Gauntlet (Old)

Part 1: Chapter 3

I woke up again. I was beginning to get tired of being unconscious so often, but I did feel refreshed. To my dismay, I was still lying on the floor in front of the bed, with a syringe poking out of my shoulder. Corru was standing in front of me, frowning.

"It doesn't usually work that efficiently. You didn't wake up early and sneak out, or not wake up at all." The monotony was all there, despite the sentence being in dire need of some sort of emotion.

"Were you waiting there the whole time?" What else was there to say? It was strange for her to just be standing there when I woke up. She ignored the question so effectively that I questioned whether or not I had said anything at all. She just reached her hand out to me with the intention of pulling me up.

"Let's do this again." I gave her my left arm, but from her perspective, probably just swung my stump at her. It was strange enough to lose an arm, but stranger still to lose your dominant one.

Correcting with my right hand, admittedly a little embarrassed, she pulled me up not a second after. I was pulled with such a velocity that the wormhole incident replayed in my mind for an instant, but it was enough to land on my feet. I stayed up for a second, feeling the opposite of natural, but it didn't last long, as my right leg - the only straight one, as my left landed awkwardly - buckled and I fell backward.

Stopped from falling fully by my strangely positioned left leg, I stayed there and took advantage of the situation. I swung forward for all that my upper body strength was good for, but overcompensated. The momentum caused my left leg to slip from underneath me. I braced by extending both arms, but my right arm wasn't enough to support the fall, buckling as well and letting my stump hit the floor at full force with my face following it.

I let out a muffled cry from my new position on the floor from the pain of the stump. Corru stood there, unfazed and said, "Again." It was a stern voice, one I hadn't heard her use before. She reached her hand out again. This was met with a groan I hoped would convey that I was in pain and didn't want to do this again. She instead took it as an invitation to pull me up some other way.

Saying nothing, she walked up to me. She slid her right hand under my stomach and the other was hooked under my arms. She pulled me up more gently, but still seemed to try and bring herself not to. I looked over to her to see a face hiding a myriad of emotions.

"If you want to be so incompetent at such a simple human function, then I guess I'll have to help." All emotion was lost again. I just stared at her in pure confusion. It was confusion, but a different kind. The kind I felt when I got here, it was different. This wasn't just confusion, it was an amalgamation of different soups with a broth of confusion, which was unpleasant and left a bad taste in your mouth.

"What's wrong?" was the statement I used to break the silence of the moment. At that same moment, however, I felt the presence of Corru's arm disappear as I plunged forward, this time turning my face and keeping my arms at my side. It hurt, but not as much.

"What the hell?" I burst out, pretty annoyed at her behavior.

"The last thing we need is for you to be mad. I'll leave you be and come back in fifteen minutes," she began walking, but paused, said, "Remember that you won't make it five minutes in this world without me," and kept walking. I heard the door swing open and slam closed. I couldn't help feel bad, but had no idea what I should have felt bad about. At least I had some time to reflect. I suddenly felt extremely tired, however, so instead of reflecting, I thought it a better idea to rest.

My invasion and overthrow of the moon people was interrupted right as I got to the moon king's castle, when I saw the door handle melt, shortly followed by the door and eventually the whole castle became a puddle as I shifted realities, waking up to the sun, or whatever this place's star is, shining through the crack of the door reflected by a mirror on the workbench. It was perfectly positioned to shine directly in my eyes.

I couldn't see Corru anywhere, and that arm on the workbench was calling my name. I was given some crawling experience by the creature that took my arm, but as it turns out, it's much more difficult with one. It took a while, but I got to the workbench. It was towering over me, despite being a waist-height table. I had one arm to get it. To my disappointment, I could barely reach the edge of the table with my right arm fully extended.

I began looking around the table and couldn't help notice that it was only supported by a framework of wooden pillars. Circumstance demands ingenuity, or whatever excuse I can use to justify this decision. I crawled over to the side of the table, looking at the horizontal pillar around halfway up it. Upper body strength, I need you right now. With a deep breath, I lifted my body while holding on to the pillar for a second, but couldn't get my body on it. I collapsed to catch my breath. 

This was a humbling experience, being defeated by a table that held my cool robot arm just out of my reach. Maybe I could've lifted myself longer if I had a slimmer build. At the same time, that would have made it harder to gain strength, so I guess it was a lose-lose situation. The door burst open, something I wasn't mentally prepared for and out came the red-skinned woman wearing the same leather armor as before.

"You moved. That arm will be awarded as a trophy for walking, so let us hurry it up."