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Chapter 2: Explorer.

What should have taken me about an hour to put together took three... I was very wary about more Sharpclaw coming along and busting down my door. But at the end of it all, I was loaded for bear and ready to figure out why the Hell I was in Thorntail Hollow. By my cell phone, I was late for work by about half an hour. I would have called in sick if I could, but what would I have said? 'Sorry, boss, I'm stuck in an alternate reality fighting lizardmen and dinosaurs from outer space? I'll be in bright and early tomorrow.'?

The thought made me chuckle... like I had reason to laugh. Still, I was about as ready as I would ever be.... even though I looked like a damn moron. I glanced at myself in the mirror one last time... I was about to head out into this great wide open... although it didn't matter what the hell I looked like.

I scrounged up an old set of British fatigues I had bought years ago... whenever I had thought about getting back into Airsofting a few years ago. Surprisingly, they fit. Personally, I felt like one of those bums wandering around in old, worn camo, but they were durable and that's what mattered. I had also found a set of black mechanics' gloves... great to grip things with if I had sweaty hands.

To add to the urban camper persona, my backpack was bulging to the seams. I had it packed full of ammunition, food, and a few items that I would possibly need when wandering around. It was heavy as hell, but that weight held my survival... in the form of canned goods, ammunition, and a couple of water bottles. All of my perishable stuff was toast, or going close to it... so I was going to be stuck with canned ravioli, ramen noodles, and tuna fish for as long as I had them.

I was still well armed, however. I raided my gun safe for pretty much anything I could carry. The most powerful firearm I had was my Enfield... the old No. 1 Mk 3*. The rifle was manufactured during World War I, and by the looks of all the gouges and scratches in the stock was possibly used then. Firing full-power .303 British rifle rounds, it could reach out about as far as I could see. I had about a hundred and fifty rounds for it... not a whole lot but enough to get me by for a while.

A holster sitting in a crossdraw position on my left hip held my revolver, a Taurus M627. Chambered in .357 Magnum, I wasn't going to leave it behind. I had around fifty rounds for it, and a bag of questionable .38 Special handloads that I wasn't too keen on firing.

My M1911A1 sat in a drop-down tactical holster on my right thigh. It was an Auto-Ordnance model... not the best quality piece in the world but not the worst. The sights were screwed up a little bit, but it still shot just fine. It fired powerful .45ACP rounds... and I had nearly two hundred of them stashed in my backpack as well as in a few of my pockets. I had thirty-three at my instant disposal, thanks to the four magazines I had for it.

The shotgun was strapped to my backpack with a couple of bungee cords and the backpack's own compression strap. It would take some doing to work loose, but I wasn't about to leave it behind. The fact I didn't have the ability to put a sling on it compounded things, but I had to make do. I also had about two hundred shotgun shells as well... making it my most well-stocked piece other than the .45.

Two other pistols resided in my backpack... I was serious about my target shooting. One was the PA-63 I used primarily as a nightstand gun, and the other was a Browning Buck Mark .22LR target pistol. I wasn't sure the .22 would have been enough to fend off anything Sauria would throw my way... but I didn't want anyone else getting their hands on it.

One thing I would have commented about was that this entire rig was heavy. I'm in my late-20s, and hadn't been that active ever since I got a car after high school. I'm also slightly overweight, so you could tell my trepidation about carrying a full load-out of gear around just to poke my head out in the open. But... I didn't have a choice. I may have looked like a complete overloaded moron, but I had to do it.

I took stock of myself one last time. The fact of the matter was I had a huge set of cards stacked against my favor. I wasn't some sort of born, trained warrior. I was some sort of average guy with a bit of an interest in firearms. I knew how to shoot a gun... at a target range. Before this day I'd never fired off a shot in anger; never went through combat. I admitted I was scared shitless. I wanted my life back... not some sort of strange-ass fantasy videogame where I was going to have to figure out the clues. Hell, I couldn't speak Saurian. It may have been some sort of simple cipher language based off of English, but without a working computer I had no way of knowing how to speak it. I'd have to learn on my way...

...or hope for Fox to show up. That was fuckin' fantastic... I was going to have to rely on a fictional character to survive out here... if he would even show up. This could have very well been before or after the timeline of the actual game... it could have been some sort of alternate universe? If so... I may have been fucked already.

I pushed those thoughts out of my mind. If I started thinking like that, I would lose focus. I needed to find out what was going on, and how to fix what I found. One thing I had in my favor was that I knew the game. I knew where to go, and generally what to do. I may be able to blunder through... it may have taken Fox just his staff and the support of the Starfox team to get through it... but I had a bunch of guns and my own internal strategy guide.

With those thoughts echoing through my head I walked out of the house. I didn't even bother locking the door. I still had plenty of valuable stuff in there, but all the advanced weapons on the planet were in my possession. I stepped past the Sharpclaw bodies to emerge into the daylight, casting an eye over the Hollow. I let my mind go to work.

The Sharpclaw were still there and a threat. At the end of the game General Scales had been defeated, meaning the Sharpclaw didn't have the need to guard everything anymore. That logic took me to the assumption that I was either placed before or at the beginning of the game. I didn't see Fox's Arwing out there... or the impressions its landing gear would have made in the soil it would have parked on. That told me that Fox hadn't been here yet.

The feeling that I was here at the start of the game was pretty much compelling. Now... how would I go about things? I didn't have a way to translate Saurian, and I wasn't going to simply wait and see how many Sharpclaw would beat me up... something told me they'd have a fun time ransacking my house and putting dents in my car out in front, anyway.

The sudden thought of Fox coming across a house and a wheeled vehicle next to his landing spot caused me to laugh a bit... that would be comedy gold. Fox being told he wouldn't be able to take a blaster... while I traipsed about with several guns. It was a good thing I didn't see any Sharpclaw... I didn't want to be caught off guard.

Another thought itched at my mind, causing me to walk forward. I was already sweating a bit under the fatigues and makeshift helmet... it was going to be a hard day. Still I kept on, winding up at a small copse of trees and an equally small field of wildflowers, jutting up from the soil like a defiant piece of pure beauty.

It was in the middle of this copse that Krystal's staff would be. I wouldn't have much idea how to use it, but Fox learned from scratch... I might have been able to as well. However... nothing that day seemed to turn out to be right. The copse was empty; Krystal's staff wasn't anywhere to be seen.

I gave a sigh to the still air... the only real sound I had made in nearly an hour. I looked like a well-armed moron, and right now I had no damn clue what to do. Krystal's staff was an integral piece of the game. I doubted I'd complete a lot of those staff puzzles with a rifle or shotgun. "Fuck..." I muttered. "Not even a few hours into this and I'm stuck." Nobody spoke English around there... except... maybe? A wave of hope passed through my mind, and I cast my glance towards the stream that bisected the Hollow. The waterfall that housed a certain lagoon lay beyond it... and I knew exactly what I needed to do. It wouldn't be easy... but at least I wasn't stuck.

My goal was to reach the Warpstone at that lagoon... but the fact of the matter was that it would take some doing. He was behind a stone wall, which meant I had to find some of those bomb spores... and hope a bullet would set them off. Also, he would need that rock candy that the shopkeeper sold in order to even talk to anyone... so I had to collect those damned Scarab bugs and get it.

I glanced around until I found the large, onion-like plant nestled by the creek... that was my target. In the game, Fox used Krystal's staff to blow it up, which then expelled seeds. I'd need one of them... and hope like hell it'd grow as quickly as the ones in the game. But... would it attract too much attention?

I had noticed several Thorntail dinosaurs staring at me curiously... I had no idea how they would react, but in the game they were pretty cowardly. Perhaps I scared the hell out of them... a bipedal outsider festooned with guns and household equipment. But, I needed to do what I needed to do.

I reached down and unholstered my .45, backing up so that there was a distance of about fifty yards between me and the spore... I didn't want to get blown up along with it. It was about the maximum range I felt confident shooting at a person with the M1911... but the spore was also a hell of a lot larger than an average man. I gripped the handgun with both hands and settled the sights on the spore. My thumb flicked the safety off, and I pulled the trigger.

The .45 barked harshly into the still air and was followed immediately by a thunderous explosion. The pressure wave pushed at my exposed skin as the spore vaporized... leaving three forearm-length seeds floating back to earth. I ran forward and managed to collect two of them before the third floated out of my grasp... not a bad haul. I gently tucked them into my pocket and prepared myself for the next task... just then noticing the Thorntail giving me a very wide berth.

I must have spooked them pretty good, which probably didn't earn me many plus points in their favor. I wasn't going to like that very much eventually, but I had to continue to focus on the task at hand. The shopkeeper's cave was a straight shot across the creek, and if I remembered right there were a couple of areas where I could pick up some of that insectoid currency right inside.

At this point I should comment again on how hard it was for me to move fast. I was carrying possibly over a hundred pounds of guns, ammunition, food, and water... and I wasn't used to carrying much over my ten pounds of electronics gear to school and back. Add that to a left knee that had been dislocated a few months ago and neglected afterwards, and you could understand the reasons why I moved pretty slowly. I also didn't want to fall in the water at all... that would spell disaster for my guns and ammunition if I did so... or at least several hours' worth of cleaning and drying them. Rusted guns would cause me to become a dead man pretty quickly out here.

I waded through the creek and crossed the hundred yard distance to the mouth of Shabunga's cave easily enough. However, the challenges I had before me were enough to make me cringe. For some stupid reason, the game designers had decided to make getting into the shop a bit of an ordeal. First, you climbed down into a ten foot deep pit, then you climbed back out. Realistically, this would keep out nearly all of the shop's saurian customer base... I didn't know many dinosaurs that could either fit inside a medium-sized cave, or be able to climb up and down the stone walls.

However, it appeared that reality closely followed game design on this count. I almost burst out laughing at the absurdity of it all... here I was, a guy that wasn't even able to do a single pull-up in gym class, and I was faced with all of this while carrying enough guns and ammo to overthrow a banana republic. It dawned on me that I'd need to find a safe place to stash most of my gear... someplace away from a certain shopkeeper that would probably love to scavenge my ammunition and sell it back to me for exorbitant prices.

With a sigh I shrugged my backpack off and set it next to the ledge... it'd be safe enough, or so I hoped. I also set my rifle and shotgun down, but opted to keep my utility belt and handguns. I wasn't about to go anywhere around here without my .357 and .45 strapped to my sides.

Like Brian Lancing, the character I wrote about putting through the same trials I apparently would have to go through; I have a pretty nasty fear of heights. Even this ten foot drop was a bit too much, and I gingerly climbed down it. My luck finally held out for once, as there were two small wicker baskets sitting down there with me. I recognized them instantly... scarab containers. I would have some money, at the very least. Thankful of the fact I was wearing gloves, I pried the top off of one of them and reached inside.

I also hate insects and arachnids... spiders and bugs creep the hell out of me. It took some willpower to force down the wave of revulsion that followed me picking up a squirming, hand-sized insect with mandibles the size of a nasty set of pliers and stuffing it into a cargo pocket. Repeating that act several times also added a slight wave of nausea as well as a constant squirming feeling all over my body. I hoped to God that they wouldn't try to bite me.... That would make my day a lot worse.

Miraculously, I climbed up the second ledge without incident and strode the short distance into the shop proper. I was greeted by the interior of the shop I had spent a goodly portion of my virtual time in, complete with a greedy dinosaur merchant riding some sort of hovering contraption.

Just like the Sharpclaw I had wasted earlier, Shabunga looked a lot less 'cartoony' in real life... his likeness in the game was pretty much a comical rendition of what he looked like in 'reality.' I wasn't even entirely sure if what I was going through was reality in the first place. Either way, I'd have to deal with him. Least to the best of my knowledge he was one of the few Saurians that actually spoke English... I'd be in pretty damn big trouble if Fate decided to have him speak Japanese, at the very least. "Hey there." I offered, informally.

"The strange customer speaks, then." Shabunga offered in his trademark hissing voice. Actually, until I had been corrected by reading through some of the official literature I'd been convinced he was actually female. He definitely sounded like a crabby old lady. "You come to look around, or to actually buy something?" The 'real' Shabunga definitely was as rude as the one in the game. An evil thought crossed my mind, spurred by my virtual efforts to have Fox McCloud smack that reptilian merchant with his staff. Here I was, right in front of one of the most annoying characters in the game... and I had the power to make him eat lead and be on my merry way.

It took a fraction of a second for me to decide not to. Yes, he was a greedy bastard and a thief, but simply waltzing into his shop and gunning him down wouldn't make me out to be much of a good guy. I didn't want everyone in Lylat after my ass just in case I wasn't in a dream or locked away in Cedar Springs. That didn't mean I wasn't going to be an asshole about it, though. "Yeah. I'm working my fingers to the bone and busting my ass just to give you a few squirming bugs in exchange for what I need to get off of this hellhole. So... shut your yap and let me find what I need this time."

"Fine." Shabunga snorted and to my surprise shut up. He quite literally hovered behind me as I made my way to the item I needed... a plate-sized piece of stone with a resin orb sitting in the center. Apparently it was some sort of candy the Warpstone liked, which would get me in his good graces. Either way, I extracted a few of those bugs from my pockets and shoved them towards Shabunga. "This should cover it." I muttered, snatching the piece of stone before I could get a reply in return. "Hell of a business model you got here."

To my surprise Shabunga looked delighted at the scarabs I had given him... I probably overpaid, but I didn't really care. I didn't want snapping insects stuffed down my pants, no matter how much they were worth. "Enjoy it, strange one."

"Believe me, I'll try." I really didn't want to stick around too much longer. If my assumptions were right, time was running out on an opportunity to make my job here a hell of a lot easier. Without any preamble I walked back the way I came... taking my sweet time climbing down and then back up with a ten-pound, plate-sized chunk of sweetened granite.

The trip up to the lagoon was a lot harsher than it had ever been in the virtual world, mostly because I was once again wearing a combat loadout that outweighed what most Marines carried. I was definitely going to have to find a safe place to stash my excess supplies; there would be no way I could make it that far with all my gear.

I slipped the backpack and long guns off as I reached the top of the natural 'ramp' that led to the lagoon. My luck was going to be put to the test once more as I pulled out one of the seeds I had collected earlier. Kneeling down and burying it in the patch of dirt right in front of the wall, I wondered if they would actually grow as fast as they did in the game. I'd find out in a bit.

The spore did grow that quickly, much to my surprise. I actually fell backwards on my ass as the big plant erupted from the ground with a sickly stretching sound. It wasn't as quick as the game had made it out to be... but within two minutes I was staring a mature bomb spore in the face.

I reached down for the .45 again... but stopped. I wondered if my Buck Mark would have the punch to set it off... it'd cut down on my ammo usage considerably, and I already had plenty of .22 rounds. I walked back to my pack and extracted it... the handgun deceptively light in my hands. I racked the slide, chambering a diminutive cartridge into its chamber... moving back as I did so. I took aim on the spore, flicked the safety off and pulled the trigger.

The .22's report was muted, sounding like a firecracker in comparison to the .45's harsh bark. It did have the desired effect, however. The bomb spore erupted in a flash of light and noise, taking the wall beyond with it. As the destroyed masonry crumbled to the ground I couldn't help but grin... I wasn't a pyromaniac but that was pretty damned fun. I paused enough to collect my things and walked into the lagoon proper.

The Warpstone was there as I had expected him to be. As I wandered around the lagoon I was just about convinced this would be a pretty safe hideout and base for all my gear. For some reason I had always liked it here. Everything seemed tranquil, serene... safe. Although, with a big stone guardian that could probably bench an Abrams I considered that par for the course.

The big guy was snoring, which meant he was definitely sleeping. The fact that he could sleep through an explosion was definitely disconcerting... although from what I remember he'd fell asleep about the time the Holy Roman Empire was around back home.

There was a large dais that would rise up to meet him. I set my backpack down and pulled the plate-sized rock candy out of it... the amount of junk I was carrying around was ridiculous, if you asked me. Still, I hefted the rock in my hands and stood on the dais.

It was like an elevator of some sort. It almost threw me off my balance and once again on my ass, but I managed to stay upright. The downside was now that I was facing a several hundred ton, fifty foot-tall talking statue that wasn't exactly thrilled to see me.

"After a thousan' years, who wants to disturb mah slumber?" One thing that cracked me up in the game was that the Warpstone sounded almost exactly like Fat Bastard in the Austin Powers movies. Actually, I even wrote about my protagonist snickering about it when they first met... but politeness was key here."But, ye seem to be a polite one, lad... even brought me a gift!" He reached down and deftly plucked the plate-sized candy from my hands. That was a little disconcerting, as his thumb and forefinger could have easily crushed me like a bug. Without any pause he tossed it into his cavernous maw as nonchalantly as I would have eaten a piece of popcorn. "Now... that was the way to greet a Warpstone, lad! Now... who be you, and what do ye want?"

Great... action time. I definitely hadn't rehearsed this. I guess the best thing for me to do now would be to tell it to him straight. "The name's Adam. I really don't know how I ended up here, but here I am. Honestly... I need some help sorting out what the hell's going on here... especially since I don't speak the local language." However... leaving out the fact that this was a video game seemed pretty prudent. I didn't want anyone to question my sanity.

"Aye... I think I can help with that. You're on Sauria, lad. We're in fer some rough times... I may have been asleep but me ears keep me well enough informed. General Scales... a cruel tyrant... e's all but taken Sauria over. 'E stole all the Spellstones from their rightful places. The entire world's in danger of breakin' apart. The Krazoa Spirits have been hidden, but they can't stand up to Scales all by themselves." It was pretty much a retelling of Adventure's plot, but I could follow it well enough.

"The only tribe to stand up to Scales and 'is Sharpclaw are the Earthwalkers. Their queen is safe and sound right here... but the few that haven't fallen in battle are makin' a last-ditch attempt at bringin' in outside help. They're at the Krazoa Palace as we speak." The gigantic living statue paused for a moment. "Are ye saying you want to help, lad?"

I gave a curt nod... knowing how that particular story turned out helped spur me on a little bit. However... there was the matter of a certain Cerinian that was about to come onto the stage in short order.

These were the facts: The Earthwalkers' stand at Krazoa Palace would fail. Krystal was also headed there, and Scales would have her imprisoned in that giant crystal until Fox could get her out. I had no idea how long it would take Fox to get here after that... and I really didn't have the time to sit around with my thumb up my ass waiting for him. It sounded like one of those hairbrained schemes, but it was looking like I'd have to do it.

Krystal could speak both Saurian and English... and I needed a translator. She could fly a spacecraft... which I would be completely hopeless at. She was also a telepath. It would be awkward as hell, running to the rescue of a fictional character. It was even more awkward since I had written this into one of my stories in the past. However... instead of Brian, _I_was the one standing there with the gun in my hands. I wondered what the hell I was thinking. I had no combat training, and I wasn't the risktaking type.

But... I was now forced to at least attempt to save a fictional blue vixen from a pretty nasty fate. I was the only one who knew what was going to happen. I was the only one out there that had potential to stop it. I was no hero. In fact, I was scared shitless. I was ill-prepared and ill-equipped... my best weapons were a rifle that was pushing a century old and a shotgun outfitted for duck hunting, not combat.

Life had taught me how to be flexible, but this was ridiculous. Warriors were trained to not fear death. I sure as hell feared it... especially on some Godforsaken planet. I wondered about my family and my friends... how much I'd be missed by them. Would I ever see them again?

Taking a deep breath I pointed to my backpack. "I need a couple of minutes to prepare, and then I'll be ready. Take me to Krazoa Palace... I'll help as much as I can."