We found the Ninja Princess portal in less than a minute, positioned between the portals leading to OASIS recreations of the games Championship Boxing and Black Onyx.
Each glowing circular portal had an icon denoting the corresponding videogame’s original packaging hovering just above it, so the Ninja Princess portal had an arcade cabinet icon above it, while the portals to either side of it had Sega MyCards above them.
As we approached the Ninja Princess portal, I began to notice a ringing in my ears, which began to increase steadily in volume the closer I got to it. Aech and Shoto didn’t seem to hear it at all, so I decided to check my inventory. That was when I realized the sound was emanating from the First Shard. The icon denoting it on my item list was pulsing in time with the ringing in my ears—as if the shard were calling out to me. Just like that green Kryptonian crystal that called to young Kal-El in Superman: The Movie. In fact, I was pretty sure Halliday had lifted the sound effect I was hearing directly from that film.
When I took the shard out of my inventory to examine it, the ringing stopped, and the inscription on the shard changed before my eyes. Now it read:
Ninniku and Zaemon aren’t alone on her roster
Once you reclaim her castle, you must face her imposter
I showed the new couplet to Shoto and Aech and their eyes lit up.
“Ninniku and Zaemon are the two main bad guys in Ninja Princess,” Aech said. “Kurumi has to defeat both of them to win the game and ‘reclaim her castle.’？”
“Then ‘face her imposter,’？” I recited. “That must be Kazamaru, the male ninja they replaced her with in the Master System port. I guess I’ll have to fight him too.” I cracked my knuckles. “Couldn’t be too difficult, right?”
“Share your POV feed with us so we can monitor your progress,” Shoto said. “I’m calling you now audio-only, so Aech and I can feed you tips as you go. Just like old times. Oh, and that reminds me…”
Shoto changed out of his formal ninja attire and put on his ornate gold armor and then strapped on his swords. This prompted Aech and me to change into our old gunter attire too. Then Aech threw up a mirror so that the three of us could admire ourselves.
“Look at those handsome devils,” she said, before blasting the mirror to smithereens with a shot from her assault rifle. “Now, let’s do this.”
“OK, amigos,” I said, accepting Shoto’s audio call on my HUD. “Here goes nothing.”
I bumped fists with both of them at once, then turned around, took a deep breath, and jumped into the Ninja Princess portal.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. Maybe that I would find myself in an immersive VR recreation of Ninja Princess, similar to the OASIS port of Black Tiger I’d encountered during the contest. Except that the rules of the old contest no longer seemed to fit, not after that flashback of Kira’s life I’d experienced when I touched the First Shard. It was impossible for her to have played a role in all this, I knew that. But what I’d experienced had seemed equally impossible.
When I stepped through the portal, I didn’t find myself inside a videogame, or in a historical simulation of feudal Japan. Instead, I found myself standing in a place I’d visited once before—years ago, during the contest.
Happytime Pizza.
The original Happytime Pizza was a small mom-and-pop pizza parlor and video arcade that had existed in Middletown, Ohio, from 1981 to 1989. Halliday had spent countless hours there during his youth, and he’d recreated it in loving detail inside the OASIS, along with the rest of his hometown, on the planet he’d named after it. But during the contest I’d discovered another instance of Happytime Pizza, hidden in the subterranean videogame museum on the planet Archaide. That was where I’d played my perfect game of Pac-Man and earned the extra life quarter that allowed me to survive the detonation of the Cataclyst on Chthonia.
Given my previous visits to Happytime Pizza, my surroundings should have felt familiar. But it was the opposite, because this time, I was wearing the ONI. This time, I could smell the tomato sauce and burnt pepperoni grease in the air. I could feel the subtle vibration of the sound system’s speakers through the floorboards, pulsing in time with the bass line as they blasted the song “Obsession” by Animotion. This time, I felt like I was really here, like I’d genuinely traveled back in time to Middletown, Ohio, sometime in the late 1980s.
I was standing just inside the glass double doors that served as Happytime Pizza’s front entrance. Someone had carefully taped sheets of tinfoil over them, to prevent any sunlight from intruding upon the dark neon cave of the game room. I tried to open the doors, but they were locked, apparently from the outside. I peeled back a corner of the foil to peek outside, only to discover that the entire building appeared to be hovering in a pitch-black void. I smoothed the tinfoil back into place, then turned around and did a slow scan of my surroundings.