gonna_shoot_it | 1st Quarter Alert [Action/Video]

[When Calhoun awakes, she finds herself facedown on a table in what must be Tapper's. The wood is slightly sticky under her cheek and smells of root beer, although when she moves a hand around stiffly, there's no mug anywhere to go with it. Which is strange.

What's also strange is that she's in Tapper's when she's supposed to be leaving Sugar Rush. That was the last thing that happened, right? Wreck-It had finally gotten his butt moving and they were going back to where they belonged before...

Stiffly, Calhoun sits up and looks around. And her eyes narrow. This isn't Tapper's. Wherever this is, it isn't the familiar watering hole filled with other arcade citizens. There isn't a single familiar face anywhere. And her gun is nowhere to be found.

For that matter, her armor isn't anywhere to be found. This is a plain white dress. What in the seven levels is this dress.

Calhoun is not amused. With a low growl, she gets to her feet - hits her head on the low-hanging light over the table - and takes another glaring look around the bar. Definitely not in Sugar Rush anymore. This isn't saccharine pink enough. There is, however, a thick journal with her name on it. She knows better than to leave a key item like that behind. After flipping through it quickly and deciding it's infinitely TL;DR, she takes the impatient route and just pokes at the transmission options a few times before she finds the video function.]

Anybody care to share what the flying fairydust is going on around here? Short version. I don't have the time to go through this whole cheat guide here.

[Aaand end transmission.

Alright. Now. First things first. She has to find her scanner, then her gun, then her armor. Then she can figure out what happened.

And somebody is going to get smacked for this.

Calhoun can be spotted slowly making her way through the main part of the village, looking almost like a lioness on the hunt at first as she tries to sniff out any kind of threat. Once she's made her stops into all the stores and found what she's looking for, she'll be a little more at ease, but no less irritated-looking. She's still got this place to scope out and figure out.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Welcome to Luceti, don't touch the wings on your back, it'll hurt.

Everything's free, relax, have a nice day, and wait until the shifts or drafts happen.

[Alright, that was definitely the crash course in what this place is. She's mildly surprised, but it's a good thing, really. Everything free, wings are for critical hits, there is some kind of war going on if there are drafts. All good information. Considering she's made for fighting, quite literally, there's only one part of that which is really bothering her.]

And what are the shifts supposed to be?

Crazy things happen. People forget their memories, or the whole lands gets transformed into something else. One time the moon decided to crush us.

So... challenge mode. At least that'll keep things interesting.

[Ah, another important detail to ask about...] Who're we fighting in the drafts?

Challenge mode?

The Third Party. They're a cult that can fly and try to cut off your wings. Or so I'm told, I haven't been on the drafts myself, but my little brother and his friends have.

Edited 2013-01-22 15:28 (UTC)

Challenge mode. Bonus levels? Score attack? [How do practically none of you people know any arcade terms. :|] ...Nevermind.

I appreciate the help, civilian.

Sorry, not familiar.

And I'm not a civilian, but you can call me Marco, Miss.

Good to meet you, Marco. And drop the "Miss," just Calhoun is fine.

[Grins.] Calhoun then.

You seem to be taking this all pretty well, eh.

This isn't my first time game jumping. After that first jump, it's all downhill from there...

[This can't possibly be as bad as Cy-Bugs loose in a world made of candy. It's kind of hard to top that.]

Game jumping....

You mean world jumping?

Call it what you want, but I meant game jumping. [Beat.] Wait, don't tell me you've never heard of leaving your game before.

As much as I've heard of calling life a game, no, I haven't quite heard it phrased that way before, eh.

But you've been to other worlds before, or games rather?

[That's all kinds of weird, but she'll leave it alone. Maybe he's coded to not realize...]

I had to. It was that or let the entire arcade get destroyed. Not much of a choice, is it?

What's an arcade?

[Give her a second to process that.]

...Seriously? You've never heard of an arcade.

Yes. Is it a county?

No, it's... [How can you even explain an arcade to someone without a clue?] You've at least heard of video games, right?

Ah... Someone mentioned them to me a long time ago. Aye, we have a few at the Welcome Center, I think?

[She nods. Good, that makes things easier.] An arcade is where a lot of video game cabinets are kept and run. I'm not sure if they're all like mine was, but all of our games were connected together by Game Central Station.

And now you've lost me again. Why did you have to jump worlds to save an arcade?

Because if I didn't, the Cy-Bugs-- [Dammit this guy doesn't know arcades, how is he going to know that.] -- viruses would have spread to every game and destroyed them all. They came out of my game and went into another one. If we hadn't stopped them there, they would've kept going until there wasn't anything left.

Out of the game?

Wait.

So...

[Rubs his temples.] When we were talking about worlds, you meant game to game?

Of course I did. That's why I called it game jumping.

Wow.

How do we know that this isn't a game inside an arcade now then?

[Video]

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