Chapter 36
Staring in the mirror, Emery looked down at the mask in her hand and chewed her bottom lip, nodding at the outfit she chose for Comic Con. People dressed up as their favorite superheroes all the time and hers was Green Arrow. So, she had a short-sleeved dark green leather outfit made, top and bottom, the material clinging to her curves, matching boots on her feet. The mask was also green leather that sealed to her face once she put it on.
Emery pulled her hair back in a tight bun, so it was out of the way. Her eyes were rimmed in black and she had green lipstick painted on her lips, foundation on to hide any blemishes. There were also black gloves on her hands as well. Placing the mask on her face, Emery walked out to join her boys along with Cheryl. Randy and Cheryl were going as Hans Solo and Leia from Star Wars and Paul…she wasn't sure what Paul was, actually.
"Everyone ready to go?"
"Dude, I'm the Tick, you know?" Paul had tried explaining over and over, but apparently these jerks hadn't watched Fox Kids back in the 90's. He was wearing a blue outfit that covered him from feet to over his head, resembling the obnoxious superhero. "You guys suck…"
"We're ready."
"He's mad because I'm not wearing the slutty Leia costume."
"You'd be so hot…"
"I'd look like Jabba." Cheryl grunted, knowing she wasn't fat, but she sure did feel like it.
"If you say so, but to me you look like a huge blue condom." Emery laughed when Cheryl spit her water out she'd just taken a sip of and Randy was rolling on the floor howling.
"H-He does…" Randy rasped out, holding his stomach and groaned when Paul put him in a headlock. "You mother-"
"Language, boys." Emery wrapped her arm around his shoulders, kissing the top of Cheryl's head. "I'm taking your pregnant girl to the car. When you two are done, we really need to go." There was a special World of Warcraft tournament booth set up and it was one of the first places they were hitting up. Paul wasn't looking forward to it along with Cheryl, but it meant a lot to Randy and Emery since they had an actual guild.
"Think she suspects anything?" Paul asked once the women were outside of the hotel.
"No, now keep your mouth shut." They walked out to join the girls moments later and headed to Phoenix Comic Con.
Comic Con was awesome, as usual, and Randy felt like his eyes would pop out of their skull from trying to take in everything all at once. Cheryl elbowed him a few times when she felt he was looking just a little too long at some of the more… revealing costumes. There were booths, exhibitions, vendors, fans from every genre, every fandom; it was great.
"Hey, there's World of Warcraft."
"Hip-hip hooray." Cheryl teased, twirling a finger in the air.
"I don't get it either."
"Because you both suck and don't know what fun is." Emery remarked, looping her arm through Randy's and walked up to the booth, not seeing the secretive grins on Paul and Cheryl's faces. She'd already gotten a lot of compliments on her costume, which made Emery feel great and so had the others. "Oh wow, look at that!"
She pointed to one of the setups, pulling Randy over and started looking at it closely. Was this a new version of WoW coming out? She owed every single one of them, along with Randy, and looked up at him, seeing he was also interested. The moment she turned around, Randy was smirking like a Cheshire cat.
"Okay, so where's the special thing you pointed out to me on the game the other night?"
"Not a thing, an event, it was all over the game's main page and being scrolled through our chat boxes. Don't you ever pay attention?" Randy snorted, shaking his head and grabbed one of the flyers, eyeballing it. "One day, special event." He passed it over to her. "So, this is just a dungeon crawl with a boss battle?"
One of the men running the booth nodded, grinning. "Yeah, sort of. There are… exclusive prizes to this event, themed ones, but you won't know until you defeat the boss."
"Probably an ogre or something." A woman mused, standing beside them.
"Famous person actually, but you have to play to find out. And one lucky player gets a bonus prize."
"No shit?"
"Oh wow… only one?"
"Only one."
Emery didn't need to be told twice, though she was curious who the 'famous' person was, raising a brow at Randy's excitement. "Are you gonna do this with me?" She nudged him playfully, trying to get his competitive juices flowing.
"I'd never go against the Queen." Randy bowed to her, the gleam in his eyes telling her he knew something she didn't. Emery didn't notice it, however.
"Oh whatever." Emery took a picture with a little girl who walked up to her, loving her costume.
"Good luck! Remember, you have until 4 PM tomorrow afternoon to complete this. Your 24 hours starts now."
Nodding in understanding, Emery walked away with Randy, Paul and Cheryl, looking at the flyer with a soft smile. "You really should do this. Maybe you'd finally beat me, Boss."
"Not likely. Come on, we can finish up Comic Con and then you can go back to the hotel, chill out and do the dungeon."
"Baby, you love World of Warcraft, you should do it. You two can team up." Cheryl pointed out, walking with him. "Besides, the last special event took your whole guild to do, just to bring down that boss."
"Ah… yeah, good point." Randy was curious to play it and he already knew the 'extra' cutscene wouldn't trigger for him. Plus… it would be neat to hear Emery's reaction to everything. "Yeah fine, I'll buddy up with you."
Specialty items and experience weren't divided for this, so… it didn't matter.
After a fun-filled day at Comic Con, it was after 8 PM when they finally walked into the hotel suite. Everyone was bunking together and had their own rooms. Emery took a shower, washing the makeup from her face and put her costume in the special bag she brought it in. It would be used for other Comic Cons in the future as well. After changing into a pair of black pajama pants and a Kingdom Hearts tank top she'd bought at Comic Con, Emery left her hair down before pulling her laptop out to start the special event. The Dungeon of Darkness. That's what it was called.
"You ready, Randy?!" She called out, firing up the laptop and rubbed her hands together, feeling excited despite her feet killing her from all the walking they'd done.
"Hell yeah! Let's do this!"
The Dungeon of Darkness, the name had not been Mark's idea. The themed weapons and armor as special rewards for clearing levels, defeating the Boss, those had been his idea. With his permission and a sign-off from the boss, it had been allowed to be used. Standard crawler, from what they had told him, except décor had been themed. Monsters were also standard, but each level had a 'mini' boss: demonized Acolytes were right under the main and the first boss was a very terrifying ogre Viscera. In the game sound files were now recordings of his laughter, played for the crawlers at random intervals.
The moment the dungeon opened up with her character and Randy's side-by-side, Emery felt her eyes widen at the particular design. It was black and purple, a familiar symbol etched on the walls. What the hell was this? Emery decided to keep going, the smile on her face faltering and could feel her heart ache with pain. Since when was Mark interested in World of Warcraft? Maybe it was a mistake…maybe they'd just designed a specific 'special event' with someone who looked like and portrayed…no, no this was definitely Mark in all his Undertaker glory. For some reason, Emery continued and didn't say much to Randy while they braved the dungeon. She didn't realize it, but her palms were sweaty and her stomach twisted violently.
"They did an Undertaker themed special event?" Randy whined, knowing he had a role to play. A small part of him was a little jealous because this had been a great idea on Mark's behalf, but… Mark wasn't a player of the game. They needed to use lots of gold and Randy Orton, he'd make a bad ass demon boss. "Oh…boss fight, look…" Viscera AKA Mabel… and he looked a hell of a lot creepier in game than in real life.
Frowning, Emery didn't understand what was going on, but kept trekking along, Randy's assertion making her feel very uneasy. "I-I guess…" She muttered in the headset, eyes focused solely on the screen and had her character dive to miss the…was Viscera an ogre in this?! "Holy shit, watch out!" She shouted, dodging another blow that would've killed her character.
She couldn't die – Emery was the Queen and had a reputation to uphold!
Searching the walls for a weapon to use against ogre Viscera, Emery spotted the lever on the wall in the corner of the screen. "Randy, go for the lever while I distract him!" It was an order, her breathing erratic.
"Wait, WHAT? Emery, that's…fucking brilliant." Randy spotted it as well, smoking his cigarette and moved his character toward the lever, cringing when ogre Viscera roared angrily. "Oh shit, he spotted me, Em!"
That was fine, it was all the distraction she needed as she took her sword and cut Viscera off by the knees, knowing he wouldn't be walking or healing for a while. "I got him! Go!" Her character dodged out of the way again when the monster tumbled back to land on his big backside, making the screen shake for a second.
Pulling the lever, Randy and Emery both dodged through the door that closed shut, a gate full of sharp edges dropping down seconds later to splatter Viscera.
"I got to admit, this is brilliant." Cheryl said from a different room, sitting with Paul.
They had linked the big screen television to the laptop, so they could see what Randy was doing, and talk, without Emery overhearing them by accident or ingesting Randy's smoke. She was glad he had given up the pot, but he pointblank refused to stop playing World of Warcraft, naked and without cigarettes. Cheryl figured one thing at a time and took a handful of popcorn, munching on it.
"Taker is a genius."
"If he was a genius, he wouldn't have lost her in the first place. Next level, boss fight at the end of this dungeon will be the Acolytes…" This level was a lot of fire. "Uh, purgatory?"
"Is that…?"
"The Acolytes, fuck! It's two-on-two and they look fucking SCARY." Randy got chills, mystic blues wide and couldn't believe the amount of design Taker put into this.
"SHIT!" Emery had to drink a potion quickly, not dodging Bradshaw's attack in time. Luckily, it didn't kill her. She breathed a sigh of relief, moving her character around to get a feel for each of them. They had to have a weakness as the fire began erupting around them. "Uh Randy – RANDY?! Is that a fire wall headed towards us?!"
"OH FUCK!"
"Are you kidding me?! We have a time limit on this!?" Emery groaned, knowing if she pulled her gaze away from the screen once, it would be over and she wouldn't win. Not an option. "Okay, take Bradshaw and I'll take Farooq!"
"Got it!"
"Now… explain this to me?" Cheryl asked, still not having a clue what was going on.
"From my understanding, most dungeons and events, people go in groups. Like once, there was a boss that was nearly impossible to defeat due to a glitch. And guilds and players teamed up around the clock worldwide to keep battling to get the damn thing down." Paul explained, knowing he probably didn't make sense, but it was the best he could do.
"Real world time and… everywhere?"
"Yep. So… these two, going by themselves, might not pay off, but they're good. It also depends on if the difficulty is set at a permanent stat or if it's variable, so… it would change depending on how many players are in the current event."
"Well it can't just be there two."
"No, it's not. But they didn't buddy up with anyone else so… if they had brought their guild, we'd see a lot more players. But this is their session. Other sessions are going on at the same time."
"Will Randy get to see the bonus content?"
"I have no idea how that works other than its tied to her ID."
It took over an hour – AN HOUR – to finally bring the Bradshaw and Farooq monsters down, thanks to the beer cans that swung like pendulums from the ceiling. That cracked Emery up. Whoever designed this special event was brilliant and had her laughing while trying not to die. Randy was howling with laughter too, both of them thoroughly enjoying themselves. Now it was back down to business and they had one boss left. Emery's jaw dropped when she seen who it was and fought back tears, swallowing hard. The final boss was the Undertaker himself. Even in the screen, he looked delicious and it killed Emery to play this, the hole in her chest pulsating with agony.
"Em, are you alright?" Randy asked hesitantly through the headset, hearing her silence and hoped she wasn't about to log off.
"Yeah…I'm fine." That was a lie. This was torture – World of Warcraft and the Undertaker all wrapped in a beautiful heartbreaking package. "Let's do this." She wouldn't stop now and pushed her pain to the side to focus on the game.
"So, he really posed for that?" Cheryl asked, watching as a very demonic looking Undertaker attacked the players. The damn beast was ten times the size of them and his weapon was a giant Trident looking thing in the shape of his old symbol, his eyes emitting purple smoke that wafted to the ground, constantly draining energy from the players.
"I hope they saved the recordings of it… I would pay big money to see that."
"Hey, I finally get to remove his ugly head from his fat neck. Hell yes!" Randy crowed from one of the rooms.
"Randy, your left! Fuck, I hate this goddamn energy draining bullshit!" Emery growled, not amused that she had to use over 20 panacea bottles in order to restore her strength. This boss was probably one of the hardest she'd fought in WoW, which was saying something. "Fuck! Randy, I got you!"
She tossed him a panacea bottle to take while distracting the demonic Undertaker monster and narrowed her eyes at the screen, sliding between his legs to make him slowly turn to face her again.