//------------------------------// // Chapter Six: Daruma-San Has Fallen Down // Story: A Buggy Game // by Bucking Nonsense //------------------------------// Keep going? Sure, why not? I know how much you love to hear me talk. Alright, so, as we descended the steps to the next floor, Hiro hovering just a little over my left shoulder, I was understandably a little... thoughtful. Things were starting to get a great deal more worrying. At the time, there was so much happening at once that, if I really stopped to think, I'd be terrified. Humans and ponies have this thing called a 'comfort zone', basically a state within which a person feels at ease, familiar, and in control, and experiences low anxiety. In such a state, a human or pony has to do relatively little to remain in that condition. You can 'coast' along like a youth on a scooter, just giving yourself a little push now and then to continue moving forward. For me, you could say my life had always been in a 'discomfort zone'. My life was defined by stress: I was at the very bottom of changeling society, due to my inability to fight effectively. There's nowhere lower that you can go than menial labor in the changeling swarm. Do you know what happens to a changeling who does fall any lower than that? Guess. Yeah, that's exactly right. So, all it would take is one serious injury, and I could find myself 'extracted', what little love I had left given to somebuggy who could still manage to do something, and my paralyzed body would be left on the wayside for someone or something to pick up and use as a coat rack. Worse, I could always accidentally draw attention to myself, draw the spite of an aristo, and... Well, let me tell you a story. The story of Deathwatch, the unluckiest changeling in the world. Deathwatch, who, at five years of age, giggled at a joke his friend told him when an aristo had been walking by, and had tripped on a rock. Said aristo decided that the giggle was at him, picked Deathwatch up by the scruff of the neck, and hauled him off to the nearest corpse pile from the latest invasion. Poor tyke got assigned permanent 'Corpse Watching Duty', meaning he had to sit and stare at every pile of dead changelings that cropped up, to make sure that nobuggy was playing dead to try and escape. For hours at a time. Every single day. Convicted criminals don't get treated that badly in Equestria, and he was given a fate that many ponies would consider cruel and unusual, just for a badly timed laugh. Five years old, and every day, from waking to bedtime, staring at corpses. I saw him a few times, when I was dragged bodies to the latest piles: Poor kid looked little better than a corpse himself when he was eight. I'd have reached out to him, given him a kind word, but even then, three years later, the aristo had the boy watched all day, and anybuggy who even acknowledged his existence would be punished harshly. It wasn't a surprise that he vanished when he was twelve. What was surprising was that, it wasn't suicide: He just quit showing up for his duties one day. In spite of their best efforts, the aristos never found out where he went... Of course, it might have helped that a certain young aristo ran away with him. Ah, but we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. As I was saying, I'd lived my entire life in a 'discomfort zone', where any misstep could result in a fate worse than death. But you can get used to anything, even the threat of death and worse. Even when I'd ended up trapped in the palace, unable to escape, I was still in my 'zone': It was just that then, there were really only two ways things could be expected to end, and both were ugly. Now? Well, things had been going well. Too well. Even with Hiro's warning of what might be on floor five, it still seemed that things were going better than they had any right to be. Asides from the latest revelation, and the weirdness of the past hour, things were looking up. And that freaked me out a little... Okay, maybe it freaked me out a lot. Maybe that's why I took Hiro's little revelation so well: Up until that point, I had half-expected that he was leading me into a trap where a hungry monster was going to crack open my head and eat my brains. The fact that he had told me that he had been misled was... strangely reassuring. Maybe there still would be a trap, and maybe this would all end with me being led to a hungry brain-eating abomination using my braincase as his cereal bow. But if so? At least Hiro wasn't intentionally leading me to it. Compared to my everyday life? This was... practically what you humans call Christmas. The fact that, until now, Hiro thought I was just a 'game'? Honestly, compared to the whole 'wind up as changeling brains soup' phobia, how high would you rate 'He thought it was just a game', in the grand scheme of things? At least he had, even when he thought it was just a game, treated me well, and had done his level best to ensure we got through each floor with a minimum of fuss. I've played with a few gamers since coming here, and not everyone would be as nice as Hiro had been. There's a lot of jerks out there, and if some of the jerks I've encountered on XBox Live been in Hiro's place, they'd have treated me dreadfully, and finding out I was real would have made their behavior worse, not better... Ah, we've gone a little far afield. Anyways, that was where my mind was at as we descended the steps to the next 'test'. Hiro's theorem, that this was all a complex set of tests to determine worth, had panned out so far. What we hadn't realized, just yet, that these weren't the real tests. These were lessons. The first real test would be coming on the fifth floor. However, this next lesson would be the trickiest one yet. Wanna take over for a little bit, hun? You're better at describing the rooms than I am. ------------------------------------- Alright, sure. Um, before we get to the room itself, I have to say... I was kinda freaking out. Not freaking out because magic was happening again, though. I know some of you were expecting me to start tearing my hair out and screaming when I figured out what was going on, and if this had been another violent game, I almost certainly would have been. However, since, thus far, the game had proven to be a puzzle game, and no one had gotten hurt, I was... distressed, I guess, but not as upset as I should have been. In fact, I was stable enough that I could use a smartphone app to order pizzas while using one hand to guide the orb around. So, what had me 'freaking out', if it wasn't magic? What I was freaking out about was the fact that Elizabeth 'wasn't' visibly freaking out. Weird, right? It's just... she took everything in stride so well that it seemed unnatural. Every bit of weirdness she'd experienced so far was rolling off of her like water off a duck's back. Yeah, I mean, compared to some of the things she's said she's gone through in her regular life, all of this seems like small potatoes, but I wasn't yet fully aware of just how thoroughly messed up her life was before we met. I mean, her reactions would have been considered strange when I thought it was a game. Now? Not even after the whole 'dress like a maid and be my servant for a month' thing had seemed to bother her. I knew at least one of my ex-girlfriends would have had put my ass in a sling, and would have likely have also thrown a rather... important part of my anatomy into a blender for good measure, if I'd tried to pull that stunt with her. But not only had Liz gone along with it, she'd seemed flattered by the attention! So, what was going on here? She was walking along, humming a jolly-sounding tune (Yes, you must certainly were, I heard you!), as if she was practically on a vacation. In a way, I was grateful for the distraction: Trying to puzzle out Elizabeth's behavior was helping to keep me from focusing on the fact that this was all happening again, that magic was once again intruding upon my sanctuary. I was keeping myself together remarkably well, all things considered. I think... I think that the fact that Liz was there with me, and was relying on me to get her through this, helped keep me from having an attack. As we reached the doorway to the next floor, my mind was flooded with questions, all of which I was, honestly, too scared to ask. It would be a little while before I worked up the nerve to pick Liz's brain for more information about her past... The room revealed, when Liz opened the door, was... interesting. The room was much longer than the last one: Directly in front of us was a white tile. Beyond that, in a line straight ahead of us, was a path of gray tiles a good ten tiles long (Sixty feet, since each tile was about six feet by six feet, by my reckoning). At the end was a second white tile, and beyond that, on a pedestal, was a statue, a bust that had grinning fox's face with blue gemstones for eyes. Other than the path, and the area beyond the second white tile, every tile in the room was black. "So, what do you think?" Liz's question startled me out of my reverie, and I immediately answered, saying, "Daruma-San Has Fallen Down." Clearly confused, she asked, "What?" "Ah, sorry, I suppose you've never heard it called by that name," I said, a little embarrassed. My mother had been the one to teach me this particular game, so I knew it by that name, rather than the more traditional 'western' name. "It's a game that also goes by the name 'Red Light, Green Light." "Again," Liz asked, still confused, "what?" I'd not quite come to terms with just how different a 'bug's' life was from that of a human, so it took me a moment to realize that she was serious. Clearing my throat, I said, "It is a somewhat common game, back where I come from, often played by children. The game will start when you step on the first white tile. I expect that the statue's head will turn around once you do so. The statue will likely turn back to face you every few seconds. The goal is to get from here to the other white tile without getting caught in motion: When the statue is facing you, you cannot move, or you'll have to go back to the start and try again." "Seems straightforward," Liz noted, then asked, "So why do you seem nervous?" "There's a... story I read recently," I admitted, after a moment, "Kami-sama No Iu Toori, that started with an event themed like this. A group of students, without warning or explanation, were suddenly plunged into a very deadly game, played with a talking Daruma doll. Moving while the Daruma doll was watching was instantaneous, violent death, and the doll was intelligent, changing the pace at which it would recite a chant it had to say before turning back around." Gulping, I added, "It ended in a bloodbath, with only one survivor in the class." "Yikes," Elizabeth said, sounding a little shocked, "Your people have some seriously freaky stories." Chuckling, I said, "Tell me about it." More seriously, I added, "So, before you start this game, we need to check and see what actually happens if you fail to overcome a trial." Call it paranoia, but things had been going a little too well in my opinion as well... Confused, Liz asked, "How?" "Simple," I said, confidently, "You start the game by touching the tile, and I'll move forward and trigger the trap: If it does something like shoot laser beams from its eyes, it might damage the orb, but it won't hurt me or you." Looking more than a little worried, Liz commented, "It isn't a bad plan, I guess, but I'd rather not risk losing you now: I don't know if I could handle doing this all on my own." "This orb seems pretty solid," I said, "and if this is a game of life or death, you deserve to know before you start playing. Besides, it isn't like I'm actually risking my life here. This is your story. Your path." With a half-smile, I added, "If I could walk it for you, I would. I can't, though. You're the only one who can. The most I can do for you is make sure that the path ahead is safe." Taking a deep breath, Liz said, "Alright." Tapping the white tile with her hoof, she said, "Go for it." At the opposite end of the room, the exit door opened. The statue's head turned around, and a voice seeming to come from everywhere at once, shouted, "Hajime no ippo!" Taking the first step. Strange. It seemed that the foxes who had lived here had once spoken Japanese, or something like it. Well, foxes did play a pretty major role in Japanese mythology. Maybe there was a reason for that? Magic was once common on earth, I was told, until it left for greener pastures. Maybe some of the kitsune of legend and song had lived here afterwards? (What really startled me was the fact that the voice sounded almost exactly like Norio Wakamoto. What, never heard of him? He's like Japan's version of Morgan Freeman. He has a voice that drips so much gravitas that he's done the voice acting of kings, emperors, supervillains, gods... and some very seriously ridiculous stuff as well, including the time he voiced a vacuum cleaner. Yeah, I'll show you a clip of it, later. Anyways, moving on!) The statue's head, as expected, turned around, and I began moving the orb forward. As I did, the voice began to recite, slowly, "Da-ru-ma-san..." Remarkable: It was doing the traditional chant for the game and everything. Curiouser and curiouser... Suddenly, it changed the pace, shouting quickly, "Ga koronda!" The fox caught me in motion, and its gemstone eyes turned bright red. I flinched, startled at the sudden change. The statue's mouth opened, almost impossibly wide, and... ...started laughing at me. Big, booming guffaws of laughter. Fox statue Norio Wakamoto was laughing at my failure to complete the course. While my orb was undamaged, my pride had taken a critical hit. The exit door slammed shut, and behind me, I heard Liz exhale, letting out a breath I hadn't realized that she was holding. I was surprised to find myself doing the same. "Well," I said with a chuckle, "now we know." Looking down at my cell, I noted the time, and said, "I'll move my orb to the other end of the room, and then you can start the game. Just go slowly, and be ready to stop at any time. And be ready: This thing changes the pace at a moment's notice. While you work on this, I need to get ready to receive company. I'll be stepping away again for a bit. I'll be back to check on you as soon as I can." With a salute, and a surprisingly cheerful tone, Elizabeth said, "I'm on it, chief!"