The Orb

"Raynor here," the man said as he answerd his phone. He listened to the report being given to him by the person on the other end of the line, and began to frown as he realized the gravity of the news being given to him. "Already," he said to the person on the other end of the line, and closed the notebook he was writing in and put it away in his jacket. After some more words from the person on the other line, he sighed, and replied, "understood, get in position but do not act until I get there." He ended the call and stood up, excusing himself from the conversation he was having. He looked at the woman, giving her one more chance. "Are you sure you do not wish to help?" The woman shook her head to confirm she did not want to be involved, and he shrugged and walked away from them.

*************************************

The four of them took a place, one on each side of the Pedestal, staring at the orb. "So, uhhh," Air said, voice trailing off for a second. "What are we supposed to do, exactly?" Earth and Fire gave her a puzzled look, and she held up her hands in defense. "You have to understand," she said, "when he and I were involved those fifteen years ago, we were removed from play before we ever got a chance to see the Pedestal and the Orb themselves. And our information said the real Pedestal had been destroyed, and you had a cheap replica of it to control the Cube. Our plans on destorying it were based on that, with the real thing here our plans are shot to the moon."

"Thing's haven't gone according to plan all day," Water said with a smile. "We just have to take things as they go, and do it live." He reached forward, and wrapped his hand around the Orb. A burst of energy came out from it, rippling up his arm, and as it engulfed him his eyes went wide and pupils dialated, and he suddenly fell to the floor. Panicked, the other three got down to help him, and, finding him unconscious, tried unsuccessfully to revive him.

"The lighter," Fire said to Air, and she hurriedly pulled it out of her pocket and handed it to him. He opened it up and lit it, and just as with the Bearer, the flame turned to a bright purple, showing the Orb was now telepathically influencing water. Fire flicked the lighter closed and reopened it, but the flame once again turned purple upon relighting it. Air took it back from him, repeating the action over and over again, but Water would not wake up.

"I don't understand," Air said angrily, tears building up in her eyes. "Why won't it work? It's supposed to abort telepathic connections when closing it and turn it off." Fed up with the object, she threw it in anger against the wall, and then stood up. "Maybe he had the right idea after all, forget the plan and just do it live," she said, wiping the tears from her eyes, and then she grabbed at the Orb as well. The other two stood quickly to catch her, as a wave of energy engulfed her as well and knocked her unconscious. They laid her gently to the ground, and stood up and looked at each other.

They stood there for a couple minutes, not doing anything. The energy field above the Pedestal hadn't changed, nothing about the setup had changed in any way since Water first grabbed at the orb. Fire went to grab at it himself, but Earth grabbed at his hand. "Stop," she said, a somber look in her eyes as she looked at him. "One of us needs to still be awake in case something else happens." Fire nodded in agreemend, and withdrew his hand for a moment. She reached into her pocket, and pulled out a coin, holding it up. He nodded in agreement, and she flipped it up into the air.

"Hea-" he started to say, but as soon as she flipped up, she herself grabbed at the Orb. He quickly stepped around to catch her, shaking his head. "You idiot," he said, as he lowered her to the ground. He stood up and looked back at the pedestal, just as the coin landed on it. It was heads-side up, and the energy field above it broke and rippled out like a wave on a pond, before reforming a few moments later. He was alone now, the odd one out, as he realized he had been from the beginning.

For an hour or so he stood there, waiting, hoping that something would happen. A few times he went to grab at the Orb himself, but he remembered that Earth was right, one of them had to be out here, just in case. But nothing was happening. Their bodies lay unconscious, the storms the Bearer had started had ceased without his influence, and the news stations were back to reporting regular dulldrums. Nothing was happening, until suddenly, something did.

A group of people suddenly burst into the room, from a door in the ceiling he hadn't noticed before. Seven people jumped down into the room in total, six of them wearing riot gear, the last one wearing a business suit. "Agent David Raynor," the man in the suit said to Fire, pulling out an ID card and showing him, "CIA. We're here to help." He looked down at the three on the floor and the exposed Orb, and then looking around the room noticed the lighter, which he went over to pick up.

"It's not working," Fire said, as the man picked up the lighter and flicked it open, lit it, closed it, and then lit it again. "They touched the Orb and went unconscious, and the Lighter isn't working to interrupt it like they said it should."

"Of course not," Raynor said, pocketing the object. "The Lighter interrupts telepathic connections. But their minds are inside the Orb right now." The man walked back over to the Pedestal, and motioned to Fire. "All four of you will need to be inside to break free. Go ahead, grab the Orb." Hesitant, Fire slowly grabbed at the Orb. Several of the other people grabbed at him and lowered him to the floor, where they were strapping all of them to stretchers. Raynor nodded, then grabbed at the Orb himself.

The Pedestal

The Bearer continued to laugh, as he held up the remote toward the wall and pressed another button. The walls came to life, revealing many large television screens, some of them showing various news reels, others showing different weather satellite and Doppler images of around the world. He then set down the Cube in the center of the Pedestal, and they all watch as it began to glow, then it's sides unfolded onto the grid of the pedestal, revealing a glowing multicolored orb in the center. Additional panels began to slide out of the sides, covering the pedestal.

"Now, watch," the Bearer said with a smile, and held the remote forward to the four of them, while raising his other hand over the orb. The bars of the cells then began to slide down slowly, from above, until they came just down below their eyes. He then put his hand on the orb, and energy rose up from the top of their heads, over the cell bars and flew toward the orb. After a few moments, it stopped, and he raised the bars back up again. "And just like that," he said, finally putting the remote into his messenger bag, "the disappointing players of this round of the game forefit their positions."

"So what now," Earth said with a sneer while trying to shake the bars loose. "You've taken the power from me, now what are you planning, giving the power to four new individuals?" The Bearer shook his head, and brought both hands over the orb. A wave of energy came out from it over the panels on the Pedestal, forming into a map off the coast of Florida, and another pattern appeared above it appeared that, based on the screens on the walls, appeared to match the cloud cover over the area.

He moved his hands in a pattern, and the clouds floating above the pedestal began to change, forming into a pattern appearing like a hurricane. The four simultaneously looked over at the wall, as the satellite and Doppler patterns shifted to match, and one of the news images changed to an emergency broadcast beginning to warn about the hurricane. "Now a hurricane is a pretty good start," the Bearer said, shrugging his shoulders, and waved his hands to clear the map above the Pedestal and reform it again. "But we can do better than that." He looked up at Water, and smiled. "How about we continue what you two started fifteen years ago?"

"You wouldn't," Air said with a sneer, and Water simply glared at him.

"Ah," the Bearer said, beginning to chuckle, "but did you tell your new friends about then? About how the two of you, caught up in the excitement of having power, and the energy of a grade school crush, nearly paralyzed the entire Rocky Mountain region by turning the winter storm into flooded landslide?" Water looked over to his companions. Air was bowing her head in shame and embarrassment, while Earth looked upon him with bewilderment, as this was a detail the two had left out of their explanation of the events of the past. Fire, however, wasn't looking at him, just staring at the Bearer, while scratching an itch on his left forearm. Fire noticed, for the first time, a black tattoo on the man's left arm, running in a helix around his arm and up where he couldn't see it in the sleeve, which is what he was scratching at.

Could it be, Fire thought to himself as he thought back to the events of the past. "Yes," he said, turning to the Bearer, "Air and I did nearly cause some damage, we were troublesome little children back then. But we realized our mistake, and that's why we got back together later and resolved to take it down. We've spent years planning, preparing for this moment, just to take it out." Water then smiled a sinister smile. "And you've not only handed us the Cube, you've given us the Pedestal along with it, which is more than we were hoping for. You've handed the means to destroy you to us on a silver- excuse me - golden platter."

The Bearer frowned, and began to wave his hands over the sphere again, the energy turning into a series of mountains. "Once I've destroyed your home," the Bearer said with a chuckle, voice much more terse though than before. He stopped, lowering his eyebrows, appearing like he was surprised that he seemed more worried at what Water said than he should be. "You'll have to watch your home destroyed, and everyone and everything you love there wiped out with it. And then yes, I will give the power to four new people. Four new people who will lose their homes in my disasters, and be told that the others were the cause. A new war, a new game, and I will force you four to watch it before I kill you, to watch those with dark hearts destroy the world."

The sound that then filled the room was not the Bearer, but it was Water, filling the room with a low cynical laugh. "You certainly are full of yourself and your ability to control others as puppets." He reached into his pocket, and brought out a black lighter. Flicking it open, he held it up and out of the cage. "You know," he continued, "being a puppet yourself." The Bearer looked up to him, and his face went pale as Water lit the lighter, and its flame turned to a bright purple. He then clicked it closed and dropped it to the ground, and the Bearer suddenly fell to the ground. "Now, Fire!"

Fire nodded, and pulled up his left sleeve, and as the Bearer began to stand back up he ran a fingernail along his tattoo. A loud, high pitched whine filled the room, and the Bearer and the others fell to the ground grabbing their ears in pain to block it out. He then held forth his hand, and the tattoo around his arm began to glow, then darted out off of his arm to the ground, slithering along until it reached the Bearer's messenger bag. It disappeared into the bag, then with a flick of his wrist back toward himself, the bag lifted into the air, and the remote control, wrapped up in the energy coil, flew back to his hand. He then held forth his hand again and it went back out, and wrapped itself around the Bearer's legs, preventing him from getting to his feet again.

Fire pressed the button he had seen the Bearer press before, and the bars began to lower once again. "What was that lighter, anyway," he said to Water, turning to him while waiting for the bars to lower completely.

"An old relic of the Grand Game," he said simply, and walked toward the Bearer once he had enough clearance from the bars. He lifted him up by his jacket, then dragged him over to the cell he just vacated. Fire pressed the button on the remote, and the cells rose up to trap the old man in it.

"I'm surprised you still had it," Air said, picking it up and holding it up close to her eyes. "I thought it was taken away along with the other things." Water simply chuckled in response. "And that tattoo as well," she continued as she turned to look at Fire. "I remember that, someone else involved those years ago had it, not one of the four users though. How did you come across it?"

Fire recalled the tattoo back to his arm from around the Bearer's legs now that he was locked securely away, and then pulled his sleeve back down to cover it up. "It belonged to my uncle. Several years ago he gave me a card with the symbol, telling me a strange tale which I honestly didn't believe him, until after that man showed up at my apartment and involved me in all of this." He scratched at it a few more times, still itching. "I was going to use it to rescue Earth, to be honest with you."

"That's all fine and dandy you know," Earth said, drawing all of their attention, "but we're not out of the woods yet." They all turned, and looked at the Pedestal. "We still have one more thing to do. We have to stop the Orb."

The Cube

The man held forward the cube, the side for Earth facing them, and the symbol began to glow. They all looked at Earth, as suddenly glowing bands appeared around her wrist, and her arms began to raise into the air. "Wha- what is this?" she stammered, panicking, and tried to back away, but her amrs remained fixed in the air at the position of the wrists, still moving on their own. Lines of energy began to flow out of the bands along her fingers and up her arms, and they all looked back at the Bearer, who began to laugh, as he brought his free hand forard, holding it above the Cube.

"You fools," he said as he continued laughing, "do you really thing you can go against the will of the Cube?" From his hands, strings of light appeared to descend into the Cube, and as he began to move them with his fingers Earth suddenly screamed out, and when they looked back at her she was clearly in pain as her arms were being stretched in a way they wouldn't be naturally. She continued struggling to pull away, pushing backwards against the ground, until she was no longer able to. Panicking, she looked down at her feet, and then shook her head worringly.

"Stop this now," Water said, holding out his hand to blast the man with water, but before the spray could go forward the floor in front of him raised up, blocking the shot. The raised floor then broke apart, and flew forward toward him. He ran forward toward it instead of dodging it, and jumped up onto it as a platform to jump up to the ceiling. He punched through the drop tile, grabbing onto pipes above it, and then suddenly the sprinklers all came to life, pouring down water. "Now then," he said, "I believe I said stop."

He looked down to Air and nodded, and she nodded in return. She then held her hands up, and a fierce wind started blowing in the room, swirling around and gathering up the water from the sprinkler, preventing it from falling to the ground. She then clenched her hands together, and it all converged on the Bearer, who held up his free arm to shield his face from the onslaught. As he did this, Water then reached down with his free hand and undid his shoelaces, and loosened his boots. He lifted one leg backward and then kicked it forward, sending the boot flying toward the Bearer, but missing. He then did it again with the other boot, hitting the cube and knocking it out of his hand.

Earth fell to the ground, and Fire ran over to help her up. As he went to touch her, though, a shock ran through his body, and he pulled back. "Uh uh," the Bearer said in mocking response, bending down to pick up the Cube. Water jumped down to the floor and began to run forward to attack him, but from his sleeve a small metal bearing rolled into his hand, which he tossed forward toward Water. Once it hit him, he stopped moving, frozen in place, and the ball fell to the floor. "That was a little clever," the Bearer said, picking up the Cube and holding his hand up to it once again, the strings of light reappearing. "I wasn't expecting to get a shoe thrown at me, anyway."

He moved his hand, and Earth stood to her feet, then stepped forward and grabbed at Fire. He tried to get free of her grab, but, enhanced by whatever spell the Cube held her in, her strength was much more than he was expecting, and he was unable to overcome it. "I will admit, though," the Bearer continued, "puppetry was never a strong suit of mine, and trying to control her is proving to be more work than I thought it would be." Air ran over to try and help pull him free, and Fire watched as the Bearer put his hand down on the top of the Cube, and the strings fell down from his fingers. The Bearer reached into his pocket, and as he pulled his hand back out Fire could see several more of the small metal bearings in it, which he through forward at the three of them, hitting the three of them.

Water was the first to be able to move again, finding himself locked in a small metal cage. He could see nothing else in the room, the only light a beam coming from above him which illuminated nothing else. He tried holding his hands up to use his power, but the bars of the cell began to glow, and he realized it was engineered to absorb his power. "Bearer," he decided to shout instead, "are you out there? Show yourself!" The response was simply a laugh, and three additional lights came to life around him, revealing his other three companions, who were still frozen and each in their own cage.

"Very nice tools," came the Bearer's voice, from somewhere in front of him. "I'm glad I saved these little balls." Laughter filled the air again, and a new light came on, illuminating the Bearer. In one hand he held the Cube, and in the other hand he held a remote, which was pointed toward the ceiling, controlling the lights Water guessed. Gasps of air came from his side, and he looked over and saw the other three had unfrozen as well. "And now that you're all awake again, we can move this into its next phase." He pointed the remote to the ground next to him, and a platform opened up, revealing something as it rose from the ground.

"What is that?" Fire asked, as a light came on over the rising platform. Upon it was a column, with a board atop it showing a large grid of gold wires. Water frowned, not expecting this move. As far as he was aware, this was supposed to be destroyed, and the company had made a cheap imitiation for its minimum effect. Seeing it again after so many years made things so much worse. Although, as he thought about it further, perhaps it was a good thing taht it was still around after all.

"That," Water said, "is the Pedestal. It is used to bring out the full power of the Cube. And with both in his control, the world is doomed."

The Bearer

The car raced loud, wild, down the highway through the dead of night, as they hurried franticly to their destination. The meeting between the four had been, she thought, a success, as Water explained to the other two what exactly had happened to the two of them those fifteen years ago, before the collapse of the dot-coms ended the Grand Game and dropped the Cube in the hands of their 'employers'.

Those same employers, now, were in danger. The frantic call they received from a secretary, that the Bearer had come back to attack the facility led to this urgency. They were expecting it, of course, but the timing of the attack couldn't have come at a worse time, with them all far from the facility. "Calm yourself," Water said to her, placing his hand on her shoulder. "Get us there quickly, but do not kill us in the process."

"So this man," Fire said from the back seat, still trying to grasp it all, not having known prior to his appearance about any of this before the other three. "This 'Bearer', you call him?" The others nodded in agreement. "If he wasn't part of the arrangement before, where did he come from now?" The cabin of the car was silent, somber for a while, nobody sure how to reply to the question.

"He came to us," Earth finally said, quietly, "about six months ago. And old mystic and tycoon, who had claimed prior knowledge of the Cube and its workings. He wanted to invest in us in exchange for part of the profits, claiming to have invested in some new alternative energy technologies that would need some field demonstrations in certain weather conditions in order to show their effectiveness."

"Like a fool," Water continued, crossness echoed in his voice, "of course the management jumped on it. Mesmerised, most likely, by those fiery black eyes of his, they ate the whole thing up. The Cube I'm sure is the real culprit, grabbing control of the man and placing him in as its own pawn in the game." He turned and handed Fire some papers, which as he glanced through them he discovered to be false identities. "Ever since Air and I learned the Cube was still around we had been planning, waiting, for the time to plant false identities needed to infiltrate the company and get involved, so we could settle it. However, we were not yet ready, when this Bearer showed up."

The car jerked for a moment, as it quickly veered onto a nearly missed onramp, and Water placed his hand on Air's shoulder to once again try to calm her. After a few moments they were steadied, and the car continued down another highway, and Water turned back to the two in the rear again. "So then," Fire asked, handing back the papers to Water, who returned them to the glove compartment he pulled them from. "If this whole thing is normally supposed to be 'planned', than what exactly was the plan supposed to be before this old man decided to change the rules?"

"All four of us would have been employees of the company," Earth said, explaning. "The rule is that none of us are supposed to know each other, and we are each given our own set of instructions that we follow. The Cube's system requires us to play against each other competitvely, and we're each given a master goal that all convene in one location so that only one can be victorious, and the winner gets a large bonus in our checks to give us the motivation to move." She paused, started searching her pockets for something, but wasn't able to find what it was and so gave up. "My main instructions, written around the false inventions of the Bearer, was mainly some geothermal experiments and some testing against fault lines for advanced earthquake prediction."

Fire nodded, then turned to Water, expectantly, but he just shrugged. "As we never had any intention of actually participating in the game, neither Air nor I actually paid attention to our orders. The blizzard in your city was our responsibility, yes, while we were trying to hinder the movements of the Bearer who had gone into that area. And we captured Earth there, who started before either of us, so we could stop her from causing an earthquake on the west coast she would have ended up losing control of and causing huge devastation."

Fire gave Earth a surprised look, and Earth looked away. "Water calculated the effect himself," Air said over her shoulder, "after stealing the effect study plans that they had given her in her assignment. Their calculations were completely wrong, and the whole San Andreas could have slipped in a huge chain reaction." Earth said nothing, and the car suddenly sped forward. "We're here. Hold on, security's down, we're crashing through the gate."

They all braced themselves as they slammed into the gate, the impact shaking them slightly, then falling forward and under them causing them to shake much more violently as they went over the poles. The ride then continued to be violent and shaking all over as the drive over the barbed wire seemed to pop someof the tires, as Air struggled to keep the car in control at the high speed and not roll them all over. "Hold on," she said, as the glass front entrance to the building came up on them swiftly, the car slowing but clearly not going to be stopping before going to the doors.

The car burst through, bulletproof glass slowing them somewhat but finally giving way, and the car finished skidding to a stop in the front lobby, amazingly not flipping. They all climbed out of the car, covered in bruises from the violent ride but nothing broken, and they looked over the lobby. Nobody there was injured from their crash, as it became evident to them that they were already all dead before they got there. "Well, well, well," came a voice from around a hallway corner, followed by some clapping. From around the hall stepped the old man, hair and face trimmed and wearing a nice suit, and bearing off one shoulder a messenger bag. "Now our four players are together, here, and the game can truly begin." He smiled, and reached into the bag, then pulled out the Cube. "But, I'm afraid, it's not going to go for you the way you want it to."

Too Crazy To Make Up

So I've gone into before how I seem to remember my dreams a lot more than other people do. And because of it I can share them a lot more often, which tends to get people wondering if I experiment with drugs and such. No, I don't, I can safely say, I just dream a lot of crazy stuff. Less often I get accused of just making things up, but frankly, a lot of this stuff is just too out there to make up. Now, usually the longer dreams I can remember have a storyline that can be used by me in things, so I don't share them, but sometimes I have long dreams that have no value to me storyline wise, they're just too strange to be of value other than amusement. Last night was one such dream. 

So the dream started out with me wanting to go explore the ruins of an ancient Japanese castle, which was in the mountains to the north west of where i was when it started, but my starting point was against faces that were too steep to climb, so I had to approach it from a different angle. So, after dealing something with a cat trying to poop in my shoes instead of a litter box there, I set out to the northeast, to head up and circle around and approach it from further north. I ended up coming to this theme park that was styled after YouTube celebrities and memes, and got distracted there for a while.

After finally getting out of YouTube land, I ran into a couple friends of mine, who also heard of the castle and heard rumor that they could each get some of some secret treasure there. I didn't believe them, nor care about treasure because I wanted to go there just for the exploration, but I decided to get back on course together with them. At that point we had to go through a bunch of residential neighborhoods that didn't have cross roads, and so had to cut through people's yards. One of the yards we ended up cutting through proved to belong to Charles Schultz's wife, and she brought us into her house to show us some things. As we were leaving a cuckoo clock on her wall began to go off, and she started complaining that it happened all the time, so I took a minute to stop to fix the clock.

While I did my friends ditched me and continued on, leaving me alone again when I left. She was glad I fixed the clock, and so gave me some rare work by Charles in gratitude that she had there. I continued on cutting through some more yards, then coming to the house of Alan Thicke, who invited me in. It turned out he apparently had started taking culinary traning after the turn of the century, and so he invited me to join he and his wife for dinner to try some new dish he came up with, while we all sat talking about movies and TV shows he did in the 90s. I then left and continued on, where yet again I was stopped by someone, who turned out to be some other childrens book author (couldn't remember who that one is), who asked me for some other help and gave me a loaf of french bread for my trouble. 

Once I finally got out of the neighborhoods, I started coming across convenience stores and a Wal-mart, and a smaller outpost version of the castle I was going to see, where I came across some of the Pokemon players local to SLC doing stuff. I called up my friend on my cell phone to complain about them ditching me, and he was saying something about not making it to the castle and he was flying through the air, and then had to go. Not sure what he meant, I continued on now that I was to the mountains, and hiked up to where the castle was.

When I finally got there, it turned out the castle wasn't abandoned at all, but was still very much occupied, and there was a rickety wooden bridge leading out to it over a hole that was disguised as the ground. As I started heading out to it I ran into Keine Kamishirasawa and Fujiwara no Mokou there, as well as some priest guarding the way to the path in the middle of the bridge. As I started walking across it Keine ran off yelling at someone else, and so I ignored her and spoke to the priest. The priest explained that the castle was only accessible to those with good intentions, and my friends would have been disqualified, but since I had no care for the rumors of the treasure and just wanted to explore it for the ruins themselves, and had proof of my good works in the form of the bread and memorobilia I had gotten from my earlier visits, that I was deemed acceptible to visit it and could continue passing. At that point Mokou came up to me to tell me something, but before she could start my alarm clock went off and I woke up.

As I sad, too crazy to make up.