ReBoot: The Bored Game (roll 3)
AndrAIa plummeted through the sky towards a section of rocky beach. The wind whistled annoyingly by her ears as she fell, and she crossed her arms and sighed with boredom.
A black winged pterodactyl swooped down and grabbed her leg with its claw. The sudden change of momentum was painful, but AndrAIa had stopped caring how many muscles in her thigh were pulled when she was suddenly jerked upwards. The creature began to climb, dragging her through the air after it.
A brown pterodactyl had been circling overhead, and now it moved into an uneven dive. A large, green arm wielding a sword reached out from between its wings as it passed AndrAIa, and the head of the avian carrying her fell past her face. The rest of its body twitched, and the talons tightened around her calf momentarily before going limp and letting her go.
The brown pterodactyl began to change direction in awkward, midair jumps. Obviously Matrix was trying to steer it after her, but the belt he was using as a halter was hardly the most efficient lead in the Net. While he was still struggling, the User pterodactyl flashed into existence and yanked her back into the area of play.
"What is it with this game?" Matrix called down to her, exasperated. "No User has this many lives!"
"There must be a bug in the coding," she shouted back. It was the fifth time they'd had the conversation, but there wasn't much else to do to lessen the repetition. She extended the nails on her right hand and jabbed them into the side of the pterodactyl, loading it with paralytic agent. It shivered and then went slack; its wings were buffeted uselessly upwards by the air, its grip in her leg loosened, and they both tumbled downwards.
Almost immediately, she felt talons wrap around her calf and bring her back up. "We can't kill it!" she yelled. "And it's almost done the final level!"
"Yeah," said Matrix, "as soon as it reaches the nest, it's won…." His mount bucked a few times and then began flying towards the User's goal.
"Matrix?" AndrAIa shouted. "What are you doing? This game doesn't care if you get there first."
"I've got an idea!" he yelled to her. "Just keep it busy!"
"Oh, sure," she muttered. "Like I've got anything else to do." She twisted her body around and kicked at the User with her free leg, dragging the heel of her boot through a wing. The pterodactyl flailed desperately, but the ruined leather couldn't keep it aloft.
As she fell, AndrAIa watched Matrix. He had abandoned his mount, and was now balanced on the face of a cliff, hacking at the branch supporting a large nest of hungry pterodactyls. They whistled and snapped at him, and he kicked one hard in the head when it got too close.
The User recovered her and continued flying towards the nest. The point of the level, from its perspective, was to feed the yipping fledglings. AndrAIa wondered distractedly what it was about her that gave the impression of bait; in her own game, the predatory programs had all understood she was poisonous.
"Okay, AndrAIa," Matrix shouted at her. He had succeeded in cutting the nest from the cliff, and he was standing unsteadily on the stump of the branch. She could hear the wailing of the baby pterodactyls as they tumbled to deletion.
"You'd better be right about this," she grumbled. Matrix didn't have her hearing, but his tight grin made her certain he understood what she was thinking.
The User flapped itself closer to the cliff, and this time AndrAIa let it. It didn't seem to notice that its goal was gone, but it didn't seem to be slowing down either. "Um, Enzo?"
He frowned as it flew towards him at top speed. "It must be programmed to stop at the nest," he shouted at her.
"That's great!" she called back.
AndrAIa was hanging upside-down in the pterodactyl's claws, but she managed to grab a hold of its tail when the wind pushed her up. She tried to pull herself free from its talons, but the User was too strong. The cliff face was coming up fast.
With a small, almost apologetic shrug, Matrix jumped out of their way. The User barrelled into the cliff with a sticky splat, and AndrAIa lost her grip on its tail and swung hard into the rocky surface.
The calm monotone of system announcements permeated the artificial world. "Game Over."
As the game left, a purple light ran up her body, changing her code back to its usual settings. The cliff disappeared, and AndrAIa fell backwards for want of its support.
Matrix's heavy footsteps approached her. "You okay?" he asked. She groaned exaggeratedly at him, and he grinned down at her.
"Next time, you can be dinner," she said.
"Sure thing." He extended a hand to help pull her up.
"Ow," she announced, once she had regained her balance.
"Are you okay?" he asked again.
"Yeah." She took a few tentative steps. "That thing nearly tore my leg off." She gave up on walking and maximized her zipboard. "Come on," she said. "I need an energy shake. A few milliseconds of not getting eaten will make anyone hungry."