Jim's PoV

 

After getting a cab he took a ride back to his house. Looking sadly at his poor injured door, he jury rigged the thing and went inside. A good breeze would probably knock it over, but it least it gave the semblance of looking right.

Jim grinned as he started looking through his inventory. Looking at the item "Helmet x 118" he narrowed his eyes and said "You sneaky little bastard. How dare you use my own terminology against me!"

Jim started making a pile and pulled out helmets one by one.

"Nope."

"Miss again."

"Come on, Gimme the good stuff!"

"Papa wants a brand new helmet!"

About ten epithets and helmets later he finally pulled out a real helmet. Inspecting it carefully, he looked sadly at the heavy damage. Wires were pulled out, dents were where circuitry should be and even some dirt was caked all over the transmitters. Those stupid boots with weeds! Everything in his inventory probably had a light coating of dirt at this point. Putting it carefully to the side he started digging more and more.

The second treasure he found was actually connected to a computer and his little loading module! Score! Thankfully his little module was more durable than the helmet since it was in a metal enclosure. Inspecting the connection ports it seemed in good condition, he would have to run a partial diagnostic on it later. Back to the helmet he turned it to the other side and saw it got pancaked. Miss again. Hopefully he had at least one intact helmet.

It was interesting that they all came out when just pulling out one helmet. But it looked like if things were all connected, they all came out at the same time. Actually he should have known that already. Damned sticky fingers Milly.

Jim kept pulling out helmets one by one. The third helmet seemed intact at first glance. He gave it a caress and said "Whos daddy's favorite little cheat engine. You are! Yes you are!"

Then looking closer he realized most of the connector ports had been bashed in. Crap. So close. Mixing delicate experimental equipment with heavy plate armors and sharp weapons in his inventory was probably not a good storage space for it.

Come on! He just needed one! Jim said to himself, "Please karma, I've been good!" Thinking about tossing those three goons to Scarlet, he reconsidered. Even though they were evil bastards, handing them over to that crazy chick was definitely not a 'good' act. Karma wouldn't punish him that much, would she?

***

 

Charlotte's PoV

 

It was nice working for a so-called 'rich' company. Or maybe it was the fact that all the doctors wanted to get their hands on what she was supplying. Still when she made a request to be told when Jim left the hospital, they complied and gave her a call.

Charlotte had the band of heroes in the back of her van and they all had their faces plastered to the windows. It was a good thing they were tinted. They looked like children.

Davis said "Wow! This is amazing! Did you see that? What are they called?"

Boredly Charlotte said "Airplanes."

Davis said "The magic that must be consumed to make that move must be incredible."

"There is no magic here. Also from now on the use of the word 'magic' is now banned in public."

Gwen asked "Why? Your magic here seems to be well ahead of what we have back at home."

"It's not magic. I'm not a teacher. I've exhausted my brain cells enough by keeping you all out of government dissection labs. Just give me some peace for a bit."

Maria asked, "What's a dissection lab?"

Charlotte grabbed the volume on her stereo knob and cranked it up. It wasn't great but it beat the endless questions. After a few more minutes they arrived at Jim's house. Turning back to the four in her car she said "Can I get a few minutes with Jim? I want to ask him some questions."

After getting a couple reluctant nods she exited the vehicle. Walking up to the front door she was confused. Was the door fixed already?

With a light pull the thing almost toppled over on her. Barely catching it she shifted it to the side. Feeling a bit malicious Charlotte didn't say anything and entered the house in search of Jim.

After a minute she found the one she named 'Oblivious' in her phone. Good enough as his namesake, he didn't even notice her enter the room. Silently she watched as he started materializing metal skullcap helmets out of thin air.

Pulling up her phone she started recording the incident. Then he said "Who's daddy's favorite little cheat engine. You are! Yes you are!"

Charlotte figured that's what it was. But at least it confirmed it for her. She stopped recording and replayed that line of dialog as loud as her phone would go.

As the Jim on her phone started speaking, the real Jim turned around and said "It's not what it looks like!"

Then he saw the phone and watched what he just did a couple seconds ago. Raising an eyebrow she said "So, cheat engine huh? You want to do some explaining on why we have some characters from Final Fantastic 3, cheater boy?"

She watched Jim as he seemed like he was going to dramatically pass out again and she said "I will hold your head under water. I know it's not a coma."

Jim tried to change tact and said "You are very sleepy?"

"Nope. Next, what else you got?"

Fumbling Jim said "Oh! Oh! You're asleep! This is only a dream! You will wake up any second now!"

Boredly Charlotte pinched her forearm and said in a monotone "This hurts Jim. Next."

Jim finally looked defeated and said "You probably really don't want to know Charlotte."

"You can somehow cart stuff over from a game world. A game world I presume you made. Fill in the details."

Sighing, Jim said "Have you really thought through those two statements?"

Annoyed Charlotte said "What do you mean?"

"If someone can just program a world and then bring stuff over here, how real does that make you or me?"

As she was thinking about it she felt lightheaded. You can't create something from nothing. Mass cannot be created or destroyed. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. The only place you could do that kind of stuff was in a simulation…

***

Jim's PoV

 

Jim watched Charlotte faint and did a fist pump! He gave up trying to solve that little mystery. Jim was too busy trying to camouflage the entrance to Pandora's box to have an existential crisis. Maybe he can convince her it was a dream after all? And his luck was working overtime because her phone was still unlocked!

Grabbing it he quickly deleted the video. Then he looked down on her sleeping there and figured he should probably move her to the couch. After that he got a great idea! On the TV he pulled up a Twilight Zone marathon and hit play. Maybe that would confuse her. Genius at work!

Going back to his room he completed going through the rest of his helmet inventory. Every single one of them was damaged. He was still a bit sour about it, but at least having these meant the time table for making new helmets changed significantly. About 10 of them were in half decent condition, after salvaging the parts and combining them he could probably get two or three working units.

The down side was that it was not an easy task. Jim was more of a software geek than a hardware nut. He had a schematic for the helmets. If he had all known good parts he wouldn't have a problem assembling one from scratch, but the diagnostic software wasn't good enough to pin-point specific faulty parts. Each fault code could be the result of 6-17 different parts. Then combining fault codes it would start growing exponentially.

The best unit of the bunch had 13 different fault codes. Mentally calculating the probability, he judged unless he had the luck of winning the lottery, the best method would be breaking down the helmet into its pre-assembly form and testing the components at that level. That seemed like a lot of friggin work. Not only a lot of work, but really really boring work.

He needed to work on hiring some of the old 3D Tech people back. Pay them a bunch more money and tell them they will be working in a 'remote' location with no cell service or internet. Jim was confident he could pull some sleight of hand and make them think they were in a remote area of New Zealand or something.

Although if they saw the three moons of the world of FF3, they might figure it out. But he felt like he needed to be a lot smarter in dealing with the world's elites. He couldn't count on laws protecting him or his people.

Hell, the pharmaceutical industry was prepared to kidnap and kill for the secrets of the new wonder drug. If anyone caught a whiff of what the helmet could do, things would get nasty. Jim was considering trying to build a facility in the mountains by King's End.

In the game there were a few spots where you could land an airship above the mountains. Game wise, it was a useless spot. It was tagged as a low level area, but by the time you got an airship so you could access that spot, you were way over leveled. It was a cool useless novelty, at least in terms of the game. But a remote and relatively safe area that only he had access to? Sounded like prime real-estate to him! He would keep an open mind, but he thought so far, that was his best super secret lair location.

Seeing Gwen enter the room he had to ask about that odd power line story. Jim said "So how many of those deaths by severed power lines were really just that?"

The wince on her face told him all he needed to know. Gwen said defensively "They were attacking us! We just protected ourselves."

Sighing Jim said "Yea. True."

Davis was entering the room and heard the comment. He said "Sorry I"

Before he could say anything more Jim cut him off and said "No need. My fault. Should have known karma is always playing tricks. All's well that ends well. I'm sorry your first visit to Earth was so violent."

After an awkward silence Jim said "If you want, I can take you back to the ship. I don't want you all to ever think you are trapped here with me."

Davis nodded and said "Thanks for that. It's relieving to hear, but we will stay here for now. That little scuffle was nothing compared to the past couple weeks."

Jim was almost embarrassed on Earth's behalf. Mob boss type characters came after them and it was less threatening than a low level game area? Then he heard someone's stomach growl. Oh, they probably hadn't had anything to eat for awhile.

Jim said "Got beer in the fridge. Also I can put in an order for pizza. How's that sound?"

A round of agreements met him and he put in the order. Once the call was over he said "Someone just keep an eye out on the door in like half an hour. Don't want the delivery man to drop the pizza because the door fell on him."

Davis said "I'll grab a few beers and then keep an eye on it. Thanks Jim."

***

Scarlet's PoV

 

"And that concludes our class on basic levels of interrogation."

As she said that she watched her lover sprint to the side of the ship and throw up. Poor guy. Just needed a little more work.

After that Forrest asked "Did you really need to keep going? The last half we didn't even get any new information out of them."

Scarlet shrugged and said "Good to be thorough. Besides, learning is fun right?"

She smirked as he went a little green. Then Forrest asked "You think we should try to wake up Jim?"

Looking around she didn't see the little tattletail beasts so she said quietly with a seductive smile "Nah. Can always wait till the morning."

As she watched him turn beat red she heard a commotion going on at the front of the ship. Not interested, she started to make her way below deck, but then she heard a shriek. Instantly she had her daggers in hand and looked behind her to see Forrest drawing his bow.

In a crouch and flowing with the shadows she moved towards the screaming. It didn't take long to figure out what the fuss was all about. Now in its shadow, she watched in bewilderment as the massive tentacled beast kept growing in height. In seconds it was even larger than the ship they were on.

Whispering in awe behind her Forrest asked "What the hell is that?"

Thinking she said "Kraken maybe? Giant squid? Something like that."

"How do we kill it?"

Scarlet shook her head and said "We don't. Don't get grabbed and eaten. We just need to poke it in its eyes enough to go away. Think you can do that?"

Reluctantly she took a deep breath and yelled "Princess! Fluffy! Help!"

She hated asking for help from those demons. They were killers of fun. Scarlet wanted to make an example of a couple of the crew that seemed a bit too resentful, but the pair didn't like the idea for some reason.

With the gang assembled she said "Ready guys?"

After a round of agreements they sped at full tilt towards the creature.

***

Officer Brady's PoV

 

Once word got out that he was back on duty he got called to the office. Maybe his partner was right. He should have just hung out. When ordered to write a report about the event he felt conflicted.

On one hand if he wrote down what he really thought happened the consequences could be difficult. He had no doubt that the higher ups would think the stress got to him. After that he would be forced to take some time off and talk to a shrink.

He was in a life and death fight. But somehow it had the quality of feeling both real and not. Most people would get trauma because they would know that they had been one of the lucky ones. One of the people who walked through fire and still came out on the other side when others didn't.

But Brady was dead. Should have been dead. Should have been one of those people that didn't make it. The emotions of fear just wouldn't attach because he had been through the worst and came out better than he had gone in.

Tired of thinking about it he just wrote the report of what Max had told him and submitted it. After doing that it was getting late and he left for home. Still wanting answers he put his plain clothes on and used his regular car and went to Jim's house. Hopefully he could find answers there.

Brady parked and then was about to knock on the door when a man said "Where is the pizza?"

Was pizza code phrase for something? He asked "What pizza?"

"The kind you eat. Jim said the next person here would bring pizza."

Oh. Right. Foreigners. He probably didn't recognize him without his uniform on. Shaking his head he said "I'm Officer Brady, I just want to talk. My memory seems.. Weird. Can I come in and talk for a bit?"

As he asked the question another car pulled up. It had one of those pizza logo toppers on the car and a young man started to walk to the door with the goods. Trying to stay polite he shuffled to the side and let the guy approach the door. Then he was confused for a second when the whole door came off the frame and was moved outside.

Oh yeah. It got broken down, didn't it? After the transaction was done, he again asked if he might come inside to talk for a bit.

Davis didn't close the door fast and seemed to give an affirmative grunt so he quickly went inside the doorway. Then he saw Jim.

Jim said "What the? What are you doing here?"

Trying to use his command presence he said "Just wanted to ask some questions about what happened earlier today."

There was a questioning look in his eye when Davis filled him in and said "This was one of the officers who saved our lives today."

Jim looked to be in thought for a few seconds and then said "Oh! Right! Saved your lives!"

Brady's cop sense was tingling. There was definitely a hint of sarcasm in that statement. But he was off duty and not in uniform. Trying to curb his instinct to start rattling off question after question he said "Is Gwen here? Can I talk to her?"

Jim started wiggling his eyebrows and said "Oh! Now I get it!"

Then Jim shouted "Hey Gwen! I got a cop here looking for a date! And the pizza is here! Come down!"

Brady covered his face in embarrassment. Seriously? He liked the guy a lot better when he kept his mouth shut in jail. After recomposing himself the Davis fellow seemed to get an even bigger scowl. Oh yeah, brother right?

When Gwen came down the stairs he blinked. She wasn't in that ridiculous looking mage costume with the black staff. Gwen had on a nice conservative dress. It looked good.

Still awkwardly standing inside the foyer he looked at Gwen, who was giving Jim a questioning look. She asked "Date? Huh, really?"

Embarrassed, Brady tried to channel his on duty persona saying "I think he had a misunderstanding. I just had…. A few questions about what happened."

Jim said "Nope. No questions. We got tons of pizza, but this is a question free zone. You can come in and have some if you want, but no questions!"

Relaxing, Brady agreed. A chance at finding answers was better than a guarantee of not getting any answers. Going inside he followed Jim to the kitchen. Shortly after he was handed a plate and everyone started helping themselves. Gwen seemed particularly fascinated by the food. Did she not have any in her country? They all spoke perfect english, he wondered where they could be from.

Gwen caught his quizzical look and she seemed particularly embarrassed. He didn't ask the question, but she tried to explain, "I really want to know how to make this, it's so good!"

Jim said "I'm sure you can figure it out. You're an awesome cook!"

Shaking her head she said "I can't know exactly how something is made just by seeing and tasting it. All my food I've probably made hundreds of times. I'd like to learn how to cook more of your foods."

Jim waved dismissively saying "I'm sure whatever you cook will be fine. I wouldn't worry about it."

Gwen asked "Where do you keep your food? I'd like to take a look at what I'm working with."

Brady was slightly perplexed. She was going to be Jim's personal cook? The house was a decently nice one, but it didn't scream wealthy enough to have a personal cook. He guessed that new wonder drug was worth a lot of money. But what kind of cook didn't know about pizza?

Jim looked to be in thought and then said "I don't think I have much. I normally don't buy real food. Let me see."

After Jim opened the pantry, Brady took a look. There were like 10 boxes of different sugary pastries and nothing else. How in the world was Jim so fit if that's all he ate? He wanted to ask so many questions, but he bit his tongue.

Jim mumbled "Yeah, I don't really have anything. Maybe when Charlotte wakes up she can take you to the store? I have plenty of cash for the grocery store on me, you can buy whatever you like then."

Gwen asked "Grocery store?"

"A place where you buy food."

"Oh."

Thinking quickly Brady said "I can take her to the store if you want. I don't have anything to do."

Jim looked at Gwen and said "I am busy, but it's up to you if you want to go. He is a police officer, so he should be a very responsible person."

Gwen said with contained excitement "Really? I would love to see what a food merchant looks like here!"

Jim handed her quite a lot of money and Gwen looked at the notes saying "What are these?"

"Money, you can buy food with them. Actually, almost forgot. Buy a bunch of extra food, Voss and his people need it. Two birds, one stone!"

He didn't know when it happened but Davis appeared shoulder to shoulder with him. While he was looking up, Davis leaned over menacingly and whispered saying "She just got out of a bad marriage. Play with her and I break you."

"Of course! I'll bring her right back after she's done!"

Davis soberly nodded as Gwen excitedly said "I'm ready! Can we go please?"

Why did he feel like a damn school boy just now? But his memory flashed back to a man with armor and a shield blocking bullets. Was it real or was he crazy?

Gwen said her goodbyes and Brady wondered how to ask her if he was nuts. But on the bright side, he somehow ended up on a date. Sort of. To the grocery store. It counted, right?