Story I wrote fro school last year in a 5 hour type-athon. It took that long because I didn't ever do a rough draft to work off of. Enjoy!
DARK TROPICS
Chapter One: Arrival
Eww, I thought, airline food. I looked out the window, searching for some thing easier on the eyes than that sloppy mass of... something. But sadly, I was blasted with blinding whiteness. We were still in the cloud layer. I snapped the shutter down and looked for a decent magazine. Even though I was hungry, I didn't dare have even a bite of the meaty paste in front of me. I imagined it glowing green and crawling away, making slurping noises as it went. "Issac, you need to eat," said my mom. She was wearing a Hawaiian flower shirt, rolled up jeans, sunglasses, and a disposable camera on a string around her neck. A typical tourist. "But mom," I complained, "I don't even know if it's meat, vegetable or genetically engineered tofu!"
"EAT!" she whispered as loud and strict as she possibly could. I groaned and picked up my spork. Just as the disgusting goop had almost reached my mouth, a flight attendant came by with a trash can and took my tray. "This is your captain speaking, I have turned on the fasten seat belts light for landing in the beautiful Bermuda islands," blared the intercom. "Oh no! it seems that due to a slight miscalculation, we're in the middle of the Bermuda triangle!" said the captain. "Don't panic, I was just joking."
Okay, I thought, bad joke. I opened the window shutter to see turquoise, almost artificial looking water, sandy beaches dotted with pink, and pastel colored green, pink, and yellow houses. It was so colorful, from the sandy beige of the coast, to the deep forest green of the inland hills, to the light colored houses. Getting closer... closer... touchdown! I thought as the small plane shook with recoil. A horrible pain shot through my ears. We slowed to a halt, and the pain in my ears stopped. "It's currently 3:07 local time, have a nice trip!" said the intercom cheerfully. I felt my stomach growl as I stepped off the plane.
Chapter Two: Taking the dive
I nearly choked on my first breath of Bermuda air. It was so humid; I was surprised to find out the people who live here don't have water filling their lungs. As I walked down the portable staircase that was pulled up to the plane, I flipped open my GPC (General Purpose Console) and checked the Bermudian weather frequencies. The same forecast was displayed for every day of the week: Lows in the high 70's, highs in the mid 90's, and sunny with a chance of a very short downpour. Oh, well that's very specific, I thought sarcastically. I tuned out the noise of the airport and played a few games of Pong. By the time I was done, I was outside with my bags. While my mom tried to figure out how to hail a cab, I checked the map. Bermuda was shaped like a hook, with a few small rocks around it. I switched off my GPC, and then I realized how heavy my bag was. I open it up, and out toppled a soaked Charles Munkson. But he goes by Chip. "Fancy meeting you here..." he said nervously, giving an innocent smile.
"Am I in trouble?"
"Chip," I said, "I know that were best friends and all, but do you have to go everywhere that I do? And how did you get an excuse for being gone for two weeks?"
"I said that I was going on an all expenses paid trip to summer camp."
His parents are just as smart as he is, I thought, and that's not good. “Sorry about your stuff...” he said, “I brought a water bottle and it blew up.”
“Great,” complained my mom, “another 13-year-old boy to feed and take care of.”
Now she looked and me and hissed, “You’re lucky that your father is on a business trip.”
I winced and my orangish yellow hair started to droop. My gel was leaking down my forehead from all the humidity.
“Issac! Your hair is crying white tears! Did you hurt it? Or get it cut lately?”
“It’s not crying, you moron My gel is leaking from the humidity.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah… Chip, you might want to take a break from thinking, we wouldn’t want you to strain your brain while you’re on vacation.”
“Shut up, Issac.”
***
The next day, we headed off to the beach on mopeds. We didn’t go very fast, but whenever the wind blew in my face while we were riding, my eyes watered. We finally arrived at the beach; the speed limits are so low here you could probably get across the island faster just by running. The sand was heavily dotted with pink, and the sky was blue, with barely any clouds. It was a peaceful scene... until I returned to reality and realized how loud and crowded the beach was. Chip and I raced to the water and dove in as soon as it was deep enough. I spotted something pulsing bright blue light on the bottom. I signaled Chip to come look at it as I dove deeper into the water. We both touched the light at the same time, and then something strange happened. It felt like I was being pushed from behind and pulled from the front. But at the same time, it felt like I was being torn apart then put back together again somewhere else. But then, I felt blood rushing to my head and then I finally blacked out.
When I woke up, Chip was still lying on the ground; he was out cold. I stood up and looked around. We were in a jungle, and it appeared to be lifeless. There was a great stone temple near us, completely overgrown with vines and shrubs. I checked my pocket and amazingly enough, my GPC was inside. I just noticed that we were in different clothes, too. I was wearing thick leather boots and gloves, blue cloth pants under a blue tunic (a tunic is like a kilt, but not plaid and not as tacky), a yellow half-cape pinned to my left shoulder and metal shoulder guard strapped to my right. I noticed all the large extra pouches on my belt, and an empty sheath hanging off my left hip. I checked the GPC map. But instead of showing the normal Bermuda hook, there was a bumpy oval in its place. “Vesperia...” I whispered to my self, reading the map. “Where are we...?”
Chapter Three: Sacredly evil
I dragged Chip into some ferns, and hid him with some big leaves. I switched on his GPC’s vibrate function and left the message: ‘Meet Issac in temple. URGENT!’ I ventured out of the bushes and walked bravely up the temple steps. I heard a beetle smash under my foot… or so I thought. My GPC started rumbling insanely and beeping. I opened it up and the screen said: ‘Fighter beetle challenges. You hold first strike.’ I wondered what it meant by ‘You hold first strike.’, as the beetle buzzed into the air. I put my fists up, ready to block whatever came at me. But no attack came. I checked my GPC again. Instead of what it said before, there was a green bar at the top of the screen that was labeled: 100/100, and three squares, the first one labeled fight, the second labeled run, and the third labeled stats. Oh, I thought, I get it now. This is just like a video… game… Uh-oh. If its anything like the ones at home, if I die it’s game over…oh no… I began to panic. And if it’s a lot like the ones at home, it could overheat and leave me in suspended animation… forever.
I gulped and pressed the box labeled ‘Fight’. Another screen appeared and gave me more options. Now, there were four squares, each one, again having a label, but this time there was a picture to go with. The first box was captioned ‘Fast attack’, and the illustration was a small man running with a sword. The second box was captioned ‘Strong attack’. The illustration was a more buff man swinging a sword with all his might. The third box was called ‘Magic’, and there was a picture of a small man holding up his arms, and a red fireball forming between his hands. The last was labeled ‘Defensive maneuvers’. It’s picture was of a small man with a shield up and a sword ready in his back hand. I selected fast attack and pressed on the word jab under a picture of a fist. After I pressed the jab button, words appeared on the screen. They said ‘Remember, you can use the headset function instead of pressing everything to make the battle smoother. Or you can just switch to free mode where there’s no turns or battle damage meters, so it’s a plain fight.’ Well, there’s an idea, I thought. I switched to free battle and the battlefield got bigger, warping the surroundings. The beetle launched itself at me, no longer held back by old turn based battle programming. I nimbly dodged the slow flying insect and grabbed it in my hand. I opened my hand and looked at the beetle. It was still alive. Or it looked like it was still alive. It dissolved into to small pieces and flew up into the sky, like water evaporating put into fast forward. The staircase shrunk back to normal, the stair I was on was no longer a giant platform. Then some words appeared in front of me in midair, and there was a small red gem under the words. I plucked the gem out of the air and looked at it for a moment, before reading the words. ‘15 experience gained ’ they said. Now a small blank bar popped up where the gem had once been. The gem dissolved, like the beetle, but instead the small blank bar absorbed the small, red shards and filled half way up. The words and bar disappeared, and I continued into the dark, dank, temple. It was pitch black and cold inside the overgrown monastery. I switched on my GPC’s flashlight and waved it around. There was something shining in the middle of the room. I shined my flashlight on it and… I don’t believe it, I thought, I can’t believe it. Because in the middle of the room there was a sword and an axe stuck in pedestals with their handles up. “Hey, Issac,” said a voice. I whirled around, ready to fight. “Relax, dude. It’s just me, Chip.” I put my fists down and shined the flashlight on him. He was wearing an orange version of my outfit, only no shoulder guard, no cape, and there was a belt with leather straps on his back and around his torso.
“Hey Chip,” I said, “Check this out. It’s really weird.” I swung the flashlight beam from him to the sword and axe.
“Cool ” he yelled. “I call sword ”
“Shut up and no, I get sword because I found it.”
“No ”
“Fine, you can don’t not don’t not not don’t not have the sword.”
“Uh… okay.”
“Okay, thanks for the sword, Chip!”
“Oh, no proble- Hey!”
“Gotcha!” I said, laughing. I love doing that, I thought cheerfully. Chip and I walked slowly up to the pedestals, and we put our hands on the handles of our weapon.
“Okay,” I said shakily, “on the count of three. One… two… two and a half… three!”
We both yanked our weapons out of the stone at the same time. We fell over backward. Suddenly, dark beams blasted out of our weapons and met above the pedestals, creating a dark warp rift. A foul creature’s head appeared from within the warp rift and said, “Fools! I knew someone would release me from that prison someday, and I’ve been waiting for that day for centuries. So greatly stupid adventurers…” it cackled. “thank you.” It retreated into the darkness. What have I done?
Chapter four: The first step
We rushed outside to see what was happening. We looked up to see dark skies, thunder clouds, and groups of giant, menacing winged creatures patrolling the clouds, and occasionally, blasting the ground with some kind of unknown energy.
“This looks bad,” said Chip, wielding his axe. “Very bad.”
“Yeah, and it’s all because we had to have these weapons, these weapons that are cursed by that thing they were holding back. And now that thing has broken loose.” Now I pulled out my sword and said, “Let’s go.”
I leapt off the stairs and tore off, racing down the jungle path and slicing down all the vines and bushes that got in my way. I started to slow down. Getting tired, I slowed to a walk. But I had slowed down all too soon. A small red imp ambushed me and sank it’s teeth into my leg. Luckily for me, it was not very powerful and it’s fangs were tiny. I took five damage as the battle started. I used a basic horizontal quick slash, and Chip leapt into the air and swung his axe down with all his might. My attack hit dead on, dealing a total of seven damage. Unfortunately, the little monster was ready for Chip’s attack, so his axe only grazed his arm, dealing three damage. Two thirds of it’s life meter were reddened from our attacks. Now, it launched itself at Chip. The imp’s tiny horns were flying at Chip. He countered the flying creatures attack by catching it with the broad side of his axe, and smashing the tiny creature to the ground. The imp dissolved as soon as it hit the dirt. Our experience meters filled up twice with the defeating of the imp. At level three I gained the ability to illuminate the area or temporarily blind an enemy, the ability to create walls of stone, and I could summon animated stone figures to do my biding. Chip could now shoot small flares from his axe and create walls of fire. He could also summon flare bees, also known as living fireballs to light up the battle. I could also use the attack ‘Lightning slash’ to hit enemies so fast that they can’t dodge, along with giving them a little surge of electricity. Chip could now use his ‘Flaming Axe’ attack to light enemies like candles, along with a new attack that uses the broad side of his axe like a war hammer to smash things. “Is it just me, or is it getting warmer?” said Chip, starting to sweat. “It’s not just you, it is getting warmer.” I said. Wait a minute, I thought, it’s just like I thought!
“"Listen to me, Chip” I said seriously, “remember how the game froze up when we were fighting the last boss back at home?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Well, that’s because the game overheats. And if we don’t get outta here, and fast, we could be frozen just like in the game. The hotter it gets, the less time we have to escape.” “Oh no, I don’t wanna be a warm popsicle forever! We gotta get outta here!”
So, with being sizzling, but never melting ice cubes on our minds, we set off in search of a better, actually-in-our-dimension-and-still-alive tomorrow.
Chapter five: The Coliseum
We walked along the path, feeling extremely bored as we hiked along the path. Getting slowly warmer and warmer, we longed for a stream to take a dunk in and get a drink from. And a little bit further along the trail, we found a clearing, with fresh what looked like apple trees, and...
“YEAH! A STREAM!” yelled Chip, drowning his red (not ‘red hair’ red, but the red you see in the rainbow but a little darker) hair in the pool.
“ MY stream!” said a deep, stupid sounding voice. A huge troll appeared holding a very long- it looked about nine feet- two ended harpoon, with a slightly large fish on the end.
“I is the river troll of this clearing and I want you three out!”
“There’s only two of us.”
“Well, I is not grood with ariteetics.”
“You mean good and arithmetic?”
“ROAR! Smarty pants short people bother and confuzle river troll!” The huge ogre launched it self at us. I barely summoned a stone platform in time to hit the river troll in mid flight. It lay on the ground, dazed and confused. The river troll took ten damage from my counter-attack. I took the opportunity to attack while the troll was recovering. I used the new ‘Lightning slash’ attack, and since it was a river troll, it took extra damage from the electrical shock. And since I attacked so fast, I still had time for another fast strike. I kicked off the stone wall I had made and swung down with my sword. The troll came out of it’s daze and thrust it’s harpoon up to block. Then it used my own momentum against me and used it’s harpoon to catapult me into the trunk of a nearby tree. I lay at the base of the tree, my back hurting. The words appeared in front of me, ‘20 damage taken you, have 175 of 300 life left. You are paralyzed for the turn.’
“Now it’s time for me to do some damage!” yelled Chip, charging at the river troll. He jumped and sliced down. The monster tried to block with his harpoon, but the harpoon was sliced perfectly in two. Chip swung his axe again and hit it’s leg. The creature took 15 damage. I stood back up and watched as the troll attacked. It only had 19 of 52 life left, if they both did light damage attacks, the troll would be down. It thrust it’s two harpoon points at Chip. Chip grabbed the wood part just below the metal tips, mimicking the troll and using it’s own momentum against it and hurling the troll into some nearby trees. The small trees fell with a crash, and the troll disintegrated when it hit the ground. Luckily, it’s harpoon halves and fish were left over. We each took half a harpoon, and Chip summoned a flare bee to cook the fish on. We each ate half the fish, and an apple, so our life was restored to full.
“That was cool, what you did back there,” I remarked, “how’d you do it?”
“Didn’t I tell you? When I leveled up, I discovered that I can throw things almost twice my size! How’s that for a good power- up?” I got some water in each of the pouches on my belt, in case we needed it for later. As soon as we had our harpoons securely attached to our belts, we stood up and started walking again. Suddenly, there was a blue flash of light and the next thing we know, we’re inside a huge stadium.
“Welcome,” said a evil and familiar voice, “To the Doom Coliseum.”
Chapter Six: Entry and Doom
I recognized the voice as the demon’s that we freed by pulling out the weapons. “I’m giving you two the chance of a lifetime.” It said. “If you can defeat my head guard in combat, I will give you the chance to fight me.”
“No problem,” I retorted, “we can defeat your guard no matter what rank he is!”
“Well, then do it now!!”
The guard appeared on a horse with a lance and a sword at the other end of the stadium. The horse charged and the guard put out his lance. I easily tripped the horse with some stones coming out of the ground. The rider went flying, and Chip caught him. Chip spun around and sent the guard sailing into the stands. There was a dusty explosion and the guard dissolved, bringing both me and Chip up to level five.
“Fine,” said the demon, obviously angered. “You win... for now.”
We were suddenly taken to a new place, the top floor of a dark tower lit by torches. I finally got a good look at the demon we had released. It was big, and had what looked like greenish gray armor plates on gray-blue skin. It’s eyes were sunset orange around the edges, and yellow-white in the center. It had radiant gems that like its eyes on it’s forehead, wrists, and ankles, and it had a broad, spiny tail. Not exactly what I’d call a glamorous villain, I thought. “Prepare to feel the pain I have for years!” screeched the demon. It blasted a dark beam at me. I tried to block with a triple thick stone wall, but the blast was too powerful. I was knocked backward, and I lost 175 life. Yes, I said 175. The demon was level 30, way too powerful for me. I had 325 life of 500 already. Two more hits like that and I’d be down. I jumped up and used my lightning slash ability, but he blocked with one of his wrist jewels. I was suspended in the air for a moment, as sparks flew out of the sword. I was blasted back again, this time taking 25 damage. Chip charged, letting out a battle cry as he went. He leapt into the air and tried to use his flaming axe ability, but the demon only had to raise his hand to stop him. Chip’s axe clattered to the ground as vines sprung up from the floor and constricted his entire body. The demon caught me in a bubble of dark energy and slammed me against the wall.
“Ha,” he said, “You are tiny. You are nothing!”
“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight,” I rasped. I stood up and charged.
“It’s the size of the fight in the dog!”
Then something happened. I leapt into the air and swung down with all the will and force left in my body. My sword shined brightly as I hit the jewel on it’s arm. The gem shattered from the force of my sword. The demon screeched in agony as the stone shattered. I used my ability to flash light to blind the demon. Then, I finally summoned three powered-up rock people to destroy the other wrist jewel and the ankle jewels. I let out a loud battle cry and plunged my sword into the forehead gem. The demon screamed and dissolved slowly. In it’s last moments undissolved, it swore vengeance on me and Chip, then it dissolved completely. It was getting unbearably hot, and I could see the landscape of Vesperia slowly stopping completely. I sliced the vines holding Chip and my sword created a warp rift. I poured the water I had saved on my head, picked up Chip, and ran through the rift, as the island of Vesperia stopped completely behind me.
The all important epilogue
So, it turns out that whenever I dissolved something in Vesperia, it just would pop up somewhere else to bother someone else. Except for that Demon. He was returned to that jail he was talking about. And the really cool part is, that to ensure that he would never come out again, I got to keep the sword and pedestal. And even if I do pull the sword out, only half of him could come, and luckily the laws of physics don’t allow that. So I’m guessing that your thinking that we’ll all go straight home and donate the sword to charity. Well, if you think that then.... YOUR TOTALLY WRONG! Actually, I got a concealed weapons permit, and I carry the sword around whenever possible. And, I just relaxed the rest of my vacation, and then packed Chip back into my back as we got on the plane leaving the dark tropics.