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answer_keyHikaru’s first night in his first home as a young adult Sim was not an ideal night.
The real estate listing for the house he’d moved into had a prominent warning that said only Brave Sims looking for a challenge need apply. Hikaru had the Brave personality trait, and he wasn’t afraid of challenges, so he hadn’t been at all worried. Besides, Hikaru was also Adventurous. He’d completely overlooked the tombstone at the edge of the lot next to the pond, though. What Hikaru should have realized—and probably would have, if he’d actually stopped to think about it—was that the reason the real estate listing had specified only Brave Sims need apply was because only Brave Sims could live on a haunted lot and not have too much trouble with living in fear.
Too bad Brave Sims weren’t able to ignore ghosts entirely, Hikaru thought, pulling his pillow over his head as the long-haired blue ghost tried to talk to Hikaru again. He wished he’d gotten the Heavy Sleeper trait when he’d matured into a young adult from a teen, but at the time, the Genius trait had exerted a strong siren call.
“I’ve been so lonely waiting for someone to show up… now that you’re here, I know you’re awake. Let’s play some go!”
The ghost was a really pretty ghost, if rather translucent, but Hikaru wished the ghost had been a white ghost who’d died of old age instead. Blue ghosts weren’t very dangerous, but they were annoying because they left puddles of water anywhere they stayed too long. Hikaru was going to have to mop up the puddles before he could fall asleep again, and he cursed his Neat trait for that. He couldn’t even move out—he was out of money, and he didn’t earn very much as a Rabid Fan at the bottom of the Athlete career track.
There was only one thing for it: Hikaru would have to banish the ghost by helping the ghost complete whatever unfinished business it had. He got out of bed, and the ghost backed away to let him have space.
Hikaru’s mood dropped into the red as he realized he was standing in a puddle. Damned drowned ghosts. “I’m up, I’m up,” he said with a sigh, yawning sleepily. He would clean the puddle up later—he definitely didn’t feel like cleaning up now, Neat or not. “What’s this game you want to play?”
“Go,” the ghost said.
Go? Hikaru had only the vaguest idea of what that was. “What’s that?”
“It’s like chess,” the ghost said.
“I don’t have any chess tables on the lot.”
“The park has them, and it’ll be go, not chess.”
The sooner he satisfied this ghost’s wishes, the sooner the ghost would leave Hikaru alone, right? Hikaru sighed and spun, changing into outdoors clothes. Good thing it was summer, not winter. Hikaru liked the snow and snow-related sports, but he wasn’t keen on trudging around on a cold winter’s night. Summer nights, on the other hand, were nice and cool. “If you say so,” he said. “Lead the way.”
The park was deserted when they arrived, but Hikaru knew soon some people would show up. People always showed up whenever Hikaru visited venues. It was one of the nice things about being a player character. He looked around for the chess tables and found one not too far away. “There’s a chess table,” Hikaru said.
The ghost was already floating towards the table. “Let’s play!”
Hikaru wondered what the ghost would do when they sat down to a game of chess, but as the ghost approached the table, something shimmered just barely perceptibly, and then the surface of the table changed from the checkered chessboard pattern Hikaru was familiar with into nothing but a a grid. “Whoa,” Hikaru said, confused for a moment. “What happened?”
“I told you, it’ll be go, not chess,” the ghost said. “Come, let’s play!”
Hikaru had lived his entire life as a Sim, and he thought he knew everything there was to know about the Sim world, but apparently he’d missed something. He also wasn’t much of a chess player, since he’d only gotten three bars in his Logic skill up to this point of his life, but the ghost was the one who’d wanted Hikaru to play. “Okay,” he agreed, sitting down. “You’re going to have to teach me—all I know is chess.”
The ghost smiled. “We can play shidougo,” he said amiably. He waved a hand over the board, and a lot of black and white pieces arranged themselves neatly into two bowls. “Let’s begin.”
Two games later, Hikaru had learned that the ghost’s name was Sai, he had been a Go Grand Master, and that Sai had drowned himself on Hikaru’s home lot a really long time ago. No one had lived on that lot in the hundreds of years since then, and Sai had been very lonely. Sai stopped giving Hikaru any more information about his past after that, and Hikaru didn’t ask much more because he was trying to wrap his head about the mechanics of this game called go.
Hikaru almost felt sorry for the ghost. Almost. He’d probably feel more positively about Sai if he got a full night’s sleep. “Look, Sai, this has been fun, but I have to get to bed, I have to work tomorrow,” Hikaru said after the second game. His fourth Logic skill bar was only a quarter full, but Hikaru was very sleepy and felt like crap. And there was still that puddle on the floor next to his bed that needed cleaning up…
The ghost drooped and looked dejected, but then the sun came up, and the ghost vanished.
Hikaru got up, ran home, and fell asleep as soon as he’d mopped up the huge puddle next to his bed.
Sai was waiting for Hikaru when Hikaru’s carpool dropped him off after work. As soon as Hikaru walked into the house, Sai greeted him with a cheery, “Welcome home, Hikaru! Let’s play!”
“I’m tired, Sai,” Hikaru said. “I’ve worked for six hours plus some extra overtime because the game went on longer than expected. It’s not easy being a Rabid Fan for that long, and all I want to do is sleep!”
Sai smiled, and an opportunity window popped up. Hikaru groaned, reading it.
”The old goban”
Legend has it that the goban of Honinbou Shuusaku has made its way to China. Travel to China and retrieve the goban from the Tomb of Game Masters. You will receive a boost in your Logic Skill as well as Visa points if you successfully complete this opportunity. Would you like to accept it?
“You know,” Hikaru said, “NPCs can be disabled or ignored. I’m a player character. I can control the game and deal with you in some other way. Maybe I’ll just delete your tombstone.” He couldn’t do it while the opportunity dialog box was still up, however, so Hikaru chose the “yes” option, and as soon as the window disappeared, switched to Build/Buy Mode. There was that pesky tombstone, out there on the corner of the lot...
...Undeletable?
Hikaru stared. What kind of game object was undeletable?
He switched back to Live Mode and there was Sai, smiling in that translucent serene way in front of Hikaru. “Why can’t I delete your tombstone?”
Sai shook his head. “I don’t know why you can’t.”
“Fine,” Hikaru said, going into his Opportunities tab. He tried to remove the opportunity that had popped up, and groaned when the opportunity stubbornly stayed where it was. “Dammit, what an annoying bug,” he said, frustrated. “So the only way I can get rid of you is to finish the quest?”
Sai nodded.
Hikaru checked his bank balance and sighed. It would take a while to get the 1300 Simoleons he needed to visit China, and Hikaru knew enough of travel to know he’d need almost twice that amount in case he wanted to spend money there on things like food. In the meantime, since playing go increased Hikaru’s logic skill like playing chess did, Hikaru supposed it was all right to play with Sai occasionally. “Fine, one game tonight, and then I’m going to bed,” he said.
Sai cheered loudly, and then led the way back to the park.
Hikaru could have purchased a chess table to cut down on the number of trips he had to take to the park, but he was loathe to spend his precious funds on something he’d have to sell at a loss later. Besides, he could jog to the park and jog back, so that helped him build up his Athletic skill, which in turn was helping Hikaru with his career progression.
He was now a Snack Hawker, just one week into his new career. Too bad the pay bump wasn’t anything to brag about; the bonus had barely covered the overdue bills he’d accumulated. To be fair, though, the overdue bills were entirely Hikaru’s fault. It was his first time living alone, and his parents had handled the bills before, so Hikaru hadn’t realized he needed to be checking the mailbox for bills. It was a good thing Hikaru had noticed that the mailman had thrown his bills on the ground, which in turn had reminded Hikaru that he hadn’t checked the mailbox since he’d moved in…
Another week or so, and he’d have enough to travel to China and some money left over for spending there, Hikaru thought to himself. He’d been learning a lot from Sai, at least, and improving his Logic rapidly, but Hikaru missed things like playing catch ball.
“Hey,” he said to Sai when he got home a couple of days later. “Let’s play some baseball or football for a bit before we play go. I really miss that.”
Sai hadn’t been averse to the idea, and had, in fact, seemed eager to play, especially when Hikaru promised they’d play two games of go that day instead of their usual one. Unfortunately for Hikaru, Sai was unable to interact with the baseball or football.
“What use is an NPC you can’t play ball with?” Hikaru had grumbled.
Sai had looked sad, and the puddle under Sai’s floating form had grown larger, so Hikaru had hurriedly gone to the park and launched into a game against Sai in order to keep the Excitable (and Dramatic) ghost from moaning and groaning about his situation.
Hikaru thought he was the one who deserved to moan and groan, since he was the one with an NPC character he couldn’t shake, but then again, Hikaru had all the time in the world once he’d turned off the Aging option. Not that he’d need that much more time; all Hikaru did was work, sleep, and play go, so he hadn’t been spending anything at all.
He checked his bank balance and blinked at the amount in there. Wow. He’d really been saving money at a fantastic pace.
The next night, Hikaru told Sai, “We’re going to China.”
Shang Simla was kind of an interesting place, if Hikaru had to be perfectly honest. He was kind of amazed at how lushly beautiful it was, with its wild-yet-somehow-sculpted-looking mountainous landscape, impeccable gardens, and those beautiful buildings. Hikaru had even seen a dragon’s head on the hillside across from Base Camp, complete with the occasional puff of smoke emerging. “Wow,” he had said, staring until Sai tugged Hikaru’s sleeve and urged him upwards.
Base Camp was up a lot of flights of stairs, but Hikaru took it in stride. Even here, he could jog around, constantly working on his Athletic skill. The rooms on the ground floor were shared rooms, but upstairs Hikaru found a room that was unoccupied and that had a nice big double bed and an attached bathroom. “Score,” he said happily, turning the bed covers to mark the bed as his.
“Hikaru, let’s go find the tomb,” Sai said, floating next to Hikaru.
“You’re in such a hurry,” Hikaru grumbled, stretching out. He wanted to enjoy being here; he had never been to Shang Simla before. In fact, his family hadn’t been very well-off, since neither his grandfather nor his mother made that much money at their jobs—they’d never advanced beyond Level 4 of their careers—and so although Hikaru had moved towns before, he’d never actually traveled outside the country until now.
Sai sighed, and wandered off downstairs.
Hikaru waited until Sai was gone and then mentally reviewed what he needed to do. If a Sim wanted to go down into the tombs, he had to make sure he was rested, well-fed, and clean, and stop by the toilet before heading in. It might be best to stop by the marketplace and buy some adventure gear before he went. Would his bank balance be able to take it? Hikaru had tried to leave himself a bit of a cushion, but he wasn’t sure just how much things cost.
Well, Hikaru thought, sitting up on the bed. It wasn’t the first time Hikaru had needed money faster than he could make it at his part-time job. This was China, but a Sim world was a Sim world. They had to have things Hikaru could collect and sell, like precious metals, or bugs, or seeds, or even wildflowers. The only problem was, they only had three days here, and collecting things took time, especially if they had to make a lot of money. First things first: Hikaru needed to figure out if he could afford the goods they had for sale in the marketplace.
Hikaru had checked the adventurer’s board on the way out, but he hadn’t been able to get a new opportunity to replace the one currently in his opportunities tab. That single quest had taken up every possible slot. How this was possible was beyond Hikaru, but he was starting to get the idea that anything to do with Sai was going to be strange and different, and had resigned himself to it at this point. He just hoped this wasn’t a permanent bug, and that fulfilling Sai’s quest would be the fix.
The local general goods merchant, Yang Hai, had been extremely helpful, and Hikaru had just enough money for everything he needed. Hikaru gulped and handed over the Simoleons; besides that magic goban, there had better be some treasure in the tomb Hikaru could sell, or he was going to have trouble paying his bills when he got back home.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Yang Hai said as Hikaru was about to walk away.
“Yeah?” Hikaru turned back. “What is it?”
“You’ll need a key to get into the Tomb of the Game Masters,” Yang Hai said. “I have the key, but all things considered, it’s much to valuable to just give away as a gift, and I’m pretty sure you don’t have any more money in your bank account.”
Hikaru grimaced. He had maybe a couple hundred Simoleons left.
Yang Hai smiled. “I could be persuaded to part with it if you’ll help me do something.”
“I can’t accept any more opp—“ and then Hikaru paused as the text of the Magic Goban quest changed itself. Now it started with an instruction to get the key from Yang Hai. “Yeah, okay,” Hikaru said with a sigh.
“Wonderful,” Yang Hai said, smiling. “This task shouldn’t take long…“
After they’d left the marketplace, Hikaru said, “You know, there’s one thing I don’t get. Ghosts are just sims like everyone else, and other people should be able to see you, but Yang Hai didn’t even care that you were standing right next to him. In fact, no one else has ever interacted with you except me, as far as I can remember. You’d think we’d have run across one or two Sims who’d have approached you by now, or run away screaming.”
Sai paused to think. “I don’t know,” he said, looking confused. “You’re the only person who’s ever noticed my presence.”
"And another thing," Hikaru said, the thought popping into his head immediately. "Why are you still around during the daytime?"
This thought had clearly not occurred to Sai before, but now Sai had brightened and was visibly bouncing with happiness. "HIKARU! I'm out in the daytime! But why? In any case, let's stay here forever!"
Another mystery to solve. Hikaru sighed as Sai danced about with joy.
The special boulder Yang Hai had told them about was weirdly placed in the middle of a flat field. Hikaru frowned at the surrounding shrubbery. “He said there would be a switch somewhere...”
Sai pointed. “There?”
Hikaru looked at the obviously-suspicious hole in the ground under a bush. Holes in the ground like that screamed “trap” and “icky things”. “I have to stick my arm in that? Oh man.”
It wasn’t as if there was much choice in the matter, so Hikaru rolled up his sleeve and reached in. He was right—the first time he put his arm in the hole, he felt things crawling on him, and pulled out his arm again to find it was teeming with bugs. It was a good thing Hikaru was a Brave Sim. Hikaru brushed them off, grumbling. No wonder Yang Hai had wanted someone else to do this. “That key and that magic goban had better be worth all this trouble,” he said, frowning at Sai before he stuck his arm back into the hole. This time, Hikaru felt something, and pushed it.
The ground shuddered, and then behind the boulder, a hole appeared. Steps led into the level below ground. Hikaru grinned at Sai. “After you.”
The steps actually led pretty far down. After three flights, though, they stopped, and Hikaru looked at the set of doors before him. He tried them, and they opened. “All right,” he said to Sai. “Let’s split up and find this scroll Yang Hai wants!”
“I can’t touch it, though,” Sai said sadly.
“If you see it, just come get me and lead me to it,” Hikaru said patiently.
Sai brightened. “All right,” he said, and floated off. Hikaru watched to see which way Sai would go, and then headed in the opposite direction.
Two rooms later, Hikaru had found some broken pottery shards and a pile of ancient coins, but no scroll. He wondered how Sai was faring as he headed into the next room, and then he paused as he realized just what kind of room this was. “Whoa,” Hikaru said. “A cemetery all the way down here?”
It wasn’t a very large cemetery—just a few tombstones and urns, carefully and neatly arranged. Perhaps it was a family memorial, Hikaru thought, bending down to read the inscription on one of the urns.
He lived as he died, flashily.
Hikaru blinked and read it again, then checked the name on the urn. No one he recognized. Hikaru felt a passing pang. The guy was probably someone who’d had a really interesting life. “Man, I’m sorry you’re gone,” Hikaru said to the urn sincerely. “The world was probably a much better place while you were around.” He dug in his pockets, but had nothing to offer. “I hope people come to visit you often. Maybe I’ll try.”
There was a flash of light, and Hikaru closed his eyes, recoiling from the brightness, so bright even though Hikaru’s eyes were closed it felt like it would sear his retinas--
--and then the light was gone again. Hikaru blinked, rubbing his eyes, and then nearly tripped over a treasure chest as he took a step back. He stumbled heavily, catching himself at the last moment, and glared at the offending red-and-gold chest. It seemed to be sparkling, but sparkling wasn’t quite the right word—the chest seemed like it was emitting prismatic rays of light.
There had better be good things in that chest. Valuable things. Things Hikaru could sell easily for a lot of Simoleons. He opened the chest and took out the scroll, which, while anticlimactic, did mean Hikaru could now get the key of the Tomb of Game Masters from Yang Hai. “Sai, hey, come back,” Hikaru called. “I’ve got it!”
“Oh, wonderful! Well done, Hikaru!”
Sai floated through a wall right next to Hikaru, and Hikaru jumped backwards instinctively so they wouldn’t collide before remembering that Sai was a ghost and could occupy the same game space as Hikaru with no problem. “Argh, SAI!” Hikaru shouted, feeling his mood bar drop as he gained a “Startled By Ghost” moodlet. “Could you please not do things like that?”
Sai looked genuinely apologetic. “Sorry, Hikaru.”
Hikaru sighed. The moodlet would wear off in six hours, and he had to head back to Yang Hai anyway. “Whatever, just don’t do it again. C’mon, let’s go get that key from Yang Hai.”
After the fruitful exchange, the key sat in Hikaru’s inventory while Hikaru bathed and showered and Sai fretted. Hikaru, however, refused to let Sai push him into going in that tomb before he was ready. “I need sleep and food, and all these other needs taken care of,” Hikaru had said, putting his foot down.
“But Hikaru,” Sai had pointed out, “You have less than twenty four hours left before you have to return!”
“That goban’s been there hundreds of years,” Hikaru pointed out. “So I go home, I build up more Simoleons, maybe get a lifetime reward or two, and I come back in a couple of weeks. No big deal, Sai.”
Sai fretted, but didn’t have anything to say in reply, so Hikaru spent the next few precious hours enjoying some ramen (one of his favorite things about China—he wanted the recipe, but it cost too much, and he didn’t have the Cooking skill for it yet) and taking a good nap.
Six hours before Hikaru’s time in Shang Simla ran out, Hikaru’s phone rang, interrupting Hikaru’s nap and giving him a Rude Awakening moodlet. The caller ID said Yang Hai. “Why are you calling me?” Hikaru asked shortly. He couldn’t help being annoyed; his mood had been bright green, and was now edging into the yellow.
“I couldn’t help noticing that you haven’t made a move towards the tomb.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t likely we’d finish before I had to leave,” Hikaru said. Why was Yang Hai calling him about this?”
“Oh, well, I should probably have told you this before, but I didn’t think you’d take your time this way,” Yang Hai said. “You can’t take that key out of the country. If you don’t use it by the time you have to leave, it reverts to me. I’m not going to just hand it over to you the next time you show up, you know. I’ll make you earn it again. Of course, if you do use it, the tomb will remain unlocked to you and everyone else who decides to investigate the tomb while you’re gone…”
Hikaru groaned. Damn that sly merchant. “I gotta go,” he told Yang Hai, and he hung up abruptly and started running.
Sai was beside Hikaru in a flash. “Hikaru, where are you going?”
“We’ve gotta use the key,” Hikaru said, jumping on his rented bicycle as soon as he reached the road. “Catch up when you can, Sai!” He started pedaling as fast as he could.
The Tomb of the Game Masters was up on a hill, so Hikaru had to get off his bicycle and run the last ten thousand miles (all right, so it wasn’t really that far away, but it felt like it took the time it would take to run ten thousand miles.) Time was ticking down, and Hikaru was still further away from the tomb than he’d like. He ran faster, not even caring if this meant he would be Winded by the time he arrived, or if he’d be Sore tomorrow. Negative moodlets were annoying, but they’d wear off. Losing the key would be horrible if Yang Hai thought of something really mean to make them do.
Hikaru wasn’t sure what would constitute something really mean, but he’d heard of quests where you had to talk to people and convince them of things, or collect rare items that were super hard to find. The tomb Yang Hai had made them retrieve the scroll from hadn’t been that bad, but there was no guarantee the next one would be easy. The entrance to the tomb was right before him. Hikaru checked game time and winced—faster, not much time left--
--the world froze around him as he pulled the key out of his inventory, attempting to bypass the action queue. “Dammit,” was all the time Hikaru had for before he was pulled out of Shang Simla.
Sai had complained dramatically when they arrived back at Hikaru’s house, but after that there weren’t any more remonstrations. Hikaru played Sai every night after work, and two games on days he didn’t have to work.
Hikaru’s Logic skill improved dramatically. He got a raise at work. And he saved money quickly.
The quest he’d completed for Yang Hai had given him enough visa points to get to Visa Level 1, so this time Hikaru was able to get permission to stay in Shang Simla for six days instead of only three. Two weeks after returning home so abruptly, Hikaru was back on a plane to China.
As soon as they arrived, Hikaru went looking for Yang Hai and found him in the marketplace as usual. “All right,” Hikaru said. “What do I have to do for the key this time?”
Yang Hai’s expression sharpened, and Hikaru took a step back. Yang Hai smiled. “I’m not sure you’ll like what I tell you.”
Hikaru braced himself. “Go on,” he said.
“It’s nothing onerous, and you won’t be doing anything you weren’t already planning on doing,” Yang Hai said. “Just make sure you come straight to me after you clear the tomb. I want fifty percent of whatever you find. Sell your loot to me, and I’ll make sure it’s a fair split.”
Beside Hikaru, Sai said, “No, Hikaru, the magic goban is priceless, you can’t sell it!”
Hikaru said, “What if I want to keep something? Can you just take half its value out of the rest of the loot?”
“Oh, do you think you’ll find something in there you want to keep?”
The interest in Yang Hai’s eyes set off warning klaxons in Hikaru’s head. Hikaru had walked straight into that one. “Just asking,” he said, shrugging.
Yang Hai thought for a moment, and then smiled. “All right,” he said. “We’ll do that.”
Hikaru blinked. That negotiation had gone far easier than Hikaru had expected. “Oh. Great, that’s awesome!” he said. “So... the key?”
Yang Hai passed it to Hikaru, who dropped it into his inventory quickly. “Godspeed,” Yang Hai said. “I’ll be waiting.”
Standing in front of the Tomb of the Game Masters, well-rested, well-fed, showered and ready, Hikaru reflected that if he had been a lot prompter the last time he was here, he wouldn’t have needed to pay a fifty percent commission—what Hikaru was calling it in his head, though it felt more like extortion—to Yang Hai. The Tomb Key was in his inventory—all Hikaru had to do was put it in the lock.
A thought occurring to Hikaru. Fifty percent of everything was steep, but Yang Hai had been in possession of the key all this time. Why hadn’t Yang Hai just entered the tomb himself and kept a hundred percent of everything?
“Hey, Sai,” Hikaru said. “Can you… well, float through that door?”
Sai looked surprised. “Usually,” he said. “Not always.”
Hikaru had never known the ghost to be stopped by anything before. “What do you mean, not always?”
“Sometimes it’s a game restriction so that players with playable ghost Sims don’t discover new areas unless they’re allowed,” Sai explained.
That made sense—Hikaru knew that the new expansions to the game had resulted in a couple of his friends’ grandparents hanging around in ghost form even after they had died of old age. Those ghost Sims would have been hugely useful for tomb recon, Hikaru supposed. “So can you get through this door?”
Sai floated up to it and pressed against it, and then shook his head.
No way to tell what was waiting behind the door, huh? Hikaru grinned, the Adventurous part of him stirring in interest. “Okay, then,” Hikaru said, hefting the Tomb Key and lifting it to the hole in the wall where it would fit. “Here goes nothing.”
The ground beneath them shook as there was a loud rumbling sound, and Hikaru had to fight to keep his balance. The door shuddered, and then suddenly shimmered and disappeared. Behind the original door, there were two more, but one of them was already sliding open. It stopped, and so did the rumbling. Hikaru looked for any sign that the first door had been there, but found none. “A magic door,” he said, blinking. Wow. That was… really cool.
Sai had floated up to the other doors and passed through them easily. Hikaru could hear Sai’s voice indistinctly through the remaining set of closed doors, getting fainter. “Sai, stop, don’t go that far ahead!” he shouted, running up to the closed doors.
A soft ‘snick’ sound was all the warning Hikaru had before he was impaled on some spikes under his feet.
Hikaru woke up several hours later to Sai hovering by him anxiously. “Hikaru!” Sai exclaimed, and the puddle under Sai began to grow. “I’m so sorry, Hikaru, I shouldn’t have run up like that! Are you all right?”
“What happened…” Hikaru said, dazedly. He checked the game clock and was shocked to see that they were already in their second day in China. “Whoa,” Hikaru said. He looked around and realized that he was surrounded by tiles with holes in them. “Spikes,” he said, the memory returning quickly. “Am I dead?”
Sai shook his head, even as Hikaru checked his Sim status. “No, you were just unconscious,” Sai said.
Hikaru felt like crap, and his mood bar was in the red—he was hungry, thirsty, dirty, and now that he was thinking about it, he would need a toilet in a few hours, too. “Argh,” he said, standing up. He looked at the spike traps around him, wondering how he’d get to the doors to get through them. He’d only triggered one, but now that he was looking, Hikaru realized that he could inspect the ground around him to find more traps and hopefully disarm them before they sprang on him.
Well, no time like the present to try, since this was a relatively safe place now that Hikaru had noticed the traps. This did answer the question of why Yang Hai hadn’t bothered coming in here. “Sneaky asshole,” Hikaru muttered under his breath, squatting down before the first spike trap.
Unfortunately for Hikaru, he’d spent a lot of time on his Logic skill, but none on his Handiness skill. Even though he could discern the traps, he couldn’t disarm a single one. Frustrated, he backed up, and then took a running jump, leaping as high as he could over one of them so the spikes wouldn’t touch him.
The trap sprung under him, the spikes missing. There was a whirring sound of machinery, and then a ‘clachink’ sound. The spike trap emitted a cloud of smoke and then, unmistakably, broke, collapsing on itself and becoming a broken tile.
Hikaru stared at that spike trap, and then started leaping over the others. As the last spike trap was set off and disarmed successfully, a loud ‘clunk’ came from the doors, and they slowly swung inwards.
“You did it, Hikaru!” Sai said, clapping. “Let’s go find the magic goban!”
“Don’t you run off again,” Hikaru said warningly. “I have a lot of needs to take care of, and I don't have that many Shower-in-a-Cans and High Quality Morsels. Most importantly, we need to find a toilet for me somewhere, or I’m going to have to go in my pants and hope the Shower-in-a-Can works on that too.”
“There’s a visitor’s room over here,” Sai said, floating in one direction.
“A what?”
“A visitor’s room,” Sai said. “With a bed, and an attached bathroom. And a fridge!”
Hikaru wondered if he should be worried that the tomb had its own guest rooms, but then gave up trying to understand tomb logic. He’d check the rooms for traps, but if there weren’t any, he wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. “Okay, lead the way,” Hikaru said, and then added, “Slowly.” He’d be inspecting all the floors and walls for traps carefully for now on.
“This way,” Sai said, floating down a hallway quickly.
Hikaru gaped as Sai floated over what was obviously a trap panel, and didn’t even trigger it. As Hikaru approached, he noticed that the trap was still live and still waiting to be sprung. What was the best course of action here? Try to trigger it safely, maybe by throwing something on it, or dashing over it? Would it be safe to land on the other side? Hikaru squinted, trying to see if the next floor panel was trapped, too.
Sai was already out of sight. “Argh, Sai, I said not so fast!” Hikaru groaned. He had a feeling it was going to be a very long tomb exploration. That goban had better be worth it, he thought. He took a deep breath, and then leaped over the first trap.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-06 08:27 am (UTC)They've got quite the adventures ahead I see!
no subject
Date: 2014-05-24 07:15 am (UTC)I know who this is!
Date: 2014-05-07 04:33 am (UTC)I'm sad it ended mid-quest, although perhaps not too sad, as I don't want poor Sai to disappear. Although poor Hikaru might!
Very funny!
Re: I know who this is!
Date: 2014-05-24 07:15 am (UTC)