"No fair — you guys left me behind!" Ben's voice ricocheted through the rust bucket's cramped cabin, half-laugh, half-protest. He jabbed at his controller with theatrical fury.
"You keep falling for every obvious trap," Gwen replied, tone cool and exasperated as she carved a rune on her tablet mid-game. Fred snorted, amused despite himself.
They were elbow‑deep in Nightfall Crucible — Fred's homebrew D&D‑style campaign turned video RPG — each on their own monitor, linked into the main laptop. Tonight they crawled through a pixelated wilderness, skirmishing low‑level goblins. Ben kept respawning; everyone else kept pulling ahead. Jealousy had him peeking at their progress until frustration flipped into a tantrum.
"Hey! Don't bring your problems into my game," Fred quipped. Ben's in‑game avatar barreled into a goblin ambush and sprinted toward Fred's character with wild flailing.
"It's not my fault you guys suck!" Ben shot back when the three of them were overwhelmed and the screen filled with "GAME OVER."
They respawned and kept at it. Ben, desperate, went for Upgrade — merged himself mentally with Fred's laptop, splicing his instincts into the code. His avatar glowed invincible. Gwen blinked with disbelief. "Ben, seriously? Cheater."
"Desperate times," Ben grinned. Before Fred could finish scolding, a crack of lightning slammed into the rust bucket. Electronics screamed. Ben, fused with the laptop, took the worst of it.
A vacuum dragged them whole. Screens went white; then color. When their eyes opened, they weren't kids in a van — they were their characters. The game had become them.
"Of course this happens," Fred swore, kicking the virtual ground. Gwen jabbed a finger at Ben. "Nice going, doofus. Now look what you did." Ben, wide‑eyed, was smirking — until a spear split the air, cleaving a nearby tree. The world snapped into lethal clarity.
First Strike at the Grove
A towering orc stepped from the underbrush, tusks flashing, club soaked in mud and old battle. Gwen screamed, "Ben — hurry! Send us back!"
Ben froze. "No problem." He tried to will Four Arms into being — nothing. The mental anchor didn't respond. He fumbled for the Omnitrix dial with shaking hands; no icons lit. Sweat pricked his brow.
Fred lunged and shoved Ben aside as the spear hissed past where Ben had stood. The iron shaft buried in the oak behind them, vibrating like a struck gong. "Ben! Any alien now?" Fred barked, grabbing the shaft with a hiss and yanking it free to use as an improvised pike.
Ben twisted the dial frantically. "Stupid Omnitrix! Why won't you work?" The HUD above their heads flashed: Health, Mana, Level. Gwen and Fred ticked up to Level 1. Ben's counter—0. He hadn't contributed.
Fred charged, spear in hand, to distract the orc while Gwen conjured a mana shield and shaped a single, brittle mana dagger. The orc swung like a battering ram. Fred ducked, rolled, and came up with a fluid, acrobatic series of strikes: a shoulder‑tackle that knocked the orc off balance, a low sweep that sent him stumbling, and a spear‑feint that drew the beast's heavy swing. Every move had the crisp punctuation of a practiced fighter: wide establishing shots of impact, tight closeups of grin and grit, the slow pan of a blade slicing through dust.
They smashed the orc with coordinated artistry — Gwen's mana bolt distracting its eyes, Fred's improvised pike threading the opening, Ben finally landing a clumsy but decisive stomp on its ankle. The orc collapsed in a shower of pixels and XP pinged above their heads.
Ben grumbled, "Finally. Level me up already."
Gwen smirked. "Maybe if you stopped trying to eat the NPCs."
Fred's breath came slower now; his eyes went sharp. "We can either grind — level up enough to get our powers back — or take out the Drake at the den and get the big XP bump. Either frees us or gets us closer to an exit."
Strategy and Stakes
They pulled up the game map: a sprawling wilderness map with a red skull marker in the north — Drake's Den — and a path scarred with orc camps. The next node beyond the forest was Loom, the border city infected by vampire disappearances. The fastest route to get real progress: clear the orc camp, storm the Drake's lair, then push for Loom. Failure here meant they stayed trapped — one life each, no respawns.
Ben munched on virtual rations to regenerate a sliver of health, face stubborn. "So we do the orc camp and then head north. I'm not getting stuck at zero."
Gwen's voice softened, practical. "We'll split roles. Fred and I handle crowd control and ranged crowd‑shred. Ben — you move fast, draw aggro, and finish with heavy hits. Don't try anything fancy until we've got your icon back."
Fred tapped his wrist device and summoned a holo schematic of his limited arsenal: a plasma handgun, a plasma shield, a crude suit of nanotech plating and a flickering holographic cloak that could blur him for a second. Each tool clicked into the choreography of their next fight.
Assault on the Orc Camp
They approached the camp beneath a ruined watchtower. Orc sentries stomped fires into life, tossing roast meat and grit. Fred's cloak shimmered and he slid behind a stack of crates, plasma pistol humming. Gwen's mana threaded into the wind, forming a silent signal. Ben cracked his knuckles, lungs steady.
The attack began like a drum: Gwen launched a pinpoint mana flare that exploded over the central brazier, blinding one sentry. Fred phased through the smoke in a blur, pistol spitting plasma bolts that toppled two archers in a hail of sparks. Ben, faster than he looked, dashed between tents in a series of sprint‑slash combo attacks, each motion a line of motion blur — a closeup on his foot smacking the tent rope, a wide shot of him tossing the fallen guard into a heap of sleeping orcs.
The orc chieftain—giant and brutish—rose, bellowing. Fred moved like a four‑armed whirlwind: block, parry, counter. He braced the nanotech suit, took the chieftain's first swing on a gloved forearm, then used the recoil to spin his body and deliver a seismic triple‑palm strike that slammed the enemy into the ground. Gwen leapt onto a rafter and rained down a barrage of crystalline spikes that pinned the chieftain's shoulders, leaving Fred to finish with a focused Tritonic Surge — an electrified palm that sparked through armored hide.
Each hit lit the scene in staccato bursts — plasma bloom, mana ripple, bone‑crunch sound fx — and in the wake of the final blow, the camp stuttered and dissolved into the familiar reward chime of the game's XP.
Their bars jumped. Ben's counter finally clicked from 0 to 1.
He cheered, breathless, and Gwen laughed, relief bright and warm. "See? You can do the boring parts right."
Fred wiped a smear of virtual blood from his lip, grin wide. "Okay — next up, Drake's Den. We do this together: push hard, level fast, get our powers back, and get the hell out."
They readied their mapped route, formed a party so they can share XP.
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