The Search For Giant Rooster

I was disconcerted when I answered the door bell and was confronted with two middle fingers.

“Can I help you?”

Once they were lowered, I could see that the fingers were attached to a young woman. She didn’t look at all happy.

“I got a huge cock sixty-nine!”

I raised an index finger.

“That a question or a statement?”

Her anger softened into confusion.

“Isn’t your username ‘IGotAHugeCock69’?” she asked, brandishing a stack of printed chat logs.

After a moment I invited her in to discuss it.

After a few more minutes I began to understand why IGotAHugeCock69 trolled her.

A Short Lecture, Perhaps

The tavern was getting to that nicely drunken stage when the doors slammed open.

“Captain North?”

The question came from the figure standing in the door, the bonfire outside casting shadows over him and the object he held. Enough people glanced at me, so I stood up.

“I am Captain North, but I’m off duty, and this is a holy day of the Island-“

“Bounty to collect.”

The figure tossed the object onto my table.

It was the head of Pirate Captain Hookbeard.

I tried to work out how to explain the benefits of gold circulation via piracy to him.

Warrior Princess MacGuffin

She was once Princess MacGuffin, hope for peace and unity between The Empire and The Kingdom. But that was years ago, before she had escaped, before she had run away.

She’d never wanted to be a figurehead of prosperity. To be honest she’d never really wanted to be a roaming warrior either, moving around the lands, both mapped and unmapped, but it was a better life than tedious needlework and forgettable bards.

She blended in well with the rest of the mercenary army, just another face in the unwashed mass of fighters.

Luckily for me her birthmark was distinctive though.

Split Second Meeting

Their eyes met, and in a single split second, they each saw a multitude of emotions wash over the other person.

She saw a mix of desperation and resignation in his eyes, followed quickly by a sudden hope.

He saw determination and a sense of purpose he had never seen before, and would probably never see again.

Perhaps, in time, they could meet each others eyes again and again, and get to know each other and perhaps, just perhaps, fall in love.

But a split second is all they had, as she failed to catch him and he kept falling.

The Ceremony

The Twenty-Seven Four Steps was taught to all children. Indeed, they couldn’t be considered adults until they could complete all twenty-seven sets of four steps and know how to serve Brewed Berries correctly.

From the correct way to open the door into the room, to how to hold the strainers as you mash up the berries.

From the way to serve the drink, in order of importance, familiarity and who was an Enlightened and who was not.

Plus, of course, which steps to skip so that the drink would kill the person, as well as how to add delayed reactions.

Rolling The Dice

I was still holding out hope that this was just a fevered coma dream, that I’d wake up any second and be in a hospital bed and everything would be fine.

But until that happened, it seemed prudent to not die in this fantasy RPG I found myself in. I mean, sure, my Half-Orc Barbarian could be resurrected, but I had no idea if that worked for players sucked into the world.

So I was stuck being the Chosen Hero From Another World, and faced down a Demonic Beastspawn, page 352.

Turns out D4s can be used as makeshift caltrops.

Life Management Technician

I dialled as quickly as my shaking fingers allowed me to.

“Helena, where-“ was all I heard him say before the phone was ripped from my hand.

“So this is the boss?”

There was a pause.

“I am the Executive Vice President of Personnel and Resource Management, who is this and what do you want with my Chief Assistant Manager?”

The group laughed.

“We’ve got her locked up, and we want your money.”

My boss hung up.

I had to wait a few minutes, and then I got to finally meet his Life Management Technician.

Private assassin in normal language.