In The Interest of Secrecy and the Stoking of Ego

http://www.geocities.com/elemental_knight1/password.html

Because I have delusions of grandeur. If you like the story as far as you've seen it, hit me up for the password and i'll probably hand it over to you. I'm a nice guy like that.

The main reason for this is that publishers dislike buying something that's been previously published, and apparently, this blog could possibly count. Even though I don't intend on turning this story into an honest-to-$diety book, I do intend on using the story in some other medium at some other time, possibly in the future, so secrecy, even the tiniest amount (which this is - the password isn't at all strong), is nice.

Besides, this way I can keep the story together on one page. It's not as fun as serializing it, but you can always go back and read it again later with ease.

Whoopsie.

I just realized that, besides the excerpt from my NaNoWriMo book, I haven't posted in this blog for the entirety of October. And most of September.

Whoopsie.

So don't mind the gap in the archives or anything. There's nothing there to miss.

Tequila Intermission (Part I - Very Rough Draft)

PART I: Tequila Mockingbird

Chapter 1

The young man in the golden armor sat down at the bar, letting his sword lean against the varnished oak. On the television hanging above the countertop, the nightly news droned on about a rampage through the city by a giant stone monster. He asked for coffee.

“You look like hell, stranger,” said the bartender. Small, smart, and black, Mockingbird Bentley was the lady everyone on campus complained to. She didn’t mind it, really, since they learned quickly enough that she was spoken for. She set the stale coffee down for the man in the armor, and watched his friend pull up a stool. Nodding at the new arrival, she said, “O’Connor. Look what the cat dragged in.”

The new guy – O’Connor – didn’t crack a smile at Mockingbird’s joke. He put his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket “Yeah. I’m the cat. Or my truck is. Or whatever. And I’ll have the same.”

Surprised at his lack of curiosity, the bartender shrugged and poured another cup. She always kept a pot of the bad bagged stuff going, since it was the only kind the Tequila Mockingbird stocked and it kept her awake during the studying hours of the night. Most of the students dropped their pencils and picked up their steins after midnight.

“So,” she said, handing off the latest cup of coffee, “what’s your story? If you’re looking for the anime convention, you’re half a year late.”

The man in the golden armor shook his head. He took a sip of his drink, his gauntleted hand wrapping around the mug with no concern for its heat. “Nah. I know when the Con is. That ain’t it.”

“Then what is it?”

“What, you don’t recognize me?” The armored man looked up from his coffee, straight into Mockingbird’s eyes. The right eye was obscured by a square piece of clear-green glass, hooking around his head to a white plastic thing that looked like half a headphone. He gave a weak smile, and said, “C’mon. No? Geeze. It’s me, Jack!”

She looked a this face closely, and glanced back at Jacob. “…Hodge? Yeah. I see it. ‘Splains why you’re with Jacob this time of night anyhow.”

“Hey!” Jacob said, pretending to be hurt.

“But you still ain’t answered my question yet. Why the get-up?”

Jack, the armored man, took another sip. “Turn the TV down and lock the door, would ya? This isn’t the sort of thing I want to tell the student body, let alone the whole world.”

Mockingbird glanced at the clock. At only eighteen-past, it’d be another twenty minutes before business even began to exist. “Yeah,” she said, dragging her keys from her pocket. “Yeah, alright.”

“You know how me and Jacob go out to the park sometimes? Just to hang out outside, y’know, get some fresh air in while we kick each other’s asses at Advance Wars. That’s what we were doing this afternoon. I seem to recall Jacob having me in a corner at the time, about to overrun some of my cities with his tanks…

“Anyhow. Middle of the afternoon, playing video games, no one else around to bother us for half a mile, when this beautiful girl steps out of nowhere wearing this armor I have on now…”

Chapter 2

The woman in the armor certainly was pretty. Long brown hair, brown eyes, a tan and all the curves Jack and Jacob, both college guys with healthy libidos, could ask for. The fact that she held a large, menacing sword at the ready caught up with them a moment later. The fact that this sword was pointed at them came right on its heels.

“Jack Hodge?” she asked, keeping her eyes on them both, though one was covered by a green monocle. She was breathing harshly, like she’d just run the marathon in her plate mail.

Jack blinked, but answered “Yeah. Uh, who’re you?”

She smiled, let the blade drop to her side. Then she let the blade drop to the ground. And then she, herself, dropped to the ground, a dusty fwump rising as she hit the grass.

Her body began to turn translucent, a shiny gauze stretched over a glass mannequin. And it kept going, from translucent to transparent, and from transparent to nonexistent. Her armor disappeared with her, as did her sword; only her single leather gauntlet and her green monocle, attached to a chunk of white plastic, stayed behind.

The two guys sat silently for a moment, staring at the impression she left in the slightly muddy ground.

Finally, Jacob remembered to pause the game. “What the hell was that?”

Jack shook his head. Instead of answering, he knelt down from the park bench, looking more closely at the outline left by the bent grass.

Jacob nodded. “Yeah. Whatever it – she – was, it was messed up.”

“Yeah,” said Jack, “Yeah, it was.” He poked the leather gauntlet the woman had left behind. It didn’t move. He gently took it from the ground, turning it over in his hands. It had nine tiny gemstones inlaid on the back of the hand, each a different color and all of them dull. The whole thing was gilt, too. For leather, it felt pretty sturdy.

Jacob simply watched, though he did interrupt when Jack went to put it on his own right hand.

“Dude. Don’t.”

“Why?”

“Because that glove just came from who knows where, and did who knows what to that girl?”

Jack looked at the gauntlet, and nodded. “Point.” He set it back down, and picked up the white chunk of green-and-white plastic.

The white part was mostly a rounded square with an indentation to fit over a person’s ear. It looked like it was made in a factory somewhere, though Jack couldn’t find any “Made In Taiwan” marks. The green piece reaches around in an L-shape, so that, if you wore the white part right, the green part would be right over your right eye.

“It’s a HUD. A Heads-Up-Display,” said Jacob from the bench. “Fighter pilots use ‘em, though they’re getting more and more widespread.”

“Oh.” Jack started to put it over his right ear, but stopped before it got too far. “Before I do this, I want to acknowledge just how dumb it is.”

“I’d guess ‘Very’.”

“Yeah. So I probably shouldn’t do it.”

“I’m with you.”

“But I want to know why the girl appeared in front of us, asked for me, and then disappeared.”

Jacob nodded. “Yeah, alright, I’m curious too. But I don’t think it’s a good idea, and if you disappear too, I get to smack you when you come back.”

“Done.”

Jack set the HUD down, and picked the gauntlet back up. He looked up at Jacob, shrugged, and put it on.

“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” said Mockingbird, nursing her own cup of coffee by this point. “Why did you let him put that thing on if you thought it was a bad idea?”

“Because that’s how it always works in the video games. A beautiful maiden, distress, maybe a disappearance. But it all works out in the end, right?”

The bartender shook her head. Turning to Jack, she said, “and why did you do all that, and put on her armor, when you knew it was a-“

“Because it all works out in the end in the games and the books,” the man said with a shrug. He readjusted his sword on the bar top, moving it out from where he wanted his coffee to go.

“You’re both insane.”

“Yeah,” said Jacob, “we know. But it gets better – and I haven’t heard this part yet.”

Jack blinked. This wasn’t the park.

It was, instead, a bright white void. There was no ground to stand on, no trees to look at, and no grass to hold the imprint of a beautiful woman.

He was also wearing her armor. Apparently, his blue jeans and T-Shirt had been replaced by her golden plate mail, leather boots, and loose cotton pants and undershirt. His right hand still wore the leather gauntlet she had left behind. It had a little give to it, but still had that fresh, crinkly, “just got me at the hardware store” feel to it.

Jack looked up when a voice – her voice – carried itself through the void. “Jack. Nice to meet you.”

“You’re the girl who just disappeared,” he said, though he wasn’t really sure he could say anything to someone who wasn’t there.

“Yep. I’m sorry I didn’t answer your question before – I was dead before you finished. I’m Krystal.”

Behind him, Jack heard a solid footstep. He turned to see the same woman from a few minutes earlier, clad in her own armor, but without the gauntlet.

“I don’t suppose I could ask what the hell’s going on?” Jack said.

“Yes, you can, though I don’t have all day to tell it to you.” She shrugged. “Long story short, I was sent to find you by everyone else in here. You’ve got a long, tough road ahead of you.”

“I do?”

“If their experiences are anything like what you’ve got to go through,” said Krystal, “oh yeah.” As she said this, many other figures – all in the same armor, pants, and boots – stepped forth from nothingness. None of them were as well-defined as Krystal was, though this didn’t make Jack feel any better.

“…Oh.”

“Yeah. That’s what I said, too,” said Krystal, waving everyone else away. They all stepped back into the white ether, leaving the two of them alone. “Let me give you the quick rundown on what you’re up against, and what you’ve got, as the Elemental Knight.”

Chapter 3

“First off, the gauntlet.” Jack looked at it, still stretching his fingers in it. Krystal nodded. “Yeah, that one. It’s the Golden Gauntlet, and that’s where you are right now. It carries the armor, the sword, and the spirits of everyone who’s died while wearing it. It also holds the Elemental Gems, but that’s another story.”

“Second, the armor. Pure mythril. It can take just about anything you throw at it.”

Scratching his head with his free hand, Jack said, “Why isn’t there a helmet with this thing? Or leg armor? Or anything but just-the-torso-armor?”

Krystal shrugged. “I dunno. I never said they put a whole lot of thought into it.”

“Oh, goodie.”

“Yeah. Third, the sword. The Elemental Blade can change itself into any other weapon you know intimately, and is made of the same stuff your armor is. It, too, is pretty much indestructible.”

“I don’t know how to use a sword. Or fight.”

“I don’t either, really,” said Krystal. “But all those people I showed you thirty seconds ago? The spirits trapped in the Gauntlet? They do. Their skill is your skill. Finally, there’re the Elemental Gems. Each one, when alight, lets you truly access magic of that element. When you get out of here, you’ll have at least one lit up already.”

Jack waved his hands at Krystal to get her to stop talking. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Magic?”

The woman sighed. “Yes, magic. Now shut up and listen, because we’ve got about a minute before you have to go out there and kick some ass.”

This, indeed, shut Jack up.

“You’ll know how to use that magic, in some basic form, just like you’ll know how to fight – from us, the spirits in the Gauntlet. You’ll also have AXIS to help you – and before you ask, she’s that thing I had on my face. Let’s see, what else… Oh, go with your instinct. In whatever it is you’re doing, go with your instinct. Got it?”

Jack laughed at the absurdity of all this. “No?”

“Tough, because we’re out of time.”

The void began to tremble and shake around him as Krystal took a step back, fading into the void. “Hey!” said Jack, shouting, “What the hell? You’re gonna tell me all this in two minutes and just throw your arms up and say, ‘I’m done’? Hey! Just what am I up against? HEY!”

Krystal’s voice rang from nowhere, vibrating with the void. “That.”

Jack blinked. He was back on the grass, with the sun shining down and the gauntlet on his hand. He looked up at Jacob. “What the hell just happened?”

“Bright flash of light, you had her armor and sword, and then you looked up at me and asked ‘what the hell just happened?’,” said Jacob, a little incredulous. “Which is something I’d like to know too.”

Before Jack could answer, the ground shook tremendously, knocking them both flat on their faces. It kept shaking, rhythmically, like when a child stomps around in a tantrum but on a far greater scale. Looking up, they both saw the trees bending and cracking through the forest, as a huge stone golem crashed through the park, towards the city.

Jack watched the monstrosity as it left the park, the quakes getting softer and softer as it did. “So that’s what she meant…”

“What who meant? Was that glove lined with LSD or something?”

Jack blinked, and gave the gauntlet another look. One of the gems on its back – the red one, specifically – was glowing with an inner light. “Might’ve been. Too late now, though.” Jack stood up, his left hand unconsciously grasping the hilt of the blade that had appeared there while he was tripping, his right reaching down as he stood to grab the chunk of green and white plastic. “This is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever said, but… Let’s hit the road!”

Jacob gaped at his now insane friend. Slowly standing up himself, he said, “What, in my truck? You want to chase after that thing?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Because it was, like, fifty feet tall! And huge! And smooshed trees!”

Jack nodded. “And when it gets inside the city, it’ll smoosh buildings and people.”

“…And you think you can stop it?” Jacob was already digging in his pocket for his keys.

“Oh, hell no. But I gotta try.”

But Jacob had already taken a running start for the tiny in-park parking lot, where they’d left his battered old ’92 Ford. “Then try we will!” he shouted, jangling his keys in the air. Jack laughed at the absurdity of the afternoon, and dashed after his friend.

Chapter 4

“I told you, you’re both nuts.”

Mockingbird was leaning back on the opposite side of the bar, her coffee cup drained of its horrid brew. Jack, still in his armor, just nodded. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time – I mean, you can’t just let a huge stone golem trash your city, right?”

“Well, yeah,” said the bartender, “but why would you just take off after it two seconds after getting thrown into God’s junk drawer?”

“Junk drawer?”

“Where he keeps the souls he doesn’t have much use for, but can’t bear to get rid of.”

Jack didn’t laugh. Jacob, though, did. “Makes sense.”

“I took off because heroes always take off,” said Jack, still nursing his coffee. “When some big baddie comes to town, ready to blow things up and take the Princess, the hero always goes after him and wins. That’s how it always is in the video games, in the books, in everything. And it worked.”

“Well, don’t stop tellin’ the story right there!” said Mockingbird. “Keep going! How’d you do it?”

Jack shrugged. “I’unno. My short-term memory kinda shut down once I hopped in the bed of Jacob’s truck.”

She turned to Jacob, expectantly. “No, I don’t remember either. I was too busy trying to keep us alive on the road to bother remembering anything.”

At this, there was a flash of light over the unoccupied barstool next to Jacob. The light quickly formed itself into the image of a young, skimpily-dressed woman stretching her arms. “Yeah, that’s why I’m around.”

Jack vaulted over the side of the truck bed, landing on both feet and shaking the frame as Jacob started her up. The engine roared to life, and Jacob yelled out “Here we go!” as he kicked it into reverse.

Jack knelt in the truck bed, examining the white and green object Krystal had left behind. He placed it over his right ear, and found it to fit just about perfectly. He pushed it into place, and felt his ear pop with the pressure of being sealed in. The green plastic-glass fit perfectly over his right eye, leaving an effect like badly-made 3D glasses. He tapped the body of the device, first hearing the noise through his skull, then through his ear. “This thing on?”

A diagnostic rundown appeared inside the green half of Jack’s vision, quickly scrolling through. A giant question mark appeared, and the device held there for a second. Then it buzzed in his ear, and he felt a tiny electric shock all through his head.

A giant checkmark replaced the question mark, and he heard a young woman’s voice – not Krystal’s – through his right ear. “Hello? Who’s this?”

“Jack Hodge. You know Krystal?”

“Did she die?”

Jack was surprised at the candor – he hadn’t thought of it as death, since he didn’t see her leave a body behind – but nodded silently.

“I think she wanted to.”

Jack shrugged. “I don’t know. Didn’t have the chance to ask her. Who are you, anyhow?”
The voice sighed in his ear. “Artificial Experimental Intelligence System 1.4; ‘AXIS’ for short. You said you were Jack Hodge? The guy Krystal was looking for?”

“That’s me. I just want you to know I have no idea what the hell I’m doing, and I was hoping you did.”

“Oh. The golem got here, too?”

Jack smacked his face with his hand. “The giant stone monster that rips apart trees? Yes. Yes it did.”

The green HUD flashed with information as the truck took a sharp turn, sending Jack rolling into the side of the truck bed. Jacob yelled back, “Sorry!” Looking over the edge of the truck, Jack saw that they were on the freeway that cut straight through downtown. Traffic was erratic and sparse, since most people had gone home for the day already.

Standing up, he saw the golem a mile ahead of the truck. “I think we’re on the right track, don’t you?” he shouted to his driver.

“Oh yeah! Totally got his trail!”

Jack nodded, and said to the air, “Any idea how we make it stop moving?”

The voice in his ear laughed. “Let me find out.” More information flashed across the display, resolving itself into a basic humanoid figure. In the figure’s chest area, something big and red was beeping. “That’s the key rock, the rock with the magic that holds it together. You destroy that, it all tumbles apart like so many pebbles.”

“And… how do I do that?”

“What, from this range?”

Jack refocused his vision on the golem. They were catching up, but the debris of asphalt and cement it left behind was going to be brutal on Jacob’s driving skills.

“If you’d be so kind.”

“You can’t,” said the female voice. She seemed a bit annoyed at him. “You need to make it slow down.”

“Again, how?”

“Fireballs.”

“What?”

“Oh, shut up and let me.” Another electric shock surged through his skull, dying down quickly but not disappearing. Jack saw himself raising his gauntleted hand at the monstrosity, felt a surge of energy flow from everywhere in his body to his hand, saw a ball of hot, glowing fire form in his cupped palm. Then, his hand flattened, he adjusted his aim, and the fireball shot forth as if from a cannon.

The golem nearly tripped over an overpassing bridge, though its stone surface seemed only scorched.

The voice in his ear said, “There. Does that make sense?”

“No! No, it doesn’t! And next time you want to borrow my body like that, I expect a better warning!”

Jacob banged on the back window of the truck’s cab. He yelled, “Please tell me you know what you’re doing!”

Jack knelt and shook his head, placing both arms on the roof of the truck’s cab and aiming at the golem. Closing his eyes, he willed himself to repeat the steps that the voice-

“-The name is AXIS, thanks-“

AXIS had shown him. Energy surged from every inch of his body, collected in his hand, and shot into the stone skin of the beast ahead. It stopped its rampage, turned, and roared.

Jacob, from the driver’s seat, slammed the brakes, cursing as the truck skipped along the cracked pavement. But Jack wasn’t paying it any mind. As the truck began to spin around on its front wheels, he put his right foot on the tailgate, and leaped. A corner of his mind calmly asked What the hell did I just do? Jump off the back of a truck going at 60 MPH? Yeah, okay but was silenced by the rest of his brain. Unspoken volumes of insane combat wisdom flew through his mind, telling his body exactly how to take that giant leap, how to spear the monster with his sword so that he could hang on, how to drill a hole with a constant barrage of close-range fireballs, and how to shove his blade deep inside the beast, piercing the keystone.

The insane combat wisdom then immediately left his conscious mind, at which point the questioning part took over and promptly announced that it had no clue how to get down.

Thankfully, gravity provided itself. The stones that made up the golem crumbled from their humanoid shape, forming a hard, rocky pile underneath Jack. The dust alone could have cushioned his fall.

“Hey!”

The silence was nice.

“Hey!”

Not entirely comfortable, but nice.

“Hey! Jack, man! Wake up!”

And it was probably over.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m awake.”

“Your eyes are closed and you’re on top of a giant pile of rubble. Excuse me for think you were dead.”

Jack sat up, opening his eyes. The world was still half-green, the freeway was cracked and pitted, every other streetlight had fallen down, and Jacob’s truck was miraculously fine. He was still wearing the armor.

“We won?”

Jacob looked around. “You beat ‘em. I don’t think anyone’s dead. So yeah. We won.” He sat down on the rubble next to his friend. “You owe me a six-pack, by the way.”

“What?” Jack laughed. “Why do I owe you a six-pack?”

“Oh, it’s tradition. Whenever your buddy drives into the mouth of hell for you, or risks his life for you, you owe him a six-pack. Just consider yourself lucky that I’m rounding down to just the one.”

Jack laughed again. And again. He lay back down on the rubble, laughing to the streetlight-washed heavens, laughing to Jacob, the idiot who drove and flicked off Death at the same time. He heard a voice in his right ear. “Hey, Jack?”

Jack stopped laughing, the dust from the crumbling highway and golem getting into his lungs.

“Jack, I don’t know if you care or not, but there’re a bunch of people headed this way. A few of them in flying machines, a few in those deathtraps on wheels…”

“Oh,” said Jack, to no one in particular. He turned to Jacob. “We should get out of here. Let someone else pick up the mess we made.”

Jacob nodded, standing up. “Yeah. This is the last thing I want on my insurance.”

“And I owe you a six-pack.”

“And you owe me a six-pack. Of the good stuff, dammit.” Jacob started climbing down the rubble, and Jack followed. He decided to sit in the truck bed, lest he get dust all over his friend’s truck cab. Also, his sword wouldn’t really fit.

Chapter 5

“And then,” said Jack, “we came here and got some coffee.”

Mockingbird nodded slowly. Suddenly remembering that she had a business that might require running, she looked up at the clock – Almost ten till midnight. “Might wanna take your armor off, then, because I’m opening up again.”

Jack nodded. “Yeah…” He thought for a minute. “…Though I don’t know how.”

The hologram on the barstool next to Jacob sighed. “The same way you put it on, doofus. Magic.”

“Yeah, well, I’m new at magic, all right? Sue me. Now, how do I do it?”

“Just will it away. That’s magic. You will something to happen, and if you’ve got the energy and the willpower and the creativity for it, it happens. Mostly.”

Jacob, looking back and forth from hologram to human, said, “Magic? That’s what the heavy artillery was before? Magic?”

“Yeah,” said Jack, concentrating on his leather-covered fist. Now, two gems were alight – the bright, dark red, and the earthy, dusty brown.

“Cool.”

“Ain’t it, though?” Another flash of light – first red, then brown, then white – and his armor and sword were gone. He was back in his dustless blue jeans and a gray T-Shirt.

Mockingbird shouted out the door, perhaps a little too loudly, that the Tequila Mockingbird was open again. The hologram on the barstool disappeared, and Jacob got up to turn the news broadcast’s volume back up. Jack sipped his cold coffee.

“You think they’re talking about it on the news?” said Jacob, turning up the volume just a little too loud.

“…Story tonight: Giant monster loose in downtown?”

“Yeah, I think so,” said Jack, looking up from his coffee. Despite himself, he kinda wanted to hear what the news had to say about all this.

“Live on the scene is our Action-12 SkyView Omnicopter and Roy Taylor. Roy?”

A scratchy, radio-droned voice broke from the TV as it circled the pile of rubble and its spiderweb of craved pavement. “Thanks, Denise. I’m currently circling above the scene where the monster was defeated just a short time ago by two unidentified men, one supposedly wielding a sword and golden knight’s armor.”

The screen cut to a recorded interview clip with some flannel-wearing pedestrian, who said, “You should’ve seen it, it was amazing! I’ve never seen a guy leap like that; it was like Michael Jordan an’ Sir Lancelot or somethin’. It was nuts!”

“Nuts indeed, say the police, as it’ll take quite some time to clean up this mess. Expect huge delays here tomorrow morning, and huge questions concerning the two men seen facing the monster down. They reportedly left the scene shortly after defeating the monster in a red Chevy, presumably an early-90s model. If you have any information concerning the origins of the monster, or the people who fought it, you can call our Action-12 TipLine at 614-555-8731. Denise?”

Jacob looked worried at the reporter’s last few sentences. “Do you think they got a license plate off of the truck?”

Jack shook his head. “I don’t think so. The kind of people who’re out and about at eleven o-clock aren’t the kind to right down a bunch of numbers like that. It’s the kind of thing they’d get shot for.”

“Crazy inner-city nutjobs.”

“Welcome to the city, Jacob.”

“Screw the city,” said Jacob, walking away from the TV and grabbing his keys from his pocket. “Let’s go home.”

“Amen,” said Jack. He dropped a five-dollar bill on the counter, put his coffee cup over its edge, and followed Jacob out the door.

END PART I

INTERMISSION

Snap.

Jack’s hand, sheathed in the Gauntlet, held just above the thumb and forefinger a tiny, lighter-like flame.

Snap.

And it was gone.

Snap.

And back again! He could do this all day. Not because he particularly loved fire (though it was pretty), but because it was easy magic. It didn’t surge through him or drain his energy away like the fireballs did yesterday.

Snap.

Jacob walked through the kitchen/dining room, oblivious of Jack’s on-again, off-again relationship with his little fire.

Snap.

This one was a little bigger than it ought to be, Jack thought, but it was still fine.

Snap.

He noticed the Gauntlet’s brown gem was lit, too, just as the red one was. If red is fire, then I’ll bet brown is Earth. It had better be, considering what I went through… Maybe I can make a little cloud of dust or something.

He concentrated on his fingers, poised to snap yet again, not even noticing as Jacob wandered through again.

Snap!

AaaaBEEPaa! AaaaBEEPaa! AaaaBEEPaa! AaaaBEEPaa!

Jack looked at the fire that now encompassed his gauntlet-sheathed hand. Looked up, at the smoke alarm directly above. Looked at Jacob, who was splayed out on the floor; the shock of the smoke alarm’s noise must have sent him flying.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” said Jack.

“So, that’s the house. It isn’t much, but we call it home.” Jack spun his arms around in a grand gesture, the living room whirling around him in a half-green haze.

The female hologram flickered into life in the office chair, behind the desk where Jacob had set up his computer. “It’s not bad,” said the hologram, “and it’s a lot better than running all over the globe.”

Jack nodded, since he rather preferred having a house to live in over wandering the world on some asinine quest. “Hey, question.”

“Yeah?”

“How can you talk? I mean,” Jack said, passing his hand through the translucent woman’s head, “How do you make sound come from ‘here’ when there’s nothing solid ‘here’ to make the sound?”

“Magic.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. Just because I’m a computer doesn’t mean I don’t come with a little magic. That’s how I fit into such a tiny casing – a normal computer of my power would be… the size of the house, I guess, where I come from.”

Jack nodded. “I won’t say that makes sense, but okay.”

“My turn,” said the hologram, sitting on her knees and looking over the swivel-chair’s back at the computer itself. “What’s this thing? I can sense the connection, but I can’t get in.”

Jack caught himself staring at her well-made ass, and quickly responded. “That’s a computer. What you’re sensing is probably the WiFi we have set up for my old laptop.” He knelt down and hit the power button. “We hooked it up so I can store backup stuff on his machine – old eBooks, and stuff – and it’s a lot easier to play against each other if they’re on the same network.”

“Ah, there we go. It’s on the network now.” She stared at the machine casing, and the password screen flashed through several thousand passwords before it began loading up an Apple desktop. “Establishing connection… And… Oh. Oh wow. What’s all that?”

Jack looked at her, confused. His brown eyes saw through to the chair, the floor, but not what she meant. “All what?”

“All those other machines. Out there. They’re not on the same network as this one and the other one – you called it Brunhilde?”

“Oh. I think that’s the Internet. It’s a bajillion other computers linked together to trade information.”

AXIS’ hologram grinned. “Sold!” she yelled, throwing her arms into the air like a child on Christmas day. The hologram disappeared, and the desktop flashed open Firefox, which itself flashed through web-pages faster than Jack could keep an eye on them.

“…Right.” He gently took AXIS off his ear, feeling the light prickling that meant she was disconnected from him, too, and set her case down on the desk. “Don’t get lost in the porn,” he said, and headed to the kitchen for a soda.

Jacob sat down at his computer, a textbook in one hand and a can of beer in the other. Nice of Jack to actually buy me a six-pack. But I ain’t gonna tell him it was just a joke, so…Wait. His desktop was filled with at least ten Firefox windows, each with ten tabs, and each tab, it seemed, was filled with pornography, flashing past his eye so fast that he almost couldn’t register the flesh tones.

“…Why is my computer showing enough porn to choke a donkey?”

AXIS’ hologram popped into existence beside him, looking embarrassed. “My fault. I can see why Jack said not to get lost in it, though… There’s a lot of it.”

“Yes,” said Jacob, taking a swig of his beer and watching the porn fly by. “Yes there is.”

“Explain to me again how this is a good idea?”

Jack and Jacob were in their backyard, such as it was. It was tiny, more just a thick strip of grass that ran alongside the back of the house. But it was fenced in by high, wooden fences on all sides; it had been installed by the owner, who knew the neighbors didn’t much care for college kids and their parties and all. On one end of the wide strip of grass was Jack, Jacob and AXIS; the other, a bunch of old, empty cardboard boxes they had scavenged from the junk in the house.

Jack shrugged. “I gotta practice on something, and I don’t think you want to be on the bad end of a fireball.”

“Well, yeah,” said Jacob, “but where’re you gonna get all the boxes you need to keep that up? Pretend you’ve got an eBay business and get ‘em all from FedEx?”

“…Yeah, actually. That was the plan.”

“All right then.” Jacob pulled up an old lawn chair, and set it in the corner of the backyard. “Fire away!”

Jack nodded, looking at his clenched fist inside the Gauntlet. A flash of light – red, brown, white – and he was wearing the golden armor again. Reaching behind him, he pulled his sword from nowhere and held it at the ready. He looked at the stack of cardboard boxes, on which he’d drawn a rather angry face with a Sharpee, and willed his blade into flames. He felt that same energy stir, but it seemed like it wasn’t sure where to go. A part of his mind said this is stupid, but the rest of him told it to go to hell.

Why not just tell it what you want?

Yeah, well, all right. It’s still dumb, though.

Shut up.

Jack leveled his blade at the cardboard boxes again, willed the blade to alight again, and quietly added, “Flame Sabre.”

It complied. All down the blade’s length, red-hot fire rose and engulfed the mythril. It flared a little above the upper edge, and then faded into nothing.

“Tell me that’s not impressive!” said Jack, satisfaction in his voice.

“It’s impressive! Just don’t light the yard on fire.”

Jack nodded, and half a second later, the flames were extinguished. He stuck the sword into the ground, and it stuck nicely. “Now watch this. I picked it up off of an old cartoon that was on this morning.”

He clenched his right hand into a fist again, and it glowed with a dark, muddy brown sphere of energy. He raised it high into the air, said “Terra Cracker”, and slammed it into the dirt, bringing his whole body into the punch. The blow forced a shockwave through the backyard, down an almost straight line and under the stack of cardboard boxes.

The boxes tumbled over. The box with the angry face was sideways in the grass.

Jacob looked at Jack, who was himself not entirely pleased. “That didn’t turn out like you wanted it, did it?”

“No,” said Jack. “I was kinda hoping the ground would swallow it up…”

Jacob shrugged. “You had something with the, uh, the Flare Sabre thing. That was nice.”

“Yeah. I’m gonna be using that one a lot.”

Jacob stood up from his lawn chair, and walked up next to his armored friend. Looking at the pile of cardboard boxes, he said, “Against what?”

Jack shrugged. “I dunno.”

END INTERMISSION