"Seriously? You said that to a professor?" Jason snickered. "Not trying to earn any brownie points, are you?"
"Hey, he was being a dick," Rob shrugged in response. "What was I supposed to do? Sit there and take it?"
"...yeeeeees? He can make your life a living hell for the rest of the semester."
"Bring it on."
Rob suppressed a smile as Jason laughed. The situation was pretty funny, and he would be paying for his backsass for the rest of the semester, but Rob also knew that Jason would get more of a kick out of his dilemma if he kept a straight face. As far as he was concerned, it was all worth it; his friend's laughter was the kind that lit up the room and washed away your troubles. It was always fun watching him just... enjoy life. Made it easier for Rob to enjoy his own.
They made a strange pair, two college sophomores walking side-by-side through campus, weaving their way around crowds of frantic students who were regretting their life choices as they ran to beat the buzzer before being late to class. Rob would be the first to admit that he was fairly unremarkable; an inch or two below six feet, a bit of muscle hidden under baggy clothing, and the kind of face that would make a girl look twice – not because he was some sort of Greek god, but because she would need some time before (hopefully) deciding: "Eeeeeh, you'll do."
Jason, on the other hand, was built like a brick shithouse. His body mass was largely made up of protein shakes and he had features chiseled out of stone. A combination of hard work and genetics had given him a physique that made him the rising star of their college's football team. He was the kind of person that many guys secretly hated, and who all of them wanted to be.
He was also the nicest guy Rob had ever met. Even Jason's most jealous detractors couldn't keep the burning flame of resentment smoldering for long when they met the guy, because Jason greeted everyone the same; without judgment and with open arms. Rob considered himself incredibly lucky that he'd been best friends with Jason since childhood; where would he have been without his favorite partner-in-crime, making poor life decisions and pretending they never had?
It was hard to imagine the rest of his life without Jason walking alongside him, trading jokes, being the best man at each other's weddings, and sitting back in creaky old rocking chairs as they yelled at kids to get off their lawn. Even if a small part of him envied Jason's eye-catching good looks and ability to charm anyone he met – drawing the attention of girls with him around was an exercise in futility – it was dwarfed by his love and respect for the man.
Even if Jason's sports scholarship meant that he would graduate free of student debt, the bastard.
It was for all those reasons that the next 30 seconds played out the way they did.
"I'm not saying I'm not stupid or reckless," Rob continued. "I'm just saying that I made life more interesting, and isn't that... mostly worth it?"
Rob waited for a response; a laugh, a retort, something. He stopped walking and frowned. "Come on man, it's not going to be that bad—" he said as he turned around, the words catching in his throat. He blinked once, twice, but every time he opened his eyes, the sight was still there.
A pitch-black hole in the world at least ten feet tall and wide had opened up in the middle of the campus. Rob felt his eyes begin to dry out and sting as he looked into the void, his retinas prickling like he'd been staring at the sun for too long. A cold tingling crept up his spine as he found himself unable to tear his gaze away, transfixed, whispers crawling into his ears.
The rising crescendo of screams broke him from his reverie. Students were fleeing in droves, practically trampling each other in their struggle to get away from the pocket of wrongness that had invaded their pleasant, everyday normalcy. Rob blinked, a voice – his own voice, not the whispers – yelling in his head. Not a word, but a pure, unfiltered emotion.
Run.
"JASON! WE HAVE TO GO!" Rob pulled him along. More accurately, he tried to, but Jason had a good 50 pounds on him and was rooted to his spot; moving a statue would have been easier.
"Rob," Jason croaked, in a scratchy tone. "I can't move."
His friend looked downwards. Rob did the same and tensed, his heart pounding in his chest as he finally noticed the tendrils of shadow creeping their way out of the void and encircling Jason's legs.
Sounds rang out from inside the hole; the first Rob had heard since it appeared. Metal clanging on metal, clear as day.
Later, Rob would marvel at where he found the strength to do what he did next. Jason weighed well over 200 pounds and was immobilized by... whatever those shadow things were. Maybe he'd summoned some inner reserve of strength, like when mothers occasionally hulked out and lift cars off their trapped children. Regardless of how it happened, it did happen. A single motion with more consequences than he ever could have anticipated: Rob put every ounce of force he could into a heavy tackle that pushed Jason aside. Only by a foot or so, but that was enough.
A linked chain shot out of the blackness in the time it took Rob to flinch. Just before it collided with his arm, the end of the chain snapped open into a shackle that clamped down painfully on Rob's wrist. Then he was flying, torn off his feet like a weed being plucked from the dirt. Rob craned his head towards Jason, but he was unable to hear his friend's wide-eyed shout, the darkness already enshrouding his ears and stifling any and all sound outside of his own breathing.
Then the portal closed, and he was in nothing.
Cold. Suffocating. Unnatural. The darkness was all that and more. It had to be similar to what a person might feel if they were adrift in space without an astronaut's suit on, except that space wouldn't be wriggling and caressing every inch of his body like some vast, all-encompassing organism. Rob panicked and took a breath, immediately regretting his action as the darkness flooded down his throat and into his lungs, keeping his mouth pried open no matter how hard he tried to close it. It forced out what little air there was and made itself comfortable as Rob's strength fled him, his thoughts growing murkier as he gradually stopped struggling.
The last thing he sensed before the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness took him was a voice echoing throughout the void. Inside and outside of his mind. Ubiquitous and uncaring. Rob's eyes closed as the words seared themselves into his memories.
"Hmm...you'll do."
—
The first thing that Rob did when he woke was breathe, then breathe, then breathe some more. Euphoric air flooded his lungs. Oxygen wasn't something anyone should ever be forced to realize they were taking for granted.
Once he'd had his fill of wonderful, precious O₂, Rob snapped to attention at the realization that he was still within darkness. Panic almost set in before he noticed that, at the end of wherever he was, there were rays of light hesitantly cracking through the pitch-black dark. Rob scrambled towards the glinting salvation like a starving man who'd spotted a buffet table, flinging himself out of the cave entrance to bask in the glory of the sun.
God, this feels amazing, he thought. I'll never spend a week cooped up inside ever again. Not even if it's finals week and I need to cram like I've never crammed before.
The sun is a gift to be cherished, just like the breeze, and the... purple... grass?
Rob rubbed his eyes, but the grass refused to be anything but purple.
Now that his post-sun high had worn off, he was able to fully take in his surroundings, and what he saw sent his head spinning. Groupings of trees covered the landscape, thick enough that he couldn't see the horizon through the gaps in what was obviously a forest. In fact, outside of the small clearing he was in, the canopies of the trees prevented much of the sun from getting through, casting the forest in an omnipresent half-light.
The tree trunks weren't purple, but the leaves were blue, which was annoyingly inconsistent. A part of him huffed at the difference; fresh leaves and fresh grass should be the same color even if neither of them had chosen to be green that day.
Inane thoughts like that were effective at staving off panic attacks, so he let them run rampant as he processed what happened. Slowly.
Chirping birds serenaded Rob as he realized many more things in succession. First, his clothes were different; his haphazardly-chosen jeans and baggy sweatshirt had been replaced with sturdy brown traveling pants and some sort of dark blue tunic. Second, a mild pressure in the back of his thoughts was calling on him to think of a specific phrase, and it was growing harder to ignore as time passed. And third, he had a freaking sword strapped to his back.
Rob gingerly pulled it free from its sheath, marveling at the stainless gray steel. It was relatively short, only about two feet long, but it felt comfortable in his grip and lighter than one might have guessed. He idly swung it around, blades of grass being indiscriminately slaughtered by a blade of steel. Wasn't the toughest of stress tests, but at first blush, it was sharp. Sharp enough to wound.
The pressure in his mind grew and poked him again. Fine, Rob grumbled internally. If it'll make you happy: 'Character Sheet.' A rectangular box filled with words popped into existence, leisurely floating in the air in front of him. Had he been the Rob of ten minutes ago, he might have been shocked. Frantic, even. The Rob of now was well past that. At this point, a hovering translucent box of info was just another bit of weird shit he was going to have to roll with.
He read it over, eyes narrowing further after every distressing line, which was all of them.
Character Sheet
Name: Rob
Level: 1
Race: Human
Class: N/A
HP: 110 / 110
Stamina: 90 / 90
MP: 50 / 50
Status Effects: N/A
Strength: 13
Vitality: 11
Endurance: 9
Dexterity: 10
Perception: 9
Mind: 19
Magic: 5
Active Skills:
Identify (LV 2)
Recall (LV 1)
Passive Skills:
Human Racial Bonus – Fast Learner
Speed Reading (LV 2)
???
Rob read it over, then stared, then read it again, then stared some more.
"Huh."
He hefted his shortsword and very, very gently dragged it across the tip of his finger. No more than the equivalent of a paper cut. It stung, and the blood that seeped out – thankfully red, and not indigo or some shit – was warm and sticky. Too real to be a dream, so that was Hypothesis A ruled right out.
"Maybe some really advanced form of Virtual Reality?" he wondered aloud. "...On second thought, better not go down that route. If I start second-guessing the nature of reality itself, I'll go crazier even faster than I already am."
And thus Hypothesis B was taken out back and shot. Unfortunately, there was no Hypothesis C. Nothing sufficient enough to explain why he had a status page straight out of a video game taking up space in his head.
You know, I'm being pretty calm about this, Rob thought. No freakout or anything.
His chest constricted as his hands began to sweat. Oh, there it is.