Chapter 3

The blonde looked at him. A puzzled expression was back on her face.

"Hey wait!" she said. "You're the--"

Too late. DaBigBoom had already stepped into the portal.

They warped to a rocky location that somehow managed to look cheerful despite being largely desolate. The only plants DaBigBoom saw were the twisted remnants of dead trees.

Not quite dead, as it happened, but not exactly alive in any way DaBigBoom expected. He watched as one of the dead stumps grew spindly arms out of its top and began to shuffle around. Pihanga absent-mindedly booted it into a nearby pool of bright green acid. She took out a telescope and surveyed their objective from behind a boulder.

Before them a wide bridge led to an enormous gate at the entrance of a cartoon-scary castle carved into the high stone wall of a cliff. The gate looked like an enormous mouth and two openings above it looked like burning eyes. It still looked about as scary as a Scooby Doo cartoon.

The oddest thing to DaBigBoom was the ground. It was marked out with squares like a giant chessboard. The pattern covered most of the grounds leading up to the bridge and continued right into the fort. Some of the squares glowed with a strange light and that same glow lit up odd pyramid sculptures scattered throughout the grounds. DaBigBoom thought they must serve some purpose within the game although he didn't have the slightest idea what.

There were guards--more of the strange pointy-eared inhabitants he'd seen walking around back at the castle. They grumbled and fidgeted, but didn't leave the squares they were standing in, even though most of the positions they occupied seemed to serve no strategic purpose.

"Okay, equipment," Pihanga said.

From somewhere, DaBigBoom had no idea where, she pulled out a sack of gear that was bigger than her, Schreck and Fiore combined.

Computer RPG physics, no point in being surprised, DaBigBoom thought.

"You." She beckoned to DaBigBoom. "Time to equip you. The high HP gear I think." There was a gleam in Pihanga's eye DaBigBoom didn't like at all.

She threw him a flak jacket that looked more suited to a cop game. DaBigBoom had no idea what it was doing in a fantasy RPG, but it was armour and DaBigBoom would take any kind of protection. He put it on.

It also wasn't the only jacket as Pihanga passed him a second and then a third jacket largely identical to the first.

"Um, I already have a jacket," DaBigBoom said.

Pihanga ignored him. So did the world. Before he even realised it, he was wearing all three jackets on top of each other. They were uncomfortably warm and DaBigBoom could barely move his arms. How was he supposed to fight like this?

"Perfect," Pihanga said. "Lots of HP."

Once again, DaBigBoom really didn't like the gleam in Pihanga's eye whenever she mentioned 'HP'.

DaBigBoom felt something rather important had been neglected in the equipping process.

"Aren't I supposed to have something to fight with?" he asked.

"Fight?" Pihanga seemed surprised by the question, as if it wasn't really relevant. "Oh, take this."

She rummaged through the sack and came back with a bow so tiny it'd struggle to make even a child's toy. DaBigBoom held the undersized bow in his hands. Now what the fuck was he supposed to do with this?

Pihanga turned her back and went back to observing the fort. She turned around and began to draw lines in the ground. She studied them with wrinkled-brow concentration while Schreck watched and gave the occasional nod of his head. Fiore crouched down and watched Pihanga draw her plans, but didn't contribute anything other than the occasional giggle.