Chapter 1: The gamer within

Angrily, I stomped through the kitchen and poured myself a drink. I would not forgive him for this. I would NEVER forgive him for this.

"Alex, you know I had to cut the power this week to repair…"

"Dad, I can't save my game without a memory card! Couldn't you have waited one more day?"

"I have a job, and maybe if you had one, you could've bought that remember disk for your Playstation."

"Memory card, and I TRIED getting a job, but the competition is ruthless! I'm not the only one out there looking for some extra cash you know."

"You just need to use your talents, honey."

I sighed, throwing my hands up in exasperation. My father was a nice guy, but sometimes he just didn't get it.

"'Use my talents'? Thanks for the tip, I can already see it now: '16 year old schoolgirl seeks employment. Specializes in messing with the timeline, doing gravity defying wall runs and smashing random objects while making perverse grunting noises'. Oh yes, I'm sure they'll be lining up to hire me!"

My dad didn't get mad or anything. Instead he did something far worse: giving me one of those knowing smiles that said "you'll understand when you have children of your own". Yuck, pass! I'd seen baby photos of myself smearing god-knows-what all over the kitchen floor: like hell was I ever going to have kids. Rolling my eyes, I took my glass and prepared to head back upstairs to my room.

"Alex, wait a minute," my dad called when I placed my hand on the door handle. "Before I forget, something came for you in the mail today."

I looked at the padded envelope in his hands. Funny, I don't remember ordering anything and it wasn't even close to my birthday yet. I took it anyway and went back to my personal safe haven. Well… it would be a safe haven once I put a chair under the door handle. I had a lock, but dad would not let me have the keys.

Sigh.

I barricaded my door and flopped down on my bed. I turned my head sideways and glanced at the game that was lying on my desk. Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. I got up and looked closer at the fierce looking figure on the front. It was no secret that I admired the Prince. I wasn't one of those squealing let-me-have-your-babies fangirls, but I did catch myself thinking more than once: what would HE do? Let's face it, I'm nowhere near as bad-ass. I'm not courageous, I'm not witty, I'm not smart and I absolutely suck at gym class. This guy can swing from flagpole to flagpole: I can't even climb the rope. Prince evades and decapitates 20 sand creatures without a sweat: I can't even last three minutes in a game of dodge ball. I might as well give up and accept the fact that my 'warrior within' couldn't fight her way out of a wet paper bag.

I sighed again and turned my attention to the envelope. It was probably junk mail. There was no send address on the back or any sign that it came from someone I knew. Still, I was curious and grabbed a letter opener.

"Let's see, which international lottery have I 'won' this time?" I muttered, but gasped when the contents of the envelop fell on my desk.

It was a memory card.

My heart skipped a beat. A memory card… A MEMORY CARD! Someone up there had pity on me! Carefully, I picked it up, I had never won anything in my life! I couldn't even remember entering a contest! I noticed that the memory card wasn't black: it was gold and I could've sworn it glowed for a moment. I still had no idea why someone would send me this, but then I recalled signing up for the forums on the official Playstation website: perhaps I had been selected for some kind of test team?

"This must be a beta model or something… a prototype for an improved version of the original memory card," I mused, looking inside the envelope for a letter or a note. There was none, but I shrugged it off. No reason to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Giddy with excitement. I plugged it in and hit the power switch of my PS2, waiting for the title screen to appear.

It did not.

"What the…"

My excitement slowly turned to worry when the screen remained black. No silver letters, no blood, no rock music, no nothing. Great, I knew it was too good to be true! My 'prize' had probably been infected by a virus or something and now some guy in his parents' basement was laughing his ass off at my stupidity.

"Dammit!" I cursed while reaching for the card. "I Just when I thought life couldn't get any worse, some nutcase thinks it's funny to wreck the only thing that keeps me sane in this…."

"You cannot escape your fate."

I froze halfway and blinked, my arm still extended towards my playstation.

"Who said that?"

The voice had been that of the Old Man from the game. I looked at my TV, but the screen was still black. What was going on?!

"Your journey will be long and there will be many difficulties on your path."

I whirled around, but the voice seemed to be coming from every where and I felt panic rising in my throat.

"Embracing your fear will set you free."

"I don't know who you are, you crazy stalker, but get the hell out of my room!"

"and…"

"I'm warning you!"

"You will die."

I felt my heart skip several beats. Oh god. Whoever this was… he was going to kill me! I urged my legs to move and made a mad dash for my door, but a golden glow suddenly came from my TV and filled my room. I couldn't move, I couldn't see, I couldn't even breathe. I only felt myself falling, and falling and falling…

---

"AAAAAAAHHH-OOF!!!"

With a loud thud, I landed flat on my back. Slowly I got up and groggily opened my eyes. Where was I? What happened? I looked around and almost fainted.

"Sweet Batman, I'm in a portal room!!!"

There was no doubt about it: a luscious red carpet stretched from the ever flowing waterfall at the entrance to the platform. Golden grains of sand spilled from openings in the walls to come together and form a whirlwind of magic. At that moment, I wasn't even mildly disturbed I had just been thrown into a videogame. For minutes, I just stood there, bathing in the mystical golden glow that had also filled my room and looking in awe: this was better than any famous painting, any musical composition. This… this was art.

Moved by the sheer beauty, I raised a hand to wipe a tear from my eye, and shrieked in horror.

"My hand! Oh god… what…"

Words could not described what I felt when I saw the color of my skin. In stead of a normal pink, it was now a sickly brownish grey.

I was a sand creature…

Trembling, I inspected the rest of my body… or what was left of it. My nails were yellow and chapped and my arms were bare. What had happened to my sweater? What had happened to my PANTS?! Looking at my legs, I discovered that my jeans had been replaced by something that resembled a loincloth. A piece of string around my waist held up two pieces of red fabric that reached past my knees, barely covering my naughty bits. My chest was also scarcely clad in a sleeveless top that would even make a Victoria's Secret model blush. My hair was black, I had tattoos on my arms and ankles, and my stomach glowed, making me look like a walking flashlight. The horrible truth dawned on me:

I was a harem girl.

"Oh great, not only am I a sand creature, I also score a nine out of ten on the slut-o-meter! I could've been one of those cool blade dancers, or maybe even a pirate, but nóóóóó! Of course I have to turn into a…" I paused for a minute to think. "Hey, wait a minute… I'm next to a portal so this is obviously Warrior Within, but aren't harem girls from the Sands of Time?"

I had little time to wonder before the sound of rapid footsteps startled me.

"YOU BITCH!!!"

Oh yeah, definitely Warrior Within.

I yelped when I suddenly saw a very, VERY pissed off Shahdee rushing through the waterfall.

"Out of my way!" she barked before shoving me aside and jumping on the platform. I wanted to make a snide comment about not getting her metal thong in a twist, but the swirling sands lifted her up and transported the woman to the past. Only seconds after, the Prince followed suit. I was propped up against a wall, too dazed to make a sound. In what could not have been longer than ten minutes, I had been transformed into a sand creature from the first game, then got flung into the SECOND game and now two of my favourite characters had just appeared on the scene: my poor brain was still trying to catch up.

"What kind of magic is this?" the Prince asked out loud before finally stepping onto the platform himself, not even noticing me once. I couldn't help but slightly frown at his action, even though I knew he would be alright. "A woman just hovered in the air and disappeared in a cloud of magic sands! Ooh, goody, let's see what they will do to me!"

I hesitated for a moment: it was quiet in here… too quiet. The silence starting to get on my nerves. Also, I needed to find a way out of here, back to the real world. I had no idea how I was going to accomplish that, but my best guess was finding the Empress. After all, if she was powerful enough to create the sands of time, maybe she was also powerful enough to send me home. I had no idea what she looked like, though. The farthest I had ever made it without saving was halfway through the Garden Tower.

I looked at the portal and made my decision. I had no idea how I got here, but staying here was not going to get me anywhere, and it's not like I had anything to loose. I prepared to step onto the platform, but quickly discovered that the up flowing winds did very little to help me keep my modesty. I would travel through time and find a way home...

… but not before I got myself some decent clothes!