Richard ‘Dick’ Miller woke up on the ground. He was face first in some damnable wet mud. Ever since that damned blue room and the fall from space, he had only short bouts of consciousness. He had woken up in various places, in various positions, always disoriented and only for a few seconds, before he’d invariably fall back asleep.
This one was new though, he was on the ground with a mouthful of mud. Better yet, he actually tasted the mud. His shirt was wet with it, his ears rang and he had a wicked hangover. Wait… hangovers don’t usually go all the way down to your chest, do they?
He tried to get up. Big mistake. That wasn’t a hangover, it was an all too-familiar broken rib.
“Oh fuck. What the hell is going on?”
Then he heard yelling. Lots of yelling. Like a crowd. He mustered the power to look up, he was in some kind of town. A bunch of weird people were surrounding him yelling various things in a big ruckus. And… there was a suit of armour?
Like some genuine, medieval plate armour, walking towards him.
Perhaps he was in a Renaissance fair?
He was looking up at the metal man when his senses kicked in, that sure as hell wasn’t a friendly posture.
“Oh fuck” He got up just in time to not be smashed into pancakes by the gauntleted fist that hit the mud where his head was.
“Woah! Woah! Buddy, look, I’m sorry for whatever I did to ya’, but can’t we talk this out?”
He asked the… knight? Squire? He didn’t pay enough attention in History class to know quite what this guy was supposed to be.
“C’mon, friend, there’s no need for this. Lemme buy you a beer!” For some reason, the words coming out of his mouth felt… funny. He knew what he was saying, but it was like he wasn’t using his own words.
“I thought you said you were an awakened, boy? Don’t try to talk your way out of this!” Some fat middle aged man in gaudy robes and gay jewelry started yelling at him. He had a cruel smile on his face and he looked like he was having all too much fun. Every drop of Richard’s experience told him that that guy was bad news.
“Who’re you calling boy, Pudgy?” Richard yelled back. The man’s face became red as a tomato, and combined with his neck folds, he looked just like a pile of ketchup. Richard couldn’t help but let out a laugh.
“Argh!! Kill him!” The fat man said.
And sure enough, the armoured man steadily continued towards him.
“Woah, kill? Who pissed in your oatmeal?” Before he had the chance to come up with a better one-liner, a gauntlet struck out at him, and he dodged it just in time. Then another strike, followed by another. He dodged the first one, but one of the gauntlets clipped his shoulder. It wasn’t a finishing move, but it sure as hell hurt, making him stumble back a few steps.
“Agh! Alright Tinnie, we’re doing this then?”
Richard charged, which seemed to have caught the armoured man off guard because it hesitated for a moment, which was all Richard needed to get in close and throw a kick.
But his kick didn’t connect, he threw it too soon and simply kicked air like an amatuer.
“Uh, oh.” Was all he could get out before the man backhanded him, sending him right into a puddle. He coughed up a mouthful of blood, as pain graced his face.
“My kick was short? What the hell, I don’t suck that bad…” Richard muttered. It was weird, like he wasn’t in his own body. Then he looked down at the puddle, and saw a young blonde boy looking back at him.
Confused, he looked at his own body and saw arms and legs that were much too short for a 52 year old man. He was wearing small raggedy clothes and had untoned muscles.
“I’m… a boy?” He asked himself.
“Shit, maybe those Buddhists were onto something…?” Looking back at the puddle, he was young, maybe 9? 10? He had blonde hair and blue eyes.
“I spend my life killing Krauts and now I’m reincarnated as a little Aryan kid? Maybe God really does have a sense of humour… Well, at least my beer belly is gone.”
Then a clink behind him brought him back to the situation, and he expertly rolled to his side as a metal foot graced the center of the puddle.
He shot to his feet, the pain in his everything was still present, but adrenaline was quickly numbing it. He faced the armoured man in front of him and took up a proper fighting stance.
The suit of armour engaged him, and he rose to the challenge. Now taking into account his small form, he expertly dodged his opponents clumsy strikes, and once the man overreached, he got up under his arms, reeled back and planted his fist into the groin. He instantly regretted it. It felt like punching a tank
He made a pained face and pulled his arm back, while letting out a groan. “Oaaagh…. That felt like punching… Well, metal.” He recovered quickly though and dodged the armours next fist, quickly gaining himself some distance from his opponent.
“Ok, new strat; the bigger they are, the harder they fall…” The knight was unarmed, or well as unarmed as one can be while wearing dozens of pounds of iron. His opponent seemed pretty stupid, or at least untrained in proper combat, so he figured he had a pretty good chance of using it’s own weight against it.
He feigned an opening, letting the armour try to strike at his shoulder, but he expertly ducked, turned around and grabbed the armoured hand, pulling hard.
It was surprisingly easy, he felt very little weight as he pulled, expecting a full suit of armour to be way heavier. Then he looked down, and saw he was just holding the gauntlet, with the armoured man still very much standing.
“Oh, that’s disappointing.” He looked back at the suit of armour expecting to find an unarmoured hand sticking out, only to see the man was armless. Or rather, there seemed to be nobody inside the armour at all!
Suddenly, the gauntlet in his hands pinched him. “Ow! What the fuck??” He looked down at the gauntlet, only to see each of the fingers moving, without anybody controlling them.
“Eii!” Letting out a very manly scream, he dropped the gauntlet quickly, and ran a few meters away. The suit of armour casually picked up the gauntlet and put it back in place.
“Oooh…. I haven’t seen something that fucked up since we raided that Nazi research lab back in ‘42…” He couldn’t let himself get too caught up in it though, since the personless armour was still approaching him.
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Colby was watching… himself… He was standing in the plaza, surrounded by the crowd of onlookers as his body was fighting the golem. He wasn’t sure what was happening, at first he was afraid he’d died.
But sure enough Colby was right in front of him, fighting the golem and actually doing a pretty good job of it. At first, his body struggled, getting hit a few times, but after managing to take the gauntlet off and getting surprised, Colby’s body started fighting really well and gaining ground on his opponent.
Hitting the golem with anything he could find, rocks, sticks, anything except his hands, the golem was steadily accumulating dents.
Actual Colby was standing in the crowd, next to the noble man. He had already discovered that his body was slightly translucent, as nobody seemed to have noticed him.
The crowd was actually cheering for body Colby, as the fight went on. The fat noble was absolutely seething. Colby wasn’t entirely sure what to do, so he just stood there and watched the fight.
