Highlander: the Game
by Argentum-LS
A/N: Written for adabsolutely as part of the HLH-Shortcuts exchange. Thanks to idelthoughts for the encouragement and betaing of this story. Questions, comments, observations, and concrit always welcomed.
Somewhere between the grocery store and the dry cleaners, Methos picked up a tail. At the deli counter, he'd caught the distinct intake of breath from behind, as of someone preparing to speak to him. That sound happened again while he perused frozen meal options, and then again in the checkout line. Each time, he turned, only to find no one there. Out in the parking lot, he became attuned to the sensation of being watched. Not Watched; that was different. And easier to ignore. By the time he knew for sure he was being followed, he caught only the occasional footstep and the stray flash of a long jacket disappearing behind a car or around a corner. The follower was good—if not practiced, at least smart and a quick learner.
On someone with less experience being followed, it might have been effective and Methos might have unintentionally lead his follower back to his address. That would not do. Whomever the person was, he wasn't a Watcher, and therefore had no business knowing where Methos lived. Taking advantage of a knot of people milling around a bus stop, Methos slipped back into big city anonymity. Put enough people in the way, make a last second decision or three about what route to take or whether to move at all, and being tracked in an urban area became a virtual , though he'd shaken the tail, as he schlepped his shopping back to his flat, he couldn't shake the feeling that just started a tale.
Twenty-seven hours later, Methos learned how right he was.
The man caught up to him while Methos hauled his weekly garbage out to the bin in the alley behind his building. It was a habit he cultivated despite the chute in the building because he wanted any nosy neighbors to be inured to the sight of him in the alley, disposing of mysterious bundles. One never knew when the invisibility of routine might come in handy.
The lid had clanged back into place, its echo still ringing against the brick walls that lined the alley, when he became aware that he wasn't alone. It was broad daylight, the sun flattening the perspectives of the Dumpsters that dotted the length of the alley and casting the lines of the overhead fire escapes into sharp lines on the ground. Methos slid a hand under the fold of his coat, reaching for his gun. His stalker had found him.
"You might as well come out." He turned, ready to draw but keeping his posture relaxed and his movements slow. "Who are you?"
Deliberately, the speaker cleared the corner and stepped fully into the alley. A black trench coat swirled around his legs, his long black hair was pulled back into a pony tail, and his face was set in a mask of concentration. His answer came through a voice synthesizer.
"I am Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod and I'm here for your head."
For all the contingencies he planned, all the encounters he imagined and worked through in advance, he'd never seen this one coming. Methos let out a deep sigh and dropped his hand. "No, you're not," he answered. He eyed up the very mortal man standing opposite him. "And, no you aren't."
The man twitched, this clearly not being the response he'd anticipated either. "I could be!" From the folds of his coat, he pulled out a katana and twirled it with a flourish. Light flashed across the walls of the alley from the odd texturing of the blade and the air whistled as the sword cut too quickly through it. Methos blinked at the realization that the man was whirling around an aluminum sword, one so flimsy that it was likely to get bent while he carried it.
"I Challenge you!" the man intoned. "Winner take all!"
A glance up and down the alley revealed that they were alone here. Oh, what Methos wouldn't give for Mrs. Malloy to try to hook him up with her granddaughter right about now. The man moved closer, swishing the 'sword' back and forth in front of him. With each step, his initial similarity to MacLeod diminished, and soon all Methos could see was a stocky, but not especially fit, ruddy skinned man who, quite possibly, was wearing a wig.
"Look, I don't know who you think I am or what you think we're supposed to be doing here…"
"You're Adam Pierson!" The modulator stopped and the man's voice changed to a normal, younger sounding one. The Adam Pierson." Faster than he should've been able to move, he reached again into his coat and pulled out a rectangle of paper, which he held out for Methos to see. Though it had been printed with the telling streaks of an ink-jet printer, Methos immediately recognized himself in the picture, and the longer hairstyle indeed marked it as from his early Adam Pierson era. "I'd hoped to get you to sign it, though I thought it probably wasn't best to start with that." Puffing up his chest, he fumbled to turn the synthesizer back on before intoning again, "I am Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod and I'm here for your autograph." The laugh that followed was both self-conscious and too loud.
"You did all this for an autograph. What makes you think I give autographs?"
The man's face dropped, a series of hard swallows showing his fight to compose himself. "Your work," he answered. "I've never seen anything like it." He swallowed again and tucked both the fake sword and the photo back into his coat. "I've read through all the source material and matched as many details as I could. Look." Turning his head, he pointed at the Celtic knot patterned clip that held his ponytail back. "It's a perfect match."
But, no matter how much he wanted to ignore this man, practically everything that came out of his mouth jangled more mental alarm bells. "Sorry, did you say 'source material'?" he asked.
"Yeah. Do you have any idea how hard it's been to track the info down? I've been searching for years and hardly anyone knows anything. What happened, did the Kickstarter bomb? 'Cause I got some ideas about how you could get more start up funds. 'Cause, lemme tell ya, dude, you've got something here."
The alarm bells had stopped, in the same way—and for the same reasons—as the Church bells were silenced at the height of the Plague. Pick a plague, any plague.
Once again, he glanced around, this time overtly. "You know, this really isn't the place. Someone could get the wrong idea of what we're doing out here. There's a bar down the street—"
The man pumped his arm in triumph. "Yes!"
"Pardon?"
"It's just, if you're inviting me for a drink, that means I made the first cut, right? You're not going all Simon Cowell on me, so that's a good sign." His brow suddenly creased in worry. "I don't really have more material prepared, though. Crap, maybe I shouldn't've admitted that. What I mean is, I really only know this character. He's my favorite." He smiled broadly, revealing a mouthful of very straight, very white teeth.
Methos opened his own mouth, then closed it again. He had to find out what this guy knew, and—more importantly—how he knew anything at all. "What a coincidence. He's my favorite too," he finally managed. "Why don't you stop and pick up a marker that can write on glossy paper, and I'll meet you at the bar."
The bar was technically open when Methos arrived, though only one car sat in the customer parking lot. He burst in the door—gaze tracking immediately to the bar where he expected to find Joe working—and nearly collided with a young woman who stood just inside. She wore slacks and a blouse, dressed up by bar standards, and overdressed in comparison to Joe's jeans and polo.
"…by Friday, at the latest," Joe was saying. His hand was clasped in the woman's in a friendly handshake. "There is still the matter of the NDA, though." He gestured to table behind him, on which lay a spread of papers and his open laptop. "We can't proceed without that … or without you meeting [Ben]. He's one of our regulars, and his timing, as always, could use a little work." He scowled at Methos, who scowled right back. One interrupted interview was already not the worst thing to happen today, though Joe had no way to knowing that yet.
"An NDA is extremely irregular for a bartending job," the woman replied. "I don't suppose—"
Before she could finish asking her question, Methos tugged Joe aside as urgently as he could without toppling him over. The seeds of a plan had begun to germinate. "Joe, we have a problem," he said, sotto voce.
The woman cleared her throat. "—about this NDA—"
"The kind of problem that carries a sword?" Joe guessed.
Methos hesitated, unsure how to address that with the woman standing right there. And she was still hovering by the door, either uncertain as to whether she should stick around to keep pressing her point, or a victim of her curiosity. "More like the kind of problem that should have a tattoo … and doesn't."
"What does that mean?" Joe hissed.
There was no way to do it. Methos turned to the woman, offering her a belated, if sincere, apologetic smile. "You want to know why the NDA is necessary, don't you? How would you like to find out?" he said. "Show us how you can handle yourself in an … unusual situation."
Her eyes lit up, and Methos made a mental note to be as inconsistent with his personal information around her as she could.
With a flourish, he too pointed at the form that lay in open view on top of the papers. Her reluctance vanished; she scrawled her signature and the date without reading the details of the agreement, then slammed the pen down in triumph.
"That'll do," Methos said. "Now grab a seat." He ushered them both back toward the table, grabbing another chair on the way. Its feet shrieked across the hardwood flooring as he hastily rearranged the configuration of chairs and table. "I've just been Challenged by a man—a mortal, in case you were wondering—who knows way more about us than he should. As if that's not bad enough, he's also under the impression that we're all part of some kind of game." He frowned at the poorness of his word choice. "In a manner of speaking."
"Sorry, what?" the woman answered.
Just then, the bar door swung open and the man-in-question entered, peering around the interior with an expression of pure awe. "Holy shit! I mean, crap. What a great place! Dark, lots of secret places to sit. You got a fireplace? I swear I can smell woodsmoke." He sniffed the air and gave a satisfied nod before letting the door swing shut behind him. "So, I'm Skylar. Skylar Niles. That's my real name, but once I know for sure what character I'll be playing, I'd prefer you use that one."
Somehow Joe managed to choke back his snicker at the sight of the Skylar with long coat open and aluminum foil sword clearly visible within.
Methos rose, ready to make what introductions he could when Skylar's enthusiasm beat him to that, too.
"I know you! You're Joseph Dawson," he proclaimed, leaping the remaining the distance across the floor to shake Joe's hand. "Your backstory is so tragic. I'd love to talk to you sometime about how you came up with it." He turned then to the woman, leaving Joe in open-mouthed wordlessness, and studied her for a second before frowning in defeat. "I'm afraid I don't know you."
She smiled blandly and folded her hands on the table. "There's a reason for that."
Methos straightened up at her words, both for their delightful ambiguity and for the slightly condescending delivery that complicated them even more.
Whatever Skylar heard her say, he nodded at like it was a shared conspiracy.
Extending her own hand, she introduced herself as Nicole. No last name. And, unbidden, Methos' gaze darted to the others paper on the table to check if that was her name. It was, but Methos still wasn't certain he believed her.
"I think we could all use some drinks," Joe stated, pulling himself together. Though he shuffled to the bar with his unique gait, Skylar was too busy trying to figure out how to sit down without crushing his sword to notice.
"So, Skylar," Methos began, "why don't you tell us about yourself, since you know so much about us already."
"What can I say? I'm just a gamer guy. It exists, I play it: tabletops, video games, card games, RPGs. I've been trying to break into the game publishing market, but it's a tough one. Very cutthroat, if you catch my drift." He smirked at his own word choice.
Joe thumped the drinks down on the table; the bottle of beer he'd brought of Skylar overbalanced and threatened to tip into his lap. Methos caught it before it did, but only because letting it spill would've been a waste of beer. Really.
Surprisingly, the rest of the story had to be pulled from Skylar with prodding questions and a lot of backtracking to fill in the details he'd somehow decided weren't important. It turned out that, as part of his gaming hobby, Skylar spent a lot of time digging through thrift stores and junk sales for old material. In one such sale, he'd found a box of discarded books. And in one of those books was a CD-ROM loaded with character sheets, world-building info, and explanations of rules for a game he'd never heard of.
"This disc you found," Methos stated, resolutely not cutting a glance at Joe while he said it, "did you, by any chance, make copies?"
"Well, yeah," Skylar answered. Where he'd been attentive to, and interested in, the "interview" before, now he developed an intensity that cast its own energy. His leg started to jitter. "People need to know about this. It's gonna be the next big thing. The next—" He frowned, his eyes darting about as he searched his mind and the dark corners of Joe's bar for an answer— "Dungeons and Dragons! No, better than D&D. It's gonna be the next Star Wars. People are gonna make a religion out of this!"
All sounds faded behind the thudding of Methos' heart in his ears. As surprised as he'd been all those years ago to learn that Don knew what CD-ROMs were, it should've occurred to him that if Don knew how to make one disc, he also knew how to make two. All this time, there'd been a back-up, one sitting right inside the bookshop, and he'd never found it, never looked for it—and how it was out in the wild.
"…thought that I shouldn't share the copies without getting permission. You know, if I could. And I wanted to lay my claim to the best character. So, here I am. What do you think? Will you guys accept me into the game? And can I play Duncan MacLeod?"
The question was still hanging in the air when the feeling of an approaching immortal made Methos tense. Joe knew the look well, and had apparently been expecting it. He glanced at his watch. "We do have another candidate coming in, any minute now."
On cue, the bar door swung open and a new man strode into the room. He wore only jeans and a flowing shirt, no jacket, no sign of a sword. His hair was short and unadorned. Like a spotlight, all the attention in the room centered on him, and everyone immediately recognized the real Duncan MacLeod.
His presence here could only mean that when Joe had gone for the drinks, he'd also made a phone call. Even Duncan's timing wasn't that perfect.
Skylar wilted.
Reaching back, he tugged the Celtic hair tie off his head and let it drop to the table. "Forget it," he said. "I can't compete against that guy." Then he stood up. "Hey, man," he said, "I gotta admire your interpretation. Risky, but bold. There's no way you won't be the One."
To his credit, Duncan managed to not sputter in indignation as he looked Skylar up and down. "Nice look," he answered. Now taking in Joe, Methos, Nicole, and the fake interview setup, he added a further, "I should have guessed you were part of this Mmm-mister."
"Why don't you take a seat, and we'll be with you in a minute," Methos suggested, waving Duncan toward the bar. He wasn't going to acknowledge Duncan's near-slip; the less attention paid to it, the better. Especially in the current company.
Taking his last—and first—sip of beer, Skylar started to leave.
"Wait," Methos grabbed Skylar's sleeve and tugged him back to his seat. "The disc you found: that was supposed to be proprietary information, only for a select group of people to see. The fact that it ended up in a thrift store, of all places, was a grievous mistake." His grievous mistake, and therefore his responsibility to fix. "But now you've seen it so we can't just let you leave."
For the first time, Skylar showed a hint of fear. "I won't say anything," he promised. "I mean, it's not like anyone has listened to me yet."
"We will need you to sign a non-disclosure agreement, of course," Nicole interjected. As she reached for the pen, the sleeve of her sweater rode up, revealing a small Ankh tattooed in the middle of her forearm. And that was the last piece Methos needed.
He hid his smile in a swig of beer. "And one more thing. While we're not going to be able to give you the part of Duncan MacLeod, perhaps we can come up with one for you. In time."
"Really?" Skylar jumped up again. His sword struck the edge of the table and crumpled in half.
"I'm afraid I no longer have the time or inclination to dedicate to the content on that CD-ROM. But I think you might be the right person to take over developing that game. Under our supervision and veto power, of course."
Skylar's whole body was quivering now, like he wanted to be nodding along, but was afraid to show too much agreement too quickly.
"That means, you're going to need a Watcher. Skylar, meet Nicole."
"Watcher?" Nicole asked. "What's a Watcher?"
Her question was drowned in the cheer Skylar loosed. "YES! I'm in! I get to be an IMMORTAL!"
Well, no, he wasn't. Nor would he ever be one. However, as long as he kept everything to himself, he could believe whatever he wanted.
While Skylar danced around, Joe gathered up the loose papers and the laptop; all the interviews were over. "Come on," he said to Nicole. "Since it looks like you're part of the family now, we'd better get the rest of your paperwork straightened out. Let's step into my office and I'll explain your duties." To Methos, he added, "You'd better know what you're doing."
"All I know is that hopefully he's forgotten he came here for my autograph," Methos responded.