The woman on the beach reeked of the perfume of death. The seal pelts she wore buffered her against the cold winds that blew off the ocean, the pelts were soaked in the blood of her adversaries. Strapped over the pelts she wore her cured leather armor. It was inscribed with all manner of runes to rebuff the sharp edges of her enemies' weapons. The runes almost continued organically into a pattern leading up her hands and neck.
A man with a gnarly beard approached. He also had odd patterns painted on himself predominantly on his face.
“Come hence do the Augustans. Twelve the count of the ships.”
The woman took out an eyeglass and scanned the ships on the horizon. What she saw coming was a battle they could never dare hope to win. She did not care so long as their blood stained this beach for years to come.
With a resigned sigh she responded, “Never were the Augustans to allow us keep the land we have taken in hand. Bow to the empire er be crushed swiftly."
“Do we stand here then mine own queen?” He asked darkly.
“Would any of thy men wish a different end?”
The man smiled grimly, “Nay.”
As she nodded at the man he saluted. Then the scene shifted.
The Queen stepped forward and punched her spear with precision into the neck of a charging soldier. The blood spouting from his artery was visibly absorbed by the spear before a bolt of electricity discharged from the end sending the soldier flying backward. His head barely clinging to his body by a sliver of skin. As she turned to charge the next soldier, Ridley realized that she was going to be in so much trouble if her mom found out she had slaughtered nearly a dozen men and counting. Oh wait. She thought. This is a dream.
As Ridley opened her eyes she stared at the water stain left on her ceiling. It had likely been there for years before her and her mother occupied the apartment. She sat up and looked around her hodgepodge of a room. Her mattress sat directly on the floor as it seemed a waste to buy a frame. One of those old TV’s with the VHS player built into it sat in the corner of the room along with a stack of old anime tapes she had purchased from the used bookstores for a dollar. It was her hobby to collect them as they were cheap and the only entertainment she could afford when she occasionally did chores like cleaning the bathrooms for the old ladies in the area. She had stayed up all night watching Rurouni Kenshin again. Looking out the window she realized she had slept past lunch time.
As her brain started to get out of first gear she recalled the events of the day before. How embarrassing, she had cried. She hated it when she was seen crying. Does anyone actually enjoy it? This was not just crying though, this was ugly crying. The kind that had snot getting all over your sleeve while your mascara runs down your cheek, leaving black streaks on your face.
The day before she had come out of her… she suppose you would call it a trance, on the way to the principal's office. She realized the full weight of what she had done as she saw Jared getting a makeshift brace on his arm. All the emotions that she had been suppressing had flooded her at the same time. It simply jumbled up her brain and caused her to just lose her shit. She even thought she had seen a weird game screen.
Jared and Ridley had been forced to stand right next to each other in the principal's office. The hundred-seventy pound athlete and the ninety pound girl that looked like she should still be in junior high made quite the contrast. Ridley had some time to settle down and clean up her face while the principal asked Jared a few questions. He of course left out any of the lewd remarks he had made at Ridley’s expense. The principal then turned to her and asked why she would attack Jared with such intensity.
She planned to respond in full honesty, that what she had done was wrong and take full blame, but her rage came back full force and with it she channeled some old England dark ages jargon for some reason.
“The boy Jared, did declare challenge against myself when he said I could contest him in grappling. So after claiming he and mine own mother had relations the night before, I felt the right to demand satisfaction of him. We did content ourselves within the bounds of the grappling arena, thus sanctioning said match.”
“Uh, Jared… did you claim to have relations with Ridley’s mother?” The principle asked.
Jared's face was searching for an excuse but even he knew a dozen people had heard him, and not all of them would lie for him. Especially when he just got his ass handed to him by Ridley of all people.
“Yes sir. No excuse, just locker room talk you know.” He shifted his feet and spoke softly. He was most likely putting on a show of shame and regret to lower his punishment. Ridley didn’t buy his act for a second though.
“So Ridley. Did you break Jared’s arm on purpose?” What was at first skepticism on the principal's face turned to amusement as he looked at Jared’s pouting face. His mouth almost twisted into a smile as he said it but he held it in.
Her head down she muttered, “No… yes. Kind of both I guess. I didn’t think I really could, but I did. I was just so angry.”
The principle looked about as confused as Ridley felt, but he didn’t comment. At least it seemed he wasn’t too pleased with Jared either. So they both ended up with a suspension. Jared's for one week and Ridley's for a whole two weeks as she had caused a serious injury to a student. Unfortunately the fact that they had been wrestling in class that day didn’t fly in her favor like she had hoped. Wait… A whole two weeks off from school? She was very much ok with that.
She had returned home to find her mother was gone, which was no surprise. She zapped a hot pocket in the microwave and binge watched her anime until she fell asleep. Though she couldn’t remember them, her dreams were not pleasant. The only things she could recall was war and bloodlust. Along with a few cool looking tattooed symbols that stuck with her.
She laid in bed for a little while longer. She needed to tell her mother what had happened—though there was only a fifty percent chance she would care, or be awake. She would have gladly slept in for a couple more hours but she needed to go to the bathroom. So with great effort she rolled onto her belly and pushed herself up. She stretched out like a cat, trying to wake her muscles which were surprisingly sore. An experience she was not too familiar with.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
She pulled on a shirt as she walked down the stairs and ran her fingers through her coarse knotted hair. To her surprise her mother was in fact sitting at the honey colored oak round table. Another amazing dumpster find by Ridley.
She looked up at Ridley and nodded, “Morning dear, not going to school today?” She commented half heartedly while munching on some toast. Even sitting there with her unkempt hair first thing in the morning, somehow, Ridley's mother was beautiful. Sherry Lancaster was likely the type that would have bullied her in school, but you don’t get to choose your mother.
Ridley grabbed a generic brand shredded wheat cereal and began pouring herself a bowl. “No mom, I actually got suspended yesterday.”
“Oh? I didn’t realize you could get suspended for failing classes.” She took another bite of her toast making a loud crunching noise that had always annoyed Ridley.
“I’m not suspended because of failing a class.”
“You're not failing a class?” Crunch. Crunch.
“Well, yes, I am. That's not the reason I got suspended though. I broke someone’s arm.”
Ridley’s mother stopped chewing on her toast and looked at her with a raised eyebrow, “On purpose?”
“Yes mom, on purpose.”
“Well that’s just not like you at all dear. Who’s the unlucky brat?”
“Jared.” As soon as she said it Ridley knew how this was going to play out. Her mother loved Jared and thought he was an angel. The way she doted on him always confused Ridley, it was like he was the kid she thought she should have.
“Jared!? Not Jared Malone? Our Jared?”
“He is not our Jared!”
“But Jared is such a sweet kid! Why would you do such a thing?” She paused for a second and looked a Ridley skeptically, “…and how did you do such a thing?”
“He is not an angel mom. He is a complete ass and has been for years.”
“Well, you are going to call him and his mother and apologize right now.”
“No, I’m not mom, he very much deserved a broken arm… he probably deserved two.”
The amount of concern she showed for the Malone family was really irritating to Ridley. Especially when she contrasted it with how she felt treated by her mother. This brought up a resentment that had long been building in Ridley but she never had the will to express.
Her mother continued badgering her, “Yes Ridley, you are or you will be grounded for a month.”
Without warning Ridley took her bowl and smashed it on the ground shattering it, sending glass and shredded wheat all over the kitchen.
Ridley looked at her mother and asked, “Grounded from what mom? There are sooo many things to choose from. Hanging out with friends? Leaving the apartment? Watching VHS tapes on my thirty-year-old TV?”
Ridley immediately recognized that this was a really low blow. Pointing out their poverty and her own pathetic situation would actually hurt her mom. However a large part of her at that moment wanted to hurt someone, anyone, in any way possible.
^
New quest!
Therapy is expensive:
You have spent a lifetime suppressing your anger, it’s time to blow some steam.
Objective: Break at least $250 worth of property
Quest rewards:
-1 xp per $1 value broken
-1 silver per $100 value broken
Time limit: 2 days
Notice: Your alignment may shift if you complete this quest.
Ridley looked at the prompt, wondering if she had some brain damage from head butting Jared’s sternum the day before. Then she had a flash back to the prompt she had seen while howling in victory. She looked back up at her mom who had gone all sulky and continued eating her toast and playing on her cell phone. She was obviously fighting off tears in her own messed up way. This is how most arguments ended. Her mother would zone back out of this world into the little one she held in her hand. The warring feelings of guilt Ridley normally felt was suppressed today though.
It seemed only Ridley could see the blue screen that was currently hovering in front of her. So she kept the screen up and, with some difficulty, navigated around the broken bowl and went back to her room. With the crazy hallucination to distract her she didn’t feel hungry anymore.
When she returned to her room she read the notification again. It looked like a game prompt. She had a bit of experience with classic role playing games. One time she hit a jackpot at a garage sale when some old guy had a stack of Super Nintendo cartridges sitting out listed for five bucks a piece. She found one called Final Fantasy VI which she was immediately tempted to sell off knowing it was worth more like $60. She decided instead to fix up a broken SNES she had in a box and play through it first. They usually had things like a status screen.
“Menu.” She said feeling slightly embarrassed as she talked to her empty room.
A second blue screen popped up in front of her face.
^
Job Skills | Skill Tree | Quests | Status | Inventory | Shop
“Holy shit!” She exclaimed upon seeing the new screen, this time with options similar to a game, as she had suspected. It looked like the shop option and inventory were unavailable as they were greyed out. When she clicked on it a little animation of a Dwarf in a construction hat was swinging a pick at a rock in a loop. The words coming soon above his head.
“Well I don’t have any items or money anyway. Might as well start with my status.”
A screen with her name popped up.
^
Ridley Lancaster - Human Barbarian - Level 1
Level progression: 0%
Strength: ≈12-22
Endurance: 9
Dexterity: 12
Intelligence: 8
Wisdom: 12
Charisma: 10
Luck: 7
The first question Ridley wondered was why a barbarian? From the little she knew from video games and history she was the last person that could be classified as a barbarian. There was a section that described her basic stats. The first thing she noticed is that, as she expected, she was not very smart. Looking at that depressing number she decided intelligence just had to do with book smarts. Any other interpretation would just be depressing. What surprised her however was that it looked like her best attribute was her strength… kind of. Which was just plain bullshit. She had trouble just moving that little box TV up to her apartment. There was however something strange about that stat. It had two little squiggly lines next to it. It made her think of an equal sign. She knew she had seen it before in math class. She had the thought that maybe she should actually open her math book from time to time, but she quickly dismissed it.
She moved over to her tv and lifted it.
Yeah, definitely lighter than when I moved it up here, but not super strength levels.
Stumped, she looked at her quest again and it showed a reward of one silver for every hundred dollars in value that she broke. Was that some kind of in game money or like legit money? Looking around her room—steaming in her frustration with being super poor—she decided what she would be doing tomorrow, whether or not it would be beneficial. She was going to find some stuff to break. How easily it seemed she had accepted all of this. She thought about Sailor Moon and her other favorite magical girl shows.
But why a Barbarian?
