Revealing Project Green

A litrpg with Characteristics, Domains, and Forest Floor Doors

By Nolan Locke

CHAPTER 1.6- Even Ghosts Get the Heebie Jeebies

So the easy description is that I feel an intense blast of cold and fury roll through me right before I’m shoved out of control. It’d be like if you were sitting in the driver’s seat of a playground fake car, right? And some bully comes over, sees the steering wheel bolted to the wood, and just does the scooching for you, without asking.

The better description is that my mind also feels too full. For a brief moment there are all sorts of images and sounds and feelings bubbling through me, like when you first pour milk into coffee and get those bubbling tendrils of white against the black.

My Will score is 3d6, and automatically rolls, but I score two 5’s and a 3, which is not lucky enough I guess. It takes over, and for a second there’s nothing but black. Now this, this is the spookiest, worst part, where it feels like forever, the part where you can’t see, you can’t hear, you can’t feel or smell or taste anything. You’re just… thoughts. No heartbeat, no lungs breathing, no nothing.

And then it was all back on, and I could see myself sprinting out the door. And clearly, all this has happened so fast, I can’t even begin to tell you how I try to fight, or try to try to fight. I haven’t figured out how. My body pelts out into the front yard, with an old man groaning confusedly behind me, and leap off the stairs to where Maya and Ritchie are busy getting away.

I can feel my mouth open, and out of it comes this gross moaning sound. Hopefully this means the ghost hasn’t got complete control over me, but I have this awful feeling it actually means this thing is going to use my body to eat my friends.

Hey, if you’ve gotten this far and you’re a mature reader, I’ll have you know this isn’t where it gets dark. It takes a little while, thankfully. Yeah, you notice how it’s me telling this story and not Ritchie or Maya?

Right.

Dear editor: I feel like that foreshadowing isn’t subtle at all, and needs some work. I’ll revisit this at some point in the future. For now I need to keep the words flowing.

I barrel into Maya and send everybody flying every which way. Arms akimbo is an appropriate word here. My Moves has been triggered, and it was both enough to stop them from doing whatever they were doing and not enough to deal attack damage. Instead, I take 2 damage from the impact, and go rolling away.

Maya pops up and immediately begins speaking in some language I’ve never heard before. It’s babbling in a language with sounds I don’t know I’ve ever heard a human voice box make. Then again, ten years old this coming week.

If I make it that long, I think.

Her hands are glowing, and this causes my body to freeze up for a moment before I get crouched down, ready to pounce any which way. I guess ghosts get the heebie jeebies, too.

Another second later, and it’s my Moves against her Will. Some good old PvP action. And here, right here, is where I slam my Will against the thing taking over my body for the first time, in a clumsy attempt to stop it from doing something awful to my friends.

I end up with a Will roll of 13, against this thing, which rolls a 10. It’s enough to shock this ghost into using its own Moves score to evade, which is a laughable 2d6+2. Nice.

Wait. What happens when Maya hits me with her psychic blast thingy? Oh sh–

It rolls a 6, for a result of 8, and Maya ends up with a 10, so we’ll see.

Apparently ten is more than enough to slam this thing out of me and reduce its HP bar to nothing. As for me, I feel a cold connection to the earth, like I’m supposed to be down in it, down under it. There’s dirt and worms and metal down there, and this psychic attack is a bright, freezing reminder of that.

Dark, right? You ain’t seen nothing yet.

I fall over, stiff and trembling, then hear Maya squeak out a terrified “Sorry!” along with some choice words in apologetic whatever-she-speaks-now. She rushes over and snaps her fingers in front of my face a few times.

It’s enough. I flinch, and she laughs in relief.

She helps me sit up to find Ritchie going to town on the sandwich from his backpack. It’s a weird choice from a kid who’s roughly 45% dead (I’m in fourth grade starting tomorrow, sue me), but I watch in amazement as some of the wounds just close up on their own. Apparently sandwich (minor) has some meaning behind it after all. Three hit point slashies on his character sheet fall away.

No wonder my wounds from the zombies healed up so quickly.

He finishes eating and turns a grin on me. “I can’t wait until we defeat some monster and a fully-cooked turkey pops out.”

Me neither, but now’s not the time to be analyzing the game system, because on one side of us, there’s a confused old man in a house we let ourselves into, and on the other, a graveyard full of ghosts. One of them, by the way, looks to have taken notice of us, probably because we’re having a 3 am picnic, uninvited, on someone’s front lawn.

Maya jumps up and grabs her bike. “Come on, we have to go.”

“This was a bad idea,” I tell her.

“No shit, Sherlock.”

We have to make sure Ritchie gets up and on his bike. It takes a little bit of doing, but eventually he’s there, he’s on, and we’re riding. I know exactly what Domain means now, or at least I think I know. In this moment, being on the bike feels a hundred percent right. It feels like I’m where I’m supposed to be.

Unfortunately where I’m supposed to be isn’t as fast as a car. One of the ghosts has just slammed into a car, one of those olde tyme ones with the fins and the huge white walls. That car has gone and fired itself up, without a driver. The headlights flare to life, first yellow and then they become an angry, murderous color.

“You guys seeing this?” I ask.

“Uh, yeah!”

“Go, go, go!”

We pedal away just as fast as we can. The car revs, then revs again, and finally peels out away from the curb, toward us.

Moves, baby. I end up with an 18, and Ritchie, even with his wound penalty, rolls an 11, while Maya rolls a 15 (with -3 from the psychic penalties), so a 12. Too bad none of us get a single 6. The car, meanwhile, rolls a Moves of 11, also luckily without a 6, because it probably has the non-bike Domain.

The car comes roaring up on us, and I have just enough time to think this is it, but also oh, hey look! Ahead of me, Maya peels away from the main road and into a side street. Ritchie and I hop the curb and immediately follow. We’re pedaling like hell, and turn at the end of the next block. From there, it’s a simple matter of hiding behind one of the first cars we see parked in their driveways. The possessed car goes roaring past us, screeches to a halt, then rubs the tires raw backing up really fast, before trying to come after us around the turn we just took. That’s right, go on, I think, before the brake lights flare and the car seems to look at us. It slows to a crawl, and we hurry around to the car’s front end in order to stay out of view.

Eventually it revs, then revs the engine again, and roars away in obvious frustration.

“That was too close,” Ritchie says.

He’s still 9 HP down. We can’t have that. “Let’s get you home and get another sandwich.” Or three.

We bike home, hugging tight to the front yards when we can, and eventually slump, exhausted, in through my window. Thankfully, my parents are asleep. I have no idea what I’d do if they found a softly glowing purple Maya, a bloodied Ritchie, who’s been grazed by buckshot, or even me. I get a good look in the mirror, and find that my eyes are bloodshot. Whether it’s from being up all night or being possessed by a rogue ghost, I have no way of knowing.

We eventually get some sleep, and this is with Maya on the top bunk. I sleep on the floor, since I haven’t been shot. We sit there in the dark, at 3:30 am, staring at the ceiling. I am, at least, wondering what the devil is going on. I’m also terrified my mother’s going to wake up for a midnight glass of water and find us discussing the issue.

And while I’m considering whether we should talk this through, sleep sneaks up and takes possession of me.

***

The next morning finds us, surprisingly enough, hale and healthy. Maya doesn’t seem to be affected by any wound penalties, and somehow neither does Ritchie. Sure his shirt is bloodstained, with holes in it, but beneath his skin is smooth and untouched.

So he doesn’t have to go to the hospital after all. Judging by his look of surprise and the way he pokes his fingers into the little holes, he’s flummoxed.

I didn’t even consider how difficult it might be for him to get any sleep at all, what with being hit by a load of buckshot before pedaling for his life. Whoops. I also didn’t really give any thought to Maya’s silver goop drinking situation, and whether or not she’d have any discomfort in getting to sleep. Double whoops.

Well all that non-worry was for naught anyway, because Maya’s just fine. Looks just fine. I mean she looks healthy, but also cute when she’s sleeping like that.

Wait, what? I’m ten years old, not twenty-nine. I have no interest in girls. None.

Anyway, we gently shake her awake, then shush her and tell her to stay hidden while we grab some breakfast from the kitchen. My mom complains about crumbs and not getting syrup on anything in my room, but she doesn’t stop us.

The three of us eat in silence. There aren’t any answers, not really. It’s all speculation, and that’s the sort of thing we’ll do on the way to school. With one of my shirts on, and his backpack full, Ritchie starts.

“Okay, we know a few things,” he says. “We have character sheets. With statistics for our abilities. Domains, two each, Characteristics three each. The abilities that are kind of like in real life.”

“If you’re in the Domain you get to re-roll any six and add it.”

“Okay, that’s good. Good to know. Also, I have this Easygoing thing, which activated when I failed a roll.” He points to the character sheet, where one of the boxes has a checkmark over top it.

“The Characteristics are all different,” I say. I haven’t gotten a chance to use Rich or Charismatic yet, which is a bit of a bummer. Quick has been super useful so far.

“The character sheets are magic,” Ritchie goes on. “Enemies have the same stats as we do, but fewer hit points. I’ll guess because we’re supposed to get through levels with a lot of enemies, like Castle at Black Cliff. Also, other people don’t have character sheets… maybe.”

“Not sure yet.”

“Guys,” Maya says quietly. We look at her, walking our bikes to school. Hers used to be bright pink, before she got hold of a can of spraypaint and blasted the Barbie with matte black. She must’ve run out of paint near the back, because a little bit of the B and some pink still shows through where the frame meets the back wheel. “Why? Why is this happening? When did it start, and what made it happen?”

“We have no idea,” Ritchie says.

Maya gives us this exasperated, wild expression, which says she’s about two seconds away from punching one of us. She only does this when I repeatedly do something funny (stupid funny) and she’s the butt of my terrible joke. She’s been really helpful in getting me to stop being a comedian whose audience is only me. And hoo boy will this be useful later in life.

“We just got sucked into it yesterday. It literally ran up and tried to club us to death. We’ve been looking for answers–”

“–but you drank our only lead.”

She glowers at us.

“Being angry about it doesn’t make it untrue. We don’t have anymore of that stuff to test out with Ms. Gina.”

Ritchie brightens up. “But Manny’s dad did say he found it by the side of the road, in a forest, on the way to work.”

“Then we go have a look at the forest,” Maya says.

So that’s settled anyway.

The first day of fourth grade (just like any first day of elementary school) is full of important things, even though nothing gets done. This school day is no different: we get to meet Ms. Smeeg. She is as interesting as she is probably unimportant, given that we’re in a video game I guess?

For the sake of reality though, she’s small and a bit chubby, with a friendly and welcoming face, and a ridiculous tan expedition hat that looks like an umbrella. People are already whispering that she lives in the jungle. This isn’t helped by the matching tan expedition clothing she’s got on, including the shorts to her knees and the long olive green socks.

She spends the day promising fourth grade is going to be an adventure, while Ritchie and I are sitting at opposite sides of the room and making eye contact. In between rolling our eyes at her every time she makes some grandiose claim. We’re going to venture through the deepest jungles of the world together, riiiiiight. We’re going to climb Mount Everest together, uh-huh. We’re going to do the math that sent men to the moon, sure.

And, after recess, more class time involving ‘what I did over my summer vacation’ in which I write and draw the ogre, zombies and ghosts, lunch, and another few hours of setting up for the school year, the final bell rings. We’re free… to go face more danger.

It’s forest time.

We bike home first and create another sandwich (minor) for each backpack, and also a soda (minor), as it’s written on our character sheets. These underage snacks will only provide 3 hit points each, but it was enough to help Ritchie get back on his bike last night… sheesh, technically this morning.

I am tired.

The forest is only a good twenty-five or thirty minute bike ride along the highway, but once the buildings melt away we slow down and take our time peering about. Maya takes it upon herself to bike across to the other side of the road and continue the hunt on the north side.

It becomes pretty evident about ten minutes of searching later. And by pretty evident I mean the thing smacks us in the face. One minute we’re looking at roadside California forest (not the ageless type, but still old) and the next the trees are all… wibble-wobbly. Like the branches are curled around into spiraling shapes, or bent around in weird boxy kind of staircase looking things. Plus, the leaves are glowing.

Nope, belay that. At first it appears the leaves are glowing. They are fluttering, as a nice summer breeze will cause leaves to do. Then the glowing butterflies emerge, dancing around the trees and foliage, like the ferns and rhododendrons. And belay that, too, because once we get closer to the little flitting, glowing things it becomes clear that they’re tiny people, maybe three inches long, some with dragonfly wings, others with butterfly wings, and some other wings I can’t put names to.

Oh and there’s a door in the middle of the nearest clearing.

Point of clarity: the door is painted fire engine red, it’s not standing up, but seems embedded in the forest floor, as if gravity were sideways there. And in the center of the door is a gleaming, gold, metal shrimp shape. Tail and feet and huge long whiskers and everything. Not sure how it’s stuck on the wooden door, but there you have it. Oh, and matching gold metal doorknob, the flat-faced kind with a key slot right in the center.

“A… door.”