Chapter
VI
Sarah sat there in disbelief. She had just seen her best
friend nearly disappear before her very eyes, simply by putting on some mirror
sunglasses that had miraculously appeared at his house overnight. Her mind ran
through all possibilities. Holographic projector? If it was 2010 and not 2002,
she might have thought so. A Spartan bedroom left her with no nifty fancy
things that could have been playing tricks in her mind, so she immediately
discounted that. She looked at her shades. Were these like Eric's shades? Only
testing would tell, but… Something about this seemed vaguely dangerous;
something Sarah couldn't quite put her finger on it.
Sarah put the shades to her face. It was now or never,
this would be a major turning point in the world for weirdness, almost as weird
as the time Eric tried to do a science project at the Science Project Expo
about the future of the world and ended up setting fire…to the nitroglycerin
cases he was using to power a water maker, causing it to explode and burn
several projects down. Eric was banned from future Expos.
Sarah slowly put her shades on. Right when it was about to
slip over her ears, Eric started muttering something about looking like Trinity
and put his arm on Sarah's hand. "I think you have to think about where you
want to go. I guess I'll be seeing you in the SFA world? I wanna head back
there again. This is gonna be cool…" Eric said with a goofy grin. "Cheerio!" He
said as he walked out of the window, slipping his shades over his noggin as he
went.
"Eric!" Sarah screamed. She threw the shades aside and ran
to the window. Looking over the edge, she saw a blurry figure disappear as it
hit the ground.
This was it. Now or never. She walked back over to her
shades' resting place on the floor and picked them up. Deciding it was going to
be faster if she didn't sweat hesitation, she focused on the Circuit City new
announcements board's SFA picture.
Almost immediately she felt her world going hazy, like
viewing everything through a thin layer of gauze. Soon, white wisps were coming
to obscure everything else even further, and it became extremely disorienting.
Soon enough, however, her vision clouded completely and cleared as she saw
herself standing at the top of a giant mountain, looking over the same rural
village Eric saw earlier. Eric was to her right, massaging his back.
"Ow," he grimaced standing up. "I hit the ground before I
disappeared. Do you know how much it hurts to land on your back from 15 feet
up? Thank god for all of those leaves outside your window."
"Ok, Eric, this is far enough! I don't know how this is
going on, but you can wake me when we all come back to reality." Sarah shrieked
desperately, reaching to pull her shades off.
"Oh, this is reality. It can't be a dream. How many dreams
have you had where you can remember having non-vision senses?" Eric had struck
a soft spot as Sarah removed her hand from her face; she couldn't remember a
single dream. Sarah couldn't believe it. Mysterious transportation to another
world, and Eric was reveling in it. So maybe those 1,347 letters to Sony asking
to be in a game WEREN'T all jokes…
"Anyway, I'm heading down there and shooting it with the
locals, care to join me? Better figure out where we are…" Eric said cheerfully.
Truth be told, Eric still wasn't used to this, but… the undeniable coolness of
it all pulled him back for more. Along with a few grudging remarks about the
impossibility of the situation, Sarah came too.
Sure enough, about 45 seconds passed when they ran into a
triceratops creature. Mustering what little courage was left after the school
idiots got through with him; Eric started to speak.
"Um…er…triceratops…um…dude, can you tell me where me and
my friend are?" At this the triceratops creature looked over and rolled his
eyes. Sarah would have done the same if the sheer abnormality of it all hadn't
robbed her of her ability to communicate intelligently.
"You don't get around much, do you?" The triceratops said,
half annoyed. "I can't even believe you don't recognize me, I'm Prince Tricky,
Prince of Dinosaur Planet, and a member of the Earthwalker race."
"Yeah, well, that wasn't my question, royal
pain-in-the-butt, I ask for something politely and I get my head bitten off!
Maybe I oughta shorten those horns…or something…" Eric said, now very annoyed.
Do all nobles have to be total snobs? He thought.
"Ho, you'll not get away with that for long!"
"Just watch me!"…
This went on for quite some time before Sarah lost her
temper. "Enough! She yelled. Then, to Eric specifically, she said, "Seriously,
Eric, you come all this way only to argue with the locals? Let's all settle
this like civilized… um…" She almost said, "human beings," but caught herself.
"…people."
"Okay…" Eric grumbled, still eying Tricky dubiously. "So you say
we're on Dinosaur Planet? Who's in charge here?"
"Krystal, made Princess of
Dinosaur Planet after Sir Fox McCloud saved us two years ago. Say, you look a
lot like him, except for a lack of fur and a different shaped head. Anyway, the
main city is that way-" He moved a massive foot to the north. "-and you might
run into one of them there if you have questions."
"Er… Yeah. Anyway, thanks." Eric said before walking off.
"Eric, I think you
seriously oughta work on your people skills. Every job requires some social
interaction." Sarah said after the encounter.
"You don't even think
it's slightly weird that we're going and talking with prehistoric dinosaurs?"
Eric inquired.
"Well, since we're in
dreamland anyway…" Sarah trailed off.
They began walking north
for a while, after about a half hour they stopped to take a break. "Crap, this
is still giving me the heebie-jeebies." Eric complained.
Sarah was about to answer
when a rustling behind the bushes startled her. "Eric! Watch out!" She screamed
as a figure burst from the bushes and launched itself at Eric. Tumbling over
the ground, Eric fought to get to his feet and face the creature.
Unfortunately, the other being was already up at its feet
and Eric was still fumbling. He managed to clumsily block a blow before an
uppercut to Eric's stomach brought him to his knees. Sarah screamed as a
familiar sound of a hammer of the gun clicking during hasty focus aimed itself
at Eric's head.
"Don't come any closer, you'd
be surprised at how fast I can change aim." The voice… it sounded… familiar, to
Eric, who was looking down, but Sarah knew what she saw. A fox-like creature
upright, with light brown fur and a white streak down the top of its head.
Eric dared a peek looking
up, and involuntarily nudged backward. The things gun was now centered squarely
between it's eyes, and a trigger happy finger seemed more than happy to be able
to switch between Eric and Sarah in a heartbeat.
"Get away from me, you
freaky… fox… mutation… THING!" Eric screamed. Eric's life was flashing before
his eyes. The being caught something along the lines of, "I don't wanna die…"
from Eric's fractured brain.
"Well now, that's a bit degrading, is it not?" the creature
said, cocking an eyebrow.
"W-h-h-o-o-o are y-y-y-o-o-u?" Sarah stuttered.
"Sir Fox McCloud,
knighted by General Pepper of the Cornarian Army."
"Holy crap…" Eric's voice
sounded foreign to him, it was so pale and weak. Fox's sensitive ears twitched,
but didn't hear anything coherent.
"What did you say?" Fox
said, squinting his eyes."
"You have no idea how
good I am with you at Super Smash Bros. Melee," Eric felt like saying, but he
really just said, "Nothing, er, can we go now? All we were trying to do was go
to the Capital City…"
"Let me check you for
weapons, we get a lot of suspicious looking folk, and seeing as you are
two-of-a-kind…"
Eric complained, but let Fox search him. All Fox really
found was a wallet with twelve dollars in it, his house key and his student ID…
"Eric Shroud, 13," Fox muttered, ignoring the rest of the
card. "A bit young for adventuring around out here, no?" He said. "He checked
the card some more. "Whitford Middle School? That'll have to run through the
records, I can't remember any school named Whitford. ID#… 783421? Another
archive check. Other than that, you're free to go," Fox finished, giving Eric
back his wallet. "These are dangerous times, rumors going around, we're
checking the rumors authenticity."
"What are they? And if
they're true…?" Eric inquired, nursing his seriously damaged pride."
"Sorry, kid, not at liberty to discuss that. Maybe we'll
meet again; uh oh…"
"What?" Eric turned around, and saw what. A gigantic horde
of animals, all walking upright and carrying very human appearances, save maybe
fur and the head, all female, were rushing at Fox, screaming things that Sarah
caught on the breeze as, "It's Fox McCloud!" "Our savior!" "The leader of the
SF team…" Fox made a rather hasty exit just then, as the onrushing mob just
tossed Eric and Sarah aside like rag dolls. Still, Eric couldn't shake the fact
that Fox had made one last backward glance at him. "I think the SPCA got
waylaid," Eric muttered sarcastically. Sarah cracked up. "We'd better head down
the capital city, see what Fox was up to…"
Little did they know what exactly had been on Fox's mind
that brief conversation.