Gritting his teeth John leaped away from his kill just as the beeping sound reached a crescendo.

BOOM!

With an almighty bang, the mech exploded in a cacophony of bolts and metal scraps. The force from the blast pushed John and Truffle through the air as they spun and each grit their teeth.

John cradled the teacup pig in his arms, attempting to shield him from the blast as they crashed to the desert floor and rolled.

Doing everything in his power not to bite his tongue, a flash of searing pain ripped through John’s left arm, then a second, slightly less painful, cut shaved his temple and a third ravaged his thigh.

He laid in the red desert sand for a long moment as a warm liquid seeped from his injured areas. John knew he was bleeding, likely from shrapnel injuries, but he couldn’t bring himself to inspect his wounds.

Not just yet.

Laying in the sand he spread his1 legs out and moved them slightly in the way that a child does when creating a snow angel.

Quest Completed:

First Contact

Objective:

Survive the encounter.

Reward:

Full recovery OR x10 shards

The quest. He’d completely forgotten he’d be given one. Full recovery sounded really nice in that particular moment and almost as soon as he had that thought the pain disappeared.

Sitting up, John quickly checked himself over to find that he was clear of all bruises, cuts, and scrapes. His body was as good as new and from the sheer volume of blood pooling on the sand, that was a very fortunate thing indeed.

His blue bodysuit was badly ripped all over, but the biggest rips were on the side of his arm and over his thigh. John was pretty sure there was a major artery in the thigh so the quest reward may have just saved his life.

“That was close,” Truffle snorted as he wriggled free of John’s iron grip. He didn’t even realise he was still holding the pig in his arms.

“What in god’s name were you doing?” John demanded, turning on the pig who looked at the floor and backed away slightly.

“Eating breakfast?” He replied quietly, kicking at the sand with his left trotter.

“That was a mechanical kangaroo thing,” John exclaimed incredulously, “how did you even know it was edible?”

“I didn’t,” he began, “but it tasted a lot better than those pellets you and Miss Anne used to feed me. Speaking of the Mistress, where is she?”

Truffle looked up at John hopefully. Though his new skills prevented him from wallowing in his own pity, John didn’t have the heart to tell the pig what had happened. He might not have been crying in a ditch somewhere, but he still didn’t feel like saying that out loud.

“She’s… not here,” he replied instead.

“I can see that,” Truffle said, looking around as if she might simply be hiding in the sand somewhere. “Well, we better go find her then. We simply can’t leave her alone out here; she hates being alone.”

John nodded and picked himself up off the ground. She did hate being alone. That had been the reason she’d bought Truffle in the first place. John’s long hours at work were starting to get to her and she wanted a companion animal to keep her company. Depression has a funny way of doing that, making the loneliness worse.

Shaking his head to clear his mind, he raised his hands and willed his new revolvers into being and they materialised in his sweaty palms. As this happened he felt a warm sensation emanating from deep within his solar plexus.

He had dropped the guns in favour of protecting the pig when the beeping had started and yet here they were, back in his hands.

Acting on a hunch, he opened his fists and let the pistols clatter to the floor. As he expected, clatter, they did not. The weapons barely made it six inches away from his hands before dematerialising and when he willed them to come back, they appeared in his hands once again.

“At least I can’t lose them,” he murmured, happy with the result of his little experiment.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Next he tried to fire a shot off but no round exited the chamber. As before, there was only the unsatisfying sound of the hammer’s click.

“Damn, how do I reload?” He asked the air in frustration, hoping that the voice in his head that granted him skills might come to his rescue.

It didn’t. He was going to have to figure this one out on his own.

Speaking of skills, this system bore a lot of similarities to gaming. A sly smile grew on his lips as he headed back towards the Mecharoo.

“Why are we going back the way we came?” Truffle asked, cocking his head to the side, “are you hungry? I think it might be a bit overcooked, what with the explosion and everything.”

“No, just need to check something,” he replied absently as he bent over the destroyed remains of the kangaroo mech.

The ground where its corpse had fallen was littered with charred flesh, guts, blood, and mechanical parts: gears, screws, and the remains of tank treads. The air stank of cordite and burning rubber and John’s nostrils stung every time he inhaled.

In a video game you usually clicked on something to loot it but considering that this system seemed to work mostly through thought, John somehow doubted the validity of prodding a piece of charred kangaroo with his finger.

Instead, he tried picking up one of the gears which stuck out of the nearby sand. He held the piece of metal in his hand but nothing happened. Then he thought the words add to inventory. Still nothing. Loot, collect, pick up. He tried every command he could think of but the gear sat idly in his hands like it was laughing at him.

Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t even received a notification for killing the mech. Every message that he had received was rather bare bones as well. Did that mean there was no experience points? What a shitty game this is.

Though a looting system would have been useful, he had to face the reality that, for now at least, there didn’t seem to be one. Dropping the gear to the ground, he sighed and began walking away from the blood-soaked sand.

***

“You were pretty badass with those guns,” Truffle said as they trekked across the hazy outback. It was the first time either of them had spoken in a while. John had no idea where they were, but he figured that picking a direction and sticking to it was the best option. Surely they’d come across something eventually.

John grunted in response; he had spent a brief time in the National Guard where he had been trained how to shoot. Granted, he wasn’t trained on revolvers, but the skill was transferable.

Joining them was the only way he’d been able to think of to pay for college tuition at the time. He had no desire to make a career out of it, but what’s a few years of service in return for a college education?

“Do you think all the cards have guns hidden in them?” Truffle asked.

“Probably not.”

“I hope not,” Truffle said with a snort, “I want to cast spells or something cool like that, or maybe there’s a card that would let me shoot lasers from my eyes, that would be so awesome.”

“I’d settle for an ammo card right about now,” John said dryly.

He still hadn’t been able to figure out how to reload the strange weapons that sat unobtrusively in his solar plexus.

“Are we nearly there yet?” Truffle asked hopefully.

“Nearly where? There’s nothing around but red sand and heatstroke.”

This went on for a while as they trapsed across the outback’s wasteland. John didn’t have an accurate way to measure time but considering that the sun looked like it was going to set soon, he was pretty certain that they had been walking for at least half a day.

His mouth was beginning to crack with dryness and as he stared at the tiny fissures in the red rocks below his feet, he began to feel sympathy for them.

John’s stomach rumbled and he needed water badly but they simply hadn’t seen anything since they’d been attacked.

The world ends, only for me to die of thirst, he thought dourly, it’s almost funny.

They walked for a while longer and eventually even Truffle had stopped talking. The temperature was beginning to drop and John was pretty certain that if they didn’t find shelter by the time darkness fell they wouldn’t survive the night.

After walking all day they had almost reached a large sandstone monolith they had been heading towards. It was red, like everything else in the outback, and it looked like someone had cut the top off a mountain.

Basically, it was a large red rock with a flat top.

As they approached the monolith, which was much larger than John had initially realised, he saw a glowing yellow sign imbedded into the rockface.

Approaching it, he realised that it was a neon sign, the likes of which could be found in any dive bar he’d ever frequented.

It said: The Outback Sleep Shack and underneath the glowing yellow hue was an iron door built right into the side of the sandstone monolith.

“This country is so cool,” Truffle said, speaking up for the first time in a while, “we never had mountain doors back home… or mountains of any kind really.”

“No we did not,” John replied distractedly as he placed his hands on door handle.

Here goes nothing, he though, attempting to open it. However, it didn’t budge.

“Is it locked?” Truffle asked, “hello, is anyone in there!”

There was no reply, so John raised his fist and tried knocking loudly on the metal exterior. As he pulled his fist back for the third time the door swung inward with an unpleasant creak.

“Hold your horses I’m coming,” a voice called from inside, “jeez, talk about a lack of patience.”

John stared into the abyss that was the opening behind the door. It was pitch black inside and though he could hear the voice, he couldn’t see its owner.

“Well are you coming in or not?” It said irritably, “we haven’t got all day you know? The welcoming address will be starting soon and I really don’t want to miss it.”

Hesitantly, John stepped through the door with Truffle at his heels. It took a moment, but his eyes eventually adjusted to the low light and he realised he was in some kind of diner.

There was a counter on the back wall with red stools lined up in front of it, booths and tables littered the main area and there was even a toilet in the back with the familiar male and female signs used the world over.

Did this place exist before? He wondered, furrowing his brow as he looked around the diner which could easily have been scraped off the side of any American highway.

“Woah!” Truffle exhaled in excited shock as John turned towards the sound. “I thought dinosaurs were extinct.”

John followed his gazed and immediately drew his pistols as his eyes landed on the creature. His revolvers weren’t loaded, so it was a pretty useless gesture, but the dinosaur didn’t know that so he drew them anyway.

Standing behind the door at approximately five feet tall was an unassumingly small bipedal humanoid creature. It dressed in white shirt, completed with braces and rolled up sleeves. It even wore a black fedora like it was the 1950’s.

Everything about it seemed distinctly normal, if a little outdated, with the single exception of its head. It had the head of a triceratops, horns, and all.