Boy, and The Montage

<Nice one Plisk, good man!>
<Prob still nonsense. Ear infection.>

Boy

With a mixture of hope, bemusement, and dread, Alex watched some of the others receive their messages from home. Messages sent across many many miles and many many years, but as fresh and poignant as if they were filmed yesterday. Which, once, they were.
The images may have been over three million years old, but to the Dwarfers of course they only felt a few years old. Less to some. Alex glanced at Jade who’d only been woken relatively recently. He was glad Plisken was cuddling her legs - sometimes the wisdom and warmth of a little kid could do wonders. He turned back to the screen.
It was a bizarre thing, this report… Something so very old and so very new, and so very important.

People received their messages and stood, and sat, in various states of shock, gratitude, upset, relief, love, happiness and confusion. As each interview passed, Alex’s stomach knotted tighter, until he realised for sure that he wasn’t going to get a message. Of course. Even Bluey being lost to the big black wasn’t enough to counteract Jess’s hatred for him.

<Please include your messages from home here in your post, anyone who hasn’t yet and would like to.>

He looked at Jamie who he supposed was unlikely to see anyone he knew, as he’d previously been on another ship. He began walking over to check he was okay when a familiar voice yanked an invisible choke-chain around his throat.

“… Boy?” It said.
Alex swallowed and turned.

“I don’t know if you’re seeing this, Boy, but if you are, know that I love you and think about you lots.”
The reporter asked “Who is ‘Boy’?”
“My son.” The man cleared his throat, concealing his concern very well, still recognisable, though. “Alex Solvay.”

Alex’s face softened in fondness, at the familiar sight of his dad. He didn’t look much different. In fact he never had changed much since Alex was little. Still tall and strong and handsome. Few more streaks of grey perhaps. Looked good though - he bet his friend’s mums were still after him. He chuckled at the thought and wiped a digital tear from his cheek.
“If you are seeing this…” his dad continued, then tailed off, and Alex chuckled again - at the doubt in his Dad’s voice this time. He always was practical, perhaps overly practical. “Well, if you are, I want to say that you know that Seren and Jada would want to be here…”
Not daring to take his eyes off the screen, Alex nodded across the ocean of time. His Dad nodded too, tight lipped and sympathetic. It was a 3 million year unspoken understanding - an apology for his cow of an ex wife.
“Keep fighting the good fight, son.”

And with that, the camera moved to someone else.

Alex took a deep shuddering breath. Well, wasn’t that something?
He puffed some air out, eyes wide, then got himself together. Smeggin' 'ell

He looked up and spotted Jamie again, he walked over to him.
“You all right man?”
“… Yeah.”
“Thanks for picking us up earlier.”
The other man shrugged.
“No biggie.”

---
For a while after the broadcast finished, and the Dwarfers had recalled who they were, people didn’t really know what to do. They hung around, a bit confused, as monsters and aliens – also affected by the emotion – milled about, no longer fighting.

“Everybody hug.” Instructed a little voice.
Jay cleared his throat. “Uh… What?”
“Group hug” repeated Plisken.
The Dwarfers looked at each other, considering the request. Their various states of embarrassment, post-‘break-up’-anger, and awkwardness, suddenly all seemed far less important than what had just occurred.

“Fine.” Alex said, shocking some of them. He was normally a bit of a shadow-slinker and often complained if people so much as touched him (well, mainly Pancake to be fair).
Point was, if even Alex could do it, so could the others they realised.

They all found themselves engaged in the multi-Dwarfered hug. Jay, Jade, Jamie, Jacky, Jaxx, Evelina, Plisken, Artie and Alex all squidged each other. It’s funny how persuasive the instruction of a small child can be. "This is lovely!" Exclaimed Artemis, raising a couple of chuckles.

Suddenly, as prophesied, the Dwarfers’ powers combined, and a glow of white light came into being between them.
At first it was very small, about the size of a ping pong ball, but soon it grew to the size of a football, then a space hopper.
The group stepped back to accommodate it, instinctively holding hands, and stood in a circle looking up at the magnificent glowing orb.

Suddenly it shot up into the sky and grew a hundredfold. Then without warning, it sent a tendril of light zapping down to the keystone, apparently blowing it to smithereens. The ‘smithereens’, however, rose up and combined with the light, which sent out fifty more tendrils all across the land. And deep into the virus.

--

At the force, Treguard clutched at his chest and staggered, grabbing for a striped Candyland railing but missing and falling to his knees. The voice of his master shook the land. It screamed in rage as it felt itself weakening.

“Daddy daddy!” Marylou reached for her fallen father but found herself weakening too. Suddenly Tregard glitched from his tall bearded, dark appearance, back into his original short, balding, friendly red-robed appearance.
“FATHER!?” Marylou choked, glitching herself now.
Her hair changed, flowing from black to blonde.

Then, it was over. The two game-guides exchanged a glance and ran to a nearby viewport. Looking into the heart of the game they saw the Lords retreating.
“My darling.” Dungeon Master put his hand on his daughter’s head. “I… I’m afraid we were poisoned.”
She blinked, her adorable eyes now free of malice. “Are we okay now?”
“I think so, and it’s due to the adventurers.” He swept a hand down towards where the Dwarfers stood, among the soldiers, monsters, and aliens, on the battlefield, near the sacred Holly Tree.

The huge, powerful, glowing orb shot further into the sky still, and exploded, as awesome as the last firework in the display.
It finally dissolved into the sky, restoring sunshine and colour to the entire land.

---
Down on the battlefield.

Dungeon Master walked among the tired Dwarfers, taking in their various states of dress and childhood.

“My friends. Please accept my apologies…” He looked at their shaken faces, they'd worked hard “… and my most sincere thanks.”
Jay nodded.
DM continued. “We knew not what we did, but your working together saved us, the realm, and yourselves. Had you been injured here, it would have been permanent.”
Some of the Dwarfers exchanged glances at this information.
“Fortunately you worked together and chose the path of goodness, which, as you can see, is a very powerful thing indeed.”
A few monsters made “aww” sounds and hugged as they'd seen the Dwarfers doing. Jaxx and Evelina smiled at each other.

Alex rubbed the back of his neck, self-comforting, still a little shaken and also feeling awkward, not entirely convinced he was ‘on the path of goodness’.
“So uh, what do we do now?” He asked, wishing he had a fag.
“Yeah, is it over?” Jacky enquired hope evident in his voice. Alex supposed the scientist wanted to get back to the Dwarf and a good book, or whatever it was scientists enjoyed. A petri dish or two?

“You have temporarily disabled The Lords,” the red-robed one informed them, “but it’s only a matter of time before they recover and replace their corrupted files.”
Someone booed.
“So what does that mean for us?” Jay said, cutting to the chase and sounding more like his normal self.
“It means they’re limping off, seriously wounded, but will be strong again soon if you don’t gain the power-up from the Chamber of Boridium as quickly as possible.”

Jaxx was excited. This sounded do-able. "So, dude, we just need to reach the Chamber and then the virus is defeated?”
Tregard had recently worked out that The Virus was what the travellers called The Lords, his master/s.
“Yes. You must get through the chamber and defeat The Boss.”
“And then we can go home?”
Everyone waited with bated breath.

“... No.”
“Aww.” A collective noise of disappointment.
“Once the Boss is defeated, you must make sure the job is completed by playing the mini games. Only then, will it be safe for you to leave this land, sail across the ocean of Rea-Litae, and return from whence you came.”
“Gnarly, let’s do it.”

---

The Montage

The raggedy bunch exited the level and went back into the Escher Room. How long ago it had seemed since they were first there.
Al had seriously been convinced he was a little boy who’d lived in Candyland for years. He exchanged a glance with the still tiny Plisky.
What a brain-smeg.

The room was different, the war having spilled over and blown bits of it apart. Sections of staircase hung oddly in their own gravity pockets, some turning slowly, some with pieces of rubble falling and repeating in a constant cycle.

“This is gonna be tricky” Jay muttered, eying what looked like literal tears in the fabric of reality – big dark sections where steps had once stood. It looked like there were stars in the velvety darkness beyond.
Many groans met the leader’s ears.
“... But we can do it.” He urged, adding a bit of twinkle. “Come on.”
Spurred on by the twinkle and the respect they had for their leader, the exhausted Dwarfers pulled themselves together and got on with it.
Jay iced the twinkle-cake with a wink, and it gave everyone a second wind.

After an awesome 80s movie style montage to ‘The Warrior' by Scandal (as can be heard here) wherein the Dwarfers assisted each other across the room, hands grabbing wrists, comrade hauling comrade, sometimes amusingly falling the wrong way when entering new pockets of gravity, ending up the other side of the room than intended when walking through doorways they thought would take them elsewhere, and nearly slipping through the tears where the stairs had been blown away… they’d finally traversed the antechamber, and stood outside a huge, chunky, wooden double-door.

“That was hard work!” Jay grinned. He looked like he’d hardly broken a sweat.
Alex raised his eyebrows. “Yeah…”

Li’l Plisky pointed upwards and everyone looked.
Instead of an ornate mediaevallly engraving or plate, like they’d expected, a big sleazy neon sign flickered on and off.
The Chamber of Boridium.

---
---

<TAG everyone.>
- What’s inside? (Don’t forget the point of the chamber is for us to collect a power-up which will give us enough energy to defeat the Boss. I expect the Boss is through the next door, out the back of the chamber.
- What is the Boss like?)
Don’t forget to write a back-post with your message if you want to and haven’t already.
</TAG>