Heroes of Dreamland, Book 3: The World of Nintendo (OLD)

Memories, a Pokemon Battle, and More Mysteries

Byte's POV:

This stinks, being trapped in my own head. Trapped inside the only place that I can be myself.

Tedium has basically shoved me out of the way and taken over. Right now I'm stuck in a corner of my mind, along with my imagination, which he's pushed next to me so it won't bother him.

Imagination is one of his greatest weaknesses. How do I know this? Let's just say, you learn things about people when you share a head when them. Although, I'm not sure if this guy fits into the classification 'people.' Being a person usually means you have a sense of humanity. From what I can tell, this guy doesn't.

He's clearly demonstrating this by the way he's stalking Kirby. The little puffball just jumped under a table to hide from the kids he's playing with, and Tedium just whispered something that I'm sure he thought was completely witty, but that sounded rather cliché to me. Seriously? He's playing hide-and-seek, so you said "Ready or not, here I come?" So original. Only around 90% of the population could come up with that one.

He glares at me in our mind. "Shut up, it's better than you could come up with."

"So what if it is?" I sneer, starting to fight against him again. It's hard work, but if I try, I can manage to take over for a minute or two. With a grin, I realize that I'm the one in control for the moment. "Kirby! Run! Find Rose!" I urgently yelp to him.

"Curse you!" Tedium hisses, taking back over.

Sticking his head out from under the booth, Kirby looks around in confusion. "Poyo?" he murmurs. No, Kirby. Don't decide it was nothing. Please, you cute-and-heroic-yet-a-bit-daft Star Warrior, just do what I said. And hurry up! Tedium's getting closer.

I exhale in relief as Kirby pops up and starts dashing through the marketplace, away from evil-ized me. Thank goodness.

"Curse you!" Tedium growls again, shoving me even farther back into the corner of my mind that's become my prison. I always felt sorry for Meta Knight being stuck in a mirror that one time, but this has got to be at least ten times worse.

Hmph. Well, as long as I'm stuck back here, I might as well entertain myself. I love making up video games in my head and then playing through them mentally. If I ever got around to it and had somewhere safe to do it, I could probably program a whole game in one all-nighter, as long as I was doing it the old-fashioned way. (E.g., for the Wii or something, not for one of the new super-complicated consoles.)

I start to play through a new made-up game, one from the Legend of Zelda series this time, but Tedium stops me with an almost-pained whimper. "No more of your imagining," he seethes at me. "And if you try resisting again, I will make you sorry."

"My head, my rules, jerkface," I tell him snarkily in reply. He growls but doesn't punish me in any way, which I'm grateful for, even if I wouldn't ever admit it.

"Why don't you just spend some time thinking of home, little girl?" he suggests, a smirk in his voice. Oh, great. Maybe he is going to punish me, after all.

"No, please," I beg. I hate thinking of home, especially now that I've gotten away from it. "Don't make me do that."

Cackling in a way that is ever-so-chilling, he reaches into my little piece of my mind and lets a dark cloud out. I shiver as I'm pulled into a memory.

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"Byte, why can't you just play the games everyone else is playing? Conformity is optimal, and the games you talk about are too colorful and imaginative, sweet," my mom sighs as I talk animatedly about how I found several more episodes of the old Kirby anime buried in some ancient computer files today.