Roll for Initiative...

Holy shit!

This storm came out of nowhere! I was walking home from the office after a long day, and an even longer week. A cold drink and a soft couch were calling to me. I had decided to cut through the city's shopping mall, to grab some food for takeout when all of a sudden, the sky opened up. Simply getting wet would have been tolerable. It would have been annoying, but it would have been a fitting cap on my last couple days. Rain, I could have handled rain. Hail, was another matter altogether.

All thoughts of grabbing a burger to go were abandoned as I took shelter in the first open store I could find. Door chimes rang out as a the door closed behind me to quell the wind that was blowing papers throughout the seemingly abandoned store. After taking a moment to catch my breath and shake out my jacket, I looked around my new found surroundings.

...a comics and gaming store? Wow...I haven't been in one of these since before I graduated from high school. And man, did this store remind me of the one I spent way too much time and money in as a kid. Warhammer miniatures lined one wall. Packs of Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh cards were on another. Racks upon racks of stories of various caped crusaders. I wouldn't have been surprised to find old school Nintendo Power magazines. And there, on the back wall, was all the role playing game gear. Monster manuals, pre-made campaign kits, and of course, the things that no good gamer would be caught without, dice of varying sides. Four sided pyramids to the all important twenty-sided polyhedrals. I couldn't help but smile remembering all the fun times my old gaming group had with these things.

As I was perusing the different sets, the different materials and colors, something caught my eye. On the floor, in the corner, lay an single D20. Picking it up, it seemed to be almost impossibly heavy. It wasn't made of plastic, that was for sure. But I'd never seen anything like it. The color was a foreboding shade of black. I could see where the numbers were carved out of each face, but there was no color or anything to make it easy to see which side was which.

I was so engrossed in this discovery that I didn't even notice the person silently walking towards me.

"Ah..." The voice nearly caused me to jump out of my skin. Turning quickly I was faced with a elderly man, the sort of shop keeper who looked like he'd try to sell you a Mogwai. "I see it's returned. Took longer to show up again than it normally does."