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 Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2015 7:13 pm
"Did you know that glass is a liquid?" Dari added randomly.
The opening cinematic began to play and both men were subtly watching Maia for a reaction. This might well have been too graphic or too scary what with the vomit and the blood and the screams. The hordes. The Tanks.
"We'll all be on a team. Unless you really want to play against each other, but then it's two-against-one."
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Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2015 8:02 pm
"Is it really? But it's solid. Oooh! It must need to be hotter to be a liquid, right? Like ice. Its a liquid, in solid form. I wonder how hot it has to be for glass to be a liquid... Or maybe it needs to be in constant movement to remain liquid? The ocean doesn't freeze like lakes and puddles do." She pondered this for a moment, distracted from the cinematic beginning until she looked up at the screen. She tensed, swallowed, and said, "Yes lets all be on a team."
She scooted closer to Toby. "They aren't real, these things?" she asked. Thet wouldn't pop out of the screen, would they?
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Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2015 11:03 am
"It appears solid, but centuries-old windows have slid down and thickened at the base. It's an incredible slow-moving liquid, on the molecular level, but you can heat it up and make it obviously more... stretchy." Dari was full of random information.
Toby smiled. "No. They're not real. If you're scared, we don't have to play it."
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Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2015 11:17 am
"But you can't reach through it or inside it," Maia mused. Huh. It was a solid liquid, at least solid enough not to suddenly dissolve and allow all sorts of bugs inside. "You know all sorts of things, Dari," she said. "You should teach me." She knew so little about the world in comparison.
"As long as they aren't real. I think I can manage."
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Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2015 11:28 am
Dari smiled. Not everyone appreciated random factoids, although he and Lori went back and forth from time to time. "I'll teach you what I can."
"No, they're far from real." Zombies weren't as a big a threat as pop culture liked to pretend they were. The FBPI had only come across one instance of "zombification" in the past, and it had only been a fatal infection. It never spread far. Every victim died within two weeks. Hardly cause for alarm.
Toby moved forward, choosing the first level and the easiest setting.
"Pick who you want to play."
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Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2015 2:00 pm
"We can have an exchange of knowledge. I'll teach you all about the ocean."
Maia smiled at Toby. Good. They wouldn't end up popping out of the television screen to attack them. "I'll be that one." She pointed to the woman with a gun. She hadn't yet grasped that she could control what was on the screen with the controller she was holding. "I'm glad they're not real," she said. "Have you picked?"
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Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 10:59 am
Toby tried very hard not to laugh, instead just grinning. Maia's ignorance was charming. She wasn't doing any harm, but damned if it wasn't adorable.
"You have to pick her on-screen. Here. Do this." He went through the movements of choosing a character. "See, that's you, Player 2, down there. So you just highlight her and press this button." He showed her on his own controller, picking the sarcastic conman for himself, predictably enough. Dari chose the younger guy. He didn't really have a favorite.
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Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 11:22 am
Maia did as Toby demonstrated, selecting the character. She leaned against the back of the couch and tried to prepare herself for what the games beginning cinema had shown. She was nervous, she had no experience with video games besides Snake and bejeweled. "Okay, now we start?"
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Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 11:30 am
A faux movie poster came up on screen as a lower bar showed the loading time. Dari leaned over to give Maia another brief course on the controls and then it loaded. A flaming zombie ran by what appeared to be a hotel window. A helicopter rose over the building and flew away, and then there they were, all three of them on the roof with a table of supplies. Nothing would attack them up here, not yet, so they had a little more time for Maia to catch up.
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Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 11:56 am
Maia watched the zombie stumble past the window, making a face. Was something on fire? She practiced with the controls by causing her character to run around in a circle. Feeling more confident, she moved to the table of supplies. "Can we take these?" she asked. "Let's go shoot zombies!"
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Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 12:13 pm
"That's the spirit!" Toby said with a laugh. "Grab a Medkit, and then you can pick whatever weapon you want. Only melee for now. Close-up." Toby took the axe himself, and Dari a pistol. Remaining were a crowbar, a baseball bat, and yet another pistol. There were no zombie noises, nothing, but the boys knew that at least one waited down the flight of stairs beside the table.
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Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 12:56 pm
Maia took a medkit as suggested, and looked at the weapons. She didn't think a baseball bat would be very effective against a zombie. And a crowbar, maybe--could zombies be killed? They were undead, weren't they? "So. How do zombies die?" she asked.
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Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 1:01 pm
"A headshot. Enough damage. In this world, anyway," Dari explained.
Toby added helpfully: "If you chop both of their legs off the computer can't animate them any more and they die."
Dari just nodded. "Are you ready?"
Given the affirmative, the trio began down the stairs and met their first zombie. Toby dispatched it quickly. As they moved through the building there were only more, coming in great waves of gibbering pain, sometimes on fire, sometimes trying to bodyslam them out of a window. They had to walk on ledges to escape and every new Special brought a new lesson about how they could kill you and, no, he was pretty sure you resurrected in closets and bathrooms just because they were the only definitely safe places with opening doors. It took two saferooms and one last great crescendo with "tanks" to win against all odds, regardless of how many times Maia had died accidentally.
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Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 1:51 pm
Maia was not ready, it seemed. She'd died at least twice, and the tanks had frightened her more than she would admit. She'd decided the best tactic was to let Toby and Dari kill / injure zombies and then make her way forward. Rushing forward had turned out badly.
"Now what?"
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Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2015 1:58 pm
The credits began to scroll except... those weren't credits, those were in-game stats! Least deaths, most zombies killed, most headshots, most melee kills, so on and so forth. Maia was surprisingly high-ranked on some but, being the newest player, that was to be expected. Toby turned to her.
"I don't know. Bed?" Or getting ready for bed? Did selkies brush their teeth?
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