Master PC - The Great Game Ch. 01

Story Title:

Master PC - The Great Game

Author:

IronLacedCarbon

Disclaimer:

This story is purely fictitious and not suitable for anyone that is below the legal age in their country to view pornographic material. All characters involved in the story are over the age of eighteen and belong to myself. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred. Reader discretion is advised.

Chapter 1:
The Master's Power

----------

It's time.

"This should have been our first story."

Considering how poorly done our very first submission was, I'm glad it wasn't.

"What was wrong with the debut of The Unbound Genie? I liked it."

So did I, but...

"But?"

There was so much more we could've done in the opening chapters, and even the later ones are more focused on sex than anything else.

"We've had fun writing it, don't be so critical. Still, you're right, we've also improved since we started all of this nonsense."

Not by much, granted. But yeah, I'd say that we've pretty much got the hang of things now.

"Damn skippy."

Are you ready to finally get this shit-show started?

"You took the words right out of my mouth."

Concept created by JR Parz.

"Execution perfected by William Pratt."

Ladies, gentlemen, and everything in between... No disrespect.

"We present to the internet:"

Another goddamn Master PC tale.

"I can hear the critics already. I tApPeD oUt At ThE mUrDeR."

... The what?!

"This one isn't all bimbos and sunshine, folks!"

-----

- February 14th - Sunday - 4:07 A.M. - Whittaker Apartments -

In the dimly-lit living room of Lawrence's small apartment, the only sounds that could be heard were that of fingers aggressively assaulting a keyboard and the maniacal, nasally giggling of an unfortunate-looking man in his early thirties.

"Yes." Lawrence hissed to himself, running his slimy tongue along the bracers that lined his thick, crooked teeth. "Yesss."

The only source of light in the room was coming from the laptop in front of him, obscuring the rest of his surroundings and allowing the pasty, acne-riddled man to focus on his primary objective.

Lawrence slammed his index finger down on the enter key; his greasy, balding dome glimmered in the light as he watched the list of commands populate on the screen over a high-resolution satellite image of the planet.

"Yesss! Haha!" He cheered, throwing both of his boney arms into the air as spit lightly sprayed from his mouth and trickled onto the screen.

"It's all coming together now..." Lawrence hissed softly. "You'll see... You'll all see..." His breathing was getting heavier by the second. "You blind, ignorant fools... None of you are in control anymore, and you're oblivious to the madness around you. Well, what happens when the foundation for your understanding of life comes crumbling down all around you? What happens when you find out the truth, and can't do anything about it but suffer and watch as your existence is torn apart? What happens when you realize it's all just one, big, stupid game to the people that pull our strings?!"

He ended up screaming in rage by the time his sentence was finished, then slammed his fist down on the small table in front of him, sending several empty cans of light beer tumbling to the ground from the impact.

"No more..." Lawrence took a deep breath, every fiber of his being trembling as an unyielding fury coursed through it.

"This is the end." He said, his voice quivering as tears streamed down his reddening face. "It's time to rip down the veil, and show the people of Imperial City just how fickle their oh-so-important lives really are..."

Then, something crossed the young man's mind in that moment, perhaps the last shred of humanity left within its broken structure.

It dawned on him that there were a few people in his life worth sparing from the nightmare that was about to strike the city.

"I'm sorry..." Lawrence sniffled, doing his best to gather himself as his hands found the keyboard once again and quickly began typing.

"This should make up for what I've set in motion... You... You weren't always the best friends a guy could have, but you were fair, kind-enough, and none of you have ever let me down when I really needed you... Especially you, Matt... Thank you all..."

With a few more strokes and a punch of the enter key, his final command was processed through the mystical program known to very few as Master PC.

Click...

"And with that..." Lawrence whispered softly, a weak smile breaking out across his fat, sausage-like lips. "The Great Game begins."

Schlink!

Lawrence's body slumped forward and to the left as a bullet passed through the back of his skull and one of the empty cans sitting on the corner of the table, no spatter residue making contact with the laptop.

His limp, lifeless body turned in the swivel chair he was sitting in, then fell out of it, landing face-first into the dark and onto the cold, tiled floor of his kitchen.

Blood began to pool around his assailant's feet as it quickly drained from his corpse.

"Target eliminated." The woman said softly, her features obscured by the darkness around her.

"Well done." Came a static-masked voice from the small communication device within her inner ear. "Finish up there, and then report back to the rendezvous location. Zeta and her Master will meet you at the extraction site in exactly twenty-four hours."

"Zeta, sir?"

"Correct."

"... Understood."

As the woman turned Lawrence's chair and carefully sat down on its worn, dirty cushion, the light from the laptop's screen revealed her tall, slender figure, which was wrapped up in a bodysuit from the neck down that appeared to be made of a cloth-like, dark, midnight-pink fabric.

Once the woman was settled, she reached down and slid the silenced, black handgun into the straps on her right calf that acted as a holster, then brought her attention to the computer running a software with the ability to rip apart the fabric of reality itself if even slightly misused.

As expected, she found herself locked out of Lawrence's account, which would've kept a detailed history of everything he'd changed in the short period of time he was in possession of the program.

'Input User's Full Name:____________', in basic, bright, green text was displayed over a black background.

Master PC refused to let the accounts of deceased individuals be accessed by anyone at all, but also removed any password restrictions on alterations that may have been in place by a user who was no longer among the living.

In other words, the logged-out screen told her that the person she assassinated wasn't some kind of clone of the original that was being used as a possible decoy, he was the genuine user.

Kill confirmed.

Still, she needed to discover and undo whatever Lawrence had done to the world, no matter what the scale of the changes were.

It's a good thing that she had a bit of help on that end of the situation.

"Alright, Omie. You're up."

The woman blinked, and her big, green eyes lit up with a bright pink upon reopening, the iris' in their centers missing.

The serious, driven expression on her stunning, angelic face shifted along with her eye-color, softening up as a smile broke out across her matte-black-painted lips.

"Finally." She giggled, running a hand through the long, now-pink bangs that hung down over her left eye; the rest of her short, black hair practically invisible in the darkness behind her. "It's about time the boys gave us another field assignment, as easy as this one was. I was actually starting to think we found the program's last copy when they shipped us off to Berlin three months ago."

As she spoke, her glowing eyes were simultaneously and very-actively scanning the keyboard.

"Aside from that disaster, even you have to admit, the organization has been working overtime on tracking down users. This guy discovered the email containing the program, what, thirty minutes before we showed up?"

"Fair enough." She shrugged. "We were busy last year, I guess it makes sense that there aren't as many of them as there used to be, all things considering."

Frowning, she glanced down at where Lawrence's body lay for only a split-second.

"That, and the remaining users have likely been flying pretty low under the radar ever since the Pillar of Duty stepped up his game."

"Game..." The woman mumbled to herself. "That word keeps showing up in the patterns of what this creep was typing. I can't tell if he had some kind of 'grand plan' in mind for what he was going to do to the people of this city, or if he was just aiming for pure chaos. Either way, this is astoundingly intricate for a first-time user."

"So? He's not the first idiot-savant that we've ever-"

"Trix, this isn't good." A look of horror swept over the woman's face. "Holy shit..."

"Calm down. What's the problem?"

"Problems, plural."

"I assumed as much. Start with the most urgent."

Click...

"... Well, somehow this guy knew we were coming, for one." She said, her voice shaky as she watched a poorly-drawn, cartoon clown run across the display of the monitor, laughing in a high-pitched chuckle as it wore what appeared to be a thick, lumpy, grey vest with a glowing number three in the center and a lit fuse sticking out of its side.

"Omie..."

Beep...

"Two, he's sealed the room with a barrier that even I can't break through." She chuckled nervously with wide eyes as she firmly placed her hands over her ears in dismay, watching the number three become two.

"Shit! We can only handle versions up to one-point-six, why did the brass send us instead of that Cerberus?!"

"We may not have been the only ones to underestimate this psycho..."

Beep...

"What about the explosion's magnitude?"

"Three, he wasn't specific. We're rolling the dice on this one." She said as a bright, shimmering, pink aura began to appear around every inch of her body.

Beee-

-----

- Sunday - 7:32 A.M. - Comic Sins -

At the sound of a jingling bell, Matthew's head rose from the glass sales counter that he'd fallen asleep on.

He coughed and cleared his throat, then rubbed his eyes as they adjusted to the low lighting of Comic Sins, a small retail shop that the twenty-four-year-old owned and managed by himself.

"We're closed, come back tomorrow." Matt grumbled, his deep, hoarse voice barely carrying across the length of the spacey room.

"Actually, we're about to open." Sarah said, locking the front door of the store behind her. "I noticed you didn't even make it home last night, again."

Ignoring his little sister, Matt glanced around for something to drink, his gaze quickly falling upon a half-empty bottle of water that he eagerly snatched up with one of his meaty hands and finished off in a heartbeat.

"Ahhh..." He sighed with relief, then threw the plastic container at a trash bin sitting by the door to the backroom, missing it by a mile.

As Sarah stepped up to the counter Matt was sitting behind, the awkward, raven-haired girl dressed in a baggy, grey hoodie and loose-fitting jeans frowned at the sight of her mess of a brother.

Scattered around the entire countertop were a variety of notebooks and binders that held all sorts of illustrations and documents that Matthew had drawn up from scratch during the late hours of nearly every night for the past few years.

"How are the stories coming along?" She asked, trying to be more polite than actually interested. "Any new developments in that fantasy land of yours?"

Matt scratched his cheek through the thick, wooly, black beard on his face as he looked down at the unorganized chaos in front of him.

"Maybe." He said, the dark rings around his eyes more prominent than that of a raccoon's. "I think I've got enough material to finally publish the first couple of issues for one of the stories." Matt slowly began gathering everything together, trying his best to stack it all into one pile. "As long as that old printer in mom's basement still works, that is."

"Wow." Sarah looked genuinely surprised. "Which story are you going with? Please tell me it's the one about that cute vampire orphan." She snickered, smiling from ear to ear and lightly bouncing on her heels.

Matt rolled his eyes. "I might fit him in there eventually, weirdo." That was the only story of his that she ever enjoyed, and he wrote The Last Drop way back when he was a senior in high school. "It's going to be a collaboration of most of the stories in the end, but they'll all have their own individual series. The final serial will likely be a final struggle between the remaining protagonists and the main villain."

"... Sort of like what 'Varvel Comics' did with the 'Revengers' Movies?"

Matt rose to his feet after a short but uncomfortable moment of silence between the two of them, the pile of papers and writing supplies bundled together in both hands as he stood nearly a foot taller than his twenty-one-year-old sibling.

"If you'll excuse me, I have to go burn these." He said, turning and making his way towards the door.

"Wait, wait!" Sarah said with a laugh, walking around the counter that also acted as a display for several limited-edition comic books and trading cards available for sale. "Geez. You need to quit being so sensitive, Matt." She said, taking the clutter off of his hands and leading the way in the direction he was initially going.

"Four-hundred-eleven." He grumbled, following behind Sarah as she opened the door to the backroom and went inside. "Still, you've got a point. A few consistencies with that franchise's method of production would make me feel like a hack if I did it as planned. I think I might need to rework a few details in how I go about this."

Sarah walked across to the spacious room that's walls were completely covered by the store's overstock and backroom merchandise, which consisted mostly of anime/cosplay costumes and regalia, along with categorized wracks of unsold and dated comics, cards, keychains, and several other goodies that Matt would easily be able to sell over the internet at a better price; then set the bundle of materials down in the middle of a very well-organized desk and on top of his laptop.

"I think that you think too much, you fuckin' neat-freak." She said, watching Matt saunter over to the long, black couch in the corner of the room and collapse onto it with a rather audible flump. "That, and you seriously need to start working out and find a girlfriend, or something. The way you just sort of exist here all day is depressing."

"Quit worrying about me and go open my store, Beaky." Matt said to one of his two only and mildly overpaid employees, then followed up with a lengthy yawn. "If you want, you can be done with your shift after I wake up and have a smoke."

Sarah wrinkled her big nose and ground her teeth together in frustration. "Rude." She said, slamming the door behind her as she left.

Matt sighed as he found a comfortable position to lie in on his side and drifted off to sleep with his shoes still on.

-----

- Sunday - 9:25 A.M. - Imperial Heights -

"Well, then where is he?" Trent Stone asked, stepping out of the high-rise elevator and onto the top floor of his father's hotel and base of operations.

"Can't say. Fish has taken up drinking as of late, he might be sleeping in."

He gave Wendy, the busty, twenty-something-year-old blonde at the desk across from the elevator, a polite smile and a wink as he continued down the left corridor.

Wendy smiled back and waved at him, then went back to whatever it is she pretended to do all day when she wasn't busy worshiping his dad's dick, Trent mused to himself while he did his best not to explode at the frustrating news he was just informed of.

After turning the corner and quickening his pace, Trent's warm, friendly expression fell and he dawned one that was more fitting for the disgruntled, ruthless, businessman that he believed he was.

"Did that pathetic shit-heel forget what happened the last time he was late? We're just a few days away from putting the finishing touches on everything, and he knew for fact that he would be working today." He snarled, adjusting the red tie that was tucked under the coat of his black, tailored suit. "Go to his apartment, break his arm, and don't fix it until you get back to the warehouse."

"Got it, boss."

Without another word, Trent tapped the small bluetooth headset attached to his right ear as he approached the wide, mahogany, double-door to his father's main office.

He grabbed both handles and twisted them, then pushed forward and strolled in as if he owned the place.

That would most likely be the reality, one day, but it was still fun to act like he was king in the meantime.

Hell, the old man usually found it amusing, Trent thought to himself.

However, as soon as he laid eyes on his father, he knew there was a problem.

"Cuban?" The tall and muscular vice-president of an international hotel-chain asked, slowing his pace and adding a more professional tone to his voice as he cleared the gap between the office's entrance and his father's desk.

"Himilayan." Robert Stone grunted as he ashed the golden-leaf-wrapped cigar in his large, callused left hand, which was all Trent could see of the man from behind his wide, brown, full-grain leather chair.

He was idly staring out of the one-hundred-fiftieth-floor window of his hotel suite that spanned from wall-to wall and ceiling-to-floor towards the main part of the city that he ruled with an invisible, but iron-solid fist, which is something the man in his early sixties only did when something was on his mind.

"Willis is dead." Robert simply said, his gruff voice devoid of any emotion as his hand pulled towards his face for a long drag of his cigar. "And so is Richmond." He exhaled the thick cloud of smoke as he spoke, causing his tone to shift only slightly. "Both of them were killed in their homes just before midnight, last night."

"What?" Trent blinked. The first half of that news was somewhat devastating, Willis Sanderton was like an uncle to him; he'd known the guy since he could walk, and had been currently funding his little side-project up to this point. The second half, however... That was actually good enough of a development to outweigh the loss of his father's oldest business partner.

"Imperial is mine, now." He said, ashing his cigar onto the bright, red carpet underneath their feet. "And mine alone."

Trent expected those words to be said at some point in his life, but by him, and with more... Enthusiasm? Satisfaction. Something, at least. The tone his father carried made it sound as if he'd given up as soon as the battle was won.

"Pops, this is big!" Trent said, slamming his hands down on the man's desk as soon as he was in reach. "I'm gonna' miss Uncle Willis, without a doubt. But, with him and Richy out of the way, we can do whatever the hell we want now!"