Things were about to get real.
The ninja's kistrike tossed me like a leaf on the wind. In the nanosecond it'd taken for me to plummet the fifty feet and slam into the smooth, rounded walls of the Task Chamber, the shadow warrior had already begun to gather his kimanna. I could see it: a small shield-sized sun of scarlet energy gathering on the ninja's back. It simmered like a skillet, it's hungry energy ready to destroy my day - literally.
Silently, the ninja had drawn his criticality-katana, adding it to his already formidable pike of priorities in the blink of an eye.
I staggered to my feet with nothing but my paper-thin Parkinson's Law Armor. It felt like flimsy tissue paper now and I cursed myself for wearing it into battle. My weapon was not much better: an Interruptions Log: a two-foot long length of wood that was nicked, cracked and looking the worse for wear. I knew that it would not last two milliseconds against my opponent's razor sharp blade.
"You cannot win. You should surrender to me." The shadow warrior's voice was cold and electronic. I made a mental note of that and chuckled inwardly at the irony. He did not wait for my reply, but delivered the rest of his line with a note of foreboding and finality. "I will send you to the other world, where glorious tasks await you. Tasks which you MUST complete. A defeat here only means your betterment, as you most assuredly know."
My whole world crashed in on me.
"What was that?" I bellowed. "'Most assuredly know'? 'Most assuredly know?' Who in the world talks like that, Nate? Please? Tell me who!"
The cylindrical, rose-colored Task Chamber dissolved around me into pixelated dust and I ripped off my VR-Hud and ER-Gloves, tossing them around our VR-Framework demo room. I was absolutely disgusted. "Nate! Who in the world did you get to write this guy's dialogue, huh? Some freak off of Fiverr? I mean, 'most assuredly know', really? Com'on man!"
There was silence from the control booth. Nate was busted and he knew it.
"How in the world, Nate, are we going to create the next level in Virtual Reality, Ninja-Battle, Time Management Software with crappy dialogue like that?"
Art Source: "Sketch Ninja1" (c)/by AlekseyBayura
Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth
#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #Ninja, #battle, #software, #development, #task, #management, #funny, #quirky, #odd, #virtual, #reality