Dozens of warriors from every part of Calradia waited inside the city of Nova Ichamur. Men-at-arms, knights errant, wealthy lords, and a few homeless persons were scattered throughout the sprawling city's towers, streets, and rooftops. Most stood in the city's central square.
Joe stood amongst this last group. It was hot, and crowded. Occasionally someone shoved somebody else. Every few minutes somebody got punched in the face, or kicked.
Somebody next to him said, "Butts." This was met with murmurs of agreement and giggles. Aside from this, and the occasional homosexual aside, most of the warriors present were silent. All eyes were on the beautiful woman standing upon the city's keep, the tallest building in sight. Her flame-red hair was silhouetted against a clear blue sky.
Joe groped himself.
Kesh cleared her throat, then spoke in a man's voice. Joe could barely hear her from down below. "Somebody go get the RoR guys, it's time for roll call." She looked at a piece of parchment, then shouted, "Holiday?!"
Someone a few feet away shouted up, "Here!"
"Dino_Penis?!"
A voice echoed back from across the city, "Here!"
"I'm_gay?!"
Everybody laughed. The whole city, in unison. Joe laughed with them--it never got old, and there was nothing Kesh could do to stop it. Every time roll call came around, he was verbally raped by Gay.
A naked guy beside Joe shouted up at Kesh, "Present!"
Kesh wiped away a few tears. The humiliation was starting to get to her. She returned to the roll call, though, calling out name after name until everyone had been signed up.
Joe's name had not been called.
His heart was beating like a war drum. His hands shook. He looked around wildly, sure that there would have been an extra spot for him. There was always an extra spot for FCC members. There was no way that Joe couldn't have been allowed in, unless someone else had joined the FCC.
Somebody... better than him.
Then Joe saw him, standing in the crowded square.
He was a handsome man. He carried a longbow--which no one used anymore because they were universally broken. A mighty erection was visibly pressed against his leather armor. Yes, Joe recognized this man back from the dead: The sWalker.
The sWalker had taken Joe's place in the roster. He deserved it. The most Joe could have hoped to contribute in the upcoming battle was launching horses off of the castle's walls into the ranks of the enemy, because for some reason he was a cavalryman. A level seventeen cavalryman, at that.
The SWalker, however, was a deadly archer--high-level. His arrows always struck home.
Joe knew what he had to do, though he loathed to do it.
He followed a crowd of warriors up the steps to the castle walls. Behind them remained the chosen few, who moved to the keep to arm themselves.
The crowd was weeping. Men cried and tore their hair. Joe pooped himself, but he didn't cry.
Somebody punched somebody else. There was no retaliatory strike.
They reached the wall. Joe looked out at the distant enemy camp.
Without warning, the crowd of unworthy warriors began flinging themselves off of the castle walls. There was only room for so many soldiers within. The rest had to go. They fell like rain to their deaths below.
The man in front of Joe hesitated, his tear-filled eyes staring down at pile of bodies below. "But I'm level thirty... I'm level thirty," He muttered, over and over.
Joe shoved him off. Swallowing his pride, he jumped too.
Joe was jerking off when someone knocked.
He jumped, surprised that someone would interrupt his happy-time. He hurried to hide the lotion and tissues under his bed, then gestured frantically at the horse on the other side of the room. She needed to make herself decent.
She looked at him. "Joe," she said, "I'm a horse. What the fuck are you asking of me?"
"Fuck you, you callous whore!"
"Alright then, I'll be in the corner." She returned to her usual spot. Her eyes unfocused, distracted by something only horses could see.
Joe opened the door, peeking his head out, hiding his still naked body behind it. To his surprise, he saw Kesh. "Hi Joe," she said.
"Oh, Kesh, good to see you." He opened the door all the way, revealing his physical beauty. He and Kesh were comfortable enough for this sort of thing.
Kesh shielded her eyes, murmured, "I should have expected that."
"How can I help you?" Joe hadn't meant for that to sound so sexy.
"I need you to watch my little Bambino for me. I need to run to EU to get some more troops and gold."
"Ah, the child. I'll keep him safe, coach."
Joe walked past Kesh, heading towards his friend's quarters. He knew that that's where he'd find the child. He'd played babysitter before--all of FCC had, at some point. It was fun, watching the Bambino. MURDERTRON hated it. Which makes sense, because MURDERTRON's a robot and robots don't usually do well with children, in Joe's experience. Everyone else enjoyed it in their own way.
He arrived at Kesh's quarters in good time. The door was kept unlocked, because the wee baby inside was too fucking stupid to open it. Dumbass.
Joe stepped in. A breeze from an open window graced his loins, slick with sweat. Sitting on the carpet in the middle of the room was the wee baby Bambino. All 150 pounds of diaper wearing, mustache-twirling, Italiano man-child. He was playing with a hunk of pepperoni, but looked up when Joe entered.
He struggled to form a coherent thought. "D-dad?"
"No. Shut up." Joe walked past the boy and sat himself on the bed and stared at the "Bambino".
Kesh had brought him home after a hard-fought battle. The retarded man-child was the leader of a group of conniving Frenchmen that was warring with FCC. Kesh had captured him--formerly known as Arowaine, with great ease, as he had found him idly strolling through the carnage of battle munching on a slice of pizza. According to Kesh, all he had to do was grab Arowaine by the hand and he just sorta followed him.
They had wanted to kill Arowaine. But Joe had suggested that they put him in a diaper and keep him in Kesh's room. Kesh was down, as was everyone else. They all decided to take turns watching him, each with their own reason. MURDERTRON was hard to guess at, what with his inhumanity. WITCHCRAFT used his babysitting time to teach Bambino spells. The dread Terrortops liked to scare little Bambino with his odd deformity. Joe harassed him. Kesh's motives were most likely sexual.
In a throwback to tradition, they renamed him "Bambino".
The child cast a skittish glance at Joe--this after having avoided his silent staring for so long. It was hilarious. This was why watching "Bambino" was so fun--the big baby was just so easy to fuck with. Joe smiled. "Hey, how about I read you a story?"
Bambino stared.
"Once upon a time--"
"Pictures?"
"What?" Joe said.
"P-pictures?" The little man-child made a gesture with his hands, as if opening a book. Joe noted the hairy knuckles.
Joe got it. "Oh, you want pictures with your story? Like a picture-book?"
The Frenchman nodded, his mustache bobbing. He was happy.
Joe laid back on the bed and pissed across the room, his urine arcing onto Arowaine's face. The guy swallowed a whole mouthful before noticing. He tried to crawl away, but there was no escape--Joe's stream chased him down without mercy, like a charging horseman falling upon a routing soldier.
He ran out of urine, and sat back up.
"Where's dad?" the piss-coated man on the ground wined.
Joe opened his mouth to give a sassy reply, but a sudden bang echoed in the corridor outside. It sounded like somebody dropped something, like a servant's tray. The Bambino looked started. Joe had an idea. He said, "Uh oh!"
Bambino-waine's attention snapped to Joe.
"Sounds like Keshy-daddy fell down the stairs!"
"NO!"
"HE DIED!"
"MIO PAPPA! NO!" He screamed. He cried. He rolled around in Joe's piss. He sobbed.
Kesh walked in, just then. He looked from the bawling Frenchman to Joe. Clearly smelled piss.
Joe smiled, and left.
On his way out, he leaned down, very close to the man-child. He whispered, "Don't be so mad."
Joe sat at the bar of a tavern inside the Jelbegi Castle. The other patrons, mostly soldiers bearing the heraldry of the FCC, avoided sitting near him. He was drunk, and in a dark mood. The Free Companies had lost every single one of their villages to an unholy alliance of Italians and homosexuals. Soon, these cruel invaders would begin attacking castles and cities. Cavalry was useless in castles and cities.
He was useless--powerless to stop the onslaught.
He swallowed the rest of his of Miller High Life. He threw the can over his shoulder, then reached into the dark, cardboard cavern of the half-empty thirty-pack on the counter and pulled out another beer.
The bartender, a fine Destrier, approached with some caution, a confused look on his dumb horse face. "My lord," he offered, "we have beer on tap if you'd like. We have lots of beer--you don't need to keep bringing your own."
Joe dribbled a mouthful of beer onto the counter. "Shut up."
"I-"
"Jesus, you don't even have hands. What the fuck are you doing back there?"
"You had the last bartender replaced, sir. Said you were more comfortable speaking with horses."
"Right you are." Joe sipped his beer, then turned in his seat and threw the can across the room. It exploded against a distant wall. He pulled a fresh one out of the box in front of him.
"Sir," the horse persisted, "Do you want to try one of our seasonal brews?"
Joe looked at the horse, silent. He drank from his can. The horse opened it's mouth to speak but Joe, still drinking, raised a finger. He drank at a slow, steady pace, his eyes locked on the horse's, until the can was empty, which took about five minutes. "Bartender," he declared, "This is the Champagne of Beers. The best brew in the world."
The animal didn't seem convinced, but nodded. "Right. Well, I guess you couldn't find a brew like it elsewhere. You could drink from one side of town to the other--do the whole village--and not find a thing like it..."
Joe wasn't listening. A voice echoed in his head, over and over. The whole village, the whole village, the whole village. He'd heard those words before, years ago...
In Vietnam.
Joe had been a rifleman--just another pair of boots. His platoon had been tasked with defending a little cluster of villages. A foolish assignment. He set up inside a hooch and waited. They sat there for hours, then days, waiting for the enemy was sure to come.
Then, one moonless night, the world reverberated with the crack of rifles and the screams of the dying. From his little house, Joe watched slivers of tracer fire stich themselves through the fabric of the night. Bullets hissed and cracked at super-sonic speeds around him, tearing through the dry lumber of the building he was in. After a few minutes the thing was ablaze, and Joe had to move--all this without firing a shot. He could only watch and run, helplessly, from fighting position to fighting position as they all were overrun by VC.
He got to his PL, in the heart of the surviving hamlet. The RTO was shouting grid coordinates into his handset. The PL looked at Joe, and at the wounded and dying around them all. He said to Joe, "Just run. We're dropping arty on us. We're gonna do the whole village if it means keeping it out of Charlie's hands."
Joe had ran, then.
A burst of clapping and laughter roused Joe from his flashback. He looked around the crowded tavern, which had broken into sudden applause. He was confused, some part of him still running through the dark jungles of south east Asia.
Joe grabbed at a passerby. "What the fuck's going on, sergeant?"
"Uh." The man swallowed, his eyes clearly recognizing Joe. "HoC is back apparently." The man shrugged. "Messenger came in and said so." He shrugged again, uncertain.
"Don't shrug at me boy, I was in the 'Nam."
"W-what?"
Joe stood, then peed himself. "I said," his voice rising, "VIETNAM!" He shoved past the man, cans of the Champagne of Beers clenched in each fist. He could hear the sound of gunfire and the scream of falling helicopters. Somebody--probably VC--stepped into his path.
Joe barked, then bit the man's face. He went down, hard, giving Joe room to leap out of the tavern and into the cool night air. He removed the rest of his clothing--finally free--and leapt onto the back of a passing horse. "TAKE ME TO CAMBODIA! WE NEED TO GET OUT!" he shouted. The animal leapt to his bidding, galloping towards the open castle gate and the safety of any place but there.
Joe threw an empty beer can. It flew, from where he sat in the castle's wall, across the courtyard. Not quite to the opposite wall. "HEY FUGGOTS," Joe screamed across the castle to his friends who were drinking on the other side, "IM DRUNK!"
MURDERTRON and WITCHCRAFT were drunk as fuck on the walls opposite from where Joe sat. "WERE DRUNK TOO!"
Joe smiled. He'd been pregaming getting drunk outside, of course. He'd gotten drunk in his friend's apartment, drinking Milwaukee Special Reserve Light, idly posting stupid role play posts on the forums of a free mod for a shitty game while he did so. He'd finished half the thirty pack before he'd started posting.
Joe, still smiling, jumped off the castle wall and plummeted to the earthen courtyard below. He broke his legs.
Joe's longship darted through the sea towards a milk-white shore, still some distance away. The Un-Nerfable barely trembled beneath Joe's feet, so perfectly calm was the water. The sky was a perfect blue, and the sun not yet too high to cause discomfort to Joe or his men. He thanked whatever gods there were for their assistance.
One of the oarsmen shouted out, "My lord! Is it yet time to strip?"
"No!" Joe turned around in his saddle to stare mightily into the man's eyes. "It is not naked time."
The man was struck by Joe's piercing gaze. He dry heaved, but managed to get out a strangled, "Yes, sir!"
"And call me by my proper title!"
He was crying now. Little lines of wet were appearing below his eyes. "I'm sorry, Dad!"
Joe bared his teeth at the man, asserting his dominance one final time before turning back around to face the rapidly approaching shore.
He pet Champion Courser. The proud beast stirred beneath him. "You shouldn't be so mean, my love."
"Shut up oh my god I hate you."
She sighed. "You're nervous."
That damn animal knew him so well. "You're right, you're right. It's just--so much depends on my success." He paused, suddenly mirthful, a pun on his mind, what with him being on horseback at the moment. "You could say that there's just too much riding on it...riding on me...too many we're riding on it much to the can't..." He'd lost the joke. His mind was drowning. He felt himself slipping away into some dark place. "...Much riding the joke can't joke.... No sergeant, can't do that...babies in the village..."
He hated this. Here he was, going back to Vietnam. "NOOOOOO! BABIES IN THE VILLAGE SERGEANT! NOT THE WHILLIE PEETE, WHAT WE YOU DOING!"
Something hit Joe's face. He blinked, his head suddenly clear. One of the men stood beside him, his face calm, an oar held high. "Should I hit you again, Dad?"
"That's quite alright." Joe dismissed the man with a little wave of his hand, then returned his attention to his horse-lover. "So much depends on our success. We need to find him, dammit."
"I know, love. Freedom is at steak." She corrected herself, "Stake."
It damn well was. He knew he was doing something treasonous--betraying Kesh and the current King of Acre. He had had to fund this whole venture himself, using his own ship and men. His own horses and food.
It had to be done. He'd known that from the start--from the moment he'd heard the whisper of a dying king. King Reinhardt, of Acre, one of FCC's many pitiful vassals, subject to an increasingly egomaniacal Kesh's unquestioned authority--Reinhardt had died. Joe saw it himself, one dark night. He'd been visint New Slezk castle, in the snowy north, on a routine inspection of Acre's cavalry forces. He despised the task--Acre shouldn't even be a vassal. Yet there he was, speaking with an officer in the stables when a messenger appeared, whisking the man away with a flurry of whispered lords. Joe followed, of course, his suspicions aroused. Remembering something he had learned from Gmnotutoo, mightiest of ninja warriors, Joe stripped himself down so as to be less encumbered. Naked, Joe had slipped past guards and servants alike, slithering snake-like on his belly through the castle. The spirit of the snake now fully in possession of him, Joe managed to slither up a tower wall and an open window, soundlessly infiltrating a secret meeting of the leaders of Acre.
None of the gathered knights and lords saw him. He wriggled naked across the floor, his balls flopping softly, under the dying King's bed. And then he heard it, amid a stream of incoherent babble. The name of an heir.
Joe slithered the fuck out of there. There was hope, now. He fled Slezk Castle in all hast, heading towards the nearest port, sending carrier pigeons in every direction at the first opportunity.
Joe was going to find Reinhardt's heir.
He was going to do it for Acre. The rightful king would not stand for this silly vassalage.
He was doing this for Kesh.
Kesh had grown too powerful. He had too many vassals and castles and soldiers. It was beginning to wear away at the man/woman's psyche, twisting Joe's friend into something terrible. Something dark, powerful, and terribly familiar to those with good memories.... Long ago, another man had been twisted by power, turning into a dark fiend of tyranny: Echo, of ATS. Joe shuddered at the thought of the name.
He would not let Kesh's brilliant mane of red hair be corrupted into a terrible neckbeard. The rightful king of Acre must return, fight for a free Acre, and strike a blow against FCC--to save it and it's leader from self-annihilation. Somewhere out here in the tropics was a man--or boy--by the name of Ronald McDonald, and Joe was going to find him.
"One way, or another," Joe whispered under his breath as his ship rammed against the shore, grinding to a slow halt in the sand, "I'm gonna find you. I'm gonna getcha, getcha, getcha, getcha."
Joe observed a scene of beauty, leaning out of the window of his room in the castle keep. The walls and towers of Nova Jelbegi castle were dusted with snow, and still more fell from a sky made silver by moonlight. Despite the hour, men and women roamed the streets below, buying and selling, their voices sending a steady murmur up to Joe from below. The sound reminded him of the ocean.
Joe put his head between his legs and sucked his own dick. The length of his cock made this maneuver easy.
After a few minutes of sucking his dick to no avail, he decided that he needed to cum, come hell or high water.
His dick was going down.
He ran to his dresser, flung the top drawer open, and slammed his dick in it. He was surprised by how much this hurt. He started to cry.
Now weeping, he ran from his room with his pants around his ankles. He ran down the stone stairs, falling on his face at the bottom. He wiped away his tears and, blubbering uncontrollably, kicked off his pants and regained his feet. He ran past Kesh's room, and out of the castle keep onto the streets below. People stared, awe-struck.
Joe sniffled. "I-I-I-I-I n-n-n-n-need my dick sucked." He stammered at the crowded city streets. Not knowing what else to do, he began to chant: "Dicks, dicks, dicks, dicks..."
A woman with a child cradled in her arms took up the chant. "Dicks, dicks, dicks, dicks..."
Then, the blacksmith. "Dicks! Dicks!"
A passing horse cried out in ecstasy, "DICKS! DIIIIIIIICKKKSS!"
The whole city was soon chanting in unison. All of Jelbegi was chanting "Dicks", and Joe was happy. They were all in agreement, then. He stopped chanting, but the crowd continued. He gestured towards the woman with the child, and she heeded his call, walking towards him as if in a trance. She got on her knees and, tossing the baby aside, started sucking Joe's dick, still garbling the wet chant of "Dicks!"
It felt good.
Then the blacksmith, then the horse, then the whole city surged toward Joe's penis. Everybody wanted a piece of the penis pie, and Joe was ready to serve it up baby, serve it up. Hundreds of tongues caressed his cock.
A man approached, then. He was not chanting. He wore the heraldry of FCC, though Joe couldn't recognize his face. "What the fuck are you doing?"
"Dicks!" Joe frowned. "Sorry. I'm roleplaying, is what I meant to say. Come, suck my dick with me." He put his head between his legs, and joined the sucking crowd.
Joe's frenzied typing was suddenly interrupted by the bursting open of the door to his dorm room. His roommate stumbled in, completely naked, a little drunk and sopping wet. He'd just showered. "Andrew," he slurred, "Andrew, I'm naked don't look." He fell, then got up again and stumbled to the window sill. "I didn't do my laundry, so I have to dry myself with paper towels." And he did just that, hissing like a cat while he did so.
Joe cracked open another can of Milwaukee Special Reserve Light. He drank, and his world spun a little. He lifted his head from his dick and stared out at the crowd of peasants and craftsmen, all of them chanting "Dicks, dicks!" He blinked, then removed his penis from the reach of their mouths. Confused, he backpedaled, falling off his bed and into a pile of empty beer cans on the floor.
He looked up, and saw a terrible creature. It was ugly, squat, and green. "THE GOBBLIN KING WISHES FOR THE PROUD CAVALIERES TO JOIN THE GOBBLIN HORDE!"
"Dad, please." Joe lurched to his feet and stumbled away from the ugly monster. He fell through the door to his room and rolled on the ground, into the hallway outside. The building was quiet at this hour.
The GOBBLIN KING chased Joe outside. "PLEASE RESPOND!"
"NOOOOOOOOO!" Joe screamed, then ran down the hallway and out of the building. He leapt upon the back of the nearest horse and kicked it into movement. It screamed and ran down the street, it's feet kicking against pavement.
After a while Joe pulled on the reigns and the horse stopped. He was in a dark forest somewhere, alone with the trees and chirping peepers and the moon. He looked around for a computer, wanting to type up another insulting roleplay, but all he saw were the silhouettes of trees and the shimmer of moonlight on pond, a few feet distant. He peed in it, shattering a perfect reflection of the moon with a healthy stream of urine.
Joe dreamt of wizards. He was running along a beach. The water was on fire and the sky was ink black. Sand flew out from under his feet and his chest heaved and his eyes were burned by sweat. There was laughter behind him. He was running in slow-motion away from something familiar but terrifying. He looked over his shoulder, still running, and saw robes and a wild tangle of red hair, all of it obscured by a dark mist. The thing shouted.
It hurled a bolt of lightning at him, and he stumbled and fell. The dark figure stood over him. It pulled back it's hood, revealing the face that Joe had been, inexplicably, expecting to see. Kesh frowned down at him, like a disappointed mother. "You goofed, son," she said. "You dun fucked up." She conjured a bow of fire and took aim at Joe's fast-beating heart...
Joe woke up shouting. "DICK MOTHER!" he cried, lurching to his feet. Sweat-drenched sheets fell away from his naked body and a draft blew in, chilling his balls. He was standing in a tent, all alone, his lover sleeping with the other horses. They'd argued before bed, and Joe had told her to bugger off, which she'd duly done. He groaned. He wanted her there now, to talk to about his bad dream, but he wasn't about to swallow his pride like that. He grabbed his trusty Masterwork Heavy Lance from beside his cot and, still naked, ducked out of his little tent into the night.
The dream bothered him because it was too similar to his situation. Too prophetic. He wandered through his company's little collection of tents along a beach, all bearing the heraldry of the Free Companies. The tents were assembled haphazardly beside their single, big-ass longship. One or two men wandered around, naked like Joe, because, upon landing, Joe had declared that night time was to be Naked Time.
He through soft sand until he felt the cold water lap at his feet. He stared out at the ocean, leaning on his Heavy Lance. The sea wasn't on fire like in his dream--it was just blackness broken up by random tumblings of white foam.
There was a click and snap beside him, and a sudden feeling of presence. Joe jumped, and looked over to see a comrade standing beside him, rather than Kesh-Wizard. WITCHCRAFT, or in some circles simply referred to as A Hot Elf Princess, was standing there wearing swimming trunks and a dark robe. She clutched a broom that Joe could not help but think of as being dick-shaped. WITCHCRAFT smiled at Joe, trying very hard to ignore his nakedness. She said, "I sensed you had a dream."
"Yeah. Kesh was fucking my shit up." Joe spat into the water. "Fucking OP ranged nerds, man."
WITCHCRAFT looked at Joe with a little bit of pity in her eyes. "There's more to it than archer gaity, Joe. You know that."
Cursed wizards, always so clever. "If that was a prophecy, and not a dream, my search is doomed." He twisted his incredibly long chest-hair with his free hand nervously. "I'll never find Reinhardt's lost heir, and Acre will never break free of us. Kesh's domination will continue, and he'll grow too strong. I'll lose him, WITCHCRAFT..." The sadness of the thought overwhelmed Joe, and he started yelling.
"Ok," Witchcraft said looking around self-consciously. "Ok, you can stop screaming Joe. I, uh, don't think all is lost."
Joe wiped away a tear. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. I don't know what you saw in your dream, but just remember how vague that shit is. I had a dream that I fell down some stairs once."
Joe wondered where she was going with this. He sniffled. "D-did you fall down any stairs?"
"Yeah it fucking sucked," she said, and was quiet.
"Oh, alright. I guess that makes me feel better." Joe was indeed somehow comforted by WITCHCRAFT's wise words. Maybe he would find Reinhardt's mysterious bastard child, Ronald Mcdonald, after all. Maybe there was hope. He felt his penis harden.
WITCHCRAFT glanced down and laughed. "Well then," she said. "That's my cue to leave." She snapped out of existence, leaving Joe to look out at the dark ocean with a new-found boner and sense of purpose. Tomorrow, he decided, they would pack up camp and make for the interior of whatever island they were on. They needed to start asking questions and gathering intelligence. These were strange lands, and he had a feeling that Ronald wouldn't be easy to find, after all these years of exile.
Joe rode into the sunny, sea-side town at the head of a company of completely naked men. The bare-backed horsemen rode slowly, with confused and embarrassed looks on their faces. They had initially resisted Joe's order to strip (it was Naked Time), so he'd had to reassert his dominance over them by naked oil-wrestling their strongest men. Neither of the men that he'd wrestled had actually resisted, or even been told that the combat was going to happen, but fuck it #yolo.
The soldiers cantered into the collection of bungalows and huts and fanned out. They had forged several miles inland from their initial encampment at the beach, and the men were tired from marching. But, they were also eager. They had come to this collection of obscure tropical islands looking for Reinhardt's lost heir, Ronald McDonald. They would not leave until they found their man. Joe wouldn't let them.
Two of the soldiers dragged an old, struggling woman to Joe. She had thick, sun-tanned skin and grey, wispy hair. Her scared eyes darted from naked soldier to naked soldier, confused. Joe's men threw her at the feet of his horse. He stared imperiously down at the quivering woman, his hand gripping a Masterwork Heavy Lance with white-knuckles. He hissed down at her, like an angry cat.
She frowned.
"Where is the Wandering Scotsman?" he asked.
"I dunno."
Joe didn't have time for this wench. His mission as one of life and death--all for Kesh's love. He started shrieking, his tongue sticking straight out of his rounded mouth. "SPREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
The woman recoiled. "OH GOD!"
Joe's beloved Champion Courser started barking at her. The rest of the men, catching on, starting yelling at her in a mighty cacophony of verbal abuse.
Joe let out another hyena's shriek and leapt off his horse at the old lady, tackling her to the ground. He yelled in her face, "WHERE'S RONALD MCDONALD?!"
She sobbed incoherently, apparently overwhelmed by Joe's interrogation techniques. He dismounted the trembling woman and remounted his beloved Champion Courser. He gestured for everyone to stop yelling. He stared at the woman, eyeing her up like a bowler hat would eye up a fresh piece of kiwi. She had to die. He raised his Masterwork Heavy Lance high, ready to spear her dumb, kiwi body...
Then he stabbed her and she died.
Suddenly, there was a great commotion behind Joe. He turned in the saddle to see a band of swarthy men in tri-cornered hats, brandishing pistols (they don't work, there's no gunpowder yet) and curvy swords approaching his band of naked men. A booming voice shouted out from the midst of the band of funny men. "Joe! Joe! Where be yee?" A great, bearded man--the most glorious piece of man-pirate that Joe had ever seen--pushed to the front of the group of interlopers. He walked on a little peg-leg.
It was Matey. Matey frowned at Joe, up on his horse. "Joe, by the high seas what're yee doin? Ain't ya heard about the Confederacy?" He stared at Joe.
Joe scratched his balls.
"Fucks, man! They be invading us! WITCHCRAFT sent me to haul yer arse back home to fight t' good fight. He, err, said that 'Ronald can wait', whatever that means."
Joe surveyed his men, naked and looking expectantly at him. He looked at the dead old kiwi. He looked down at his horse, who looked back at him and nodded. He looked back at Matey, who had pulled a French fry out of his beard and was eating it. WITCHCRAFT was right, Ronald could wait. He was just a means to an end, and this Confederacy business would stall Kesh's rise to dominance long enough to spare Joe from his quest for a while. "Matey," Joe said, "Floop da whop whoop diddily doo."
Matey nodded and they went back to FCC land to beat up the shitty Confederacy of bad factions right in their nerdy dumb dumb, moonshine brewing, bible sniffing faces.
"Fucking fuckers!" Joe growled, his face just inches from his computer screen. He was staring with wide eyes, and heady mixture of sweat and adrenaline was pooling between his naked thighs on the hard, metal stool he was sitting on. The froth smelled like what he imagined sex smelled like. His hands shook, and he was crowning. All this, and more, was happening because Joe was really getting in-character.
He did this every time he posted in the diplomacy forums. There was this one rule, you see.
His fingers, made sticky by lube and maple syrup, slapped audibly against the keyboard. He was in a roleplaying frenzy. "Fucking knaves," he typed and wheezed aloud, "assholes. Learn how to be like real knights and pay for mercenaries. Real knights. Real knights! REAL KNIGHTS! REAL KNIGHTS!"
Joe broke.
His voice cracked and he fell from his stool into a fetal ball. The stool tipped over, spilling sweat all over his weeping, shaking, naked body. "R-real kn-kn-knights," he whispered. "We're all real--"
The basement door exploded off its hinges and flew across the room in a shower of splinters and plaster. The door-knob bounced over the hardwood floor, away from Joe, who watched it with great interest, still muttering about knights. He knew what was coming. A deep voice boomed, "SON?! I"M BACK FROM WAL-MART! THEY WERE OUT OF DICKS, HAHA!"
Dad was home. Joe curled up tighter and ceased his whisperings, hoping that dad might miss him.
"GET IT, BOY? DICKS!" There was a long pause, followed by an authoritative, "PLEASE RESPOND!"
Joe was silent.
"EHL OH EHL, WHATEVER THEN." A single can of beans rolled out of the doorway into the middle of the basement. "I GOT YOU BEANS," was all that Joe's father said before he climbed the stairs, his footfalls like cannon-fire. Joe remained on the floor, staring at the beans.
March, 1968. Khe Sanh.
Joe sat on his haunches inside a crowded bunker and waited patiently for the bombardment to pass. He surveyed the wide, tired eyes of the soldiers around him, and marveled at their fear. One man was curled in the corner, shaking and mumbling. Another smoked his cigarettes too quickly. The highest ranked of them, a sergeant of some sort, had happened to duck in with them and waited impatiently by the bunker's dirt and sandbag constructed mouth.
He pitied these people. They were scared. Noobs and peasants, all of them. They were mortal, too, which perhaps explained the fear. Joe had gone many, many years without feeling that fear. He'd wandered the earth a hundred times over, never fearing death, reveling in his immortality. It had started with a flash of lightning--a fall from Olympus's heights, banishment--and it had ended here, in the 'Nam.
The last missile fell, and the men tumbled out, their funny, ranged weapons in hand. Joe could hear whistles screaming along one side of Khe Sanh's perimeter, and knew that Charlie was about to make another push. The American soldiers around him ran towards the raucous. It was time for XP.
Joe mounted his Champion Courser, left just outside the bunker. He put on his Thrice-loomed Bascinet. "Mars is with us, today. We shall level up a hundred times over."
Champion Courser looked around, confused. "Where the fuck are we? Where are the cops?"
"We're in the 'Nam, baby," he said. They had spawned just south of the base, for after dying in a race-riot in Chicago, fighting for equality against a police shield-wall. Shitty 1hers.
Joe drew his sword and surveyed the battlefield. Several hundred meters of trenches snaked and criss-crossed towards the barbed wire perimeter. Beyond that was a field--perfect for cavalry--and beyond that the dense jungle.
He would avoid the jungle. That's where the 2hers camped.
His horse surged beneath him, and the two of them charged through the trenches, past very confused G.I.'s, towards the din of battle. Ranged nerds had already begun exchanging volleys of fire--it seemed that every peasant and his mother fought with ranged weapons nowadays. He ignored the crack and snap of arrows and bolts. Courser took him past the barbed wire and into the field. They galloped forward, eager for kills.
The enemy army surged out of the forest, into the open. They didn't even have any polearms; it would be slaughter. And so it was. Joe and Courser flew at the nearest VC and cut him down before bumping another fifty Charlie on their way through the formation. They circled around again, and did the same thing. Soon hundreds were dead and Joe's k/d pleasantly padded.
Afterwards, back at the flags, Joe said to Courser, "I could get used to this. Certainly easier than Titans, or those assholes with the flip-fops.
She looked at him. "Those were Roman--"
A catapult missile--something that landed with a mighty boom--struck Courser and blew her to pieces. "Son of a bitch," Joe said. "Shitty catapult fuckers can't even fight fair wow." He tried to get into a bunker, but he, too, was struck by a catapult. It didn't even hurt, lol.
He waited patiently to respawn, surveying the battlefield from above. The timer ticked down.
It got to "1". His screen went briefly black--something new, that was. He opened his eyes. Instead of Vietnam, he was looking at an army of knights, like himself. They were marching past him, just feet away, along a dirt road. He looked around. They were all in a forest. Beside him stood an equally confused Champion Courser. This world looked different--less detailed, more blurry, generally ugly.
A woman in the robes of a sorceress, clutching a broom in one hand, stepped out of formation and approached Joe with a happy expression on her face. Joe spoke first. "Where am I, witch? What sorcery is this?"
She smiled. "Welcome to Calradia, nerd. My name's WITCHCRAFT." She waved over at a mounted woman behind her. "Kesh! I trapped us another one!" She turned back to Joe. "You live here now. I trapped you with magic. Welcome to the gayest place in the universe."
The woman did not lie. Joe felt it, in his loins. He was suddenly craving dick. This was a strange place, indeed.
