Motion Sickness

"I have a portal gun, why am I walking," Mark asked about five minutes into the microscopic hike. He fired his portal gun, the iconic sound effect sounding odd without the usual reverberation, only to be met with a fizzle. The shot had hit the tree some half mile distant and died on impact. A small decal on the back on the shroud of the tool had the usual portal reticle with neither half of the portal icon giving any signs of life or activation.

"Because there's no walls for it. They're set up but not at the base. Did my best to make them invisible from the ground too. I know how you are, you'd try and skip parts." Gaia was right. While she was talking, Mark had been looking in the branches for stark white patches. It was unfortunate but funny she knew his antics already. "Promise you'll do your best to clear this without any major sequence breaks, and I will hold you to it, I'll tell you something about this dungeon you'll want to know. Deal?"

"Fuck it, sure. I like puzzles and exploring anyway." Mark didn't need to think much on that one. Information was always valuable.

"Cool. Back out and I will screw you on this but there's no mean, angry creatures in here to contend with. It's mostly birds. Feel free to blow your mana load. Or any load, you've been holding back." That was the last thing he wanted to be thinking about as his erection was finally dying. Gaia had a sense of timing that could put master fight choreographers and world class comedians to shame. Using it exclusively to mess with one person felt petty.

The tree loomed high as they closed in, the enormous trunk was large enough to seem flat close up like this. Mark looked up and saw it immediately, stark white wall embedded in a branch. There wasn't anything below it so it was likely the top part of a gravity launcher. "Let's have a look over there," Mark said to Heidi, pointing towards the branch. "I'd bet there's two more white walls on the ground we can use to launch ourselves."

With a nod, she followed. The portal gun looked at odds with her dress, having more the vibes of some kind of traditional outfit. Could have also just been a style but Mark couldn't say. It had supposedly come from his memories but if it had, it was from the 'junk data' that didn't get sent from short term memory into long term. Something else prickled in his head, like a memory he was struggling to remember. He picked away at it while they walked but nothing seemed to come of it.

There was another white portal wall under the first they'd seen, a long way up as the branches didn't start for maybe one or two hundred feet. It didn't seem like the lowest branch but at this scale, it was exceedingly difficult to gauge distance. A test shot showed portals forming at the top, blue and incomplete. It was odd, firing a portal gun. Inside the space at the back was a vertical handle were three triggers and a button. All except the pinky finger rested on triggers, with a thumb button to unlock them. The top two were for the two portals, while the bottom seemed to be for the grab feature. When Mark had tested it, a little motor in the handle made a feedback vibration. With a second shot on the wall on the ground, a free fall setup was ready to launch them at terminal velocity. The only issue was that there was no second platform to be launched upwards with on the ground.

"Probably something on the top side of one of the branches... Well, no way to get used to it unless I do it." Mark stepped up to the edge of the portal and took a breath. "Stomach, don't fail me now." One foot followed the other and Mark fell. His stomach lunched as gravity took hold, arms and legs flailing in spite of his attempts at keeping himself calm. "Shit, shit, shit," he swore as he fell back down towards the ground portal. Falling like this would definitely take some getting used to but there was some part of him that was elated at the freedom of the fall. Somewhere between the panic in his head and the fight to keep down his lunch in his stomach.

To Soar on the Wind
Release your burdens and embrace the element of freedom.

Splat.

Mark had been so busy reading the notification, he'd missed the fact he was off from the portal because of his flailing. He landed in a belly flop onto the dirt and grass with zero damage dealt. Raucous laughter came from the potato.

"You dumbass! Oh fuck, my sides!" The laughter made the bad audio quality sound even worse as god laughed at Mark's situation.

"I got distracted by that stupid pop up..." Mark grumbled as he dragged himself to his feet. "Why'd you send it while I was falling? The last ones that came while I was busy just went into a folder."

"Oh, that wasn't me. Your system is translating elementalist bullshit into game terms. Something about spiritual understanding to connect with the Sources. One guy tried eating rocks to better understand the earth, I was watching him for like an hour trying to understand."

"That... I don't know how to respond to that."

"By getting back up and trying again! And try not to splat this time."

So, not having a better idea, Mark got back to his feet and went back to the edge of the portal, peering through. It was an extremely odd perspective, looking down at himself from high above. It did show another white panel on the top side of another branch, which he eyed with a smile of mixed emotions. "Why do I get the feeling I'm about to have get *very* comfortable with falling?"

With a breath, Mark took a step and fell once more into the portal, firing his gun at the target before he could flail. The shot landed and Mark was sure it had some form of aim correction. The portal appeared and the one below reflected the change, falling through it and now falling upwards. He was, however upside down. The sudden reversal of gravity did unkind things to his stomach and equilibrium. He fought to keep from vomiting, upside down and moving upwards. It didn't work. On the downturn, he ended up in the extremely unfortunate situation of having his feet covered in bile, barely avoiding a face full of the stuff by moving his upper body. It was in his socks

With the momentum shift of rotating, he began to spin, landing on the branch the second portal now occupied. The thick branch shook with impact as Mark laid on his stomach, disgusted. "Someone remind me to put a spare set of clothes in my inventory..."

"Reminder added. You will be informed upon leaving the dungeon." Heidi's voice came from just beside him, having only stepped through the portal. Her long brown hair looked good from this angle, mildly splayed out by the gently flowing wind. She offered Mark a hand up and he took it, dusting off his front before a shift of his weight brought a squelch from his shoes. A shudder ran through him before both shoes and socks were tossed into his inventory.

"Gaia, what are the rules on leaving and coming back again?" His voice was exasperated, trying not to think about his socks and feet.

"Saferoom rules. Find one, leave from there. When you come back, you'll be in the same one you left. I'd give you a freebie for that one but I physically can't. Rules are rules."

"Thank you. Best to get to one then, I don't want to do this barefoot." Mark took a step and visibly relaxed at the lack of sound. The bark was uncomfortable to stand on but only as much as concrete might be. Being too lazy to put on shoes when taking the trash to the curb had helped toughen his feet. At least, that's what he told himself.

With a sigh and a steeled resolve, he began looking for the next surface to portal onto, finding it on the main trunk of the tree. It was extremely disorienting to go from falling to standing, playing hell with his equilibrium again and again as they traveled but without the added sensation of free fall, Mark held onto what remained of his last meal. "Guh... Need to get used to that already."

"A possible remedy is to focus on the horizon as you pass through, giving yourself a stable reference point on the other side to ground yourself." Heidi followed dutifully behind Mark, offering her advice. It seemed sound. Far better than anything Mark had in mind in any case.

"I'll try it, thanks. Just need to get to the first safe room. Hopefully there's one not far." Between simple portal transport, flinging themselves vertically, and even a diagonal launch, they'd rounded the tree and risen a few hundred feet into the air. The next portal surface Mark saw was actually on the floor, just a few paces in front of him. It pointed back towards the main body of the trunk, a hole to the interior perfectly on the path. "I guess we're headed in. I don't see any places to fall so launching might be a little difficult... We could backtrack but that might be difficult, we had two verticals to get here..."

The sound of two portals firing caught Mark off guard, turning to see a portal on the angled surface with Heidi pointing out and downwards. "There is a compatible wall over that way, with a vine we can swing on." Said vine was attached to a third branch, positioned perfectly for a swing from their position to send them careening into the portal surface. The disconnected end just so happened to be draped over the limb they stood upon.

"That sounds horrifically stupid and dangerous," Gaia called from her potato speaker, a fake sense of affront to her voice, shifting into outright sardonic. "I would never engineer a situation to get you two to press tightly together while reenacting something from a movie. That would be downright deviant."

Mark shook his head as he looked at the suspiciously placed, sturdy looking vine. "I'm starting to think threatening to mash you was going too easy. Maybe I should make divine French fries."

"Less flirting, more swinging!" Gaia's exclamation was surprisingly enthusiastic for a potato and Mark relented.

Heidi came close to Mark as he grabbed hold of the vine, wrapping it a few times around his arm before gripping it. The fibrous cord was almost as thick as his wrist, fitting nicely in his hand. The portal gun disappeared into his inventory as his now free arm went to pull Heidi into him, hand at her waist. A notification had made itself known in his peripheral senses but it didn't fully show itself so he let it be for now. "If we fall, we'll still have the portal back up here, so here goes nothing."

Heidi wrapped her arms around Mark's neck, holding tightly as she could with one hand preoccupied. Mark took a breath and the pair stepped off the branch, starting to fall in an arc. Wind rushed past as Mark felt his goat-esque companion press into him firmly, likely to the considerable glee of their ride-along goddess. Thankfully, their descent and swing was more prominent in his mind.

The portal came up quickly, almost too fast to really think. There was a fear of their aim having been off and slamming face first into the corner of the portal but they passed through harmlessly. Mark let go of the vine when he felt gravity start to change, the pair flying through the hole, into the tree, and landing in a tumble.

Mark grumbled at the disorientation of the whole ordeal, having landed on his back. Heidi ended up on top of him, every bit of this likely going according to Gaia's plan. She sat up, straddling his waist in her long skirt. "My apologies, I seem to have... Oh," Heidi turned, looking back for a moment before her gaze returned to Mark's face. "You really are quite erect. Should I-"

"Gah! No, no, no thank you, sorry!" Mark interrupted as he scrambled out from under her, red faced and embarrassed.

With the portal gun in his inventory, Gaia's voice radiated from everywhere with a single word.

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