Today's Earth date: June 19, 1992

We've had a few random encounters on the open water. They were all flying devil fish, which are basically fish with wings and big teeth. They're dangerous if you underestimate them or if one gets you by surprise. We've lost two crew members because they were distracted and a fish got to their necks. Surprise, surprise, they are more aggressive with Heroes around.

Killing them isn't difficult, but it takes a while because you have to wait for them to jump out of the water and over the boat.

The real assholes are gore gulls. Imagine a New Jersey sea gull, you know, the kind that take the hotdog out of your hand. Make them four times bigger and give them a bunch of shark teeth. Awful, awful, awful.

This isn't very hero-like: We're all struggling with sea sickness. Even trying to write this makes my head swim.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

One guardian mushroom was in the open, standing in a field created by its own blast of spores. The other guardian mushroom was still mostly obscured by trees, so Wayne opted to target the first. That mushroom had continued moving and would eventually be back beneath the forest canopy if he waited any longer.

He had a troubling observation. Everywhere the mushroom stepped, little mushrooms sprouted. If they looked little from this high up, they had to be the size of Christmas trees or larger. Wayne had a feeling where this mechanic was heading, and the appearance of new red dots, one after the other, confirmed his suspicion.

"The mushrooms are dropping adds. Everywhere they walk, mushroom monsters grow."

Both Skycats reached the first guardian mushroom ahead of Wayne, hosing it with streams of Dynamite. The mushroom raised an arm to protect its face and stomped its foot. The monster bent down, picked a mushroom that sprouted at its feet, and threw it at one of the Skycats.

The mushroom missed, but it exploded in the forest, releasing a fresh plume of spores.

"The adds can explode," Wayne warned.

"Roger," Armond replied. "We're dealing with ghost badgers."

The barrage of Dynamite had blown noticeable chunks out of the mini boss, but the damage appeared to be relatively superficial. Its one arm was somewhat mangled from using it to block, but it was still very much usable, and anywhere else the Dynamite hit blew away pieces of mushroom, though none of the wounds seemed critical.

Guardian mushrooms were tough.

As the Skycats approached for another pass, the mushroom unleashed another blast of spores, flattening more trees and blowing the two planes out of the air.

Nee.

A bush grew on top of the mushroom. Wayne grinned.

A few seconds later, two dozen bushes burned on the mushroom's cap. It attempted to extinguish the flames with its hands, but its arms weren't long enough to reach around the cap. It managed to snuff a few at the very edge while the rest continued to burn.

Wayne briefly considered possessing the other mushroom with his SoulStorm™ Brew but decided against it. He didn't have a safe place to leave his body unattended.

So he flew toward the burning mushroom, peppering it with Missiles.

Slyway Robber.

That spell from Tunnels & Trolls enabled him to steal attribute points from his target. Wayne's strength and vitality went up by 10, overfilling his hitpoints as a result:

HP: 473/346

Next, he activated Chicken from It Came from the Desert to lock the mushroom into a head on battle. As Wayne hoped, the mini boss didn't have the wits to puzzle out what was happening, so as soon as it stepped outside the confines of the game, it lost.

Losing Chicken meant a significant debuff.

Wayne activated Insult Duel for good measure, shouting, "I usually see people like you passed-out on tavern floors."

As always, the words came automatically. He had no way to contain them.

With the distance between Wayne and the mushroom rapidly diminishing, and with several buffs and debuffs in play, he readied his attack and augmented a single powerful swing with the Two by Four ability from Splatterhouse, drastically amplifying his power.

The cap and half of the guardian mushroom's head blew off in a spray of raw mushroom. While its health bar collapsed to zero. Wayne heard the guardian mushroom activate its spore blast.

"Homerow?" Wayne asked, offering to reset the party back to where the fight began.

"Hold!" Armond replied. "These badgers are too hard to track. Can't risk losing visual."

That answer was mostly fine with Wayne. Homerow would have saved him a lot of Blitzing, instantly placing him near the rest of the battle, but oh well.

Two of the spirit badgers were below half health according to his HUD. The other badger and the remaining mushroom were at full health. Wayne had chosen to intercept the second mushroom before the Zeroes were in range of its spore blast attack, but he now questioned the wisdom of that strategy. Many of his heaviest hitting tactics were already on cooldown, so he wouldn't be able to stack debuffs to defeat this mushroom.

Mentally reviewing the spells and abilities that weren't on cooldown, he devised a plan that was not incredibly original as far as mini boss battles went, especially in film or television, but no one in this world would know that. All they would see, and hear about, was the bad ass way he killed a giant marauding mushroom.

The mushroom attempted to swipe at Wayne as he closed the distance, but lacking a neck, the monster could barely look up. Its ability to lean back was similarly hindered, the consequence of having a solid mushroom stem for a spine.

Doing his best to aim it because he wanted a precise hit, rather than the guaranteed but less precise blow his autotargeting would provide, he turned sideways in the air above the mushroom cap.

Fire a Broadside!

A cannonball punched a small hole in the surface of the cap. It wasn't quite centered, but it was close enough. Wayne peppered the spot with a few sticks of Dynamite to expand the wound left by the cannonball, and then committed to his plan.

Wayne Blitzed straight up into the sky, and then Blitzed straight down. He expected this to hurt a bit, and on the off chance that it hurt a lot, he hoped Armond could find his body in time to cast Born Again to resurrect him.

The Zero Hero plunged into the mushroom cap and spammed Blitz to drive himself as deep as he could. Having no real way to judge how far he traveled–it was unsurprisingly quite dark inside the head of a monster mushroom–he hoped that he was deep enough. Casting Fanbi to drain boss health as a precaution, he moved into phase two.

Wayne activated every area of effect spell and ability he had.

Fire from ESWAT surrounded his body with balls of twirling fire. Swirling Leaf and Righteous Cloud from Ninja Spirit summoned a swarm of blades, the leaves shooting outward while the cloud of knives orbited Wayne. Then he finished with Tyris-Flare Fire Magic (3 Pots) from Golden Axe.

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That last one wasn't technically an area of effect spell, but the burning spirits it conjured immediately exploded within the mushroom.

Despite all of the fire, Wayne was unharmed, thanks to an ability from Ultima that made him immune to fire damage.

The guardian mushroom was harmed, however. Its head didn't completely explode as Wayne hoped, but the cavity his combination of spells created dealt enough damage to kill it. Lacking the momentum of a dramatic dive from the clouds, Blitzing out of the mushroom was considerably more challenging. By the time he carved his way free, one spirit badger remained and had roughly three quarters of its health left. A half dozen smaller mushroom adds were still in play as well, but judging by the number of mushroom corpses, they hadn't given the Zeroes much trouble.

As for his party members, Hector had taken a few big hits, and it seemed that Armond and Margo suffered a few blows as well. None of their health was close to being halfway depleted, and Fergus hadn't been hit at all, or if he had, Armond topped him off back to his max capacity.

Getting to the fight through the trees was a pain. When Wayne finally arrived, he saw a semi-transparent badger the size of one on Earth. This one wore a tattered cloak and stood upright, its forward movements the awkward side to side hobble of something that couldn't bend its legs to take a proper step.

Had the badger fought on all fours, it likely would have been much more mobile, but this badger stayed standing, hurling spells and blocking attacks with magic barriers. All of its attention was on Hector. The party's tank glowed from multiple buffs providing protection and damage bonuses. Some of those buffs came from Armond, but many of them were his own.

Hector landed two clean strikes back to back, dropping the badger's health substantially, and then a laser came down from the sky to finish the job. That was a Phantasy Star II spell that Fergus knew.

The spirit badger disappeared into a cloud of smoke.

Wayne checked his status menu and cursed. All that, and he didn't level up.

He cursed even more when the chest at the bottom of the spawner was empty.

On the second to last random encounter between Gitna and the Zeroes, Wayne leveled up. He was relieved, but Fergus made it very clear he was frustrated that he–or any of the other Zeroes–were not so fortunate.

While the rest of the party used a Quick Gate to get back on the train, Wayne thought it best if he made his first stop in Gitna a check in with Barry.

The same butler answered the door, said that the family was expecting Wayne to stop in at some point, and escorted him to an obscenely gaudy parlor. The overstuffed chairs looked comfortable from a distance, but the cushions were hard, the back was steep to the point that even sitting up perfectly straight was uncomfortable, and the armrests were strangely low.

Henry appeared after too long, accompanied by a still-frazzled Barry. The father and son sat in two of the nearby chairs.

"I know we had an awkward start, but I hope you know how grateful I am for protecting Barry," Henry began. "I must seem like a poor father in your eyes. Despite your warning that trouble tends to follow you, I trusted the advice of my security when they said the journey would be safe."

"It's fine."

"Truth be told, he had been asking to visit those ruins for some time. I was on the verge of sending him out with a few bodyguards to get the childish desire for 'adventure' out of his system. Had he not traveled with you, I fear he would not be here in the room today."

"I'm sorry that I didn't save them all," Wayne said. "I tried but wasn't fast enough."

"I'll hear no more of that. Those were good men, and from everything I've been told, your best was still quite impressive."

"Thank you."

"Barry," Henry said, addressing his son. "We owe the man payment."

Barry stood and handed Wayne two Pages of Power. "Thank you for protecting me," he mumbled. "I'm sorry I called you a pussy."

"Appreciate you saying that."

Barry returned to his chair.

"Should you ever need a favor in Gitna," Henry began, "I hope you call upon me. We are very grateful to you and your bravery."

"I don't know what to make of these," Fergus said, sitting in his cabin on the train, inspecting the newly acquired Pages of Power. "I imagine if they're not actually games then nothing would happen by circling them. You can circle all kinds of stuff with a pencil, and games have still been the only thing Christmas List reacted to."

"Do you feel that way about the hardware options?"

"Less so," Fergus admitted. "But we won't know until we try.

In addition to reaching level 26, Wayne unlocked two new abilities. The first was from Pat Riley Basketball:

Man to Man Defense – Each player on your team guards a specific player.

And he got his sixth and final unlock from the strategy game Centurion:

Ramming – To ram, simply steer the ram on the prow of the ship into the enemy's ship.

Neither could be activated on the train, but Wayne was pretty annoyed with Ramming. That would have been useful against the guardian mushrooms, and he would prefer it if he didn't have to forcibly insert himself into the body of a monster ever again.

After sharing all of this with Fergus, including the new pages, Wayne was still torn on what to select. He decided that one good bet and one experiment was a reasonable approach.

The good bet was Hayes Personal Modem. He circled it, finding that like other Utility-based unlocks, there was only one ability to learn from Hayes Personal Modem:

Virtual Connection – To establish a virtual call to a user on the network, you must have the network address of the other node to which you wish to connect and any other information required by the network.

When Wayne activated it from his system menu, a command line prompt appeared in the center of his HUD. He certainly didn't know what the system description meant by "nodes," nor did he have any network address to plug in. He typed, "Fergus."

The staticky screech of a dial-up internet connection attempt rang in his ears. It persisted for fifteen seconds, stopped, and a message appeared: "Node not found."

That was disappointing, and that was the good bet. The wild bet was the fictional game Roman Debate from the Target ad. He circled it.

Wayne's world immediately froze.

Loading…

Grant Permissions for Game: Roman Debate. [Failed]

Game: Roman Debate Not Found.

Searching…

Expanding Search…

Found Game: Rome: Total War…

Match Rejected.

Expanding Search…

Found Game: Caesar.

Match Rejected.

Expanding Search…

The system continued to propose game titles only to reject them immediately after. Wayne, still frozen, watched as the rest of the Total War series scrolled by, and watched the same happen for the Caesar series. Then the system cycled through two dozen other games tied to Rome in some way. He didn't recognize most of them, but he did know Anno 117. That was an ancient Rome city builder. Sid Meier's Civilization series cycled by, and so did Assassin's Creed Origins, but the system rejected those too.

Wayne began to worry that he had trapped himself in an inescapable system loop, hardlocking his consciousness, essentially. He began mentally pressing buttons that he hoped existed in the system, like ESC, or ALT+F4, or CTRL+ALT+DEL. Nothing happened, not even an error message.

He tried opening his system menus. He couldn't. He tried speaking via Voice, and that failed too.

Finally, he saw:

Expanding Search…

Found Game: Argument Wars.

Match Accepted.

Diagnostic Scan.

Installation Success Confirmed.

Reboot Recommended.

Rebooting…

Wayne woke up on the couch in Fergus' cabin. Fergus and Armond stood nearby, talking. Wayne couldn't understand what they were saying. He attempted to get their attention, but all he managed was a groan.

"Wayne?" Armond said, coming over to the couch. He knelt. "Don't get up. You've been unconscious for a bit, so take it slow. First, is there anything that hurts or feels wrong?"

"I have a headache."

"Anything else?"

"I don't think so. How long was I out?"

"An hour and a half. Do you know what happened?"

Wayne sighed and sat up, rubbing his head. "The system couldn't find the game Roman Debate. It spent that whole time searching for an alternative. I couldn't do anything while it ran."

"Did it succeed or did it give up?" Fergus asked.

Wayne opened his system. He had indeed unlocked Argument Wars. He had never heard of it.

Objection – On your opponent's turn, reject a weak support card.

The system listed that as the first unlock out of a set of glitched characters.

"It unlocked a game I don't know," Wayne answered. "But I am not going through that to try to unlock a sewing or an accounting game, that's for sure. If I start to convince myself otherwise, slap me."

"Gladly."

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