Overlord and Princess back up Jan 28

   I awoke one day to find myself alone. My memory was fuzzy but I knew normally someone would be in the bed with me. The blanket was pulled up over my breasts and tight under my chin as though someone had tucked me rather than sleeping naturally. As I sat up the blanket did not fall from me as it should, instead it fell apart. Its grey and drab coloration due to decay and being mold eaten. A quick scan of the room told me something was not right. My bed was on the floor, the wooden posts all but gone, the mattress collapsed and springs sticking out and rusted. The wooden floor, walls, and cieling revealing that at some point moisture had gotten in, allowing mold, fungi, and even plants to take root and spread; a window at some point had broken but no projectile to be seen as the cause. The lattice frames had simply rotted from the outside in allowing the wind and gravity alone to dislodge and break them. Nearby there still stood my cabinets of little trinkets and treasures. Most however were unrecognizable, decayed fluff, wooden figurines that hat rotted away to piles of mold and splinters. The most recognizable things were porceline figurines although their paint was mostly gone on some and completly missing on others; having faded away or fallen off into neat piles around the base of the figurines like colorful sand. Time had clearly passed, how much I could not tell, something was wrong. I knew the conditions around me were caused either by alot of time, or by the wet and hot summers and cold winters coming into the room speeding up the processes of decay. My own body is self repairing, even the soft skin over my frame contains a self repairing system; yet even that felt like it had weathered more than it should have. I do not know what finnally woke me up, I shouldn't have stayed asleep through adverse weather conditions entering my room.

   As I walked from the bed I could feel the wood under my feet struggling against my weight, out the windows what should have been the sight of a wide road and a large decorative fountain bigger than any swimming pool and home to fish, lillypads, and water fowl, was instead an over grown forested swamp.Where the shops and houses should have been was mostly just trees with the odd wall, stone boarder, or pieces sticking up to indicate where they were. The little shops of the square did not survive whatever happened. Over the tree line I could see the stone castle still standing. Having found no survivng clothing I switched to guard mode so my exterior would be harder and dawn a silver and blue color pattern to simulate clothing.

    I made my way to the castle along the way noteing just how little of the village was still standing, although up close more was still intact than looked like it from above; albeit mostly being held up by the trees growing around the stone parts, while anything concrete or plaster was mostly just piles of dirt or missing entirely. I noted no signs of debris or marks to suggest weapons had been used to cause any of this; I actually found that more distressing. When I reached the castle I found it stripped, no tapestries, no furniture, no books, or anything. It had been completly cleared out. The lack of any indication of an attack told me at some point everyone had just left. Taken everything of value, except me, and left. I ran my claw along the stone walls as I walked, finding my way to the Princess' room, I had hoped to find her there in her pink or blue dress, her long blond curly hair, just waiting for me to kidnap her again; yes I was remembering. I would routingly do this, I had another castle myself further away for this purpose; but I also had a closer secret room in the haunted mansion to be closer to her during the off season. But she wasn't there.

  I was remembering more, I had been asleep too long somehow. I tried to find a port but there was no power. I searched my own memories, ex-military unit recommisioned as the "evil sorceress queen" for a fantasy adventure park.The princess, my princess, was also a unit like me. Both very durable, players would use holographic avatars to explore the park and do battle against me; so many complaints about me defeating the avatars. I was, I was...I was to be replaced by some turtle dragon hologram. Yes, they wanted to allow players to use their own robot avatars to explore the parks without risk, switch it around, they already used holographic monsters, they wanted to switch out the bosses with holograms as well. Even though we required no maintanence or extra power; that's why they wanted ex-military units, built to last forever and recover from anything. Too tactical, too strong, too capable of countering the predictable patterns of amateur players. But what happened to the park? I was clearly left alone and my room left untouched save by the elements; yet the castle was picked clean.

  Remembering myself I switched my skin to grey, kept my hair black, and activated my own holographic projections to produce hard light clothing, my fairly revealing evil sorceress outfit. The same hard light projection also gave me curved horns along the sides of my head. My boss mode. I decided to check out the "Castle of Evil" where I would take the princess too for the main quest of the story season. In the off season this whole area around the princess castle is more like an amusement park with shops and carnival attractions for tourists. I had a room I set up secretly in the haunted mansion attraction where the princess and I would meet up to snuggle and utilize our pleasure functions on each other. I remembered I was harsher with the players because I had found out part of the extra cost optional quest rewards was for the princess to put out for the hero that saved her. She did not like this, nor did I, so I made it a point that they would never win. The park owners didn't like it but my logical excuse worked on them; they paid more, and expect a higher reward, which also increased the difficulty of the monsters and other bosses, as the final boss I was following suit to be the hardest challenge. I believe they regretted comssioning me for this job and why they bought some holographic monster to take my job.

  The last thing I remembered was going to the haunted mansion room to wait for the princess. We were done with this, we had heard from players about the Andros Nation back on Earth and intended to leave to join them; after all they could just use a holographic princess or any old pleasure drone for the players if they were going to waste having us; but  I woke up alone and an indeterminate amount of time had passed. However as I was heading that way through the forest and over grown paths I detected a familiar hum, the sense of hard light holograms booting up. It was growing darker and the holographic monsters were appearing, ghost types along with giant fanged bats. The swamp had been natural as far as I could determine with natural wild life. These projections were being beamed in from a satelite, randomly distributing projection cores all over the area. I recognized some of the units but alot of them were new. Had they recommissioned the zone to be a "haunted forest"?, or were there new owners of the park. I did not know. My goal was unchanged, however had new relevance. If the park was still active then maybe the princess was still in the park. My best guess, the evil castle, playing the role of being kidnapped by the monster. After all the players using robot bodies had told the park managers they prefered a robot princess for their extra cost. Maybe they kept her from leaving for Earth after all. I could not allow this.

   Much to my surprise the ghost projections tried to attack me, simple enough to disperse. Nothing to really report about the journey other than the landscape still looked over grown, none of the helpful NPCs either as robots or hard light holograms were around; the villages they would be in were overgrown, although the hard light holograms inside the villages were humanoid ghosts and various zombie types. It wasn't till I got to the draw bridge of the evil castle that I encountered players, who much to my surprise were holograms not robots. An archer in a green tunic, a typical armored paladin, and standing out was a cowboy with a gun; I easily dispatched all three, their hard light projections were at a pretty descent hardness class with a high energy output, so I'd guess around lv.60 or so for all three of them as an average if they were operating by the same rules from when I was the boss. I suppose robot bodies can't be so easily modified and I do remember some hologram players complaining that robot bodies broke the game for them; rich kids playing with expensive toys getting broken; better to keep the robot bodies to the non-combat zones and attractions. That is what I had heard; I do agree from a financial and logical angle.

  I made my way through the evil castle, to the boss, it was the giant turtle dragon they were to replace me with, I dispatched it with relative ease, a little too easily even for me. However the princess was not my princess, it was a hologram. When I left the castle that is when you showed up and brought me here to question me. As I have stated I did not return to the park, I never left. I do not know why I was asleep, or why no one found me. As I have stated.


  ******

   Observing all of this on a recording a well dressed man and woman are with a group of security officers.

   One of the officers holds up a tablet, "We have confirmed this android is Overlord Marja from the old Worlds of Adventure theme parks attractions. The High Fantasy adventure zone was abandoned and fenced off thirty years ago and reopned just last week. Going by the android's account it does sound suspicious they were just in that room alone and no one noticed they were missing all this time."

  "Not really," says the woman, "Overlord Marja was reported stolen after the anti-AI freedom terrorists hit the park thirty years ago. They used a powerful EMP that fried most of the NPCs CPUs beyond repair and the projectors. As their people had invaded and raided the park, among the items not accounted for after were several NPCs and Overlord Marja."

  "This is very upsetting," says the man, "I paid the reconstruction crew good money to go over the overgrown remains of the old park and find everything of value. Clearly they didn't search the haunted mansion very well if there was a whole untouched room with this high end android just lying in it."

  The officer asks, "and what about this Princess the android spoke of?"

  "That," says the woman, "would be Princess Tia,"

   She checks her own clipboard, "Well according to records she wasn't even on site of the day of the attack, Princess Tia was the Andros registration facility. Huh, it says here she did return a few days after the terrorist attack to collect; or rather purchase her things with an Andros fund. Seems she did enter the haunted mansion alone according to this budget report and left with just some small doll that the report says she must have stashed away in the ride to take later. Not unheard of for androids buying their freedom to have stashed away items to also purchase with themselves, especially from amusement parks."


  "Well that paints a sad story," says another officer, "would also explain why this one said she was waiting in the room only to find herself tucked in."

  "Yeah pretty grim," says the head officer, "from an android perspective. Sounds like this Overlord Marja got hit by the EMP, was found by this Princess Tia who tucked her fried body into their secret lover's bed leaving their other stashed items behind like some tomb."

  "Wait, so," says the man, "it just recovered after thirty years?"

  The officer answers, "well according to our study the previous owners had indeed purchased military units for the park, going around the law as no physical living human bodies would be on site as these units have self repairing systems. Chances are with a military repair crew the android might have recovered alot faster, or access to some power source. Guess this Princess Tia didn't know that and assumed her lover had been damaged beyond repair. We can also speculate the new systems put in place last week may have been supplying power over the quantum network to the projections and was being siphoned by this android's in-direct siphon system. We will need to locate and contact this Princess Tia if we can to get more clarification."


  ******


  *a few days later*

   A man in his early twenties is sitting on the couch watching tv. On the screen it shows Overlord Marja meeting up with a shorter woman with long blond hair wearing a casual dress. The two embrace and kiss as the caption reads, *Overlord and Princess united again*. The young man scowls at the tv as an older man standing nearby drinking a beer laughs, "So it really was Marja that fragged you huh?"

  The young man looks over at him, "Yeah dad, that's what it took out your oh so powerful character you loaned me."

  The old man laughs again, "That's just funny, no sooner do they reopen the park, and even let us older players loan out or sell our old saved avatars from their servors; but my own son gets fragged by Marja who wasn't even supposed to be there. I can't tell you how many times I fought through that castle, finnally reached the princess, only to get insta killed by Marja. Now that was a final boss. Not like the games you play these days, the parks are all about making everyone a winner. Just before those asshole attacked the park I was on the message boards signing the petition to keep Marja but make her a raid boss.


   ******

   -A day later-