"La la la.. la la la. Laaaaa la la la la, la," I hummed as I stared into space. The space consisted of a very odd looking room. There were two strange tables with numbers flashing above them. There were several weird cabinets propped up against a wall with little buttons to push and little objects moving in a screen. A couple of casual observers leaned on a counter and watched our group. We had just appeared out of nowhere a couple of seconds ago. Popping out of nowhere didn't bother me though. When things like that happen I just let the more high strung people handle it and everything seems to work out fine. Besides, who can resist watching little objects hop around a screen. Yes, I'm easily amused. I was also amused to see Wildfire hop on one of the tables and start screaming.
"YOU HALF-WIT! CLUMSY, GANGLING, MONKEYS FOR BRAINS MORON!" she raged at Traster, who didn't have the sense to cower or even take a step back. Wildfire doesn't like men much. She doesn't like anyone much. And no one likes Traster. So things were a bit tense. It got even more so when a small red cylinder shaped thing slid fast into Wildfire's foot.
"Who threw this at me?" she hissed, picking it up and gripping it so hard it was getting bent out of shape. I didn't dare answer, and neither did anyone else in our group. Someone else was brave enough to though.
"Uh, lady? Can I have my hockey puck back? We're trying to play a game here and you're standing in the middle of the air hockey table," said a little boy looking wide-eyed up at Wildfire. Her eyebrows inched up slightly; she was hardly ever mistaken for being a lady. She shook her head, chucked the puck at him and continued ranting.
"IT'S TRASTER'S FAULT! IT ALWAYS IS! THAT HAS TO BE THE REASON WHY WE'RE HERE!" she gestured angrily around the room. Privately, I agreed with her. Bad things often happen because of Traster. He's a cleric who tries to convince everyone to worship his god, Pelor. His over-zealousness often gets us in a lot of trouble.
"If you would just calm down for a minute," suggested Scarloc the ranger meekly. Wildfire picked up another little boy near the table and chucked him at the whipping elf.
As the boy knocked Scarloc over, Selendria sensibly stepped up to the counter and smiled at the people behind it.
"Hi. I was wondering if you could tell us where we are." The two glanced at each other and rolled their eyes. The one standing closest spoke in a monotone, "Laser Quest. 17 bucks for three games."
This made Traster happy, "A quest! Since we obviously go on quests, this will be the perfect opportunity for me to convert more people! Yay!" Scarloc heaved a sigh, Wildfire looked murderous, Selendria shrugged, and I had stopped paying attention.
All of the sudden, more adventurers plopped out of thin air onto the table. Wildfire howled: three people landing on you all at once has got to hurt. She slunk off the table and glared at the newcomers.
I looked up from the shiny objects on the screen to study them. There was a woman dressed in robes that looked a little like what Selendria was wearing, an elf with bagpipes and a violin, and a pretty cute satyr with horns sticking out of his head. My eyes lingered on the last one a bit longer then the rest. He caught me looking at him and grinned.
"It's the lost party members! Hiya, lost party members!" cried Traster.
"Huh?" I said. I didn't recall seeing these people before, and it isn't every day you meet a hot satyr.
"We lost these three party members in a dungeon awhile ago. This was before we met you, Giselle. I wonder what they're doing here now though," answered Selendria.
"Four people," the woman in robes spoke up, "You're forgetting Nick."
I looked around and only saw three. Frowning, I wondered if I had lost my ability to count. It was all too possible.
Scarloc also looked confused, "Uh, Landria, I don't see anyone else." The guy with the bagpipes leaned over and whispered something that sounded like, "Went loopy in the dungeon. Invisible boyfriend."
"Ah, so this is Nonexistent Nick! Nice to meet you!" Traster stretched out his hand and shook the air in front of him, all the while laughing. He must have overheard.
Landria looked upset, but before she could say anything the guy behind the counter spoke up, "Do you want to play the game or not?"
"Sure we do! I'm always up for a quest," Traster spoke before anyone else could, "Here ya go." Several gold pieces dropped onto the table.
"This isn't real money dude," the guy blinked at him.
"But it is!" Traster insisted, "Are you so poverty stricken that you've never seen gold before? That's really pathetic. See, this is what you do, see. You convert to the ways of Pelor and attain gold and much, much more!"
As Traster droned on about Pelor, myself and the rest of the group inched slowly towards the door. We had already walked in before we realized that it wasn't the way out.
"It's dark in here!"
"Maybe it's night time?"
"If any of you dunderheads bump into me again, I swear-"
"Ouch!"
Bite, kick, poke. "Nick, where ever do you think we are?"
"In the dark, in the dark, without any darts," a voice screeched to the accompaniment of a violin.
"Scarloc's a hippie..."
"Who said that?!"
"It was a lark, it was a lark, in the dark-"
"Shut up, Elgus!" chorused everyone except me.
"-ness."
Suddenly a light filled the room. Selendria had enough sense to cast a "shine light" spell while the rest of the party bumped into and insulted one another. A funny group we made. Me, with my strange druid clothing (I wear a cloak with a hood for the fun of it). Selendria and Landria are dressed as real mages. Wildfire, or Slinker and Stinker to some, either tries to kill the men in the group or steal someone's belongings. The two elves, Scarloc and Elgus, look exact opposites. Scarloc has his bow and arrows and Elgus has his musical instruments. The satyr just looks cute.
In the midst of my musing, Traster barged in the door. "Hi guys! Thank goodness I was able to find you. It was such a chore convincing those poor people to accept my generous offer of gold. You'd think they'd be more grateful instead of chasing me in here. What is this place anyway?" he complained.
Suddenly a bored voice was heard from somewhere in the ceiling.
"You are playing Laser Quest. Your goal is to shoot each other as many times as possible while avoiding getting shot yourself. Pick up a gun and leave your junk in the room. You have a couple of minutes to get ready."
"Pelor spoke! It is a sign!" Traster hollered, hopping up and down.
"A sign of your stupidity?" Wildfire grumbled, taking a gun from the rack and putting it on. I noticed she kept all of her stuff with her.
"Well, wait a minute. We can't actually shoot each other, can we?" Scarloc wondered, looking panicked.
"Let's find out," Wildfire said, pointing her gun at Traster and pulling the trigger.
"Gah! I'm dieing! I'm dieing! It's not faaaaaiiiiiir!" Traster screamed. He clutched his chest and fell to the floor.
"No you're not, you moron. Get up. All that happened is I got a point," Wildfire snarled. She shot a disgusted look at Traster and left the room.
"Damn," I said.
We decided to pick out our guns and leave our adventuring weapons behind. Selendria was busy enhancing her gun with magical powers. Traster was sniffling about his "fatal" chest wound. I was giggling at Scarloc because his clothes glowed in the dark. Elgus was singing a nonsense song about Nonexistent Nick being related to Nearly Headless Nick. I spotted Landria and decided to chat with her.
"Hi Landria. I'm Giselle," I said to her, "Is Elgus always singing silly songs?"
"Yes, and he's always making fun of Nick too. It's quite annoying," she said, wrinkling up her nose.
"I bet. Do you want to stick together, the three of us?" I asked, thinking having someone nice on my side would be a good thing. It's not every day I meet a person who shares my habit of having conversations with imaginary people. Be it flying pink elephants or boyfriends, it's good to have common interests.
"Yeah, that would be great!" Landria exclaimed, her eyes lighting up.
I leaned in and whispered, "Hey, what's the satyr's name?"
"Oh, him? Phandos. Be warned though, he's a big flirt."
"That's fine by me," I smiled. Before Landria, Nick, and I walked through the door I yelled behind me, "Good luck, Phandos!"
"Good luck to you also, um, friend of Landria!" I heard him yell back.
Damn, I should have introduced myself earlier. No time to think about that now. We ran around looking for a good hiding place. When the quest started I found out rather quickly how much I sucked. Landria was almost as bad though, which make me feel better. It was also fun to listen to Traster yell at Wildfire.
"Hey! You are supposed to shoot the person, not whack them from behind with your gun!" he shouted at her.
"I know. Shooting you doesn't kill you though. I'm hoping a couple of good hits to the head..." Wildfire let her sentence trail off and then snuck away.
There also seemed to be problems with Selendria's magically enhanced gun. It would shoot out glow-in-the-dark flowers and make loud noises whenever Selendria tried to sneak up on anyone. When she managed to shoot Elgus it made him bark like a dog and run in circles. At the end of the game we headed back to the room that stored all of our weapons and equipment. Scarloc was laughing about Selendria's messed up gun.
"The way you made Elgus and Giselle run around in circles!"
"Oh no, I did that on my own," I informed him.
"Ah, so your name is Giselle, is it?" Phandos came up to me.
"Yeah," I smiled.
"You're not like other druids," he commented.
"No, I'm not. Is that bad?"
"Not to me it isn't."
Elgus just then broke into a song titled What Would You Do With A Drunken Druid. It was fairly suggestive so I told him he sounded better as a dog.
Landria spoke up, "Why don't we make teams this time? Giselle and I could be captains!"
"I'm all for it," I agreed. Landria decided on Traster, Scarloc, Elgus, and then remembered Nick. I picked Phandos, Selendria, and Wildfire. It would have worked out well except I kept on shooting Selendria by mistake. I was also trying to impress Phandos, except my lack of shooting skills hindered me, as did Elgus's song titled Giselle's Lack of Shooting Skills. Maybe the dog insult did it.
The second game went by quickly and we met up in the storage room again. Selendria found one of the little boys rummaging through her stuff. Big mistake. She fired her gun at him and he started to dance. He was a very, very good dancer. We couldn't help but stare for minute. Scarloc had an expression on his face that could only be described as "priceless".
"I can do that," Traster scoffed. Wildfire's lip involuntarily curled but besides that, he was ignored.
Eventually we came to our senses and picked teams again. I ended up with Elgus, Scarloc, and Nick. I wasn't too happy about being put against Phandos, Landria, and Traster. Landria tried to cheer me up though.
"Don't worry, Nick will protect you. Nick, do me a favor and stand in front of her the whole time, will you?"
"DUDE!" I shrieked as someone bumped into me. The problem was, I couldn't see anyone there.
"Dude!" Traster mimicked. I thought he also mumbled something about `the illness spreading' but I wasn't sure.
Once inside, Landria was nice enough to "guard" me since she felt Nick wasn't doing a good enough job. Her attempts to discourage her team mates from mercilessly shooting me were kind, although not very effective. Every couple of seconds I would hear Traster shout, "Dude!" It wasn't until the end of the game that I realized he was trying to get a response out of me so he could follow me around better.
I ran up to the tower to try to avoid being a human bull's eye. A spotlight jumped in front of me and I screamed.
"Oh! Sorry, Giselle! You're on my team, aren't you. Sorry. Are you ok?" Scarloc the glow-in-the-dark ranger asked me.
"No!" I said, running down to the lower level again. After what seemed like forever the game ended. We stood in the main room to see our scores. Not surprisingly, I received a negative and was quite sour about it.
"Ha ha ha ha ha," Traster laughed at me. Landria hit him over the head with her hand bag. No reaction. She did it again.
"Ow!" said Traster, "What was that for?"
"What do you think?"
In the mean time Selendria was fiddling with her gun, trying to understand why it was acting up the whole time. Coincidentally the gun was pointed at Traster. It then did what guns do. The result was quite frightening.
Traster went quiet for once. His eyes glazed over, he swayed back and forth, and then he looked at me.
"I love you, Giselle!"
Chaos ensued.
I gasped and took a step back. I prayed to God, Pelor even, that a simple charm person spell was cast on him and not a truth spell.
"WHAT!?!?!?" boomed Phandos. He started toward Traster while Scarloc tried to hold him back. Wildfire took advantage of the chaos and attempted to steal the gun away from Selendria.
"Put the gun down! Put-the-gun-down! It's dangerous!" Elgus foolishly jumped in the middle of the cat fight between Wildfire and Selendria, songs and music forgotten.
The inevitable happened. Another spell shot out of the gun. Thankfully, it didn't hit anyone. Or so we thought. Out of thin air, a young man with dark hair and dark eyes appeared on the air hockey table. He looked mildly surprised, and then spoke quietly.
"Hi. I'm Nick. It's nice to meet you, well, see you finally, isn't it."
"He does exist," Traster whispered, then fainted. No one bothered to try and catch him.
Landria smirked, "I told you so." The rest of us were left gaping in astonishment.
THE END
Note: This story is also based on Dungeons and Dragons, except I put everyone's characters into a "real-life" situation. All of us went laser tagging one day, so I decided to write a story about how our characters would act if they went laser tagging. I know, I'm a dork :-).
