A Gamer's Guide To Beating The Tutorial

She’s breathing heavily and smiling, holding her bow in one hand with her other hand resting on the hilt of her short sword. I’m also breathing heavily, though I’m not really in any place to use my right arm right. I should have recognized what she was doing earlier, focusing all her efforts on my right shoulder specifically. By this point, it’s almost more useful to pull it off if only to get it out of the way.

However, after close to twenty minutes of bleeding like a stuck pig, I’ve finally achieved what I was going for.

On the other side of the arena, Rice takes a long look around her, at the completely RED floor. Then, she looks over at me. “You’re pretty clever, Prince. But are you sure it’ll work?”

I cackle to myself. “Oh, yeah. It’ll work.” If it doesn’t, I’ll look like a massive doofus and she’ll probably laugh, which isn’t too bad, now that I’m thinking about it. Either way, it’s time for some metroid action.

I practically throw myself into a ball, rolling myself across the arena, the slippery blood beneath me acting as grease to make me go even faster. It’s beyond difficult to ascertain her facial expression since the world as a whole is zooming by so fast, but I can assume that she’s astonished. I mean, who wouldn’t be?

Rolling in a wide arc around the circumference of the arena, I head towards her, ready to spring up and at her like a leaping hedgehog.

“You know, Prince…” she says, her voice ringing clearly even over the splashing of blood, “I can still see the trail of fresh blood.”

…Ah.

I can’t see it, but I can hear the sound of her bowstring being drawn, and then the whistle of the arrow piercing the sky, and it’s only by instinct that I leap up and out of the way, letting the arrow bounce out of bounds as I touch down on the floor again. Only to then realize that its slippiness combined with my momentum has allowed me to expertly imitate a ballerina on ice, sliding and slipping and—isn’t that the edge of the arena right there?

Hey, whoa, wait just a minute, I don’t mind being embarrassed a little, but I can’t lose like this! D—damn it, why can’t my claws find grip on this damn arena—?!

My feet leave the sanctity of the arena. And for just a moment, I hang midair. A million thoughts going through my head. None of them expressed in words. None, save for one.

Crap.

But right as my toes are about to be dipped into the moat and my last few shreds of honor forfeit, I feel something slip over my head, around my arms and chest, then suddenly tightening with all the force of a constricting boa. Suddenly no longer falling, I bump my back against the wall of the moat, where I hang loosely for a moment. I look down to find a rope snaking around me. No, not a rope, a lasso.

…Did she—

My thoughts go no further, as the rope tightens even further, my body being pulled up from the moat and back onto the arena. Rice looks beyond happy. These are levels of smugness no non-feline should be able to pull off.

While I’m still on the floor, she strolls up to me, spurs jingling, walking a wide arc around me to wind the rope across my chest and arms properly. Then, she takes her due distance again. I’m impressed that she still manages to show a bit of caution. If I was in her place, I would’ve gone all-in on the foolhardy cockiness by now.

With a bit of effort, I’m able to stagger to my feet. Unfortunately, I’m not in much of a position to escape these ropes. Or to do pretty much anything, as a matter of fact. She’s caught me.

“Well?” she says from across the arena, bow in hand. “Do you surrender?”

I give a smirk to match hers. “You should know the answer to that one, Rice.”

She nods solemnly. “What a shame. I had hoped we might end this without bloodshed, though you’ve done plenty of that so far.” Pulling the final arrow from her quiver, she loads it into her bow, pointing it right at my heart. “If you stay still, this won’t hurt one bit, not that you mind.” Closing one eye, she smiles. “We’ll take the handshake after you wake up. See you in a few hours, Prince!”

A chill passes over my back again. Like the cold fingers of the dead, poking me, reminding me, telling me that soon I’ll join them. It’s only for an hour or two. When I wake up, it’ll have felt like an instant, same as how all the time that passed before I was born didn’t feel like anything. But in that absence when I’m dead before I’m alive, there’s an infinity, one that I don’t feel. One that I never want to feel again.

Ah, ah…

I don’t want to die.

Sweat mixes with blood across my back. Behind her, sitting in the audience, I spot Moleman. I haven’t had my rematch yet. I need to have my rematch with him. I can’t die here. And we promised that he’d get me dinner. I need to live so I can do all of that. I can’t die here. I just—

The bowstring is drawn, and the arrow flies.

On instinct, on nothing but instinct, I duck.

Thump.

Ah? There’s something in my…

Brain Damage Protection Lv.3>

I turn to the left, I turn to the right, but the thing on my forehead remains in sight.

What

is

this?

Across the place, she’s talking. Something about how I’m still alive. Something else about how I should stay still. Something more about how if I just stay still, it’ll be over soon.

Over? Why? We’re still going, aren’t we?

I can still move. But I’m a bit restrained. Snakes around me, tight, holding me down. Not good.

But she’s coming closer now, with a knife, which is good, a knife will be good to get out, to free me. I turn my head back and forth, watching the thing on my forehead sway. I’m like a narwhal. Should I push it through or pull it out? Push, pull, push, pull.

I fall down and roll myself into a ball and bite the ropes, gnaw gnaw gnaw gnaw, the ropes fall off. There we go. When I stand up again, she’s closer, eyes like a wolf, knife in hand. The thing on my forehead looks twofold and she stands between the semi-tangible things, ready. It’s a fight?

I take a step towards her but things are wrong. There’s something warm and wet running down from my forehead and I lick at it. My legs are bad, there are arrows in my knee. But my right arm is the worst. It’s almost gone. Just a dead weight. I don’t need it anymore, so while she’s approaching, I stab my left hand into my shoulder, flesh twitching around my fingers, claws gouging and slicing off muscle and tendons. I can feel my own collar bone, its sharp, broken-off edges cutting me a little. Squishy.

I saw my arm off and remove it. I hold it in my hand by the wrist, like a bludgeon. Wasn’t there a comic book hero with this power? Arms falling off? Arm garde?

I experimentally swing it at her, succeeding in knocking the knife out of her hand. It goes sliding off and into the moat. Ahaha! So this was the answer all along? Arm? Clever!

Arm! Arm! Arm!

Aha? Now she brings out her sword? Very well!

Have at thee, harlot! Like this, I’m just like that one I fought before, though I can’t seem to recall her face. I strike out, stepping closer, and she steps back, away. There’s an odd look on her face but her face looks foggy and I can’t really see it at all but her eyes are there.

I strike at her with my arm and she tries to not fight back much but her sword keeps getting stuck in the flesh, keeps chipping at the bone, and the blood splurts like confetti or maybe like candy from a pinata. I wonder if pinatas are real? I was never really invited to parties and nobody showed up for the few I had so I never saw one, is there really candy in them? I don’t know!

Her face twists. Blood on her face. I see the blood. RED splattered against mist.

And she takes a bit of distance, and she raises her sword, pointing it at my chest, to stab me there and end the game early.

But I don’t want that,

so I hold up my arm, my upper arm, the one in my non-attached arm, and her sword goes in between the wrist bones. I grin at her because I got her and even though she doesn’t understand what I’m doing, why I’ve got the sawed off part of the arm in my mouth and the hand in my living hand, she understands it when I twist my hand, twist the wrist, and,

Yoink!

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha!

Sword goes flying and then it skids across the floor and there it goes off the moat, gone, her last weapon exhausted, gone! Ahhh, what a shame she has no claws with which to slice and no fangs with which to bite!

For the love of all that is fair and just, I toss my arm away, letting it join her sword in the moat. See, now we’re on the same level, nothing between us anymore!

One arm grabbing her shoulder I tackle her to the ground, down into the slippery bloody mess below. Neck. Neck. Neck. Bite. Claws: rip. Jaws: tear. The nail of my one thumb scratches a deep line across her face. Now she’s bleeding, too. More RED so her face isn’t covered up by all the mist. Her hat is somewhere else, her hair bright and exposed, wiry and everywhere.

Bite, bite, bite, bite.

I press my face against hers to bite to rip to tear out her throat to win but I find myself stopped by the thing in my forehead, the butt of it pressing into her forehead. Ah? Ah? Ah? Weird. Push, then. Push push push. Drops of blood go down the thing on my forehead, connecting to her forehead. Streaking across her misted face. A little more and I win, a little more and I can bite.

I hear words. Her mouth is visible through the mist. They say,

“Prince, I’m… sorry,” through gritted teeth, “to have to win like a coward…!”

I can feel it, I can feel the head of the arrow, poking into the back of my skull, just a little bit more, and…

She reaches inside her vest.

The smell of sulfur, and of ashes. The smell of… of asphalt being laid, of heavy machinery, of work and of…

An old memory deep in my mind is scratched. When I was a kid, no older than six, I had a little toy revolver, with a little holster with Lucky Luke on it, and with that revolver, I had these little cartridges you could put in, so that when you pulled the trigger of the revolver, there’d be a bang! and it would smell like eggs and ashes, like, like…

Gunpowder.

Inside her vest, clipped to her chest, is a holster. From it she pulls a revolver, a crude one, a home-made one, one that smells like cast iron and smoke, and she puts it to my chest, only a little above hers, its cold nose pressing against where my heart is, and she pulls back the hammer, puts her finger on the trigger, and—

BANG!

I turn to ashes.

But before I go, I see her face, her smiling face, covered in rose petals, and although I can’t hear the words, I can read her lips, mouthing,

“Goodnight, sweet Prince.”