Arc the Second
Chapter 1: To Believe in Magic
It was now mid-October, and the weather had begun to turn cold. The trees had donned many shades of red and yellow, and the air had a bitter crisp to it that only the autumn could bring. Felix had begun to make his rounds to the other houses about something, and I had begun to take Team Fortress 2 a bit more seriously. Sometime in September I began to play Borderlands 2, but there was just something more satisfying with competing with other people. It was exhilarating to completely wipe the floor with someone after they muttered the same, dead jokes. I had just begun to play Asteroid when Felix rang our doorbell. I quit the game for a second to go answer the door. “Oh hello, Ash! How are you doing today?”
“Fine, I guess. Why?”
“Well, I was just heading around town to see what we were going to do. After all, Halloween is just a couple weeks away. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could have magic for that week?”
“Yes, Felix. It would be. Now, once your “magic” begins to work, I want the very first magic wand, or whatever.”
“Okay, then. Now, what else? I was thinking we could get a bunch of pumpkins, like the big ones, and—“
“You seem too sure about that magic.”
“And what if I am, Ash? Don’t you believe?”
“Felix--”
“Oh, you’ll see. Just remember, life’s an adventure, and in an adventure anything can happen. Now, as I was saying, we could get a few pumpkins and give one to each household. What about drinks? I was thinking some hot cider and—“
“Sure, I dunno. I’m not going to be doing much Halloween, and Alex is working on a big project for a client this month, so I don’t actually think we’ll be doing anything.”
“Well, still nice to hear from you. You folks stay safe!”
“Okay then, Felix. See you around.”
“Goodbye, Ash!”
As I closed the door, I began to think that Felix was delusional. There was no such thing as magic. Actual magic, that is. Yes, you could play around with the smoke and mirrors as much as you want and make someone believe you made a statue disappear or whatever, but you couldn’t actually do anything like wizardry. He’ll spend all month in his workshop getting nothing done. I returned to my computer and joined an Asteroid game.
Someone had clearly been very good about this. Our base had been infiltrated and someone was stealing our power core, and managed to get past our Engineer with ease. How they did it I have no idea—
Egg_Salads has killed the Sentry Gun of Engifar with the Grenade Launcher.
--Well that explains a lot. It was obvious that to stop a Demoman like this, we’d need some firepower. And that’s exactly what we have.
As I entered the back room of our base, I saw him. A Demoman clad in a top hat and green shutter sunglasses, taunting me as I approached. He had stolen all 200 of our power cores, and if he delivered this back to his base, they'd be well past the goal of 300. He charged at me and swung his sword. I launched him backwards with a blast of air, and shot a flare at the Demoman, lighting him on fire. He ran off to the side and fell into the water surrounding the reactor, putting himself out immediately. He began to swim through the ducts, heading back to the outside of our base. I headed up towards the front to see if I could intercept him. I heard a Demoman’s battle cry and saw the man charge into his own base. This was going to be a challenge. But I could get him. I just needed to get there as soon as I could.
Egg_Salads has killed #YOLO with the Tide Turner.
Egg_Salads is dominating #YOLO.
Well, at least he’s distracted. I got out there and hit the Demoman with another flare, distracting him from killing another Scout. He took out the grenade launcher and fired a few grenades at me. I shot them back with air and he took a hit, knocking him into the water. I took out my melee weapon and jumped in after him.
AshLand97 has killed Egg_Salads with the Powerjack.
AshLand97 is on a killing spree!
Okay, he’s dead but the core returns to us in 60 seconds. If I go kill their robots and then the core returns to us, we could win this. I just had to be quick. I called out to my team. “Help me kill the robots!”
I met up with a Combat Engineer, who dropped down a mini-sentry as I begun to burn the weakest robots down. As they both exploded, we collected the cores. The Engineer packed up his sentry and we headed off to the next set of robots.
The administrator called out that our core was in danger. Again. “I’ll be back!” I said as I ran off. I saw that a Scout had stolen the core and was rapidly closing in on their base. If only he had paid attention to where he was going.
#YOLO has killed himself.
The two actual core bases were both guarded by laser fields and needed to be carefully maneuvered or required taking a side route. The scout died on the second laser of the three in his own base, mere yards from victory, and it’d be nearly impossible to get back in there to retrieve it. I returned to the Engineer to find that he had destroyed the second tier of robots and was heading up to destroy the final ones, which yielded many cores. If we destroyed these two and let our core get returned, we would surely win. There was a brief moment where we warned of the core being taken, but that sorted itself out almost immediately.
Egg_Salads has killed himself.
The first of the two robots exploded, launching power cores about the room. Since the core had been taken, we had to wait a full minute for it to return automatically; we couldn’t do it ourselves. The enemy team was also nearing their core goal, coming up on 200. We had 85, but once our core was returned we’d be about done. The second robot went down and there were but a few seconds before the core could return to us.
TheMaskedMan joined the game.
Egg_Salads has killed AshLand97 will the Tide Turner.
Dammit. The core was right there and there was no way I could get back in the game and hope to stop him. As he approached the core, a glowing rocket came from seemingly nowhere and destroyed the man.
TheMaskedMan has killed Egg_Salads with the Black Box.
And with that, the core remained in that corridor for just a few seconds, before vanishing and returning to us. Securing our victory.
As I disconnected. Isaac sent me a message. “So what are you guys doing for Halloween?”
“Not much,” I replied, “probably this.”
“Ah. Well, Chris was having a party and he actually invited me and a couple of your other friends.”
“Well, have fun, then.”
Some time passed, a couple days or so, and Felix knocked on our door. As I opened it, he had a self-assured smirk on his face. “What do you want, Felix?”
“You said you wanted the first one, so here it is!”677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDHTY89NMIQ
Felix held out a small wooden case, and inside of it a wooden stick, carved and polished, with a glass-encased light at the tip. 001 was stamped onto the inside of the lid. “What is this?”
“Oh, let me show you!”
He took the item and pointed it at the ground. A beam of green light shot from the end, and where it struck the ground was a small sapling. He gave it back, looking more enthusiastic than ever. “That’s what we’re doing for Halloween! Magic!”
“How the hell did you pull this off?”
“It’s magic, Ash. Just believe in it.”
“It’s not magic.”
“Okay fine."677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTPYWqiM1YX
I knew it.677Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ04mSPD8RDN
"It’s wizardry. And all next week that’s what we’re doing! And I had the perfect name for your little magic journey!”
Well, it can’t be that stupid. Can it?
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