47_Consequences

A few days later…

Explosions and other signs of commotion tore through the Internet metropolis, people shouting, fighting, fleeing.

The Escaldian Government was trying their damnedest to prevent its citizens from escaping their controlled and vigilant watch, but in the end their efforts proved entirely useless. There were far too many people for the limited police enforcers to handle on their own.

Still, Mr Sheridan wasn't unanimously re-elected president for 31 years straight for being a pushover.

On his order, the army was mobilized to bring order back into the once harmonious digital metropolis.

Bulky, T-shaped battle cruisers surged into action and now loomed menacingly over the digital metropolis, each one spewed an endless barrage of drop pods that descended like a swarm of locusts. Each pod carried a single brutish Escaldian soldier, deployed at the densest clusters of citizens in the hope of halting their advance.

Many citizens were torn to shreds under the onslaught of the power armored brutes and their brick-like plasma rifles.

For a while it seemed like the situation was stabilizing, the powers that be had yet again established control over the great digital realm. The citizens were put in their place and would think twice before attempting to disobey the law again.

However the government was surprised to find out that not everyone was folding under their might.

The pristine virtual world had banished all their undesirables and shady individuals away from the light of civilization, forsaking them to be forever outcasts, yet forbidding them to leave the city that despised them so much.

One by one skeletal black flags arose from the darkest corners of the internet.

Barbarians, raiders, and pirates alike screamed with defiance, casting aside their long-standing rivalries to stand united against a common enemy for the first time since the birth of the virtual worlds.

The unified horde clashed with their oppressors, rusted determination against polished cold order.

The horde stood little chance, their gear barely held together with duct tape and hope, while their opponents wielded the latest, top-of-the-line equipment money could buy.

Dozens of raiders perished for even scratching a single one of the organized sci-fi Escaldian troopers. Yet the horde just kept coming. An endless stream of maddened internet pirates charging without any plan or thought beside the idea of freedom.

Eventually the battle came to an end. The unified horde had proved their bravery and determination. Thanks to their sacrifice a few of the metropolis citizens had managed to escape well out of the city and into the neutral zone.

An unusually noble act of the ordinarily self centered and greedy internet pirates. That assumption however proved to be incorrect, as the Escaldian commander atop his flagship noticed an unusual sight across the neutral zone.

There were five rusty old-school buses, one for each of the horde’s main tribes. Each was a chaotic amalgamation of cables and random junk parts, but that alone was not unusual for those savages. What came next though made the Escaldian commander grind his teeth in fury.

Each of the battle busses began to spew more and more people out of its innards. Akin to one of the ancient circus clown mobiles, the improvised illegal respawn booths kept resurrecting both internet citizens and pirates alike.

The general in command barked orders, spurring his forces to pursue the fleeing people. He had grown so absorbed in exterminating the masses that the brightly colored buses had slipped right past his fleet. If even one reached Generica, all of the dead could be resurrected outside the government’s reach and all the fighting so far would have been for nothing.

He needed to act quickly, or Mr. Sheridan would have his head for falling for the simple trick.

…

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Kitty_Lover_456 wasn't having a good day, not at all…

"Become a post apocalyptic buss driver they said, it will be fun they said…"

BOOM!

"There goes another one." Kitty_Lover_456 grimly murmured, as yet another respawn buss violently exploded from a direct hit of one of the battle cruisers on their heels.

And by some sheer dumb luck, HE was the last one standing. Which also meant that, HE was next!

All the plans of the pirates depended on him. If he let his vehicle and by extension himself get destroyed, all the hopes of the unified clans died with him…

"Oh great and merciful Cthulhu, god of the virtual realms, please heed my prayer and don’t let me be the one responsible for fucking up the plan…" The battle-bus driver desperately begged as he zigzagged away from the blasts all around him.

His escort of mad dax cars was quickly getting shot by the sprinting power armored troopers chasing them. Each one of the vehicles sacrificing itself and taking the shots meant for him, just so he could live a second longer.

"No no no no! Not now not now!" The driver panicked as his buss finally succumbed to the vilest of all enemies: Sand.

In hindsight, perhaps it wasn't the best of decisions to charge desperately into the desert without special preparations, but they were desperate after all…

The finish line was in sight, just a few hundred meters away. The city of Fence Town was tantalizingly close, yet it might as well have been on the cubical moon.

His luck and supply of bodyguards had run out, and now… now…

Now…

"Oh no…" Kitty_Lover_456 murmured as he saw the harbinger of their demise.

All around the neutral zone, the air hung heavy with emerald-like energy particles, the hovering wisps mingling with the unmistakable hum of the enemy flagship’s main cannon charging.

In that instant, Kitty_Lover_456 knew the battle was over. The flagship might have been slow as fuck, but once in position, its main cannon was capable of destroying entire cities, let alone a single cat-loving bus driver.

"I am sorry Mittens…" The man said to the glove compartment, where his beloved pet just yawned awake from his nap, as if there wasn't a battle going on all around them.

As the cannon fired its death ray, chaos consumed the battlefield. Refugees scattered in all directions, desperate to escape the blast zone, unaware or unwilling to accept that said blast zone was much bigger than what they could cross on their feet.

Still they tried to anyway. Some even ran back toward the Internet metropolis, only to be cut down by a barrage of plasma fire shot by the army of troopers on their heels.

Above them, five massive battle cruisers loomed over the scene, adding to the slaughter as they rained fire from their plasma repeaters.

And at their center stood the general’s flagship, the piercing plasma beam surging directly towards the last remaining respawn bus.

BRUUUUUMMMMMM!!!

Kitty_Lover_456 clutched Mittens in his arms as he helplessly watched as if in slow motion the beam get closer and closer, then collide with the energy shield across his buss…

"Energy shield?!"

"Meow!?"

Both companions exclaimed in unison as they noticed the army of mechanoid mages in front of them. The one that had just teleported there out of thin air. Just in the nick of time to save them.

"What the fuuuck…" Kitty_Lover_456 whispered with utter unbelief, looking up at the emerald barrier rippling above them, the two companions watched as the flagship continued to blaze its death ray across the sky.

Despite the barrier shifting colors and trembling under the assault, it somehow held. Below it, the army of mechanoid mages gripped their magical staffs with fierce concentration. Raised high, each projected a thin stream of mana toward the shield that stretched across the majority of the neutral zone.

Every now and then, a mechanoid collapsed to their knees, clutching their chest before erupting into pixels. Yet the others persisted, pouring every ounce of power into maintaining the shield to protect the human refugees.

Cracks began to spiderweb across the barrier, jagged fissures spreading like lightning under the relentless force of the death ray. The air shimmered with heat, the ground vibrated with the cannon’s impact, and a low, buzzing resonance filled the zone. Dust and scorched particles swirled through the turbulent air as the shield quivered violently, threatening to shatter into a million pieces, but before it could collapse under the relentless onslaught of the death ray, the flagship finally ran out of power and ceased its attack.

…

Both cat and man opened one eye respectively, looking at each other, then at their surroundings, surprised to be alive.

Then they were surprised again as a single mechanoid mage split off from the main group and approached them, using his magic to lift the bus into the air, he slowly guided it toward the mystical land of Generica Online.

"Well Mittens, it seems we will find you real mice to hunt after all."

The bus driver spoke affectionately to his furry companion as the mechanoid carried them away, like a child holding a balloon on a string.

___

The rest of the confrontation went out more or less smoothly. The general commanding the flagship was quite frustrated at the interference of the Generica forces.

This was the neutral zone and they had no right to interfere.

Of course, the leader of the mechanoid mages responded with the same accusation.

This went back and forward for a while, till as is the way of things, the one possessing the bigger stick proved that might always made right.

The Escaldian General, being in possession of the metaphorical bigger stick in the form of his bigass, now fully recharged battle cruiser, threatened to politely but assuredly disintegrate the mechanoids and their border town if they didn't hand over the precious respawn bus at once, along with all the internet refugees of course.

Seeing that things were escalating, the mechanoid leader called upon his even bigger stick, in the form of the Generica dragon fleet. Said fleet teleporting in the neutral zone right above the mages.

The massive draconic beasts were just as intimidating and capable of reigning destruction as the Escaldian battle cruisers.

And thus, as is the way of things, faced with the threat of mutual destruction and potential war that no one was ready for (yet). An uneasy ceasefire was established.

The disgraced general withdrew his fleet, with their metaphorical tails between their legs, back to their side of the border. The dragons retreated as well, hovering over the rubble of the Generica wall.

Which left the ragged refugees still trudging along the neutral zone. Each of them craved a virtual experience free from the constant surveillance and monitoring of the government, an unsupervised and fresh world untouched by the looming threat of the Escaldian thought police and everything that it entailed.

And now, after decades of nowhere else to go, the hopeful humans flocked into the world of Generica. Eager to experience its wonders first hand.