- >Actual time was irrelevant.
- >The only thing that mattered was the time left till the start.
- >Six minutes.
- >You were not hungry, had nothing to disturb you and were totally ready.
- >This was the day for a great accomplishment.
- >You had spent a full week gathering supplies.
- >For yourself and those of your teammates that were unable to devote as much time.
- >This was the day when you were going to win.
- >No matter what.
- >Five minutes. Elixir check.
- >Everyone was hiccupping, quite a funny sight.
- >But you would do anything necessary to get any advantage possible.
- >No side effects mattered if it made you more suited for this fight.
- >The leader was reminding everyone their jobs.
- >Like anyone could forget that now, after all the preparations and training.
- >Two minutes. Ready check.
- >You had been born ready for this.
- >But, as usual, there was that one man that was too slow to react and got yelled at.
- >Okay, now he is here and ready too.
- >One minute. Positioning.
- >You followed your main target to the side.
- >Time up.
- >The encounter started.
- >Targets had names and fancy appearances. You didn't see anything of that.
- >For you they were just boxes, colored according to priority and filled to display health level.
- >You stalked your target, making sure his health was always topped.
- >Avoiding the death zones (rain of fire or something, for you they were just bright red circles).
- >Throwing an occasional heal to the most unfortunate teammates.
- >Depoisoning the team.
- >Giving the mana restoration spell to the person that needed it most.
- >Resurrecting the poor soul that had stayed in the death zone for too long.
- >Tapping a rune or quaffing a potion whenever possible.
- >You always enjoyed this complicated dance of raid healing.
- >Now you could do it almost effortlessly, instantly reacting to everything.
- >And it payed off.
- >The enemy was going down!
- >You won!
- ***
- >You let out a sigh of relief... But everything suddenly froze.
- >You were several different kinds of pissed off.
- >Disconnect? Now? Before you could get your reward? NO WAY!
- >Only then you noticed that the world itself stopped.
- >You tried moving but couldn't.
- >Great.
- >Had you just overexerted yourself and got some kind of brain damage?
- >Orange flash!
- >You fell down, feeling the impact pretty hard.
- >At least you could move, though still half blind from the flash.
- >What had just happened? You rubbed your eyes, trying to figure out the situation.
- >Was it an explosion or something? Were you in danger now?
- >You could get burned alive in just a minute for all you knew.
- >'I require help of someone skilled in repristination,
- >might you be so kind to aid me in my preparations?'
- >What was that? You were pretty sure you were alone in your apartment.
- >No one should be able to disturb you during a raid of this importance.
- >Especially not someone speaking in cryptic rhymes.
- >The only good thing was that by now your sight has somewhat returned.
- >You stood up and looked around, still feeling a little dizzy.
- >This wasn't your room.
- >Your room was much larger.
- >Also, it didn't look like a hut of a voodoo warlock.
- >You were standing in the center of something that looked suspiciously like a magical diagram,
- >tricked out with various herbs, candles, bones and other incomprehensible stuff.
- >And right in front of you, staring intensely at your face, there was a zebra.
- >A waist-high zebra-like creature, although it was slightly different from a regular zebra.
- >And it had some kind of African jewellery on.
- >Makes sense. Zebras are African animals, after all. Yeah, sure. Makes perfect sense.
- >You braced yourself against a possible attack. One never knows when an animal decides to charge.
- >Besides, the weird rhyming person, probably the owner of the hut, should be around somewhere.
- >'There is no need for this confrontation, all can be resolved with negotiation.'
- >This zebra has just spoken. In rhymes.
- >You had just found the owner of this place.
- >A rhyming voodoo zebra.
- >Now your mind was legitimately full of fuck.
- >You did the only thing you could think of.
- >Screamed and bolted for the door.
- ***
- >A small cottage in the wood. Such a pleasant sight.
- >But the creature hiding in the branches of a nearby tree wasn't enjoying the scenery.
- >It felt food inside the cottage.
- >And it desperately needed that food.
- >Too weak. Too hungry to even think straight.
- >After the disaster it could no longer rely on others of its kin while being unable to hunt properly.
- >It could only hope that the zebra that lived there would make a big enough mistake.
- >Then the cottage emitted a pulse of magic.
- >Not like such occasions hadn't happened before.
- >But after this one the creature could sense more food inside.
- >Maybe this improved the chances of getting some?
- >Yes! The new food ran out of the building and scrambled through the bushes.
- >An ape, having an almost hairless body, short-haired head and wearing some loincloth.
- >Not like any of that mattered. This was food.
- >The crearure followed the ape, stalking it from above and carefully probing its mind.
- >Being weak like this, it probably had only one attempt.
- >Better make sure nothing goes awry.
- >This ape sure was weird. But... Not like there could be any other choice.
- >Gathering all the remaining power the creature pounced.
- ***
- >You were doing your best to put some distance between you and the voodoo den.
- >Too bad you weren't doing a very good job at it.
- >Trying to scamper through a wild forest while being barefoot and almost naked...
- >A bad idea, to say the least.
- >Also your skinny form wasn't too fit for any serious strain.
- >In about five minutes you were already bearing some scratches from snags and thorns
- >and breathing heavily.
- >This was no good.
- >If you were to be summoned by this crazy warlock animal, why did it have to happen
- >with you only wearing your boxers?
- >Everything would be so much easier with your hiking clothes on.
- >And a backpack of survival gear would certainly come in handy.
- >You would definitely need it, being in the middle of an unknown forest and all.
- >Hell, you were probably not even on Earth anymore.
- >There were no rhyming voodoo zebras on Earth last time you checked.
- >But what was the point in thinking about your clothes?
- >You were most definitely not getting any right now.
- >Unless you wanted to come back to the hut and ask the zebra to summon you some.
- >However, you were not too pissed off by the situation.
- >On second thought it might become an interesting experience.
- >If only you were not naked, yeah.
- >Pointless dreams.
- >Meh, you might as well be wishing for the bio armor suit from the tabletop rpg
- >you used to play. Equally unreachable.
- >Ouch! Getting too distracted wasn't a good idea either.
- >You tripped over a root and hardly managed to stay on your feet.
- >Yeah, that suit would be most appreciated right now.
- >You couldn't help recalling all the little shticks of its design.
- >The suit wasn't that detailed in the rulebook, but in the course of the years you
- >had been playing the game you worked out every small part of it.
- >Your had roleplayed through your character getting into all kinds of situations
- >while wearing the armor.
- >You could imagine it in great detail.
- >You...
- >You got knocked to the ground.
- ***
- >After a couple of seconds of trying to wrestle the powerful amorphous mass that
- >overwhelmed your body you were freaked out even more.
- >By the transparent 'It is strongly recommended to run setup now. [Go] [Later] [Eject]' promt
- >that appeared hovering before your eyes.
- >Sure it is possible to become addicted to the game...
- >Now you were pondering the possibility of a heavy overdose.
- >Because there was no way this could be happening for real.
- >You blinked a few times, but the promt didn't disappear.
- >Maybe... Just maybe... It *was* real?
- >You thought about the possibility of that zebra playing mind games with you.
- >Or being in a coma while having a vivid dream.
- >Or just good old insanity.
- >But... Did it even matter?
- >If it was just a dream, you didn't want to wake up.
- >With a shit-eating grin you did what you had many times imagined doing before.
- >Visualized pressing the 'go' button.
- ***
- >The creature... No, the changeling was bathing in wild energy surges.
- >Concentrating on doing what the ape expected to happen was hard, yet very rewarding.
- >After weeks of slowly starving to death the drone had almost given up any hope.
- >But the abandonment hurt even more that starvation.
- >Of course, it knew that its connection to the Queen had been severed for the greater good
- >of the hive — so that the remaining energy could be distributed between the more valuable drones.
- >That knowledge didn't help at enduring the sudden loneliness in the slightest.
- >But there was one thing that had been able to make sorrow subside.
- >Hunger.
- >Excruciating hunger, overtaking the forsaken changeling and clouding its psyche.
- >Stealing the very ability to think about anything but food.
- >Now that the threat of starvation had retreated,
- >the crushing realisation of being alone was creeping up again.
- >Trying to hide from its own thoughts, the drone focused on pleasing the ape to the best of its ability.
- ***
- >You were somewhat disappointed.
- >Not with the armor. It was in every little detail exactly what you had imagined.
- >With yourself.
- >You were not remotely fit enough to perform the awesome stunts your character could.
- >Trying to enable all-around vision left you with vertigo and headache.
- >The 'operator test' left you ashamed with the amount of limits that were auto-set
- >to prevent you from hurting yourself. Pathetic.
- >Still, the armor was awesome. It was not its fault you couldn't keep up with it.
- >Speaking of awesome...
- >Was *that* function present? In game it was mostly just used for laughs, but...
- >Your curiosity got the best of you.
- >You uttered the code that activated the 'easter egg' of the suit.
- >Feeling it starting to adjust in the crotch area, you giggled.
- >The so-called 'armorjob' did, in fact, work too.
- >Life was good.
- ***
- >The changeling had never experienced this level of power before.
- >All the previous food sources had been much weaker.
- >This ape — no, human. He called himself human in his thoughts — was really enamored by his dreams coming true.
- >Also, most of the energy extracted previously went to sustain the not-so-successful drones of the hive.
- >None of these sources had lasted for too long.
- >The survival of the hive was much more important than the survival of the food.
- >And more important than the survival of each individual hive part.
- >That's why this drone was now alone.
- >There was no possible way of being reattached.
- >Even though all the energy provided by the, uh, human would probably be very useful for the hive.
- >Any drone that somehow lost connection to the hive even for a couple of minutes had to be killed personally by the Queen.
- >This changeling was alive only because she didn't want to waste the valuable energy ending the one that was going to die anyway.
- >But now that it had managed to survive... What was the purpose of its life now?
- >The Queen had always been the mastermind and beacon of the hive.
- >No drone could ever do anything she hadn't appointed it to do, except when acting on pure instincts.
- >But wait. This 'human'. He didn't have a queen or a hive to live for — and still wasn't depressed.
- >Maybe given enough time it would be possible to understand how he was able to live this way?
- ***
- >Having calmed down a little after the initial hype, you leaned against a tree.
- >What could you do at the moment?
- >You weren't hungry yet, but soon you will be.
- >Better find some food now.
- >Stealing from that zebra would probably be a bad idea.
- >You could get a bowl of oatmeal (or what do these creatures eat?) at best.
- >And stealing from a warlock was a bad idea anyway.
- >All the trees and plants were strange.
- >You had never seen anything like that before.
- >Trying to blindly eat whatever berries you might find...
- >Probably even worse an idea than stealing from a warlock.
- >Maybe you could try hunting?
- >Yeah, like you would be able to catch a hare if it jumped right into your face.
- >You looked around for any possible hints.
- >A-ha! There was a nest up in the branches of a nearby tree.
- >Eggs. Definitely better then nothing.
- >You vaguely remembered how to start a fire from your childhood games, but raw eggs were fine too.
- >Now you just had to get to your future meal.
- >Of course, it would be better if it could come down instead...
- >All of a sudden the whole nest got enveloped with a green aura, emanating from you.
- >Then it took off and flew down to your feet, the green aura disappearing shortly after.
- >What.
- ***
- >The changeling instantly realized its mistake.
- >Trying to do anything that this human wanted, it ended up using an ability the 'armor' it was imitating should not have.
- >It needed to think up a solution.
- >And better be quick at this, because if he freaked out — this fantastic flow of power would stop.
- >Unacceptable.
- >Luckily, in its frantic delving through the human mind it quickly managed to grasp a concept that could work.
- >Actually, it could help with the things that the drone was unable to mimic, too.
- >And it would not have to carefully divert this bothersome prey's attention from these anymore.
- >Not bad.
- ***
- >Before you had a chance to properly think about what had just happened, the answer jumped right into your face.
- >Literally, on a pop-up.
- >These were becoming slightly annoying...
- >You scrolled through the text.
- >Your armor turned out to be an experimental model, made for testing only.
- >It didn't have a number of standard functions — booster glands, projectile spikes, even most built-in reflexes were missing.
- >But instead it had better brains, better morphing, an ability to sync with user's mind and, yeah, telekinesis.
- >It was... A great tradeoff, if you were the one to ask!
- >Still, you felt slightly uncomfortable.
- >It was almost like you were a character of some generic anime — this sudden summoning, finding prototype armor and all.
- >Meh, you weren't exactly able to do anything about the situation.
- >Better just go with it and hope to be the *main* character.
- >You looked at the fuckhuge manual on the nonstandard functions of the suit.
- >Why read it now?
- >The overview was quite simple, learning by doing is always better.
- >After all, it will always be easy to look up anything you need.
- >So you just pressed the 'sync' symbol.
- ***
Don't like ads? PRO users don't see any ads ;-)
A Man In His Armor [WiP]
Text below is selected. Please press Ctrl+C to copy to your clipboard. (⌘+C on Mac)
create a new version of this paste
RAW Paste Data