~~Chapter 1 : I am on a mission... to win~~

So, hey… My name is Jack Harley, and I am one of the world’s first teenager uncover agents. Now I know it sounds pretty over the top. But its not. I am a boy of 16 and to be fair I am not really special or anything. Just your average 16-year-old teen. But the government hired me. That’s right! The government. Of course, teenagers are very young and inexperienced but the advantage about them is they always seem least suspicious. Simple reason because most of us just care about playing video – games, watching TV and hanging with our friends.

So, when a man in a dark suit wearing dark sunglasses came to me asking about my background, my first instinct was to punch him. Now don’t blame me. If a man so darkly suited comes to you, you expect a shady person to be trying to hurt you. Luckily enough he wasn’t offended by the punch because apparently whichever teen he goes to gives him that. Hey at least I’m not weird.

Anyway, this man said that he was looking for new recruits for a video – game being played on Saturday and whether I wanted to enter. Let’s say anything with the words “Video – game” are enough for me to say yes. In hindsight that’s probably the reason they kept the video – game. All teens love those.

So, on Saturday I reached the place that the man had told me. I was actually pleased that I agreed to come for this game session. It was seriously 10 video screens, VR sets and VR motion sensors. It was the epic gaming setup every teen wanted! There were 9 other teenagers who were waiting and were being instructed about the game rules and the objective of it. So, I joined them and listened to all the rules. They said that the prize of the competition was one no one could imagine. After understanding the instructions, we went to the various VR set ups and started getting ready for the game. The game’s objective was to somehow beat the others and get a sword that was kept deep in some Jungle. So, we all geared up and the first thing to do was to wait for the game to load. About two minutes later that was done and now music started being played in my ears. It was the adventurous type of music. They were making this as real as possible. So now, we all spawned in the game at the same place, in some kind of metal room surrounded by metal walls with no opening. Knowing this was a race we now rushed from corner to corner trying to find an opening but also make sure no one else found it. After all, if someone were to see you open it and followed you, you would have no head start!

So, anyway turns out we were not 10 in the room, we were 8! 2 people had already found the opening and escaped. Then I saw that they made the vital mistake of leaving it open slightly. That’s because I could see a door like object slightly swinging in the wind from outside and a bit of sunlight streaming into the room but no one else noticed. So, making sure I didn’t react too suddenly, I moved slowly towards the door and soundlessly escaped.

What I saw outside was a completely new terrain for me. A jungle. There were trees as far as the eye could see, with a few vines hanging from one tree to the other. There were also a few animals such as monkey, sloths, koalas and all the other animals that come in the “Passive” category. Too easy. I made a mistake of thinking that. First law of every quest, real or in a video-game, if you think its too easy well then brace yourself it is going to get about five times tougher.

Suddenly I was surrounded by snakes as long as me and as thick as the trunks of the trees around me. If they wanted they could swallow me whole in few seconds time and it would be “Bye World!” for me. But they seemed like they were waiting for me to attack. Weird. But I didn’t have time to think about weird or not and I looked around my waist to see if the game gave me anything I could use for my defense. Luckily, they did. It was a sword. I pulled it out of its sheath hoping to look all brave and awesome but instead I dropped it by mistake nearly chopping my leg in the process. The snakes stared at me then each other as if to say “Seriously? We got to fight this guy? Got to be the wrong guy. This guy is a joke!” Well, I quickly picked up the sword and got ready to fight. And then the fight began. Well to be exact getting ready for the fight was just making sure I didn’t chop up myself and the fighting meant me slashing wildly with my eyes closed. When I opened my eyes, the snakes were all gone and instead, there lay bottles of poison. Now the only reason I knew they were poison was because it was written so on them. If it was not written, judging by the fact how the red liquid in the bottles looked tasty, I would have drunk it hoping for a power up and would have died. Anyway, I quickly picked up the bottles for future use (on enemies obviously) and moved on.

That’s when I final reached the room with the boss in it. The boss was a huge scorpion. Of course! It had to be a scorpion and not something easy like a small puppy or a rabbit. Anyway, I looked behind me and saw new snakes that were now fighting the other players. So having no time to waste I looked up at the scorpion and saw two swords embedded into its arms. Looked like the first two players had died here. Not comforting. Anyway, I noticed that its arm was now very weak. If only I could somehow injure it to the point that it’s of no use to the scorpion...

But the scorpion had no time for letting me plan. It just couldn’t wait! It started advancing towards me, clicking its claws. I quickly jumped out of the way before I got cut. That’s when I noticed that one of the swords of the previous players were perfectly stuck into the joint of the arm of the scorpion. Now all I had to do was push it down or up, good enough so that its arm would break due to the lever that was formed. I looked around for things to throw but that’s when I noticed my arm had some kind of pad kind of thing on top of it. I clicked it and it showed me an array of options. These were actual super powers. One of them was high jump. Clicking that I jumped. Let’s say I should have practiced before I just simply attacked the scorpion. I jumped well enough by my landing was no graceful. More like graceless. So, I feel on top its head and tumbled down.

Luckily just before I completely fell off, I held onto its nose. So, to get me off the scorpion started shaking its head and I held on for dear life. A fall from this height would surely kill my player. So, I looked at the sword sticking out of its arm joint again and I saw that I could just somehow reach it, it would be enough. So, I quickly looked at my arm pad for some other super power and that’s when I noticed. During the whole tumbling episode, my pad had come off and fallen to the ground. At that point it looked like game over to me. But I could not give up after getting this far. I somehow summoned up some courage and pulled myself onto its head. Now as it was shaking its head, if I stayed on top of the head for too long, I would fall. So, I ran like my life depended on it. Probably because it kind of did. Game life anyway. I quickly reached the sword and executed my plan. I expected the sword to move as through its moving through cheese and the scorpion’s arm dropping onto the ground with ease. Let’s say that’s what happened except in the very opposite manner. The sword would not budge!

So, I pulled out my own sword and started hacking at the arm when a better idea came to my mind. What if I blinded it? Worth a shot. So, I ran to its eyes making sure not to fall, and plunged my sword into its eye. The scorpion shrieked out in pain. It started hitting its arms onto its head and moving wildly from here to there. I was about to leap off when I saw while shrieking its mouth was open. Wide open. Remembering the bottles of poison I had, I pulled them out and started throwing them one by one into its mouth. But because of its wild movements I kept missing. Before I knew it I was down to my last bottle of poison. This throw was for all the marbles. I aimed and threw and just by coincidence, when another person threw some kind of metallic object towards the scorpion’s head, it hit my bottle. My bottle was previously going off course but because of that the hit by that object, it fell directly into the mouth of the scorpion. A few seconds later, the scorpion started swinging from one side to another and then it fell with a mighty crash. Its body dissolved and in its remains was left the greatest sword I had ever seen.

The sword had a hilt made of solid gold carved into figures of dragons. The dragons had rubies for eyes and their wings were made of emeralds. The sword’s blade itself was made of pure titanium decorated with designs of ancient languages. How did I know it made of titanium? I had not noticed it but my game-self had a screen in front of his face giving details. So, this screen could give details about what is a sword made of but it could not tell me how to kill the scorpion? Great. Just what I need. I rushed to the sword and picked it up and then soon everything dissolved and I removed my VR set.

I was sweating from the top of my head to the tips to my toes. I looked around and saw all the other players were scowling at me and they all then quickly hurried away. A man in a dark suit, different from the one whom I punched, came to me saying “Good job. You won. Now for your prize.” Being a free gaming competition, I expected about 5 dollars and to be sent away. Something right? But turns out the truth was much deeper. The man led me to a barren field and went to the middle of it, tapped his foot 5 times on the ground. To my great surprise, there was a platform hidden there that now revealed itself. It lowered itself into a room with many men in the same outfit as the one who led me there, black suits and black glasses, sitting around computers. Then a man with a wide smile came to me and said “Good job winning our auditioning game. We look for teens around your age with a good build and then invite them to these games. The games are specially made to find out who are capable for our mission” By now I was probably gawking at the person. What was this man talking about? Was this some kind of trick? A trap? A prank? So, I asked “What mission. What are you even talking about” and he replied “Oh you didn’t connect the dots? You are now a secret agent working for the government in our new teenager squadron.”