The Players: Staring Contest

[Kaden]

Not being crushed turned out to be a good thing. Digital or not, Kaden wasn’t in a rush to find out what happened if they died while in a computer, after all, if mainstream science fiction was to be at all believed, being killed in a computer obviously meant dying in the real world. It always seemed cliché to the courier during movies or TV shows, but when he was actually faced with it, he wasn’t in any hurry to point that out.

On the other side of things, the fact that something tried to crush them wasn’t nearly as good a thing. The Carnival had seemed perfect. In every sense of the word. People were always happy, the sights and sounds were always spot on, and nothing ever seemed to go wrong. All of a sudden, as Kaden looked around, he realized there were no people. There were no blaring sirens announcing someone’s victory over some arbitrary game of dexterity, no squawkers challenge anyone within ear shot to test their skills. There was nothing.

“I don’t like this,” Ashe spoke up.

Neither Belle nor Kaden responded. They weren’t big fans, either. Casting a glance at the collapsed sign, Kaden briefed a sigh of relief as Orion, Victoria and Lance were closing the distance between them. Given that all of them had made it through the gauntlet of Gamer’s bizarre events, the courier would have been surprised if any of them had fallen victim to a big chunk of falling metal.

Sadly, the fact that they were all together only meant that they wouldn’t know what was going on together. The Carnival around them, a fake by Kaden’s estimation, seemed to be laid out almost exactly as he remembered it. Even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be hard to find what he was looking for. As Ashe, Belle, Lance, Orion, and Victoria exchanged words, ensuring everyone’s safety, Kaden began moving. He probably would have gotten himself lost had Orion’s voice not stopped him.

“And where are you off to, boy?” the saiyan asked.

“The Arcade, I think,” Kaden replied. “If things are laid out the same, then it should be this way, I think.”

“You think this is the time to be playing video games?” Victoria asked, incredulously.

“What? No. The arcade was in a big tent.”

There was a moment of silence as Kaden watched his allies process the piece of information. To his delight, Orion nodded and began walking in the same direction he had been. The others seemed slow to follow, but they did nonetheless. As they were walking, Ashe jogged up beside the courier.

“So… you think there’ll be any fun games in the arcade?” she opened.

“Not really sure. If there was a staring contest in the last tent, who knows what we’ll find in the next one.” The courier shrugged. “Of course, we may not find anything at all.”

“You almost sound sad about that,” the girl observed.

“Not sad. It just wouldn’t be nearly as interesting as walking into a tent and finding ourselves… I dunno. In an episode of Iron Chef.”

“I always wanted them to use Peeps,” Ashe mused.

“Peeps?” Kaden cocked an eyebrow at her. “Like… the marshmallow duckies?”

“Yup.”

“What… could you possibly cook with them? And who would want to eat that?” Immediately after asking, Kaden laughed at the grin that Ashe flashed him. “Touché.”

Fortunately, Kaden’s wild guess turned out to be at least partially accurate. Indeed, there was a large tent where the Arcade should have been. The tent itself, though, was slowly expanding and contracting, as though it were… breathing. A large sign that should have read “Arcade” was, instead, a jumble of characters that didn’t make sense to anyone present. Slowly, the quintet approached the door to the tent.

No one was really eager to take the first step into the tent itself. As the mass of canvas contracted, the door-flap blew towards them wildly, only to swing the other direction as it expanded. Unfortunately, the inside was completely dark. The courier never would have guessed a circus tent could be so… foreboding.

Figuring, since it was his idea to look for another tent, he should be the one to take the risk, Kaden took the first step towards the door. Sadly, his timing was less-than-ideal. About a foot away from the door, the tent contracted, sending the door-flap whipping into the blonde’s face with enough force to knock him to his feet.

Before the door flap could be pulled back into the tent, Ashe reached out and grabbed ahold of the end that had beaten back Kaden, offering to hold it open for him. He was about to thank the girl when the door flap in her hands expanded, wrapped her up, and pulled her into the depths of the would-be arcade. The closest to the door, Kaden was the first one to rush forward and leap through the still-open doorway. It probably looked like an effort to be heroic, but he wouldn’t have been able to sleep well knowing something had happened to the pink-haired teen if something befell her because she was trying to hold a door open for him. That was about as emasculating as it got.

Instead of finding his feet on solid ground, Kaden felt himself tumble through the doorway of the tent and begin an erratic freefall. Sadly, the fall stopped quickly, and abruptly against a hard wooden surface. Struggling to reclaim the breath that had been forced from his lungs, the courier was slow to pick himself from the floor. When he did, he found himself all the more confused about his surroundings.

“Kaden!” came Ashe’s voice. “Are you ok?”

“Yeah,” the courier brushed himself off. “What about you, Ashe?”

The girl quickly informed him that she was also fine, then shared his concern of their whereabouts. The two of them were standing on the upper deck of what appeared to be a pirate ship. While that made little enough sense on its own, the pirate ship looked to be sitting in the middle of the road in a city that looked surprisingly familiar.

“I had to race through this city,” Kaden realized as he looked around. He had narrowly lost to Piper in atop a shiny red motorcycle a couple of rounds ago.

“Look at this!” Ashe called out, motioning for Kaden to join her at the edge of the ship.

As Kaden approached, the girl leaned as far over the wooden railings as she could, trying to reach something below. To the courier’s amazement, she was trying to dip her hand in water. Instead of roads winding their way through the city, the boat was sitting in the middle of some kind of… waterway. Though he would never have found an explanation for such a thing, Kaden’s musings were interrupted by a series of loud thuds behind him.

Belle, Victoria, Orion, and finally Lance all landed on the deck of the pirate ship, some more gracefully than others. Kaden and Ashe quickly shared the very little information they had. No one seemed to have any good guess as to where they were or how they got back. Though they had fallen from the sky, there was nothing above them but stars and even most of those were blocked out by the lights of the city. Before much speculation could be made, a new voice rang out.

“Howdy, y’all. Right fine bunch we got here.”

At the forefront of the upper deck, where one would expect to see a wheel of some kind, was the upper half of a robot. It’s waist fed directly into the floorboards of the ship. His LED eyes blinked from one person to the next as he placed his hands on what would have been his hips.

“Who the hell are you?” Victoria asked.

“Name’s Joans, little lady. I’m your ship, of course. I reckon y’all better get up off yer pimple. We’re about to get this show on the road.”

“What show?” Kaden asked. As he did, he cast a glance upward. Despite the robots speech, there was, indeed, a black flag complete with a skull and crossbones fluttering atop the highest mass.

“And there aren’t any roads,” Ashe pointed out.

“Well if you mail-order cowboys don’t have your spurs in a tangle…” Jonas shook his metallic head. “Tuck in your shirt tails and we may see the other side of this elephant yet. Try tah beat the devil ‘round the stump and each one of ya’ll end up in the bone orchard.”

“What the hell is he on about?” Orion spat. “At least the boy’s ramblings were understandable.”

Before either Jonas or Kaden had a chance to reply, their attention was drawn over the starboard side of the ship. From beneath the big blue watery road erupted a second pirate ship. Though it looked decayed and weathered beyond its useful years, after exploding onto the scene it stayed afloat. Standing at the helm of the ship were a quartet of warriors, only one of whom Kaden recognized as Raditzu. The other three, Bardock, Bra, and Kirano all seemed to sneer at their apparent competition.

“I think we’re... racing…” Belle said after a moment.

“That would be my guess,” Kaden added.

“Why aren’t they wet?” Ashe asked. “They were under water.”

“Get a wiggle on, ya buncha coffee boilers!” Jonas called out. Before they could ask any questions, the half-robot hooked a thumb over his shoulders. On the lower deck was a row of cannons, all pointed towards the other ship. “Ya may be on the hurricane deck, but runnin’ into silk means we’re all goin’ up the flume, so leave me in the saddle and get on them overgrown boomsticks.”

Once again questions ran rampant regarding the meaning behind the robots needlessly cryptic words, but they didn’t have much time to voice them. Swooping in from the sky, a… turtle riding a… smiley faced cloud appeared between both ships. In the turtle’s hands was a fishing rod, with what looked like a traffic light at the end of the line. Jonas hooted and hollered as the traffic light flashed red, then amber, and finally green. With a mighty lurch, their ship leapt forward.

The race was on.