Loot and Booty Box Set

by Zeke Biddle

  “What? No. I don’t see anything. How’d you do that?”

  “No idea. Maybe it’s some of that code your sister snuck in. Okay. So according to this, I think all the cops are on the main floor. If we go around back and take the stairs to the deck on the second floor, we should be able to get inside without them even noticing. That’s where the portal was last time. Maybe it will be there again.”

  I give Gillian a quick kiss on the lips. “Good job.”

  Silently, using the shadows provided by the abundance of trees, we sneak around to the back and up the stairs. Each time a board creaks, we pause, ready to flee at the first sign we’ve been noticed, but the small-town cops are too busy gossiping in the living room to have any chance of hearing us.

  The sliding glass door is locked, but the window has been left open. Gillian cuts through the screen with one of her many knives, and we climb into the house.

  We won’t need to waste a lot of time searching for the portal. It’s right there in the room with us. This one glows white.

  Gillian grabs my face with both hands and turns me to stare into my eyes. “You go first. I’ll shoot an arrow timed right as you are going through in case there’s someone waiting on the other side. And I’ll come find you. Go!”

  She shoves me toward the portal.

  I nearly fall but manage to catch my balance.

  Confused, I look back at her while still moving forward.

  She’s got an arrow raised to her cheek, ready to fire.

  I return my attention back to the portal.

  In two steps, I’ll be through.

  That’s when I see the message floating just above the portal:

  Single-use portal.

  I try to stop, but my momentum carries me forward enough for the portal to grasp me and suck me through.

  The arrow flies over my right shoulder.

  Someone screams on the other side.

  12

  I can’t help but laugh when I see the man in front of me, clutching his eye and crying out in pain.

  “What happened to my eye?” he screams. “Does it look okay?”

  He pulls his hand away from his face.

  I cringe away. Not that my reaction matters. He can’t see it.

  He’s blind.

  I know I’ll probably go to hell for laughing at him, but fuck it. Sometimes we all need a little gallows humor.

  “Looks like we’ll have to start calling you the Zero-eyed Monster,” I say as I lower my wand. “Where are my girls?”

  “Who the fuck cares? I’m blind, man. Hey, hey…can you push me back through that portal? Maybe when I pass through, I’ll go back to my normal life.”

  Those words do drag some sympathy out of me. “Sorry, man. I don’t think it works like that. We’re just going to have to make the best out of what life throws at us going forward. Besides, that was a one-use portal. It’s not even there anymore. Gillian is trapped on the other side.”

  The One-eyed Monster falls to the ground and thrashes around noisily.

  I don’t blame him. I’d be in shock, too, if some random arrow appeared out of nowhere and blinded me. That’s some really shitty luck.

  “Just kill me then,” he pleads. “I’ll do anything.”

  I can’t bring myself to kill a helpless man, but I can leverage his pain to help my women. “Release Alexandra and BoomBitch from your harem.”

  He laughs like a loon. “Sure. Why not? What use will they be to me in this condition?”

  I know I should tell him millions of blind people lead healthy, happy lives full of plenty of fucking, but I bite my tongue for the moment.

  “You cruel fuck,” he says. “It is done. They are released. Enjoy them on my behalf.”

  With that done, I have nothing left to say to him. He rants about how I promised to kill him. I don’t even bother to point out that I never made such a promise.

  In silence, I look around to gather my bearings.

  Lots of trees.

  A river.

  The sound of something roaring in the distance. Train? Plane? No…waterfall, I bet.

  The women can’t be far away. The One-eyed Monster wouldn’t let them too far out of his sight.

  I giggle.

  Too soon?

  “Alexandra! BoomBitch!” For dramatic flair and because I’m feeling a little slap-happy, I add, “It is I, Marcus, here to rescue you.”

  “Over here, wizard,” Alexandra replies.

  “Don’t you dare leave me here!” the One-eyed Monster continues screaming behind me as I walk away. “Kill me, you coward!”

  I ignore him and press onward. I start to worry when I don’t hear BoomBitch. I jog toward where I think I originally heard Alexandra and call out, “Marco!”

  “What? Who’s he?” Alexandra asks.

  “Just say Polo. It will help me find you. Marco.”

  “Asshole,” Alexandra answers.

  Close enough.

  When I find her tied standing up with her chest against a tree, and BoomBitch tied to a nearby tree, sound asleep, I breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Have you heard from Eulalia or Ynes?” I ask.

  Alexandra shakes her head. “This idiot brought us out here. Said he needed to meet with someone. So, stay alert. Who knows when they might show up?”

  I pick up one of Alexandra’s swords from the ground a few feet away and cut her free. I move on to BoomBitch and stroke her cheek to wake her so she doesn’t fall like a sack.

  She yawns and opens her eyes. “You came back for us. I told Alexandra you would. She didn’t believe me.”

  “You didn’t?” I ask Alexandra over my shoulder.

  “Get over yourself, wizard. What’s the plan?”

  I shrug. “Fuck if I know. It seems like each time I walk through a portal, I lose track of some of you and don’t get any closer to finding the queen or doing anything useful.”

  “Got one more try in you?” Alexandra asks, nodding behind me with her chin at another portal sitting in the middle of the woods.

  I groan. “You’ve got to be kidding me. No way. I’m not going through it.”

  “I’ll make you a deal, wizard. You agree to go through it and try to help my mom, and I’ll fuck your brains out.”

  “That’s quite a deal, but I thought you were saving yourself until you can join the harem.”

  Alexandra Strongarm has joined your harem. You currently have 4 women in your harem.

  “Wait. I thought I didn’t have an open spot until I leveled up? Did that happen without me noticing? And didn’t it say, like, four of five women when the others joined? I’m certain it did. Why’d that change?”

  Is this something my sister added, too? I can’t imagine her wasting time with it. Maybe the game devs are making more changes, too.

  That’s not a particularly comforting thought.

  “Is that really what you want to spend time talking about right now?” she asks, stepping toward me until her breasts press against my chest.

  Her presence is overwhelming, especially since I’ve wanted her for so long and now she’s throwing herself at me.

  “Listen,” she says. “A bunch of shit changed in the world since you’ve been gone. I see messages floating around stuff all the time. I can open something called Inventory. But I don’t have time to explore it. My mom is in danger. There’s a good chance only one of us will be able to make it through that portal. We need to make sure whoever gets through has the best chance to survive. So, we need to fuck. I have no idea what my harem skill is, but let’s just fuck and sort it all out later, okay?”

  She nods vigorously until I finally nod my head in agreement.

  “Good. And be fast with it, wizard.”

  “Umm…this is kinda awkward, but—and this is no reflection of how I feel about you, of course—I’m not hard right now.”

  “Figures,” Alexandra says, dropping to her knees and lifting my robe up above my waist. “Here. Hold this out of my way while
I do all the fucking work, like every time ever.”

  I grab hold of the cloth she hands me. “See, what happened is Gillian and I were back in the dorms—hey, did you know she’s from Earth? BoomBitch, too, we think—and we kinda had sex—just Gillian and me, not BoomBitch—but we offered to include her of course—”

  “Marcus,” Alexandra says.

  It takes me a second to realize she’s talking to me. I’m not used to hearing her use my real name instead of calling me wizard. “Yes?”

  “Shut up and let me suck your dick. I bet you’ll be up and running before you know it.”

  “Of course. Go right ahead. I’m sure—oh! That feels incredible.”

  Her lips are soft yet firm, and she dives in without any hesitation, much like how she approaches the battlefield. She uses her tongue with aggression bordering on anger.

  And it feels amazing.

  My dick springs to life between her skilled lips.

  “There you go, wizard. Who’s the real magician around here?”

  “You are, Alexandra,” I say as much out of fear of her stopping as her punching me if I don’t agree.

  “Damn straight.” She gives my dick a tug with her hand that nearly makes me fall forward. “Now why don’t we see whether you know how to use this dick of yours?”

  “Right here on the dirt and leaves of the forest under the pale moonlight? I never saw you as a romantic.”

  She pushes me back against a thick tree trunk. “No. Fuck me like you’ve got things to do and you just need to unleash the beast so you can get back to work.”

  I rise to her challenge. She brings out the inner warrior in me.

  I pin her body face-first against the tree.

  I hike the leather skirt up over her hips and give her ass a firm smack. “That’s for making me wait this long.”

  “If I would have—”

  I don’t wait for whatever taunt is coming. I shove my dick into her tight, wet pussy and fuck the words away. We speak to each other in grunts, gasps, and moans.

  My hand turns her ass a pretty shade of red as I spank her. With each swat, she pushes back against me harder, silently begging for more. Our bodies smacking against each other echo around the trees.

  “Wizard, you are going to make me—”

  The orgasm chases her words away.

  Her already tight pussy convulses against my cock, making me come. She milks every last drop of my seed before we both drop to the forest floor.

  “Damn, that was hot,” BoomBitch says, reminding us we aren’t alone in the woods.

  Alexandra rushes to pull her skirt back down and I roll onto my stomach so BoomBitch won’t see the tent my robe is making as my dick tries to decide whether it thinks it could survive another round.

  When it finally comes to its senses and goes to sleep for a while, I rise to my feet. “Okay. Time to see where this portal takes us. Let’s go.”

  BoomBitch tries first. It blocks her. Alexandra meets the same fate.

  “Fuck,” I say. “Probably no chance of it blocking me, too, huh?”

  Alexandra pulls me into a deep, passionate kiss. “Save my mother. Bring her back.”

  I don’t wait for her to pick me up and throw me through the portal.

  I walk straight up to it…and through, hoping there’s not someone waiting to kill me on the other side this time.

  13

  The room is dark and crowded. Based on the crappy rap music, I must be back on Earth.

  It only takes me a second to realize I’m in the middle of a party in a dorm room. The students mill around carrying their red cups, laughing and shouting over each other while grinding against their dance partners or making out.

  It takes me a few more seconds to recognize the room. It’s where Gillian—Jenny, technically—and I first met that night of the infamous spilled beer. This is the place where the string of events that eventually led to me becoming trapped in the game all started.

  None of that matters right now.

  I need to find the queen and save her.

  I momentarily wonder about the passage of time between my two worlds and realize I could have just looked at my tablet when I’d visited during my other trips back. Have months passed here in the real world like they have in the game? Or is this still that same fateful party because time moves much quicker in the game world?

  I could find out if someone happened to leave a newspaper lying around, but those seem to show up more often in movies than in college party rooms. I’m not going to make a fool of myself by asking what day it is like some weirdo from a Twilight Zone movie.

  I’m just going to find the queen wherever she is hiding on campus and then hope to find another portal to bring her back where she belongs. How hard could that be? I’ve already gone in and out several times now.

  How strange must this world be to someone from the game, like the queen? So loud, unpredictable, and chaotic. She might be hard to find because she’ll probably be hiding under a bed or behind a bush, depending on where she first teleported to when she first arrived.

  The campus is small, but it will still take forever to find her if she is hiding.

  A chant begins over near the makeshift bar. “Show your titties. Show your titties.”

  Drunk college students are no Shakespeare.

  I start to shove my way through the crowd toward the door when something catches my eye in the middle of the chanting fools.

  A tiara.

  Two giant football players lift a woman in a blue, long flowing gown up onto the homemade bar. She’s old enough to be their mother but stunningly gorgeous all the same. It’s no surprise every eye in the room is drawn to her. Her hourglass figure is the desire of every man and the envy of every woman in the room.

  She looks like a slightly older and still incredibly sexy Alexandra, only with a dress instead of leather armor and without the vicious weapons.

  My first selfish thought is Alexandra will only get hotter as she gets older.

  My second is that if I don’t do anything I’m about to see her mother’s breasts.

  “Stop!” I shout, but I’m unheard over the noise around me.

  I look around at the drunken, excited fools. I’d once looked up to them and wanted to experience the kind of fun they had. After all, my life had been so boring I’d thought partying and getting drunk until I couldn’t remember how miserable it made me was just how people dealt with the college years before they had to start the grind of working a real job and raising families.

  My new life is so confusing. It’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not. Is it any less real just because most of the people I hang around are just lines of code? I still have to make the same kinds of decisions as in the real world. Rather than cowering in corners wishing I could be happy, these days I’ve been taking life by the horns.

  And right now I want these leering fools to stay away from Alexandra’s mother.

  I feel the tingle building in my stomach. If I were on the game side of my reality, I would expect to be able to unleash magic and clear everyone out of the room. Over here, it’s probably just nerves.

  I’ll just have to roll up my sleeves and do things the old-fashioned way.

  With renewed boldness, I shove my way back into the crowd. This time, I make forward progress and quickly find myself at the bar.

  “Ma’am, you don’t know me, but I’m here to rescue you away from all of this. Alexandra sent me.”

  The queen looks down at me, smiles, and points to her ear.

  She can’t hear me.

  One of the jocks standing to my left did, though.

  “Shut the fuck up, dweeb. Let the hot chick get naked. Don’t you want to see those titties?”

  God, how could I have ever wanted his life? Don’t get me wrong, I love naked women. My harem can vouch for that. But standing around like a drunk fool hoping some random broad I don’t know takes off her clothes is just so pathetic.

  The tingle in my
stomach spreads up through my chest and out toward my fingers.

  What’s going on here?

  “Queen, let’s go,” I say.

  I reach up and tug on the hem of her gown.

  The jock slaps my hand away. “I told you to leave her alone. We’re just trying to have some fun.”

  Before I can react, the giant monster hauls back and throws a punch that lands squarely on my left cheek.

  The crowd cheers as I fall to the floor.

  I know I’m going to feel it later, but in the heat of the moment, my rage consumes me. I bounce back up onto my feet.

  The jock smirks. “Why don’t you run home and cry to your mommy? You don’t want anything to do with this.” He slams his fist against his chest to show how tough he is.

  I won’t win in a traditional fistfight. But that tingling feels so very real.

  Will my magic work here? It’s impossible, right?

  My main concern is that if it does work it’ll cause panic as everyone flees from the scene. I need a way to use my magic without it being obvious how I overpowered him.

  A plan comes to me.

  Very humbly, I reach out my hand. “What do you say we let bygones be bygones?”

  He looks down at my hand with a confused expression on his face. “Bygones? Sure. Whatever, man. Just shut the fuck up and let us party.”

  He grabs my hand and tries to squeeze it tightly, hoping to embarrass me one last time.

  I unleash a stream of electricity as I squeeze back on his hand. No one else can see the magic because of our close proximity. His body convulses as he drops to his knees.

  I glare down at him. “What’s wrong? Can’t handle getting your hand squeezed by a real man?”

  Other than the rap music, the room goes silent. Knowing I need a little more theatrics to convince the crowd that I’m kicking his ass, I punch his face with my left hand while channeling more electricity into my fingers.

  On a normal night, my hand would’ve probably been hurt more than his face.

  Tonight, with the magic coursing through me, his head jerks back like he’s been kicked by a horse. He falls onto his side, knocked out cold.