I was just casually walking across campus, when a cool dude on a skateboard drifted by. He had the body of an athlete, attractively pale skin, and Anime shades as spiky as his hair. Dirk Strider had come to town.
Naturally, I ran after him. A fictional character living in an alternate universe 400 years into the future doesn't show up every day, you know. Sadly, I couldn't keep up, and as I watched, he rolled right into traffic, hands not even leaving his pockets, and reached the other side without a scratch. Part of me wanted to keep trying to follow him, but a passing friend deterred me. When the walk light finally came on, I had completely lost sight of Dirk.
Not having anything better to do, I decided to take a nap. I don't even remember falling asleep or dreaming. Nevertheless, I remember waking up, comfortably wrapped in my blankets, dressed in my favorite pajamas, and looking straight at Dirk who was sitting on the bed by my feet.
I could feel that he was cocking an eyebrow at me behind those shades of his.
"I saw you cross the street om your skateboard earlier. Did you time that or were you just leaving it to chance?"
Yes, I'm blunt and ignore social niceties. What of it?
My roommate, realizing I had woken up, made the official introductions. Don't you hate that awkward moment when you're introduced to a guy you already know from hours of what seems now like internet stalking and you're in your pajamas to boot? Strangely, something about the way he shook my hand made me think he knew me too. I decided not to dwell on that.
"I'm not an idiot, if that's what you're asking," he said with a smirk.
My roommate picked up the conversation about music they had been having before I woke up. When they got to one artist, Dirk's face lit up with a melancholy joy.
"His music is the only sound I can't bring myself to mix when I'm DJing. I get chills from blending music around itself, but his work...any alterations I try sounds like profanity."
He recomposed his face into its usual facade and glanced down at me.
"So, want to learn how to ride a skateboard?"
........................................
"This wouldn't be so awkward if I wasn't in a nightgown!" I grumbled after the umpteenth fall from my training board, which consisted of roof shingles glued together. The plastic backings slipped easily against the carpet of the sloped hallway Dirk had me practicing on, while the grit on top kept my from losing my footing, in theory at least.
"Yeah, it's kind of hilarious. Now, this time, try to make it to the rolled up mat at the bottom." He pointed, and then slid off on his own, proper board. When he reached the mat, he hopped over it and landed with the board in his hand on the other side.
My turn. Miraculously, I made it to the mat. In retrospect, it was obvious he intended me to use it as a break, but arrogant little me decided to try the jump for myself. It ended in my lying flat on my back, staring up at yet another Dirk Smirk.
"Better, but jumps don't really work with roof shingles." He offered me a hand up.
At that moment, Roxy Lalonde appeared, accompanied by what I can only describe as an octopus-squid-type-hoozamawhatsit, or Jeff as she called it.
"Dirk, come on. We were going to work on getting Jeff home, rememb- oh! Who's this?"
"This is a girl I'm teaching to skateboard."
"Hi!" I chimed in. Jeff crawled towards me and lifted a single purple tentacle. Not knowing what to do, I decided not to leave him hanging. The moment my palm touched his limb, light shot from the tip and projected a round, golden mark above my head.
Dirk glanced at Roxy. Roxy shook her head. "No! No way are we bringing her into this. She shouldn't be involved!"
"He accepted her sigil. She's part of it regardless."
"Um, what are you two talking about?" I asked as the sigil faded from view.
"Jeff here is a mediator," Dirk clarified, "He can intervene between Prospit and Derse, Trolls and Humans, feuding Horror Terrors. However, he was somehow sent to earth. Without him, dark and light in the Incipisphere are slaughtering each other, even without players making it into the game. We're trying to get him back before the entirety of everything rips itself apart."
"So, what was that with the glowy symbol thing?"
"It's how he communicates, sort of," said Roxy, "It's like, he can't talk normally. He can only communicate with people he decides to auspistize for, which he can only do if he prototypes an arm with their soul, represented by the sigil. He's kind of picky about this usually. I mean, he only has so many arms. I guess he thinks you'll be useful."
"Well then, Jeff, anything you want to add?" I looked down at the cartoonish, wiggling thing beside me.
Then, messages flashed through my head. He showed me the trolls on their various planets in the game, Jane in her helium filled wasteland, horror terrors doing some unspeakable thing or another. Everything started to go wrong and change when Jane entered the field and released one of the balloons, which Jeff happened to be trapped in. He drifted off into a a meteor field and kept drifting, into another universe even, where the reckoning took him down to earth and left him there, unable to serve existence like he was meant to.
When the images stopped, at least one question had been settled in my mind. I knew for certain that Jeff was not to be trusted.
No comments:
Post a Comment