The Players: Staring Contest

[Ashe]

Everything erupted into chaos all at once. What had originally been a foolish and near suicidal plan to rush the great serpent had turned into a stupid plan at that. The three of them had gotten just within the dragon's sight before it turned, lashing its great tail across towards them, flinging the remains of buildings at the trio. "Move!" Orion commanded, leaping high into the air before performing a great aerial display between the great shards of iron and wood.

Simply ducking beneath the tail and then actually using his great arms to knock aside any incoming debris, Belle continued his charge at the beast, Victoria falling in beside him once more. The creature's great claws touched down as it's horned maw turned in the direction of its next meal. The world burst into great luminosity as a large beam of ki suddenly slammed into the scaly armored side of the dragon. It spun immediately, its great claws swiping through the air to narrowly miss the cyclopean warrior once more.

Judging as best as she could from the back, Ashe supposed the first line of the assault was doing fairly well. They weren't dead yet, and that was always a plus. "Shouldn't we have some kind of weapons or something?" she asked the remaining team, fumbling her hands along her waistline a dagger or something.

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Lance agreed from beneath his blue outfit. "I wonder if this arm canon still works," he supposed, holding his arm up and facing it in the direction of the boss monster. With a slight amount of effort, the canon began to glow, releasing a blue burst of power at it. "Uh, shit," he yelped as it turned towards them.

Kaden threw his arms around Ashe and dived to the side with her as a stream of energy erupted near them from the direction of their opponent, Lance just narrowly avoiding it himself. They lay there for a moment as they waited for the dust to settle, hearing the further sounds of conflict around them as their three team mates reignited their assault. "Thanks," she breathed out, her face an inch from his ear.

"Uh, yeah," he comforted her, pulling himself to his feet and helping her up, brushing the dirt from his sides. Without allowing the situation to grow awkward, his hand grabbed her own, his other hand rising to fire a small blast of energy, deflecting a piece of thrown debris from their path. Lance slid up next to them once more, charging his arm canon again.

The dragon swept its massive set of four wings as Orion leaped into the air to take another shot at it, blowing him and his team away before it suddenly ascended higher into the air. "Dammit!" Belle cursed, glaring up towards it with what appeared to be a small tree in his grasp.

"I'm on it," the other pink haired woman stated, her eyes lighting up with energy before it sparked into her palms. Her hand rose high into the air like a beacon, calling down a strike of electricity towards the rapidly rising beast. Despite its size, it's bellowing wings pushed it away just before being struck, repeating the motion twice more as Victoria tried to call down two more bolts. "Oh bull-" she began, the light fading from her eyes as the ground beneath them suddenly shook.

"What... is going on now?" Lance asked, hearing Kaden's immediate whistle to summon the rest of the group back in.

"Look!" the courier motioned, his hands pointing directly up to the sky. Everyone's vision followed, causing a few downcast looks immediately.

"Its chargin' its lazers," Ashe realized, following the gathering energy that was pooling directly before its open maw.

"Ok, so we start planning a counterattack," Orion decided. "I'll worry about deflecting the beam with my own, you guys worry about-"


"Yeah, about that," Kaden interrupted, his eyes illuminated with a blue hue. "I'd actually highly recommend completely avoiding this one. It just doesn't look... right," he settled on, taking a few steps back with his arms out.

"So how long do we have to get out of here?" Victoria asked, following his lead as the others adjusted to his motion.

"Roughly six more seconds," he stated, pointing just above the creature.

Ashe followed his gaze, lacking the assistance of her own ki but seeing of all things... "Are there really actual numbers up there counting down?" she asked, finding her words clipped as Kaden grabbed her by the arm and turned, running as quickly as he could. Everyone fell quickly behind as they tried to clear the area entirely, rushing through the great gateway of the mountain encrusted town.

3...

2...

1...

They all spared one last look over their shoulder as the massive beam of energy hurtled down from beneath them. Kaden quickly made note of a few subtle differences in the blast before it struck the ground two feet behind them, nearly singing their hairlines. Where they expected an explosion, there was only silence. Nothing was thrown through the air, nothing further happened... at all.

"I don't... understand," Lance groaned, pushing himself back up as others followed suit. "What was so bad about..." His words trailed off completely as they turned in the direction of the former great capital of Orgrimar. "Its... gone. Everything," he breathed, looking around.

The entire mountain, to include the quest giving orc and the ground all the way up to the point just behind them was simply not there. There was just... emptiness. A series of floating code had taken its place. "The beam it fired at us, it was similar to what's decompiling all the code around us. It was like a void zone, eradicating everything it touched and..." His mind burned as he tried to figure out how to best explain what he had seen, leaving Lance to pipe in.

"Formatting it."

"Yeah."

"So we don't get hit by that beam," Ashe noted.

"Yeah, but what's to stop it from just sitting up there and firing the beam over and over?" Victoria asked the group, still upset over her missed bolts.

"Game rules, I hope," Lance informed them. "A game is no fun if it's just completely unbalanced and unfair. There has to be SOME way to beat it, even if it's extremely difficult, otherwise there's no point."

"This is Gamer we are talking about," Kaden mentioned beside Orion.

"And I don't exactly think the rules are in place right now with everything fucking up like this," Belle raged.

"Both excellent points," Lance agreed.

"What's that about?" Ashe suddenly asked, pointing into the nearby fog. Directly before them was a series of hazy figures, all combating an enormous beast of their own. The creature was covered in a thick rocky hide, emulating that of a hundred foot tall mutated armadillo.

"Oh, no..." Lance whispered faintly.

Belle suddenly spun in place and grabbed the man by his chest armor, lifting him up from the ground. "You'd better stop fucking around and start spilling some answers!" he demanded, jerking unintentionally as what appeared to be Piper rushing directly through him while yelling at some distant figure. "These were our friends! What happened to them!"

"Is everyone we know dead?" Ashe whispered, realizing that nearby a wispy image of Sage was trying to help another figure that looked like Ander to his feet. These were all people that had been eliminated.

"No, no, no, it's not like that!" Lance defended himself as everyone closed in. "They are just eliminated, and it looks like they were... Uh," he stopped, considering his next words before closing his eyes with a swallow.

"Start talking," Victoria glared. "Or I'm going to start feeding you to that thing above us."

"You haven't been very honest with us, Lance," Kaden said, crossing his arms while shaking his head. "But everyone deserves a second chance. What exactly is going on here? We're not mad, but we should really know these things."

"Speak for yourself!" Belle seethed.

"Wrap this up," Orion reminded them. "We've got a dragon above us just watching us like ants, and we might end up fighting this other thing as well."

"It's called the Tarrasque," Lance finally admitted. "But first, I was a friend of Gamer, or so I thought. I don't really know what else to tell you guys about that part, because I came into this thinking this was just a fun game to be had. I didn't think that he was this crazy," he pleaded. "It wasn't supposed to be something with any real point to it. From all I knew, it was honestly supposed to be the exact game that you guys were lead to believe."

"So you were deceived like we were," Kaden murmured, beginning to see the underlying point of the event.

"No, actually," he responded, shaking his head. "I still knew a bit more than you guys did since I was supposed to be an NPC role. That thing you guys are seeing is called the Tarrasque. It was supposed to be released as some kind of massive boss monster, but... I mean, we decided that it was just too OP to put into the game."

"OP?" someone asked.

"Overpowered," Ashe answered, not looking to see who she was addressing. "So if it was removed from beta, then what is it doing there? With our friends?"

"They were eliminated and sent to some kind of prison. I don't really know much about it. He told me that it was none of my business because I probably wouldn't get sent there anyway. So I figured he removed it as well, but it's pretty obvious that he didn't," he added gravely. "It's pretty obvious that I was screwed over."

"Typical," Belle grumbled, lowering him finally to his feet before releasing him with a small shove. "So you were part of the game from the beginning, yet you want us to feel sorry for you getting lied to."

"Belle's right," Kaden agreed. "You should get over the emo act and just help us figure out what to do next. We get it - you got lied to. You lied to us as well by not coming clean earlier, so I think we should just get past that and get moving."

"Ok," Lance acknowledged, stretching his back from the stiffness that Belle had placed on it. "Look, the Tarrasque was supposed to be unbeatable, so I'm not really sure what your friends expect to do to it, but whatever is happening, it seems to be weakening. I'm guessing it has something to do with the weapons they are using. Maybe that's why things are acting all wonky."

"Who's that?" Victoria asked, pointing at the growing man that the other group appeared to be fighting through the veil.

"Looks like Magnus," Lance groaned. "He's-" He was going to explain that he was a hacker, and what effect that might have had on the way things were falling apart, but unfortunately for him, he had run out of time.

1...

"SHIT!" Lance cried out, his eyes taking note of the dragon once more. In a move of desperation, his arm canon suddenly changed into a massive fist glowing with a furious light, rising into the air before he brought it down to strike the ground.

No one was able to register what exactly had happened as the ground rippled up like waves around him, throwing the entire group off their feet before the earthen wave carried them quickly away from the impact point of the beam. They had very little warning outside of Lance's move, and only once they came to a stop did they even realize that he'd thrust them outside of the beam's radius.

"Ugh, Lance!" Kaden growled angrily, looking around as the group stood on what appeared to be a small floating island by now, surrounded by fog and code. "LANCE!" he called out.

No one answered.

"Serves him right!" someone said angrily, but Kaden whirled on them.

"No, it doesn't! Don't you have any compassion?" he roared before turning back around. "Forget it, we've got a dragon to fight," he reminded them, trying to calm down. "Ok guys, we're gonna need everyone to combine their efforts for this one," he decided as the ghostly images ran through them.

"Like how? It's up there!" Belle reminded him.

"Belle, you gained control of your Ki while in that training room, right?"

"Yeah..."

"Orion, you already know what you are doing. Victoria, I'm sure you'll handle yourself as well."

The two grunted in agreement as he turned to Ashe. "Ashe, we're gonna all fire at the dragon at once. We've got to time our shot to strike him just before he releases the pool of energy he'll gather before him."

"What?" she panicked, looking around.

He took a breath. "You've been practicing your energy since the last time we met, right?" he asked, a pleading look in his eyes. "When it goes to gather its energy, just before it fires it at us, I'm hoping that with enough force from us we'll be able to push the energy back into it and rock its world just before it sends it to finish us off."

"But... no! I can't!" she realized, turning from person to person.

"Now's not the time for this, Ashe," he informed her, his eyes taking a glowing hue once more. "We've got roughly... six seconds! Just don't try too hard, let it flow on its own and guide it!" he instructed, turning a hand to the sky.

Ashe looked around as the rest of the group followed his motion, each gathering their own pool of energy before them. She hesitantly stuck her hand forward and willed her ki to obey her, to do as she commanded it to do... But... nothing.

"Assshe?" someone stressed from nearby.

"I can't... I can't..." she repeated, trying as hard as she could to not let them down in their moment.

4...

Her need burned through her. She wanted this, to help them all, to not let them down. She needed to do her part and not be a failure. The energy was all there, it was all inside of her, but she just kept swiping her hand through it and missing, as if it were as ethereal as the images of her friends.

3...

She thought of everyone counting on her, but it just wasn't coming. "God dammit!" she finally screamed, turning suddenly and running, her eyes closed, oblivious to the calls of her name from nearby. Hre legs carried her straight over the side of the floating island, leaving her somehow running across an empty invisible world as her friends all began to fade into the fog around her, the world becoming a void.

Time had run out, she realized.

Her friends needed her.

But she couldn't control the enormous energy well within her spirit.

She ran.