The Prison

[Piper Juunanagou]

With an almost snorting grunt, Sergeant Piper Juunanagou’s eyes cracked open, revealing a pair of vengeful, bloodshot pupils. Sitting up, the woman blinked several times as she waited for her eyes to adjust to the overdose of sunlight gushing into her current whereabouts through a nearby barred window. After nearly a minute, Piper rose up to a standing position, her vision now sufficiently adapted to the sunny, sweltering environment.

“Where the hell am I?” The woman whispered to no on in particular as she scanned the small room for an indication of life. When she received no helpful response or saw no sign of any company, Piper let out an exasperated groan and proceeded to make her way toward the reinforced door at what seemed to be the anterior of the rundown building. As she reached out for the handle, she noted that she was still wearing the metal glove from the space simulator.

Breaking off the door handle when it refused to budge, Piper forced it the rest of the way open with a series of violent kicks that bowed its midsection enough to compromise the integrity of its mounting brackets. In the end, it was this lack of integrity that eventually caused the heavy door to peel away from the surrounding wall and topple forward into the sand-stained ground outside the shanty.

Just great…

A heavy frown spread across the woman’s face as she stepped out into the decaying remains of what may have been a thriving town a few decades ago. In the time that had passed, the buildings and streets had slowly been fighting a losing battle against the desert that surrounded the town. All that remained of civilization was a scattered assortment of rundown structures patched up with rusted sheets of metal. The bleached soil that may have once been roads and even tiny lawns was now fissured and doted with fractal remnants of fences, signposts, and even a car or two.

“I hate this place already,” Piper rasped beneath her breath as she began to note the abundance of pipes that ran across the dried earth. Based on the people she could see either scurrying about or simply pacing with no real motivation, the soldier could only assume that the pipes served to provide the ‘towns’ inhabitants with a source of water. Unfortunately that deduction only served to raise more questions within the mind of the inquisitive woman’s head. After all, who would voluntarily choose to eek out a living in such a dreary, inhospitable place?

No one would, you moron. Piper mused as she turned to notice a masked man creeping along the opposing side of the street. Despite a faint recollection of the individual’s attire, the woman couldn’t put a name to the partially obscured face.

“At ease, Captain!” The individual shouted as he snapped off a quick salute to the scowling soldier and continued without more than a fleeting glance at her visible disapproval. Even though she didn’t have a name for the face, Piper could only surmise that she wanted nothing to do with the sarcastic masked figure.

Turning away from the direction of the stranger, Piper began to march down the opposing end of the path. A short distance from the shanty, she walked passed a larger structure that was labeled ‘Prison’ and seemed to house a few unconscious forms. If this had been some other situation, the woman probably would have stopped to assess the condition of the people and offer them any necessary medical support. After all, that was what she did to earn the big bucks. Unfortunately, the foreign elements that Gamer had unwillingly forced upon the woman had served to numb the altruistic elements of her personality, and as Piper marched down the eroded sidewalk, her mind contained but one single, solitary motivation—vengeance.

In any normal situation, Piper would probably have evacuated the scene and rallied some backup before attempting to confront Gamer, but her young and foolish kidnapper had made the terrible mistake of leaving her with no other options. By hooking her up into a computer and keeping her against her will, Gamer had quintessentially trapped the proverbial lioness into her proverbial cage. And when this lion escaped, there would be no retreating for backup. There would be nothing but pain and bloodshed.

With a heavy frown, Piper lifted her right hand and channeled a sphere of ki through the glove. As it had been before, the hue of the energy was green as opposed to the shade of light red it had manifested as in the prior Kill Town events. Holding the twitching, scintillating orb between her bruised, blistered hands, the woman took a single, commanding step forward and proceeded to hurl the sphere of energy toward an outdated, dilapidated car rotting down the street. In a flash of green light, the vehicle was reduced to nothing more than a black scar on the remnants of the pavement. The scorched pieces of the car that weren’t eradicated in the blast were blown apart and scattered into the winds. Reeling back, Piper lifted a forearm to shield her face as a few twisted shards of metal sailed passed her.

“Well that was strangely satisfying,” Piper muttered beneath her breath as she lowered her arm back to her side and looked disconcertingly at where the vehicle had been. “It’ll be interesting to see what would happen if that had been Gamer’s skull,” the woman added with a rather sinister grin as she clenched and unclenched her metal-encased fist. With a delightful mental picture swirling about in her mind, Piper began to casually meander down what remained over the eroding sidewalk.

For the next several minutes, the soldier passed the time by achieving absolutely nothing worthwhile. Sure, in that time she had managed to map out the perimeter of the ghost town, but other than that, she’d done nothing more than manage to kill some time she knew should have otherwise been dedicated to formulating an escape plan. But how the hell was she supposed to escape from a marginally abandoned town and traverse the seemingly vacuous desert that surrounding said locale?

With a frustrated crown, Piper marched over the crest of a small hill and suddenly found herself staring at something that made absolutely no sense. There, smack dab in the middle of an abandoned town in the midst of a desert, was an extravagant mansion surrounded by lush, flourishing grass, trees, shrubbery, and flowers. The entire thing was an ecological impossibility, and despite her desire to investigate the bizarre mansion, Piper figured it was probably some stupid trap for starving, dehydrated maniacs. Anyone who crossed through the lavish gate to the courtyard would probably be mowed down by hidden machine guns, and the massive door at front of the building was most likely connected to some sort of pitfall or rigged shotgun.

“Yea, screw that,” Piper remarked as she instead took a right and began to head toward the center of the decaying settlement. Unlike the carnival, the prison town (as Piper could only assume it functioned as) was mostly silent. Every now and again, the blonde would pass a leaky pipeline or notice a sign or loose sheet of metal being rattled by the wind, but other than that, silence seemed to be the norm. On the other hand, the prison town also seemed to house a mostly robotic populace, although Piper did pass a few people she had noticed from that initial group chat with Gamer.

To the delight of the soldier, the artificial life forms that dwelled in the old town lacked the suffocating desire to serve the nearest flesh and blood figure. Like frightened children, most of them recoiled or fled when they noticed Piper or realized that she was looking their way. Once again, had the soldier really had the impetus, she would have pursued one of the shy robots, but instead of that, she continued to focus on self-reliance. If Gamer had thrown her and several of his other victims her when he could have otherwise slain them, they had to be there to serve some purpose.

“Hey, Piper,” the distinct alien accent triggered the woman’s march to come to an abrupt halt. With a grin, the soldier turned around and verified her assumption that she was not without her allies in the prison town.

“Hey, Szar,” Piper said with a degree of nonchalance as she retraced her steps until she was standing just a few paces from the deceased changeling. “Glad to see I’m not the only one who seems to have met… misfortune,” the woman remarked as she emphasized her closing remark with a sweeping gesture toward their inglorious surroundings.

“Indeed,” Szar snorted as he crossed his arms across his armored chest and began to dig on of his heels into the fragile, weather-beaten concrete. Unlike their previous engagement, where the duo had climbed a horrible mountain and then enjoyed some lovely tea, the alien now seemed genuinely incensed.

“I’d say that things could be worse, but you’re already sort of dead,” Piper quipped, shrugging her shoulders as she tried to devise some sort of topic to converse with the alien about. “So how about that Gamer? You ready to kill him yet?” She asked with a faint smile as she recalled the mental image of exploding Gamer’s skull.

“It’s now infeasible for us to claim victory in his stupid contest. Without winning, how else are we supposed to even get close enough to Gamer to bring him to justice?” The changeling growled as he reached down and scooped up a handful of eroded concrete, dirt, and sand. With a heavy frown, the alien ran the amalgamation of rough particles between his fingers. Unable to deduce the meaning of the odd display, Piper opted to focus her thoughts on Szar in an attempt to try and get a reading of his emotions. While the technique had worked on Kaden and several others in the preceding months, the empathic soldier was unable to get even the slightest reading off her alien comrade.

“Why are you staring at me like that,” Szar inquired upon noticing that the woman’s brow was furrowed and her jaw was clenched. With a sigh, Piper allowed her facial features to relax and her shoulders to slump.

Remember how I can communicate telepathically? The soldier projected the question into Szar’s mind, prompting him to twitch a little, perhaps an indicator that he had almost forgotten that fact.

“Yea, yea,” the changeling responded as he emptied the contents of his hand and smacked his palms together to clear away any residual particulate matter.

“Well if I focus, I can usually read people’s emotions,” Piper said with a faint smile. “It’s really helpful when you’re talking to a friend who won’t man up and admit he’s having a bad day,” she chuckled.

“And you can’t get a read off me?” Szar asked as his formerly strict, almost totalitarian posture began to falter.

“Not at all,” Piper replied with a frown. “It's the strangest thing.”

“It’s probably because I’m dead...” the alien grumbled as he let his arms fall away from one another and settle on his sides. “Great…just another lovely reminder that I get to go back to hell whenever this ends. And at this rate, I’ll get to return their without the satisfaction of knowing that Gamer will be there as well.”

“Cheer up,” The soldier spoke as she closed the gap between the changeling and herself. With a sigh, she gently smacked a hand down on Szar’s naturally armored shoulder. “We’re going to escape from this prison, we’re going to escape from this glorified computer game, and we’re going to kill Mr. God-Complex.”

“That’s a pretty tall order there,” Szar snickered as he playfully batted the woman’s hand off his shoulder.

“Well hey, remember that one time we managed to escape—heavily sedated, mind you—from a madwoman’s car?” Piper inquired as she crossed her arms over his chest and flashed the changeling a wide grin.

“And then afterwards I got shot with a rocket launcher and forcibly moved to the other side of the planet,” Szar responded with a frown that was designed more so with the intent of playfully scorning Piper than to convey a sense of melancholy.

“Yea, well…maybe this time you’ll keep an eye out for steroid-infused henchmen,” Piper retorted as she light-heartedly shoved the alien off balance. As Szar teetered backwards on one foot—his eyes wide as he flailed his arms in a drastic attempt to secure his equilibrium—his female comrade turned her attention down the street. Almost immediately, something caught her interest, and although a backwards glance would reveal a rather unpleased Szar resting on his haunches, Piper jogged toward her new interest.

“That woman needs to understand her own strength,” the changeling groaned as he jumped back up to his feet and pursued the soldier down the street.