Chapter 31: Shit Luck
If I ever had any questions about what type of luck I had, they were all answered right now. Shit luck, that was the type of my luck, I was stuck firmly on shit luck.
Taking in a deep breath I looked down at my right arm that was still bound by rope to the bed. I was sure that the armor had stretched the rope somewhat, but it was not enough to actually be able to break it. Then again, my neighbor, whose name I was still not clear on, did buy one of the better ropes found in the local hardware store.
Looking at it, it was clearly a nylon rope which meant that it got an A+ for strength and durability, but otherwise, it was shit when it got wet. Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t willing to bleed all over it again just to make it stretch enough to get my right arm out.
There had to be a setting in this armor that allowed me to get out of nylon rope.
Right?
’Sync has been completed,’ came the words across my helmet screen. I narrowed my eyes and hoped that I would be able to figure out how to work this thing before the killer came back with lunch.
I leaned over on my right side and brought my left arm as close to the metal-clad fingers of my right hand as I possibly could. I took a second to marvel at the beauty of my armor. It was as black as night when there was no light, but when the light hit just right, there was a dark purple hue to it. The metal overlapped like dragon or snake scales but the middle of each scale came to a sharp point with a little hook on the end, similar to shark skin. It was really amazing.
There were no words on the wrist computer that I could see, but maybe I was looking at it from the wrong angle, I wasn’t sure. However, just to be sure it wasn’t sleeping like my laptop did when I ignored it for a while, I ran the tip of my armor’s claw (because what kickass armor didn’t end in claws?!) over the center of the unit.
All of a sudden, an asterisk-like shape appeared on my screen. As I moved my finger, the little star-like symbol moved around in my helmet. I brought it over to the red heading entitled ’weapons’ and tapped on my mini computer.
The word ’weapons’ lit up and then a drop-down box appeared in the center of my screen. I raised my eyebrows in wonder at the number of weapons that seemed to be installed into this skin-tight armor. I debated between wrist blades and plasma cannon, one sounding more along the lines of what I needed versus one that sounded really, really fun to try and I ended up choosing the wrist blades.
Did I mention my shit luck?
Yeah, the wrist blades were three incredible blades that were just as matte black as the rest of my armor and must have been at least one to two feet in length, going past my fingers by an impressive length. The downside? They slid out of my armor on the other side of the rope, nowhere near close enough to actually cut it. Fuck my life.
I debated whether or not I would end up blowing my own arm off if I used the plasma cannon to cut a piece of rope that was half an inch wide and instead chose the safer route of picking a different weapon. Mind you, the rope on my forearm was doubled so that was at least an inch of rope. However, the plasma cannon still seemed like a bit of overkill.
Awkwardly scrolling down my list of weapons choices, I came across another one that simply said ’laser’. That one seemed promising. Hopefully, it was strong enough to be able to cut through the rope but not strong enough to damage the armor underneath. Because let’s face it, the armor was so pretty that I didn’t want it damaged for any reason.
Clicking on my weapon of choice, I was a bit disappointed when nothing happened. It wasn’t like I was expecting this giant thing to come out of the armor, but at the same time, I was expecting something. I turned my head to look at the rope in frustration.
And that was when I saw the prettiest thing ever. Reflecting off of the bright white rope was a small, dark purple spot. When I moved my head, the dot moved with it. So the laser had to be attached to my helmet somehow and right beside my eyes at that. What side? I had no idea, but I had a laser and a pressing need to use the washroom so I wasn’t fucking around anymore.
Lining up the dot to where I wanted it on the rope, I tapped my wrist computer.
Nothing happened.
Holding back a whole bunch of swear words, I closed my eyes for a second. Opening them back up, I looked at the screen in front of me again. I had clicked on the laser, expecting it to just shoot, but apparently, that was the beginning of a long list of other things that I had to go through first.
If this was the only way to work the armor then it was not for any type of hot weapon combat, unless of course, I had a few hours to figure out everything first. I hated technology.
Taking a breath, I scrolled down the options. The first column in front of me was a bunch of numbers that really didn’t seem to mean anything. However, as I scrolled up and down the numbers, the size of the dot on the white rope either became bigger or smaller. Choosing a size that was about half an inch, the same width as the rope, I clicked ’okay’.
That brought me to a second column with a bunch of slashes. They increased in number from a single slash to six slashes. Thinking that I had the correct width for what I needed, I should only need a single shot to be able to get the ropes off. Selecting the single slash, a third column popped up.
Once again holding back my temper, marveling that alien technology could give people emotions they were otherwise told they weren’t capable of having, I looked at the numbers on the third column. Picking the biggest number, 150, I clicked on that, completely done with trying to figure everything out.
At this point in time, I might as well wait for my neighbor to come in and let me out of the ropes... it might take less time.
