It was too damn hot. The air downtown smelled like a mixture of wet leaves and cement. Rain sprinkled down from grey skies and splashed onto the lenses on my glasses. The mid-summer day wasn’t muggy yet, which meant my dyed-blonde hair would only frizz to half the size of Mount Rushmore once it dried. I started to wish I was sitting at my favorite café, hearing the rain gently patter against the pink striped awning, with warm, spiced tea in a little mug and the taste of sugar lingering on my lips.

I couldn’t do that. I had errands to run.

Maybe I can get everything done real fast and have time for a donut after, I thought, cramming the black bag under the back seat of my car. My cellphone’s to-do list displayed my next task in obnoxiously-large red letters: Nathan’s Birthday – game w angels fighting giant sea monsters? Flying around. Bow and arrow or slingshot. Expensive? See Drawing.

My whole back tensed. I had no problem with getting my nephew a big birthday present for his eighteenth birthday. He’d graduated near the top of his class, and he’d nabbed a few significant scholarships. And, more than anyone else I knew, that kid deserved a special day. But how did my step-sister think I’d be able to find Nathan’s mystery game? I hated video games!

Nancy is a prosecuting attorney, I reminded myself. You’re the receptionist at a motorcycle repair joint. You’ve got time to look. Remember, she’s setting aside a day to treat everyone to that expensive Italian dinner. That’s hard for her.

I took a deep breath, adjusted my red-rimmed glasses, and began walking towards Fourth Street.

-x-x-x-

I never thought I would enter a video game store, especially one called Dragon’s Den Gaming. There were no windows on the ground floor, and the glass door was covered by a purple velvet curtain, so I couldn’t tell what the inside was like. Instinctively my mind conjured up an image of a single, cramped, dark room with dirty video game boxes strewn about on lopsided shelves for customers to sift through. The floor would be water damaged, wooden boards groaning in protest with each step. The vague stench of black mold would be everywhere, but was the source? The boxes? Somewhere in the walls? The curtain draped over the door? And, of course, the world’s worst cashier: a bored teenager who wasn’t legally old enough to work, sitting in the corner with a smartphone-turned-register in his hand, waiting for me to leave so he could get back to texting his friends about how unfair it was that he couldn’t get “420” tattooed across his cheek.

My stomach turned at the imaginary Dragon’s Den.

As I passed through the curtained entryway I let out the breath I was holding. The store was well-organized and clean. Signs dangling from the ceiling announced the types of games available – board games, tabletop gaming, video games, card games – in a faux medieval font. An enormous felt dragon tapestry on the back wall (which probably took a while to make) announced that comic books, DVDs, and collectibles were available upstairs. A woody scent hung in the air, strong enough to be noticeable but faint enough where I didn’t want to puke.

The front counter had a service bell covered in tiny dragon stickers. The sign next to it read “Need something? Ring me to summon a Gaming Master.” I tapped the button on top of the bell.

“Coming!” called a deep, scratchy voice.

I stiffened. The store itself was neat. The middle-aged man wearing the Magical Boy t-shirt heading towards me was not. He had several small metal earrings in his left ear and his patchy, curly red hair glistened with sweat.

“Good afternoon,” he chirped, holding out a hairy hand for me to shake. “I’m Mac. Welcome to the Dragon’s Den! What can I help you find today?”

“Hello,” I said. My fingers barely wrapped around his huge hand. “I’m looking for an old game, but I don’t know which one. My nephew played it once at a friend’s house, around ten years ago…”

“Do you know which system it was for?”

“…uh?”

“Which console did he play it on? MegaSys? GameGorilla? Super Pro? Maybe Tomodachi Hub?” It might have been a basic question. I couldn’t tell. My brain had spontaneously morphed into a bowl of chowder.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“I, uh, don’t know anything about games,” I finally managed. “It’s for a birthday present.”

“That’s okay!” The warm smile that broke across Mac’s face was genuine. “You know what it was about? Or the names of any of the characters? I’ve played a lot of games and a hint might help me figure out what it is.”

“Ahhh…” I was having too much difficulty processing the “geek” in front of me to focus. “He said it was a game about angels fighting giant sea monsters. He remembers flying around and using a bow and arrow, or a slingshot, or something like that.”

“Rrrright. Unfortunately, there’s more than one game that fits that description,” Mac said, “though that does narrow it down a lot. Does he remember anything else?”

“He drew a picture.” I brought up Nathan’s drawing on my smartphone. “Does this help?”

Mac’s pale grey eyes bugged. “Ohhhh yeah, I definitely know what that is. Oh, man.” He grimaced, revealing very square, even teeth. “We actually do have a copy, but…”

“What?” I let out a nervous laugh. “Is it expensive?”

“Well, I have a copy for sixty-five dollars, so it’s not too expensive, but the issue is,” Mac explained, “that it’s a region-locked game for the JP exclusive GameGorilla HAPPY, so you need a Japanese console and an outlet adapter to play it. Then, you’d need a Japanese memory card on top of that if you wanted to save. The console itself is almost impossible to find nowadays.”

“I see.” Whatever he was talking about sounded out-of-budget. “Thank you for telling me. I’ll call Nancy and let her know that I’m buying him something else.”

“Hold on,” Mac’s voice grew louder. “Is your nephew hard-set on playing the original? Because there was a 15th anniversary re-release last year for the FantaMeg that would be a lot cheaper, and it had a US release.”

“Uh… sure.”

“Follow me.” I saw pure joy across Mac’s face for about a quarter of a second before he half-walked, half-bounced towards the staircase leading upstairs.

The second floor was slightly less neat than the downstairs, with large white boxes stuffed with comics lining tables along one of the walls. A large window let grey daylight seep into the room. In the center was a display case with several dozen figurines of animated characters midmotion underneath thick glass. I would have ignored it had the corner of my eye not caught on a large price tag with “SALE: $199.99.”

My eyebrows furrowed. Two hundred dollars on sale? For plastic? I must have been seeing things. I re-read the sign. It still said two hundred dollars. My eyes trailed upward. I had to know – what character would someone spend more than two hundred dollars on?

I found myself looking at striped black-and-grey tentacles. They curved and looped as if they were frozen in the middle of a hypnotic underwater dance. At first I thought I was looking at a scientifically-accurate octopus figurine, but there were only six tentacles, and there was a brown-skinned human body up top. A male body, shredded like a superhero, with several large tattoos of tentacles wrapped around him. His clawed fingers were bent into a menacing position. His eyes…

I choked on my own saliva. A brand-new emotion shot through my chest like a miniature lightning bolt. They weren’t unusual eyes for a cartoon character, big and “villainous” with a heavy brow. The “whites” of his eyes were pale yellow, and his tiny irises had horizontal pupils, like a goat. They weren’t pretty eyes by anyone’s standards.

OK, Liz… why is your heart pounding?

The rest of the character’s face looked somewhat more attractive, with an angular jawline, squarish nose, and full lips. He had an open smile with pointed grey teeth. Thin, striped tentacles sprouted out of the sides of the figurine’s otherwise-bald head and swirled around it, a twisted version of pigtails.

His eyes.

I turned away from the display case. It didn’t help. My pulse still thundered in my ears.

The hell is wrong with me? Octopus-man was just an overpriced kitschy knick-knack–so what was I feeling? Was I afraid? Enchanted? Turned on? I shuffled a little. It did feel a bit damp down there…

“Found it! Eagle’s Quarry, Deluxe Anniversary Edition.”

I squeaked. I’d forgot Mac was looking for Nathan’s present. “Thank you,” I said, plastering my best customer-service smile across my face. Mac handed me the box, to which I replied, “SHIT!”

“…Ma’am?” Mac asked.

“Oh, sorry, I just remembered something I forgot to do, and I need to get it done, and… yep!”

His fucking eyes were right there on the cover of Eagle’s Quarry! The rest of the figure was bathed in shadow, looming above a band of cartoon bird warriors, but there was no mistaking those tentacle-pigtails, or the way his gaze peered out from beneath his brow.

“Is ‘tentacle hunk’ in this game?” I asked, pointing at the figure behind me with my thumb. I kept my focus on Mac so that I wouldn’t accidentally see those painted-on eyes again.

“Oooooh, good catch!” said Mac. “That’s MC Tentachill, the Big Bad. He’s a moron! He’s got a really hard boss fight, though.”

See, Liz? I thought. You must be imagining things. No way you’d be having a spiritual experience with someone named MC Tentachill.