Gatekeeper Myst

Myst grinned slightly as he saw a hot redhead talking to an attractive blonde girl with slightly pointed ears. ‘Maybe going to a bar wasn’t such a bad idea.’

“Look I know you’re a master at your craft but there is no way that you can stuff a gatekeeper’s entire lore base in a human’s head without their brains leaking out of their ears,” the blonde girl disagreed.

“Bullshit, I’ll prove it,” the redhead stated.

The blonde girl pouted. “Yeah, no, you’ve got a ringer planned, I know how you work.”

“Nope, I’ll even let you pick the target.”

“The out of place guy at the bar drinking cider,” the blonde said pointing at Myst.

“Why him?” the redhead asked.

“Why not, he’s here,” the blonde replied. “He looks nice and normal.”

“Fine, fine, let’s see if he explodes,” the redhead replied as she walked over to Myst. “So, can you help settle a bet, my friend doesn’t think you can stuff five centuries of gatekeeper knowledge into a random NPC without their head exploding or them slowly turning into an eldritch abomination.”

“That would probably depend on the system,” Myst replied, curious about which game they were talking about.

“Great, so you’ll help?” the redhead asked hopefully.

“Sure, what do I need to do?” Myst asked.

The redhead smiled at Myst as she brought her hand up to touch his face. “Try not to die or mutate, I really want to win this bet.”

‘Great, she’s crazy. Meh, she’s still a hot redhead-’ Myst’s thoughts cut off as mind numbing pain ripped through his brain and he felt himself falling. His last thought was questioning why his hair felt like it had pain receptors.

Myst groaned as he woke up on something flat and hard with a splitting headache. He opened his eyes and frowned as he realized he was in a hanger bay of insane proportions, the ceiling looked to be over two stories above him and it was the size of a football field, or at least that was what it looked like at first glance. Of course the primitive looking roomba moving along the wall meant someone was probably fucking with him, it looked way too retro to have such advanced features. He was also fairly sure real hangers didn’t have massive armored metal doors.

He inhaled and frowned as he noticed the strange metallic smell in the air, mixed with the hint of a forest which immediately ruled out him being asleep.

Myst sighed as he pushed himself off the metal decking and got to his feet. He absently ran his fingernail over his index finger. “Okay, I can feel that. Point two for it not being a dream. Where the hell am I?”

He blinked as he looked around at the various vaguely familiar spacecraft that looked way too realistic to be fakes. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose then frowned at the bloody snot. “Great, bloody nose,” he muttered as he reached into his pocket and grabbed a penny. He glanced at the copper coin then tossed it toward one of the ships.

He blinked as it bounced off the ship with a metallic ping. “Okay, yeah, that would cost way too much to fake this.” He didn’t remember hearing anything about a science fiction convention in the area which meant he’d been unconscious long enough for someone to drag him out of the bar and into a car then drive him somewhere with a warehouse and extremely realistic models which probably meant Seattle or Renton and both of those were at least an hour away.

“Yeah, okay, someone put way too much effort into this,” Myst complained as he walked over to examine one of the ‘spacecraft’ while trying not to freak out. “I wonder if they cast it with battle damage or shot the metal?” he muttered to himself as he tapped the strange craft with his knuckles. “Looks solid,” he muttered with a sinking feeling, starting to really worry because he wasn’t sure where the hell he was or how he’d gotten here. 

He absently glanced at the ships as he headed toward the possible control panel for the hanger doors that he could see. “Okay, fine, you want to stick me in a set, fuck it,” he grumbled as he walked over to the panel. He frowned as the looked at the strange vaguely familiar looking letters on the panel. He grabbed the lever and pulled it, expecting the lights to come on or for someone to jump out and say gotcha or some shit. What he wasn’t expecting was for the hangar bay doors to ‘slowly’ slide open, revealing a jungle landscape. “Okay, what the fuck?”

He stared at the landscape as the hangar finished opening. He could smell the jungle flowers so he knew it wasn’t just an image. “No jungles in Washington… no jungles in the States as far as I know, where the fuck did they take me?”

“Anyone here?!” Myst called out, more than a little annoyed about being drugged and abducted, at least he was fairly sure getting drugged was the only way they’d have enough time to drag me to a jungle. “My cider? Tasted normal and I watched the barkeep pour it. I don’t feel drugged but I can’t recall how I got here so, maybe.” He scowled as he stepped out of the hanger then jumped back as he saw a dog sized blue lizard crawl up a tree. “What the fuck is that?!”

He pulled himself back together then ran over and pulled the lever to shut the hangar bay doors, wanting nothing to do with a dog sized lizard he’d never seen or heard of. He took a breath and then let it out as he tried to figure how what he’d just seen. “Okay, if I’m not drugged out of my skull and seeing things, that can’t be real. No company is just going to abduct people and my vague verbal contract the girl wouldn’t be enough to save them which means I’m somewhere else… yeah, not sure that makes sense...” he trailed off as he realized he knew how to create gateways… kinda.

“Yeah, fuck it, the damned lizard was real enough,” Myst grumbled, unwilling to be one of the idiots that stood around denying reality just because they couldn’t believe it until something horrible happened to them. 

“I’m grabbing a gun or a crowbar or something,” he muttered as he walked toward the sideroom he could see if the strange letters above it. He glanced around the primitive yet futuristic looking locker room then scowled as he saw the very familiar looking white fucking armor. “You have to be shitting me.” He shook his head as he walked over to look at the replica clone armor. “Someone went to way too much trouble doing this.” He picked up the blaster, pointed it at a wall and fired it, almost dropping it as a bolt of plasma shot out of the end of the barrel and hit the wall, leaving a black mark behind.

“Fuck!” Myst stared at the wall in shock. “Okay, they were fucking ROBs…” he shook his head then concentrated on the armor. “There is no try, there is only do…” he trailed off as it was obvious the armor wasn’t moving. “Yeah, I’m not sure if I should be happy or not that I don’t have force powers.” He gestured dramatically at the wall. “Force lightning?”

He sighed. “Yeah, damn, that would have been cool.” He took a breath and let it out. “What do I have? Some sense of using an item to open a portal.” He glanced at the clone armor. “Looks close to the right size, maybe. Let’s hope the armor is like the books, not the movies.”

Myst spent the next couple minutes putting on the unfamiliar armor and thinking that the DMG might have a point about penalties for unfamiliar armor. Sadly it wasn’t a perfect fit as the clone had narrower shoulders but it could be a lot worse as they were both six feet tall. He scowled as he pulled the helmet on, not wanting to be the idiot that got shot in the head just so they could have their face on camera. “Huh, you can actually see pretty well out of these, yeah no reason to take them off.”

He looked through the rest of the lockers, finding much the same. He grabbed a shoulder bag out of one of the lockers and stuffed a number of magazines into it then grabbed a belt full of them from the last locker. “Okay, now I just need to find food.”

He sighed as he headed out of the locker room and went exploring. He grinned like idiot when he found a lightsaber in a foot locker of one of the officer’s rooms. “I know I shouldn’t but fuck it,” he said as he pointed the emitter away from him and flipped the switch. He grinned at the blue glowing blade. “I have a lightsaber, it’s not purple but I have a lightsaber.”

He gave it a couple very careful practice swings then turned it off, not wanting to risk accidentally cutting off any of his limbs. “Okay, it should work for cutting through things if I need a saw or need to kill any of the lizards.”

He snagged the thing that looked vaguely like a granola bar from the man’s stuff then glanced at the bed. He walked over and sat down as he tried to figure out what he was going to do. “What did the girls say, something about a gatekeeper and stuffing knowledge in my head…” he trailed off as he realized he knew how to access the base level of an item using a gate. He wasn’t exactly sure what that meant but he knew he could which was a strange feeling, knowing how to do something and not remembering where he learned it.

He glanced at his feet. “At least I don’t have tentacles. Hopefully she was joking about the eldritch abomination bit.” He took off his helmet and set it on the bed then opened the ration bar and sniffed it. It smelled like food. He took a small taste then frowned as it tasted like a granola bar. “Great, who do I shoot for some real food?” he muttered sarcastically then realized that he had no idea if the local wildlife was edible.

He slightly as he realized he was going to need to carve runes into something to get the gate to work. “Okay, maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, it beats sitting in an abandoned outpost until I run out of food.” He got back to his feet and headed back toward the hangar bay to see if he could find something that let him carve runes in the walls so he wouldn’t have to use his lightsaber as he wasn’t sure how to charge it. 

0o0o0

Myst frowned slightly as he looked at the wobbly test welds he’d done on a scrap of metal. “This might be a problem.” Sure the last couple lines were better than the first couple but it had been about twenty years since he’d welded much of anything and it showed. He’d like to blame the alien equipment but he was fairly sure he was just out of practice. “No time like the present,” he muttered as he dropped the piece of scrap in the scrap bin and grabbed another sheet of metal.

He looked at the symbols he’d drawn on the metal with the pen he’d found then carefully clamped it to the work bench and started trying to follow the lines as best he could. He spent another half an hour practicing before he was reasonably sure that he could follow the diagram he needed to draw without screwing up too badly. He had a feeling he wouldn’t like the result if he screwed up the symbols.

Thankfully the welder was portable which meant that he could drag it to what he was fairly sure was a meeting area of some type and start etching the design he’d managed to draw on the wall. It took over an hour and a several breaks to let his hands and wrist rest but he was reasonably happy with the results or at least as happy as he was likely to get given his current welding skills.

“This is nuts, what happens if it doesn’t work?” Myst shook his head as he realized he was stalling. “Worst case, it doesn’t work and I play with the switches and try to find some type of communication system.” He placed his hand on the center of the diagram and sort of pushed his energy into the symbols like he remembered doing and yet had never done.

He stared in shock as the symbols ignited with purple fire, something that by all rights shouldn’t have happened. He stared at the glowing symbols in shock. “I have magic… I have fucking magic!” he screamed in excitement then started laughing as he realized he might actually be able to get home.

Myst managed to stop laughing after a few seconds. “Okay, you have magic, what can you actually do with it?” He focused on the bits and pieces he ‘remembered’, if the symbols worked like they should, he should be able to link a item to the portal which would take him somewhere else. He wasn’t sure where that somewhere else was but he was really hoping they had food that wasn’t ration bars.

He pulled the half eaten granola bar out of his bag and focused on the symbols and ration bar as he pushed his magic in the bar and the symbols. He smiled as the part of the wall contained by the symbols turned into a shimmering purple portal. “I really wish I had a scout droid right now.”

Myst weighed his options, he could either jump through a magical portal to the unknown or he could stay in the base and drive himself crazy trying to figure out how to use all of the strange tech scattered around the base when he couldn’t read the language. He wasn’t sure what it said about his sanity when he set the ration bar on the ground, made sure his helmet was on properly then jumped through the portal after grabbing his blaster.

He blinked as he found himself in a large hangar filled with tie fighters, familiar looking astromech droids and weird multicolored titles on the floor that made everything snap into focus. ‘Disgaea, no wonder it seemed familiar.’ He twitched as several of the droids started heading his way. ‘So much for turn based.’ “Parlay?”

Myst frowned as several of the droids turned on their cutting torches as they made their way in his direction. He glanced down at the white panel he was standing on and smiled as he realized he was standing on the base square. ‘Okay, if I can trick one of the droids into touching the panel, I should be able to recruit them, probably.’

He brought his blaster up and started shooting at the droids as they slowly ‘charged’ him. He was rather glad that none of them had been modified for combat because there were at least a dozen of them in the hangar. He wasn’t sure if he should be happy or annoyed that the droids merely vanished when he did enough damage rather than shutting down so he could scrap them in a useful manner. He stepped off the base square then back on it and sighed as nothing happened. ‘Shit, so much for being able to leave the item world that way.’

Myst spun as he heard footsteps behind him and saw a protocol droid step out from behind a starfighter holding a wrench in one hand and a coffee cup in the other. “Parley?”

The protocol droid said, “My apologies but you are late for the meeting, you shall be punished.”

‘At least I have armor,’ Myst thought to himself as he clipped his blaster to his belt and waited for the protocol droid to close the distance. He was really hoping no one had updated the droid’s combat programming or he’d be in real trouble. Thankfully the droid’s swing was easy enough to avoid by stepping to the side. He shoved the unstable droid onto the base panel with a touch of amusement. He smiled as the droid didn’t reappear after several sections. ‘Okay, that might have actually worked.’

He focused on the various glowing tiles. ‘Boosted damage, boosted evasion, less evasion, less strength… yeah, looks like the game.’ He carefully made his way to the door that led to the rest of the base. He ducked behind a starfighter as the door opened revealing a clone trooper. ‘Great, he’s wearing the same armor and is probably a lot better with a blaster than I am. Time to cheat.’ 

Myst waited for the clone to walk past him then lunged at him, grabbed the back of his head and brought his face into contact with the starfighter hull. He bashed the man’s face into the hull a second time then worked on dragging the dazed soldier back to the base panel. He grinned slightly as he shoved the stormtrooper onto the base panel and he vanished. ‘Okay, hopefully that means I’ll have a minion that can read basic.’

‘If this is like the game or the stuff I can sort of remember, I’ll have to clear ten floors before I get out of here, so much for just jumping around the multiverse with portals.’ He was fairly sure he could create something that would get him out of the Star Wars universe but he was fairly sure he needed more mana and more practice welding before he could make it work. He grabbed his blaster off his belt then carefully made his way toward the door.

He was a touch relieved when he saw a pair of protocol droids trying to hurry down the corridor toward him. He smirked as he blasted the shit out of the protocol droids that reminded him of C3PO. He twitched as four stormtroopers ran around the corner and opened fire on him. He dodged back out of the way and ran toward the nearest ship he could use for cover, rather happy that their aim seemed to be shit.

‘At least they’re from the movies rather than the books or the prequels because their aim sucks,’ Myst thought to himself as he worked on killing the stormtroopers. He scrambled to his feet and ran as he saw the last stormtrooper fiddling with something on his belt. His caution proved well placed as the grenade exploded sending shrapnel everywhere. He dove behind another starfighter and brought his gun up as he waited for the grenade happy trooper to come out into the open.

“Rebel scum!” the trooper shouted as he sprayed the area with blaster bolts.

‘Great, either they get better when they’re alone or I just got supremely unlucky and shot the idiots first.’ He glanced around as he tried to figure out his next hiding spot. ‘I should have just stayed in the base.’ He pulled his canteen out of his bag and tossed it toward one of the other ships.

“Did you expect me to actually fall for that?” the stormtrooper asked sarcastically.

“I was hoping,” Myst lied as he waited for the man to come around the ship he was using for cover. He slid the marker along the ground toward the stormtrooper just as the man ducked around the ship ready to shoot him. 

Myst took the glancing blow from the man’s blaster as he shoulder checked him then shoved the unstable trooper into the base panel causing him to vanish. Myst looked down at his scorched chestplate he was going to have to replace. ‘Yeah, gotta love government contractors. I have at least twenty rooms to clear, this is going to suck,’ he smiled as he glanced at the starfighter facing the door to the rest of the ship, ‘unless I get creative.’

0o0o0