At first glance, the Spicy Mushroom didn’t look like much. It was just your average run down bar in front of an equally run down mud road that a player could purchase as an empty building with an extra bit of gold. It was automatically inhabited by several NPCs who came in from time to time. There was absolutely nothing special about it.
That was what was going through Alex’s mind when he dove through the portal and found himself in front of the primary base of the resistance against the hackers. He just didn’t know it yet though.
To be fair though, the first though that was going through his mind was of disorientation. The portal he had jumped through was on the ground. The portal he exited was on the wall of a building. He flew out headfirst and barely managed to roll to avoid damage. He looked up to see a rundown shack with a mushroom on the front.
Behind him, Miles soared out and landed gracefully. Unlike Alex, he knew where the portal would end up.
“We’re here.” He said as he ended the spell. “The hideout of the infamous coders.”
“Coders?” Alex asked, confused.
“It’s the name we’ve been given by the hackers because we employ freelancer programmers to help write scripts to block the Hacker’s powers and try to get them on the ban list.”
“So that’s true then, and Bearzerker and Saru weren’t just making it up.”
Miles nodded. “The problem is, a lot of the hackers are using illegitimate accounts. The game doesn’t recognize their usernames on the official username list, so it can’t ban them. Seeing how we can’t get access to the username list, we can’t put them on to be banned.”
He lowered his voice. “They also look for ways to negate the effects of the noise. We haven’t had any luck so far.”
They walked through the door. Inside, they found a small dingy room with tables scattered around. A blood red cow hybrid with a case of bad fungi growth stood behind a bar wiping mugs. Just your typical fantasy barroom.
Miles strode up to the bar. The barman looked up and said in a robotic voice, “Welcome to the Spicy Mushroom. Can I get you anything?”
“I’ll have a mug of Tachyon, and since he’s a minor, so he’ll get a glass of milk.”
“No thanks, I’ll pass.” Alex said, noticing the large udders on the cow.
Miles shrugged and threw a few coins on the bar. The Cow grabbed a glass and filled it to the brim with a drink, and handed it to Miles.
“Thanks Spicy.” He said and went to take a drink. Alex kicked him before he could.
“Two things. One, that was a dick move with the milk. Two, you do know that tachyon is a type of radiation in Star Trek right?”
“Shut up.” Miles muttered. “I could’ve asked for the spicy milk to screw with you.” He downed his drink in one gulp and motioned for Alex to follow. Together, they walked out of the bar, around the building, and came face to face with a leaning outhouse.
“Okay, why did we come to the outhouse?” Alex asked, slightly confused. “You’re not one of those super hardcore guys who plays like he’s in real life are you? And what was it with ordering a drink back there? I thought for sure that we’d sink through the floor or something and end up at your secret base.”
Miles spat into his hand. In it, a green gem lay, glowing dimly.
“You were right. Tachyon is a type of particle emission given off by many things in the Star Trek universe. For instance, transporters, temporal fields,” he tossed the gem into the outhouse. It bounced off the wall and into the toilet. The toilet and floor shimmered and disappeared to reveal a ladder leading down. “And cloaking devices.” Miles finished. He turned to Alex. “One of the programmers is a major trekkie and suggested it as a code word.” He jumped into the hole and slid down the ladder.
“Well then,” Alex thought. He looked around to make sure no one was looking, then followed Miles back into the pit.
@0@0@
The ladder was one of the longest Alex had ever come across. It traveled deep enough that the light above was a tiny pixel by the time Alex reached the bottom. It was pitch black, and he couldn’t see a thing. He jumped down the last few feet and collided with Miles. The area they were in was barely 2 meters wide- not much room for two people.
“Dude, your super- secret hideout is pretty dark and pretty tiny. You might want to expand or at least get a bit of light on the subject. Just sayin’.”
“Shut up and give me a second.” Miles fumbled around before saying, “Shit. We left the torches in the dungeon.”
“We can go back and get them,” Alex offered.
“No, the dungeon would’ve reset by now. Those torches are as good as gone,” Miles said sadly.
“Hold on,” Alex said. He tried the fireball attack again. The red aura still appeared, but in the close quarters they were in, the dim light it cast was enough.
Alex looked around and got a good glimpse of his surroundings for the first time. They had traveled deep- way into the bedrock area. The floor had a thick layer of dirt that had been kicked down from the surface and pounded hard by the hundreds of feet that had walked on it. Three wooden levers lined one side of the wall.
Miles pulled the left one and closed off the entrance. He then pulled the middle one down once, the right one up and down eight times, then pushed the others back to the initial position. A section of the wall rumbled and opened to reveal a short hallway. A small lizard- like character stood wide eyed at them.
“Sup.” Alex said; intent on making some friends.
“HACKER!!” it cried, pointing at the red aura still in Alex’s hand. He turned and ran yelling, “THERE’S A HACKER IN THE BASE!!”
“Shit” Alex cursed. “What n-”
Alex couldn’t get the last part out as a lasso was thrown around his neck and he was dragged headfirst through the hallway and into a massive cavern. His character was thrown up against the wall and was pinned by a stocky iron golem. The golem’s glowing red eyes narrowed and flames bubbled out of its mouth, making it quite clear that Alex was going nowhere.
A crowd of people had gathered- no two resembled each other. Alex saw elven archers, more golems, puppet masters, human- animal hybrids, even strange plant creatures. There was only one constant with the crowd. All the faces showed anger, fear, and betrayal.
“What the fuck?”
“How the hell did he get in here?”
“Is he alone?”
“Are we compromised?”
“Guys! Calm down! He’s cool! He’s with me!” Miles yelled, trying to ease the tensions.
“You brought him here Miles?” An elf asked? “A hacker? What the on earth were you thinking? You want to bring down the entire group!”
“He’s not a hacker!” Miles shouted over the din. “Look, he got mixed up in this accidentally and unknowingly had the virus placed on him by Bearzerker and Saru!”
That was the wrong thing to say. The crowd didn’t make out most of his sentence. What they did hear though, was the names of the two most feared hackers in the game. If the previous level of volume was loud, the ensuing cacophony was unbearable. Finally, the clockwork Golem holding Alex to the wall turned his head and roared, “SHUT THE HELL UP! YOU’RE GIVING ME A WORSE HEADACHE THAN THE HACKERS!”
That shut everyone up. A massive iron golem yelling at the top of their lungs with their mic volume at the maximum tends to do that.
The golem turned to Miles. “Say that last part again. I don’t think we heard it correctly.”
Miles took a deep breath. “Ginganinja here ran into Bearzerker and Saru in the game when he first logged on two days ago. For some reason, they decided to try and recruit him. They fed him some backwards story where they were the good guys and we were the hackers, and gave him the virus under the pretense that it could protect him from the ‘hackers’.”
“So what made you think it was a good idea to come here?” The elf asked, “Into the middle of the biggest group of Coders?”
“I figured out what happened and I now want to make up for it.” Alex replied.
“Not before I had the crap beaten out of me.” Miles muttered.
Alex shot him a glare, but continued. “I heard there was a raid planned for the castle. I figured I might see if I could join up.”
“Not anymore there isn’t.” The golem snarled. “We can’t afford to take the risk that you’ve compromised us, willingly or not. If we are compromised, there could be a trap waiting for us.”
“Dude, not cool.” Alex said. “What gives you power to say if there’s a raid or not.”
The golem cocked its head as much as its stocky neck allowed. “My name is Qilin. I’m the leader of the coders.”
“And a pretty bad one at that.” Alex said. “Rule number one about staging a revolt: NEVER give the real name of your leader.”
“Good point,” Qilin conceded. “That would be true had the coders not already known my name. A little squirt we let in once stole all our secrets, plans, lines of code, and lots of names- including my own. It took us months to get back to where we were. And the craziest thing was,” he leaned in close, “he had the exact same excuse as you did.”
“Qilin, come on.” Miles pleaded. “This guy may’ve been a bit of a dick at first, but he risked himself when he realized he’d screwed up. Plus, he’s pretty damn good. Saru himself even said it. You know how much that means.”
Qilin thought for a moment. Finally he said, “I’ll give you a chance, if two others can vouch for you, I’ll let you go. If you can’t we’ll just ban your username and IP.”
Alex looked at the obnoxious elf. “Care to vouch for me?”
The elf shook his head. “Sorry dumbass. I don’t like lying hackers.”
Alex flipped him the bird.
“I’ll vouch for him,” Miles said. “Don’t even think about trying to stop me.”
Qilin nodded. “Why do you think I asked for two people?” He turned to the crowd. “Anyone else want to vouch for him?”
“I will.”
The crowd parted and a player strode to the middle. He was slightly hunched with extremely odd clothing on. It was split down the middle where one side was a mirror opposite of the other in color. For instance, he wore black with a white glove on his left, and white with a black glove on his right. He had a (thankfully) normal colored bow and quiver strapped to his back. A knife was held against the sling for the quiver in a cross draw formation. He wore a mask with the same strange pattern.
“I know this guy. I trust him.” He said.
“Janus, I appreciate you trying to help me and GN out here, but I don’t think you’ve ever seen this guy before,” Miles said.
“I’m serious. I know him.”
“Janus,” Qilin said, “You logged on fifteen minutes ago for the first time this week. How can you know this person?”
“I live five minutes from his house.”
The crowd murmured in astonishment, but Janus seemed not to notice. He walked around Qilin and said in a low voice,
“I’ll admit Spiderman would beat Batman, but only because it isn’t a fair fight. Spiderman is way too OP.”852Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡE5ktbgauan
