Chapter 14: Plans

John Call looked at The Pride of Clan Hunters through his computer screen. He was sitting in the real world now. Even though he could surpass the maximum time allowed by regular gamers, he seldom did because of the actual risk that would eventually remove his body from his mind.

Standing up and walking around his desk, he studied the administrator's view of the universe inside of DreamLand. Currently there were about 3400 people online, which meant that he had sold about three times that number, if not more. He found that as more of the devices became available, more people decided that they did wanted to own one.

And what was better? The older owners of the Device would keep coming back as soon as possible to spend more and more of their time and money inside of the system. It was perfect!

The profit that John was making on this alone meant that he could retire at any time and live comfortably the rest of his life, but he enjoyed being the head of the company and also enjoyed his reputation while in DreamLand itself. I'm the head of a universe! John thought to himself smugly.

"And next? Everything else…" John said aloud.

Larry rolled up tiredly and stretched to work the kinks out of his muscles. The pains he had gathered in DreamLand quickly began to fade away, and he noticed the time.

Twenty-four hours…Larry thought to himself, Just as well, I have to get to class soon.

Taking a quick shower and gulping down some food, Larry gathered his books up and quickly made for class at a quick trot. He had no desire to oversleep any thing as important as his calculus classes.

As he entered, he peered around the lecture hall and grabbed a seat next to Delaine, who was a graphic arts major. She looked as tired as Larry felt.

Sparing him a sideways glance, she continued to doodle on the sheet of notes that she was planning on using for today's lecture. A slight smile lit up her face, and Larry asked, "What's up?"

"Nothing," she said and continued smiling. Larry almost threw up his arms in frustration. She always did that, and he HATED it.

Peering at the drawing, Larry noticed that it was the beginnings of a figure of feminine qualities that appeared to be sprouting wings, "What's that?"

She grimaced slightly, "You know better then to ask me that! I don't know yet. Hey, wanted to ask you what are you doing this afternoon?"

John motioned to where the large professor was walking in, "Nothing except homework."

She looked at him sideways through her lashes at him, "You want to take another lesson from Genji Take-no-hemi today?"

Larry lowered his voice as the large professor stood ready over the overhead and began shuffling his notes and overheads, "How much will it cost?" he asked.

"Nothing," she whispered back, "It's on me."

Larry cocked his eyebrow, "How much?"

She glared at him dangerously and Larry put up his hands while grasping his pen between his right thumb and forefinger as though to ward off a blow, "Alright alright! I'll go."

Delaine smiled and went back to her notes and began to jot down the formulas that were on the overhead. Larry smirked at her for a moment, and then went back to his own notes and began scrawling down the notes for himself.

Squall Leonhart glared contemptuously out of his icy blue eyes at what was left of the island that had formerly been the base of operations for the Clan Hunters. He was angry enough to grind his teeth, and managed to avoid such a display of emotion by sheer force of will, but his face was so dark that the SeeD candidate that saluted in front of him flinched at that gaze.

"Reports say that this base has already been evacuated by the Clan Hunters, sir."

Squall regained control of his face with some effort and changed what he was about to say, "Anything else?" he asked calmly. Clam like a river is calm.

The SeeD candidate flinched as though Squall had shouted and brandished his gunblade at him, "They did not use the Stargate and it looks like none of the other ships in orbit around the ring have sent forces to investigate this island, but there is evidence of a firefight inside, including bodies."

"Heartless?" Squall suggested and frowned when the candidate shook his head, "The wounds are only consistent with weapons that humans would carry. The Heartless have however begun to show up inside of the base. The recon units are requesting withdrawal. Some of them are beginning to suffer wounds too quickly to heal up."

"Any sign of the Index?"

"No, sir. Most likely it was taken by the clan members before they left."

Squall nodded and turned to his assistant, a Lt. Colonel Xu and said, "We need to find them. Give the order to fall back to the Stargate and ready the Ragnarok for flight once we reach Balamb," he turned back to the still waiting candidate, "Tell them to fall back. You've done well."

Both Xu and the candidate saluted with their fist to their heart and walked off of the landing vessel's observation deck.

Squall Leonhart, Supreme Commander of SeeD, glowered at the island and cursed the person who had hired all of SeeD to take this Index. He would never accept a job from them ever again. No matter how much was offered.

Larry walked from his calculus class frowning about the homework that had just been issued. He really didn't like the in-depth math that was offered by the professor, because Larry had a hard time applying math to anything that had no practical need. He was great at physics and chemistry because those had a practical need. None of this, "Let's graph a line for no reason" nonsense.

Moving quickly, Larry had to get to the other side of campus before his next class started. A big history buff, Larry usually enjoyed his Ancient History course but he was having a hard time concentrating on anything today. He was counting down the hours until he would be able to join back up with the Clan Hunters onboard the Pride.

He even began researching the planet of Nar Shaddaa on his laptop to see what he could find out. So it came as quite a surprise when Professor Hartwell spoke Larry's name loudly.

"I'm sorry sir," Larry said looking up from a picture of one of the docking bays on the planet to find a purple faced Professor glaring down at him.

"Indeed you should be," Professor said with a light British accent, "Now maybe you can tell me who the leaders of the Three Kingdoms of China were?"

Following Larry's blank stare, Hartwell snorted, "I thought not."

He moved off, but not before saying, "I hope you pay better attention in the future, Thompson. Now, who can tell me the correct answer?"

Serro Varch who was a student from Australia rose his hand and asked, "During which time period?" Serro's voice took on a lecturing tone, "There were different leaders for each of the Kingdoms, starting with Cao Cao for Wei, Liu Bei for Shu, and Sun Quan for Wu. However, Cao Cao was replaced by Cao Pi in 220 AD…"

The Professor cut him off, "Thank you Mr. Varch. I think you have sufficiently answered the question to our liking. Don't you all agree?"

The class either moaned or nodded their heads in agreement, and the Australian sat down.

After one more significant look from the Professor, Larry moaned to himself softly and shut his laptop mournfully.

The man landed on his face against the cold stone floor. His body shuddered as he tried to sit up, but flinched back from the gaze of the creature that stood next to a large pit.

His body was ragged, and pain racked him as he even tried to move. He took a chance to look around and found himself inside of a cavernous room without a ceiling. He gaped as the clouds flew by and past the mouth of the cave at a speed that was faster then any cloud should move normally, even during the most dangerous of storms.

Shying away from the creature again, he tried to overcome the fear that was clutching his heart so strong that it was making it difficult to breathe. He managed to study the creature out of the corner of his eye without burying his head back into his hands.

The first thing he noticed was that the creature was big. Nearly ten feet tall and looked like a human, but beyond that it was dressed in black so it was difficult to tell much else. That was all that he had time for before a voice began to dominate his mind and blew all other thoughts and fears out of his skull.

YOUARENOTOFTHISWORLD. WHOAREYOU?

The voice was so overpowering that it took the man a few moments to realize that it had asked him a question and he was so confused by the question that he only stared in silence with his mouth hanging open. The voice spoke again, and this time the presence in his skull threatened to rip his head open.

SPEAK!TELLMEWHOYOUAREWORM!

Throwing his hands to the sides of his head, the man writhed on the stone floor and cried out, "I don't know!" in a wail that was laced with pain.

HOWDIDYOUCOMEHERE?

The man breathed heavily for a few moments before answering, "Through a Stargate."

FROMWHERE?

The pain stopped and he moved to wipe the tears off of his cheeks and said, "From another world, the Hork-Baijr homeworld."

The man collapsed as the oppressive voice made a demand of him.

YOUWILLSHOWUSTHEWAYTHERE.

Sitting up, the man looked down into the pit, "Us?"

Before he could blink, the creature was behind him and planted a boot firmly in the back of the man, who cracked his head on the stone floor.

A voice that sounded of rotting flesh came into the ears of the man as he tried to curl in on himself, "No one questions the Great Lord, human," it said.

"I'm sorry!" The man sobbed, "I'm sorry master! I did not know!"

The sound of the man's cries faded as the sound of laughing took over the man's brain.

Larry paused in the act of walking down a set of stairs and frowned back into the room. Something was wrong, but he couldn't tell what.

He had felt like a cloud had gone over the sun, or like a storm had just broken over the campus.

But it was a bright sunny day, and he quickly shrugged the feeling off. He had more important things to do then worry about fancies.