I reposed in crystalline silence, while my heart and soul barked wildly inside me. My human had signed his own death warrant. He was going to take on the highest authority of the Shard, the new master of Platformia, in his own lair, with the mechanics of his own game of origin.
At the time, the nuances of different gametypes were lost on me, and indeed they yet mean very little. Apparently it really is just a bunch of different ways to make the lights on glowing rectangles do different things.
The best explanation I have had was, surprisingly, from the Vendor Merchant Kriegsgewinnler sometime later. Having a vast and detailed understanding of physical items that are meaningful to people—and therefore valuable—he said that it is similar to chew toys. There are many kinds of chew toys, in different colors and shapes and textures and even concepts; some make interesting sounds from a squeaky apparatus which I enjoy removing surgically, to Lisa’s great dismay; some are meant to be enjoyed competitively with another, such as my tough rope that has rugged loops on either end; some take many hours of hard work, like the durable bones which used to be made of more organic materials but now are formed from nylon and other synthetic substances, but which provide hours of entertainment for me—so much so that I will growl at anyone who comes near when I am engaged in the thrill ride of gnawing.
But just little lights that you watch go back and forth? For Players like Commander Zideo, sitting in front of his glowing rectangle, I am told this is very entertaining, although I can’t see the appeal. He just sits there, wiggling his thumbs. Different strokes, I suppose. Then again, for Kriegsgewinnler and all digital folk, it was just life, and every once in a while you’d cross paths with a god.
No matter how many times it is explained to me, I still cannot wrap my canine mind around the taxonomy. I struggle to retain the differences, or care.
Now, in the moment, I saw the tableau before me shift from (as has been interpreted for me) “Platformer” to something called a “Fighting Game.” Human readers will already know the difference. For my dog audience, a Fighting Game is essentially what it sounds like. A standoff between often human opponents until only one remains. Why humans enjoy simulating the violence of nature that they have built so many protective social and physical walls to prevent is entirely beyond me.
In the end, the irresistibility of our natures finds us at last, and we do weird shit. Sometimes I chase my own tail. Who knows?
I will tell you what I saw as best I can. Keep in mind that an entire clockwork lair was falling apart around me, so my attention was in several places at once. Not only that, but the shudders and vibrations of the Armory slid me closer and closer to the edge of the walkway, which itself was in a precarious position. The moment that I would be swallowed into the churning gear-works drew near, and I clung to what I knew were my final glimpses of my beloved human.
Xue-Fang tossed the useless crystallicer onto the cushioned seat of the throne, where it misted with cold vapor. Zideo, emboldened by the change in the atmosphere brought on by new mechanics, I am sure, stepped forward to meet his enemy. Xue-Fang first stepped nimbly back to maintain the space between them—every dog reading this already understands the importance of spacing, how these microscopic movements signals intent. This is nine tenths of a standoff between dogs, which is often solved by intimidation without the need for killing. Xue-Fang, seeing that his opponent did not understand this law, dropped his fighting stance and shook his head.
He shot forward with one leg in the air, and kicked Zideo in the chest. The latter went sliding on the grate, and I could hear the squeak of metal against skin. Inwardly, I winced.
“I thought you had played QuarterMasters (19∞8),” sneered the shapeshifter. “But I see I am not to be satisfied with a rewarding fight, even after all my trouble.”
Zideo got to his feet. Not the quick and fancy way that I have seen martial experts on Lisa’s big living room glowing rectangle do, putting their feet into the air and whipping their bodies into a standing position. Rather, he took the scenic route.
“Gimme a break,” he began, then coughed. “I’ve only done this with my thumbs.” He resumed his stance, fists up.
Xue-Fang sighed, and put one hand behind his back. Zideo threw a punch, which he telegraphed so overtly that it must have been visible from space. It was batted out of the way like a housefly. He kicked, and the shapeshifter gently redirected his heel with a single finger.
Xue-Fang’s eyes narrowed. “High weak punch to medium middle kick,” he observed. “A combo attempt? I am flattered.” He jabbed Zideo in the gut with his single fighting hand, a quick strike to relieve my human of the air in his lungs. Zideo doubled forward, blowing air out through his flapping cheeks as when someone stops pinching neck of a full balloon. Xue-Fang stood him up straight by the shoulders. “But, look around you. There is no time for this.” He struck him with wrist, a thrust with an open hand, and Zideo went down once more. “In the good old days, we had a timer to rely on, but no longer. Ah well. When I kill you, all Radians you possess will be returned to me. All but one, the Red, which is within my nimble and potent person at this very moment.”
“Fights can go two ways, Boss,” said Zideo, wiping at his lower lip, and smearing red across his forearm.
“In the unlikely event that you beat me, so unlikely that I disgrace us both with such speculation, then you get the Red, but the Purple dies with your friend Nereus, as he sinks into this collapsing clockwork, and Ludopolis remains in darkness eternal.” He did not deign to motion toward us, but Zideo looked anyway. His eyes fell upon me, and I prayed to Dog that he would forget me.
Xue-Fang made claws of his fingers and steepled his hands together, then threw an orb of green fire the size of a tennis ball at Zideo. It splashed in a spray of sparks against his chest, and he staggered backward, clutching at his charred shirt.
“Ow,” he said. Then: “Ow!”
The Boss only shook his head. He rocketed forward and swiped sideways, a trail of the same green fire following his fingernails through the air. They connected with nothing.
“Holy,” said Zideo, from a foot above him, “crap!” He landed on the hour-hand walkway with a clang. “Fighting game jumps are nuts!” Xue-Fang snarled and spun a kick at him. Zideo leaped back, but then air-dashed over his head, trailing flame and landing on the other side. “Huh.” He looked at his hands as though seeing them for the first time. “My skills still work. What’s going on with these mechanics?” He back-flipped over another bolt of arcane flame.
“You are only delaying what must be,” said Xue-Fang. “You know as well as I do that the longer this drags on, the more I fill my meter.”
“Speaking of dragging on,” said Zideo, “where’s Gobo?”
“The dr—? Oh,” said Xue-Fang. He was so disgusted by the use of a pun in his presence that he spat over the edge of the platform. “The dragon. He failed in his task of governing. He has been dealt with.”
“It’s dracken actually—oop!” said Zideo, jumping to dodge a gathering bolt of green flame. Xue-Fang canceled out of it, then repeated the action, sending a delayed bolt toward Zideo as he fell. Zideo pressed his feet against nothing and jumped a second time, and the bolt sailed harmlessly beneath him. “Guess wall jump still works too. Hey, Xue-Fang, platformer skill upgrades make good fighting game dodges, wouldn’t you say?” He effected what I will now describe as the most shit-eating grin I have ever seen, attacking the shapeshifter’s ego if not his body. “That must really be annoying for a spammy, zoning, one-trick pony like you.”
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Xue-Fang’s upper lip shook. I believe the human English term is “tilted.” He rushed in, slashing his hands rapidly like a detestable cat in a fight.
Something flopped down in front of my eyes, but it was too close for me to focus on. It moved, and I felt it cinch around me even through my crystalliced skin and fur. My nose scraped against the grating. “Hold tight, love!” said Helmgarth. I dropped from the gangway, and the rushing teeth of gears rushed toward me, crusted with industrial debris. My belt was scratchy—a rope, and it went taut inches before the swirling crush of junk swallowed me. I swung, too fast, and my impact against the piping behind me absorbed the force while visions of the shattering Sorrow Trooper flashed in my mind. All I could see, all I was able to look at, was the pipe-lined and junk-laden wall, sliding downwards, which for me was upwards.
I soon beheld Helmgarth’s kind eyes. “Nothing broken,” he said, petting me. “Wish I could help you out of this, er, predicament, but we’ll need your master.” I let that slide, for all the Dog Points Helmgarth had gained.
His kindly caress was comforting against my brittle skin, but only in a logical sense. It did not release the flood of endorphins that a pet from a human would under normal circumstances. “Oh, sorry,” he said, and turned me carefully so that I could see the fight, but not before I saw that he had the glowing rectangle “booted up” and was typing away in front of the statue of Nereus, as though he could somehow deprogram the crystalliced state.
But in that glimpse, I saw that there had been a face on the screen. A face with mirror sunglasses above a jean jacket and a gown the color of starlight.
“I’ve got them,” said Helmgarth. “The dog, and the philosopher. Both crystalliced, I am afraid, but out of danger.”
“And the rest?” The Princess’s voice was tinny, like when Lisa left her own pocket rectangle on the table in the mode that made a normal voice small but amplified. It was hard to perceive what she said, and anyway I suppose I was lucky to hear anything at all while my sensory organs had been turned to ice crystal.
“And the rest?” came her voice, thinned and spread out like pizza dough.
“Bailey Blastoff is dead. DuChamp doubly so. Addrion is…” he paused, unwilling to be the bearer of particularly bad news. “...unaccounted for.” There was a silence. “Zideo is here. He is fighting Xue-Fang. There’s not much time.”
“Say again, Helmgarth,” said the Princess’s micro-voice. “It sounded like you said he was fighting Xue-Fang.”
“I’m afraid so, your highness. We need an out. We need you to–”
I am not sure what alerted Helmgarth to the straggling Ohmpressor. I heard it well ahead of time, but had no way of warning him. Soon the clutter of debris was upon us, directly to my right. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw clamping hands sway a pile of strips of hot metal away like hanging beads. A metal foot kicked me over carelessly, and I feared I would shatter when it moved to tread upon me. The clamping manipulator opened wide, the aperture contained within charging up with a glow and a rising electronic whine that skewered my frozen eardrums.
Helmgarth twisted and did not so much jump out of the way as fail to stand, accidentally launching himself sideways down the mountain of junk. He slid toward death.
Red flashed, and the glowing rectangle was replaced by a black metal gouge ringed with an orange glow, vomiting smoke. The Ohmpressor turned and aimed to take a shot at the Helmgarth, but staid its clamper, perhaps opting not to waste resources on a man whose fate was assured.
On my side once again, with the shadow of the Ohmpressor’s foot positioned over me to stomp me into a thousand shards of glass, I was afforded a moment of clarity. I became aware of all senses at once, and memories with them, an influx of sensations and understandings that comingled so densely that I wondered if this was what humans meant when they spoke of one’s life flashing before one’s eyes. Hot oils and metals shearing against one another. The scent of my human’s sweaty body, such a long way away, yet so near. The shriek of steel and bronze bending to their limits. Waking up on Zideo’s couch with my nose nuzzled into his armpit. His arms around me. If his arms were around me, how could I be taken away?
A swath of the domed, textured ceiling above us disintegrated, raining bolts and loose metal components down like rain. Through it, I could see a black metal shape like a stingray, and its glowing serpent. A stubby little penguin waved a flipper, and a waterfall glowed orange and pink and white like a lava lamp that Krystal had once owned. A roar made way for flame, racing against superheated metal toward the sky.
The stomp never came, and if I had been breathing, I would have exhaled. The Ohmpressor’s lights, the few that I could see from the edge of my vision, winked off one by one. Steam hissed and I smelled the scent of an animal, and might have heard my instincts and given chase if I had the use of my joints and muscles. The torso of Ohmpressor peeled back like a bloomin flower, the same way I had seen in the laboratory in Fort Weepus.
The turtle moaned, and rubbed its eyes, blinking in the way that someone roused from deep sleep might. “Ffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuu-cccckkk,” it said. “Sorry about–hey, are you okay down there?”
I returned my attention to Zideo, dodging many of Xue-Fang’s blows, failing to dodge others. He did not fight Xue-Fang, but rather DuChamp. For the duration of a punch, perhaps one and half seconds, Xue-Fang was the hulking mayor. His log-sized arm spun Zideo backwards with a haymaker to the chin, and then the magician stood before him again. He briefly became Addrion, firing a bolt of her XLZ cannon, which Zideo jumped over, but which set the back of his shirt on fire. He had to pat it awkwardly and frantically to put it out, and by that time Xue-Fang was himself again.
“Cheap, Xue-Fang. So cheap,” he said. “But what did I expect from a final Boss?”
Xue-Fang was in no mood for banter. He attacked rapidly with a variety of strikes, now becoming Gobo and swiping with his tail, now the snow-monster swinging the rudimentary axe. And always himself when he recovered, never stopping. I may have been spared, but I knew he would soon kill Zideo.
Then the earth quaked. Something descended on us, gossamer-thin and just beyond the veil of sight. A change that sent a tingling sensation into my crystal spine.
Xue-Fang felt it. Zideo felt it too. “Something’s different,” he said. His eyes searched for evidence, darted to understand. He threw a punch at the shapeshifter, which turned into three, which turned into five rapid strikes. Xue-Fang blocked each of them, but slid back on the hour hand an inch or so with each blow. Zideo kicked, punched, kicked, all blocked. He jumped, and Xue-Fang jumped backward, not to be struck from above. He kicked, which Xue-Fang blocked in the air, but landed with a sheen of sweat on his brow. “Gyatt damn,” said Zideo. “I’m fast all of the sudden. And… what’s this?” He pressed his lips together.
He strained like a man desperate to pass something through his body. I have seen this face on dogs in our yard who made the mistake of eating vegetables dropped by their humans while cooking dinner.
He jumped out of Torrence’s way. How the captain of the Ludopolitan guard had appeared, I was uncertain. So was he, by the confused expression on his face. Zideo was out of breath, but pointed to the stunned Xue-Fang.
“You!” said Torrence, his cybernetic eye glowed red, as did the matching eye of his crow, who cawed furiously. Torrence took one step forward and clocked Xue-Fang with his meaty gauntlet, sending the shape-shifting wretch stumbling back and covering his jaw with both hands. “I’ll–” began Torrence, but then he disappeared.
There is no awkwardness like an interrupted fight. The question “are we still doing this?” hangs on everyone’s mind. The two fighters were uncertain who should speak next.
Xue-Fang opened his mouth and pointed at him, but saw that Zideo was tensing up again. Addrion appeared, who needed no onboarding. She was already grabbing the shapeshifter by the shoulders and ramming her knee into his gut. She turned, and grease or a bruise stained her cheek. “Zideo, I found Gobo! We’re–” but she disappeared as well.
“Stop that!” demanded Xue-Fang.
“I think…” began Zideo. “I think somebody changed the game.” He strained again. “And I think I know who.”
“No!” Luciano the Cost Cutter whirled into being, twirling his many blades.
“I’ve waited a long time for this,” he said, tornado spinning and striking Xue-Fang at least a dozen times in rapid succession, sending him flying. Luciano was gone before the Boss hit the ground, but not before he gave Zideo a bladed thumbs-up.
“Looks like it’s a tag-fighter now,” said Zideo. “You got any allies left?”
He pointed through the rent in the ceiling, where the floating tower of the Boss Council hovered. Xue-Fang was on his knees, dishonored in his own collapsing lair, in front of all of his peers.