Phantasy Star: Fringes of Algo

Corg got up from his seat; the tedium of typing a text for almost thirty minutes straight was too much for him. His stuck on the age-old philosophical question of how Dee could do this work as efficiently as she did stuck in his mind as he walked over to the water dispenser in a vain attempt to wash away the tedium and continue typing. Corg wondered how a book about the android apocalypse could be so unexciting, but Reflections in an Unblinking Eye was determined to show him that it was possible.

As he sipped on the lukewarm water that came from the obsolete water dispenser—just proof that nobody actually cared about the project, most water dispensers in other parts of the school had at least seven different temperature settings—he heard an unexpected noise: the sound of equipment, maybe a laser saw, in use on the museum floor. He had not been informed of any renovations going on during his shift or anytime soon at the museum. Corg lazily reached into his pocket and pulled out his ID card, passing it through reader.

Stepping outside the room, he tip-toed to the end of the short hallway and glanced around the corner. He saw four men, three of whom appeared to be armed, using some sort of laser weapon to cut through the glass on several of the cases and remove whatever artifact was inside. Corg’s heart skipped a beat and he felt the blood running through the veins in his hands grow as cold as ice. Logic told him to go back in hiding; they obviously didn’t know he was there, so if he stayed in the room, nothing would happen to him. But the same way a passerby will stop to see an accident, no matter how morbid the scene is, Corg’s eyes remained fixed on the theft he was witnessing.

Suddenly, one of the robbers, a fellow with a goatee, spotted Corg peeking out from around the corner. The man yelled at the others to stop and pointed in Corg’s direction. The man with the goatee and two of the others, a blue-haired guy with a mustache that went out of style years ago and a guy with spiky orange hair, pulled out guns and aimed them in Corg’s direction. Corg switched out of panic mode and went in survival mode, quickly running back to the room he worked before any of the three could draw a bead on him.

As he clumsily fiddled with his card, he heard one of them tell the others to continue working and that he’d “handle” the witness. Corg cursed himself as he struggled to do something so simple as pass his ID card through reader. Just as he saw the shadow of one of the men appear on the wall at the entrance to the hallway, he slipped his card through the mechanical sensor and fell into the room.

His freckled forehead becoming moist with sweat, Corg looked around the room for a place to hide. Suddenly, his vision began to grow hazy and as if somebody had slipped a pair of lens over his eyes, everything around him took on a faint red glint. His fear left him and he calmly turned off the lights, ignoring the sound on the other of the door…the sound of somebody passing a card through the reader.

***

The goateed man entered the now darkened room. He calmly felt along the wall with his right hand, looking for a switch. Ah, there it is, he thought. Hitting the red button near the switch, the room soon was flood with an eerie yellowish light. A brief scan revealed that the room was empty, but the man with the goatee was not convinced. He quietly reached down and changed the setting on his gun to the highest level of “STUN”: a shot directly to the head would come with enough force to not only stun the witness, but probably damage his brain enough that he wouldn’t remember what it was that he had seen.

The man with the goatee moved silently through the room, looking at all of the nooks and crannies near the ceiling and opening the doors to all of the little closets that were full of nothing but books. Occasionally, he kneel down and look under a table to see if the witness was double enough to corner himself in such a classic way.

A strange noise came from the work area at the opposite side of the room. It didn’t sound like a person moving. No, it actually sounded like a rattle of sort. Closing in on the sound, he then heard someone speak.

“Poisoner,” was the cryptic word whispered by a raspy voice. “Poisoner.”

Ready to fire on the perpetrator the moment he faced him, the man with the goatee knelt down in front of the terminal. Before he could fire, however, two blurry objects that looked like fingers struck him in the hand held the gun, right between the thumb and index finger, and in his eye. The man dropped the gun immediately and rubbed in his eye with his other hand.

A young boy, about 18 years old, tumbled out from under the terminal and stared at the man. The boy’s freckly face was now a deep shade of red and his eyes were narrowed to the point that he almost looked asleep. His hand were curled up into a fist, except for his index and middle fingers, which were extended and slightly bent. His entire body undulated in a rhythmic, snake-like fashion.

A searing pain went through the man’s right hand and then, without warning, went completely numb. His eye also began to throb and his vision became blurry. As the throbbing grew stronger, the truth became clear: his eye had swollen shut.

Suddenly, the boy lifted up one his legs and began to shake it violently. The leg moved with so much flexibility that the man with the goatee thought that it had been completely dislocated at the knee. The man stood there, mesmerized by the random, hypnotic movements of his leg. His judgment told him to make a run for the door and have the others take care of the boy, but his eyes never left the strange movements the young boy made with his rubbery leg.

Then, out of nowhere, the boy flung his leg out in a strange, unexpected overhead arc, smashing his instep against the man’s face. The man crashed sideways to the ground. The boy, with his two claw-like fingers, dug into the soft spots in the man’s shoulders and lifted him up, slamming him into one of the large tables in the middle of the room. A cracking sound accompanied the impact, and the man knew that the force with which had been thrown had practically destroyed the table. The boy somersaulted onto the table and jabbed his fingers into the man’s shoulders again, causing him to yell in pain. By now, the man with the goatee could hear voices outside; his buddies had come to rescue him.

The door slid open, revealing the other three robbers on the other side. The boy sunk his fingers a final time into the man’s shoulders and fell forward, in the direction of the men who were at the door. Using the forward momentum, the boy threw the man across the room and into his cohorts, knocking the guns out of their hands. Only the larger man was bowled over by his partner.

The man with the goatee looked up at his friends, their inquiries as to if he was alright sounding like a blur of meaningless words and sounds. It was soon that he drifted off into unconsciousness.


***

Corg stood atop the quickly-breaking table, his posture low, one leg extended far behind him, and his arms bent in front of him with only his index finger sticking out. He swayed his body back and forth, watching the two smaller men scramble to their feet. The man-mountain stood behind them, his mouth agape at the show of force he had just witnessed. The huge man removed what looked like the haft of a sword from his belt, only that the haft had no blade whatsoever. Squinting his eyes, Corg noticed a button on the haft near the man’s the thumb. It became clear to Corg that the man was about to use a photon blade on him.

With great agility and force, Corg pushed off the table with his legs and sent himself sailing into the air in the giant’s direction. As he came closer to the man, he spun his body and thrust his leg out. The momentum from both the jump and the subsequent spin joined to give his kick so much power that it sent the thief flying back several feet, landing on his back with a loud crash.

Corg turned and saw the other two men stumbling over to where their guns had fallen. Corg ran over to them and, grabbing the blue-haired man’s leg with his index fingers, swung him across the room. The mustached man flew in a glass case full of old axes. The glass shattered into hundreds of razor-sharp shards, lacerating part of the man’s body on his way down. The violent destruction of the glass casing triggered the centuries-old alarm system and soon the loud blare of klaxon signals echoed throughout museum.

Turning his attention the lead thief, Corg lashed out with his locusta-like claws and knocked the gun out of his hand a second time. The man then started throwing numerous haymaker punches at Corg, but the young man ducked and dodged all of them. He then shot back with a powerful blow with his finger to the man’s face, leaving a dark violet gash across the man’s cheek. The man’s eyes widened with pain and surprise, but only reacted with more angrily-thrown punches.

One of the punches struck Corg in the mouth, and the boy felt his tongue being bathed in some warm fluid. The man’s next blow, however, was not so lucky. Corg parried the blow and latched onto the man’s wrist with his claw-like grip pulled the man forward, sweeping the man’s legs out from under him with his own in such a way the orange-haired thief dived face-first to the ground.

Corg was about to pounce on the man when a powerful kick to his stomach send him sprawling to the ground. It was the man-mountain again, who looked none the worse for wear. Before Corg could get his defenses up, the hulk grabbed Corg by his head and began smashing it into the numerous glass fixtures inside the room. The tickling feeling of streams of musty-smelling sweat, or so Corg thought, made him forget the splitting headache he now had. He struggled to wiggle his way out of the man’s grip, but large thief was too strong to let go out without a fight.

Then it came to him: Corg heard a sinister hissing sound in his ears. His relaxed for a moment, and then took on the form of the Poisoner fang-technique he had disabled the first thief with. Corg jumped up and wrapped his legs around the man-mountain’s torso and started savage jabbing and gouging the man’s arm with his two-fingered Poisoner strike. Corg struck ruthlessly at the nerves and blood vessels in the man’s enormous muscular arm. The man let out several groans, letting go of Corg’s head, as his arm now slowly turned several shades of black.

The young boy dropped to the ground and slid under the man’s legs. Using his locusta claw technique, Corg jabbed at the man’s back, causing the man to yell in pain as Corg climbed up his body. The young boy secured the man’s neck with his lithe legs. The giant of a thief started throwing himself against a wall, brutally smashing Corg’s head and body against it, too. Corg’s grip, however, only tightened with each successive impact. The giant, now desperate, threw himself into several class cases, the shards digging into both his back and Corg’s, staining their clothing with scarlet ichors. Then the thief, spotting his photon blade on the ground a few feet away, turned in the weapon’s direction.

Images began flashing in Corg’s mind: Corg saw the image of a locusta’s bone-crushing mandibles rip remorselessly into a fire ant’s exoskeleton as if it were made of paper. Corg quickly pulled his elbows against his rib cage. He struck the man in both of his temples with the blades of his hands. The man continued his quest to get his sword back. Corg did it again, tensing his body up as much as possible at the moment of impact. The man staggered several steps to the side, but soon regained composure. Corg finally struck his temples a third time, his mind filling up with the images of the locusta once again tearing its prey to pieces. This time, the man tumbled forward and collapsed.

Corg pulled himself to his feet and began breathing heavily. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and, to his horror, found that his hand was now red with his own blood. As Corg came to realization that he was bleeding profusely all over his body, he felt a round metal object be shoved against his temple. It was the man with the orange hair, pointing the stun ray directly at his head.

“You know,” said the robber impatiently. “You weren’t supposed to be here. And even if you were, if you hadn’t left the room, things wouldn’t have turned out this way. If you had minded your business, we would’ve got the things we wanted, left you alone, and we’d all be better off and happy. But now you’ve hurt my compatriots, prevented us from getting what we came for, and now there are probably several guardians on the way to find out why the alarms are going off.”

Corg remained silent. In fact, few of the man’s words entered into his mind. The only that Corg heard was the distant echo of a terakite’s unearthly shriek in his mind’s ear.

“—listen to me! Listen to me before I kill you! You-you freak!”

The word “freak” was indeed heard by Corg and the word struck the core of his being so hard that he soon lost all notion of reality.

To the thief’s surprise, Corg spun around so quickly that his own body parried the gun away from his head. With his index and middle fingers spread and curled up opposite his thumb, Corg dug his makeshift talons into the man’s hand and shoulder, to the point that his fingers immediately punctured the man’s skin, causing little creeks of blood to flow from the wound. The man clenched his teeth and screamed in pain, but soon found his entire body being controlled and manipulated by Corg.

“Freak? Freak? So it’s let’s gang up on Corg again, isn’t it? ISN’T IT?” Corg screamed incoherently.

Corg swung the man in a half circle, bringing him face-first into a wall.

“C’mon! C’mon” taunted Corg. “Make fun of me some more! Go all the way!”

Corg slammed his knee in the man’s stomach, nearly knocking wind out of him. He then proceed to smash his face into a wall several more times, nearly reducing his face to a bloody pulp.

“Is that the best you can do? I’ve heard fourth-graders hurl better epithets than you. C’mon! Insult me like the rest! Torment ol’ Corg! He doesn’t care! He’s made of stone! He’s a freak!”

Corg roared with a voice so loud that it pierced the thief’s soul, letting a flood of fear into his spirit. The man honestly believed that the boy was going to finish him off.

“Worthless! Worthless! Say it! Say it! Say that Corg is worthless! SAY IT!”

Finally, Corg, his fingers digging deeper in the man’s flesh, swung the man around one last time, sending his body into one of the few glass cases that hadn’t been shattered yet, sending it to join its fellow glass fixtures.

***

Dee and Carmen ran as fast they could through the museum, accompanied by two guardians in the black clothing armed with laser pistols. It had been a coincidence that they were passing by the museum when they heard the alarms go off. They quickly found two guardians, who were privately contracted by the university as special security, and made a mad dash to the museum to see if Corg was alright.

The reached a large room near their workplace that looked like a complete warzone. Most of the glass cases had been smashed and large, threatening pieces of broken glass littered the floor. Lying on the ground were the unconscious bodies of four men, none of whom Dee or Carmen had ever seen in the museum before. They also noted the presence of what looked like weapons, laser guns, maybe, on the ground near them. The guardians ran past the two girls to neutralize the would-be crooks before they woke up.

“They’re still alive, but will need medical attention,” Dee heard one of them say to the other.

“Look!” cried Carmen. “It’s Corg!”

Sure enough, huddled against the wall near the hallway that led to their workspace was Corg. The young boy sat still with his head almost between his knees, almost completely oblivious to the arrival of his friends and the guardians. He simply sat there, motionless.

“Corg!” screamed Dee, who usually never displayed very much emotion. “It’s us!”

The boy looked up at them as they ran over to where he was. Dee and Carmen both gasped when they saw him. His face was several shades of red, from physical exertion, the blood that ran from the cuts on his face he had got from getting his face smashed against several panes of glass, and from the blood that had mixed with his tears. The two girls saw that he was in a complete state of shock from whatever had just happened.

The two girls flung their arms around him, but Corg remained unresponsive.

“Dear me!” exclaimed Dee. “His back! It’s full of glass!”

Several large shards of glass protruded from his now bloody back and his “Newman Fan Service band” T-shirt was soaking in blood.

“Carmen, you hold him up while I get these out of him,” barked a concerned Dee.

Carmen, nodded anxiously. She pulled Corg’s head into her embrace and rested it against her chest near her shoulder. The sound of a muffled sob coming from Corg quickly reached her ears.

“It’s okay, Corgie. We’re here for you,” whispered Carmen reassuringly.

Dee pronounced the word “RES” and an eerie blue glow emanated from one of her hands. She went to work, pulling out the shards of glass with one hand and using her RES technique, a technique that Palmans used to heal themselves and each other, to seal the wounds with the other.

“He’s still going to need some professional medical attention,” observed Dee, trying to keep calm. “But he’ll pull through from looks of it.”

Corg continued weeping uncontrollably into Carmen’s shoulder, who mussed with his dirty blonde hair, whispering words of consolation into his ears. Dee, soon finished with her “repairs”, joined Carmen in embracing Corg.

“It’s okay, my friend. We’re here with you. We’ll have to go with the guards to file a report, but after that the two of us will take care of you.”

“Yeah,” whispered Carmen. “You can count on us.”