The CODER

How I Became the Best Archer Shot in the World

It felt like I had jumped off of a building, and I was plummeting into what seemed to be an endless abyss.  I could do nothing except clench my eyes and wait as I fell farther away from the reality that I'd been torn away from.

But then, I stopped.  It's not like I had hit the ground or anything, I had just stopped falling.  Slowly, I began to open my eyes, to see what might greet me.  I had my eyes closed so long, that when I saw the sunlight, it burned my eyes.  I began to feel around a bit, and I was laying down in some grass.  I heard the shuffling of feet run in my direction, and I knew that is was human footsteps.  At least it wasn't anything else, I suppose.

"Hey mister, are you alright?", I hear a deep voice shout.

"Yeah I'm fine, I think I blacked out or someth-"  And then I looked at him.  "Oh.  My.  God.  It's Savage."  Savage was the name for one of the mercenaries in Crash of Tribes.

I was in the video game.  I was in the video game!  I was so confused, but ecstatic!  I am in a video game!  Somehow, when I'd touched the screen of the game, I'd somehow been sucked into the game!  This was incredible, what was I going to tell everyone.

I'm pretty sure I just sat on the ground with a crazy grin on my face for about 5 minutes, when a Hunter, the archer mercenary, tapped me on the shouler. 

"Uh, guys?  Just a suggestion, but we might want to get back into formation.  The opposing Tribe is on there way, so I'd say that we should all head back to our positions, so we DON"T TURN TO DUST?!", she said to all the mercs who were staring at me.

She was right.  On the horizon, we could see all the Savages, Hunters, Warlocks, and almost every other mercenary was charging right for us.  Oh yeah, I remembered, today is Crash Day! Crash Day is the day after two different tribes have studied each other's layouts, and then trie to win the most coins for the Tribe to win.  In order to gain coins, you had to kill and destroy the enemie's base.

And I just so happened to be there on that day.

I tried to think of something I could do, maybe hide or fight- wait, that was it!  I could fight firsthand in one of my own battles!  I went to the armory to pick out some weapons, but everything was gone.  All of the Troll's clubs and Savage's spears were gone.  Man, it would be cool to fight with one of those spears.  Suddenly, I felt like lightning had sent an electric current into me, and everything went black for a second.

Oh no, not again.  I thought I had been transported again.  But instead, I was standing on the front lines of the battle, with the enemy Tribe approaching fast.  I looked at my hands, and I was holding a javelin.  No, hold on a second, I was holding a Savage spear!  I had become one of the Savages!  Once the enemy was in range, my instincts, or AI, or whatever was controlling me, went to work.  Every other merc fought almost exactly in sync, repeating the same movements, over and over again, with one purpose in mind: defend the Village Center.  I don't know why we all fought for that; it wasn't a very special building.  But even if they took our silver, even if they destroyed our homes, training grounds, and our entire village in general, we couldn't let them take our Village Center.

I began to grow tired of the fighting style that the Savage was using, so I tried switching bodies again.  I thought about how awesome it would be to fight with a bow, and how cool that would look.  I was hit by the same shock, and suddenly, I was a Hunter.  I aimed at an approaching Troll, and I hit him right in the head.  I hadn't even aimed in his general direction, but it still hit anyway.  I tried to hit a Savage, just by poinying my bow upwards.  About ten seconds after I launched the arrow, it hit him smack dab between the eyes.  As the battle proressed, it was becoming clear that we were the dominating side.  After a battle that seemed like it had lasted for hours, when in reality it was three minutes, with what little power they had left, they raised the white flag. Cheers rang out through village as the enemy Tribe retreated back to wherever they had come from. I teleported back into my own body, thrilled at what I what I had just experienced. I fought in my own Tribe, in my own virtual world.  It was something only the imagination could conjure!
But, there was only one problem.
I had no idea how the heck to  get out.  As if it was queued, and it probably was, good ol' Trench Coat showed up.
Oh god, not him again, I thought to myself.  Wait, am I in a dream again?
"I see you're in the the predicament", he said from his hooded face, the sound  seeming almost, artificial.
"You aren't here to kill me again, are you?"
"I never killed you in the first place.  If you're referring to when I gave you a dose of GAM, you didn't die, you just blacked out."
"But that was a dream, wasn't it.  This is all just one crazy dream.  Right?"
"Not at all.  While everything you see around is virtual, it's quite real."
"Alright, sure.  So, if it's all real, how do I get out of here?", I asked.
"Tap your heels together three times, and say, 'I wanna go home'", he said mockingly.
"Please tell me your kidding."
"Alright, alright.  Close your eyes, and imagine an 'EXIT' button in front of you."
I closed my eyes, and thought of a button.  When I opened my eyes, it was there.  I touched, and I was torn away from the game.