The Blake, er- Wiggle, er- Phoenix, er- Uber, er- Paradox Wars; Part II

 The Phoenix Wars struggled with general malaise after a while. We had all fought for so long, so many times, gained so much experience, invested it all so much, that we were basically capped out. We had no more new powers. Like in the days of the Wiggle Wars, we devolved into petty political squabbling. Also, I was losing. As the supposed "good" guy of the story line we had contrived, the champion of funkilicity, I had a code of honor I abided by in my combat. Ray, being the champion of education, had no such scruples and won more often than I did. I was getting really bored with that. So, I proposed a permanent alliance with a couple of my friends who ran clans I was not opposed to. Thus began the Uber Wars.

It sounds cool, maybe. But that coolness was short-lived. We had the same problem. While we had successfully gotten friends and associates, including school staff occasionally, to join our gaming over the years, we had dwindled to our core group of friends by this time. We were all really powerful. We could occasionally whip out some awesome duels, but they didn't happen very often. So Ray and I agreed that we would say that total victory would come down to a two out of three, or three out of five, I can't remember, series of duels. The winner of the set of duels would be considered the overall winner and the game would end. 

Those were some epic battles! I remember they were close, they taxed all of our tactical abilities, as well as our practical dueling capabilities. At least one of those battles rampaged through neighboring art classrooms. During classes! With the limited patience and acceptance of our respective art teachers. It was pretty awesome. Our second to last battle, Ray pulled out all the stops, took advantage of a loophole, which involved trading in all the things we used our experience to buy for a discounted refund of that experience, so that he could reinvest it in a way that wasn't expected. I don't know if he won that fight, but he definitely surprised me. We were down to one fight left. I decided I would take pages out of Ray's book to win this last fight, no matter the cost. That meant dirty tricks, blood sacrifices, and the like. I won that last fight. I won the Uber Wars. But, we agreed, afterwards, fitting the story to the events, agreeing to tell it in the way that made the best story, I won by compromising my funkilistic honor. I won by falling to the dark side of education. 

The result was a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a return to the Wiggle Wars of old, except everyone had one special, unique power, a mutation that resulted from the educational radiation left over by the vast magical fallout of the last Uber Wars battles. Mine was to go back in time a few seconds. Others had other abilities. I imagine this to be more Mad Max in the desert wasteland kind of battling, rather than the Vietnam War in the jungle vibes the original Wiggle Wars had. 

That was our senior year in high school. It was over. 

Except, most of us went to our local community college, to pick up Associate's degrees and cheap credits before moving on to our respective four year colleges. That meant we all had two more years left together before the obscenity of adulthood tore us apart and scattered us to the winds. Ray and I were determined to make the most of it. 

Just like with Kriphtin, whom I have talked about in my Nostalgia post, the end of our gaming was more driven by the story we were telling than the actual gameplay. So, we decided. We would bring back the Wars. We got really creative with this. This was before Ray went to Full Sail, so he wasn't ruined for game design yet and we loved doing this stuff together. As I mentioned, my character in the Wars, Qertus, for years had been the champion of funkilicity, only to taint it in the end with the powers of education. We decided we would rely on the mutant powers we gave ourselves at the end of the Uber Wars to further the plot. If you remember, I had the power to go back in time a moment. Now that I think about it, I remember that Ray had the power to "possess" people briefly, sending them as agents in his stead. Well, we used that. 

How the story goes is that I regretted being tainted by education, so I develop my powers of time travel and go back in time to assassinate the dark lord of education that originally corrupted Raemon in the first place, way before Ray ever met him. Ray, in his way, possesses one of my warriors, using that host's time travelling abilities to go back in time and stop me. 

I succeed. But, as the last name in the title suggests, this timey wimey bullcrap ends up creating a paradox. If I succeed in assassinating the dark lord of education, then Ray never becomes his avatar, the Wiggle Wars never start, I never fall from grace, never gain the powers of time travel, and never go back in time to kill the dark lord. You can see where this is going. Ray relished the chance to come up with new mechanics to represent this paradox power. It became another resource. The longer we existed in this timeline, the more strain we put on the fabric of reality. Like a spring, reality could hold it only for so long. If we did nothing to relieve the tension, then reality would slowly erase us, until there was nothing left. Instead, we would release the tension, using it to power new, timey wimey powers. If we overdid it, then we erased ourselves, too, but in this way it was only temporary. Basically, it was like if we had no temporal paradox pressure, then the universe could ignore us. If we had too much, it would wipe us out. The key to the game lied in using the powers enough to keep us in that sweet zone between being ignored by the universe or healed out of existence. Beyond that, my in-game identity had shifted to try to balance the powers of light and dark, of funkilicity and education, now that I had embraced both in my fight for balance. 

It was such an awesome idea. We struggled with implementing it because there were no periods to reset us all with. So we were stuck back in the "each day is our reset" mode. That slowed us down a lot. We never got very far with it. Then Ray went to Full Sail, and the rest is unfortunate history. 

That's it. I know this was a long story. But I would be remiss to get nostalgic about my nerdiness in general, or my gaming specifically, to not talk about the most embarrassing gaming I've ever participated in. It was part of what made that part of my life so amazing. Thank you Ray, for making my young adulthood some of the best years of my life.