#artificial intelligence program alpha

Floor 55: Western Mountain

“No,” Locus said with a flat air of finality. The word echoed around the mountain summit, bouncing off the crystal-like shards of ice that seemed to grow out of the rock. He shifted slightly to the side, probably so he could keep an eye on both the path and Tucker himself, and the snow gave way beneath his stupidly high-level boots with a satisfying crunch.

“C’mon,” Tucker whined, completely ignoring said air because c’mon. “I’m a fucking dragon. It’s like a rule or something.”

Locus glared at Tucker over his own black-clad shoulder and let out a huff. “I’m neither a woman nor royalty,” he pointed out as he brushed a few flakes of snow out of his hair to little effect. “Besides, your predecessor guarded nothing and no one besides victory over the floor and some low- to mid-level loot.”

Tucker tried to give the same pouty little huff that usually had Locus giving in to whatever he was asking for at the time, but instead ended up triggering his ice breath-attack instead. The ex-merc barely had time to jump out of the way before the jagged burst of ice-magic struck exactly where he had been standing.

It felt kinda… tingly, if he was being honest—a bit like drinking Sprite right after eating a mint. And, of course, like he had just nearly flash-frozen his partner because he couldn’t figure out how to freaking pout while piloting a hundred-foot-long, nocturnal frost dragon. After he finally figured out how to shut off the damn, well, dam, Tucker bobbed and weaved his head around, trying to spot Locus amid the ice and snow.

He spotted the dude’s gun—a “Silent Assassin”, because he’d decided to double-down on his melodramatic choices even after leaving his crazy-ass guild—before he spotted Locus himself. Crouched low behind an outcrop of ice-crystals, the ex-merc was using the reflective surface of a particularly large, vertical shard to see if it was safe to come back out yet.

“Are you quite finished?” Locus said dryly, when it was clear that Tucker was no longer breathing deadly ice-magic.

If it was possible to duck your head when you were a big-ass, boss-level dragon, Tucker did his best to accomplish it. “Uh, yeah,” he answered sheepishly, avoiding the other man’s eye as he rolled to his feet and strolled over to pick up his sniper rifle. “Sorry about that, man. Haven’t quite got the hang of this fuckin’ thing yet.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Locus muttered under his breath, sounding vaguely mutinous.

Tucker hoped that Church would come back soon, just in case their resident mercenary decided to go back to his usual method of problem-solving from back when he was in his guild. Charon Industries’ usual problem-solving method, of course, being murder.

As if summoned by the thought, a blaze of indigo light shone from somewhere in the ice field, creating a luminous effect as it bounced from one shard of ice to another all around the mountain summit. Immediately following the pretty light-show was the familiar, frustrated shout of “God fucking dammit!” that typically accompanied Tucker’s dubious best friend.

“You alive over there?” Tucker called, knowing that Locus didn’t like or care about Church in any way, and thus wouldn’t check.

“Oh, fuck off, wyrm-boy!” came the much-expected reply as Church painstakingly picked himself up off the frozen ground and trudged over to them, brushing snow off his light-blue guild armor while he walked.

Tucker smirked as much as his could without lips. “You know, for an in-game A.I., you kinda suck at pretty much all of it,” he remarked once said A.I. got within regular human hearing range.

Church narrowed his eyes. “So, done anything else mind-bendingly stupid while I was gone?” he spat, obviously upset by more than just Tucker’s sass.

“Um,” Tucker hedged, trying not to shuffle any of his four feet or rustle his wings guiltily while he avoided Locus’ eye and Church own victorious smirk. “No?” The leader of the Ronbaru Blues didn’t look convinced so Tucker quickly changed the subject. “Anyway. You figure out if this whole thing is a game-breaking glitch or just the usual B-G-O bullshit?”

“Ah. Ahem.” This time it was Church’s turn to avoid their eyes and he did so with admirable dedication, even going so far as to manoeuvre himself so that one of Tucker’s forelegs and a wing was between himself and Locus. “Funny story about that…”

Locus said nothing, didn’t even glance Church’s way, but he did very pointedly peer through the scope and begin checking over his gun. Amused as always by how very much his two favorite people in BGO low-key despised each other, Tucker wriggled backwards and lowered his long neck until his chin rested lightly on the snow-covered ground.

“Yes?” he prompted, wondering what fresh hell Blood Gulch Online had decided to cook up today, even when “today” became “yesterday” as the dull grey sky began to subtly lighten.

Church cleared his throat and dragged the toe of his boot through the snow.. “So…” he said awkwardly. “Um. Right, yeah, so. It’s kinda. Both?” Hit by an unexpected wave of exhaustion, Tucker slowly blinked one giant red eye at the scruffy-looking A.I. and waited for him to continue. Church made an aggrieved noise and did so after a few seconds, sounding more than a little embarrassed. “According to what I could dig up in the archives, whatever happened to you is a cross between an out-of-date feature of the game and a software bug, compounded by an… earlier mistake in the programming made by yours truly…”

Locus had stopped messing around with his big-ass sniper rifle and was now outright glaring at the Blue leader, which had Tucker’s brain struggling to process what was being said purely out an instinctual need to understand what put that expression on his not-boyfriend’s face. When it clicked, he let out a snort that nearly triggered his breath-attack again.

“I’m a motherfucking dragon because the game glitched and pulled a Highlander?” he laughed, somewhere between disbelieving and genuinely entertained. It was getting harder and harder to keep his eyes open as the light got brighter, and the laughter held more than a tinge of hysteria. “And the game glitched and pulled a Highlander because you glitched and pulled a Tron?”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, jackass,” he heard Church grumble, eyes now completely closed, and his voice sounded weirdly far-away. “Apparently if you kill the dragon without a weapon made out of the proper metal, a supposed-to-be-deleted passive ability of X’rphan the White drains all your hit-points to heal itself and resets you back to Floor One. But, since whenever you die you can’t just reset, the byte-sized A.I. in charge of the floor tried to fix the problem itself and decided that your consciousness would just be transferred to the dragon as well. Is… is he fucking sleeping?”

Tucker tried to pry his eyes open and show that he was paying attention, but couldn’t manage it. With great effort, he opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off by Locus’ deep rumble, and decided to just let it go in favor of listening to the sounds instead of the words.

Church had no such impulse, however, and audibly threw up his hands. “Ugh, whatever, I’ll just go get the metal from the cave and have Lopez forge the fucking sword while he’s out. Then we can poke him when he wakes up and he’ll revert back to his original form. Not that it’s a big improvement…”

The sound of their glorious leader stomping away and muttering obscenities under his breath met Tucker’s ears and he used his dragon-sensitive hearing to track the A.I.’s progress through the mountain. A second later, he heard the crunch of snow, felt the heat of Locus leaning against his shoulder, and sighed in sleepy contentment.

“Y’sure I can’t c’nvince you?” Tucker managed to slur through the fog of sleep. He could both feel and hear Locus’ rusty chuckle. “Y’d be a great princ’ss…”

“If your blacksmith isn’t a high enough level to work with the crystallite ingot,” Locus rumbled against his scales, “I will allow you to be as stereotypical as you wish until we find a master to forge an appropriate weapon.”