03-24-2010, 08:42 PM
“Oh!” said Juno, his memory catching up as fast as Kazuya’s hair could cascade gracefully down her back. He sighed inwardly; she might’ve been hot if not for the rather large age difference. Ah, well, he thought, and turned back to look at the TIE-fighters. “So,” he pondered, “How the hell are we supposed to get up there?”
It was a valid question. Kazuya and Ace followed Juno’s gaze, the team of three quickly meshing after the Japanese woman and the psychokinetic had exchanged introductions, noticing that the orb-shaped cockpit was several meters off the ground, well out of climbing and jumping range. There didn’t seem to be any ladders nearby, either, so the contestants were, for the first time in a while, quite perplexed.
They stood there rather comically for a few seconds, Kazuya looking up at the ship as if it was still very foreign despite the injection of knowledge she’d just received, Alex slightly disappointed he wasn’t already in the thick of the battle (he seemed a bit too eager to pilot one of the ships) and Juno with a contorted face that signaled the overwhelming frustration he felt for this damn competition already. Couldn’t Gamer just make something easy for a change? Why did this all have to be so difficult?
“I don’t think that regular flight’s going to work here, guys,” Juno realized, feeling the slight damper on his ki for the first time. He wondered if Kaden would’ve been able to point that out sooner, thanks to his ‘sight.’
“You can fly?” Trafford said, cocking his head to the side. Kazuya and Juno looked at the boy as if the fact was quite normal, and Ace quickly returned his confused look to the spaceship, attempting as much as possible to act casual. “Uh,” he sputtered, trying to redeem himself, “We could always… climb.”
“Climb the ship?” Kazuya scoffed, “You act as if it’s easy to climb a flat surface, boy.”
And with that, the trio was silent again, peering up at the spaceships in a certain idiotic wonder. Their eyes squinted, they turned their heads like confused puppies, they tried everything, from crossing their arms to raising their eyebrows, but… nothing. They couldn’t figure out a single way to get into the spacecrafts.
Suddenly, a certain familiar heavy breathing entered their ears, and they clutched the sides of their head as the voice from above—that no one besides them seemed to notice—began to mock them.
“Do I have to do everything?” Gamer’s distinctive voice hollered, and the trio looked up to the roof of the hangar for some type of intercom. Gamer’s voice wasn’t coming from any PA system, however; it seemed to be coming from all sides. Kazuya and Alex, at first glance, didn’t seem to think anything of it, but he couldn’t be sure—Juno, however, stored that little observation for later use. He didn’t have time to converse with the two about Gamer’s intrusion into the game, however, before he found himself forcibly teleported inside the cockpit of one of the TIE-fighters, keys still jingling in his hand. “There, you useless… things. Now, get to flying. I want some frickin’ explosions, for God’s sakes.”
“Classic male,” Kazuya’s voice piped in over the radio, “Always looking to do things the hard way… I say we take them out from the inside.”
“And how do we do that, Kazuya?” Juno asked, as the demon-possessed woman’s face popped up on a monitor in front of him. She scowled, silent. “Looks like we’re going to have to do things his way, like it or not.”
“Alright then, let’s get started!” Ace shouted, his face appearing next to Kazuya’s on the monitor. Before either or the team could reply, the orange-haired man had quickly turned his keys into the keyhole and launched out of the hangar, already speeding ahead of his teammates. Juno sighed. He was way too excited about this.
“This is ridiculous,” Kazuya muttered.
“Tell me about it,” Juno scowled, “I still don’t know how exactly to work this. It’s not like anything I’ve driven before.”
“Come on, guys, the water’s warm!” Alex laughed.
Juno glanced at Kazuya on the monitor, and she met his gaze. They rolled their eyes in sync, turned the keys in their ignitions, and pushed forward on what looked to be a control. Their ships began to hover above the metal flooring of the hangar, and within seconds, the pair of ships had—albeit, kind of recklessly—shot out of the Kill Cluster and into deep space. The pair circled around the Kill Cluster’s side, finding themselves in the midst of an epic space battle—X-wings, as Juno supposed they were called, flew around in loose formations, launching orange laser beams at TIE-fighters; the Conglomerate’s vessels countered them with emerald green blazes shot from similar dual cannons.
All of a sudden, as if triggered by some force from nowhere, Juno’s eyes glazed over, not for a look into the future, but for something eerily familiar—he saw flashes of things he knew, whether it be Kaden, or Sage, or Sophia, or Alex and Kazuya—he was standing in the midst of a familiar blue plane, an astral plane he’d visited in Friend or Foe, in the midst of the final ten’s meeting in Olde Town; he felt strange, he felt—
“Juno, get your eyes on the battlefield, man!” Kazuya’s voice called, breaking him from his trance. He shook his head, apologizing briefly and returning his focus to an X-wing that was flanking him. He did a backwards flip, landing behind the ship and firing a series of consecutive shots at it; it exploded in green flame, the pilot’s screams disappearing in the vacuum of space. “Juno, our communications radar is receiving another frequency on this channel, from somewhere nearby,” Kazuya rattled off as if she was an expert technician.
“Do you even know what any of that means?” Juno asked.
“No,” Kazuya replied stoically, met by silence. “Well, aren’t you going to tell me?”
“It means there’s someone else here,” he muttered, and Kazuya scoffed as if that was obvious, “No—someone else playing the game. We’re not the only people here from Kill Town, Kazuya.”
A bit of static buzzed in, and Juno listened intently, noticing that the signal was coming from a pair of X-wings that was slowly closing in on their position. Damn it—they’re on the other team! We’re frigging fighting against our own! The radio began to chirp as the signal finally came in clear, in a female’s voice, “Uh… Iron Maiden here, I’m moving to engage—”
“Be careful, Victoria!” another voice, this one a man’s, and familiar, shouted as he zoomed up behind her and shot at Alex’s craft, which had closed in for a shot. Trafford dodged like an expert pilot—he must’ve played flight simulators or something—and joined his crew.
“Hey, we’re on your side!” Juno called over the comm, and the voices on the other side began expressing confusion which Juno couldn’t make out as they talked at the same time, “Well, not really on your side, but we’re from Kill Town!”
“Whoa. So you mean Gamer is making us fight against real people? Jerk,” Victoria, as the other guy had called her, mused. Juno suddenly had a realization as to who the male’s voice was—Ander, Sage’s friend from the carnival. He quickly made note to prove his total humanness, hoping that they’d realized they weren’t in-game creations.
“You—guy—you’re… you’re Ander, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Ander muttered, “And you’re… oh, God, it starts with a J—”
“Juno!!” the hybrid yelled, bitter. Why did everyone have to have no idea who he was? First Kaden barely recognizes him on a rooftop in a battle for life and death, and now this arrogant jerk didn’t remember his name? He knew that maybe he’d gotten carried away with his tone of voice, but still; he remembered peoples’ names he’d barely met, so why couldn’t they bother themselves to know who this little, meaningless Saiyan kid was? Well, looks like he’d have to make an impression. He dove out of formation, coming up beneath Ander’s ship, and fired a couple of shots at it. Not expecting the attack, Ander barely dodged the green lasers.
“Yo, watch it, buddy!” Ander called, a bit ticked, “I guess this means we’re not making an olive branch.”
“Just playing the game, guys,” Juno laughed, putting a cover on the bitterness, attempting to hide the anger, “And if shooting you guys out of the sky is what it takes to get out of here, then I’m ready to do it!”
“Suit yourself,” Ander smirked, turning straight downward and doing a nosedive toward the Kill Cluster. Juno watched carefully—that must’ve been their objective. Get rid of the space station—it was so obvious.
“Kazuya, Trafford—” the hybrid shouted, “On him, now! Don’t let him get away!!”
It was a valid question. Kazuya and Ace followed Juno’s gaze, the team of three quickly meshing after the Japanese woman and the psychokinetic had exchanged introductions, noticing that the orb-shaped cockpit was several meters off the ground, well out of climbing and jumping range. There didn’t seem to be any ladders nearby, either, so the contestants were, for the first time in a while, quite perplexed.
They stood there rather comically for a few seconds, Kazuya looking up at the ship as if it was still very foreign despite the injection of knowledge she’d just received, Alex slightly disappointed he wasn’t already in the thick of the battle (he seemed a bit too eager to pilot one of the ships) and Juno with a contorted face that signaled the overwhelming frustration he felt for this damn competition already. Couldn’t Gamer just make something easy for a change? Why did this all have to be so difficult?
“I don’t think that regular flight’s going to work here, guys,” Juno realized, feeling the slight damper on his ki for the first time. He wondered if Kaden would’ve been able to point that out sooner, thanks to his ‘sight.’
“You can fly?” Trafford said, cocking his head to the side. Kazuya and Juno looked at the boy as if the fact was quite normal, and Ace quickly returned his confused look to the spaceship, attempting as much as possible to act casual. “Uh,” he sputtered, trying to redeem himself, “We could always… climb.”
“Climb the ship?” Kazuya scoffed, “You act as if it’s easy to climb a flat surface, boy.”
And with that, the trio was silent again, peering up at the spaceships in a certain idiotic wonder. Their eyes squinted, they turned their heads like confused puppies, they tried everything, from crossing their arms to raising their eyebrows, but… nothing. They couldn’t figure out a single way to get into the spacecrafts.
Suddenly, a certain familiar heavy breathing entered their ears, and they clutched the sides of their head as the voice from above—that no one besides them seemed to notice—began to mock them.
“Do I have to do everything?” Gamer’s distinctive voice hollered, and the trio looked up to the roof of the hangar for some type of intercom. Gamer’s voice wasn’t coming from any PA system, however; it seemed to be coming from all sides. Kazuya and Alex, at first glance, didn’t seem to think anything of it, but he couldn’t be sure—Juno, however, stored that little observation for later use. He didn’t have time to converse with the two about Gamer’s intrusion into the game, however, before he found himself forcibly teleported inside the cockpit of one of the TIE-fighters, keys still jingling in his hand. “There, you useless… things. Now, get to flying. I want some frickin’ explosions, for God’s sakes.”
“Classic male,” Kazuya’s voice piped in over the radio, “Always looking to do things the hard way… I say we take them out from the inside.”
“And how do we do that, Kazuya?” Juno asked, as the demon-possessed woman’s face popped up on a monitor in front of him. She scowled, silent. “Looks like we’re going to have to do things his way, like it or not.”
“Alright then, let’s get started!” Ace shouted, his face appearing next to Kazuya’s on the monitor. Before either or the team could reply, the orange-haired man had quickly turned his keys into the keyhole and launched out of the hangar, already speeding ahead of his teammates. Juno sighed. He was way too excited about this.
“This is ridiculous,” Kazuya muttered.
“Tell me about it,” Juno scowled, “I still don’t know how exactly to work this. It’s not like anything I’ve driven before.”
“Come on, guys, the water’s warm!” Alex laughed.
Juno glanced at Kazuya on the monitor, and she met his gaze. They rolled their eyes in sync, turned the keys in their ignitions, and pushed forward on what looked to be a control. Their ships began to hover above the metal flooring of the hangar, and within seconds, the pair of ships had—albeit, kind of recklessly—shot out of the Kill Cluster and into deep space. The pair circled around the Kill Cluster’s side, finding themselves in the midst of an epic space battle—X-wings, as Juno supposed they were called, flew around in loose formations, launching orange laser beams at TIE-fighters; the Conglomerate’s vessels countered them with emerald green blazes shot from similar dual cannons.
All of a sudden, as if triggered by some force from nowhere, Juno’s eyes glazed over, not for a look into the future, but for something eerily familiar—he saw flashes of things he knew, whether it be Kaden, or Sage, or Sophia, or Alex and Kazuya—he was standing in the midst of a familiar blue plane, an astral plane he’d visited in Friend or Foe, in the midst of the final ten’s meeting in Olde Town; he felt strange, he felt—
“Juno, get your eyes on the battlefield, man!” Kazuya’s voice called, breaking him from his trance. He shook his head, apologizing briefly and returning his focus to an X-wing that was flanking him. He did a backwards flip, landing behind the ship and firing a series of consecutive shots at it; it exploded in green flame, the pilot’s screams disappearing in the vacuum of space. “Juno, our communications radar is receiving another frequency on this channel, from somewhere nearby,” Kazuya rattled off as if she was an expert technician.
“Do you even know what any of that means?” Juno asked.
“No,” Kazuya replied stoically, met by silence. “Well, aren’t you going to tell me?”
“It means there’s someone else here,” he muttered, and Kazuya scoffed as if that was obvious, “No—someone else playing the game. We’re not the only people here from Kill Town, Kazuya.”
A bit of static buzzed in, and Juno listened intently, noticing that the signal was coming from a pair of X-wings that was slowly closing in on their position. Damn it—they’re on the other team! We’re frigging fighting against our own! The radio began to chirp as the signal finally came in clear, in a female’s voice, “Uh… Iron Maiden here, I’m moving to engage—”
“Be careful, Victoria!” another voice, this one a man’s, and familiar, shouted as he zoomed up behind her and shot at Alex’s craft, which had closed in for a shot. Trafford dodged like an expert pilot—he must’ve played flight simulators or something—and joined his crew.
“Hey, we’re on your side!” Juno called over the comm, and the voices on the other side began expressing confusion which Juno couldn’t make out as they talked at the same time, “Well, not really on your side, but we’re from Kill Town!”
“Whoa. So you mean Gamer is making us fight against real people? Jerk,” Victoria, as the other guy had called her, mused. Juno suddenly had a realization as to who the male’s voice was—Ander, Sage’s friend from the carnival. He quickly made note to prove his total humanness, hoping that they’d realized they weren’t in-game creations.
“You—guy—you’re… you’re Ander, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Ander muttered, “And you’re… oh, God, it starts with a J—”
“Juno!!” the hybrid yelled, bitter. Why did everyone have to have no idea who he was? First Kaden barely recognizes him on a rooftop in a battle for life and death, and now this arrogant jerk didn’t remember his name? He knew that maybe he’d gotten carried away with his tone of voice, but still; he remembered peoples’ names he’d barely met, so why couldn’t they bother themselves to know who this little, meaningless Saiyan kid was? Well, looks like he’d have to make an impression. He dove out of formation, coming up beneath Ander’s ship, and fired a couple of shots at it. Not expecting the attack, Ander barely dodged the green lasers.
“Yo, watch it, buddy!” Ander called, a bit ticked, “I guess this means we’re not making an olive branch.”
“Just playing the game, guys,” Juno laughed, putting a cover on the bitterness, attempting to hide the anger, “And if shooting you guys out of the sky is what it takes to get out of here, then I’m ready to do it!”
“Suit yourself,” Ander smirked, turning straight downward and doing a nosedive toward the Kill Cluster. Juno watched carefully—that must’ve been their objective. Get rid of the space station—it was so obvious.
“Kazuya, Trafford—” the hybrid shouted, “On him, now! Don’t let him get away!!”