The Rose Bud

3K 78 7
                                    

Riptid3's P.O.V.

"Arti, slow down!"

"Why should I?! There's no time to waste!"

"You sound like a four-year-old!"

The last thing I remember is getting dragged off my virtual couch by a certain magenta crazy person and now I'm here: outside of the Halliday Journals, again.

"Why are we here, anyway?" I question while panting like a flipping dog.

"Parzival messaged me saying he was heading over here and he wanted to tell us something."

"Ah, okay."

Fucking, why?!

Before we can head in, I overhear a bunch of yelling. I glance towards the entrance and see a gargantuan pile of avatars. I manage to get a window to see who they're going bonkers over.

Parzival! Wait- why am I surprised?

He's the first person on the scoreboard, after all.

"I'll get him out of this mess. Follow me in," Arti whispers.

She dones one of her disguises, complete with an Alien chestburster. It's one of my favorite costumes she owns. I follow her in the pristine glass doors, but I try not to get noticed. I mean, I'm the second person on the scoreboard. Didn't think about that until now. Hehe, oops...

Arti drags Parzival into a hidden room under the stairs. I follow her in. Then, she releases the chestburster and I burst out laughing (full pun intended). The expression on Parzival's face was priceless!

"Not cool!" Parzival exclaims at Arti. Then, his snaps his eyes to me. "You're okay with this?!"

"I'm sorry!" I say in between laughs. "But your face is worth the number of credits in your account!"

He laughs but a smirk is present. It's in a very teasing manner. We eventually calm down and then Arti speaks up.

"Dude, you're the Parzival now. You have to have a disguise."

She opens up her inventory and pulls out some glasses. She puts them on Parzival and his hair turns black. Oh boy...

"Clark Kent glasses. They hide your identity without changing your look." Then, she pulls out two suits and holds them up.

"I'm not wearing that," Parzival says.

And here we are! Walking up to the Curator with "Parzival" looking like a digital Clark Kent. We stride up to the Curator and he glances at us.

"You three, again?"

"Yeah, yeah. We need to see the memory when Halliday is talking to Morrow about-"

"The date. Of course." He then strides off. We follow him back towards the memory. When we arrive, Arti yanks off Parzival's disguise. The memory starts up and Parzival points out a certain person.

"Look at the man in the back there," he says as he points to a slender man in a white button up.

"No way! Sorento?!" Ari replies. I lay low in the back and stay quite when his name is mentioned.

I hate that man.

"Before he was at IOI, he was an intern at Gregarious Games. He claims to know everything about Halliday. That's how he convinced people to build the Sixers for him. But ask Morrow, the only thing he knew about Halliday, was how he liked his coffee," Parzival explains

"Well that's depressing," I say as a side comment. I pay attention to the memory once I hear Sorento talking.

"So, I was thinking we could have different tiers and the people could have access to different things depending on how much they paid. There could be a gold, silver, platinum, bronze, and water could be the highest because 'Oasis'?" Sorento tries to communicate his idea to Halliday, but I seriously doubt Halliday would go for anything like that.

"This is a killer latte," Halliday says as he completely disregards Sorento's idea.

"Fast forward to the part about the date," Parzival says from my right. Curator does what he's told and we listen in to what is occurring.

"Wait, what?" Arti spits out.

"Just listen," Parzival replies.

"So, how'd it go?" Morrow inquires.

"Nothing, I invited her over.

Morrow sighs before asking a different question. "Did you at least get her name?"

"Kira."

"No, that's her gamers tag."

"Karen. Karen Underwood."

"No way! Ogden Morrow's wife?!" Arti expresses her astonishment.

"Yep. But this is long before they were married," I reply. I finally decide to step in between Arti and Parzival.

"They went on one date," Parzival leans over my shoulder and tells her. Our conversation ends there and we draw our attention back to the memory.

"What happened?" Morrow asks.

"She wanted to go dancing, so we watched a movie."

"That's it? Come on man, gimme some juice. Where's the juice?!" Morrow says while they're both laughing.

We listen to the rest of it before Parzival says something.

"This is the only time Kira's name is mentioned in his memories."

"Wait, that seems a bit strange, don't ya think?" Ari says.

"Impossible," Curator says from behind us.

"Go ahead and check. I bet you all my credits," Parzival fires back.

Curator pulls up his database which looks like a computer almost. A bunch of pictures is flying across the "screen."

"Search Karen Underwood Morrow," he commands. I pull my attention away from him and back to Parzival.

"Don't you get it? She's the rosebud at the center of Halliday's memories!" He says.

"I actually agree with that. If she's only mentioned once, she has to be of some major significance." I say back to him.

"That's the part of his past that Halliday was trying to escape!"

"He loved her..." Ari says.

"It seems I have lost," Curator suddenly says. "A bet is a bet." He flips some silver object toward Parzival and he catches it.

"A quarter?" He inquires. "I'm good." He flips it back to the Curator. Yet, Curator flips it back.

"I insist," he says. Ari grabs the quarter out of his hand and flips it.

"You free tomorrow?" She asks him.

"Me?" Parzival asks while turning around which causes the Curator to turn around.

"Of course you!" Ari exclaims.

"Uh yeah..?" He replies with doubt.

She puts the quarter in his pocket.

"You know the Distracted Globe?"

"Yeah. The dance club planet."

"There's something I want to show you. Meet us there. 10:00 pm. tomorrow. Don't be late." She says while walking off.

"Too bad. I was beginning to like her," Curator says. I laugh and walk in the direction Ari went.

"See ya later, Knight," I say and skip off.

Never been dancing. This should be fun.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~OMG! Thank you guys so much for 100 reads! Love you all!

Holy cow, a long chapter! I'm so excited to write the next one! It's one of my favorite moments in the movie. See ya next chapter!

I'm Not Ready Where stories live. Discover now