Jake and his friends looked forward to play Dragons Blood Online during their monthly LAN gaming session. It was going to be a big night now that their characters had finally all reached level 60. Sure, the forecast called for some rain and maybe a little thunder, but with an industrial strength UPS, who worried about the weather?

---

Here's a little something I've been threatening to start posting ever since Elsbeth posted her "Beyond the Pale" story. So, umm, my remaining 2 or 3 fans can blame her for any delays in other requested sequels. jk! On that note, I am also working on two additional stories right now. ADD for the win! One is a sequel to my MAU story and the other is tentatively titled ASEE. Sorry, Whisper and Mystique are kinda low on my ADD radar. However; there is a link to Mystique in this story. Well, I intend for there to be one anyway. Thanks go out to Beyogi, HSE and Draflow for their feedback and ideas. djkauf for fixing all my errors to make this more readable.

~o~O~o~

Disclaimer: The original characters and plot of this story are the property of the author. No infringement of pre-existing copyright is intended.  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.  Well, except for General Rommel.  Sorry, but it’s kinda hard to not mention him when you have Germans + British + WWII + Desert. This story is copyright (c) 2011 R Nelson. All rights reserved.

Colonel Claus von Oppeln stood on his seat to examine the desert terrain via his tank commander’s hatch. Sweltering under the oppressive heat, he brought his prized Swiss-made field glasses up to his eyes to survey the desolate surroundings.  It seemed like a lifetime ago, but it was only last year he celebrated his 35th birthday with his wife and children at their family home in Munich. The times seemed so much simpler then and the reach of the 3rd Reich appeared to have no bounds.

He sighed as he thought back to what brought about his current predicament.  The attack was going so well, until that new British General ordered his forces to stop retreating. General Rommel’s attack was both daring and risky.  It was going well until the British somehow figured out that Rommel’s attack was mostly smoke and mirrors.

Like most Panzer company commanders, he led his mixed company of Panzer III and IV tanks from the front.  The oppressive heat that reflected from the accursed African desert once again made him miss the cool climate and beautiful mountains of the Fatherland.

As von Oppeln peered ahead, he spotted a sandstorm heading their way.  It was still a few minutes away, but the dark clouds and lightning promised that it would be vicious.  He tapped his foot on the driver’s shoulder to signal for him to stop.  He turned and signaled for what was left of his company to halt, stop their engines and batten down the hatches.  His company could properly be called an under-strength platoon now.  He had a mere three of the older Panzer III tanks, five of the newer Panzer IV tanks and one Sd.Kfz. 251 half-track that was currently loaded down with all the extra fuel and ammunition that his men could scrounge.

He was not looking forward to spending however long it would take for the storm to blow over while he and his men stayed, closed up inside tons of sun baked steel.  However, it beat standing outside and getting blasted apart by burning sand. Stopping the engines would help reduce some of the heat inside the tanks and it would prevent the engine’s filters from becoming clogged.  He and his men had fought in this desert environment for far too long to make such a rookie mistake during a sandstorm.  At least, the sandstorm would help hide their tracks from the British.

The storm slammed into his tanks with a force unlike anything he and his crew had ever experienced.  The wind was so strong that it rocked the heavy tank on its tracks.  Then came the sounds of sand and rocks hitting the sides of the tanks.  He wouldn’t be surprised to find out that they would need to repaint their tanks when the storm finally passed.  Cleaning the sand out of the main gun’s barrel and engine intakes was sure to be a chore that his men would not like.

A spark danced from his instruments as the air in the tank turned heavy and the sounds of thunder could be heard booming outside the safety of the tank’s thick armor.  He was not surprised to see his men soundly asleep during the storm.  He shrugged his shoulders. While louder than he expected, this was nothing compared to the sounds of a battle and his men needed the rest.

He started to close his eyes and relax when a loud boom shook the tank and a bright light pierced the grime encrusted view ports.  The tank felt like it was falling for a second before its tracks and suspension slammed into ground with a jolt that shook everyone awake.

“Mein Gott!” he shouted as his gunner woke and yelled, “What in the hell?”

“Have the British found us?” His driver asked with a panicked look on his face.

“Why is it so quiet?” Their gunner asked calling attention to the fact that the storm’s noise was missing.

“I don’t know.” von Oppeln said as he cautiously opened his hatch.  A light dusting of desert sand spilled in with the crisp cool air that smelled like the woods near his home.  Confused, he stood on his seat to look around.  Everyone else in the tank muttered with surprise and relief as the cool air from the open hatch washed over them.  His driver popped his hatch and poked his head out too as they both took in what looked like a large clearing that overlooked a castle in the distance.  A castle surrounded by an army of some kind.  von Oppeln looked behind him and was reassured by the sight of the rest of his tanks sitting behind him on what appeared to be a narrow dirt wagon path through some wooded area.

The hatches of the other tanks started to open as the rest of his vehicle commanders popped their heads out to look around.  They also gasped with amazement at the abrupt change in scenery.  He was just about to use his field glasses to get a closer look of the strange castle to the front of their position when he noticed a strangely dressed man appear with a burst of light twenty meters from the front of his tank.

“You there!  Are you this unit’s commander?” The man arrogantly yelled up at him.

“Yes, who are you?” von Oppeln had spent far too many days inside his tank to have any patience to deal with lunatics, no matter how strange. He unsnapped the case and drew his Walther P38 pistol from his shoulder holster.

“I am your master. You will obey me!” The crazy man’s eyes turned black.

The man was clearly deranged because von Oppeln only obeyed one man, his Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler. He casually aimed his pistol at the strange man, “I am a Wehrmacht Offizier! You are neither my commanding officer nor the Führer!” von Oppeln contemptuously aimed and shot the crazy man. His bullet sparked as it harmlessly ricocheted off of an invisible barrier less than a meter before hitting the man.

He found himself lying on the ground at the crazy man’s feet.  Looking up, he noticed that what he initially thought was a man was something else entirely.  The being had pure black eyes, small horns on his forehead and shark-like teeth behind thin bloodless lips, “Mein Gott! What are you?!”

“Foolish human, your weak god cannot hear you! I am your new master!” He said with scorn.

Von Oppeln felt the beginnings of panic, but he clamped down on his fear. It could not rule him. This abomination must die, even if killing it meant that he must die. Firing the main gun wasn’t an option due to the possible sand in the barrel. If it didn’t blow the breach back into the turret, it would surely wreck the gun.

“Run it over!” He yelled knowing he would most likely be crushed in the process. He heard his tank’s engine roar to life. The creature standing over him laughed before it yelled in some twisted language. Von Oppeln turned back to see his tanks suddenly covered in a sickly green fog.  He looked on with horror as his driver climbed partially out of his driver’s hatch before collapsing with a gurgle.

“Now, perhaps you will be more willing to obey me, or shall I prepare you using the same method that I used on your men?” The creature’s asked with a sharp toothed smile that only a demon from hell could have.

“What do you mean?” asked von Oppeln as he pissed himself.

“Why my dear foolish human, I expect you to follow my General’s orders and lead what is left of your command into battle on my behalf.” He purred with satisfaction as he inhaled the aroma of von Oppeln’s urine stained fear.

“How can I do that?  My men are all dead.” von Oppeln pointed to his dead crew and the long row of silent tanks with the occasional body lying across an opened hatch.

“Fear not my dear Colonel. I will allow you to once again command them.” The demon creature said before he yelled once again in a twisted language that hurt his head just to hear.

Von Oppeln looked on with mounting horror as his men twitched, once, twice and started to move once again.  His driver’s eyes glowed with a pale green color as he soundlessly straightened himself up and once again sat back down with the top of his head and glowing green eyes peering out of the smoothly idling tank.

The creature pointed to the army below his position. “Now, direct your war machines into the camp below and follow the orders of my General.  With your weapons, I expect the castle’s defenses and its people will be destroyed before nightfall.”

Colonel Oppeln ignored his urine-stained uniform and saluted the thing.  “Ja, mein Führer.” He walked back to his tank. The sight of his men staring listlessly ahead with their green glowing eyes was almost enough to make him want to use his side arm on himself.  If he did that, he felt certain that the creature would just turn him into one of them.

~o~O~o~

 

---

 

Finally, it was the first weekend of the month and Jake anxiously looked forward to tonight’s gaming get together with his friends.  Jake, with his fiancée Brooke, Brian with his wife Emily and his friend Nick, all played Dragon’s Blood Online (DBO) together.  They usually just played over the Internet from the comfort of their own homes, but once a month they all gathered at Nick’s house for a DBO LAN party.

Jake, Nick and Brian all met and formed an unlikely friendship in high school after they each discovered that the others enjoyed playing D&D. Jake was the jock of the group and on the football team.  Academically, he got slightly above average grades without too much effort.  Athletically, he was also slightly above average.  In the end, his grades weren’t good enough for an academic scholarship and his football wasn’t good enough for an athletic scholarship. He knew that his parents couldn’t afford to put an average student through college. However, he did know the value of teamwork and he liked the college program the Army offered, so he joined, as a grunt (11B) since that MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) offered the best college money and signing bonus.

During his four years in the Army and two tours in Iraq he quickly rose to the rank of Sergeant E-5 and his Army career looked good until a roadside bomb blew up the Humvee he, his platoon leader and company commander were riding in.  Fortunately, the Humvee was one of the new and improved models with extra armor plates, so no one died. Everyone made it out with minor injuries, except for Jake.  He lost his right foot when a fragment of the bomb punched through the armor and slammed into his leg just below his knee.  Six months of therapy, a high tech prosthetic foot made of titanium and carbon fiber, and a medical discharge later found Jake back home and attending college full-time using his G.I. Bill money. Two months later, he met the love of his life while getting an ice cream cone.

Brooke worked at the local ice cream shop as the assistant manager while she attended college to pursue a teaching degree with a focus on elementary education.  Jake gained five pounds from eating ice cream before she accepted his proposal to go out with him on a date. She confessed to him that she initially thought he was the stereotypical jock that she never wanted to date again.  She saw his gait as a macho thing instead him needing to walk with a slight swagger due to his missing a foot.  She was incredibly shocked when she learned that he was an amputee.

Brian and Nick fit their stereotypes to a “T”. Brian fit the stereotypical overweight geek during high school by being the math club president, having zero luck with the girls, straight A student and D&D rules lawyer. On the other side of the coin, Nick fit the computer geek stereotype.  He was and still is the thin and pale computer geek who loved to read comic books and science fiction during the lunch hour.  It was their shared love for science-fiction, fantasy, comic books and D&D that bridged the stereotypical jock versus geek divide and forged a lifelong friendship between them.

After Jake joined the Army, Brian went to college to study engineering and Nick got a job as a sys admin at his father’s company. They managed to stay in touch via an occasional email and Facebook update, but it wasn’t until Nick got them all hooked on their first MMORPG. With that, the terrible trio was once again reunited.

Brian broke his girl curse when he met Emily in college and married her after they both graduated. Jake still couldn’t see how they could have found anything in common with each other. At the time the two of them met, she was a Graphic Arts Major and his complete opposite personality wise.  Where Brian was shy and introverted, Emily was outgoing and vibrant, but he could see how much of a positive change she made in his friend’s life.  His confidence and outlook on life improved in leaps and bounds. Now, Brian couldn’t be happier being a nerd and working as a mechanical engineer, and it is all thanks to Emily.

Emily was also happy with her hubby and worked as a graphic artist at a local ad agency. The painting that she created using a screenshot of the group when they all hit level 40 hung in a place of honor in Jake’s apartment. She did such an excellent job with the characters.  The realistic graphics in the screenshot looked good, but the characters on the painting looked like they could have been alive and breathing at one time.  Jake hoped that she would be willing and able to do another group painting to celebrate the group hitting level 60.

Of all the places someone could meet, Nick and Allison meet each other at a computer conference.  He liked to try and claim she was a booth babe, but he quickly stopped making those claims after she threatened to tell everyone how they really met each other. He stopped, but she told his friends anyway. They all thought it was funny.

She worked as an assistant in the marketing department of a company that made the best water cooled computer cases.  They met because he was such a geek, that the sight of the cool computer cases on display to his right attracted his attention more than the scantily clad booth babes on his left. He was studying the cases so hard and not paying attention to where he was going, he walked right into a pole and almost knocked himself out.  It was Allison who saw his feat of non-agility and ran over to see if he was okay.  Nick never understood why a girl as smart, good looking and friendly as Allison would agree to go out with him, but he almost broke his arm trying to pat himself on the back for digging up the courage to call her and ask her out on a date.

When Dragon’s Blood Online was first released, Nick, Brian and Jake rushed to the store to buy the much anticipated and critically acclaimed MMORPG.  It only took four months of near constant play by the guys until they had each reached the end game and were in danger of burning out when their DBO Widows put their collective feet down and issued their ultimatum.  They either stopped playing the game or they would cut them off.  The guys were seriously thinking about the pros and cons of each when Brian proposed a third option.

“You girls are mad because we play the game too much and don’t spend enough time with you, right?” Brian asked.

“Well, duh.”

“Of course.”

“Okay...instead of us stopping the game cold turkey, how about the girls join us and we all play together as a team one night a week?”  Brian asked.

“What do you mean?” Emily asked with a curious expression.

“Simple, we all  will create first level characters and then once a week and only once a week, we all play those characters and only those characters together.” Brian said.

Nick’s wife, Allison, hated the game, but Emily expressed an interest in giving the idea a try.  Emily had actually played the game once or twice using Brian’s account. After Emily broke the ice by admitting that she had played it, Brooke decided that she would be willing to give it a try if Emily and Allison would too.  Allison was dead set against the idea, but the boys admitted that there were only five slots in a group, so one of the girls or boys would have to sit out anyway. Allison relented and grudgingly accepted the solution if it would stop her husband from playing the damn game 24/7.

There was one additional condition that Jake thought of as a way to stack the deck and make the group stronger at the same time.  From their extensive knowledge of the game and experience with playing similar games in the past, each of the guys had enough experience to know what the strongest and weakest class and race combinations were.  They knew that the perfect group needed a Warrior, known in game as a Tank, a healer, a crowd controller or CC along with two high Damage Per Second or DPS classes.  

Jake usually played the tank, but he knew that a novice healer could spell disaster for the group, while a novice tank could easily grow into the role.  So, to help reduce the risk, he proposed that each of the guys play the class and race most opposite from their usual play style with the intent that the more skilled guys could take on the harder and more complex roles and shepherd the girls into roles they could grow into and learn at their own pace without getting frustrated or getting the guys frustrated by their newbie mistakes.

Jake and the guys suggested that Brooke play the warrior and much to Jake’s chagrin, she gravitated toward the wood elf race because they were so petite and pretty. While a wood elf could technically be a warrior, he felt that the race was too puny to make good warriors.  Ogres or Trolls made the best warriors. Brooke sped through the general appearances part of her character.  She just clicked the random button a few times until she saw the face and hairstyle she liked, and then she changed the hair color and adjusted the body slider to make her slightly taller than the norm for her race.

The last thing she added to her character surprised everyone. She added a long and jagged scar feature that ran from just over the top of her left eyebrow and down across the top of her cheek.  She explained that her character’s parents were killed and she had been kidnapped by an Orc raiding party. She was unable to get healed before the scar formed and that is why she was a warrior. She would never again be unable to defend herself or the ones she loved.  She used that back story when it came to figuring out a name for her character.  She named her Brelyssa Orcsbane.  Jake felt surprised and proud that Brooke felt the desire to role-play her character so soon.

Brooke joined the guys when they teamed up on Emily to peer pressure her into picking the super hot dark elf sorceress as her race and class combination.  The guys attempted to talk her out of playing the sorceress because it is not an easy class to play. They suggested she play a wizard due to their rather simple job of blowing stuff up, but she insisted because a sorceress sounded cooler to her.  They guys gave up and let it go because if it got her to play, then it was still a win in their book.

Emily took a lot of time building her character’s physical appearance.  Unlike Brooke, she tested every hairstyle and hair color combination before settling on a medium length straight platinum silver hair that complemented her dark blue skin tone with her cobalt blue eyes and blood red lips.  She even adjusted her character’s skin tone until she felt that it complemented her outfit.  The guys tried to tell her that she would go through many outfits, but their lack of fashion sense was overruled by the girls.

Emily dived into her character’s evil mythos and took great joy when she picked out Iridia Arborshate for her name. Iridia was due to her hair color sort of resembling the color of iridium and Arborshate because it just sounded evil.  Emily enjoyed making her character so much that she threatened to make a few more just to play with the possibilities.

With the tank and crowd control slots filled, Brian quickly created a human rogue named Belamros Swordhand for one of the pure damage slots and for the rogue’s lock picking skills. He normally played a high elf wizard, so a human rogue was pretty close to the opposite end of the damage spectrum that he could get and still be a pure damage class.  Unlike the girls, Brian just hit the random button a few times to select his character’s appearance.

Nick grabbed the final hybrid damage slot by creating a dwarf paladin named Norros Axemage instead of his normal human priest healing class.  The only vanity appearance item he spent any time over was his character’s beard, “A Dwarf has got to have a good beard! It’s in the Dwarven handbook somewhere!”

While not the best at damage, the paladin class made an excellent backup healer and backup tank while still providing good damage output.  The paladin was especially good against undead and evil creatures. Never mind the fact that Emily’s race was known as an evil race to play.  In a group, race didn’t matter and it was all about the role play.  Based on Emily’s and Brooke’s reaction to making their characters, he knew the girls would make an exciting addition in their group’s dynamic.

That left the final slot for Jake as the group’s healer.  He normally played an Ogre Warrior, so he considered playing either a priest healer or a druid healer.  As a priest, he could be a high elf, human, dark elf or dwarf.  As a druid, he could only be a wood elf or human. While he liked the priest’s raw healing power, the druid class also had some good heals and a bit more utility over a the pure healing priest class.

Since they lacked a wizard, they would need someone who could teleport the group and the druid class filled that role almost as well as the wizard class. Brooke’s squeal of excitement when he briefly looked at the wood elf druid options made the choice for him. Out of everyone, a wood elf druid was about as far away from his typical race and class combo as he could possible get and still play the game.

His mistake was to leave the room to go to the bathroom followed by a run for another drink from the kitchen before he had saved his character.  While he was absent, the rest of the guys finished his character for him.  They changed his male wood elf druid into the most beautiful blond haired female model they could pick, changed his name from Rayven Stormshadow to Jancaryn Stormshadow, and then they saved the changes before he could get back and stop them.

“Damn it guys!  Why in the hell did you do that?  Now I have to delete her and start all over.” Jake sighed with frustration.

He was surprised when Brooke and Emily pleaded with him to keep her. “Please Jake, for Allison.  Since she can’t play we really want to have a third girl to play with.”

“But, she’s not really a girl.  She’s my character and I’m not a girl,” Jake attempted to explain while the girls just looked at him with a confused expression.

Brook placed her hand on Jake’s bicep and patiently smiled at him. “Well...No, you’re so obviously a guy, but why can’t you play a girl?”

“Would you want to play a guy?” Jake asked, sure that would be the end of it.

Brooke paused and thought about it for a second, shaking her head slowly from side to side. “No, I never really thought about it, but I might be willing to give it a try because it could be nice to play a game and not be considered a lesser player due to my appearance. Do you want me to change my character into a guy?”

Jake appreciated her offer, but he didn’t want her to waste time over something so unimportant. “No, you like your character and you spent a lot of time building her. It’s not that important and I’d rather you enjoyed your character.”  He chuckled when she exhaled with relief. “It’s not that I feel that playing a virtual girl will make me less ‘gay’.” He air quoted the word to show he didn’t really believe in the stereotype because even with the old and silly ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy in the Army, he worked with two gay soldiers and he never once considered them to be any less capable.

“It’s just that I like to role-play my characters.” Jake noticed that the girls looked a little confused by his ‘role-play’ gamer term.  “I like to pretend to be my character and act how my character would act.  Kind of like being an actor in a movie or a character in a book and I just can’t see myself acting like a girl. I’m worried that everyone will just laugh at me.”

“We won’t and if you’re worried about what I will think, all I can say is, ‘Babe, you’re more than enough man for me!’” Brooke’s coquettish smile took Jake by surprise and made his pants feel too tight.

“Okay...Okay, I’ll play her. Geez, it’s not like thousands of other guys aren’t playing female characters and it will only be with you all, so I guess it’s not really that big of a deal.” Jake said and was immediately rewarded when Brooke squealed with delight and jumped into his arms, showering him with kisses.

It had been a little bit more than a year since that fateful date and everyone looked forward to tonight’s session. Since all of their characters had finally hit level 60 during last week’s session, tonight would mark the first time they could finally try some of the harder level 60 restricted dungeons. The loot from just one run had the potential to provide some pretty good upgrades for the group’s gear.  Even if they didn’t get any upgrades, at least the fights would be a fun challenge.

For the monthly party, each couple usually brought a hot dish and a bottle of wine to share and since it was a Friday night, they could play as late as they wanted too.  This time, Brian and Emily didn’t bring the traditional bottle of wine.  Brooke and Allison were the first to notice the omission, but thought nothing of it until they tried to offer Emily a glass of wine from the bottle that Jake and Brooke brought with them.  She refused with a pleased smile, which delayed the start of their game by almost an hour as the girls realized that there could only be one reason Emily would refuse a glass of wine.

Brooke was the first to make the connection. She jumped up from her chair and hugged Emily. “Oh my gawd, Emily!  Here, sit in my chair! This is so exciting. When did you find out?”

“Well, it was confirmed by the doctor Wednesday, but I knew something was wrong when I missed my period two weeks ago.” Emily smiled happily as she possessively held Brian’s hand.  Brian looked a little uncomfortable with the sudden attention that he and Emily were receiving.

Jake slapped Brian on his back and sighed. “Dude...game over, man, game over!”

Nick nodded affirmatively until he noticed the glare from both Allison and Brooke.

“Wow, so, like two months ago...Hmmm, does that mean that your baby is a DBO Baby?” Brooke laughed as Emily confirmed her theory with a blush as she looked into her husband’s eyes and pulled him down for a heated kiss.

Once the kiss ended, Brian pretended to gasp for air due to the intensity of the kiss, causing everyone to laugh at him.

Allison rushed in and hugged Brooke and Ally. “Girlfriends, we have got to talk!” She glanced back at Nick. “Why don’t you boys go down and play in the man-cave for a bit?”

Sensing the rush of estrogen fueled baby talk, the guys quickly excused themselves and retreated into the basement to set up the laptops and PCs for tonight’s game session. Jake and Nick used that time to both congratulate and bemoan Brian’s impending status demotion. Once all of the systems were up and connected to the net, Jake ran back upstairs to let the girls know that everything was ready.

“We will be right there!  Ally and I are just plotting with Emily before we descend into the pit of testosterone!” Brooke yelled back, causing the girls to giggle.

“Okay, see you in a few, then!” Jake ducked and headed back down the stairs and let the guys know that it would probably be fifteen to twenty minutes before Brooke and Emily would be ready to start playing.

Brian checked the clock and assessed the odds of the girls actually being ‘right there’. “Hmmm, why don’t we log everyone in, make sure we all have the needed supplies and spell components, and run our characters to the dungeon entrance so that the girls don’t have to worry about that stuff?”

“Excellent idea!” Nick grinned. “That should help get us started faster once they finally get done talking about babies...” He shuddered with fear at the thought that Allison might want to have a child now that Emily and Brian had broken the seal.

~o~O~o~

---

 

It took the girls a bit longer than the guys expected to finish talking about babies, but now that they were here, it was game on.  Jake liked playing in the same room with his friends. While it was kind of the same playing with each other over the net and they used the voice chat feature built into DBO, being in the same room made the group work so much better and it was so much more fun being with his friends.  An ambush could be foiled by a simple sharp inhalation and if someone was having a problem with something, there was a person who could look over their shoulder and lend a hand.  It made things much less stressful and helped a ton during the early days with getting the girls up to speed.

Since this was going to be the group’s first time in a level 60 dungeon, Jake had spent all of his free time last week researching the drops, or treasures in gamer lingo, and powers of the dungeon’s chief bad guy, known as ‘The Boss’.  He even found the fight strategy videos and studied them so he would know exactly what to expect.

Unlike the lower level dungeon instances that allowed the group to zone in, buff and prepare before moving to their first fight, the level 60 dungeons had smarter and more aggressive AI programs controlling monsters referred by the players as “Mobs” for “Movable Objects”.  The mobs could see you as soon as you could see them and instead of just waiting for you to enter some predictable aggro radius before they attacked you, they would attack immediately.  

As soon as everyone got settled, Jake took charge and began to issue the group orders, “Dia, haste and mind candy, please”.

“On it Jan,” Iridia replied as she cast her melee haste buff on Lyssa, Norros and Belam to make their attacks faster and more deadly. Once those buffs were complete, she cast her mana regeneration and storage buff on herself and Jan.  Mana powered their spells. It was their magical energy battery and they only had so much to spend before they ran out of power.  When Jan ran out of mana, she couldn’t heal and when she couldn’t heal, people started to die.  When Iridia ran out of mana, she couldn’t slow, freeze and weaken the enemy, which made the fight harder, which made Jan need to heal more, which caused her to run out of mana and people started to die.

Iridia’s mind buffs also allowed her and Jan to regenerate their mana faster and boosted their mana storage capacity by 50%.  While she lacked strong offensive and defensive powers, the combination of Iridia’s crowd control spells and her group buff spells made her character vital to the group’s success.

While they played the game, they called each other by their character names.  At first, it was a little confusing for Jake to have everyone use a girl’s name for him, but after a few months he got used to being called Jan and sometimes referred to as Jan when they got together to talk about the game over a meal.

Emily’s character name of Iridia was eventually shortened to “Dia” when in battle. While Iridia isn’t hard to say, they would sometimes stumble over the unfamiliar syllables in her name.

Everyone except for Nick’s paladin, Norros, ended up with a shorter named based upon their character’s full name.  Brooke’s character, Brelyssa got shortened to “Lyssa” since she didn’t think that “Bre” or “Brel” or “Brela” was pretty enough and Brian’s rogue, Belamros, got shortened to “Belam” and sometimes “Bedlam” for fun.

“Norros, pally bless please, then I will slap us all with drood skin and damage shield Lyssa before you two lead the way into the dungeon.  All the guides said that this dungeon has a hot LZ.” Jake said as he began to cast his new level 60 group stat and health buff that everyone derogatorily referred to as “drood skin” due to the overabundance of less than skilled druid players. He smiled as the special effects from his spell displayed a rapid succession of ghostly animal spirits infusing everyone in the group with their power. His damage shield worked exactly opposite of what the name suggested.  Instead of shielding the character from damage, it inflicted a small amount of damage to anyone who successfully hit the shielded character. In effect, it turned them into virtual porcupines.

Norros’s pally blessings were technically buffs, but since the paladin class was a hybrid of a priest and a warrior, the game called them “blessings” to keep with the holy theme.  He had some of the priest class spells and buffs that he could cast on the group.  His paladin armor and health buff was a copy of a lower level priest buff.  He did have a few specialized paladin group auras that he activated during combat.

These auras were centered on his character and radiated out to affect everyone in the group that stood within 30 feet of him.  His best aura magically raised the group’s effective armor by one level.  It essentially gave cloth the same protective properties as leather and leather the same as chain mail, etc... He also had an aura that raised the group’s strength and agility thus making them stronger, more accurate and harder to hit in battle.  His last aura gave the group a minor health and mana regen effect.  The regen effect was so minor when compared to the armor boost aura to protect and reduce the group’s injuries; they rarely used it during combat. However, it often came in handy after a major fight to help speed up the group’s recovery time.

Once the prep work was done, Jake anxiously waited for his and Dia’s mana indicators to reach 100%. “Go!”

Lyssa yelled her battle cry, “Release the hounds!” Lyssa yelled as she, Norros and Bedlam raced for the dungeon’s entrance portal.  She glanced back over her shoulder. “Come on Jan! Shake that money-maker of yours!”

“Brooke, would ya please stop talking about Jan’s butt like that?” Jake sighed with frustration as he watched Brooke’s character disappear into the portal.

Brooke unrepentantly giggled and gave Jake a quick hug before her character started to materialize inside the dungeon. “Don’t wear skin tight leather pants then!”

“Hey, it’s not my fault!  You know that leather armor is the best that a druid can wear and all the leather armor for the female characters issexy and skin tight!” Jake found himself wishing he had re-rolled his character as a male Druid.  Compared to the female armor patterns, the male Druid patterns were much less revealing and actually looked like they might provide some protection.  He found his change in attitude about blatant sexism in video games to be highly amusing sometimes.

Brooke glanced back to her screen and impishly grinned. “Yeah, I know, but I just like teasing you about it babe. Don’t I always make it up to you later?”

“Hey you two, get a room! Focus, we got a dungeon to beat here!” Nick yelled as the mobs in the dungeon entrance started to react to their presence.

Brooke turned to give him a quick raspberry before she laughed and charged the two mobs guarding the entrance of Lord Baleron’s lair.  She met them with a loud crash as the impacts of her long sword, shield and plate mail armor stopped their advance when she slammed into them.  Norros and Belam quickly joined her, helping to support her initial rush while they waited for the less armored and more fragile casters to join them in battle.

As the squishy casters, Jan and Iridia, waited an extra second or two after Lyssa, Norros, and Belam disappeared in the magical barrier that marked the entrance to the dungeon before they followed.

From the sounds that came from the speakers of the other PC’s, Jake heard the fight start as he and Emily waited for the dungeon’s entrance to materialize for their characters.  The game’s engine was very good at accounting for latency and helping a group time their entrance properly.  It first loaded the instance for everyone and then, it timed the player’s character arrivals to match the order that they had each entered the instance’s magical border.

While, they could have all arrived at exactly the same time, that would have made things harder on the casters since the NPCs guarding the entrance would have prioritized their attacks for the weakest and most easily killed targets. Like, Jake’s leather clad druid and Emily’s scantily clad dark elf sorceress.

Now that Jake was playing a female character, it bothered him a little more that the female models were so blatantly sexy, but he could also understand why the game developers designed the female character models the way they did.  It made good marketing sense because sex sells and if the picture of a scantily clad babe on the cover of the game box sells a few more copies, then even better.

Marketing excuses aside, it didn’t make any sense how a mini-skirt or sheer silk robes could offer any protection whatsoever, but magic made an excellent excuse to indulge with the fantasy. Take Emily’s scantily clad dark elf as an example. From his D&D days, Jake didn’t think that dark elves could handle the cold any better than any other elf race, but he noticed that all of Iridia’s clothes had some cold resistance built into them.  He once looked at her character screen and saw that her cold resistance was at a whopping 70% compared to Jan’s 20%.

Maybe that is how the game designers tried to justify her skimpy clothing options. Since nothing was real, they didn’t really have to worry about the weather making their characters cold or hot. They could all run their characters stark naked through a blizzard and nothing would happen. Iridia’s extra cold resistance did help her because she always took very little damage from cold based attacks and Emily liked to rub everyone’s noses in the fact that the girl wearing a silk negligee was better in a snowball fight than they were.

Against the two guards, if they had all zoned in at the same time, they would have still won, but the cost in mana and health would have been higher since it would have taken longer for Lyssa to force the guards to stop attacking the high value targets that the casters made.

By the time they did arrive, one of the guards was almost dead and the second was halfway dead, while Lyssa’s health was only down by 40%, Norros was down by 20% and Belam barely had a scratch on him.  Jan cast a quick and efficient heal over time spell on Norros, but for Lyssa, she needed to cast her biggest and slowest heal to bring her health back up to optimum levels.

As a warrior, Lyssa had significantly more health points than Norros and she needed a bigger heal to bring her back up. The larger healings took longer to cast, but were more mana efficient. As she was casting her healing on Lyssa, Iridia cast her slow and weaken spells on the second guard just as the first guard fell from a vicious backstab from Belam.

The combined forces quickly dispatched the second guard and to keep the initiative, the barely taxed group charged deeper into the lair before the rest of the boss mob’s lackeys could respond.

“Hey Bedlam, come to the dark elf side, we have cookies!” Emily glanced over at Brian with a smirk as she watched his character on her screen.

“Anything for you, babe!” Brian said as he activated Belam’s dark elf illusion mask by equipping it on his face slot. He liked using the mask.  Not only because Emily liked seeing his character as a dark elf, but because of the enhanced night vision that the dark elf illusion granted to his night blind human eyes.

He wore the mask so much, that he often thought that he should’ve just made a dark elf rogue instead of a human rogue.  He even spent additional time playing the game to have his character learn the dark elf language. He felt that from a role-playing perspective, learning the language would be the right thing to do to help better his magical disguise.

Once, he used the mask to sneak into the dark elf capital city to see what it looked like. As a human, he would’ve been toast if his illusion failed or if he had gotten too close to city’s royal and religious centers. Those areas were guarded by special detection spells that would have seen right through his magical disguise, but it was still an interesting and exciting adventure for him.

“Aack, I’m surrounded by evil dark elves on one side and smelly tree hugging elves on the other, what would me dear ole’ mum say about me choice in friends if she could see me now?” Norros lamented. Like Jake, Nick enjoyed role-playing his character. When in character, he spoke with a Scottish accent to help sell his characterization of a surly dwarvish paladin.

“Umm, I dunno Norros. How about, grab another brew and stop yer whining?” Jake laughed as the group ran into a larger group of NPC guards.

“Why ya pointy ear, daisy eating tart! I’ll bite yer kneecaps off!” Nick switched to a fake British accent, causing everyone to laugh before the conversation devolved into simple battle commands as they each dove into their roles.

Jake didn’t have to tell Brooke to attack the enemy caster first. Lyssa charged right through the enemy guards, knocking them back from the power and shock of her rapid passage. She slammed her shield into the enemy caster interrupting its casting of a spell.  Brooke was a pro and Jake couldn’t help but be proud of his fiance’s skill.

Iridia charmed one of the enemy guards and turned it against its own people. She used the confusion caused by Lyssa’s charge and the charmed guard turning on its own to cast her slow and weaken spells on the remaining guards. Norros held the remaining guards interest and prevented them from attacking her or Jan while Belam used his rogue damage to help Lyssa quickly drop the enemy caster with a brutal back stab.

The fight ended pretty quickly after the caster dropped. Lyssa engaged the two un-charmed guards while Belam and Norros brought their most damaging attacks to bear.  Jake almost felt sorry for the last guard when Iridia canceled her charm and everyone unloaded on him.

The caster dropped a nice bracer that was an upgrade for Iridia’s current bracer and the group managed to collect a few extra gold pieces from the pockets of their fallen enemies before they were forced to move on by the intruder alert that was rapidly making its way through the evil lair.

The group managed to fight their way to and defeat the lair’s first mini-boss or lieutenant of the main boss mob, Lord Baleron. The group gained a short rest to recover their mana and health after refreshing their combat buffs.  The mini-boss mob dropped a few more gold pieces and a platinum piece along with two magical item upgrades for the group.  Lyssa scored an ultra-rare, named relic breastplate, called “Alimith’s Elvish Bulwark”.

Everyone drooled over it and congratulated her on the upgrade. When she equipped it, the generic steel breastplate model morphed into a very nice looking, form fitting mithril-steel alloy breastplate that looked protective, feminine and it also gave her a huge boost to her armor. The breastplate had very cool stylized elvish tree etched into its surface, but the most important thing, in Jake’s opinion, was the fact it added a whopping 20% to Lyssa’s armor protection. Her breastplate also added an additional 20% to her Strength and Constitution scores while giving her an extra 10% to all of her character’s magical and elemental resistances.

Belam got a wicked looking assassin’s dagger that added +15% to his character’s Agility and +5% to his Backstab chance.  The dagger would also randomly cast a medium strength poison effect when it struck an enemy.  The coolest thing about it was the neat oily smoke particle effect it gave off when drawn. It looked very vicious and deadly.

Just as they were about to move onto the next part of the dungeon, Allison poked her head down. “Hey, you guys know that there’s a storm coming, right?  The weather forecasters are saying that it came out of nowhere and it looks pretty powerful. We could lose power.”

Nick looked up at her and pointed to a large black cube sitting on top of a wooden packing crate beside the wall. “Thanks hon, but we have my office server’s old UPS system down here. It’s got enough juice to keep us running at 100% for at least an hour and at the rate we are chewing through this dungeon, we will probably be done in less than 30 minutes”.

“Okay, do you all need anything?”  Allison asked.

Everyone checked their drink glasses and after verifying that they all had enough to tide them over Brooke replied, “I think we are good to go for now Alli, thanks!”

“Okay, just yell if you need something. I’ll be reading a book in the living room.” Allison said as she walked back up stairs.

~o~O~o~

---

 

Rested, the group forged ahead. After fighting a few minor battles and gaining some more gold, silver and copper for their troubles, they reached the chamber of Lord Baleron’s captain. Flush with success, they all felt excited.  They knew that if they could defeat the Captain, they would be able to enter the final section of the dungeon and defeat Lord Baleron himself.

Jake halted the group just before they entered the lieutenant’s chamber, “Okay, this guy is a caster. So, Dia, we need you to stun and mana drain him like a son of a bitch instead of wasting a slow on him.  Lyssa, shield slam him every chance you get while Norros and Belam go for max damage to drop him.  He has an AoE ( Area of Effect ) spell ability that will damage everyone in the room each time he casts it, so I will be busy trying to keep everyone’s health up instead of concentrating on just keeping your health topped off like usual.”

“Got it, Jan!” Brooke nodded as she glanced over her shoulder at everyone else in the room. “Are we ready?”

“g2g!” Jake said with a grin as he watched his friends hunker down in front of their screens, fingers poised over their keyboards, ready to go.

Lyssa ran into the boss's chambers and yelled her battle cry, “Release the hounds!” as Brooke activated her warrior’s charge ability to cross the open distance in an instant and slam into the Captain with a crash of armor.

Brian used Belam’s sneak skill to maneuver into position behind the Captain before he unleashed a back stab that caused the boss to briefly turn on him before Lyssa was able to regain his attention with another shield slam.  Norros activated his group strength and agility aura to help their DPS, while he smashed the lieutenant with his huge two-handed battle hammer.  Iridia chained her stuns and mana drains to keep the boss from casting most of his really big damage spells, but he did have a few instant abilities that even her stuns couldn’t stop.

Jake used Jan’s instant cast healing over time spells to help preserve her mana while keeping the group’s health above 50%.  Due to Iridia’s lower caster health total, Jake tried to keep Iridia’s health closer to 100% compared to the hardier melee characters.

Once the boss's health was down to 50% and the group’s collective health was below 40%, Jake hit his group heal macro key that announced to the group, “AoE Group heal incoming! Tighten it up, make your buddy smile! ^-^”.  Jan’s group healing took three times the mana and took twice as long to cast as her big single target heal, but it was the most efficient per health point for every person that it healed over three.  As soon her spell’s initial casting phase completed, a sparkling energy radiated out 15 feet from where Jan stood and washed everyone in the group with a healing wave that pulsed every three seconds for 15 seconds unless Jake canceled casting the spell or was interrupted by the enemy.

That much healing power attracted the boss's attention and after the third pulse healed everyone in the group to 80%, the boss broke free of Lyssa and began to smack Jan around. She was able to maintain her concentration and continue casting the spell for another pulse which brought her group’s health all the way back up to 100%, while her health quickly plummeted to 20% from the Captain attacking her lightly armored body.

The algorithms running the boss must have detected an easy kill, because the boss would not stop hitting the critically wounded druid despite everything that Lyssa and Norros attempted to regain its attention.

With the Captain's health down to 20% and Jan’s health dropping by 5-10% per hit, Jake was positive that his character was going to die, quickly followed by a wipe when the rest of the group died.  He was ready to begin planning corpse recovery when Norros reached over and touched Jan when she had less than 5% of her health remaining.  Her health shot back up to 100% with Norros’ emergency Lay on Hands paladin heal and Lyssa was finally able to regain the boss's attention.

“Phew, thanks Norros, I thought I was a goner for sure there!” Jake said.

“No problem dude, watch your aggro!” Nick said with a grin.

“Yeah, I should’ve stopped after the third pulse. Now, we won’t have your Lay on Hands for the final fight.” Jake said, frowning slightly with concern.

After Norros’ save, the Captain ran out of mana from all of Iridia’s drains and he folded like a wet paper bag under the coordinated onslaught of the group’s attacks.

Lord Baleron’s captain dropped some more coins and a pair of magical caster geared shoes. All the guys looked at the shoes and commented about how nice the stats would be for Iridia, but it wasn’t until she put them on that everyone was stunned by how they looked on her character.

They looked so generic and plain on their inventory screens, but when she equipped them, they morphed into a pair of black suede ankle boots with a three inch silver stiletto heel.  Not only did the boots boost her character’s intelligence score by 10%, but they raised her sorceress’s class critical charisma score by another 20%.  Plus, the guys all thought she looked even hotter now, so she was even more of a sorceress to them.

“Me-ow!” Emily said with a pleased smile as she studied her character’s outfit.

Brian pretended to be an enthralled zombie by shambling over to Emily’s side. “Oh no, you’ve charmed me, you evil wench! I am powerless to stop kissing you.”

The rest of the group laughed and the lights briefly flickered as the storm rolled in.

“Ut oh.” Jake nervously glanced around the room. “We had better get a moving.  We have done so good, I’d hate for us to get booted while in here.”

“Don’t worry. We have cable Internet and all of the cables are buried.  Everything we need to play is plugged into the UPS.” Nick said.

“That’s cool, but just in case...” Jake gave Brooke a quick hug as she and Emily glanced nervously up at the light when it flickered again. “Okay, let’s refresh our buffs and move out.  According to all of the guides for this place, as soon as we enter into Lord Baleron’s part of the lair, a group of six fighter NPCs and two wizard NPCs will attack us.  We will need to save our strength because Lord Baleron will attack us five minutes after that fight starts.  So, we need to drop NPCs as fast as possible without using up all of our mana so that when Lord Baleron hits us, we will be ready. If we can defeat all of his lackeys before he attacks us, it will be a simple tank and spank fight.”

“Sounds like fun.” Emily said with a smile. “Should I try to charm one of the casters to use against them?”

“Sure, good idea, but don’t try to charm a caster until its health is below 50%.  Just in case it breaks charm and we need to kill it fast.” Jake cautioned.

“Got it.” Emily nodded.

“Okay, Lyssa. Lead the way, so I can admire that shapely metal clad butt of yours.” Jake said with a grin.

Brooke turned her head, stuck out her tongue at Jake. “I expect to see you do your wood elf stripper dance when we win.”

“Crap...” Jake said. He remembered feeling pretty good when Brooke discovered the dance command for her character.  Each race and gender had a custom programmed dance step that they could perform.  His ogre warrior’s dance looked like the hammer dance and it always made him laugh, but the wood elf dance looked like something he had seen performed at a stripper bar.

The sultry hip and arm movements looked like the dancer was inviting the audience into her loving embrace.  Lyssa, with her bulky steel armor looked a little silly doing the dance, but Jan’s skin tight leather armor made the dance into something else entirely. He invariably felt simultaneously turned on by watching his character dance and slightly perverted for making her dance.

Brooke didn’t care; she found it hilarious to watch her character dance and loved pressuring Jake into joining her character dancing on the screen.  The catcalls by the rest of his friends only added to his embarrassment.

Emily’s character also had it good with the dance moves.  Iridia’s dark elf racial dance looked like the Pulp Fiction dance.  She looked so dangerous when she performed her dance.  Why couldn’t the happy and nature loving wood elves been programmed with a less seductive dance style.  Something easy, like the Twist instead?

The final encounter went off without a hitch.  Emily’s charmed NPC made all difference due to its high wizard DPS.  When Emily commanded it to attack its former master, it burned through all of its mana doing tons of damage before attracting its former master’s attention and getting killed in seconds.  That worked out perfectly since it now meant that they didn’t need to worry about Iridia’s charm breaking during the fight and the group suddenly getting attacked by her former charm victim.

The group finished the fight critically low on mana.  Jan finished at only 10% mana.  That was well below the 25% Jake preferred to hold in reserve in case the group needed an emergency teleport if a fight went wrong.  Iridia ended the fight completely OOM ( Out of Mana ) from keeping Lord Baleron slowed, debuffed and a lightly damaging stun spell thrown in for good measure.  Norros was also low on mana from his casting of an occasional spot heal on the others so that Jake could concentrate keeping Lyssa alive using her big heals.

With Lord Baleron dead, the sound of thunder and lightning from the storm finally made it past Jake and his friend’s mental filters.  They had all been concentrating so hard on the game, nothing existed for them outside of the game.

“Hurry!  Let’s loot this guy and get the heck out of here before we lose power.” Brooke nervously glanced around as the house lights flickered and died.  “Ah, crap, now we will never find out what his treasure was.”

Nick pointed to their still running computers and the UPS. “Relax, we got another hour on battery if we need it, but Jake, I think that you should hurry up and loot it, just in case.”

Jake clicked on Lord Baleron’s corpse and the group was rewarded by a split of 15 platinum, 26 gold and a pair of leather pants.  Jake thought for sure that they would be for Brian’s rogue, but he was shocked when he inspected them and discovered Lord Baleron’s rarest treasure item, druid pants.

“Congrats, Jake!“ Emily and Brian chorused.

Nick slapped Jake on his back. “Nice drood pants, dude!”

“Hurry up! Put them on, I wanna see what they look like!” Brooke anxiously clung to his side and watched Jake’s screen..

Jake quickly clicked on the pants to make his character auto-equip them and was rewarded by a wolf whistle from Brooke. He thought that they would be another pair of tight leather pants. Instead, the “pants” turned out to be a dark green and black trimmed leather skirt.  The skirt hugged his character’s curves with a tight and form fitting shape that fell to just above the knee in the back, but wrapped in the front at mid-thigh to form an inverted ‘V’ in the front.

“What in the hell?” Jake was shocked.  While he liked how the skirt managed to show off his character’s legs, he wondered how in the hell something like that could offer any armor protection whatsoever.  The stat bonuses of the skirt did help to redirect and blunt his dismay at its appearance.  Surprisingly, the skimpy looking leather skirt boosted his druid’s wisdom by 20%, charisma by 10%, and constitution by 20% and had a 30% higher armor value than Jan’s old leather pants.

How in the hell that worked, Jake had no idea, but he decided he didn’t have time to ponder it. With his new “pants” equipped, he pressed the button that started Jan’s group teleportation spell. With the spell cast started, even if they got disconnected right now, Jan would continue to cast the spell and everyone’s characters would still be safe.

“Not a moment too soon!” Jake sighed with relief as the entire house rattled at the sound of a nearby lightning strike.

Brian jumped. “Holy crap! That was close!”

“Yeah, as soon as we land, let’s shut down and unplug everything.” Nick said with a worried tone in his voice.

Allison yelled down into the basement. “Holy shit! You guys should see what it looks like outside!”

“Brian, I’m scared...” Emily whimpered as she held onto Brian’s arm.

“Maybe we should-” Nick was interrupted by the flash and crack of a lightning bolt. This time, the lightning bolt struck the house and a 100 million volts of electricity surged through the home's electrical wiring, overloading the UPS battery pack. The flash of the lightning bolt followed by a loud boom was the last thing any of them saw or heard before their world went black.

~o~O~o~

---

Jake’s entire body tingled, causing him to slowly wake up. The tingling quickly subsided and he felt relieved because he worried about nerve damage caused by the electricity. He wondered what hospital he was in now and if his friends were okay. The lightning bolt that hit the house was a whopper.  First, his closed eyes reported the presence of light. Second, his ears heard the sound of a forest.  That confused him, but maybe this hospital used sound therapy to help calm their patients.  His nose further confused him by reporting the scent of rich earth mixed with fresh air and trees.

“Why does this hospital sound and smell like a forest?” Jake thought.

He tried to open his eyes and immediately regretted it as sunlight cut through large granite pillars, forcing him to blink his eyes. “Sunlight, in a hospital?  Wait, stone pillars!?”

With that observation, Jake gasped as he bolted upright and into a sitting position.  Next to him, he spotted an ornately carved, polished wooden staff laying in the grass. As he looked around, he noticed the bodies of four other people lying scattered in a small, slightly raised clearing surrounded by huge stone columns. He got the impression of Stonehenge, but in better condition since there were no columns missing and each column was capped by a slightly curved stone that bridged the gaps between the columns, forming a circle around the clearing.

Approximately 40 meters beyond the stone circle, stood the start of a thick, ancient forest filled with trees that had trunks 2 to 4 meters in circumference, standing 50 or more meters tall.

“How in the hell…” Jake whispered softly as he took in what his eyes, ears and nose were reporting to him. Everything seemed crisper, his vision sharper with colors more vibrant, he heard sounds in ranges he was sure he had lost long ago and his nose seemed more refined somehow. It was like he was smelling for the for the first time his life.

As his sense of touch came into play, he began noting additional strange sensations.  He wondered why his stomach and legs felt bare while his boots felt so soft on his feet.  He also wondered if he had suffered a chest injury due to the tight feeling across his upper chest. The soft support on his chest almost reminded him of the elastic bandages he had to wrap his chest in when he broke a rib playing football.

“Mmmmmmpphh...” Jake groaned and wondered which of the two female figures lying near him drowned out the sound his own groan.

The nearest person in this clearing looked to be about five feet away from him. He shook his head in confusion and that only added to the sensations that his body reported back to his muddled brain.  He felt long hair brush across his shoulders and back when he shook his head.  He never had long hair.  He always kept his hair cut to military regulation.

“What in the-” Jake stopped himself before he completed his question.  His voice sounded so strange to his ears.  He sounded like a girl.

He looked down and he saw two distinctive mounds of flesh sitting on his chest. His brain failed to register the additions and as his eyes automatically slid past the mounds, he noticed a pair nice, smooth, shapely and tanned pair of women’s legs capped by a pair of soft looking leather boots. Her legs emerged from what looked like the leather skirt his DBO character recently won. Someone in the hospital was working with Nick and punking him. They had to have propped him up in his bed and placed a mannequin's body over his to make it look like the mannequin’s body was his own.

He reached down and patted the exposed thigh, expecting to feel plastic, mannequin legs. Instead, he felt his hand touch his leg. “What in the fuck is going on!?!?” Jake wailed, sounding even more like a girl as he started a more aggressive inventory from top to bottom.

His arms looked different!  They were slender, lightly tanned and smooth with a hint of pale blonde hair, but firm with excellent muscle tone.  He wore metal bracers on his wrists, black, fingerless leather gloves and his hands looked so small and dainty.

Jake began to hyperventilate, which caused the mounds on his chest to rise and fall in a very unsettling fashion. Maybe they were fake? He reached up with both hands and attempted to stop the movement by firmly pressing down on them. He felt breasts. Worse, he felt his hands grabbing his breasts.

“What tha fuck?” Jake yelled as he quickly let go of his breasts while gasping for breath.  He had never seen a woman’s cleavage from this angle before and he felt stunned by what he was seeing, feeling and hearing. His vision began to fade around the edges. He was starting to black out, but managed to stop himself by closing his eyes and concentrating on slowing his breathing.

“Focus, Jake.  Focus. Maybe you are just dreaming this.” Jake clung to that thought and he started to feel his panic recede. He was in the hospital and this was just a trippy, drug induced dream. He had simply played Jan a little too much and now he was dreaming about being her.  It was an admittedly strange dream, but he had weirder ones while he had been in the hospital recovering from having his foot blown off.  As dreams go, this dream was like sunshine and lollipops compared to those dreams.

Feeling slightly calmer by that thought, Jake opened his eyes again.  “Okay, this is just a dream. Nothing is real.  I should just go with it and enjoy it...” Jake’s perky, dream girl voice sounding odd to his ears.  With that thought, he looked down once again and past his chest to his legs.  His bare knees with his lightly tanned and toned upper thighs looked very attractive to him.

“Oh my god!” Jake’s eyes focused on his feet. “I have two feet in my dream!” He wiggled his toes. “I can even feel both of them!”  His voice still sounded odd, but it right now, that was the last thing he cared about because he had two feet again!

“Okay, I know that I had dreams where I had my feet again, but this is getting ridiculous!” Jake muttered to himself.

“Uuughhh...” A feminine groan came from somewhere to his right.  He turned his head and spotted one of the bodies he noticed earlier beginning to stir. Five feet away from him, the setting sun glinted off of the armor clad body of an auburn haired elvish woman who put her arm over her eyes to block out the sunlight.  The woman’s armor looked like Brelyssa’s.  If he was dreaming that he was now his DBO character, then maybe he was also dreaming that Brooke’s character was in his dream too.

“Brooke?” Jake tentatively started to crawl over to the woman.  The long grass in the small clearing dug into his bare knees and tickled his thighs as it brushed against them.  His long blond hair hung down and obstructed his vision until he reached up with his left hand pulled it back along with an unconscious puff of breath to blow an errant strand from this eyes.

“What?” The woman asked, looking almost as confused as Jake felt when she uncovered her eyes and looked over at Jake.  Unlike Brooke’s character, this woman didn’t have the jagged scar on her face.

“Who are you?” She asked.

“Umm, Jake...I think.” Jake frowned and glanced down at his dream body again.

As her eyes focused on his face, she looked confused. “What? No way...” She mumbled before her brilliant green eyes widened with surprise as recognition followed, “Oh my god!  Jake, did you know that you look just like your character?”

“Brooke?” Jake asked as fear hammered inside his chest.

She nodded her head. “Yes. Is that really you,Jake?” Brooke asked, grabbing Jake’s hand and pulled herself into a sitting position to get a closer look at Jake’s face. Her armor gently rustling as interlocking plates slid smoothly against each other.

Jake closed his eyes. “Yes and I am really hoping that this is just a weird, drug induced dream.” He whispered, ashamed and confused by the situation he now found himself in.  He flinched as he felt the rough texture of Brooke’s gloved hand on his face.

“Oh shit, sorry Jake. I didn’t realize I had this metal glove thing on.” Brooke struggled to rise to her feet.

The sound of someone else groaning nearby caused Brooke instantly jump to her feet and draw her sword.  Jake barely reacted or even acknowledged Brooke’s concern. He was still on his knees next to where he had found Brooke laying.  He felt too shocked by his situation to feel much concern for anything else at the moment.

“Jake, it’s the rest of the guys.  People that look like Nick, Emily and Brian’s characters are here with us.” Brooke anxiously noted.

“Jake!” Brooke said, this time with a little more urgency in her voice.

Jake heard Brooke sheathe her sword followed by her grabbing his shoulders and effortlessly pulling his unresisting body to his feet. He dimly noted the fact that he could feel both of his feet now.  Not just a ghost sensation, but the real thing.

“Jake, I need you.” Brooke said, desperately.

Jake felt himself being shaken, gently at first, and then a little rougher before he heard Brooke yell his name again.  He looked up at Brooke’s new face and once again felt confused by what he was seeing and feeling.  Not since he first learned about losing his foot, had he ever felt so lost and weak.  Brooke had lifted him so effortlessly.

“Jake, I’m sorry and I know you’re freaking out right now, but I really need your help!” Tears began to well-up in Brooke’s eyes. “I don’t know where we are and I don’t know what to do.  I think our friends are here with us and they are going to need your help too.”

Brooke’s plea for help and the danger that they were all in started to penetrate the fog surrounding his thoughts.  He felt Brooke’s grip on his arms relax as he began to hold himself up with his own legs.  He felt his strength returning as his mind began to work on the mundane problems of survival.  He blinked once to clear his vision before he looked up and met Brooke’s eyes.

He nodded once to both acknowledge and show her his appreciation. “Okay, first.  Brooke, you check on Emily. I’ll check Brian and Nick.” The sound of his own voice was distracting, but the act of doing something helped to take his mind off his own problems.

Brian was the closer of the two guys, so Jake stopped and knelt with one knee by his side first.  “Brian?” Jake asked as he gently shook the shoulder of the man who looked like Belamros, Brian’s rogue.  Jake felt his bare knee digging into the grass and was highly conscious of the fact that his skirt rode up on his legs and exposed more of his thighs to the light breeze that was blowing through the clearing.

Brian’s eyes snapped open and he rolled away from Jake.  He sprang to his feet and drew his daggers with a blur before Jake’s mind could even process what just happened. Brian looked just as startled as Jake as he looked down at the daggers in his hands with confusion and then raised his eyes to look at down at Jake who was still kneeling and frozen with surprise by where Brian had just been laying.  Brian broke the silence first. “Umm, sorry ma’am, but umm, who are you?”.

“Jake...” Jake cautiously stood up and realized that while Brian wasn’t a huge man, he was noticeably larger and stronger looking he was now and that made him feel a little uncomfortable.

“No, I’m Brian. Who are you?” He smiled inquisitively and relaxed his stance.

“I’m Jake.” He sighed with mild exasperation.

“Umm, how can you be Jake?” Brian asked, skeptically, not realizing he had changed too.

“I don’t know Brian, but right now I’m feeling a little nervous by the fact that you still have your daggers drawn and ready.” Jake glanced nervously to Brian’s naked blades. The blade with the inky black miasma hovering around it made him feel exceptionally apprehensive.

Brian quickly sheathed them with a sheepish grin. “Sorry, ma’am, I don’t know how I did that. I just reacted.”

“That’s okay. I’m more than a little freaked out myself right now.” Jake gestured toward his own body as if afraid to touch himself.

Brian didn’t seem to be getting it. “Hey, did you know you look just like the character my buddy Jake plays in D...BO?” Comprehension and understanding dawned on his face. “Oh. Shit. You are Jake...” He looked around and spotted Brooke helping an absolutely stunning female dark elf to her feet.

“Emily?” Brian asked as he turned toward her.

The dark elf woman looked from Brooke to Jake to Brian and down to herself. “Brian?”

He nodded his head, yes and with her cobalt blue eyes flashing with tears she broke from Brooke’s side to face the man who looked nothing like the man she married.  They both stood at arm’s length, cautiously taking in each other’s appearance as Brooke and Jake looked anxiously on.

“Ahh, cripes. Would ya two just get it over with and hug each other already?” Came a surly voice from Jake’s left.

Everyone turned and spotted a dwarf encased in full plate armor sitting up and looking on with disapproval at the proceedings.

“Nick?” Jake asked, knowing the answer before he finished his question.

“Of course!  Who tha’ f’ing else could I be?  I’m a freaking dwarf and you’re a wood elf babe.  Sorry Jake, I don’t know about you, but I think that this is some pretty f’ed up shit!” Nick ranted as he clanked and clanged his way to stand on his feet; using his huge two-handed battle hammer to help push himself up to his full four and a half foot height.  His hammer was almost taller than he was.

Everyone else in the group were stunned and silenced by Nick’s blunt assessment. They glanced nervously at each other as Nick looked down at his feet, back up to everyone else and snorted with disgust. “Would ya look at this fucking shit? I’m a freaking midget with a beard so long; it has to be f’ing braided!  Who in the Sam freaking hell thought dwarves needed beards to be cool?!?”

~o~O~o~