“Watch this,” I said. Taking a few more steps into the kitchen, I rooted around in the recycling for a second and found another empty water bottle. I set it on the end of the table away from where the couples were sitting. Danielle, who’d already seen this trick, went and stood by the others, who looked baffled.
Going to stand next to Danielle, I pointed at the bottle and said, “Mana Bolt!”
As before, the bottle was blasted to smithereens. Everyone’s eyes grew wide.
COMBAT: 1 MP Mana Bolt does 1 Damage to Harmless Water Bottle. Harmless Water Bottle obliterated. Still not impressed, and you still get no XP. Go pick on something your own size. 249/250 MP.
I shook my head at the message. That was going to get old. Though I had to admit, it did get my attention. No denying it.
“Still think this is bullshit?” I looked at Miss Pouty Pants. “Think I put dynamite in the bottle or something?”
Her face had gone pale and she was shaking her head slowly. The others looked at me, then her.
“I… I don’t know what you did,” she said after what seemed like an hour. “Magic isn’t real. None of this is real. I want to go home.”
I patted the suitcase I’d set down at my feet when I zapped the bottle. “That was kinda my plan, but our cars don’t seem to work and I’m guessing neither will airplanes.” My jaw dropped. “Oh God. All the airplanes. They probably fell out of the sky.”
Everyone else looked horrified as well. The scope of this was starting to become clear.
“No fire engines. No ambulances. No communications.” Now I was shaking my head like a little kid denying a bad dream. “Oh my God. The cities will be chaos.”
“You don’t know that!” snapped the pouter. “Even if it’s real it could just be here. If we get to the closest town everything could be fine.”
“I hope to God you’re right,” I said. “But Joe says the messages said it was the whole Earth. Right?” I looked at him and he nodded, lips quivering as if he were about to cry.
“Okay, before we get too carried away, what about the others?” There was one more couple who’d joined our little den of debauchery. Presumably they were still upstairs.
“Haven’t seen them,” said Joe. “When I came down I was the first person up, I think. Should we go wake them?”
“Probably,” I said. “Though we should try not to surprise them and give them a chance to read their messages before they disappear.”
Anthony nodded. “Good idea. I’ll do it. Mike and I are friends.” He took a last sip from his coffee mug and stood up. “Be right back.” Up the stairs he went.
The rest of us stared at each other for a second until Mandy spoke up. She also tended toward the telling-people-what-to-do end of the hypnosis spectrum, but despite her sullen appearance she was tolerable if you were polite.
“Okay,” she said, “Once they’re up, then what?”
“We have two choices,” I answered. “We can sit tight, or we can run. I’m inclined to run. The messages said it wasn’t safe here and we needed to get to a lower-mana area.”
“What if it is dangerous out there?” she challenged. “Everybody but Mike and Samantha flew. They live close enough to drive, but our cars probably don’t work anyway. And even if any of us had guns, we didn’t bring them on the plane, I bet.” Her brown eyes were half-closed with irritation. “No weapons other than my ray gun and your finger thing and maybe some knives in the kitchen. No cars. If we leave, we walk.” This only made her more irritated. She wasn’t morbidly obese or anything, but she was definitely… heavy. Everything about her was fairly round. The idea of walking to the nearest town obviously wasn’t sitting well with her.
“If we all choose our classes, some of us may get more skills that can help us. I’m a Mage. I couldn’t pick a lot, but I have that damage spell. I can make it much stronger. And I have a healing spell.”
“Skills or spells?” asked Joe, obviously the nerdiest of our group. “There’s a difference.”
“I call them spells because I’m an RPG geek,” I said, “but you’re right, they’re Class Skills, not spells. Are there spells?”
He nodded. “I think so. One of the snarky messages told me if my class skills weren’t good enough for me I should go find a spell book. So I think spells are something that cross classes.”
“Good to know. What are your Class Skills?” I had sorta volunteered my own, after all. Even if I’d left out some information.
“I’m a Defender, which is a kind of fighter, I think. I said I wanted a class that would help me protect people and that’s what it offered me, and it says ‘Advanced’ next to my Class.” He blushed and paused, probably expecting to be razzed for his idealism. But no one gave him any static and I shot him an approving look and a small nod. After a second he went on.
“My Class Skills are Protect the Primary, which makes me hit harder and take less damage if I’m fighting to defend someone else, and Weapon Flexibility, which lets me use any basic weapon as if I had the next higher level of skill with it.”
He looked at me questioningly, almost as if looking for approval. I studied him for a moment. He was a bit gangly, but the System had obviously beefed him up a bit as part of his Class. Blue eyes burned with determination as he met my own, a shock of unruly black hair spoiling the effect somewhat. I wasn’t the best fighter around, but I’d taken a lesson or two, and I didn’t see why he couldn’t make it work.
“That’s awesome,” I said, meaning it. “You’ll be defending us while we’re trying to get out of here. If you come.” I didn’t know what he meant to do, after all.
“Mis… I mean, Mandy’s very worried about her family back in Dallas,” he said. “I’ve got to at least try to get her to an airport. If the planes really aren’t flying…” He swallowed and shook his head. “My family’s all on the West Coast. They might as well be on the other side of the world if there’s no cars and no planes. Dallas is closer and at least it’s not on the other side of the Rockies.”
“Gotcha. So what do you say, Mandy?” I turned to her, using the opening Joe had accidentally given me.
“Where are we going to go?” she said with a touch of challenge.
Oh, right. Domme. Better tread carefully.
“The nearest real airport is in Knoxville and that’s more than an hour drive. It’s ten miles just to Pigeon Forge,” she went on.
“I don’t remember the roads around here too well,” I said as honestly as I could. “I just followed the GPS. I remember seeing a guidebook in the living room…” Just then, Anthony came back down the stairs.
“They were still asleep,” he said as he walked back over to his seat between Mandy and the still-frowning whatever her name... Susan! It was Susan. It came back to me when I stopped trying. “I woke them, but they were pretty freaked out by the messages. I told them that as far as any of us knew it was real and we would wait for them down here.”
“Mandy just asked where we’d go if we went,” I said, “And that’s a damn good question. Anybody hungry? Maybe we should eat and wait for Mike and Samantha. They drove so they may know more about the area.”