Nick Cole - Soda Pop Soldier

With just one hand I’m next to useless. I proceed forward despite the pleas for help, cries of agony, the delight of the deviant.

A menu option opens, letting me know I can tuck the Samurai’s damaged left hand under his opposite arm to control the bleeding, but I’ll be at a combat disadvantage. Still, it’ll control the damage loss. I’ve already lost another 2 percent health.

I do. I curse Iain again. And I wonder where Sancerré is right now.

Then I stop. I’ve got to focus and make this thing pay, regardless. So I force myself to play the game and let go of all the other junk in my life.

If I’ve started in the dungeon, I reason, then the child I’ll need to rescue is most likely at the top of the tower. That’s the obvious path and the only goal I can think of right now. Somewhere, I’ll probably find a staircase leading up from the dungeon and into or near the tower.

I need to go up.

Instead, all I find are rendered rough-hewn stone steps leading down into a faintly green iridescent well of darkness. Dripping water from fanged stalactites above provides a tympanic counterpoint to the lonely wooden chock … chock … chock … chock of my Samurai’s cautious steps down through the mostly silent descent. The steps finally lead me to a natural cave. I move the Samurai close to the wall and, cleverly, the avatar turns sideways and hugs the rocky surface. Once again I’m amazed at the authorship of the game.

In the cavern, a long-legged dark figure, with slender thighs but misshapen by a large potbelly, prowls about. Fat arms and tiny hands caress a ropy bullwhip. Above this, a curiously odd-shaped head, covered by a leather mask, cranes itself side to side from the short stump of a neck. In my gut, I know it’s another player.

I call him Creepy.

Probably Darkness.

Beyond Creepy, a natural bridge heaves itself over a gaping chasm. The other side is little more than a lone, distant torch and flickering shadows. I wait, back to the stone wall, hidden in the dark of the passage. Once again I scroll through the Samurai’s submenu looking for some ability that might be of use. I find nothing. Serene Focus, which I could employ to push Creepy off the ledge after a quick rush, refuses to come back online as it slowly recharges.

My brain begins to tickle, and I wonder for a moment if I’m being watched. I check the stone staircase behind and above me. Nothing. I watch the stone ledge where Creepy seems to be patrolling, looking for something, even waiting for someone. A new submenu, which I’d been prowling, opens up the history of my Samurai. After I get past all the code of honor and devotion to the art of combat stuff, I catch a line that intrigues me.

The Samurai, a master of balance and grace, employs these traits to deliver decisive death blows and evade enemies.

I unpin the Samurai from the wall and walk forward. Creepy instantly stops pacing. The whip hangs limply from one studded-gloved hand.

I send him a message in text.

“HOLD, friend, let’s talk.”

I open up a chat channel and send him an invite. My quickly evolving plan, in short, is to do a little role-playing. If Creepy likes to play with his food, and if I can maneuver him into a position near enough the edge of the chasm, I might be able to push him over said edge, or even get myself onto the bridge and away from him. I might be able to evade him if I catch him off guard or lure him into a sense of complacency or even, perhaps, do something more lethal. The bullwhip is a weapon I could probably use with one hand. The Samurai were masters of every weapon, and if I am going to make my thousand bucks pay off, then I need to think like a Samurai and get a weapon.

Will Creepy go for it, and if he does, what does he want? Role playing involves me looking into his room, his world, wherever in the world that is, and him, even more frightening, looking into my world, my apartment.

I take a quick sip of scotch, consider lighting a cigarette, and wonder again where Sancerré is right now.

Shortly my worst fears are confirmed. A visual channel opens in the top left-hand side of my screen. Creepy in real life looks exactly like Creepy in the cave. He’s cosplaying himself in the game. From behind the black mask I see two beady eyes alight with feverish intensity.

“Guten abend, mein freund.”

Crud, a German.

“I don’t … sprechen … English?”

For a moment Creepy’s face seems to twist with frustration. Then, “Ja, my English is nicht sehr gut. But I make it for you.” Red lips painted with lipstick smile awkwardly back at me. For a brief moment he seems nice, harmless, like a kid I knew in school who just wanted to make friends but didn’t know how. I feel sorry for him and instantly I degrade Creepy’s threat level. Maybe he’s just playing for kicks, looking for a good time and, more important, a friend. I can use that against him. Maybe I can even get him to leave me alone, or help me.

“You vant to make vis der role playing or maybe you vant to vatch me do stuff?”

This is too easy …

… and I know it’s too easy.

And nothing is ever too easy.

“Yeah,” I say, “I like to watch.” I feel a million tons of sludge oozing through my veins.

“Ja, really?” says Creepy flatly. Watch out, I hear my mind scream.

“Okay, I’m gonna lock my door so no one comes in, vait a second.” He gets up from his keyboard as I wonder two things.

One, who is “no one”?

And two, wouldn’t you lock your door before dressing up like a weirdo sadomasochist pervert to play an illegal Black game?

He gets up from his computer, turns his back, and goes to the far end of the room, receding into the fish-eye lens of the visual chat.

It’s now or never. I run for the bridge. The head start I get on him now that he’s away from his keyboard might give me just the edge I need to at least get onto the stone bridge. Maybe the bridge narrows enough that I can make him fall if he chases me or at least slow him down.

But from the moment I slew my POV toward the bridge to begin my dash, I know it’s doomed. Ten steps out and, crack, the whip’s sonic slash echoes over ambient. A POV-spinning second later and I’m facedown on the digitally rendered grit and gravel of the ledge. I slew my POV around and see Creepy pulling hard to haul me in. On-screen, the visual link’s still active, and I see Creepy smiling, drooling, chuckling softly to himself as the glimmer of a crimson SoftEye burns malevolently inside the cheap shiny leather of the mask. He’s got some kind of motion-recognition software running. He’s pulling hard at an invisible whip, dictating the movements of his on-screen character.

He’d kept an eye on me the entire time.

No deception. No gain.

I send my cursor scrambling through the Samurai’s submenus looking for anything to use. Serene Focus still refuses to activate, but it’s crawling toward a full charge. Under a menu called Posture I find all kinds of things. Sitting, Standing, Relaxed, Entertaining, and even something called Breakdancing. But it’s the combat postures listed there that intrigue me the most. Creepy’s almost passing out from glee on visual, so I cut the link. Focusing on the Posture menu, I find a variety of weapon and martial arts stances for different combat situations. Some are online, but all the powerful attacks seem to require both hands. Some even require the Samurai’s lost sword, Deathefeather, specifically. I quickly scroll through the martial arts, searching for anything to use in the next ten seconds. I find Hopkido, even something called Hwa Rang Do, but it’s Judo that attracts me the most.

Creepy drags me upright. His avatar’s grinning, sweating face thrusts itself into my monitor like a fiend. I can only imagine what’s going on in Berlin, or wherever Creepy resides. This is probably like the Super Bowl for him. Creepy wraps his bullwhip around my neck and my screen suddenly hazes over in a red mist as a thudding heartbeat begins to pump slower and slower through my speakers.