.
Once it was her turn, she plopped the game down on the counter.
The cashier smiled at her. “Will that be all?”
Jasmine nodded, “Yes.”
The cashier rang up the item – the price was $30. That’s a pretty good price.
The cashier tapped the screen, and Jasmine swiped her debit card to pay for it. Then, the cashier smiled again and bagged the item.
“Enjoy.”
Jasmine smiled and nodded as she took the bag. “I will.”
There was always that blissful joy you got when you bought a new video game. Jasmine was getting a weird feeling from it, though, like it was dark or even evil.
She had never found a game that ran on emulators before. Emulators were usually used for pirating games, not playing them.
Nintendo, Sega, and even Microsoft were against emulators, and if you were found running their games on one, you were usually forced to pay a fine or go to jail for piracy. Maybe this new video game company was trying something different? Pay for the game and run it on the software you already have.
Jasmine decided to call her brother, so he could help her get the game started.
It's go time, she thought to herself, as the phone rang.175Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqU1Je6eA3R
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CHAPTER TWO
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Bobby was on his laptop setting up a live stream. He did this sort of thing sometimes but not often. He didn’t do the newer games; he didn’t really care for them. No, retro games were his thing, and lately, he had seen the game Skate advertised. Of course, he knew the title, as it was from a skateboarding game for one of the old Xbox though Bobby forgot which one, and he never played it, as he was more of a Tony Hawk’s Underground fan anyway.
The box of this game actually had a retro look and feel to it, which Bobby liked, and it had popped up a few times on his Facebook newsfeed before, and again today, as he set up for his live stream like the site was reading his mind or something.
The emulators were set up, the screen-grabbing software was set up, and the broadcasting software was set up. Now he just needed to find a game to play.
He shook his head. “I don’t see why kids like this Fortnite crap. When I was their age, we didn’t have games like that.” Growing up in the 90s, he’d been barely able to play Mortal Kombat because of his overbearing parents. Hell, he used to save up all his change and sneak into the arcade tent at the fair to play all the games his mother didn’t want him to get near.
Ah, the good old days back when bloody fighting games were new. Now it seemed like everyone was putting out those sorts of games.
Bobby’s eyes were getting tired, so he got up from his computer chair and went into the kitchen.
He walked to the fridge, opened it up, took out an energy drink, popped the tab, walked to the cabinet where all the glasses were, and took one out.
He was taking his first sip of energy drink when he heard his phone go off. His ringtone was Mr. Crowley by Ozzy Osbourne, which was really loud. He figured it was probably some spammer calling him, so he didn’t rush back to his phone.
Bobby walked back to the dining room, where his laptop and computer chair was, and sat back down, putting the glass on the table.
Bobby picked up his phone and looked at the missed call.
“That’s strange. She doesn’t usually call me.” He paused. “She probably wants something.”
He opened his voicemail and played the message; it was his sister and she bought a new game and wanted to see if his laptop had the required emulators to run it. She didn’t say what game it was, though. Still, he figured it might be an excellent opportunity to stream a new game on his YouTube channel.
He texted Jasmine to come over, and he sipped his energy drink.
“Ah, tasty,” he said. “Guess I’ll wait for Jasmine.”
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~*~
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It wasn’t too long until his sister walked through the front door. Bobby was still sitting down, sipping on his energy drink. Jasmine walked over to the table and dumped the contents of her bag onto it. It was one retro-looking game box. The cover art had the main character doing a peace symbol in front of a dark metropolis. He found the depiction of the city to be ominous and foreboding.
He looked over at Jasmine, standing beside him, looking excited. “So, this is the game, huh?” He picked up the game case.
Jasmine nodded happily. “Yeah, it is.”
She paused for a moment. “It was weird; it was like the game was pulling me towards it. Like it wanted me to buy it.” She looked like she was in deep thought or some sort of a trance.
Honestly, he didn’t like the sound of that or the way his sister looked. The only thing that ‘pulls you to it is some sort of evil spirit or entity. Those are usually in haunted houses and creepy places. Could the game be haunted? Was it cursed or someshit? What about GameWorld, where it’d been sold to Jasmine?
He wasn’t getting any weird vibes from it, not really. It was still in its case, mind you. Maybe if he got the game out, he would feel different, and how was he going to run this thing on the emulators anyways? Only one way to find out.
He opened the case, and it opened up like any other case. No big deal, nothing to panic about. A small CD with the same art from the front of the game was printed on it. He picked up the CD from the sides and blinked as he held the game.
He smiled a crooked smile. “A CD? This really is retro. I was kinda hoping for a DVD or something. Surprised they haven’t just started making video games on Blu-Ray discs.” He laughed.
Jasmine glanced at the mini-CD that her brother was holding. “Interesting, and it has a retro feel indeed. I wonder if we can put that in a CD player and access the soundtrack.”
Bobby laughed. “For real, Jasmine? Who has a CD player anymore?
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CHAPTER THREE
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Bobby had hooked up a USB CD-ROM to his computer. He pushed the button on the CD-ROM, and the tray extended. He put the mini-CD in the tray, which was a perfect fit! What good luck.
He was one of those people that loved retro shit and had a lot of old-fashioned paraphernalia. Hell, up in his room, he had a few desktops from the early 2000’s that he had torn apart and had been trying to make into emulated arcade machines…though, the project wasn’t going too well, mind you.
There was always that excitement of playing a new video game because you didn’t know what would happen or who you would encounter. Bobby was excited, if not a tad wary of the game. Looking at it, he could feel the pull his sister had talked about. He felt like he needed to play this game.
The tray retracted back into the CD-ROM, and you could hear the CD spinning as the computer was doing its job and booting it up. A window opened with the contents of the CD: there was a single game file on the CD and some other files – one was a . PNG file of the cover art, and the other files were just simply set-ups.
Two retro-style USB controllers were hooked up to the ports on the laptop. Nowhere on the box had it mentioned if the game was for one or two players; the two had been hoping for a multiplayer game. If it wasn’t one, then they would just take turns.
Jasmine was anxious and looked at her brother. “What do you think the game will be like?”
Bobby shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably some platformer. If it’s supposed to be retro, that is the kind of game it will be.”
The room had an electric feeling, like a vortex of energy. Of course, he lived in a rather old apartment. That didn’t bother him. He was smart enough to leave the paranormal alone. He loaded up his emulator; it was a simple GUI. It had three tabs: FILES, SETTINGS, and TOOLS. SETTINGS was where you calibrated your gamepads. He clicked on FILES, then located the ROM file on the CD-ROM and opened it. The game loaded, the title screen came up rather promptly, and they were both amazed.
Then something odd happened. That electric feeling? It got stronger.
“Dude, do you feel that?” Jasmine asked.
“Yeah,” Bobby replied. “It’s weird.”
Suddenly, a portal opened up in front of them, coming directly from the laptop screen.
“Are you seeing that?” Bobby asked his sister.
She nodded mutely.
They both reached out a finger and touched the screen. Light shot everywhere! And suddenly, it felt like they were falling, and that was because they were. After it felt like they had been falling for hours, there was a thud; they had finally hit the ground. Bobby was the first to stand up, dust himself off, and look around.
They were in what looked like a forest, and he noticed a wooden sign stuck in the ground. The sign read: Darkcrest, 4 miles, with an arrow pointing to the right. Could they be on a hilltop or something?
Jasmine had pushed herself off the ground and dusted herself off like her brother did before her, and then she blinked and looked down at her hands, only they weren’t hands anymore. She had paws! She didn’t really know how to describe them. They almost looked like cat paws, big and fluffy, the color of a tabby cat.
The center of her paw was round; she had five other round spots where her fingers used to be, and she had sharp protruding claws. She felt like Wolverine from the X-Men for a moment. If she had been changed into something, indeed, her brother had been too.
Jasmine began to scan the area.
“Bobby?” She called, but there was no answer. He had to be around here somewhere.
She began to walk around, and eventually, she spotted her brother. She’d sworn she had just seen him. He had been the first to stand up when they landed in this place. Where were they, and what was the deal with the area?
He was standing by a sign. She looked at it with utter confusion. “Darkcrest, huh? That sounds ominous.” It did sound dark and creepy. So apparently, you could get to this city by going right to the sign and walking for four miles. Who wanted to walk? She didn’t want to walk. She had done enough walking for one day.
This place seemed oddly familiar like she had seen it before. Maybe on a website that was advertising this video game? She wasn’t sure.
She looked over at her brother, who was staring off into the distance with a severe look on his face, only, he wasn’t the brother she remembered – he’d transformed into a giant anthropomorphic bear. Kinda fitting, seeing as they were both from Maine, and the bears from there were mad strong. Of course, Jasmine had to end up as an oversized cat, a lousy cat…Jasmine was scared of cats, as they’d never liked her much.
Jasmine looked over to Bobby. “So, what do we do?”
Bobby broke his concentration on whatever he was thinking about and shrugged. “I don’t know. Follow the sign?” Yeah, good idea, he thought. You’re in a new world, and you don’t know what’s out there, so you suggest ‘following the sign’…you are probably going to get yourself and your sister killed. Then again, you are a huge bear, so why not. Whatever is out there is perhaps smaller and weaker than you.
He wondered if they had any extraordinary abilities. That would be awesome, and he knew there were bad guys out there, and they probably had to take them down. They could be the heroes of this story.
A smile came over his face.
Bobby looked over at Jasmine. “You know this might just be a dream. We are probably knocked out lying on the floor and are just waiting to wake up.”
In truth, he was lying. He wanted to make Jasmine feel better, so he lied. He didn’t want his sister to worry about what was happening to them. This was like all the comic books he had read as a child before Jasmine had been born. Some nerd gets sucked into another world, and he, she, or they become its savior. With a name like Darkcrest, he was expecting something from a horror movie or a fantasy novel. Maybe both?
Bobby balled up his paw and punched the air, and when he did, he could hear a crack like he had hit something solid. He noticed what looked like an air slice come from his paw. That was different. Could this be his special attack?
He looked over at Jasmine and nodded. That was him telling her to try to use an attack.
She nodded back, concentrated, and did what he dubbed a double slash scratch attack with much ease. Jasmine’s eyes went wide with amazement and excitement. She was a cat, so she had some sort of slash attack. She kinda thought of herself as that cat Digimon....the name wasn’t coming to her right now. She felt powerful!
But then she got a feeling of dread. She looked up to the sky and saw a few of what she assumed to be drones flying overhead that looked like giant, robotic birds. She blinked and looked over at her brother.
Bobby nodded. “I see them too; you can hide. If I move, they will see me and probably strike.” This would be a perfect time to test out his new attack! You find out you have a powerful attack, and now you must fight the bad guys. This was typical video game bullshit. He had no actual proof they were in a video game; it was just the only thing that made sense right now.
He wondered if his sister was going to listen to him this time. Ever since they were kids, she never listened to him, especially when he was right.
Jasmine nodded as she looked at her brother and found a bush to hide in rather quickly.
Bobby wasn’t worrying about anything right now, but as he looked up at the sky at one of the drones, it started speeding toward his head. It was coming real fast; his eyes were locked onto it, and he simply shrugged before punching the thing and when his bear-paw hit the drone, it shattered into a million pixelated pieces.
He blinked. “That was kind of easy.”
With the destruction of that single drone, others in the area were alerted to its annihilation and called to the site. Bobby saw the swarm, and he swallowed hard. Maybe this hadn’t been a great idea… perhaps he should have run.
But Nah, he thought. Bobby was going to stand his ground. The swarm had surrounded him; all of the drones had opened up their mechanical beaks and had begun to fire a barrage of laser shots toward h.im
He raised his paw and swatted away the laser shots like they were flies. He then decided climbing a tree to get on the drones' level would be a good idea. He jumped on each of the drones, smashing them individually. He watched each one crash to the ground. When he landed on his feet, he made a giant thud, and the earth shook for a moment or two.
He dusted himself off; they really needed to haul ass. There would probably be more drones coming.
Surprisingly, he didn’t use his bear punch to defeat these foes, which were a bit too easy to defeat. Either this was the first level or some sort of tutorial. Well, it probably wasn’t a tutorial since no annoying person or creature was popping up to tell him what to do.
He watched Jasmine come out from behind the bush.
He had succeeded in what he had set out to do. He was assuming that to get out of this world, he had to beat the game, and he figured there were some answers in Darkcrest. He was going to call it Darkcrest City for now. Darkcrest just sounded too ominous and dark. He actually wondered what the city was like, to be honest.
He blinked and noticed a life bar and a small picture icon with lives next to it. He had three lives.
Bobby shook his head. “Great.”
Jasmine walked over to her brother and blinked. “What?”
Bobby pointed to his life bar and mini-icons. “That.”
Jasmine blinked. “Oh.”
She looked under her brother’s life bar and mini-icons and realized she had one too. Yup, it looked like they were in the game she had picked up from GameWorld.
Jasmine looked back at her brother. “So, we’ve gotta make it to that city, right?”
Bobby nodded. “Right.”
Jasmine laughed. “It’s four miles! We’ll make it in no time!”
Bobby shook his head. “Remember the world we are in. Probably gonna be roughly eight zones before we hit the actual city. The city is probably the end game where the final boss is.”
Jasmine sighed. “You’re probably right, and I don’t think we will be able to do this by ourselves.”
Fast people were indispensable. That was true. They would probably have to form alliances with the locals. From what he understood, he was seemingly the powerhouse, and Jasmine could be a speed user. They just needed to find someone that could use flight. A mix of a flight and a speed user.
They would probably find different abilities on this long and challenging journey. Bobby couldn’t think about that right now; all that was on his mind was getting into that city and out of this forest. Pushing on, that is what they needed to do, and he wasn’t going to let his sister ride on his coattails.
He started walking towards the city – going right where the sign was pointing. Jasmine followed behind her brother. He was getting a feeling, and not a good one. It felt like they were being watched. Of course, they were being protected; why wouldn’t they be? The bad guys always watched the new heroes when they showed up, which is what they were – new heroes.
He knew he was strong, but he would have to get stronger if he wanted to beat this game. It was exciting, and if they lived to tell the tale, they would have an incredible story to write down, and probably no one would believe them.
Now, stereotypically, the first level of a game was always the easiest. That is when you are introduced to the game mechanics, enemies, and the foundation of the world you are playing in. Right now, though, it was literally the world they were in.
Bobby was expecting to come up on a zoning sign pretty soon. They hadn’t. They had come up to a log bridge instead.
Bobby stepped onto it first, and it was a bit wobbly. He didn’t see any enemies around. He looked down beneath the bridge and saw some water. Nothing was in it. He found that strange. He could hear it gushing under his feet.
He shrugged again and walked across the bridge, and Jasmine quickly followed suit.
When they got to the other side of the bridge, they found things that looked like monitors and, on the monitor screens, were items. He saw one article that looked like a giant spiked mallet.
Bobby looked at Jasmine and pointed at the item monitor. “You take that one.”
Jasmine nodded. “Alright!” she walked over to the monitor and kicked it as hard as possible. When the monitor broke, it made this dinging sound, and then an ethereal aura materialized around Jasmine, and the spiked mallet appeared in her hands.
She blinked and then smiled. “Cool!”
It was cool. Bobby knew if they traveled a little more, they would run into some bad guys, and a game only gave you oversized items when you needed to use them against something big, bad, and terrible.
Jasmine looked at her brother. “You don’t need an item?”
Bobby shook his head. “Maybe not now.”
He looked over at his life bar, and it was missing some life. Of course, the fight with those drones. He had taken some damage. He noticed two other monitors, which had rings or coins in them. He didn’t know which. He walked over and kicked two of the monitors and collected what was in them, and he noticed that some of his life had been restored. He’d played a game like this many times, and there was even a cartoon like this.
Jasmine blinked and looked at her brother. “Your life has been restored!”
Bobby nodded. “Yup, I figured my life would be restored if I collected a ring or two. Call it a hunch.”
“A hunch? People still use that term?” Jasmine laughed.
Their brief moment of comedy had been interrupted. The buzzing sound could be heard in the sky, and both looked up.
Giant. Robotic. Wasps.
The first thing that came to Bobby’s mind was to run far... fucking… away! But that wasn’t going to help. Even if they did run, the wasps would find them eventually. They probably had some heat-seeking components. They were most likely sent out there to exterminate whatever was in these forests. The game boss was perhaps an angry asshole who didn’t like animals. Who didn’t like animals? They were so freaking cute! Bobby looked over at his sister, who was looking at the giant robotic wasps.
Jasmine smirked as she looked up at the wasps. “I think I can take you.”
Bobby blinked as he heard what his sister had said.
Has she gone fucking nuts?
There was a giant swarm of the things. Twelve at the least, and his sister thought she could beat them. Ugh, this kid was always getting into trouble, and there was no way he could stop her from doing stupid stuff like this.
He sighed. All he could do was back her up. He looked at her, and she had a death grip on the spiked mallet. It looked like she was eager to use her new toy.
She was giving off heavy Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad vibes.
Bobby looked over at Jasmine and sighed. All he could do was back her up. “Be mindful of your life. You haven’t lost any yet, and we don’t know when we will come across more rings or coins in this world.”
He blinked, and he noticed he had a ring count of 5. He had won his match, but some of his life had been chipped away. If she got injured, he could give her some. Still, as he said… she should be mindful of her life. She’d always been like this. Rushing into battles and not worrying about the consequences.
He continued to watch Jasmine, and it looked like she was itching to go. How could he convince her that this wasn’t a good idea?
He couldn't.
He watched Jasmine jump into the air, and boy could she jump high. Maybe that was one of her abilities. He watched her jump on the robotic wasps and send them hurling toward the ground, and upon impact, they exploded. She didn’t even have to use her mallet, which Bobby had only just noticed that she had. It was like she had been training for this moment all her life. All twelve wasps had been destroyed, and a ton of black smoke was rolling off them. She landed next to her brother, smiled, and gave a peace sign like she was looking for a camera or something. Bobby rolled his eyes as he noticed some of her life had diminished. Not a lot of it. One of those wasps had probably got a lick in. That wasn’t fun, and it didn’t look like she was injured or anything.
They looked at the horizon – it looked endless; the world looked endless. There were trees and rock formations that went on forever.
How do they start finding a way to the city? It looked like there was a desert area. He hated deserts. Hopefully, this world didn’t have a sun that ran after you. He hated that shit. They were going to have to walk through the grassy plains. That is what he was going to call this area: The Grassy Plains. It did have a ring to it.
He looked over to Jasmine. “What else do you think we will find here?”
Jasmine put her hand under her chin and looked into the distance as if she was in deep thought. “You know, with all this grass…probably grasshoppers and other grass creatures.”
Bobby nodded. “Probably more flying asshole creatures too.”
That is what he had called bees, wasps, and yellowjackets in his home world. They were flying assholes, and for some reason, these assholes were always attracted to him. It didn’t matter. He could kill them quickly, and they both had three lives. So, it wasn’t like they really had to worry about things right now, and he did wonder why there were so many things in the sky. He hadn’t seen any information about an evil ruler or this area under protection or surveillance.
It was just strange.
They showed up and had to deal with these assholes. Bobby was a strong bear, so he probably didn’t have anything to worry about. He just wouldn’t be able to get into tight spaces, and that would be a drag.
Bobby blinked. “You want to explore, huh.”
Jasmine smiled happily. “Yup!”
That had always been Jasmine’s forte. She would thrive in this world by fighting, exploring, and finding stuff she wasn’t supposed to see. Right now, there wasn’t that much to explore. Both of them started to walk.
They were wading through high grass. It looked like it hadn’t ever been cut. They had to keep their eyes out for bad guys. This world had a lot of bad guys, and they both knew they hadn’t seen them yet or even half of them.
They came to a ledge, and there was a vine they could swing on to get to the other side. Bobby looked at the vine in disgust. He didn’t want to do this right now.
Jasmine nudged her brother with her elbow. “This will be fun.”
Bobby looked down over the edge. There was a lot of nothing below them, like if you fell, you’d be falling for hours, and Bobby didn’t know if his bear paws would be able to grab the vine and if his weight would snap it.
He went to look at his sister, but she had already swung on the vine and was on the other side. He shook his head. Great. Now it was his turn. He backed up a few feet and ran towards the vine, swung on it, and when he got closer to the other ledge, e jumped and landed safely. His heart was beating a mile a minute. He didn’t want to do that again. Not ever again.
The grass was shorter on this ledge, and he looked down and could see rocks and clay in the grass. That was interesting and weird. He wondered if all the terrain was going to be like this.
They kept on walking; the scenery was lovely. They weren’t in the high grass anymore, so maybe they wouldn’t encounter more robotic insects. Yeah, sure, they wouldn’t. They expected something to jump out from the background and attack them any minute, but nothing was happening.
He shouldn’t even think like that. These were beginner, bad guys – the more they ventured through the land, the bigger and worse the villains would get. He looked over toward Jasmine and wondered what that spiked mallet could do.
They kept walking until Bobby saw a cave. He blinked. There was a big stone wall that blocked the entrance to the cave.
Exploring new areas was usually fun, so he walked over to the stone wall and hit it lightly. The thing was hollow. Either one of two things was going to happen. He would hit it with his mighty bear paw, or Jasmine would hit it with her spiked mallet. It didn’t look like Jasmine was paying much attention to the cave. There was a grassy hill on top of the cave, and Jasmine had found a vine and climbed onto the hill to look at more scenery.
It looked like it was going to be Bobby that was going to go inside and explore. He hit the stone wall as hard as he could, and the wall crumbled. He walked into the dark cave and noticed some lights on the left and right sides of the walls. Lights, huh? Could this be a mine or something?
Bobby started to walk through the cave. He heard some bats as they flew over his head, and he wondered if they were mechanical or genuine. They looked like real bats, not those robotic enemies he had been coming up against, but he could be wrong. He had ducked to make sure he missed them.
It was spooky in the cave, and he could feel a chill. A gust of wind had blown through the cave, making an eerie sound. He continued to walk until he was stopped by more of those monitors. They had the ring logos on them, and there were only three. He kicked all three of them, and the rings were added to his ring total. He wasn’t paying attention to how many rings he had. He wanted to see what was in the cave. Like before, he felt like he was being watched.
He noticed that the ground had a dark blue tint and was littered with stones and minerals. He’d never seen dark blue rocks and minerals. He thought that the dark blue shade could be coming from the light source.
As he continued to walk, he found a gap. The hole wasn’t huge; he could probably jump. He sighed; he didn’t want to climb another vine to get over.
He jumped the gap and landed on the other side. Bobby made a slight thudding sound when he landed. He looked up at the ceiling and saw what looked like beetles walking upside down, and he blinked. He knew what was coming. Next, he was a gamer, of course. The beetles started spinning and dropping. He ran as fast as he could from the beetles. Every step he took shook the ground, and after he was away from that area, he stopped and caught his breath.
What the hell had just happened?
This seemed like a whole new mechanic for this world. Maybe this was a different game. No, that didn’t make sense. He looked up and saw some dirt and rocks falling. That must be Jasmine on the surface walking around.
He noticed a few blocks, and they looked breakable. They were hanging in the air, and he reached up and punched them. All that came out were rings. More rings were added to his ring collection. These would come in handy a little while later. He knew it. He kept on walking through the cave.
Nothing out of the ordinary, and he liked how quiet it was. He knew that the quietness wasn’t going to last for long. As he walked, he heard something loud and heavy coming towards him. His eyes went wide when he saw what it was. Hell, he thought he was the only serious thing in these tunnels.
It was a large vehicle that looked like a car of sorts and had a drill on the front of it. The drill looked like it was going a mile a minute.
There was a robot manning the car.
So, what was this thing doing? Drilling for, what, ore? It looked like he had gotten himself into a pickle. He tended to do that rather than on purpose. Was that the reason why dirt and rocks were falling from the ceiling?
Now was he really supposed to fight this? If so, how did he fight it? He blinked. Man, this was going to be a pain in the ass. The Drill Car came towards him, and he jumped over it before it hit a wall. The drill made a hole in the wall, and the cave shook slightly. So, this thing was going to slam into walls until he defeated it. Great, just great. He swore he had fought this thing a long time ago. He was getting massive deja vu. If that was the case, he didn’t remember how to take it down. Maybe he would figure out how to beat it while he fought it. He watched The Drill Car turn itself back around and point itself at him.
Bobby shook his head. “You are going to be a pain in my ass.”
He planted his feet and watched The Drill Car approaching him at breakneck speeds. It was coming closer and closer by the second. When it was a few inches away from him, he jumped and smacked the robot driver in the head with his paw and landed behind The Drill Car. It had stopped for a moment, and the robot rubbed his head as if it had hurt. Bobby blinked. Was the robot the weak spot? That was predictable.
Okay, how many times did he need to hit the robot before The Drill Car blew up? This had to be a boss or sub-boss battle. If this was a sub-boss, he didn’t want to see what the real boss looked like.
Bobby jumped back a few feet before The Drill Car turned around, and the robot was glowing red. He looked pissed, and Bobby laughed and shook his head. He motioned to The Drill Car to come at him. For once, Bobby was acting cocky and confident. He knew how to take this motherfucker down. Years of playing video games had paid off. The Drill Car came at Bobby, this time, it was faster, and he did the same thing as before, jumped over the car, hit the robot on the inside, and landed behind the vehicle. This time The Drill Car did something different. It started shooting flames from the back of the car. Bobby hadn’t noticed two extensions come out of the back of the vehicle, but he saw them now.
Okay, now we got a car throwing flames from its asshole. Next run-through, he had to keep that in mind. The fire had hit him, making him lose a bit of life. The rings he had stored gave him back a little of his life, though, so he could breathe a little easier knowing that.
Bobby jumped a few more feet. He had to be careful because he was coming upon the gap and didn’t want to fall down in the opening and lose a life. A lost life right now wouldn’t be ideal.
The Drill Car had turned around and was charging at Bobby again, and this time the whole car was glowing red, and the vehicle had an evil smile plastered on the front of it. He wondered how Jasmine was doing up top…maybe she had come up on a mighty enemy and was fighting it too. Careful, be careful with life. He had told Jasmine, and he would have to live by those words. He would see her soon, right after The Drill Car was put down, and they could use the thing for scrap after it was dead.
Bobby blinked. “Great. This thing turned into Christine.” He figured this would be the last go-through with this monster. The Drill Car came fast towards Bobby, and this time he just waited for The Drill Car to get a few inches away from him, and then with all of his might, he smashed the front of the car. The Drill Car was broken into a billion pieces, and the robot got out of the car and ran away to fight another day. Just hitting that car had cost him some of his life. He walked over to the broke drill car, looked through the wreckage, and saw a tag or sticker; he didn’t know what it was. Whatever it was, it read: Property of Darkcrest Enterprise. Darkcrest? That was the name of the city they were heading to. What the fuck was this? The plot thickens.
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CHAPTER FOUR
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Bobby walked through the rest of the cave, and it was quiet for the most part. Eventually, he found the exit, which was covered by a giant rock wall.
Bobby laughed. “Incredible Hulk, eat your heart out.”
He hit the rock wall with all his might to create an exit. He did have to dig out some of the smaller stones to make his way through the exit until he was finally out, but he sucked in a breath of fresh air. This was awesome! Then he looked around to see not such an incredible sight. The sky had turned crimson, and the grass and other vegetation had been burned. He looked around for Jasmine.
Bobby shook his head. “I knew I shouldn’t have gone down there.”
He heard someone or something huffing and running up behind him. With his state of mind right now, it wouldn’t be wise to run up against him. He looked behind him, and it was just Jasmine. She looked okay but out of breath. It looked like a battle went on up here, and it seemed like the bad guys had won…for now.
Jasmine looked at Bobby. “It was awful. These things came down from the sky and just rained fire. I barely got away.”
Bobby nodded. “Yeah, it was pretty much the same in the cave.
We both battled some pretty tough bad guys. It’s okay, though.” They just needed to find more rings – he’d noticed that Jasmine was low on health.
He wondered what kind of beast could rain fire from the sky. Could it have been a blimp or an airplane? That would make too much sense, and it seemed like this world didn’t make much sense. They started to walk again, and they didn’t get even a few feet until they noticed a bridge. It was hanging on one side and fire on the other, and there was no way to get across without jumping and climbing the bridge like a ladder. The ropes were still on fire, and they were snapping fast, and he shook his head and looked over to Jasmine.
Bobby then looked back at the bridge. “I know what we must do.”
Jasmine nodded too. “Okay!”
They both backed up a few feet, got a running start, jumped onto the bridge, climbed it like a ladder, and then climbed up onto the grassy hill that was pretty much ash now. He couldn’t believe what had happened. So now he was going to look out for fire-breathing enemies.
Jasmine was walking a few feet ahead of him, and she found more of those monitors and kicked them. The rings came out and healed here. Whatever rings were left over from her healing added to her ring count. Being careful and mindful of your health while you were under fire from the enemy, now that was hard. She had cuts and bruises on her body, which had somehow disappeared. These rings were magical. She continued to lead the way, and her brother brought up the rear for once. She wondered what was on his mind; he was probably trying to deduce some plan to defeat the monsters and bad guys. That was so much like him; she just liked to explore and look for hidden things. It was unlike Bobby to go into a place off the beaten path.
He thought he could find something useful in the cave. All that he found in that cave was a powerful bad guy to fight. So, he felt the bad guy he had battled was a sub-boss. So, was that thing that rained down fire from the sky a boss? It couldn’t be. There was no way she could of hit it, and it didn’t come down and try to fight her. It was just a hazard that changed the landscape.
They came upon a sign that read: End of Zone 1. Was this a zone? Did they complete it? She blinked and walked past the sign so did Bobby.
When they did, the landscape changed again, and another sign read: Entering Zone 2. Okay, another zone, and the world was still on fire, smothering.
Birds were flying above them, and they didn’t look very friendly, and they both blinked as they looked at their rings. They didn’t have any more rings. So, entering a new zone killed their supply of rings. Bobby was standing under a burning tree, looking up and seeing something metallic. He jumped and hit it. It was one of those monitors. It had ten rings in, and the rings were divided between him and Jasmine. Now they had rings.
They walked a few more inches and were greeted with a spike pit.
They both blinked and then looked at a ledge moving up and down. Bobby didn’t want to do any more fucking jumping. This was getting bad. The birds above them started spitting small fireballs at them.
One hit Bobby and lit his ass on fire. This was when he decided to make that leap of faith and jump onto the moving ledge he made, and then he waited for Jasmine, and then they both jumped onto another moving ledge and another. After the last one, they were on solid ground, passing by their first checkpoint. The checkpoint looked like a stop sign, and when they went by it, stars appeared above it.
So, if they died, they would be respawned here.
They walked a few feet further and were greeted by robot chickens that breathed fire. God, he didn’t want to deal with any more fire-based baddies. He kicked the chicken in the face, and it smashed into seemingly a billion pieces, and then he saw more on the horizon coming their way.
There was a bridge, this time, it was intact. Jasmine got in front of her brother, and it looked like she would have time to finally use her mallet. When the fire came down from the sky, she wasn’t going to try and fight. She ran across the bridge to the fire chickens and swung her mallet with all her might, and they went down relatively quickly.
She smiled, looked back at her brother, and gave him the peace sign with a cheesy smile.
Bobby shook his head. “Show-off.”
He walked across the bridge and then stood beside his sister, and they continued to walk through the area. There were no more baddies for a little while, and then they came to a bunch of trees that were dropping bombs that looked like coconuts, and they had to haul ass. Neither of them wanted to get hit. They needed full health. Both of them felt like they would come upon a boss soon. They reached a giant rock, leaned against it, and sighed. That had been one of the most challenging runs that they had done yet. Both of them knew there were going to be more dangerous zones ahead. They were surprised they hadn’t come upon any of the locals to help them. Maybe they were the only people in this world right now.
Bobby looked at Jasmine.
“Having fun yet?” He huffed.
Jasmine rolled her eyes. “Sure.”
She was huffing too. She knew this resting was going to be interrupted by something soon. Maybe aliens or something. She wouldn’t be surprised if there were aliens in this world. Aliens beaming themselves down from another planet would be cool, and she’d never played any games where that had happened. She looked over at her brother and knew something was on his mind.
He’d always been the strong and silent type, and she didn’t like it when he got like that.
Bobby was wondering if he should tell Jasmine about what he had found in the wreckage of that vehicle. Darkcrest Enterprises. It sounded like an evil place to work. It probably was; why would someone want to make things that destroyed this remarkable landscape? Maybe they had to; it could be all in the story of the world that they were in. He wondered how long it would take for them to bump into the area boss.
Usually, it didn’t take long; they were in zone two. He didn’t have a name for this zone. He could call it Fire Hills, but that wasn’t its official name. He leaned against the giant rock, which was about the size of a boulder, and it started to move as he depended on it.
Bobby blinked. “What the hell...”
He turned around and started pushing it. Jasmine saw what he was doing and decided to help him move the boulder. After they got the boulder out of the way, they noticed a secret area. There was a ladder that they could climb down, and it looked like it was lit up by some sort of light source. Jasmine smiled happily and immediately began to climb down into the secret area. Bobby followed behind her. For the first time, both of them went into a secret location, and then both saw the light source.
It was a room full of coins, not rings, coins. It was exciting, and both grabbed as many coins as possible. Oddly, the coins registered as rings and were added to their ring collection. It looked like one room. Jasmine began looking around and saw what looked like a rock-themed lever, she pulled it, and then a wall suddenly opened up. It was another room, and this room was a bit darker. There was still light coming out of it, and Jasmine’s face lit up like a child’s face on Christmas morning.
Bobby walked behind Jasmine. She was the first person in the room. It looked like an old pirate’s treasure room. There were gold coins on the ground and a being with a sword and shield. It looked to be some sort of humanoid. They were human, well, they used to be. Could this be another person who came to this world and did not survive?
Jasmine looked around the room, and Bobby went and examined the body. He took his bear paw and knocked on the skeleton. It was metal. Of course, it was metal. Everything in this world was metal. Why did he think they had found a human? He could be an idiot.
Jasmine ran her hand along the stone walls, looking for another hidden switch. She found another rock-themed lever and pulled it, then ten compartments opened, and more of the robotic beings popped out. This time they weren’t dead; they were reanimated. The one Bobby was next to came to life too. He jumped back a few feet. They wander into an area and get ambushed by metal men. Great, just fucking great. Bobby dug his feet down into the earth below and was getting ready to fight. They could take all these assholes. It’s not like they haven’t been in this situation before. They’ve been in this situation multiple times today.
Bobby used all his might and charged at the robotic person he was fighting, he hit the robot in the chest, and it broke into a million pieces. He stepped over the discarded robot and went to help Jasmine. She was swinging wildly with her mallet. It didn’t look like she was hitting a single one. He kind of laughed and went and punched all the rest of the robotic people in the chest.
Defeating them, and he watched them get destroyed. More wreckage for them to step over.
Jasmine looked over to Bobby. “What the hell are those?”
Bobby shrugged. “I don’t know.”
The area began to shake again, and the spaces that held the robotic warriors merged into one large door, and both walked through it. This had to be a way out. They hoped it was a way out; neither wanted to deal with any more robotic shit today. Inside the next room was a giant water fountain. The water was sky blue and very clear. There were two canteens on the ground, and each other picked up a canteen, dipped them in the water, and took a sip. They felt rejuvenated. Could this be a health recovery spring? They both have seen places like this in games that they had played. After they drank, another door opened. That had to be the exit. They walked through the door, and there was a ladder. Yup, this was the exit. Jasmine climbed up. First, Bobby was right behind her, and they climbed up and were back above ground.
They both looked at the sky, which was still on fire. Both of them felt they would be meeting this area's boss very soon. Two against one would be great odds, especially for them. They had fought bad guys separately, and that wasn’t fun. Fighting with a friend was always a lot more fun. They eyed a bridge; it looked pretty sturdy. Jasmine walked over to the bridge and looked down below.
There was water. It was blood red.
It looked like it had been stained by fire.
Some people just liked watching the world born, and it was up to Jasmine and her brother to save this world from the wrong people.
Her brother was standing right behind her, she could feel his hot breath on her neck and then she started to walk across the bridge, and her brother followed her. They had just started this journey and had been through some shit already. When was this going to be over? She knew it probably wasn’t going to be over soon.
Jasmine and Bobby got to the other side of the bridge, and they both noticed just a small hill, that is what they were standing on, and more bridges. It was like they were being led somewhere. Where could they be going? Probably into danger once again.
Jasmine was going to lead the charge.
Jasmine kept a hefty grip on her spiked mallet, and she started walking over the bridges, Bobby followed behind, and the only reason he was behind Jasmine was to keep her from getting attacked by any other bad guys.
He didn’t feel like talking, and he continued looking around. Oddly, no creatures or robots were in the area. He heard something buzzing in the sky, but he couldn’t see what it was. It was like he was the lone wolf; they always stayed a few feet behind the pack to defend it.
It was hidden by the blood-red clouds in the sky. Yeah, they looked like blood now and not just fire. You know that feeling you get when you’re walking into a trap? He was getting that feeling. Maybe it was more of a bad vibe; he just knew some heavy shit would go down soon.
They went over a few more covered bridges until they came to the mouth of the burning forest. There was no heat coming from the forest. It just looked like it was on fire. Jasmine just stood there, looked at the mouth of the forest, and shook her head. Who could do this? She was actually getting mad and wanted to fight something, and luckily, there wasn’t anything around. She wanted to go crazy and start fighting whatever she saw. She knew she had to make sure her health was good. You know, this was different than actually playing a video game. If she was just playing a game, she could pause the game and take a little break. Maybe go grab a coffee or an energy drink and then refocus her energy to play the game. That wasn’t what this was. This was very real and scary.
Bobby looked at the mouth of the burning forest; he had a solemn look on his face. “Welcome to hell.”
It’s true. Nothing else could be worse than this. Hell couldn’t be worse than these. Bobby walked in front of Jasmine and started walking towards the burning forest.
Should he call this area this? The Burning Forest. It had a ring to it when they fully entered the forest. He felt the energy change. It felt very dark and foreboding in the woods. He looked around for places where bad guys could pop out and attack them.
He didn’t find any. If there were any bad guys, they probably would have popped out by now. So, they continued to walk. There was still that humming and swishing in the sky. They still felt like they were being taken somewhere by some sort of spirit.
Honestly, it sounded like an airship.
Was something going to come down and attack them? Bobby wished he had more weapons besides his fists. His fists would not be able to defend an airship and whatever came from it. Again, Bobby thought they were walking into a trap. He was just getting that vibe. He wasn’t going to say anything because he didn’t want to scare Jasmine. She probably knew something was up.
The ground started to shake a little – something was about to happen. What next? Snakes falling from the sky? He dug his feet into the ground, expecting an onslaught of robotic bad guys. Nothing came; maybe they were catching a break. Both of them looked into the distance, and they saw another bridge and what looked like water. They couldn’t make out the color of the water. Most likely, it was still blood red. They approached the bridge and saw a silhouette of a person. There were people in this world?! Maybe they could both get some answers. This person looked back and had wings. Wait, was this person a freaking bird? They walked closer, and the figure got clearer, and that is what it was. A bird.
It was about Jasmine’s size. She had to be about five feet tall. Bobby was a bear and had to be about seven feet tall.
He was a bigger target, which is why he was in front of Jasmine for a while.
Jasmine looked at Bobby. “Should we try to go say hi?”
Bobby shrugged. “It couldn’t hurt.” Yeah, it couldn’t hurt. That is all he could think up to say. He was still leading the party, so to speak, and he approached this new person, and it looked like the bird was just starting into the distance. Almost looked like he was waiting for something to happen. Like he was expecting a large-scale invasion. They figured that he could be some evil robot that had been sent to kill them.
“You know I can see you, right?” The bird spoke as he turned around and looked at Bobby. The bird had dark eyes, a yellow beak, and white fluff on his chest. He also wore a pair of knee-high leather boots with straps. They had wheels on the bottom of them, and both of his hands were covered in white gloves. He extended one to Bobby. “The name is Skate.”
The health items! Three of each. So that meant each of them had health items. That must mean they could heal themselves by eating or drinking something after a bottle. The things went directly into their inventory. The items they had just acquired had icons next to their life display.
Bobby thought that these items came into play when your life dropped to a certain amount and healed you instantly.
After the items had been bought, the shack disappeared. They needed some kind of catchphrase, but all the cool ones had been taken by other people. That was strange but helpful, and now it was time to enter the zone.
Skate laughed. “That was a first for me.”
Bobby smirked. “Item shops aren’t uncommon, but I didn’t think I’d find one in a world like this.”
Skate cocked his head to one side in confusion. “A world like this? What do you mean?”
Bobby laughed. “We aren’t from around here. We are just passing through and getting sucked in on this adventure.” He didn’t want to lie to Skate. He knew the bird wouldn’t believe they were from a different world. Maybe that is why they got sucked into this game. To save this world.
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CHAPTER FIVE
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Skate, The Crow. It was an odd name, and Bobby blinked and shook Skate’s hand; he assumed that Skate was here because of the forest being on fire. Now it looked like the world was falling apart, and who were these new people?
Skate was going to take all the help he could. Darkcrest was anvil company, and the person behind it was eviler. Lord Asterios Darkcrest. It did sound like a chick’s name, but this person thought he was god and lord of everything he saw and touched. Sociopath, a nasty dude, and a tad narcissistic. So, what was Skate going to do? Push beyond his limits and bring this asshole down. That is what he was doing here.
Skate stared at the sky. “I know you are up there; come down and face us like a man!” Skate was angry and had been mad for a long time. He shook his hand at the sky like a demented old man. The skates on the bottom of his boots made him the fastest in the land, and he then turned to look at Bobby again. A bear? So, this guy must be powerful. He could smash giant stones and beat up small bad guys easily. So, there was that.
Jasmine had walked up next to her brother and saw who he was talking to. It was the guy on the video game cover that she had picked up, and she blinked as she looked at both of them. This was surreal, and she wanted to fan girl about this moment, but she kept her composure for the most part. She still had a big smile on her face. She looked at both of the males, and they both had serious looks on their faces, and her smile slowly turned into a frown. There was a dark and foreboding feeling in the area, and she wondered if the boy had also felt it.
Bobby looked at Skate. “So, you know who’s doing this?”
Skate nodded Solemnly. “Yes, sadly.”
Bobby nodded and sighed. “We got to get into that city, don’t we?”
Skate nodded again. “Yeah, but it looks like we are blocked off from it.
We just got this bridge that leads over to that little floating area, and I’m confident if we venture over there, we won't get attacked by whatever has done this.” He had lost some friends when whatever it was had rained fire from the sky. He thought he had seen a dragon's head; it looked red. A fire dragon? That wouldn’t surprise him. This world was messed up, and he felt like it was up to him to fix it for future generations.
He had a serious look as he stared at the floating area.
Bobby smiled. “You know there are three of us, right?” He pointed to himself, Jasmine, and Skate. “I think we can take whatever they can throw at us.” Now Bobby was just being optimistic and didn’t want to show the rest of them that he was scared.
This big bad, and the burly bear was scared.
Bobby looked at the bridge and approached it. He had an unbridled rage inside of him, which was terrifying. Scared of what might come after them, scared to see people get hurt and killed. He had been fighting off people his entire life, and now he could finally use that for good. He knew that they could save this world, no matter what.
Both Skate and Jasmine had a look on their faces. They thought what Bobby was going to do was a bit insane.
Did he think he could beat whatever came after them? Skate blinked and looked over at Jasmine, and motioned toward Bobby. “Is he serious?” Jasmine closed her eyes, shook her head, and gripped her mallet tighter.
“Sadly, he is. He’s strong-willed, stubborn, and doesn’t give up on people.”
Jasmine smiled; she ran after her brother Skate was right behind them, and he shook his head from side to side.
Skate looked at Jasmine’s backside. “Following both of you is going to get me killed!” He didn’t want to die. Now it was just a matter of time, all three of them stepped onto the floating area at the same time, and then all three heard something rumbling in the sky, and they watched the area grow a bit wider. They were standing in the middle of an arena, and now there were three bridges to climb.
Skate blinked. “I’m assuming these will take us to different parts of the area.” It suddenly got hot, and Skate looked up to the sky, and it was a giant red fire-breathing dragon! He knew it! The dragon's underside opened up, and mini-humanoid versions of the dragon flew down from the underbelly. They were dragon-themed fighting robots. What was going to happen next? There were six of them, and they circled the heroes and they were getting ready to strike.
Bobby blinked. “Um, guys? What do you want to do?”
Jasmine smiled. “Smash them!”
Skate scowled. “Defeat them like the scum they are!” With all of that said, the robots came in even closer.
One looked like it was about to breathe fire and bring pain. Another one was raising its hand and charging up a bit of fire energy to be fired at the trio. Okay, now they had to combine their skills to beat these guys. So, a plan would be excellent. None of them had a plan, and Bobby planned to simply hit the shit out of them. Also, these robots were about as tall as Bobby was. Somewhere between six feet tall and seven feet. This would be a fabulous time for Bobby to show them what he was made of. He wanted a weapon to play with. His paws were pretty fucking deadly, though. Should he be the first one to attack these guys?
It didn’t matter who started attacking who. It just had to happen, and Bobby was going to be the first one; he ran toward one of the robots and hit it in the chest. There was a loud clunking sound, like flesh hitting metal.
The robot just tilted its head back and laughed at him. What was that? Why didn’t it work? Bobby blinked, and the robot hit him and sent him flying around a few feet. He got knocked to the ground, and some of his health dropped. His eyes went wide as he stared at the ground, and then he pushed himself back up. He wasn’t going to give up that easily. He honestly saw himself as the hero of this story.
If Jasmine had never picked up that game, neither of them would be here.
Skate hadn’t moved. It looked like the bird was looking for some sort of opening; the local didn’t charge in and go willy-nilly against these things. Maybe he had scouted them and knew what they were up against. Bobby and Jasmine were the outsiders, and both had decided to jump into the fray to help. They would need to beat the game if they wanted to return to their world. Bobby looked over towards the robot, and it was still laughing at him. This pissed Bobby off. There was a fiery angry aura around Bobby. It looked like there were flames surrounding him. There were the metaphorical flames of anger. He charged after the robot and hit it as hard as he could.
This time his paw and whole arm went through the robot, and it burst into flames and blew up as Bobby pulled his arm out of the robot.
That was that. All the other robots took notice and gathered around Bobby; all of them were pointing the palms of their hands at Bobby, and it looked like they were charging up a super attack to take the bear out. Bobby blinked and looked at all the robots. They were cowards. Were they going to try and blast him away? Like that was going to work. The health that had been depleted had been restored. The number of rings in his inventory did that.
He didn’t know how many rings this battle would take out of him, and he didn’t want to know. Maybe Jasmine and Bobby should try some sort of double team. Jasmine had that mallet, and that would be great against these assholes.
Jasmine looked over at Bobby, instantly knowing what he was thinking. A double-team attack. Bobby held out both of his paws, and Jasmine ran over towards Bobby and jumped on Bobby’s paws. Then Bobby launched Jasmine into the air. Jasmine destroyed the remaining robots with her mallet and landed on the ground next to Skate and Bobby. She was in the middle and smiling. She watched all the robots blow up, and then she stood there with a peace sign victory pose. It was kind of her thing, and she didn’t know why she started to do it. It was just something she did.
“You win this round, heroes!” A voice boomed from the sky, it was the dragon, and then it disappeared into thin air. Did they win? This was winning. They had barely gotten by this battle.
It was great that no one was seriously hurt. Three signs had appeared in front of each of the bridges. The bridge in the center was: The Electric Zone. To the left was The Water Zone, and to the right was The Sand Zone. Great, they had three paths to choose from, and Bobby wondered if you cleared a zone if you came back here to go to another location. Sort of like a level select screen.
It made sense, and then Bobby turned and looked at Skate.
“So, where are you from?” Bobby asked Skate.
Skate shrugged. “Here and there.” He didn’t want to tell the newcomer his whole life story. It was a sad story; these robotic assholes showing up in his world had destroyed his home and taken his family away. It was the typical tragic hero story. He had lived in The Tree Top Zone before it had been set on fire. Honestly, this area used to be a nice place to live before Darkcrest started destroying things in the ‘name of science’ complete bullshit.
Skate looked at Bobby and Jasmine. “So, where do you guys want to go?”
Bobby looked to be deep in thought. “Okay, The Sand Zone sounds shitty. The Electric Zone could be fun. I don’t know if we have the experience to fight off electric-themed enemies.”
Jasmine nudged her brother with her arm. “We can do anything. We could go to The Water Zone, but I know how much you LOVE swimming. That zone might be my forte. Rock paper scissors to see where we go?” She was beaming right now, and she was in her zone. Her brother would not accept this game as a way to make a decision. She knew he hated rock, paper, and scissors, making her smile and giggle.
Sometimes being annoying was fun.
Skate looked at Bobby with disbelief. “Is she earnest?”
Bobby nodded and laughed. “She sure is.” He wouldn’t play this game with her right now the more they stood around.
The more this world was thrust into chaos. This place was dying, plain and simple. He knew what it would take to get it back to where it was.
That thing was teamwork. That was going to be hard for him.
He was a solo, act, lone wolf and liked to be left alone, and now he was a part of a team. This was going to be interesting.
Now Bobby and Jasmine had a heated discussion about which zone they should go to next. ‘heated discussion’ was just a polite way of saying they were arguing.
Skate arched his brow as he watched the two. What was the big deal? All the zones were going to be equally tricky. He should know; this wasn’t his first rodeo. He’s been going on adventures since he was little. This was just the semi-serious first adventure, and he continued watching the two squabble. Voices were getting raised, and he was getting a headache.
The two knew what had to be done to get this show on the road. Rock, paper, and scissors. They had mentioned it to Skate just a few moments earlier.
This was an arcane way to get over a disagreement, and both of them were pretty good at the game, and they had a third person in the midst.
So, he could watch both of them and make sure no one cheated. They were convinced that Skate didn’t want to be the judge.
Both of them looked over at Skate. He was rubbing his temples, and it looked like the poor bird had a throbbing headache. Had both of them do that? They had sheepish looks on their faces.
No matter what, this decision had to be made, and time was running out. Not literally, metaphorically.
Water was a no-go, and a sand area sounded like hell on Earth. Electricity hazards and enemies didn’t sound like fun, either. So, the only logical choice was electric.
Bobby wished there was a recent button so they could go back to the beginning and do stuff differently.
If he did that, he’d have to go through all those bad guys again, and he didn’t want to do that.
Okay, so the game was on. Bobby and Jasmine looked at each other and started to play rock, paper, and scissors. Bobby won two out of three game rounds, which meant they were going to the electric zone. Wished they had thought up better names for the zones. So the electric zone was now known as The Electric Boogaloo.
It sounded family-friendly.
Skate looked at Bobby and Jasmine with an annoyed look and started tapping his foot. “You two done? We need to get this show on the road. We don’t know what kind of evil Darkcrest has in store for us!”
Skate hated to wait and be the voice of reason.
Both Bobby and Jasmine nodded their heads. “Right!” they both spoke in unison. Some would call that stereo.
Bobby and Jasmine were unsure about what they would encounter in The Electric Boogaloo Zone. It couldn’t be as bad as what they just had to go through, and if this had been a starter level, they didn’t want to see what the last level looked like.
The last level was always the hardest and put a lot of hazards and enemies in the way.
The enemies usually weren’t strong; there was just a lot of them.
All of them started to walk towards The Electric Boogaloo Zone, and when they got mere inches from entering it.
Something appeared in their way, a shack of sorts.
Bobby and Jasmine blinked. It almost looked like a tiki bar, and no one was attending hit.
Bobby and Jasmine approached the shack and blinked. There was a wall full of items, and no one was there to pay or talk to. What was this? Bobby blinked and noticed the ring and coin amounts next to the articles. An Item shop they were looking at an item shop.
Bobby didn’t think they would find something like this here.
Even Se Skate was shocked too. He wasn’t expecting this either, and it was a pleasant surprise. Items were divided into three types: Speed, Power, and Flight. Technically, Skate was Speed and Flight ‘cause he had wings and those skates on the bottom of his boots. That is why he was called: Skate.
Also, there was a column that said: Health items. These items looked like fast food. There were Chili Cheese Dogs, Hamburgers, and a few more things that looked like drinks: Sodas and Energy Drink cans. These items were dancing in place as if to say pick me! Pick me! The health items had the lowest cost in the shop. The things that boosted your speed, power, and flight had higher ring counts. Which meant they were expensive. Bobby took all of his rings out and bought whatever he could.
It was go time.
CHAPTER ONE
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“Oh! This looks like an interesting game!” Jasmine flipped the game box around; seeing new retro games in the wild was weird. She scanned the back of the box rather quickly. It was about an anthropomorphic crow that could fly fast that had skates on the bottom of his shoes, and the name of the game was Skate; Jasmine swore she had heard that title before.
On the front cover, it had the main character doing a peace sign, and behind him was a metropolis-looking area called Darkcrest– a weird name, Jasmine thought, and the game did look a little dark. How did one play it when you got it home?
You could dump the ROM and put it on an Everdrive. It also looked like you could use emulators too. It was strange that it could be played via an emulator, but Jasmine didn’t really care about that.
Jasmine laughed. “To think GameWorld would have games like this.”
She smiled as she waited in line to pay for her new game. She also noticed that there were plushies of other well-known video game characters for sale, but she ignored them. She was ready to go home and play this game.
Was this a clone or a parody? She didn’t know and didn’t care. The line seemed to go on forever, and Jasmine was annoyed. Only two more people were left in the line, and then it would be her turn.
Once it was her turn, she plopped the game down on the counter.
The cashier smiled at her. “Will that be all?”
Jasmine nodded, “Yes.”
The cashier rang up the item – the price was $30. That’s a pretty good price.
The cashier tapped the screen, and Jasmine swiped her debit card to pay for it. Then, the cashier smiled again and bagged the item.
“Enjoy.”
Jasmine smiled and nodded as she took the bag. “I will.”
There was always that blissful joy you got when you bought a new video game. Jasmine was getting a weird feeling from it, though, like it was dark or even evil.
She had never found a game that ran on emulators before. Emulators were usually used for pirating games, not playing them.
Nintendo, Sega, and even Microsoft were against emulators, and if you were found running their games on one, you were usually forced to pay a fine or go to jail for piracy. Maybe this new video game company was trying something different? Pay for the game and run it on the software you already have.
Jasmine decided to call her brother, so he could help her get the game started.
It's go time, she thought to herself, as the phone rang.
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CHAPTER TWO
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Bobby was on his laptop setting up a live stream. He did this sort of thing sometimes but not often. He didn’t do the newer games; he didn’t really care for them. No, retro games were his thing, and lately, he had seen the game Skate advertised. Of course, he knew the title, as it was from a skateboarding game for one of the old Xbox though Bobby forgot which one, and he never played it, as he was more of a Tony Hawk’s Underground fan anyway.
The box of this game actually had a retro look and feel to it, which Bobby liked, and it had popped up a few times on his Facebook newsfeed before, and again today, as he set up for his live stream like the site was reading his mind or something.
The emulators were set up, the screen-grabbing software was set up, and the broadcasting software was set up. Now he just needed to find a game to play.
He shook his head. “I don’t see why kids like this Fortnite crap. When I was their age, we didn’t have games like that.” Growing up in the 90s, he’d been barely able to play Mortal Kombat because of his overbearing parents. Hell, he used to save up all his change and sneak into the arcade tent at the fair to play all the games his mother didn’t want him to get near.
Ah, the good old days back when bloody fighting games were new. Now it seemed like everyone was putting out those sorts of games.
Bobby’s eyes were getting tired, so he got up from his computer chair and went into the kitchen.
He walked to the fridge, opened it up, took out an energy drink, popped the tab, walked to the cabinet where all the glasses were, and took one out.
He was taking his first sip of energy drink when he heard his phone go off. His ringtone was Mr. Crowley by Ozzy Osbourne, which was really loud. He figured it was probably some spammer calling him, so he didn’t rush back to his phone.
Bobby walked back to the dining room, where his laptop and computer chair was, and sat back down, putting the glass on the table.
Bobby picked up his phone and looked at the missed call.
“That’s strange. She doesn’t usually call me.” He paused. “She probably wants something.”
He opened his voicemail and played the message; it was his sister and she bought a new game and wanted to see if his laptop had the required emulators to run it. She didn’t say what game it was, though. Still, he figured it might be an excellent opportunity to stream a new game on his YouTube channel.
He texted Jasmine to come over, and he sipped his energy drink.
“Ah, tasty,” he said. “Guess I’ll wait for Jasmine.”
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~*~
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It wasn’t too long until his sister walked through the front door. Bobby was still sitting down, sipping on his energy drink. Jasmine walked over to the table and dumped the contents of her bag onto it. It was one retro-looking game box. The cover art had the main character doing a peace symbol in front of a dark metropolis. He found the depiction of the city to be ominous and foreboding.
He looked over at Jasmine, standing beside him, looking excited. “So, this is the game, huh?” He picked up the game case.
Jasmine nodded happily. “Yeah, it is.”
She paused for a moment. “It was weird; it was like the game was pulling me towards it. Like it wanted me to buy it.” She looked like she was in deep thought or some sort of a trance.
Honestly, he didn’t like the sound of that or the way his sister looked. The only thing that ‘pulls you to it is some sort of evil spirit or entity. Those are usually in haunted houses and creepy places. Could the game be haunted? Was it cursed or someshit? What about GameWorld, where it’d been sold to Jasmine?
He wasn’t getting any weird vibes from it, not really. It was still in its case, mind you. Maybe if he got the game out, he would feel different, and how was he going to run this thing on the emulators anyways? Only one way to find out.
He opened the case, and it opened up like any other case. No big deal, nothing to panic about. A small CD with the same art from the front of the game was printed on it. He picked up the CD from the sides and blinked as he held the game.
He smiled a crooked smile. “A CD? This really is retro. I was kinda hoping for a DVD or something. Surprised they haven’t just started making video games on Blu-Ray discs.” He laughed.
Jasmine glanced at the mini-CD that her brother was holding. “Interesting, and it has a retro feel indeed. I wonder if we can put that in a CD player and access the soundtrack.”
Bobby laughed. “For real, Jasmine? Who has a CD player anymore?
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CHAPTER THREE
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Bobby had hooked up a USB CD-ROM to his computer. He pushed the button on the CD-ROM, and the tray extended. He put the mini-CD in the tray, which was a perfect fit! What good luck.
He was one of those people that loved retro shit and had a lot of old-fashioned paraphernalia. Hell, up in his room, he had a few desktops from the early 2000’s that he had torn apart and had been trying to make into emulated arcade machines…though, the project wasn’t going too well, mind you.
There was always that excitement of playing a new video game because you didn’t know what would happen or who you would encounter. Bobby was excited, if not a tad wary of the game. Looking at it, he could feel the pull his sister had talked about. He felt like he needed to play this game.
The tray retracted back into the CD-ROM, and you could hear the CD spinning as the computer was doing its job and booting it up. A window opened with the contents of the CD: there was a single game file on the CD and some other files – one was a . PNG file of the cover art, and the other files were just simply set-ups.
Two retro-style USB controllers were hooked up to the ports on the laptop. Nowhere on the box had it mentioned if the game was for one or two players; the two had been hoping for a multiplayer game. If it wasn’t one, then they would just take turns.
Jasmine was anxious and looked at her brother. “What do you think the game will be like?”
Bobby shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably some platformer. If it’s supposed to be retro, that is the kind of game it will be.”
The room had an electric feeling, like a vortex of energy. Of course, he lived in a rather old apartment. That didn’t bother him. He was smart enough to leave the paranormal alone. He loaded up his emulator; it was a simple GUI. It had three tabs: FILES, SETTINGS, and TOOLS. SETTINGS was where you calibrated your gamepads. He clicked on FILES, then located the ROM file on the CD-ROM and opened it. The game loaded, the title screen came up rather promptly, and they were both amazed.
Then something odd happened. That electric feeling? It got stronger.
“Dude, do you feel that?” Jasmine asked.
“Yeah,” Bobby replied. “It’s weird.”
Suddenly, a portal opened up in front of them, coming directly from the laptop screen.
“Are you seeing that?” Bobby asked his sister.
She nodded mutely.
They both reached out a finger and touched the screen. Light shot everywhere! And suddenly, it felt like they were falling, and that was because they were. After it felt like they had been falling for hours, there was a thud; they had finally hit the ground. Bobby was the first to stand up, dust himself off, and look around.
They were in what looked like a forest, and he noticed a wooden sign stuck in the ground. The sign read: Darkcrest, 4 miles, with an arrow pointing to the right. Could they be on a hilltop or something?
Jasmine had pushed herself off the ground and dusted herself off like her brother did before her, and then she blinked and looked down at her hands, only they weren’t hands anymore. She had paws! She didn’t really know how to describe them. They almost looked like cat paws, big and fluffy, the color of a tabby cat.
The center of her paw was round; she had five other round spots where her fingers used to be, and she had sharp protruding claws. She felt like Wolverine from the X-Men for a moment. If she had been changed into something, indeed, her brother had been too.
Jasmine began to scan the area.
“Bobby?” She called, but there was no answer. He had to be around here somewhere.
She began to walk around, and eventually, she spotted her brother. She’d sworn she had just seen him. He had been the first to stand up when they landed in this place. Where were they, and what was the deal with the area?
He was standing by a sign. She looked at it with utter confusion. “Darkcrest, huh? That sounds ominous.” It did sound dark and creepy. So apparently, you could get to this city by going right to the sign and walking for four miles. Who wanted to walk? She didn’t want to walk. She had done enough walking for one day.
This place seemed oddly familiar like she had seen it before. Maybe on a website that was advertising this video game? She wasn’t sure.
She looked over at her brother, who was staring off into the distance with a severe look on his face, only, he wasn’t the brother she remembered – he’d transformed into a giant anthropomorphic bear. Kinda fitting, seeing as they were both from Maine, and the bears from there were mad strong. Of course, Jasmine had to end up as an oversized cat, a lousy cat…Jasmine was scared of cats, as they’d never liked her much.
Jasmine looked over to Bobby. “So, what do we do?”
Bobby broke his concentration on whatever he was thinking about and shrugged. “I don’t know. Follow the sign?” Yeah, good idea, he thought. You’re in a new world, and you don’t know what’s out there, so you suggest ‘following the sign’…you are probably going to get yourself and your sister killed. Then again, you are a huge bear, so why not. Whatever is out there is perhaps smaller and weaker than you.
He wondered if they had any extraordinary abilities. That would be awesome, and he knew there were bad guys out there, and they probably had to take them down. They could be the heroes of this story.
A smile came over his face.
Bobby looked over at Jasmine. “You know this might just be a dream. We are probably knocked out lying on the floor and are just waiting to wake up.”
In truth, he was lying. He wanted to make Jasmine feel better, so he lied. He didn’t want his sister to worry about what was happening to them. This was like all the comic books he had read as a child before Jasmine had been born. Some nerd gets sucked into another world, and he, she, or they become its savior. With a name like Darkcrest, he was expecting something from a horror movie or a fantasy novel. Maybe both?
Bobby balled up his paw and punched the air, and when he did, he could hear a crack like he had hit something solid. He noticed what looked like an air slice come from his paw. That was different. Could this be his special attack?
He looked over at Jasmine and nodded. That was him telling her to try to use an attack.
She nodded back, concentrated, and did what he dubbed a double slash scratch attack with much ease. Jasmine’s eyes went wide with amazement and excitement. She was a cat, so she had some sort of slash attack. She kinda thought of herself as that cat Digimon....the name wasn’t coming to her right now. She felt powerful!
But then she got a feeling of dread. She looked up to the sky and saw a few of what she assumed to be drones flying overhead that looked like giant, robotic birds. She blinked and looked over at her brother.
Bobby nodded. “I see them too; you can hide. If I move, they will see me and probably strike.” This would be a perfect time to test out his new attack! You find out you have a powerful attack, and now you must fight the bad guys. This was typical video game bullshit. He had no actual proof they were in a video game; it was just the only thing that made sense right now.
He wondered if his sister was going to listen to him this time. Ever since they were kids, she never listened to him, especially when he was right.
Jasmine nodded as she looked at her brother and found a bush to hide in rather quickly.
Bobby wasn’t worrying about anything right now, but as he looked up at the sky at one of the drones, it started speeding toward his head. It was coming real fast; his eyes were locked onto it, and he simply shrugged before punching the thing and when his bear-paw hit the drone, it shattered into a million pixelated pieces.
He blinked. “That was kind of easy.”
With the destruction of that single drone, others in the area were alerted to its annihilation and called to the site. Bobby saw the swarm, and he swallowed hard. Maybe this hadn’t been a great idea… perhaps he should have run.
But Nah, he thought. Bobby was going to stand his ground. The swarm had surrounded him; all of the drones had opened up their mechanical beaks and had begun to fire a barrage of laser shots toward h.im
He raised his paw and swatted away the laser shots like they were flies. He then decided climbing a tree to get on the drones' level would be a good idea. He jumped on each of the drones, smashing them individually. He watched each one crash to the ground. When he landed on his feet, he made a giant thud, and the earth shook for a moment or two.
He dusted himself off; they really needed to haul ass. There would probably be more drones coming.
Surprisingly, he didn’t use his bear punch to defeat these foes, which were a bit too easy to defeat. Either this was the first level or some sort of tutorial. Well, it probably wasn’t a tutorial since no annoying person or creature was popping up to tell him what to do.
He watched Jasmine come out from behind the bush.
He had succeeded in what he had set out to do. He was assuming that to get out of this world, he had to beat the game, and he figured there were some answers in Darkcrest. He was going to call it Darkcrest City for now. Darkcrest just sounded too ominous and dark. He actually wondered what the city was like, to be honest.
He blinked and noticed a life bar and a small picture icon with lives next to it. He had three lives.
Bobby shook his head. “Great.”
Jasmine walked over to her brother and blinked. “What?”
Bobby pointed to his life bar and mini-icons. “That.”
Jasmine blinked. “Oh.”
She looked under her brother’s life bar and mini-icons and realized she had one too. Yup, it looked like they were in the game she had picked up from GameWorld.
Jasmine looked back at her brother. “So, we’ve gotta make it to that city, right?”
Bobby nodded. “Right.”
Jasmine laughed. “It’s four miles! We’ll make it in no time!”
Bobby shook his head. “Remember the world we are in. Probably gonna be roughly eight zones before we hit the actual city. The city is probably the end game where the final boss is.”
Jasmine sighed. “You’re probably right, and I don’t think we will be able to do this by ourselves.”
Fast people were indispensable. That was true. They would probably have to form alliances with the locals. From what he understood, he was seemingly the powerhouse, and Jasmine could be a speed user. They just needed to find someone that could use flight. A mix of a flight and a speed user.
They would probably find different abilities on this long and challenging journey. Bobby couldn’t think about that right now; all that was on his mind was getting into that city and out of this forest. Pushing on, that is what they needed to do, and he wasn’t going to let his sister ride on his coattails.
He started walking towards the city – going right where the sign was pointing. Jasmine followed behind her brother. He was getting a feeling, and not a good one. It felt like they were being watched. Of course, they were being protected; why wouldn’t they be? The bad guys always watched the new heroes when they showed up, which is what they were – new heroes.
He knew he was strong, but he would have to get stronger if he wanted to beat this game. It was exciting, and if they lived to tell the tale, they would have an incredible story to write down, and probably no one would believe them.
Now, stereotypically, the first level of a game was always the easiest. That is when you are introduced to the game mechanics, enemies, and the foundation of the world you are playing in. Right now, though, it was literally the world they were in.
Bobby was expecting to come up on a zoning sign pretty soon. They hadn’t. They had come up to a log bridge instead.
Bobby stepped onto it first, and it was a bit wobbly. He didn’t see any enemies around. He looked down beneath the bridge and saw some water. Nothing was in it. He found that strange. He could hear it gushing under his feet.
He shrugged again and walked across the bridge, and Jasmine quickly followed suit.
When they got to the other side of the bridge, they found things that looked like monitors and, on the monitor screens, were items. He saw one article that looked like a giant spiked mallet.
Bobby looked at Jasmine and pointed at the item monitor. “You take that one.”
Jasmine nodded. “Alright!” she walked over to the monitor and kicked it as hard as possible. When the monitor broke, it made this dinging sound, and then an ethereal aura materialized around Jasmine, and the spiked mallet appeared in her hands.
She blinked and then smiled. “Cool!”
It was cool. Bobby knew if they traveled a little more, they would run into some bad guys, and a game only gave you oversized items when you needed to use them against something big, bad, and terrible.
Jasmine looked at her brother. “You don’t need an item?”
Bobby shook his head. “Maybe not now.”
He looked over at his life bar, and it was missing some life. Of course, the fight with those drones. He had taken some damage. He noticed two other monitors, which had rings or coins in them. He didn’t know which. He walked over and kicked two of the monitors and collected what was in them, and he noticed that some of his life had been restored. He’d played a game like this many times, and there was even a cartoon like this.
Jasmine blinked and looked at her brother. “Your life has been restored!”
Bobby nodded. “Yup, I figured my life would be restored if I collected a ring or two. Call it a hunch.”
“A hunch? People still use that term?” Jasmine laughed.
Their brief moment of comedy had been interrupted. The buzzing sound could be heard in the sky, and both looked up.
Giant. Robotic. Wasps.
The first thing that came to Bobby’s mind was to run far... fucking… away! But that wasn’t going to help. Even if they did run, the wasps would find them eventually. They probably had some heat-seeking components. They were most likely sent out there to exterminate whatever was in these forests. The game boss was perhaps an angry asshole who didn’t like animals. Who didn’t like animals? They were so freaking cute! Bobby looked over at his sister, who was looking at the giant robotic wasps.
Jasmine smirked as she looked up at the wasps. “I think I can take you.”
Bobby blinked as he heard what his sister had said.
Has she gone fucking nuts?
There was a giant swarm of the things. Twelve at the least, and his sister thought she could beat them. Ugh, this kid was always getting into trouble, and there was no way he could stop her from doing stupid stuff like this.
He sighed. All he could do was back her up. He looked at her, and she had a death grip on the spiked mallet. It looked like she was eager to use her new toy.
She was giving off heavy Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad vibes.
Bobby looked over at Jasmine and sighed. All he could do was back her up. “Be mindful of your life. You haven’t lost any yet, and we don’t know when we will come across more rings or coins in this world.”
He blinked, and he noticed he had a ring count of 5. He had won his match, but some of his life had been chipped away. If she got injured, he could give her some. Still, as he said… she should be mindful of her life. She’d always been like this. Rushing into battles and not worrying about the consequences.
He continued to watch Jasmine, and it looked like she was itching to go. How could he convince her that this wasn’t a good idea?
He couldn't.
He watched Jasmine jump into the air, and boy could she jump high. Maybe that was one of her abilities. He watched her jump on the robotic wasps and send them hurling toward the ground, and upon impact, they exploded. She didn’t even have to use her mallet, which Bobby had only just noticed that she had. It was like she had been training for this moment all her life. All twelve wasps had been destroyed, and a ton of black smoke was rolling off them. She landed next to her brother, smiled, and gave a peace sign like she was looking for a camera or something. Bobby rolled his eyes as he noticed some of her life had diminished. Not a lot of it. One of those wasps had probably got a lick in. That wasn’t fun, and it didn’t look like she was injured or anything.
They looked at the horizon – it looked endless; the world looked endless. There were trees and rock formations that went on forever.
How do they start finding a way to the city? It looked like there was a desert area. He hated deserts. Hopefully, this world didn’t have a sun that ran after you. He hated that shit. They were going to have to walk through the grassy plains. That is what he was going to call this area: The Grassy Plains. It did have a ring to it.
He looked over to Jasmine. “What else do you think we will find here?”
Jasmine put her hand under her chin and looked into the distance as if she was in deep thought. “You know, with all this grass…probably grasshoppers and other grass creatures.”
Bobby nodded. “Probably more flying asshole creatures too.”
That is what he had called bees, wasps, and yellowjackets in his home world. They were flying assholes, and for some reason, these assholes were always attracted to him. It didn’t matter. He could kill them quickly, and they both had three lives. So, it wasn’t like they really had to worry about things right now, and he did wonder why there were so many things in the sky. He hadn’t seen any information about an evil ruler or this area under protection or surveillance.
It was just strange.
They showed up and had to deal with these assholes. Bobby was a strong bear, so he probably didn’t have anything to worry about. He just wouldn’t be able to get into tight spaces, and that would be a drag.
Bobby blinked. “You want to explore, huh.”
Jasmine smiled happily. “Yup!”
That had always been Jasmine’s forte. She would thrive in this world by fighting, exploring, and finding stuff she wasn’t supposed to see. Right now, there wasn’t that much to explore. Both of them started to walk.
They were wading through high grass. It looked like it hadn’t ever been cut. They had to keep their eyes out for bad guys. This world had a lot of bad guys, and they both knew they hadn’t seen them yet or even half of them.
They came to a ledge, and there was a vine they could swing on to get to the other side. Bobby looked at the vine in disgust. He didn’t want to do this right now.
Jasmine nudged her brother with her elbow. “This will be fun.”
Bobby looked down over the edge. There was a lot of nothing below them, like if you fell, you’d be falling for hours, and Bobby didn’t know if his bear paws would be able to grab the vine and if his weight would snap it.
He went to look at his sister, but she had already swung on the vine and was on the other side. He shook his head. Great. Now it was his turn. He backed up a few feet and ran towards the vine, swung on it, and when he got closer to the other ledge, e jumped and landed safely. His heart was beating a mile a minute. He didn’t want to do that again. Not ever again.
The grass was shorter on this ledge, and he looked down and could see rocks and clay in the grass. That was interesting and weird. He wondered if all the terrain was going to be like this.
They kept on walking; the scenery was lovely. They weren’t in the high grass anymore, so maybe they wouldn’t encounter more robotic insects. Yeah, sure, they wouldn’t. They expected something to jump out from the background and attack them any minute, but nothing was happening.
He shouldn’t even think like that. These were beginner, bad guys – the more they ventured through the land, the bigger and worse the villains would get. He looked over toward Jasmine and wondered what that spiked mallet could do.
They kept walking until Bobby saw a cave. He blinked. There was a big stone wall that blocked the entrance to the cave.
Exploring new areas was usually fun, so he walked over to the stone wall and hit it lightly. The thing was hollow. Either one of two things was going to happen. He would hit it with his mighty bear paw, or Jasmine would hit it with her spiked mallet. It didn’t look like Jasmine was paying much attention to the cave. There was a grassy hill on top of the cave, and Jasmine had found a vine and climbed onto the hill to look at more scenery.
It looked like it was going to be Bobby that was going to go inside and explore. He hit the stone wall as hard as he could, and the wall crumbled. He walked into the dark cave and noticed some lights on the left and right sides of the walls. Lights, huh? Could this be a mine or something?
Bobby started to walk through the cave. He heard some bats as they flew over his head, and he wondered if they were mechanical or genuine. They looked like real bats, not those robotic enemies he had been coming up against, but he could be wrong. He had ducked to make sure he missed them.
It was spooky in the cave, and he could feel a chill. A gust of wind had blown through the cave, making an eerie sound. He continued to walk until he was stopped by more of those monitors. They had the ring logos on them, and there were only three. He kicked all three of them, and the rings were added to his ring total. He wasn’t paying attention to how many rings he had. He wanted to see what was in the cave. Like before, he felt like he was being watched.
He noticed that the ground had a dark blue tint and was littered with stones and minerals. He’d never seen dark blue rocks and minerals. He thought that the dark blue shade could be coming from the light source.
As he continued to walk, he found a gap. The hole wasn’t huge; he could probably jump. He sighed; he didn’t want to climb another vine to get over.
He jumped the gap and landed on the other side. Bobby made a slight thudding sound when he landed. He looked up at the ceiling and saw what looked like beetles walking upside down, and he blinked. He knew what was coming. Next, he was a gamer, of course. The beetles started spinning and dropping. He ran as fast as he could from the beetles. Every step he took shook the ground, and after he was away from that area, he stopped and caught his breath.
What the hell had just happened?
This seemed like a whole new mechanic for this world. Maybe this was a different game. No, that didn’t make sense. He looked up and saw some dirt and rocks falling. That must be Jasmine on the surface walking around.
He noticed a few blocks, and they looked breakable. They were hanging in the air, and he reached up and punched them. All that came out were rings. More rings were added to his ring collection. These would come in handy a little while later. He knew it. He kept on walking through the cave.
Nothing out of the ordinary, and he liked how quiet it was. He knew that the quietness wasn’t going to last for long. As he walked, he heard something loud and heavy coming towards him. His eyes went wide when he saw what it was. Hell, he thought he was the only serious thing in these tunnels.
It was a large vehicle that looked like a car of sorts and had a drill on the front of it. The drill looked like it was going a mile a minute.
There was a robot manning the car.
So, what was this thing doing? Drilling for, what, ore? It looked like he had gotten himself into a pickle. He tended to do that rather than on purpose. Was that the reason why dirt and rocks were falling from the ceiling?
Now was he really supposed to fight this? If so, how did he fight it? He blinked. Man, this was going to be a pain in the ass. The Drill Car came towards him, and he jumped over it before it hit a wall. The drill made a hole in the wall, and the cave shook slightly. So, this thing was going to slam into walls until he defeated it. Great, just great. He swore he had fought this thing a long time ago. He was getting massive deja vu. If that was the case, he didn’t remember how to take it down. Maybe he would figure out how to beat it while he fought it. He watched The Drill Car turn itself back around and point itself at him.
Bobby shook his head. “You are going to be a pain in my ass.”
He planted his feet and watched The Drill Car approaching him at breakneck speeds. It was coming closer and closer by the second. When it was a few inches away from him, he jumped and smacked the robot driver in the head with his paw and landed behind The Drill Car. It had stopped for a moment, and the robot rubbed his head as if it had hurt. Bobby blinked. Was the robot the weak spot? That was predictable.
Okay, how many times did he need to hit the robot before The Drill Car blew up? This had to be a boss or sub-boss battle. If this was a sub-boss, he didn’t want to see what the real boss looked like.
Bobby jumped back a few feet before The Drill Car turned around, and the robot was glowing red. He looked pissed, and Bobby laughed and shook his head. He motioned to The Drill Car to come at him. For once, Bobby was acting cocky and confident. He knew how to take this motherfucker down. Years of playing video games had paid off. The Drill Car came at Bobby, this time, it was faster, and he did the same thing as before, jumped over the car, hit the robot on the inside, and landed behind the vehicle. This time The Drill Car did something different. It started shooting flames from the back of the car. Bobby hadn’t noticed two extensions come out of the back of the vehicle, but he saw them now.
Okay, now we got a car throwing flames from its asshole. Next run-through, he had to keep that in mind. The fire had hit him, making him lose a bit of life. The rings he had stored gave him back a little of his life, though, so he could breathe a little easier knowing that.
Bobby jumped a few more feet. He had to be careful because he was coming upon the gap and didn’t want to fall down in the opening and lose a life. A lost life right now wouldn’t be ideal.
The Drill Car had turned around and was charging at Bobby again, and this time the whole car was glowing red, and the vehicle had an evil smile plastered on the front of it. He wondered how Jasmine was doing up top…maybe she had come up on a mighty enemy and was fighting it too. Careful, be careful with life. He had told Jasmine, and he would have to live by those words. He would see her soon, right after The Drill Car was put down, and they could use the thing for scrap after it was dead.
Bobby blinked. “Great. This thing turned into Christine.” He figured this would be the last go-through with this monster. The Drill Car came fast towards Bobby, and this time he just waited for The Drill Car to get a few inches away from him, and then with all of his might, he smashed the front of the car. The Drill Car was broken into a billion pieces, and the robot got out of the car and ran away to fight another day. Just hitting that car had cost him some of his life. He walked over to the broke drill car, looked through the wreckage, and saw a tag or sticker; he didn’t know what it was. Whatever it was, it read: Property of Darkcrest Enterprise. Darkcrest? That was the name of the city they were heading to. What the fuck was this? The plot thickens.
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CHAPTER FOUR
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Bobby walked through the rest of the cave, and it was quiet for the most part. Eventually, he found the exit, which was covered by a giant rock wall.
Bobby laughed. “Incredible Hulk, eat your heart out.”
He hit the rock wall with all his might to create an exit. He did have to dig out some of the smaller stones to make his way through the exit until he was finally out, but he sucked in a breath of fresh air. This was awesome! Then he looked around to see not such an incredible sight. The sky had turned crimson, and the grass and other vegetation had been burned. He looked around for Jasmine.
Bobby shook his head. “I knew I shouldn’t have gone down there.”
He heard someone or something huffing and running up behind him. With his state of mind right now, it wouldn’t be wise to run up against him. He looked behind him, and it was just Jasmine. She looked okay but out of breath. It looked like a battle went on up here, and it seemed like the bad guys had won…for now.
Jasmine looked at Bobby. “It was awful. These things came down from the sky and just rained fire. I barely got away.”
Bobby nodded. “Yeah, it was pretty much the same in the cave.
We both battled some pretty tough bad guys. It’s okay, though.” They just needed to find more rings – he’d noticed that Jasmine was low on health.
He wondered what kind of beast could rain fire from the sky. Could it have been a blimp or an airplane? That would make too much sense, and it seemed like this world didn’t make much sense. They started to walk again, and they didn’t get even a few feet until they noticed a bridge. It was hanging on one side and fire on the other, and there was no way to get across without jumping and climbing the bridge like a ladder. The ropes were still on fire, and they were snapping fast, and he shook his head and looked over to Jasmine.
Bobby then looked back at the bridge. “I know what we must do.”
Jasmine nodded too. “Okay!”
They both backed up a few feet, got a running start, jumped onto the bridge, climbed it like a ladder, and then climbed up onto the grassy hill that was pretty much ash now. He couldn’t believe what had happened. So now he was going to look out for fire-breathing enemies.
Jasmine was walking a few feet ahead of him, and she found more of those monitors and kicked them. The rings came out and healed here. Whatever rings were left over from her healing added to her ring count. Being careful and mindful of your health while you were under fire from the enemy, now that was hard. She had cuts and bruises on her body, which had somehow disappeared. These rings were magical. She continued to lead the way, and her brother brought up the rear for once. She wondered what was on his mind; he was probably trying to deduce some plan to defeat the monsters and bad guys. That was so much like him; she just liked to explore and look for hidden things. It was unlike Bobby to go into a place off the beaten path.
He thought he could find something useful in the cave. All that he found in that cave was a powerful bad guy to fight. So, he felt the bad guy he had battled was a sub-boss. So, was that thing that rained down fire from the sky a boss? It couldn’t be. There was no way she could of hit it, and it didn’t come down and try to fight her. It was just a hazard that changed the landscape.
They came upon a sign that read: End of Zone 1. Was this a zone? Did they complete it? She blinked and walked past the sign so did Bobby.
When they did, the landscape changed again, and another sign read: Entering Zone 2. Okay, another zone, and the world was still on fire, smothering.
Birds were flying above them, and they didn’t look very friendly, and they both blinked as they looked at their rings. They didn’t have any more rings. So, entering a new zone killed their supply of rings. Bobby was standing under a burning tree, looking up and seeing something metallic. He jumped and hit it. It was one of those monitors. It had ten rings in, and the rings were divided between him and Jasmine. Now they had rings.
They walked a few more inches and were greeted with a spike pit.
They both blinked and then looked at a ledge moving up and down. Bobby didn’t want to do any more fucking jumping. This was getting bad. The birds above them started spitting small fireballs at them.
One hit Bobby and lit his ass on fire. This was when he decided to make that leap of faith and jump onto the moving ledge he made, and then he waited for Jasmine, and then they both jumped onto another moving ledge and another. After the last one, they were on solid ground, passing by their first checkpoint. The checkpoint looked like a stop sign, and when they went by it, stars appeared above it.
So, if they died, they would be respawned here.
They walked a few feet further and were greeted by robot chickens that breathed fire. God, he didn’t want to deal with any more fire-based baddies. He kicked the chicken in the face, and it smashed into seemingly a billion pieces, and then he saw more on the horizon coming their way.
There was a bridge, this time, it was intact. Jasmine got in front of her brother, and it looked like she would have time to finally use her mallet. When the fire came down from the sky, she wasn’t going to try and fight. She ran across the bridge to the fire chickens and swung her mallet with all her might, and they went down relatively quickly.
She smiled, looked back at her brother, and gave him the peace sign with a cheesy smile.
Bobby shook his head. “Show-off.”
He walked across the bridge and then stood beside his sister, and they continued to walk through the area. There were no more baddies for a little while, and then they came to a bunch of trees that were dropping bombs that looked like coconuts, and they had to haul ass. Neither of them wanted to get hit. They needed full health. Both of them felt like they would come upon a boss soon. They reached a giant rock, leaned against it, and sighed. That had been one of the most challenging runs that they had done yet. Both of them knew there were going to be more dangerous zones ahead. They were surprised they hadn’t come upon any of the locals to help them. Maybe they were the only people in this world right now.
Bobby looked at Jasmine.
“Having fun yet?” He huffed.
Jasmine rolled her eyes. “Sure.”
She was huffing too. She knew this resting was going to be interrupted by something soon. Maybe aliens or something. She wouldn’t be surprised if there were aliens in this world. Aliens beaming themselves down from another planet would be cool, and she’d never played any games where that had happened. She looked over at her brother and knew something was on his mind.
He’d always been the strong and silent type, and she didn’t like it when he got like that.
Bobby was wondering if he should tell Jasmine about what he had found in the wreckage of that vehicle. Darkcrest Enterprises. It sounded like an evil place to work. It probably was; why would someone want to make things that destroyed this remarkable landscape? Maybe they had to; it could be all in the story of the world that they were in. He wondered how long it would take for them to bump into the area boss.
Usually, it didn’t take long; they were in zone two. He didn’t have a name for this zone. He could call it Fire Hills, but that wasn’t its official name. He leaned against the giant rock, which was about the size of a boulder, and it started to move as he depended on it.
Bobby blinked. “What the hell...”
He turned around and started pushing it. Jasmine saw what he was doing and decided to help him move the boulder. After they got the boulder out of the way, they noticed a secret area. There was a ladder that they could climb down, and it looked like it was lit up by some sort of light source. Jasmine smiled happily and immediately began to climb down into the secret area. Bobby followed behind her. For the first time, both of them went into a secret location, and then both saw the light source.
It was a room full of coins, not rings, coins. It was exciting, and both grabbed as many coins as possible. Oddly, the coins registered as rings and were added to their ring collection. It looked like one room. Jasmine began looking around and saw what looked like a rock-themed lever, she pulled it, and then a wall suddenly opened up. It was another room, and this room was a bit darker. There was still light coming out of it, and Jasmine’s face lit up like a child’s face on Christmas morning.
Bobby walked behind Jasmine. She was the first person in the room. It looked like an old pirate’s treasure room. There were gold coins on the ground and a being with a sword and shield. It looked to be some sort of humanoid. They were human, well, they used to be. Could this be another person who came to this world and did not survive?
Jasmine looked around the room, and Bobby went and examined the body. He took his bear paw and knocked on the skeleton. It was metal. Of course, it was metal. Everything in this world was metal. Why did he think they had found a human? He could be an idiot.
Jasmine ran her hand along the stone walls, looking for another hidden switch. She found another rock-themed lever and pulled it, then ten compartments opened, and more of the robotic beings popped out. This time they weren’t dead; they were reanimated. The one Bobby was next to came to life too. He jumped back a few feet. They wander into an area and get ambushed by metal men. Great, just fucking great. Bobby dug his feet down into the earth below and was getting ready to fight. They could take all these assholes. It’s not like they haven’t been in this situation before. They’ve been in this situation multiple times today.
Bobby used all his might and charged at the robotic person he was fighting, he hit the robot in the chest, and it broke into a million pieces. He stepped over the discarded robot and went to help Jasmine. She was swinging wildly with her mallet. It didn’t look like she was hitting a single one. He kind of laughed and went and punched all the rest of the robotic people in the chest.
Defeating them, and he watched them get destroyed. More wreckage for them to step over.
Jasmine looked over to Bobby. “What the hell are those?”
Bobby shrugged. “I don’t know.”
The area began to shake again, and the spaces that held the robotic warriors merged into one large door, and both walked through it. This had to be a way out. They hoped it was a way out; neither wanted to deal with any more robotic shit today. Inside the next room was a giant water fountain. The water was sky blue and very clear. There were two canteens on the ground, and each other picked up a canteen, dipped them in the water, and took a sip. They felt rejuvenated. Could this be a health recovery spring? They both have seen places like this in games that they had played. After they drank, another door opened. That had to be the exit. They walked through the door, and there was a ladder. Yup, this was the exit. Jasmine climbed up. First, Bobby was right behind her, and they climbed up and were back above ground.
They both looked at the sky, which was still on fire. Both of them felt they would be meeting this area's boss very soon. Two against one would be great odds, especially for them. They had fought bad guys separately, and that wasn’t fun. Fighting with a friend was always a lot more fun. They eyed a bridge; it looked pretty sturdy. Jasmine walked over to the bridge and looked down below.
There was water. It was blood red.
It looked like it had been stained by fire.
Some people just liked watching the world born, and it was up to Jasmine and her brother to save this world from the wrong people.
Her brother was standing right behind her, she could feel his hot breath on her neck and then she started to walk across the bridge, and her brother followed her. They had just started this journey and had been through some shit already. When was this going to be over? She knew it probably wasn’t going to be over soon.
Jasmine and Bobby got to the other side of the bridge, and they both noticed just a small hill, that is what they were standing on, and more bridges. It was like they were being led somewhere. Where could they be going? Probably into danger once again.
Jasmine was going to lead the charge.
Jasmine kept a hefty grip on her spiked mallet, and she started walking over the bridges, Bobby followed behind, and the only reason he was behind Jasmine was to keep her from getting attacked by any other bad guys.
He didn’t feel like talking, and he continued looking around. Oddly, no creatures or robots were in the area. He heard something buzzing in the sky, but he couldn’t see what it was. It was like he was the lone wolf; they always stayed a few feet behind the pack to defend it.
It was hidden by the blood-red clouds in the sky. Yeah, they looked like blood now and not just fire. You know that feeling you get when you’re walking into a trap? He was getting that feeling. Maybe it was more of a bad vibe; he just knew some heavy shit would go down soon.
They went over a few more covered bridges until they came to the mouth of the burning forest. There was no heat coming from the forest. It just looked like it was on fire. Jasmine just stood there, looked at the mouth of the forest, and shook her head. Who could do this? She was actually getting mad and wanted to fight something, and luckily, there wasn’t anything around. She wanted to go crazy and start fighting whatever she saw. She knew she had to make sure her health was good. You know, this was different than actually playing a video game. If she was just playing a game, she could pause the game and take a little break. Maybe go grab a coffee or an energy drink and then refocus her energy to play the game. That wasn’t what this was. This was very real and scary.
Bobby looked at the mouth of the burning forest; he had a solemn look on his face. “Welcome to hell.”
It’s true. Nothing else could be worse than this. Hell couldn’t be worse than these. Bobby walked in front of Jasmine and started walking towards the burning forest.
Should he call this area this? The Burning Forest. It had a ring to it when they fully entered the forest. He felt the energy change. It felt very dark and foreboding in the woods. He looked around for places where bad guys could pop out and attack them.
He didn’t find any. If there were any bad guys, they probably would have popped out by now. So, they continued to walk. There was still that humming and swishing in the sky. They still felt like they were being taken somewhere by some sort of spirit.
Honestly, it sounded like an airship.
Was something going to come down and attack them? Bobby wished he had more weapons besides his fists. His fists would not be able to defend an airship and whatever came from it. Again, Bobby thought they were walking into a trap. He was just getting that vibe. He wasn’t going to say anything because he didn’t want to scare Jasmine. She probably knew something was up.
The ground started to shake a little – something was about to happen. What next? Snakes falling from the sky? He dug his feet into the ground, expecting an onslaught of robotic bad guys. Nothing came; maybe they were catching a break. Both of them looked into the distance, and they saw another bridge and what looked like water. They couldn’t make out the color of the water. Most likely, it was still blood red. They approached the bridge and saw a silhouette of a person. There were people in this world?! Maybe they could both get some answers. This person looked back and had wings. Wait, was this person a freaking bird? They walked closer, and the figure got clearer, and that is what it was. A bird.
It was about Jasmine’s size. She had to be about five feet tall. Bobby was a bear and had to be about seven feet tall.
He was a bigger target, which is why he was in front of Jasmine for a while.
Jasmine looked at Bobby. “Should we try to go say hi?”
Bobby shrugged. “It couldn’t hurt.” Yeah, it couldn’t hurt. That is all he could think up to say. He was still leading the party, so to speak, and he approached this new person, and it looked like the bird was just starting into the distance. Almost looked like he was waiting for something to happen. Like he was expecting a large-scale invasion. They figured that he could be some evil robot that had been sent to kill them.
“You know I can see you, right?” The bird spoke as he turned around and looked at Bobby. The bird had dark eyes, a yellow beak, and white fluff on his chest. He also wore a pair of knee-high leather boots with straps. They had wheels on the bottom of them, and both of his hands were covered in white gloves. He extended one to Bobby. “The name is Skate.”
The health items! Three of each. So that meant each of them had health items. That must mean they could heal themselves by eating or drinking something after a bottle. The things went directly into their inventory. The items they had just acquired had icons next to their life display.
Bobby thought that these items came into play when your life dropped to a certain amount and healed you instantly.
After the items had been bought, the shack disappeared. They needed some kind of catchphrase, but all the cool ones had been taken by other people. That was strange but helpful, and now it was time to enter the zone.
Skate laughed. “That was a first for me.”
Bobby smirked. “Item shops aren’t uncommon, but I didn’t think I’d find one in a world like this.”
Skate cocked his head to one side in confusion. “A world like this? What do you mean?”
Bobby laughed. “We aren’t from around here. We are just passing through and getting sucked in on this adventure.” He didn’t want to lie to Skate. He knew the bird wouldn’t believe they were from a different world. Maybe that is why they got sucked into this game. To save this world.
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CHAPTER FIVE