Disclaimer: Neither I nor dogbertcarroll my partner in crime and craziness own any intellectual property claimed by any major corporation. We just own the story.

A tall well built bearded man sat bored on a couch, hurling throwing knives at a dartboard with the metal edging removed. 'Dead end job with almost no hours on the schedule; check. Essentially five and half to six days off a week; check. Boredom and reading fanfiction; check.'

Abruptly there came a knocking at the door. Ambling over to the door revealed the Fedex man - a brief guaranteed surcease from boredom as he handed over the goofy digital clipboard for my signature and afterward exchanged it for a small and surprisingly heavy box for its size.

"Thanks Fred, seeya next delivery," Charles called to the Fedex guy who waved cheerfully and climbing in his big brown truck, drove off.

Charles ambled back inside and tore into the box, cutting the tape with one of the throwing knives negligently and tossing the knife into the dartboard.

Slowly and carefully Charles lifted the surprisingly good quality vambrace from the SciFi channel's canceled Sliders/Stargate knockoff that apparently combined the worst of both shows which is why they never got past the pilot. It was made of what seemed to be carbon fiber plates and he'd actually bought it with the intentions of converting it into a PipBoy.

It was surprisingly heavy and when placed around his left forearm suddenly locked into place and the featureless black material lit up like an LCD touch screen. "Oh fuck; this is gonna either be really cool, or it's going to suck more dick than my ex, Lucille." (Yes, I've heard all the jokes; no, none of them are funny.)

Checking out the vambrace he discovered a menu… it was strangely similar to a PipBoy… it showed everything he was currently wearing along with everything in his pockets. When he cautiously dragged his pocket knife to the right hand on his character sheet he found it in his hand, instead of in the cargo pocket of his jeans. "Alright… I've got an inventory management feature… lets see what else this thing does."

Clicking through the other tabs revealed he wasn't irradiated, poisoned, or cursed and was at full health and stamina which he thought was a definite plus. Other than the athlete's foot he'd been spraying with antifungal powder he was in perfect shape according to the device. Curiously he dropped his pocket knife, trying to get it to go into the inventory and felt the weight settle in his pocket. "That's pretty nifty."

He checked through the tabs and noted that he was slightly dehydrated according to the food and drink status monitors so grabbed a bottle of water and drained it in three pulls before tossing it into the plastic bin.

Another tab listed Worlds Visited, under which was listed Earth and a string of numbers and had an option to set it as the home world. Shrugging he did so, he wasn't anywhere near stupid enough to ignore that particular piece of technology.

There was a bar at the bottom under the Worlds Menu noting the Jump Power remaining of the device. Currently it was a crimson line from one end of the screen to the other. "Okay, I'm guessing that means full power."

On the next tab under the Worlds tab was one listed as Targeting Data, which when opened showed Planet Earth with longitude and latitude. He was amazed at the detail until he noticed the Google symbol in the corner where the vambrace was tapping into the satellite network… Which while not nearly as amazing was still a good use of technology.

Bemusedly he punched in the address of his friend John and the device zoomed in, revealing John's house as shown by Google Earth somewhere in the midwest. With a shrug and a deep breath he pointed the device like they did in the pilot and hit the portal button…

A glowing blue circle which looked like it was ripped off from the Portal game (probably another reason the pilot episode failed) appeared with a woosh in the middle of his garage, and through the opening in the portal he could see John staring in shock as he reached down and lit up a cigarette. "Hi?"

Charles waved. "Hi, John!"

"I appear to be, yes," John replied with forced casualness, brushing his short black hair streaked with grey back with a free hand.

"That's only a Marlboro you're smoking, John."

"And this shit's as expensive as fuck, when do you think they're gonna get the prices down?" John tried to change the subject to something normal.

"Probably when the government stops being dicks and tacking on sin taxes," Charles replied with a snort.

"So, never in other words."

"Strictly 12th of, yep. So… take three steps back and one to the left."

John glared at him but obliged, wondering what the hell was going on as his internet buddy Charles stepped through the glowing disc and into his livingroom. Never mind the several thousand miles between the two places.

"So, how you doing, Charles?" he asked taking a deep drag off his cig.

"Oh, I'm fine… Got a new toy," Charles deadpanned trying to figure out why John was acting like nothing unusual was going on.

"A new toy? Really, how's that working?"

"Works fine, evidently it opens glowing portals and whoever made it can expect to get sued by Valve any day now." Charles waved the bracer currently locked on his arm through the air. "Solar powered or something thingamabob that was supposedly used on that ScyFy ripoff of Stargate crossed with Sliders."

"I remember seeing that, it had promise; meaning the female aliens had big tits." John took a contemplative puff on his cigarette.

"Yep, and I figured if I didn't share you would be very pissed when you found out."

"Share what?" John asked.

"Well, this thing has a Worlds' screen… You do the math."

"Just to be positive here, I'm not hallucinating the whole portal thing?" John asked cautiously.

"Nope, I really did take a step from my garage and end up in your living room."

"Oh good, I was afraid I was gonna end up somewhere in a padded room in an 'I-love-me' jacket again. Still, the pudding was nice." John sighed and some of the tension went out of his frame. "But yes, if I found out you had a wand of adventure and did not include me I would break your nose and sit on you until you apologized; and I am not a small man. Possibly a small island, but not a small man."

"Right, so I have a function where I can teleport on this world… and a function where I already set this world and my house as home."

"So, you're not a complete idiot planning on getting us lost in all of space time, good to know," John said cheerfully.

Charles gave John a pointed look, "Okay, get the stuff you need from your house and come to my house. I'll get adventuring stuff together from my place and then we'll go on an excellent adventure that hopefully won't turn into a bogus journey."

"Fine, but I'm Bill."

Charles shrugged nonchalantly. "Oh, and this thing is a nifty computer but bring your tablet with you… We'll load it down with all the neat survival books so we can have more than one copy with us, just in case."

"I don't have a tablet, I have a Nook!" John argued as he always did, not wanting his precious to be lumped in with the new fad.

"It's rooted, it still counts." Charles stuck his tongue out and stepped through the portal to his garage leaving it open for the moment so John could come through when he had the stuff he wanted to bring with him. Looking down at the vambrace he could see that the portal didn't seem to be taking up much energy and looking the device over it had USB port. Shrugging he plugged the USB charger from his tablet into the device. A cheerful charging screen came up.

"Okay, solar charger for nifty portal device will work… So will charging it from a wall mounted usb charger… And it seems to have a solar option of its own as well. This thing evidently was designed to be easy to charge. Which is good."

Charles shrugged and put it out of his mind for the moment and went over to the gun safe in the garage and punched in the code to open it and grabbed his bug out bag from the bottom before pulling out a selection of firearms to take with them. "Going to alien worlds unarmed? Not happening."

His bug out bag was a large internally framed backpack and was packed with everything necessary to survive in a bugged out state. He'd earned an 88 on the Dungeon Crawl Preparedness Quiz and fully intended to make use of that.

A few minutes later John stepped through the portal and into his friend's garage wearing a Navy issue set of foul weather coveralls, his flight deck boots, a black leather jacket, and had a large grey backpack slung over his shoulders. "I'm ready."

Charles looked him over, "So, what do you have by way of weapons or am I outfitting you?"

"I've got a short handled sledge hammer and a couple of knives, but if it goes boom that would be you."

Shrugging Charles opened the gun cabinet again, "What do you want? What do you actually know how to use?"

".45 Modified to fire .38 rounds so you can fit more to a clip."

"I don't have one, next."

"Okay, a .38 or a .45 then?" he asked hopefully.

"Alright, I have a .38 Chief's Special revolver here if you'd like."

"Ooh, I like revolvers they look cool and I've watched far too many cowboy movies!" John exclaimed with a grin.

Charles just shook his head and passed John the box containing the pistol and a box of ammunition. "There's 50 rounds in the box, the pistol is loaded and…" Charles trailed off and dug through the gun cabinet before making a satisfied "Aha!" and handed over three speed loaders for the pistol.

John loaded the speed loaders and then broke the rest of the ammunition up between various pockets. "Thanks."

"Want a long gun?" Charles asked.

"Nope; no depth perception. At long distances I can't hit shit. Got a plinker?"

"Sure, I have a couple of .22 pistols here." Charles handed him another pistol this one a Ruger semi-automatic in a shoulder holster. "There's four clips to balance out the pistol on the other side of the holster and one magazine in it. So that's fifty rounds loaded… and here's another two boxes."

John put one box in his backpack and put the others in various pockets. "Just in case we run into something small or we need to hunt Thumper… Or get really bored. It's to discourage things with tentacles ideally."

Charles snorted and picked up his Tanfoglio 10mm and belted it with it's holster around his hips, checking each magazine and slotting one up into the pistol and the other six into ammo pouches on the belt.

"Okay, hand weapons… You said you had a sledgehammer…"

"Short handled and it works well as a lock pick," John stated.

"Alright, I'll carry my machete then…"

"Light weight, good for plant matter… They don't make them heavy enough anymore, you're going to want to carry a hand axe."

"This is military issue."

"Exactly, it's lightweight and used for plant matter not people," John explained.

Charles grumbled and redid the straps to hook it back to his backpack before walking outside to the woodpile and picked up the very sharply honed hand axe. "Okay, I got an axe, you happy now?"

"That depends, are you bringing sanity?" he asked cheerfully.

"Fuck no, that bitch left town."

"Then we're good, because any sane person would not be doing this." John stated firmly.

Charles shook his head and slung his 10mm carbine over his shoulder, tucking four boxes of ammunition into his bug out bag and four spare magazines into a thigh pocket. "Okay, I have a long gun, a pistol … various melee tools. One of which you don't approve of…"

"I didn't say I don't approve of it, just that I don't approve of using it for chopping on flesh. It only works for plants and lightweight ones at that. We're probably over thinking all of this. But still, better safe than chewed."

"Are we ready?" Charles asked seriously.

"I'm ready…" John admitted, unable to think of anything else he had that he should bring off the top of his head.

Charles nodded and then blinked before setting his bug out bag back down and strapping on his camelbak before picking it back up and cinching the straps that held it tight. "Okay, I have food and water and several means to cleanse water… What do you have?"

"I have a box of frozen corn dogs and half a case of cold Mountain Dew. That's in case we get stuck overnight or something."

"Okay…" Charles trailed off, then shrugged. John would be John and frozen corn dogs were in general much better than the survival food he was carrying and Mountain Dew had more flavor than water.

"Ooh; one last thing. Open a portal up to my livingroom, I forgot one crucial thing."

Shrugging Charles hit the button to open the portal to John's livingroom.

John stepped over to his computer hit Internet History and then Clear. "Can't be too careful, you know - just in case."

Charles chuckled and patted his bag, "My computer is coming with me."

"Yeah, but you won't get a good wifi signal… Or if you do I'll shit myself."

Charles winced and closing his eyes tightly shook his head for a minute to get THAT image out of his mind's eye. "That's horrible."

"That is what as known as an EXPRESSION; it means surprised, shocked, borrowing your system to check my email."

Charles grinned and opened the targeting tab on his vambrace.

"I say we put this portal in the middle of nowhere on the Earth before we step out… Rather than releasing a stream of zombies into your house," John interrupted him before he could activate it.

Charles blinked and nodded. "Alright, to the camaro. We'll go to the storage unit. It's made of steel, it's empty, and it's paid for."

"There's a better way to do this rather than using it somewhere in the US… You can get anywhere on Earth with that sucker right?"

"Sure…" Charles said, trailing off.

"Chernobyl," John told him with a grin.

"What?!" Charles exclaimed.

"We're not going to stick around there very long and it's not going to have enough time to really affect us. Just don't eat or drink anything while we're there," John said guessing what Charles would say.

Charles pondered this for a few moments then pulled up Google Earth via the vambrace and zoomed in on an abandoned amusement park far from the power station, but still within the cordon area of Chernobyl and opened the portal. "Quick, I don't want my house irradiated."

"Listen, the radiation level has really died down… Just watch out for the wolves."

Charles pushed John through the portal and then stepped through himself, closing it behind them. "Okay… lets try this again…" He opened the targeting tab.

"Try TSR-X1," John suggested.

Shrugging Charles punched in the numbers and blinked when a portal successfully opened. "Did you just give me a D&D module product code?"

"It worked didn't it?" John asked.

"Yeah I suppose so," Charles said not surprised that John surprised at anything the crazy fanfic writer came up with anymore… or trying not to be at any rate.

"Besides, at least in one version one of the module one of the dinosaurs had a Ring of Regeneration in it's stomach," John said intently stepping through the portal into the sweltering heat heat of the tropics.

"I hope to holy hell, that 10mm hot loads work well on dinosaurs," Charles growled following him onto a pristine white beach in a far off reality.

"They're just big lizards," John waved it off.

"Yes, I know this… But … I feel like I should have brought one of my heavier rifles instead of a pistol caliber carbine."

"Huh, that probably would have helped a bit."

Charles glared at John then shook his head, "What's done is done; it holds more ammo anyway and hits like a .41 Magnum pistol out of my pistol… So the 16" barrel will work quite well enough at short to mid range."

John pulled out his Nook. "Where is the map? I'm not Dora here," he muttered bringing up a copy of the TSR module.

Charles shook his head and chambered a round into his carbine, also working the slide on his pistol to chamber a round and took the safety off on the rifle and made sure it was on for his pistol.

"This map sucks ass, there's not a decent map for this module. They always assume the DM is going to herd you where you need to go." Two ghouls appeared almost as if summoned, their feet crunching in the loose sand of the beach the two were on and drawing Charles' attention, as John continued looking through the module.

Charles drew a bead on the first one's head as they got to about 30 yards away and squeezed the trigger. BAM! A dull thunderclap exited the barrel of the weapon and downrange the ghoul's head was met by a high powered slug and turned into a gaping ruin on the exit side. "We've got company!" Charles announced as he drew a bead on the second one as it ran toward them, squeezing the trigger and making another canoe out of the head of the beast.

"Can't you kill those things any quieter? I'm trying to find the right entry dammit!"

"Hey, I'll build a fucking silencer when we get back. Put these in until then." Charles handed over a pair of shooting ear plugs, designed to dampen extremely loud sounds.

"Just warn me before you fire!" John replied not wanting to compromise his hearing in the dangerous new world they standing on.

"These earplugs are designed for firing ranges, you can hear conversation it just dulls the roar of the guns." Charles wandered over and searched the undead mooks who dared to trouble them. "Okay, wow… In D&D land, we're getting screwed… Wait a minute no the hell we're not, I just spent maybe couple of bucks and we got 50 platinum, 130 gold, 212 silver and 93 copper."

A beep from the bracer indicated that the steel flask one had was a Flask of Infinite Water and the Bracers taken off the other one were Bracers of Armor +4.

"Wow, these ghouls must have been part of some adventuring party before they became ghouls; in the inner pouches were tons of money and they two magic items. Too bad they didn't have any armor or weapons on them."

"Too bad they didn't have any armor or weapons on them, they'd have probably been valuable magic items," John spoke up.

"One had a pair of bracers of armor +4. Speaking of, how do you want to split this up?" Charles asked curiously.

"You wear the armor, I'll duck behind you. I hereby dub thee tank."

"You're all heart John," Charles drawled and looked at the bracers before shaking his head. "I can't put both bracers on, looks like you get the armor."

"Put them on your shins. It's magic, it doesn't have to make sense."

Charles snorted and tried putting the bracers on his shins, which surprisingly enough seemed to work and he saw that they were providing defense in the menu on the vambrace. "Okay, that worked… And we have infinite water… now we just need one of the various infinite food items."

"Do they come in corn dog?" John asked.

"Not that I know of," Charles admitted.

"Then they do not have infinite FOOD items," John said firmly, his devotion to food you didn't need silverware or dishes for well known to Charles.

Charles split the coins into roughly equal amounts and gave John one of the piles. "Here, this way if one of us goes splat the other one doesn't lose everything. But I recommend you grab my ammo pouches and the rifle and pistol if it comes right down to it."

"I'm also going to have to use the axe to cut through your arm because the machete is just not going to work to get that bracer off you," John deadpanned.

"You do know that they use machetes to cut peoples heads off all the time in Africa, right?"

"This is not Highlander. They have those people restrained and it takes them quite a few strokes," John pointed out.

Charles shrugged. "Okay, which way are we going oh master of the map?"

"Inland," John said pointing into the thick foliage just up the beach.

Charles sighed and headed in off the beach after loading the two expended shells into a pocket and reloaded the magazine. "Alright."

"Inland," John repeated as he wiped sweat from his forehead, "and man it's fucking hot."

"Take off the jacket."

"I like having blood INSIDE my body and if we find a ring of heat resistance I'm stealing that too. Or is it a ring of warmth? It keeps you around 60 degrees regardless, I recall."

Charles shrugged. "There's a reason I'm wearing a thick denim jacket instead of my 10lb leather trenchcoat."

"I'm just saying I remember this module and I asked for that .22 caliber pistol because I remember the size of the mosquitoes."

"You could have told me to bring another one… I own three." Charles sighed.

"Well you seemed amused when I wanted one."

"I should have grabbed one of them also, I just didn't think about it. I'll remember next time. No point using up 4d6 ammo vs goblins and low HP shit…" Charles muttered as they continued onward through the jungle like terrain.

"See if your pip boy shows a map or anything, you can't get directions from this fucker and my cellphone is not helping a bit, unlimited anywhere my ass!" John bitched.

Charles flipped through the screens on his PipBoy. "Okay, it shows an inertial map and has mapped everything I've walked… No actual map of the whole island."

"That helps, just not as much as I'd hoped. Let me read through, what are we looking for?"

Charles stood watch as John flipped through the module again. "Holee shit, there's some dragons on this island. Note to self, stay in the trees. Hey, there's some neanderthals on this island, we could kidnap some of those."

"Why?" Charles asked looking at John curiously.

"It'd make Chernobyl more fun, just think of what it would do to the people who worry about radiation damaging their DNA."

"I'd rather not import stinky, hairy neanderthals… to our Earth."

"Oh come on, we got plenty of space. That area's empty."

"Maybe if we come back with tranq guns. Mine makes canoes," Charles replied. "You didn't look at the skulls of those ghouls did you?"

"Nope, not what was left of them anyway I was busy reading."

Charles shrugged and was very happy he had put on surgical gloves before searching the undead.

Three dryads slowly melded out of the trees and Charles smiled tentatively at them, keeping his carbine pointed down on it's sling. The elven appearing maidens in their loose simple garments approached slowly.

John muttered, "Man am I glad I erased my internet history. I say we run…"

"Why?"

"According to the module we may be made into sex slaves for 1d4 years, now normally I would not have a problem with that but I assumed we had more stuff we wanted to do here than them."

Charles nodded and the two took off, running away from the trio of trees the dryads stepped out of.

Some 10 minutes later the two of them leaned against a pair of handy trees and panted.

"I'm not in shape for this," Charles groaned.

"Neither am I. Note to self, stop smoking," John panted.

Charles nodded. "Could definitely be a good thing."

John reached into his backpack and pulled out a pair of Mtn. Dews and lit another cigarette. "But not yet."

Charles accepted the Mtn. Dew that John held out to him and both took pulls from their tasty beverages. "Okay, Mountain Dew beats the hell out of water… I vote we look for everlasting gatorades."

"Bah, those are barely better than Mtn. Dew and have no caffeine, so clearly they're deficient."

Charles chuckled and offered John one of the survival cookies from his pocket. "Here, these have 3600 calories each... Eat what you want of it right now, wrap the foil back around it and stick it in your pocket."

John stuck the entire thing in his pocket. "Not hungry." He took a puff of his cigarette. "Ahhhh."

Charles chuckled and shook his head. "Alright then…"

They continued onward cautiously… only to encounter a giant spider with a large fleshy lump on it's back sitting in the middle of an enormous web. The spider was greenish brown in color and as large as a small pony and currently had a book in between it's large front 'hands'.

Charles blinked. "We just ran into a giant, intelligent, spellcasting spider didn't we?"

John checked his Nook. "Looks like it."

The spider chittered but didn't seem inclined to bother the two as it rested in the middle of it's web.

"My vote is we leave the spider alone. Much like the bunny in the box, there is no profit in disturbing it."

"I agree, I agree quite thoroughly… But I've never heard that phrase."

"Remind me to show you the movie Con Air when we get back," Charles replied.

"Oooh!" John nodded. "That's where that was from."

They backed away and waved at the giant spider which waved back as they left it to it's book.

"Note to self, giant intelligent spiders are on this island…" Charles muttered as they continued to walk only to come out of the jungle nearby a very large lake, possibly about a mile across.

"Okay, what is in that lake, John?"

"A plesiosaur."

"What IS a plesiosaur John?"

"You remember the people who went to Loch Ness and said they saw something?"

"Yes I do, this is supposed to be Nessie?"

"Pretty much, let me read. Flesh eating, lake dwelling dinosaur with an extremely long neck and flippers in place of legs… Also a large snake-like head filled with sharp teeth. Think carnivorous Nessie."

"You want us to kill this, don't you?"

"I want the Ring of Regeneration that's supposed to be in it's guts, yes. That increases my odds of survival by a thousand fold," John said energetically.

"Oh, called dibs did you?"

"I already told you this."

"Okay, but I'm damn sure taking the next one."

"Agreed, after we get this one we gotta search for one for you. This was pretty much my idea from the get go. We go to places D&D exists and get Rings of Regeneration!" John exclaimed excitedly.

"Right… Ummm, we need bait to draw this critter out where I can shoot at it."

"Huh. I hadn't thought of that, generally it attacks anyone who gets within 15' of the lake."

"Right, but I'm guessing it has 12 or 15 hit dice… This carbine only does 4d6 a shot; it's also semiautomatic."

"Yeah… it's got 16 hit dice. Just assume max hit points and you're golden… But really you should aim for it's head. I mean, how many hit points could it's head have? 25, 30? Two well placed rounds and we're done."

"I guess… What do we use to draw the damn thing out of the lake? I need to have a steady aiming point…"

"We don't have any politicians and just when one would be handy, damn it. So, I'll throw rocks and make noise, you stay back out of range."

"How about you use that .38 when it comes out of the water?"

"I'm more concentrating on avoiding getting bit."

"Use the .22 then, if you have to drop it replacing it won't be hard. The .38 technically belongs to my mom."

"I'm not pissing off your mom; I'll piss off the dinosaur, I ain't pissin' off mom," John said resolutley.

"Thus the .22."

".22 it is."

Charles knelt down behind a tree and used it for a rifle rest taking careful aim at the area John was going to draw the dinosaur to. "Use that area over there, there is a tree that you can at least duck behind if necessary."

"Hmmm, browser history is erased…" Five ghouls appeared as John started toward the lake, attracted to the noise he was making.

"Hey John! Drag the wandering monsters to the appropriate area, we'll use the ghouls as Nessie bait!"

"I approve of that idea!" John yelled back, running past the area.

"Nessie" exploded out of the water and it's long serpentlike neck brought it's head darting down to snap up one of the ghouls.

"Fire!" John yelled.

Charles released a deep breath and utilizing the empty lung technique fired a heavy 10mm bullet straight into the dinosaur's very large visible eye. BLAM! There was a sound like a watermelon exploding at a gallagher show as the eye disintegrated under the force of a chunk of copper plated lead moving at supersonic velocities. "Damn I can't believe that worked!"

John meanwhile was running from the four remaining ghouls. "Hey, asshole! Shoot the damn ghouls!"

Charles blinked and fired semi-rapidly at the ghouls, shooting for their chests as they shambled after his running friend. With four shots the ghouls fell where they stood. Gaping holes from the carbine in their chest cavities.

"God! These stink worse than Con-goers on the fifth day of a week long convention!" John panted, flinging himself down on the beach.

Charles wandered over, carefully covering Nessie until he got close enough to put another pair of bullets into it's skull.

"You know, I'm glad you brought that axe…"

"Why?" Charles asked.

"That dinosaur is gonna be a stone cold bitch to get that ring out of it's stomach…"

"I'll make you a deal, you go digging for your ring and I'll search the undead here."

"Deal."

Charles passed John the axe along with a pair of surgical gloves, "Here," then pulled on a pair of his own.

"Yeah, I'm having a smoke first. I need to catch my breath."

Charles shook his head and chuckled as he proceeded to search the five ghouls. "14 bottles of contaminated honey; toss, common wig covered in blood that I peeled an ivory tiara off of… Keep the tiara, lose the wig… Hardtack - nasty bread that nobody would eat…. Sickle, a common farming tool… rusty as shit… Now on to the good stuff."

Charles continued searching their pouches which were filled with pounds of silver and copper coins and some miscellaneous gems. The real finds were the jewelry; a silver crown, set with gemstones, a silver pendant to match, a wrought silver pendant and a ivory tiara. "Okay, the ghouls evidently turned a royal party at some point. This place was called the Isle of Dread wasn't it?"

"Yep."

"After you fish out that ring, we're getting the hell off this rock."

"Yep, because now we can afford some proper equipment," John replied as he continued fishing for the severed arm in the dinosaur's stomach.

"How much does a ring of regeneration cost?" Charles asked.

"I dunno, fifty to a hundred thousand gold? Depending on if one is available. Might be easier just to specifically go looking for another one out of another module."

Charles reloaded his rifle after stripping off his used surgical gloves.

"Hah! I found it," John declared as he pulled a skeletal arm out of the reeking mass of the dinosaur's split intestines. "Come to papa!" he declared before washing off in the lake and taking off his surgical gloves.

"Congratulations. I just had to search the undead you had to dig in that things guts," Charles said, gnawing on a survival cookie.

"Yeah, but now nobody can say smoking is unhealthy for me," John said with a grin.

"Rings of Regeneration do that." Charles acknowledged before washing off the treasure and his hands carefully in the lake with a small bottle of dish detergent. "Is there anything else that's interesting on this island before we go home? We've got pounds of coins here along with gemstones and jewelry… I'd rather not go exploring carrying this much weight."

"The damn island's not going anywhere, and now we can afford better gear. And I am covered in dinosaur blood. Let's get the fuck out of here."

Charles and John proceeded back to the beach, avoiding a 15 foot long four foot tall bony plated monstrosity that was ambling along and eating plants. Which unfortunately channeled them into a group of six zombies who stumbled toward them, groaning mindlessly.

"Okay, more undead…" Charles muttered, taking aim and calmly firing into the group of undead who were about to be just dead.

John chuckled, firing into them as well with the .38 Special. "Whee! I killed a zombie; do you know how many people would pay to do this? I'm not saying we should start up a tour service, but this is pretty awesome. Hellsing Abridged was right!"

Charles snorted and pulled out the magazine from his carbine and reloaded it as John made sure the undead were just dead by going through execution style and capping each of them in the head.

Four ghouls attracted by the noise came out of the trees toward them. "Okay, I'm pretty sure I can shoot some of them this time," John said.

Chuckling Charles proceeded to shoot calmly at the creatures. "You know, modern firearms make short work of ghouls."

"Very and someone on this island has made a LOT of ghouls," John replied. "A lot of adventuring parties came this way and did not return, I'm thinking."

Charles pulled on another set of surgical gloves. "You know, looting these guys is a pain. I think I'm gonna turn into a lobster before I feel clean again after we're off this pirate infested undead romp of an island and I get a scalding hot shower."

"I know, it's great isn't it?!" John exclaimed with a laugh.

In response Charles threw another pair of surgical gloves at John. "Okay, you help loot then."

"I'm watching for attackers," John weaseled out of it. "Mountain Dew?"

Sighing Charles went to work. "Okay; we've got more pounds of precious metal, another handful of gems, a gold tiara set with gems, an ivory brooch, a jade ring, and a platinum bracelet set with gems… Also I found you a suit of armor."

"I suppose I can wear ringmail."

"It's ringmail +1 according to the vambrace," Charles said after taking the ringmail off the ghoul and pouring bleach all over it to disinfect it. "Put it on."

"Whee, I have armor," John deadpanned after putting it on and rearranging his equipment. "I am so getting a ring that stops this sweating-to-death shit."

Charles chuckled darkly and they returned through the portal to Chernobyl, then used another portal to get to the very seasonal and thus abandoned showers at a waterpark he knew would be empty in November.

"We clink when we move and I am so burning these coveralls," John said.

Charles nodded, "I think I'll burn these clothes also. No point tracking in possible pathogens."

"Eh, I don't think it's pathogens but with zombies you can't be too careful. I'm not starting the zombie apocalypse, by accident anyway. You have a fire pit right?"

"Yep, lets get clean."

Charles and John washed up quickly with diluted bleach and dishwashing detergent and after doing so portaled back to Charles' house to burn their filthy clothing. Relaxing with a beer near the fire pit they went through their loot.

"50 platinum pieces, 283 gold pieces, 1,970 silver pieces, 567 electrum, 650 copper… and lots of gems and jewelry… Four magic items including your ring. Two of which ensure survival."

"Just remember as long as they don't take my head, and maybe if they do, just put it back in place and wait. My ring of 'doesn't have to stop smoking' is awesome. I also don't have to quit drinking Mountain Dew!"

Charles threw the cap from his beer at John. "The only problem is we don't have a way to explain any of this precious metal."

"Smelt it down and make ingots… Then we can go back and get more… You know, we could sell a handful of these coins at various jewelry stores. They're all obviously old and authentic."

Charles shook his head, "We'll be lucky to get metal weight, they're all stamped with shit no one could explain. Except the ones that are just flat discs more or less because of time."

"Isn't that all we want? They think they're stealing historical artifacts for scrap metal weight, we get cash and better yet, we can sell it on the coasts so they can't track us. Your portals will let us pop all over the damn world. Like Sweden; Sweden doesn't ask many questions, at least according to the Germans."

"My vote is the first thing we buy, other than me a Ring of Regeneration, is a damn bag of holding for the loot or even better a Belt of Many Pockets. Because that 70 pounds of coins was bloody heavy," Charles grumbled taking a long pull of his beer.

"So was all the gear we were carrying, but at least now we know what we need a little better."

"I was just carrying survival gear in case we got stuck. Granted it was pretty heavy too."

"The question about the belt of many pockets is, can we find one? I can't recall one of them in any of the modules," John mused.

"I'm sure we can; there are whole kingdoms of mages in Mystara, which is where that module we just came from is set. Drop by the markets in Alphatia and I'm sure one or the other if not both."

"How do we find those markets?"

"Portal in and look around the capital would be my suggestion; unlike the module for the adventure the boxed sets came with decent maps."

"Google the product code and lets go," John said. "In city doesn't need a lot of armor and weapons, but how will we talk to people?"

"My guess is they'll speak English; the module is written in English the quotes from the characters are written in English… My guess is English equals common."

John shrugged. "Works for me. Now let me look up my ring…" He opened up a browser on his phone and started typing. "Bah, nada that only protects against cold," he muttered, sorting through the list of magical rings.

Charles waited for John to figure out whatever it was he was looking up, and after checking the code punched in the ISBN code for the Dawn of the Emperor's boxed set and uploaded the map before centering the portal in the capital city. "Most everything is run by magic and it's a magocracy."

"Do they arrest strangers on sight?"

"Nope, lots of adventurers there too." Charles shrugged, "we'll have to be careful and get in and get out. They'll likely assume I'm a mage what with the opening portals bit and also the dealing death with loud noises stuff… We each probably qualify as D&D sages to boot."

Charles carefully bound the coins in a blanket as well as secreting the jewelry in his bag wrapped in another. "Felt muffled coins and jewelry, who knew it'd catch on? In amongst all this not counting the water flask or the ring of regeneration or your armor or my bracers turned shin guards we have roughly 31,214 in gold."

"Wait a minute… spices. They're dirt cheap here and we can sell them for huge amounts in D&D land. So are dyes." John spoke up.

"To the grocery store?" Charles grinned wickedly.

"Check what the books say for value. Dye and alchemical solutions are also big money ventures. Mages need rare earths and ingredients we can get cheap. We can trade for something they make and cut out the middle man! Perfumes are also big money items, perfumed soap would be worth more than it's weight in gold. Old Spice could make us a huge profit."

"Yeah, but we need the stuff in glass bottles or something instead of modern plastic containers… Spices we could easily get away with just packing it in waxed paper. Or a random wooden box." Charles mused thoughtfully, running his fingers through his beard.

"Plastic is fine," John said waving it off. "We just say it's a special material to keep things from spoiling."

"Alright, well… Cloves and Pepper sell extremely well… as does nutmeg…" Charles went through the D&D book looking at spices and their prices. "Black peppercorns cost 12 bucks or so a pound, cloves cost 14 a pound… A pound of nutmeg is 13 or so bucks."

John started laughing and rubbing his hands together like he was a cartoon villain. "We portal to Sweden and sell the Tiara. Then we take that money and portal to India for bulk rate on spices and dyes."

"480 gold for a pound of pepper, nutmeg is also 480 gold a pound, cloves are 320 gold per pound… Do you have a reference for dye prices?"

"Nope, nor perfumes, so we'll buy small amounts, ten or so pounds and sell them at whatever they turn out to be valued at," John said unconcerned. "It's not really expensive to buy and we can get colors so bright they hurt the eyes that have never been seen before."

Charles nodded, "Well, I have a couple hundred bucks from my last paycheck and we can buyout the 1lb containers of spices cheap… We've got waxed paper for meat in the house, if we want to bother switching out the containers at all. I'd say it'd be a good idea… I dunno about selling the jewelry off in the modern world, but it won't take long to turn some of these blank coins into ingots in the shop and we can sell them for metal weight at the pawn shop. Gold is at 1,143 dollars and some odd cents an OUNCE right now. Ten coins make a pound - a sixteen ounce pound not a troy pound." Charles grinned wickedly and stood up draining his beer and tossing the bottle into the glass recycling pile. "Ten gold for nearly 20,000 dollars. Okay, it's 18 and change but…" Charles shrugged and headed inside to grab the acetylene torch.