The Legend of Bart, Chapter 1

Bart blinked his eyes, his vision filled with a vast sheet of empty blue, then rolled up off the dirt onto his feet. "What a night," he murmured to himself. These LARP events were always a blast – his personal mantra was that if you didn't come home dead tired after a multi-day event, you weren't doing it right. He was standing with his kite shield in a large dirt clearing with masses of trees around him. These trees didn't look quite like the pine trees that he was used to, though, they were far too close. It was like one of those English hedge mazes, but with the mouth of a cave on the corner.

"Hey, guys!" He looked all around him, but no answer was forthcoming.

"Helloooo! Heeello!" He could see some trees that blocked his vision to both sides and in front of him, off in the distance there were some sort of large red things wandering about. The cave seemed like an obvious place to start – caves made great headquarters and you could usually find an NPC in one.

An old man stood in the cave, fires burning on either side of him. "It's dangerous to go alone! Take this," he said. A sword lay on the ground in front of him.

"Cool," Bart said. He picked up the sword and his eyes widened. This one had some actual real heft to it, this was no boffer weapon! He held it in both hands and swung it around in front of him, marveling at how it felt. It was a great sword, but highly impractical. He could see that the edge was bright and shiny, obviously sharp and likely to chip as soon as he hit anything, and of course he couldn't use it in the boffer fights. "Uhm, thanks, but am I really supposed to take this?"

The old man stood there, regarding him impassively. "You want me to take this?" He looked at the old man and waved his hand. Bart held up his left hand, fingers crossed, in the "I'm out of character" signal for the LARP. "Look, this is obviously expensive and someone is going to be missing it. Are you certain that you wanted me to take this?" The old man continued to regard him impassively, not saying anything.

"Ok, then I guess this was really what you meant when you said that it was dangerous to go alone and that I should take this." He backed slowly out of the cave, giving the old man plenty of time to say something else, expecting a further challenge to be issued any moment. He bBarted in the sunlight as he exited the cave, feeling as though he'd missed something. Well, if he had to pick a direction, it would be to go see what those red things were in the distance.

They were amazing animatronic works, trundling along, shooting some sort of brown balloon, filled with talcum powder that burst on impact, although they must be assembling the balloons inside, surely they were too small to hold much in them. He ambled forward for a closer look and one of the brown balls bounced off his shield, knocking him slightly off balance for a moment. Those weren't balloons, they were much harder. Perhaps this was what the sword was for. He held it out in front of him, swinging it around like a baseball bat and suddenly a phantom image of his sword projected out in front of him and impacted a creature! With a flash of light, the creature vaporized, leaving not a trace behind it other than its footprints in the dirt.

He stood there in shock. "What the," he started to say, when another ball hit him in the stomach, knocking him off his feet. A wave of nausea swept over him and he had the distinct sense that he was weaker now. He swung his sword around again and nothing happened. "I must have, I." As he stood there, another ball slammed into his unprotected right side and another hit him from behind. He coughed and was surprised to see some red drops fly from his mouth into the dirt in front of him. He turned his aching body and furiously brought the sword down onto a creature. It also vaporized and disappeared. A brusque treatment of the third creature left him alone in the clearing until a fourth creature that he hadn't noticed among the bushes walked into him. It touch burned like fire and, as he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, he felt himself falling backward.

Bart blinked his eyes, his vision filled with a vast sheet of empty blue, then rolled up off the dirt onto his feet. He was back where he'd started, but with this difference, he held his new sword in one hand and the shield in the other hand. He stormed into the cave to confront the NPC. "What happened out there, what are those?!" The NPC stood there as impassively as before, seeming to look off into the distance, not at Bart at all. "No, seriously, out of character, what's going on here?" Bart waved his sword in front of the NPC's face. "Come on, out of character, snap out of it." He put his sword into his left hand, awkwardly holding both the sword and shield and clapped the NPC on the shoulder. "This is just getting crazy," he started to say, but the NPC suddenly blinked out of existence, and a moment later a fireball shot out of one of the fires and slammed into him.

His mind filled with a sense of pain and as he screamed the stench of burning flesh assaulted his nostrils. "Medic!" He tripped over his feet as he started to back away and a fireball from the other fire hit him in the other side. He rolled over on the ground, onto the sword. His eyes closed as he could feel his bowels emptying and another fireball slammed into his hair.

Bart blinked his eyes, his vision filled with a vast sheet of empty blue, then rolled up off the dirt onto his feet. He was back where he'd started, but with this difference, there weren't any wounds, only the memory of them remained. This must be Hell. Either that or someone had kidnapped him. He looked at the row of trees ahead of him and decided that if they wanted him to follow the path, he was done with that. He started hacking at the trees in front of him but his sword passed uselessly right through them as though they weren't real. He threw his sword and shield to the ground and thrust himself into the trees, grabbing as high as he could and lifting, scrabbling for a higher branch to step on, and his vision blacked out.

Bart blinked his eyes, his vision filled with a vast sheet of empty blue, then rolled up off the dirt onto his feet. He was back where he'd started, but with this difference, his sword and shield were back in his hands. Maybe that webcomic had been right, maybe people really did want to experiment on geeks. Maybe he was in some sort of virtual reality world. He cursed and glared around angrily, looking for someone to take his anger out on. He must have been kidnapped, that was the only explanation. Well, if they wanted him to go explore, then that must be what he'd have to do. He'd play their game, for now, but only until he figured out how to break out.