Simone laid the stolen Sig Sauers out on the metal patio table in front of Sara and Chadwick.

“Thirty-six rounds,” Simone stated, her voice dropping into a serious, tactical register. “Two full magazines, and one in each chamber. Unless we find a reliable way to manufacture modern ballistics or get back to Earth, that’s absolutely all the ammo we have.”

Sara looked down at the matte black steel, her trusty clipboard resting at her side. “What can these actually do on Earth?”

“Kill.” Simone was point-blank. When it came to firearms safety and capability, she was absolute. “And that’s very likely what it will do here, as well. In the right hands, this is thirty-six unexplained, instant deaths. In the wrong hands, this is a bloodbath of crowd-surge casualties on top of wildly fired, stray rounds.”

“I don’t think you’re selling us on keeping them, bro,” Chadwick said, folding his massive, furry arms over his chest.

“She might be.” Sara looked up and across the gray forest clearing, where the Shafted had constructed a makeshift firing range. Targets ranging from Knoblin flesh to stone, iron, and a scavenged Draggin scale were set up downrange. Chino and a small Dwarven crew stood well back behind a reinforced blast wall to help with setup and teardown.

“Four shots,” Sara commanded. “I need to see exactly what it’s going to do here before I authorize it. All I need is for this world to have fucked physics. We test Knoblin flesh, stone, iron, and Draggin scale.”

“I’ll start with the Knoblin, since that’s what we really want to know regarding flesh.” Simone squared up to the firing line. She raised the Sig, ignoring the soreness in her bicep from training. She leveled her sights dead center on the suspended Knoblin corpse, and squeezed the trigger.

BANG! Tink. “Ow,” Sara flinched, putting a hand up to her forehead. “What the fuck was that? Why did nothing happen to the target?”

Simone cocked her head, lowering the weapon and checking the chamber. She ejected the magazine and checked the brass. “There’s definitely one less bullet. I really wish we had some sort of combat feed for this. Like… Log!”

Instantly, a heavily technical-looking text window popped open in the air in front of her. “Holy shit, it worked. Checking.”

“Log!” Sara and Chadwick called out simultaneously, summoning their own glowing screens as Simone tried to decipher exactly what she was seeing.

The UI looked exactly like a chaotic, early-2000s Japanese internet forum. There were wildly mismatched font styles, aggressive neon colors, and everything was clunkily smooshed together to fit English, Japanese, Finnish, and ELI5 (Explain Like I'm 5) machine translations all onto the screen at once.

Simone scrolled rapidly until she found the most recent action log entry.

[USER: SIMONE] used [ITEM: UNKNOWN_PROJECTILE] on [ENTITY: KNOBLIN_JAKE] – [RESULT: ERROR_rebound_effect_nullify_DMG:0]

“Aww,” Simone frowned, looking at the tiny, dead dick-monster swaying gently on the target line.

“I know,” Sara said, reading her own screen with a sigh. “His name was Jake.”

“Like Jake Yoon?” Simone smiled, a flash of their shared Earth history breaking the tension.

“Dirty Kansai for life,” Sara nodded fondly, referencing the Osaka hip-hop scene. “But seriously, are you seeing this code? If it rebounded with a nullified effect, is that what hit me?”

Simone thought back to the distinct tink sound. She looked down. Sure enough, resting innocuously at Sara’s leather boots was a perfectly intact, flattened 9mm bullet slug. She picked it up, holding it between her fingers. “The engine didn't know how to calculate the ballistic damage against fantasy flesh. It just zeroed out the momentum. It literally bounced off and harmlessly fell at your feet.”

“Girl,” Sara rubbed her forehead where the slug had tapped her. “Harmless my tail.” Sara paused, her eyes glazing over slightly as she stared into the middle distance—her signature, weed-induced inspiration moment. “Shoot the very end of my tail.”

“Absolutely not,” Simone said, not letting her finish the thought. “This is Dungeons and—”

“Nope!” Sara cut her off quickly, her panic spiking. “Don’t say the name! Lawsuit!”

“I was wondering when we would get back to that specific paranoia,” Simone sighed, casting a dry, exhausted look up at the gray sky, silently judging Mark's chaotic universe. “Sara, even with a targeted, non-lethal shot, damage is still damage in this game engine. Remember back when that guy Matt’s character died from a critical roll on a haircut because the NPC barber, Wenis Podd, was using Mastercraft enchanted scissors?”

Sara frowned, the memory of that brutally unfair tabletop session returning, and nodded slowly. “Twenty-six slashing damage with a natural twenty confirm roll. Yeah. Okay, fine. Let’s see what it does to everything else.”

Simone looked downrange at the stone, steel, and scale targets. “These tests are going to largely be redundant.”

“What do you mean?” Sara wondered.

“If I shoot the stone, it’s going to ricochet just like it does on Earth,” Simone explained, checking the pistol's safety. “If the magical reaction is the exact same as it was with Jake the Knoblin, then the bullet will just fly off somewhere randomly with zeroed-out damage, and no harm done. But...”

Sara nodded, following the tactical logic perfectly. “But if the bullet has a different coded reaction with inorganic or magical material, then there could be a massive, unpredictable reaction.”

“Exactly,” Simone said, gesturing widely to the growing settlement of Shafted tents and cabins behind them in the distance. “We have actual kids here now to think about. I am not firing this blindly.”

“Yeah,” Sara tapped her pen thoughtfully on her clipboard. “Then what do you propose? Because right now, I’m sitting at a firm mandate for the magical destruction of these weapons.”

“I second that,” Chadwick agreed, crossing his arms but leaving room for the Ranger to proceed with her pitch.

“I’ll try the Draggin scale,” Simone proposed, pointing downrange. “It’s highly organic, and it's at least as hard as that forged steel. That’s exactly why Chino is using the leftover scales to reinforce the blast walls, right?”

“What about the ricochet risk, still?” Chadwick asked, his protective instincts flaring. “It’s organic, but it’s dead. There’s still a high statistical chance it doesn’t dud-out like the Knoblin flesh.”

“Then let’s take it down to the Void,” Simone shrugged. “Miles and miles of un-rendered, unused game content, right? If it ricochets forever, who cares?”

Sara looked up at Chadwick, who gave an easy, agreeable shrug.

“Can you get a target set up down there, Chino?” Sara called out over the barricade.

“Yeah, boss,” Chino grunted. He jerked his head at his Shafted crew, who immediately picked up the heavy scales and headed for the newly excavated hatch just across the field. “Give us five minutes. Rob, Jonny, grab a couple more of those scales to reinforce the backstop.”

They traveled the short distance down the cavern tunnel to the Void in relative speed. The Shafted had already started cleaning the path out and reinforcing safe travel routes in preparation for the Plunderdark expansion, but it was still a rough trek.

When they arrived at the sheer cliff overlooking the glitching, black abyss, the Shafted had already set up the targets. Both Simone and Sara came to a dead halt, their eyes wide.

The three Draggin scales were naturally, perfectly rectangular. The Dwarves had stacked them long-ways, one on top of the other. The scales were almost translucent, glowing with a faint, sickly light-purple hue, secured with a solid black stone support on the top and bottom.

Simone let out a heavy sigh, casting another dry look at the ceiling of the cave. “I think the game engine failed its foreshadowing roll. It looks exactly like a door.”

“Shardi has a magical catch-box set up behind it,” Chino pointed to the goth-Dwarf, who was actively carving glowing blue reinforcing runes onto the stone supports. “If the bullet passes through, it won’t get out into the Void.”

Sara looked at the very worrisome, highly suspect scene in front of her, and quickly moved behind the heavy blast wall the Dwarves had erected. “Do it.”

“Clear out!” Chino called to the crew, followed by a sharp, piercing whistle. After a few moments passed, everyone was securely in position, peering through the thick, magically reinforced blast glass. “Do it.”

Simone stepped up to the edge of the precipice. She raised the Sig Sauer, leveled the iron sights dead center on the purple scales, and took an extra beat to reinforce her newly sweaty grip.

BANG!

The reaction was instantaneous and catastrophic.

A hole the exact size of a 9mm bullet punched dead center through the Draggin scales. A blinding, iridescent blue light immediately shined through the puncture.

Nothing else happened for a long moment. Simone lowered the gun, approaching the scales slowly, until she froze in her tracks in absolute terror.

The bullet hole was actively, slowly getting bigger. It was eating the scales. It was expanding.

She bolted backward as everyone rushed out from behind the blast wall. Simone stretched her arms out, physically shoving Sara and Chino back behind the glass just as the entire subterranean cavern shook violently. A deafening, digital rumble knocked everyone cleanly from their feet. The blinding, iridescent blue light flooded the entire cavern space, humming with raw static, before the quake halted just as quickly as it had begun.

Simone untangled herself from the pile of groaning bodies and dusted the dirt off her leathers. Her breath caught in her throat when she looked over. Sara was staring straight ahead, her face completely awash in the blue light, utterly speechless.

“Sara?” Simone whispered.

Simone walked out from behind the glass and followed her friend's gaze. The catch-box Shardi had set up didn’t just contain the bullet.

It contained a massive, swirling, fully stabilized portal. And staring through the iridescent blue tear in the fabric of the game engine, Simone could clearly see the messy living room of their apartment back on Earth.

Sara snapped out of her shock, her Managerial brain overriding her awe. She whipped her head to Shardi. “How long will that hold?”

“As long as my carved runes aren’t physically disturbed, the containment field should hold the anomaly indefinitely,” Shardi said, looking incredibly proud of her handiwork.

“And if the runes get damaged?” Sara pressed, her tone sharp.

“It fizzles,” Shardi explained simply. “The runes keep the magic active while they’re intact. Break the rune, break the spell. The portal closes.”

Simone’s tactical gears were spinning wildly. “Where exactly does it go?”

“Earth,” Sara said, furiously scribbling a massive note onto her clipboard. “That's our living room. Shut it down. Right now.”

“Wait,” Simone stopped her, stepping in front of the Dwarf. “Let me go back through and get more ammo. Having a literal portal gun mechanic is some Rick and Morty-level shit, Sara. Do you know what we could strategically do with this?”

“Yes,” Sara said, folding her arms firmly over her chest. “And I am firmly against it. We destroy the guns. We shut the portal down.”

Simone grabbed Sara's arm lightly as the Tiefling turned to walk away. “Sara. Please.”

Sara paused, her tone softening, not unkind to the protest. “If you have something else you want to say, this is the time, Simone. This is simply too dangerous if Craig, or the King, or anyone else got their hands on it.”

“You’re right,” Simone nodded, looking down at the heavy weapon in her hand. “But if shooting it did this to the fabric of the Void, what’s going to happen when we try to magically, or physically, destroy the gun itself? Do we rip the whole continent apart?”

Sara narrowed her eyes, the logic landing perfectly. She looked up at Chadwick, who was already leaning in, highly interested in the debate. “You want to take them back to Earth?”

“Yeah.” Simone took a deep, shaky breath, laying her real motivation bare. “I have a Hearthstone in my pocket, and I’m well off my cooldown timer. I can get back here safely.”

Sara paused for a long moment, considering the logistical and emotional weight of the request. She tapped her pen against her clipboard. “Why do you really want to go back?”

Simone’s breath caught. She was right. Sara's Insight stat was too high to lie to. Simone took a deep breath. “I want to try one more time. Without being chased by cute dicks, or fat dicks, or angry cops. I just want to walk around my home city and try to live a normal life for a single day. That’s it. I don’t want to stay there. I just want to see if I can feel it. If I can finally just exist as me.”

Sara pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and immediately started texting someone rapidly.

Chadwick stepped forward, placing a massive, heavy hand gently on Simone's shoulder. He gazed down into her eyes for a moment, a look of profound, shared recognition swimming in his bovine eyes. “I know exactly how it feels to want to fit in at home, bro. I think you should go.”

Sara gave Simone a knowing, deeply affectionate look, slipping her phone back into her pocket. “Ok. But you’re taking backup with you. Just in case. No questions asked.”

Sara looked down over the gathering stack of chaotic papers on her clipboard and made a few rapid notes. “And, while you're there, you’re gonna take some fantasy gold. You are going to fence it at that little grimy pawn shop behind the laundromat at whatever extortionate cut they demand. And you are going to buy as much vape product as you can physically carry back through that portal with you. I’m talking hit every shop in the city. Buy in massive bulk. We are going to war.”

Simone nodded, a massive smile breaking across her face. “Done. Who am I taking?”

“Me.”

Raven stepped smoothly from the dark tunnel path above, tucking her own cell phone back into her pocket.

 

 

 

 

Character Name: Simone

Class: Ranger 5 Rogue 7

Race: Forest Elf

Stats:

Strength: 12

Dexterity: 28

Constitution: 14

Intelligence: 18

Wisdom: 14

Charisma: 16