Novanto's Note: This one's gonna be LOOOONG. Meet Juan Horado Miguel. He hails from Mexico, and as a result, there's going to be a large amount of Spanish. I will provide translations at the closing author's note
Juan Miguel, a black-haired Mexican teen who was fluent in English, attempted to patiently wait for his friend to return to his computer. The teen wore a plain white shirt with a tan lightning bolt on it, along with jeans and tennis shoes. As he waited, he examined the letter that had come with his Sburb disks.
Hola, señor Juan Miguel
Usted ha sido elegido para ser uno de los primeros jugadores de o nuevo juego Sburb Oro! Esperamos que usted y su coplayer, uno Chris Eyvindr, disfrutar del juego! Por favor, háganoslo saber después de que usted lo bata sobre cualquier preocupación que pueda tener.
Atentamente, la Compañía Skaianet (1)
He set the letter aside and sighed. "Andele, Chris, vayamos...!" (2)
He jumped when Pesterchum dinged and fell off his chair.
ED: † I got it! †
ED: † Yay me! :-) †
DD: **\ Muy bien, Chris!
DD: **\ You ready? I'm installing mine now.
ED: † kk †
Juan pulled out the disk sleeves and inserted them into his laptop. Almost immediately, a text window opened up, signaling that the game was ready. "That was quick." Juan commented, impressed.
DD: **\ Okay, Chris, it's ready!
ED: † So's mine. †
Sburb's window dinged lightly.
"Sburb client is running.
Sburb server is running.
A Sburb Host user is attempting to connect with you
Client has established connection with host.
Press ENTER when ready.
Juan, for reasons unknown to him, took a slow deep breath before lightly tapping at the return key.
The game responded by bringing up a loading screen of a rapidly spinning spirograph above a loading bar that was filling up just as quickly. Within a minute, it vanished, and the Sburb Gold logo appeared on the screen: A gold house broken in four pieces like a jigsaw puzzle: a roof, right half, left half and a diamond in the center.
ED: † Wow dude †
ED: † I can see your room! †
DD: Qué?
ED: † I can also see you, and... †
ED: † Hehehe, I can make it look like I'm poking you with the cursor! †
ED: † Like this! †
ED: † Poke! †
"Ow!" Juan yelped as he felt a force sharply hit the back of his head and whipped around to see a familiarly-shaped object floating directly behind him. "What the...?" The object resembled the Sburb logo almost perfectly, with the only real difference being that it was 3-D. Staring at it, the Mexican took a picture of it with and sent it to Chris.
DD: **\ Hombre... ¿qué es esta cosa en mi dormitorio? (3)
- dilegentDiviner [DD] sent -
ED: † Dude... I... †
ED: † I think it's the cursor! †
DD: **\ ¡Esta imposible! (4)
ED: † I'm looking at you on the screen! I can see you pointing your laptop at it! †
ED: † Watch! †
Almost in response, the object, now identified as Sburb's cursor, began moving around the room, first gently picking up his dragon-plate Dragonborn statue, then releasing it with a thump. It then moved over to a discarded book titled RASP... and dropped it on Juan's head.
DD: **\ Ow! Halta por favor!
ED: † Lo siento... tryin' to get the hang of this...† (5)
ED: † I hate my mouse... always slides too much... †
ED: † I was TRYING to put it on the bed. †
The cursor continued its exploration before stopping over his bed.
ED: † I think I got it down! †
ED: † Okay, I see this list of objects and they look pretty big... Any suggestions to where I should put them? †
- experimentalDeity [ED] sent -
In the picture was what looked like a Heads-Up Display over Juan's room, displaying an inventory. In it were four objects: a punched Catchpalogue card in the green color of Juan's backpack, a large platform-like object, a blocky contraption with a wheel, and a thin lathe.
DD: **\ the uh, big flat one...
ED: † That's called the... Alchemiter. †
ED: † The blocky one's the Cruxtruder, and the third one's a Totem Lathe. †
DD: **\ Yeah that one...
DD: **\ It can go... in my foyer.
DD: **\ Same with the others.
DD: **\Might as well have 'em all in one spot!
ED: † Good plan. †
Three loud thumps sounded throughout the house. Juan immediately walked his laptop downstairs to his house's entryway where the three large contraptions sat fairly comfortably on the rug. Pesterchum emitted it's familiar ding! noise.
ED: † Hope you like where they are. †
ED: † Because I can't move 'em without a lot of... Build Grist it says, whatever that is. †
DD: **\ It'll do hombre. It'll do.
ED: † According to this guide I found by one Ms. Lalonde... You gotta open the Cruxtruder. †
ED: † Preferably by hitting the lid or wheel with something heavy. †
DD: **\ Heavy, huh? :-1 Hold that thought.
Juan rushed up to his room and located a large femur-shaped Warhammer. "This'll do." he smirked, before rushing back down and bringing the heavy bone weapon down onto the cruxtruder. The lid immediately popped off, revealing the top of a tan cylinder and a rapidly flashing orb. Juan quickly looked away. "Ai, Dios Mio, mis ojos..." he muttered, rubbing the spots that the seizure-inducing sprite had seared onto his corneas. Upon opening them, he suddenly noticed a timer on the Cruxtruder had activated.
ED: † Dude... is that a timer?! †
DD: **\ Looks like it.
DD: **\ Just over four minutes. And what's this thing?
Juan pulled out the foot-long cylinder and held it up so Chris could see it from his screen.
ED: † That's called... Cruxite. Specifically a Cruxite Dowel. †
ED: † It's supposed to help with making stuff on the alchemiter. †
ED: † And Mr. Seizure ball over there is called a Kernelsprite. †
DD: **\ Heheh... Seizure ball...
ED: † {laughs and clears throat} †
ED: † This card should have something to do with it... †
Chris released the punched card and Juan picked it up. The card bore a picture of a tan potted sapling. Picking it up, Juan turned to the lathe.
3: 29.
Looking inside the lathe's slot, he realized it was the exact width of the card. A clamp on the side was the perfect fit for the dowel of Cruxite. After inserting both, several blades in a unique pattern stretched down and carved the cylinder into a totem. "Incredible..." Juan muttered, removing the molded dowel almost reverentially and examining it, jumping when his laptop beeped at him.
ED: † Dude! Quit staring at it, you're running outta time! †
DD: **\ Lo siento.
DD: **\ This is just... fascinating!
DD: **\ Can't wait to study this...
ED: † It can wait, just †
ED: † Is your house shaking? †
DD: **\ Qué?
Juan watched as a vase near the door fell and shattered, then shoved the totem into the "Key item" pocket of his backpack and rushed outside. The rest of his neighborhood was shaking too. Multiple people were standing outside and looking up at the sky while murmuring in Spanish at each-other. Juan did the same, and his eyes widened at the sight.
High above was a massive bright object hurtling through the. "Qué es esta?" he asked himself, pulling some binoculars out and looking through them. "Oh my..." Juan gulped as his eyes widened behind the lenses when the object was revealed to be a burning meteor.. and it was headed right for his house! "Oh. My. GOD!" The boy swore before running back inside to his computer and typing rapidly in pure Spanish.
DD: **\ Un metero! Un metero se dirigió a mi casa! (6)
ED: † Dude! Yo no comprende mucho español! † (7)
DD: **\THERE'S A FUCKING METEOR HEADED FOR MY HOUSE!
ED: † Oh. †
ED: † OH! †
ED: † ... †
ED: † Um, crazy as it sounds, I think that's what the timer is for! †
DD: **\ What are you talking about? Tú es una persona loco! (8)
ED: † Think about it! †
ED: † If there was a meteor headed for Earth, the news would've said so, right? †
ED: † There would've been the whole "stay calm" thing, "evacuate" and all that stuff. †
ED: † But there wasn't a warning! †
ED: † So impossible as it may sound... †
DD: **\... the Cruxtruder must've summoned it!
DD: **\ Dios mío...
DD: **\ According to the timer... I only have exactly three minutes!
ED: † THEN MAKE THE SEEDLING HOMBRE! †
ED: † DO IT! †
Juan rushed over to the Alchemiter and fumbled with the totem before placing firmly on the pedestal. An arm-mounted laser unfolded and scanned the curves of it and materialized a small seed, which promptly evolved into a sapling in a pot.
DD: **\ How the diablos does a sapling stop a meteor!
ED: † Yo no se! The guide isn't clear! †
ED: † It does say you need to prototype the Seizure Ball with something before you do anything with it! †
ED: † Just put the sapling in sunlight for now and water it! †
ED: † Speaking of Seizure Ball, why is it hovering over there? †
Juan looked over, where the rapidly flashing ball floated near a mounted Mexican free-tailed bat.
DD: **\ You mean Remolino? He was my old pet bat.
DD: **\ Died years ago...
DD: **\ Wait... Prototype... that's it!
The Mexican grabbed the taxidermied free-tailed bat off of the base and threw it into the sprite, which flashed and developed a bat's face and wings, flashing many shades of tan and squeaking rapidly. "Well, at least it's not AS seizure-inducing..." Juan mumbled, walking into the kitchen with the sapling.
Holding it under the running faucet for a moment, Juan watched as it quickly grew a little bigger, the plant inside pushing against it's pot. "Now it just needs some light." he commented
Back in the foyer, Juan sat down cross-legged in a patch of sunlight with the plant in his lap and watched the timer wind down, his natural impatience urging it to hurry up.
2:19
With each passing second, the seedling grew bigger and bigger.
2:18
The plant was soon ready to bloom.
2:17
Petals began to spread wide.
2:16
The flower opened, revealing its identity as a lotus. Suddenly, it began to glow with a bright tan light, as did his windows.
From outside, the entire two-story building glowed a bright white and vanished. Two minutes later, a meteor slammed into the small ditch that once held the foundation and obliterated it, along with the rest of the small town.
There was darkness. For an instant, violet light filled the Mexican's vision, before it returned to the darkness.
... Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!
Juan woke up to Pesterchum's persistent dinging. It appeared he had fainted when the lotus bloomed. Groggily, the teen pulled his laptop closer and read Chris' messages.
ED: † Juan? †
ED: † Hola, Juan! †
ED: † ... †
ED: † Are you okay? †
ED: ... †
ED: † DUDE PLEASE ANSWER ME SO I KNOW YOU'RE OKAY! D-: †
DD: **\ I'm here, I'm here! I'm okay...
ED: † Oh thank Ra... †
DD: **\ That flower knocked me out.
ED: † Looks like it... †
ED: † Whoa, check out the Kernelsprite... †
Juan looked blearily at the flying orb and rubbed his eyes. The object appeared to be splitting in half. With another flash it had split in three: A dark orb, a light orb, and a ghostly wisp. The light one flew up through the roof while the dark one zipped into the ground.
DD: **\ It just...
ED: † Broke in half, yeah, I see it. †
ED: † Incredible... †
Juan rushed to the windows. Outside was a small oasis, surrounded by dunes of sand stretching to the horizon. "Dios mío... Dondé estoy?" (8) he asked aloud. Followed by the ghostly Sprite, he stepped outside.
As the window suggested, his home had been transported to a whole other world. This was clear from the fact that the sky was pitch-black. Palm trees surrounded the circle of yard that had been teleported with his house, but almost immediately to his right, ticking loudly but erratically, was a massive clocktower resembling London's Big Ben. Looking through his binoculars, he could see more, similar towers in the distance.
"The Land of Sand and Clocktowers." the sprite commented casually, startling Juan. "Or La Tierra de Arena Y Torres de Reloj" if you prefer."
"¿Remo?" The boy asked. "¿Eres tú?" (10)
"Sí, amigo. It's me." Remosprite replied smiling. "I'd hug but... these wings aren't really the best for that."
"I think I can fix that." Juan smiled back. "Just... gimme a second." He turned to his laptop.
Translations:
(1) "Hello Mister Juan Miguel
You have been chosen to be one of the first players of our new game Sburb Gold! We do hope you and your co-player, one Chris Eyvindr, enjoy the game! Please let us know after you beat it about any concerns you may have.
Yours truly,
The Skaianet Company"
(2) "Hurry up, Chris! Let's go!"
(3) "Man/Dude, what's this thing in my bedroom?"
(4) "That's impossible!"
(5) "Ow! Stop please." ... "Sorry."
(6) "A meteor! A meteor is headed for my house!"
(7) "I don't understand much Spanish."
(8) "You are a crazy person!"
(9) "My God... where am I?"
(10) "Is that you?"
Next time on Champions of Rasp! Exposition and Entry!