Diablo 2 Fan Fic
"I never would have thought it if I didn't see it," Lloyd Kramer said to the psychiatrist. "But I swear it really happened."
The psychiatrist eyed him carefully.
"What really happened, Kramer?" she asked.
Kramer cracked his knuckles.
"Promise not to send me to the psychiatric ward?" he asked. "'Cause if you do, I'll just go back to the place that caused all these problems."
The psychiatrist nodded, eyebrows raised, and Lloyd Kramer began his long, bizarre story.
"I suppose it actually started, for me anyway, the day my Father went missing on his way back from the Community College. Father always liked to learn new things: he had a doctorate degree in biology, worked on-field for the laboratory, and he still took classes at the college, just to stretch his brain out. His classmates said he went to the library to do some sort of research, and that was the last anyone ever saw of him. I still have his little Nissan. Father and his car. Father and his anything..."
Kramer straightened in his seat.
"Okay," he said. "the actual problem started the night my son Colt went to his friend Bryson's house. We'd actually been sending him to a psychiatrist of his own for chronic depression and apathy. He never liked to do anything. He'd date here and there, but he spent most of his time and all his money on computer games. I tried taking them away, but that only worked until he bought his own Playstation and put a lock on his door."
Kramer's expression went to one of nearly nostalgia.
"I promise my room wasn't as messy as his was before that night when I was his age. My father would never have let me use up all my time like that. Ever. Wouldn't have happened. But Colt wouldn't respond to his mother telling him to please-oh-pretty-please brush his hair, please-oh-pretty-please cut his hair. His grades were terrible, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. The only things he'd do were watch movies, especially Lord of the Rings, and play video games.
'Finally, he found a few friends who were just as hopeless as he was, and Bryson invited him to a 'gamer' party, where they'd all plug their computers into a terminal and play game after game after game until their minds were squishy inside and two plus two equals seven. But at least he would be having social interaction. So I let him."
Kramer leaned up on one knee, almost confidentially.
"Colt stuttered all the time before he left to that Gamer's night. S-s-s-tuttered."
It didn't seem so much a mockery as a demonstration and a memory.
"I thought nothing of it except that he would be gone for three days and I wouldn't have to feed him. Bryson lived in his own apartment, anyway. Colt should have moved out, gone to school, etcetera, but no. He wanted to sit upstairs and plug his brain in forever.
'But he came back after just a few hours. I will remember that experience for the rest of my life. Pre-gamer-night, he hunched, wore his glasses dirty, grew facial hair in all the wrong places and never bothered to fix it, and walked like he thought everyone would smack him upside the head if he looked them in the eyes. Post-gamer-night, I didn't even recognize him. I wondered if some old classmates had kidnapped him via transportation and dragged him to the mall for a makeover or something. He walked like my father used to walk: tall, strong, not proud, exactly, but noble. Back straight, eyes directly forward. He still wore the same clothing, but he had shaved except for a tidy bit on his chin."
Kramer lay back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.
"He looked me straight in the eyes for the first time in years.
'Hi, Dad,' was all he said, and he went upstairs, a totally different person. He came downstairs about an hour later in much better dress. Not conservative, but stylish. Something girls would look at twice. He still wore his hair shaggy, but he actually brushed it and made it look intentional instead of neglected.
'Within three days, he had a better job and moved to his own apartment, within two weeks, a better car. When the community college spring semester started, he'd enrolled in their engineering prerequisites, taking all the remedial courses online to make up for his bad grades in high school.
'The only thing he didn't do was date. Never. No girls came home with him, and he never went out with any. I finally asked him, I said "Hey Colt, you've been absolutely awesome in the last little while, but, if you don't mind my asking, why aren't you dating.
'He again, looking me straight in the eyes, said'
'Dad, that is my own business. I apologize if it offends you."
"And he left it at that. I had no clue what to say about it. I would have just left it at that, me ending up with one football son and an engineering son, but his apartment landlord either died or something happened with the building, and Colt needed a place to stay for about a week. I gave him his old room again, and, upon coming home from work one evening-I work really late on Thursday evenings-I saw a bizarre bluish light coming from underneath the door to his room. I knocked-no answer. I picked the lock. I know I shouldn't have, but I thought, if he's leaving the television on and he's asleep, I should shut it off.
'But it wasn't the television. I don't even know how to describe it. It stood about a foot taller than I am, a brilliant, oval shaped... door. There's nothing else to call it. And it glowed blue, with little whitish flames licking up the sides. It didn't burn the carpet or anything, it just hung there, five inches off the ground, and I couldn't figure out what it was. So I put a pole through it. Nothing happened to it, so I poked a head in."
Kramer paused, remembering what he'd seen through the odd blue door.
"It had been snowing outside. At least three feet of snow covered the lawn-he'd shoveled the walk, apparently, but a little covering had built back up already on it. But the place on the other side of the portal-I found out that's what it officially is called, later-it felt like 110 degrees. Sand. Sun. Ocean. And a very Middle-Eastern-looking man walking a few feet away. Maybe I should have turned around and gone back. Maybe I should have stopped. I don't know. But I kept going. I went through the portal and asked the man if he'd seen my son. But of course, he didn't understand English. He seemed nice, of course, and pulled me over to an old, nearly bald guy around the corner. They talked for a few seconds in some language I totally Did. Not. Understand. The older man finally turned to me and said, with quite an accent,
'You speak Misuri?, pronounced 'Mee-soo-ree', with slightly shorter sounds."
"I speak English...?" I told him, "And French, a little bit.'
'He seemed to understand what I was saying.
'You speak the language of the Misuri. Do they call it English where you are from?"
"Who are the Misuri?" I wish I had never asked. I really wish I had never asked.
"Gandalf, their leader, owns the Desert Rain. I will take you to him. My name is Deckard Cain. With that the younger man bowed lightly and went back to his business. Cain led me up one street and down another a few times until we arrived at a big building with the name written in really weird symbols.
We entered.
At the counter, a young, almost India-Indian-looking woman stood talking to a customer. She actually giggled at my outfit! Cain said a few words to her; I only caught 'Gandalf'. She called up the stairs for him. I heard a fairly loud clunking, and a tall man with my father's eyes and hairline, ten years younger than me, if that, wearing robes and some kind of fancy metal thing around his head.
The expression on his face when he saw me bordered somewhere between a laugh he was trying to keep inside, frustration, and exasperation. He kissed the Indian woman, pulled up a little dark-skinned girl onto the counter and said a few words to Cain. Cain chuckled and left the building. Finally, this 'Gandalf' turned and addressed me personally. I should have known from just the fact that he looked like me and my father, but it didn't click. He looked a whole twenty years older. The first thing he said to me:
"Come, speak with me in the garden." With the air of almost nobility, he turned to go around the staircase, pausing only to kiss the little girl on the forehead.
"I walked with Gandalf in their back garden. He walked like Colt did now, after the gamer-night, but it couldn't be Colt. There had to be at least a ten-year difference between the two.
"So, Chi-chi-wei, I mean Dad, why did you pick my lock on my bedroom door?"
'He didn't want an excuse. He wanted an answer. This guy, strong, very weather-worn, and just the sort of person I would be too scared to want to talk to at a business conference, just called me Dad.
"Colt?" I gasped.
"I am your son, Colt James Kramer, yes. Here I am Gandalf the Paladin. Yes it's from Lord of the Rings."
"I was about to protest the insanity of it all when a dark-skinned boy, about eight years old, came running down the path, yelling 'Chi-chi-wei! Chi-chi-wei!' Colt/Gandalf knelt down with the little kid, who proudly showed off something in his hand, chattering away in their language about how he found whatever it was he'd found. Colt/Gandalf praised him, said something that sounded like a promise-whatever it was, the kid's eyes lit up like little black lanterns at it- and ran off back to the Inn.
"That is why I haven't been dating, Dad." Colt explained. "The woman in there, Shi-shi, is my wife. That's my son Aragorn, also from Lord of the Rings. The little girl in there is Gimli, we call her "Gimi". Naming her Arwen seemed incestuous and I never really liked Galadriel, anyway."
Kramer sat quiet for a few seconds.
"Gimi had to be at least five, and Aragorun eight. I had an eight-year-old grandson from a kid that should only be twenty, meaning he would have been twelve when he had Aragorun. Anyone seeing us together and hearing him address me as 'Dad' would have thought it was either honorific or I was ten when I had Colt.
"Colt,' I said, "Colt, what IS this? You're a different age, you have a wife, kids, a title. Cain said you own the Desert Pearl...
"Desert Rain, Dad. Desert Rain. Elzix ..." -I actually saw his eyes go teary for a split-second- 'Elzix gave it to me when he died. Personally, I think it's only the Horadric keeping Deki alive. He should have died a long time ago. I'm surprised he didn't die in Tristram!"
'Colt paused. He had the look of someone who had gone through a lot of life in the last little while. But he shook himself out of it and hollered over to the gardener in the weird language. The little man grinned and took off toward the house.
"I told Deki to find the other Misuri, but I forgot to tell the kitchen to start work on the feast to celebrate 'an old friend's' appearance here in Lut Gholein None of them have gone back to Earth since coming here except for me. Tyrael set up a rather warped time-continuum so I can be Colt Kramer-age-twenty in Missouri, and Gandalf the Paladin here in Lut Gholein. 'Saved me a lot of explaining. By the time Tyrael set it up, we'd already been here seven years. "
'That explained the age difference, and no, he wouldn't have been twelve when he had Aragorun. He would have been three.
'Colt kept going. "Every time I go back there, time stops here. Every time I come home, only one night goes by, no matter how much time I spend there."
'He'd called Missouri 'there' and called here 'home." And rightly so. He had a wife, his own business, and two kids!
"So, where did you meet Sushi?" I asked him. Something about the name sounded wrong, but I couldn't quite place it.
"You mean Shi-shi? Dad, Sushi is raw fish, even on Earth. You know that." He muttered something about his wife and raw fish and continued.
"Promise not to freak out?" he asked. I nodded, wondering what he was talking about.
"First time we went through the Arcane Sanctuary Quest, we, the Misuri, had to pass through the Palace Harem..."
"Harem! You found her in a HAREM!?"
"...let me finish. The demons let loose by the Horazon impersonator had killed off everyone but one girl. She'd hidden under a bed behind walls of pillows. When we went through and destroyed the monsters, Dane's weird vine found her, and I pulled her out. Yes, she was from the Harem-so what? Her mother had sent her there as an infant to pay off some debt or other. I took her back to Lut Gholein and put her in the care of Fara and Atma. She begged to follow me to Kurast.) Meshif had never stopped bragging about what a nice place it was, so we let her come. She actually packed herself in my stash to come with me to the Pandemonium Fortress, and of course I had to take her to Harrogath with me from there. After that... well, if my Mercenary Waru could come with us to the Nightmare level and on to Hell level, so could Shi-shi. The furniture was all in different places in those levels, so someone like Shi-shi couldn't hide there."
"Well, he seemed to know what he was talking about. I had no clue. How could someone's vine find someone?
"Colt, is this some sort of parallel universe?"
"It's a game-world that... somehow... is real. The day I went to Bryson's house, we had a whole list of games that we were going to play. The first one was Diablo 2. There was me, Bryson, his older brother Cameron, Cameron's girlfriend Charlie, Bryson's-then girlfriend-Cassidy, and his other weird friend Samantha from his Martial Arts class. We all made characters. I picked Paladin, Bryson picked Barbarian, Samantha picked Assassin, Cassidy picked Amazon, Cameron chose Necromancer, and Charlie picked Sorceress. We hadn't even left the Rouge Encampment when suddenly, we weren't in Bryson's basement anymore."
'Colt paused there, remembering it.
"We just sort of stood there staring at each other. Charlie actually hugged Cameron and started crying. Warriv started talking to me, the way he does at the beginning of the game, and I had absolutely no clue what he was saying because he was speaking their language. Bryson accidentally backed into the fire and dropped the calculator he'd had in his hand when we'd asuddenly popped up at the Rouge Encampment into the fire.
"Maybe it was because it was from Earth, maybe because of something else, but Dane, our Druid, suddenly appeared, standing in the fire. He freaked out, jumped out of it and started yelling his head off at us in their language. Finally, Charlie cried something about wanting to go home. And, to our surprise, Dane spoke English.
He'd started his Druid character seven years ago and had been daydreaming about an easier way to learn Japanese for a college course. Same thing that happened to us had happened to him, and he went through all three levels by himself. He could tell because we were missing Deki, that we'd pulled him to the 'normal' level again-and he wasn't too happy about that.
"''Colt told the story much better than I am telling it. I think he took a course in Storytelling from somewhere in Lut Gholein.
"Apparently, there was a way for him to return to Earth, but we'd messed it up because we'd appeared here. He started us on the first Quest, showing us the best ways to level up-that guy is still a kazillion levels above the rest of us, and he dubbed himself the 'level-up-Nazi'-and it's true, too. He had all the spells he wanted to use, and his whole army in tip-top condition. Working us through Normal level bored the poor guy to tears. When we found Deckard Cain-Deki-he actually spoke English, which was nice, because Dane was to the point where he'd walk us out and say absolutely nothing the entire time. Poor Dane. I've been back through part of Normal Level once to look for stuff-never did that again. Everything is so squishy!"
"He kept telling me of his adventures. The Misuri were named for Missouri, home state, and they had gone through quest after quest after quest trying to rid this little planet of Evil. After three times, it finally cleared, creating the world they had now. He'd met the former owner of the Inn the first time around, and had become friends. In the last difficulty level, after helping to destroy something called the World stone for the last time, he'd come back to Lut Gholein and helped Elzix out. When Elzix died, he gave the Desert Rain to Colt, and he and Shi-shi had started up a family and stayed in contact with the rest of the Misuri.
'Three days later, the meal he'd started setting up the day I arrived had finished. He hadn't just prepared a little meal. He'd invited everyone he knew, plus half the town and rented Atma's public house to fit all the people! He had me go back home and dress in a suit to come here. The clock had said 11:39 when I left. Now it said 11:44. Not a lot of time had gone by here. I dodged my wife-there was no way she would believe me-ran by the grocery store and bought ice cream and a few other things they probably wouldn't have there, put them in the cooler, found my best suit, and went back through the portal. No more than five seconds had passed in Lut Gholein. Colt and I stood at the door, greeting every single person that entered the public house. He introduced me to them and had a servant escort them to their seat. There, I found out that the first man I'd seen here was Warriv.
I saw what the years had done to Bryson-known here as 'Bahn'; he'd given his character the name of 'Strong Man', which flatly didn't work, so he'd decided to go by something else entirely. Given a larger size than his Earth size, Bahn the Barbarian had thoroughly immersed himself into the Barbarian culture. He brought his massive axe with him to the dinner table, his Barbarian-tribe wife Anya at his side looking just as dangerous, followed by five kids-three single births and twin two-year-olds. His oldest, a big girl with wild blond hair and a 'thing' for mace-type weapons, bragged about her dad rescuing her mother from a freeze-spell-and beat everyone else's kids at arm wrestling.
Through the Way point from Kurast glided in Cameron and Charlie, self dubbed 'Sensei and Winry', two graceful geniuses with one adorable little girl that hid behind her mother's dress, but Bahn's daughter bullied everyone except her-the little petite thing could freeze you in your tracks-literally, where your skin turned bluish and you couldn't move until the spell lifted. Right behind them came Yakani and Binni, Sensei and Winry's respective Mercenaries, newlyweds.
Samantha... wasn't in her seat and then, with a bang of one of her traps, she was. She had no mercenary, preferring to blaze her way through things solo. Her black belt from Martial Arts back home still hung around her waist, and black armor alternately covered and revealed. She enjoyed making people look at her, and then spurning them with odd glances.
Cassidy, her constantly dyed-other-than-normal-colors hair on Earth, finally at its real color, a light yellow-brown, bound back in a tight ponytail, her bow still slung on her back. Right behind her towered her mercenary Haseen, still wearing Lut Gholein-style clothing after years of being her guard. Loyal to the end, he'd do anything for her, but they hadn't married or even seemed to go in that direction yet. They'd been working at the Pandemonium Fortress, helping to 'clean the place up a bit,' whatever that meant.
Colt introduced me to dozens of people, but their names sortof slid right past me. Akara, Charsi, Ormus , Malah, and of course, Deckard Cain-Deki.
All seated except one: Dane. Colt started the feast with explaining that Dane had a tendency to be late, and the fact that he hadn't picked a home-town: he'd last been seen tracking something in the jungle, with his Private Stash in Kurast; Sensei had left a note on it a few days ago. Dane checked his stash enough that he probably got the note. Hopefully.
He introduced me as 'One dubbed Bilbo, and old friend from the secret realm of the Misuri,' and everyone cheered for me and asked what my class was. At least, with Colt translating it back and forth. Whatever he told them my class was, they all laughed, and one, 'Gheed' cheered. Whatever he said, it had something to do with me being a businessman... I think.
One single raven flew in through the door and landed on the shelf above the bar, and Colt looked up at it, eyebrows raised, a slight smile creeping up his cheek. A brilliant blast of more ravens and bright light suddenly burst through the doorway, showing off the silhouette of bear standing upright on his hind legs. The lines began to shift, and the bear shrunk to the size of a man in full armor, but the only thing that said he'd actually shrunk was his height relative to the door frame. He could have been a giant with his grandeur. Casually, still with the light blotting out everything but his form, he cracked his neck and removed the helmet, striding into the room in the process, followed as an army off more ravens, one odd snake-shaped plant, a full-size bear, and one full-armor mercenary followed by a quickly dimming white spirit form-the bright light.
"Sorry I'm late, Gandalf-san," Dane said. "I found the note about three minutes ago, hence the armor."
'He strode to his seat and threw booted feet on the table. The mercenary sat with the attitude of a proud butler. One of the ravens perched on his shoulder, and the weird snake-like vine slid up around the chair and seemed to peer blindly around his side. The bear sank into a sitting position at his side-until Bahn's daughter poked it. After that, it went to play with her and the other kids, letting the smaller ones ride around on its back.
'I sat and stared at Dane. It didn't make any sense. He should have been older-as old as Deki or older. But a single lock of the blond hair he'd had as a youth streaked down from his brown back into his long ponytail. His eyes had the slightly beaded look of a bear's eyes now, and a huge, ragged battle scar raked down his right cheek, but the hairline and clear, forward expression had never left, after years of wild battles.
'Dane was my Father. No doubt about it. His hands, held in the same position he'd always folded them at the dinner table, now bore numerous callouses and scars, and magic-rings covered his fingers-all but his wedding ring finger. That still bore the thin little white-gold ring that marked his marriage to my mother, many years ago-more for him. It made no sense for him to be sitting across from me, next to Sensei and Winry, but there he was, using his big, gnarled hands to wield chopsticks with more grace than Sensei's long scholar's fingers.
'The only thing I didn't understand was why he didn't recognize me or say anything to me. He hadn't actually looked in my direction yet at all, so I didn't think he knew I was there. I couldn't get up right then and walk over to him in the middle of this formal dinner! I waited until people started to go home-stuffed to the brims with food. My ice-cream gave everyone a brain-freeze instantly-their mouths weren't used to something that cold. Have you ever seen someone try to eat ice cream with chopsticks? I hadn't thought of that when I brought it. Father pulled it off quite nicely. Sensei's little daughter froze hers even more, into little blocks, and then used her chopsticks to pick up the blocks.
'Finally, I went over to him.
"Uh, Sir?" I said, not sure how to get his attention. He turned from his discussion with Drognan, and faced me.
"Lloyd?!" he gasped. He really hadn't seen me coming in. From this close of an angle, I saw that the scar had also affected his vision in that eye. He couldn't have seen me from where he'd been sitting, anyway. As everything processed in his mind, I could see his brow moving, the way it had as a kid when he had something to figure out.
"Colt is my grandson!?"
'His mercenary, apparently skilled in English, turned from his conversation with Charsi.
"Gandalf? But... how does that work?" the mercenary asked.
"That's what I'm trying to figure out," Father said, tightening his ponytail. Something glistened on the back of his hands. He caught my look because he showed them to me: three perfect gems embedded into the flesh on the back of each hand.
"Larzuk sockets an item after completing the first quest at Harrogath. I, uh, got him to socket my hand instead of an item."
"Doesn't that hurt?"
"Yeah." He paused for a second, exchanging glances with Bahn, who grinned and flashed his own hand with gems embedded into it.
"But it was worth it. Because they're not in a specific item, I get all the benefits from them."
For the next twelve hours, me and my father talked. He was the guide that walked everyone else through the world over and over again. He'd taken out Diablo by himself three times—and never noticed he and Colt were related."
At that point, Kramer stopped talking and looked at the psychiatrist, turning his hands over in a gesture of submission. "What do you think?" he asked.
"I think your mind has come up with a bunch of stuff in an attempt to deal with the loss of your father and your son."
Kramer sighed. "That's what I thought you'd say." he said. He pulled a small scroll bond with blue ribbon out of his pocket and let go of it in midair. A huge oval appeared in the psychiatrist's office and Kramer stood up, opened his hand, and pulled the psychiatrist through to Lut Gholein.