Player one: Ramona Roth. Nineteen, blue hair, pierced eyebrow, former president of the student council, virgin. The mission? Rekindle a friendship during a power outage by way of Mario Kart, heart-to-hearts, and extreme trash talking.
Due to a somewhat nerdy author indulging herself, this offering for Geek Pride is full of video game and pop culture references, at least one virgin, rebellious university students in a small town, and car windows fogged with steamy sexual tension. I make no apologies for its length.
War is hell, they say, but I say they’re wrong.
Hell is insanity, and insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Hell is false hopes and flagrant disappointment.
Hell is knowing that the squabbling of Ilyra, the princess from the far-off planet of Nianus, and Jostok, the snarky-but-pleasantly-ripped humanoid alien soldier from Quighnan, would attract the attention of Izzon’s monstrous space beast.
It’s knowing that the beast would destroy the vent your plucky band of misfits was crawling through.
It’s knowing that you’d all tumble into the cavernous belly of the spaceship with only the last-second triggering of a force-field from your omni-cuff to prevent you from turning to gizzard soup on the space-grey floor.
I watched Jostok realize that the forcefield hadn’t prevented the princess from being crushed beneath the weight of the metal that tumbled from above. I watched him separate her from the tangled pile of bodies and bionic limbs, cradling her barely conscious form against one beefy, armour-clad bicep.
I watched her brilliant violet eyes flutter open, and saw the little half-smile on her face as he called her by her name, and heard the weakness in her voice as she reminded him that it was Princess Ilyra to him. I heard Jostok chuckle wetly and assure her she was going to make it.
After all, she was the princess. This was not how princesses died.
Which was true, because she didn’t die like that.
Izzon’s beast hurled itself to the ground in front of us, its weight making the spaceship itself shudder violently. A beam of light shot forth from its gaping maw, wrenching Ilyra from Jostok’s arms. He reached for her, but before his bionic arm was even fully extended, the beast had pulled her into the air, clutched her between its massive claws, and snapped her in half like she was a fucking Kit Kat bar.
So, she died like that instead.
There was a beat; a pause as horror dawned across the party. A splash of blood splattered on the floor followed by the delicate circlet Ilyra always wore.
“No,” breathed Jostok.
A metallic cackle from above filled the room.
“So much for your princess,” Izzon said as he descended on a floating platform.
He landed just in front of the beast. Two long strides brought him to the circlet, and he plucked it from the pool of blood before making a mockery of Ilyra’s memory and placing the fragile band of metal on his horned forehead.
“You killed her,” Jostok said, his voice wavering.
“Well, duh,” Izzon said, chuckling. “What, you think this is your fairytale or something, Quighnan? You kill the horrible, evil, sad little man who was just trying to get back what was rightfully his? You think you save the world, you get the girl, you get the glory?”
His smile faded, and he straightened the circlet before reaching for his omni-cuff.
“Well, Quighnan, I have news for you. You failed. The world is mine, the girl is dead, and you—”
“Shut up, you piece of Cul excrement!” Jostok roared.
“Or what?” Izzon taunted.
“Or this,” I muttered.
Surprise flashed across Izzon’s face as Jostok smashed his omni-cuff, using the last of its power to create his trademark rocket launcher. Hefting it over his shoulder, he screamed as he fired it. Izzon’s beast stepped forward, snatching its master from the ground seconds before the ball of certain death hit him, and it was time for me to take over. 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯.𝘤𝘰𝘮
The battle was hell. It was a place I’d been a million times before, and I let the world around me fade as I focused on Izzon and Izzon alone. His beast didn’t like that, of course, but the beast wasn’t my concern. There were others to fight the beast; only I could fight Izzon.
Sweat beaded on my forehead and dryness scratched at my eyes. I refused to look away, refused to be distracted for even a millisecond from my task. Izzon darted around the battlefield, firing laser after laser in my direction, but I knew how to dodge them. I knew how to use them against him; I knew how to lure the beast to just the right spot for Izzon to maim it himself.
And I knew what would happen next.
The world shook, a rumbling that vibrated through my bones. Izzon’s platform shot up, and I tracked it, ignoring the shouts and cries of the battle raging around me. High above, I saw the flash of light, and I hurled myself out of the way moments before a ball of plasma crashed down and punched a hole through the entire ship.
A rush of air sucked through the floor, and I clung to the strategically placed pole for dear life, still refusing to take my eyes off Izzon’s platform. I waited, watched, my heart racing as he descended, and descended, and…
“Now,” I said through clenched teeth, and I jumped.
Wind and suction twirled around me as I fought against the force with everything in me. It was a Hail Mary, a last-ditch effort, a moment of pure insanity as I mashed at the omni-cuff wildly. I mashed, and mashed, and mashed, and—
I made it.
I got to the platform.
“Oh my fuck,” I breathed. “Oh fuck, oh frak, oh… fruck.”
I finally did it.
Izzon stood before me, his wretched face twisted in anger. I pointed my weapon at him, just as I dreamed I would a thousand times before, and without so much as a second thought, I began to fire. One shot hit and his body jostled; another and red splattered around me; one more and—
And all went dark.
Sudden silence replaced the sounds of battle as blackness overtook me. For half a moment, I thought I had died, like for-real died. Then, my eyes adjusted, and across from me I saw the form of a woman with pale skin, wide eyes, and bright blue hair in the depths of a black mirror.
“No,” I whispered.
The woman mimicked me.
“No,” I said again, a low groan as realization dawned on me.
The woman’s face crumpled. A bolt of lightning flashed through the basement window, and as thunder roared, I screamed.
“You’ve got to be frucking kidding me!” I shrieked, and I’m not at all ashamed to admit that I burst into tears.
“Ramona!” my mom shouted distantly.
I ignored her cry; tears were streaming down my cheeks as frantic footsteps thudded on the stairs. Despondently, I slid off the couch and crumpled to the floor, clutching my controller to my chest as I sobbed.
“Ramona!” Mom gasped again, the faint glow of her cell phone flashlight spilling across the basement. “Are you hurt? Ramona, talk to me, w-what happened, are you—”
“The power,” I whimpered as she reached me and hesitantly touched my shoulder. “The power went out, and I was so close.”
“Close to… what?”
“Beating Izzon,” I sniffed.
Silent tension filled the basement.
“In a game,” she said flatly.
“Well, yeah, but—”
“You screamed bloody murder in the middle of a huge thunderstorm because the power went out during a game.”
It was no use trying to explain to her that I’d been stuck on the boss fight in The Circlet of Nianus for days. I stared sullenly across the basement at the darkened TV as Mom launched into another one of her ranting lectures that had become routine since I’d returned home for the summer after my first year of university.
“This is not proper behaviour for a nineteen-year-old woman,” she said, probably. I would’ve had to have been listening to know for sure, which I wasn’t, but all her lectures were pretty much the same. “Christ, Ramona, it’s like I don’t even know who you are anymore. What happened to the sweet girl who left for university last August?”
Then, if that lecture was anything like the other ones—which it likely was, but I still wasn’t listening—she would have started tearing up.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve you acting like this, Ra-Ra,” she probably said in a watery voice. “What happened to my goody-two-shoes straight-laced brown-noser who would never dream of putting a toe out of line and who I, as the head of the Minwack Falls Homeowners Association, could truly be proud of since she was as cookie-cutter and put-together as the yards and fences I work so hard to keep in line at all times?”
Well, she probably didn’t say that last part. At least, not out loud. But the implication was there. When I tuned back in to the conversation, she was shaking her head as she looked dramatically in the other direction.
“Honestly, Ra-Ra, maybe we made a mistake,” she was saying, for real that time. “Sending you to that school… I worried that you weren’t ready and now—”
“I was perfectly ready to go to university,” I said dully. “And I’m an adult, so you didn’t send me anywhere. I chose to go. And my name is Ramona.”
“Adults don’t throw tantrums because of a silly game.”
“It’s not silly,” I said through gritted teeth. “This is what I want to do with my life.”
“Play games.”
“Make games.”
“Hmmph,” she said. “Be that as it may, I highly doubt you’ll find a summer job making games. I charged the laptop battery up earlier today, so if the power stays out, we can still work on your resume tonight.”
