by Yuli Ban
Maria nodded at whatever the hell Ana had said to her during my daydreaming and faced me head on. "So, little man—"
"Now what's with the insults?" I shrugged. "Why is everyone so mean here? I have done nothing wrong."
She blinked. "There's no way such a beta male could be the one we seek. In fact, I don't think he's even a beta male. He's more like an omega." The way she spoke, it really fit her style. She was supposed to be a succubus, so having that mature and sultry tone made sense. And it made the insult sting more, like I made a mistake just by existing. “I bet he even has a womb. You have a womb, little man?”
Was she really comparing me to a woman to insult me? Did she not understand the hypocrisy drowning her words? Of course she didn’t, because she’s a video game succubus.
Ana set her hand over her sister's chest— NO— and said, "Hold on there. Let me tell you, when the going gets tough, he's a top-tier fighter. You should have seen the way he took on the Rocket 88s. He alone bashed fifteen of them."
I did?
Maria's eyes lit up. "He did? And yet he's just a level 1!" She looked at me and I looked at Ana and Ana looked at— NO. "Unless my sister's exaggerating, you may actually be of some use after all, little man." Why did she have to put so much emphasis on 'little?' Then she jumped up and down several times. Why? Why did she jump up and down several times? I’ll tell you why: to jiggle those fat tits.
I felt my bones burn beneath my cheeks, and not just the two on my face. Though I liked tits, no one needed that much. It looked silly. Her bustier barely cared about holding her breasts in and it was distracting me. Not because I was horny, but because like I said, she looked like a goddamn cartoon. Even anime did better at not oversexualizing women to that stupendous degree. Jesus Hector Christ, she was like a camel. Double camel. Sideways. No, not a camel, but ten thousand camels. Ten trillion. So many camel humps compressed onto her chest that they had their own gravitation fields. Yet even that could not come to one-one quintillionth of how much tit was compressed into her tits. Good god man.
Like a dick-in-ass fellow, I felt proud of myself for surviving, but like a man whose dick went into dirty holes of a different sort, I felt a painful itch in my crotch from where the muscly orc snatched me. Except why did any of that happen? The girls would know, so I asked, "So what is even happening? I was brought here and now, what, am I supposed to..."
I caught a red helmet from Maria. Before I could drop it and pout like a toddler to piss her off, she glared at me and said, "How well can you ride a machine, little man?"
I looked back and rubbed my mouth, feeling anxious about where this was heading. Because it was heading straight towards a wicked hole— and no, not either of those holes. "Uhh, not well. I've never actually driven a motorcycle before. A-and it's Alex, not 'little man.'"
She tossed her head to the side, throwing her locks over her cheeks with a scoff. "That's going to change, little man."
"What?"
"By tomorrow, you'll be competent. By next month, you'll be a road wizard. And, as much as I don't trust you yet, I'll believe my sister when she tells me that you have the potential we need to exploit."
I felt around the helmet. It looked swanky. Like, real swanky— worth a thousand dollars in real life. The surface was cold and smooth without any imperfections, but it also had these sexy angles by the cheeks and back. And the visor was pitch black from the outside. It looked like someone in a manga would wear. I slipped it over my head— perfect fit. Then I looked over at the girls and I couldn't tell if the helmet had a HUD or if I was looking at my own.
Ana popped her leg back and said, "Perfect! You're looking cuter already, Boss."
Deadpan, I said, "What is happening right now?"
"Tonight," Maria said as she stepped over to me, "You're going to practice, little man. Practice, practice, practice. And when you think you're done, you're going to practice some more. I want you to do five laps around the Rio Baja Desert, starting at our home."
"Five la— what?"
Ana sat cross-legged on a rug, hands on her knees, and said, "Oh wow, that's a lot. He's gotta drive around the whole thing?"
Maria clicked something on the left side of the helmet. That's when I saw its own HUD come up. That one was much cooler, with neon targeting reticules and arrows that made me think it came straight out of Blade Runner.
"Follow the map." She led me out of the cave. "And, little man, when you come back..." She dropped her bustier and let her nipples hang loose— for all that I thought she had hanging out, she had two hundred percent more packed inside. "I'll reward you for victory..." Then she put them back up and pulled out a katana from hammerspace. "Or punish you for failure."
Ana laughed and said, "Oh, mee-ow! You don't want to get one of Maria's punishments! You might never fuck right again." She put one of her paws up to her mouth and said, "Oops. Maybe I shouldn't be encouraging you to fail."
I spread my arms out and went full Dumblydore with, "What the hell am I supposed to be doing, motherfuckers?"
Ana bent over laughing. Maria rolled her eyes and head. "Be back after sundown, little man. Oh, and one more thing." She jogged to a cherry-red crate, one with a Christmas-green cannabis leaf clad on the side, and removed a gunmetal-grey Uzi from inside. "You're going to need this, at least until you can get your magic up to full potential."
I caught the gun as well as two ammo sticks. "Magic? Why would I need magic if I have a fuckin’ Uzi? This is all the bang-bang magic I need.”
She looked me dead in the eyes and said, "A proper magician is more powerful than an atomic bomb, Alexei."
Exasperated, I shouted, "How do you even know my name?" She raised an eyebrow and pointed at my head. I looked up and flinched back when I saw a translucent nametag floating above my head. On it read 'Alexei’. "What the hell..."
"You have one hour to complete this training. Off you go, little man!" Maria pushed me onto a Harley-Davidson, turned on the ignition, turned up the radio, and pushed me out to the sand. The bike started gliding on, shaking in my grip. Finally, I understood Anakin Skywalker’s passionate bigotry against sand as the rough, coarse grains magically found their way into the worst folds of my body and went out of their way to dig deeper and deeper against my skin.
My soul ignited, "I don't know! I don’t fucking know how to drive a motorbike, you assholes!"
Maria— it was very clearly Maria's bitch of a timbre— shouted, "It's like riding a bicycle, little man." When I looked back, Ana was beaming as she gave me an army salute while Maria lazily waved with a sneer on her face. I wanted to flash a goddamn dragon-sized bird at them, but I couldn't get the bike to stop. I screamed as the silver machine rumbled and crashed over little rocks. The vibration made me jump and shake. It was a mess. About a hundred feet out, I fell over and the front wheel kept spinning on my face. I still haven't found one of my teeth. Maria facepalmed and Ana had her hands in her cheeks.
After Ana helped to set me back up and Maria graciously didn’t reset the clock, they sent me out again before I had a chance to hide. That time, I actually managed to stay on the bike all the way to the actual road and once I merged onto it, the ride felt much smoother, like I wasn't about to self-destruct at any second. The Uzi rested nervously in my shirt. And I mean in my shirt— I had it down my shirt, with the ammo handle bar sticking down the front of my jeans because where else was I gonna put it? I didn’t know how to activate hammerspace. I didn't even want to know why she gave it to me. However, I saw in the lower right corner of my vision that I had 32 bullets for it with 64 rounds of ammunition. I had no clue where the ammo was supposed to be and I didn't have time to check because I was wobbling all over the place. One bad move threw out the front axle at a 90-degree angle and I started doing donuts before crashing again. But by that point, I was far away from the sisters and I didn't know whether to be thankful or lament— I could take or leave Maria, but Ana was starting to obsess me. She could kick my ass and teach me how to rid
e a bike properly, and I’d be eager for every moment of it. Whereas Maria— I was a six-month old who needed to learn how to swim, so she decided to toss me into a pool of sulfuric acid and berated me for melting like a pussy.
The bike hadn’t taken that much damage— there was a health monitor floating above it that still read green, so it wasn’t about to start belching smoke or explode. When I got back on it, I considered what the hell I was doing.
'I'm just wasting my time. I don't need to be doing this. I can barely keep this thing straight.'
With a push, I started off again.
Oh, how convenient. And it actually made a difference. Not by a whole lot, mind you, but I definitely noticed that my hands were steadier and the road wasn't trembling before me as much. Yet before I could start thanking god that I had caught a break, I nearly swerved out when the same notification popped back up.
'Already? But I just leveled up like five seconds ago...' I wondered if this was one of those cursor-sensitive notifications that returns to the front when you look at it, but that was definitely a different number than before. And for my snark, I earned yet another level up.
'What the hell? Did I just use some sort of cheat code? Impossible, this was supposed to be an MMO sandbox game. Is this a bonus stat area?' And to round it off, I was rewarded with, you guessed it:
"Stop!" I yelled to no one. It was starting to get distracting, though I was open towards having whatever new skills I could get. Sure, it was a bit too easy for it, but if I were in any less stable of a state of mind, I'd probably have had a psychotic break by then.
Instead, I started playing with the handlebars. Even when I pushed them relatively far, I didn't go careening off the road like I did before. I still couldn't lose my mind and defy the laws of physics, but I felt much more confident.
Then the game brought up a new notification:
"Oh god." The game wouldn't have sent me a prompt about headshots if I wasn't about to have an opportunity to try to make some soon, but there was no one on the road around me for miles. Nor was there anyone in the desert and shrubbery. I checked above, just to make sure I wasn't about to get abducted by aliens. All clear. 'So what was that all about?'
The road wound across the landscape like a snake. There were so many needless curves and zig-zags that I thought was wasting gas. When I checked the fuel tank, I nearly screamed when I saw I was near 'E'.
"Goddammit, Maria!" And there were no gas stations as far as the eye could see. I had to ride on a prayer that I could make it.
Along the way, I got another level up notification:
As a result, my grip of the handlebars became even more firm and relaxed. Because I certainly would have flipped off into outer space when I saw dust over the horizon. I thought that maybe it was a car. Nope. Not that lucky. In these sorts of stories, the protagonist is never allowed to be lucky because then we won’t grow or some shit.
A motorcycle appeared. Then two. Then four. Then eight. I stopped counting there. And they took up the entire goddamn road— this was a four-lane freeway! I banked off into the sand and pulled out the keys. The motorcycle rolled on forward before dropping to its side. I ducked behind a dead shrub and hoped that I had merely overreacted.
In fact, I underreacted. The bikers stopped close-by enough that they could probably hear the stream of obscenities and blasphemies I spewed at the sky. And then one of them took off his Nazi Stalhelm helmet to reveal that he had golden hair sticking straight up like a Super Saiyan. He aimed his arm right at me and spewed a tidal wave of fire while screaming in what I guess was Russian or Ukrainian. I pulled out the Uzi and leapt like a badass, firing in slow motion.
Wait, slow motion? Again? It was like Max Payne or The Matrix come to life— the thugs looked at me like they were immersed in molasses while the flashes of gunfire from the Uzi lingered. I could see each bullet moving. The tongues of fire licked the air by my head, but I could shift my place to avoid it.
Somehow, I had activated Bullet Time.
By pure luck, I managed to hit one of the Nazis in the head and earn +500 EXP. However, most of the rest either sprayed on their bodies or missed entirely. They all had health bars above their heads and for about five of them, that bar was in the yellow.
"— just don't give a shiiit!" I laid down some more suppressive fire, dodging return fire that sent shrapnel and dust right into my face. Not to mention I was completely exposed. The Legendary Super Aryan retracted his hand to let his mana recharge— I think? — and pulled out a Barretta. Yes, a Super Saiyan with a Barretta. He wasn’t even a good shot.
I saw that all of the goons were still crowded by their bikes, so I started firing at them hoping that their concentration would give me a better chance at a strike. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6— click, click, click. Out of ammo. Completely automatically, my hands wrapped around the handle and pulled out the ammo bar. From hammerspace, I pulled out another bar of ammo and jammed it in. Then I cocked the Uzi— which you don't do in real life— and prepared for some more Nazi genocide. Uh oh, that didn't come out right.
Sparks flew. The Nazis ducked behind the ass sweat-covered seats of their bikes. The Super Saiyan mage threw off another fireball at me, and I had to leap away from the explosion. The first half of that leap was in slow-mo. Then everything went regular speed again and a depleted bar on the bottom left of my screen flashed red.
“Why am I not seeing any of this beforehand?” I exploded. I kept firing, and the dakka grew thick as we waged World War III on the side of the road. Even though I was a complete schlub, I managed to drop another Nazi. Finally, the sparks started really flying as a massive fireball screamed from where one of the bikes had been. That triggered a chain reaction as bike after bike blew up. +500 EXP came about ten times, complete with an 'Explosive Kill' bonus. It didn’t go completely quiet, but at least the guns silenced. And thank God, the Devil, Zeus, Ra, Buddha, whoever else because I had one bullet left. Plus, with all the Nazis neutralized, I earned a new notification.
But I hadn’t even picked myself off the ground yet, so I think the first thing I said was actually something like, “Calm down!” Couldn’t even get a single second to process anything before the game thought it necessary to start shoving more shit into my face.
‘I swear to god, if I find a goddamn Jewish girl’s chai or fingers, I’m gonna find the developers of this game and shove Ana’s katana up their asses.’
The first thing I picked off one of their bodies was a copy of Mein Kampf, so I shot that to shreds and checked the next guy. This one was the Blooper Saiyan.
I was glad to find the money but I had no use for that flask for as long as I had an Uzi. But I also found ‘Golden Hair’ which had two neat stat boosts: Infinite mana for 120 seconds and 200% extra damage for magical attacks for 120 seconds. Also found some drugs:
The effect looked real promising: Hallucinate for 120 seconds; Induce berserker state; 50% extra damage for magical attacks for 120 seconds.
What a haul. I pocketed the money (where?), put the magic potion in my inventory (where?), kept the Golden Mane of Maximum Power (I couldn't wear it because it was for Level 25 'Wizards'), and also made a plan for those fat tabs of acid.
As if the game needed time to buffer it all or maybe the server gods heard my bitching, I received the notifications all at once.
That was pretty cool. Below that, I saw a bronze star awarded to me:
Kill 10 people with an explosion? So I killed more people? And all at once. I looked back at the charred corpses of those men. Now I didn't feel all that bad since they were Nazis, and whatever basic human goodwill may have lingered after was further taken when I told myself that they were NPCs, but being able to see the bits of burned skin, smell the overcooked veal, and hear the sizzling all in glorious Reality-k definition at Infinite FPS still made me ill.
I understood what all those moral guardians meant when they talked about how ultra-realistic graphics would cause people to not understand the difference be
tween real life and fantasy, because that looked messed up. And the blood pooling from the headshotted guy brought flashbacks to my friend. I didn't need to keep looking at that.
I found my bike and threw myself back on it. However, it didn’t take more than five seconds before it sputtered and died. Since I had no gas left, I committed some grand theft because I’m sure Nazis don’t need bikes. As I began to drive on, I shuddered and spat onto the road. The feel of the engines started to become like hypnosis. I loved the way it all felt because I needed time to think.
The sun started hanging lower and lower in the sky and I realized after I passed the burnt-out shells several times that I had indeed managed to drive around the desert. But how much time had passed? I brought up my full HUD.
00:00:02
00:00:01
00:00:00
Oh goddammit.
Faster, Pussycats…
On the way back, the fact that one Nazi longhair and his gun vanished kept bothering me. Where did his gun go? All I did was chuck a newspaper stand at his face and annihilate him, that shouldn’t have been enough to vaporize his gun. Was it possible there was no gun? How could I trust my own memory if I was in a video game? At any moment, I could start perceiving entirely new colors or change into a chick and that would have been my new reality— that always would have been my new reality. Oh god. What if I was actually in some sort of Orwellian dystopia and this wasn’t a video game at all? No wonder my memories were BS.
Well, if I had to live in this world, I might as well move forward. And it wasn’t like the game world was a sore sight. Far in the distance, purple mountains rode the horizon like the heart monitor of the world. The land stretched out, a similar color with a hint of fuchsia. No clouds. Just a neon-indigo sky and stars breaking through. Cold and dusty wind broke across my face like the dry sands farted on me. I passed a bleached skeleton tied to a cactus. Broken rocks paralleled against gulches— perhaps dead brooks— and desert weeds fell still. The bike’s tires on the worn asphalt hypnotized me with its chugging, and the lack of any features beyond the little mentioned seemed like sensory deprivation. I’ve never been in a desert prior, but even I figured there was more to them than this.