The night had so far progressed as normally as any stag-night can be expected
to. The meal had gone well and the group had retuned to the gamers convention
hall for a pub quiz. It wasn't clear whether anyone in the group was actually
trying to get the questions right or if they were just trying to top Bret's
comments about the MC's mother. Suddenly the main door opens and a female
enters. She is about five foot seven with bright orange hair and wearing a long
orange leather skirt and an orange leather bodice. Normally this would be an
unusual choice of clothing but this is a gamers convention so it’s not too
unusual. Nevertheless it should be mentioned that something should be done to
outlaw orange leather. At the far side of the room Darrly's stag night group
don't even notice. The new comer suddenly leaps onto a table and shouts
"Ekij, show yourself", at the same time she casts a seeker spell,
three balls of greeny yellow light about eight inches in diameter appear, the
yellow and green colours swirling and crackling across the surface of each
sphere. Then spheres then slowly drift away, each one heading roughly towards
one of other three corners of the hall. Once the spell has been cast the strange
woman and each of the three seekers are surrounded by a large sphere about seven
meters in diameter of a barely perceptible blue hue. Ekij recognise them at
once, they represent a magic field. A magic field like this shouldn't be able to
exist in this plane of reality but there isn't a lot he can do about it right
now. He waits, if he moves too soon he will show his position, but he can't wait
too long, the seekers are not very fast or smart but will knock him out if they
hit him, their purpose is to stop him hiding and then distract him from the
newcomer who he now recognises as Tangerine, one of Zolag's fighters from his
universe Musad. There are a number of things that don't immediately make sense.
Why is she here? Why is she casting magic spells? She is a fighter, more
comfortable with the simplicity of hitting things very hard or poking then full
of holes with spiky things. Concepts like multi-syllable words and spells are
usually beyond her. As to what she is doing here, the answer to that one is that
she is almost certainly trying to kill him. How did she get here? Here in
his home plane of reality. He instinctively rubs his left thumb over his fourth
finger feeling the absence of his ring. If he had his ring he could enter
creator mode, freeze time and figure out what was going on, but he doesn't have
it, not here in his home plane of reality. He doesn't have time to dream 'what
if' he needs to concentrate. The large tinge of blue is a magic field, she is in
one, he isn't, which isn't good. She can cast spells and he can't, at least not
until either she or one of the seekers is uncomfortably close. Speaking of which
the closest seeker has located him and is homing in, timing is going to be
everything. As the seeker closes on him, Ekij enters the blue sphere. Now he can
use magic and abilities not normally at his disposal in this reality. He kicks
backwards out of his seat in a backwards summersault and lands on his feet on
the gaming table behind him, permanently contradicting the 'mint condition' tag
on a second hand game of Civilisation. Extending his left arm to its full length
and pointing the first two fingers at Tangerine a long burst of lightning leaves
the tips of his fingers and streaks and crackles rapidly in her direction. As it reaches the edge of the
magic field it turns into pink silly-string and falls harmlessly onto a table of
gamers. Perhaps not entirely harmlessly, a number of the guys at the table have
adopted expressions that strongly suggest being covered in pink silly-string
isn't something they are prepared to just laugh off. Ekij swears and spins off
the far side of table just avoiding the seeker. “Great” he thinks, “so I
haven't got a magic field, my spells can't cross between magic fields and it
appears hers can.” The seeker has looped back and has him pinned between
itself and the wall. He fires a second lightning bolt into the seeker at almost
point blank range and it disperses, taking its magic field with it. He looks
round trying to find the next closest seeker, this is going to be tricky, he
needs to be close to a seeker to cast but can't afford to get hit by one. The
one that wandered up the far left side of the hall is looking lost in the far
corner, the other remaining one looks like it might have locked onto him and is
drifting closer. Ekij jumps forward hands on the table ready to spin across it
again when a spray spell hits him in the side knocking him onto the floor behind
the table again. A spray spell is basically a large cloud of small balls, a bit
like squash balls, they are usually used to find invisible creatures. They
haven't done any damage but they distracted him. Thinking of it Ekij realises
that he doesn't even know how many hit points he has (other than it's presently
a positive number). He rolls under the table and narrowly avoids being stabbed
by a rather nice ruby crystal drain sword being swung by Tangerine who has
wasted no time in getting to Ekij once he had shown himself. What a pity that
such a nice red sword should clash so horribly with the orange leather armour.
He rolls back under the table towards the wall and hears a dull thud. Looking up
he realises the second seeker is now only a few feet above him and dropping
fast, a quick lightning bolt only just dispatches it. Ekij realises that Bret is
swearing. He cautiously stands up to see Bret standing over the prone body of
Tangerine holding the neck of a broken bottle and shouting, "That bitch broke my bottle of Smirnoff".
On closer inspection it appears she did this by interrupting
Bret’s attempt to swing the bottle at arms length by getting the back of her
head in the way. Ekij quickly checks that on the third seeker, it is still playing with
the overhead projector at the far end of the hall and then bends over Tangerine.
How did she get here? It must have been a portal but she shouldn't be able to
open one to this plain of reality. He knows that he needs to get this mess cleaned up as quickly as
possible. The gamers might think that this is a cool stunt but the hotel staff
might not be as understanding. If the police get here and try and take Tangerines finger prints then things will get really complicated.
Ekij grabs Tangerine and jumps to his feet and hears his back crunch. Ouch! no magic field, normal strength. Tangerines magic field vanished when she was knocked out. With assistance from Kaz he picks her
up again, a little slower. He checks for the ruby crystal sword and discovers it
has shattered and the pieces are slowing evaporating. This is not an uncommon thing for a crystal sword to do
when it is
removed from a magic field. Ekij and Kaz slowly drag the unconscious body of
Tangerine in the direction of the door. As he approaches the door Ekij once again checks on the location of the last seeker.
For some reason it is still wandering aimlessly around the stage area, there
seems to be a bug with the spell, the seeker should be able locate him from this
distance, that will need a little investigation, sometime, some other time, as
in not now. He also spots Darryl talking to a rather big guy. The unknown man is
over six foot three, dressed in black leather biker gear with a studded belt and
a pierced nose. He is wearing tinted glasses and has very very short hair,
almost shaved, the hard-man image
is only slightly marred by traces of pink in his hair. Darryl appears to be
trying to persuade him not to follow Ekij and to sit down again. Ekij leaves him
to it, hoping that Darryl is a good negotiator. Ekij steps through the door to
the hotel lobby and spots the portal right smack in the middle of the lobby, not
particularly concealed. All he has to do is thrown Tangerine through it and then
collapse the portal. Everything should be OK, unless someone from the hotel has
entered the portal in the mean time, and lets face it who from this reality
would enter a portal. You would have to be nuts or drunk or probably both to do
something like that. Ekij groans, what is he thinking? there is a gamers
convention on in this hotel! There must be a few hundred drunk nuts in the hotel
tonight. No time to worry about that now, if someone finds themselves wandering
about somewhere nasty at the other end of this portal then they can just .. well
.. probably die, but he can't do anything about that right now. A member of the
hotel staff is standing staring at the portal and pointing, in the distance he
can hear a siren. Just before Ekij stuffs Tangerine through the portal he spots
a ring on her finger, it is a ring of lightning bolt, or probably now a ring of
silly-string. Nevertheless Ekij decides to keep it, he can't think of a good use
for the ability to shoot silly-string from his fingers but perhaps given enough
time he can think of one and he pops the ring in his pocket. Quickly stuffing
Tangerine through the portal Ekij then collapses it with a few will placed
kicks, (and two less well placed ones) and rushes back into the hall, straight
into the last seeker.
Everything goes dark.