Couch Potato Chaos- Gamebound

by Erik Rounds

  Her leg was broken, so she couldn’t walk toward whatever the glowy white thing was. Nobody was going to help her. She would have to put on her big-girl suspenders and pull herself up by her nonexistent bootstraps. If only she’d saved one of those tacos from earlier, she might have gotten her hearts back.

  Over the course of the fifteen minutes, she somehow managed to crawl the distance, her hands clawing the ground toward her. She dragged herself up the stairway and reached her hand out toward the white circle.

  Save point registered.

  Health and mana restored. All status conditions removed.

  Her pain diminished as she touched the glowing circle and the rotating floppy disk vanished. A cloud of ethereal mist flowed around her body, healing her injuries before dissipating. Her leg no longer hurt. In fact, the bones had healed in just a few seconds. Tasha decided then and there that save points were amazeballs and that she would never pass one by without availing herself of its curative properties.

  Tasha stepped off the save point and walked to the edge of the atrium. A vast landscape extended to the horizon in all directions. Glancing over the cerulean railings, she found the ruined remains of a city far below. This must be the highest floor in the temple. There was nothing but grassy fields in any direction as far as she could see. Even if she managed to get out, where would she go?

  Well, one thing at a time. She would escape the temple and then figure out what to do once she made it outside.

  As Tasha explored the atrium, she came to the realization that she wasn’t alone. On the far side of the atrium from where she’d entered was a cage with an animal inside. Once she got close enough to make it out, she immediately recognized it for what it was.

  Trapped inside the cage was a velociraptor, a kind of small dinosaur about as big as she was. Thankfully it was caged. After seeing Jurassic Park as a child she had nightmares for weeks, and she hadn’t bothered going to the newer sequels. If the monster were free, it would surely rip a poor girl like her to tasty bite-sized pieces. It was probably hungry, and she was the only source of food nearby.

  As she inched closer, she expected the creature to snap at her, but instead it just looked at her with sad, pleading puppy-dog eyes. This dinosaur was messing with her mind. It was more reminiscent of a caged dog than a vicious monster. She liked dogs, but her apartment manager would never let her keep one, and she was too lazy and cheap to move to a better place.

  There was something on the floor of the cage that she hadn’t seen earlier. Thin pieces of clay littered the cage floor. They looked familiar. Then she remembered. When she’d woken up in this world, she had been contained in clay pieces just like this. Had this dinosaur been trapped in a clay statue the same way she had?

  Tasha didn’t really think that it would respond, but maybe talking to it would help.

  “Umm… hiya. I’m Tasha. So, hypothetically speaking, if I were to let you out, would you tear me to little nummy bits and gobble me up?”

  No response. Based on internet memes, she half expected it to answer in a British accent while wearing a monocle and sipping Earl Grey. That didn’t happen, though. Instead it made an adorable yelping sound. In that moment, she wanted to adopt the velociraptor and take him home and cuddle him and squeeze him lovingly while Netflixing.

  Tasha wasn’t the sort of person to just leave a hungry animal in a cage to die. It wasn’t in her to do that. There never really was any choice in the matter. The cage was shut with a simple latch from the outside. Even if the raptor had opposable thumbs, which he didn’t, there was no way for him to reach the locking mechanism from within the cage.

  “Just so you know,” she said, “I’m told I taste terrible. Trust me on this.”

  Hoping that she wouldn’t regret the choice, she lifted the latch, causing the cage door to inch open. Instantly the raptor sprang outside and leapt on her, locking her to the ground. She got a nice good look at a full set of razor-sharp teeth and knew that she was done for. She wished that she could say that she hadn’t screamed her lungs out at that moment, but sadly that did not comport with the truth.

  Fortunately, rather than tearing her to tiny bits, it stuck out a forked tongue and proceeded to lick her in the face. It really was like a big puppy dog. A big puppy dog with razor-sharp fangs and claws. Above him was the text “?????” That must be where his name is supposed to go.

  “So, I guess you aren’t going to eat me after all. I think that’ll be good for our long-term relationship. Erm… Do you have a name?”

  He let Tasha get to her feet and looked at her questioningly.

  “Okay, let me think of a name for you. How does Yoshi sound?”

  There was no response.

  “Really? Because I kind of liked that name, though it might get me sued by Nintendo. Okay, in that case, how about Cringer? No? Spot? Okay, not Spot. That’s dumb. Who names a dinosaur Spot? Dino? What about Barney? No, wait! Forget that last one. I’m not calling you Barney.”

  The animal continued to stare at her in apparent confusion. If she was being honest, Tasha was glad he hadn’t responded to the last one. Turns out that she sucked at naming dinosaurs. Who knew?

  “Okay, how about Denver? Do you like that?”

  He looked at her happily and made a few yelping noises. It seemed that Tasha had found his name. The “?????” next to his name was replaced by “Denver (Level 1).”

  “Great! Pleased to make your acquaintance, Denver. Now that we’re besties, let’s get the hell out of this place.”

  A few minutes of searching later led her to discover a flight of stairs leading into the temple’s bottom floors. Humming a little ditty, Tasha led her newfound friend down the stairs and into the lower levels.

  Chapter 7

  Boss Fight

  Upon descending the stairs, Denver and Tasha proceeded through a corridor filled with boblins and proceeded to kill them with relative ease. It was good not to have to fight alone. When she pulled up the menu, it showed that he was now part of her party. It showed his current level and progress to the next level, but his stats were hidden. His portrait appeared beside hers, though his was an artistic rendering rather than a photo. Tasha wondered who drew it.

  At the far end of the room was a locked steel door that she wasn’t able to get open. There were also side rooms attached to the main hallway that each had their own mini puzzle. Sometimes Tasha would need to push blocks onto pressure plates. She found that to be slightly easier thanks to the extra stat point, but it was still hard work.

  One of the rooms she explored contained a toilet and a sink. That was fortuitous because she felt the call of nature. She was about to use the toilet, but she hesitated.

  Hold on a minute, what if this is a trap? What if the toilet is actually a mimic? She shook her head. Nah, what self-respecting mimic would impersonate a toilet? On the other hand, it could still be a non-self-respecting mimic. Oh, whatever shall I do?

  Finally, she settled on a tried-and-true tactic that humanity had developed over the ages to deal with the unknown mysteries of the universe: She poked the toilet with a stick. It didn’t respond. Ultimately, she discovered that it was a regular toilet. It was good to know that this world had developed indoor plumbing. She supposed that it made sense that whoever built the temple didn’t want their worshippers doing their necessary business in the hallway.

  After completing her bathroom business, Tasha and her trusty dinosaur, Denver, returned to exploring the dungeon. In another room, she encountered a new type of monster. It had four legs, furry red skin, and a funnel-like nose. It strongly resembled Q-Bert.

  Schnozrok (Level 3)

  He has a belly full of rocks made ballistic through the process of rapid nasal decompression.

  ATK 5Mag ATK 0

  DEF 4Mag DEF 3

  It would project fist-sized stones out of its schnoz at Tasha and Denver. Tasha wondered how the biology of such a creature worked. The first one that hit her cost an entire heart container. On
ce she knew what to expect, Tasha learned to dodge their attacks until she could get in close to finish it off. Either two slashes with her gunblade or one firestorm-boosted attack was enough to finish it off.

  Once she finished off the schnozroks in that room, the door to the next room opened automatically. The next room contained a number of pits that fell to the level below, which separated the entrance from a platform at the far end of the room. Two schnozroks stood upon the far platform and shot rocks at her from a distance.

  Hanging from the ceiling atop each of the pits was a batlike creature with one eye.

  Keekee (Level 1)

  Gets its kicks by dive-bombing people right when they are jumping over pits.

  ATK 1Mag ATK 2

  DEF 1Mag DEF 1

  She carefully approached the edge of the first pit and measured the distance to the other side. Thanks to her newfound agility, she could probably make the jump without difficulty. She regarded the keekee suspiciously but had no way to attack it from so far away.

  Stepping back to give herself room, she darted forward and leapt over the pit. When she was halfway across, the keekee swooped down and rammed into her, redirecting her flightpath into the pit below. The keekee’s impact only cost her a quarter heart, but the fall to the next level brought her down to half.

  She chamber she had fallen into was being patrolled by several boblins. One of them got a hit on her, slashing her arm before she was able to scramble back to her feet. The boblins weren’t difficult to defeat as she had already studied their movement and attack patterns, and she made short work of them. The room was otherwise empty, save for a ladder that led back to the entrance at the upper level.

  Her injured arm pulsed with pain as she climbed up the ladder back to the second floor. When she ducked her head out, a schnozrok fired a rock at her. She just barely ducked in time. She quickly scrambled up the stairs. The keekees remained motionless on the ceiling, waiting for her to attempt her jump over the open pit.

  There has to be some way to take the dumb bat thing out. She needed to trigger its dive attack and kill it when it came close enough. Assuming this was a normal video game NPC, it probably triggered the dive based on how close she was to it.

  She reached her arm across the pit as far as she could. The keekee didn’t move.

  Just a little more…

  Finally, as she was leaning as far over the pit as she dared, the keekee dived at her. She slashed at the keekee as it passed, but her gunblade only tasted empty air. The bat landed on the roof behind her and immediately dove at her a second time.

  I must still be within range. This is my last shot to hit it.

  She slashed at the keekee and hit it, knocking it to the ground, where it exploded into mist. Her attack score of 3 and the mob’s low defense of 1 allowed her to deal three hearts of damage, which was more than enough to kill it.

  Her way unimpeded, she leapt across the first pit and repeated the process with the second keekee. All the while, she dodged intermittent projectile attacks from the two schnozroks at the end of the chamber. Finally, she made the final jump and dispatched the two schnozroks.

  One of them dropped a key when it died. Stuffing it into her pocket, she made her way back to the main hallway and used it to unlock the far door, which led to a mid-sized chamber filled with large green monsters that resembled a familiar toy from her childhood. The creatures moved from place to place by turning from one side to another, head over tail.

  Slinker (Level 2)

  What haunts your dreams and hatches schemes and eats everything that it sees? A thing, a thing, a monstrous thing, oh, everyone knows it’s a slinker.

  ATK 1Mag ATK 2

  DEF 3Mag DEF 2

  The slinker was covered in a furry green membrane. They were actually sort of cute. Tasha imagined herself with a nice cuddly pet slinker monster.

  She approached one of the slinkers, and it promptly leapt into the air and swallowed her whole. One moment she was standing right next to it, and the next she was engulfed in darkness, suffocating and being pressed in from all directions. She would have died a second time if Denver hadn’t come to her rescue. Less than a minute after she’d been swallowed, the slinker monster vanished into a cloud of purple mist. For the next ten minutes, she lay on the floor trying to clean as much of the slinker’s digestive juices out of her hair as possible.

  Deciding to take a short break, she removed her cell phone from where it rested in her inventory. The time on the lock screen read 98:58:49.

  I must have been in this temple for hours. The message from before said that she had died and was in Oblivion for at least an hour. How had only twenty minutes passed?

  The time remained the same down to the second. This was a mystery that she would have to solve at another time. Who knew how much time had passed since she had checked her social media. Just as she pulled out her phone, she realized the absurdity of what she was trying to accomplish.

  I’m in another world. Of course my phone isn’t going to work. There wouldn’t be any cell towers or Wi-Fi hotspots to connect to.

  She pulled out her phone, and just to verify her suspicions, she fired up her web browser. In stark contradiction to the logic of the situation, her phone had a strong 4G connection. She went to several of her favorite websites, and they worked perfectly. When she tried to pull up Twitter, however, it wouldn’t connect. So she could perform web searches but couldn’t leave social media posts. Her email wasn’t working either.

  Tasha so distracted testing her phone that she didn’t notice the hooded figure who had appeared atop a flight of stairs at the end of the room. The figure held one hand out toward Tasha and yelled, “Steal!”

  Without warning, Tasha’s phone came loose from her grip, flew through the air, and the cloaked figure caught it in her outstretched hands.

  “Hey! Hey, what the hell! Give that back!” Tasha cried, getting to her feet. She saw the face of the cloaked figure for the first time. It looked like it might be a little girl, but she couldn’t be sure. The figure darted away through a door at the top of the stairs.

  Not wasting any time, Tasha darted up after the figure through the door, leaving Denver behind her. The next room was filled with roving puddles of acid that moved in seemingly random patterns. There were two doors, and the girl ran through the door to the right. Tasha dodged between the puddles and opened the door, following the cloaked figure.

  Around her was a hallway with doors on either side. One of the doors was swinging closed. She rushed down the hallway and threw the door open, stepping inside. The room was a small library with only a single entrance. There were two people within, a tall man with pointy hair in a martial-arts outfit and the cloaked girl hiding behind him. The man had been absorbed in some book.

  He was taller than most men she had met, and his spiky hair would have fit right in at an anime convention. His uniform only partially covered his otherwise bare torso. He wasn’t unattractive in a chiseled-from-steel sort of way. Not that Tasha was into that sort of thing. She normally preferred her men to have some extra padding, and this guy did not qualify in that respect.

  The man had turned to face the girl and hadn’t noticed Tasha come in. “Pan, you stink. What happened?”

  The girl pointed at Tasha. He turned and saw her for the first time.

  “Hello, miss. I thought we were alone here.”

  “Sorry about the smell. I was just swallowed by a slinker, and I’m afraid I’m still covered in its digestive juices.”

  “I understand. It happens to the best of us. Here, let me clean you up.”

  The idea of a man cleaning her caused her a moment of trepidation. “That’s okay, mister, you don’t have to—”

  Ari held out his hand and performed a simple gesture while saying, “Cleanse.” When he did this, the slinker’s internal digestive fluids lost its grip on Tasha’s skin, clothes, and hair, sliding off and pouring onto the ground. Sweat, dirt, and other detritus came loose from her
body as well. When the spell was complete, she was as clean as she had ever been. Even some of the blood caked on her bathrobe came loose, though the fabric was still stained red.

  “Was that magic?” she asked.

  The man nodded. “Of course. It’s just a simple cleansing spell. You don’t need to be a mage to use simple magics like it. Sorry, I guess I assumed that you didn’t want to smell like that.”

  She looked between the two of them, “No, I’m happy that you did that, so… thanks… I guess.”

  He extended his hand. “I’m Aralogos, but most people just call me Ari.”

  “I’m Tasha. I didn’t realize that anyone else was here. Actually, I don’t really know where ‘here’ is.”

  He closed the book and set it on the table’s surface. His daughter hid further behind him. “I can help with that. You are in the Temple of the Player. My daughter and I were exploring the area, and the temple sort of appeared around us during a thunderstorm.”

  “The Temple of the Player?” Tasha said, “Well, I’m a player. I was just playing a video game when I found myself in the statue room upstairs. I’ve been trying to get out for hours now.”

  Ari frowned. “Really? You’re a player? Are you quite sure about that? Your scan data says ‘Couch Potato,’ not ‘Player.’”

  “There’s nothing confusing about that. Most players are also couch potatoes, after all. What, are players a big deal or something?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “they’re mythical figures from history. There have only been five somewhat credible reports of players in the three thousand years of recorded history. The arrival of a player always heralds great change or catastrophe.

  “Not to be rude, but can you show me any proof that you are truly a player?”