The Great ZD Incident of Whateverism
- Thread starter onebizarrekai
- Start date
onebizarrekai
gay energy
~-o-~
CHAPTER FIVE
“… Twenty-four hours?” our group almost all says at once.
“How is that even possible?” Azure asks.
“All right, let me give you the short version,” Term says. “At a certain point, obviously before those twenty-four hours, me and eleven other people were taken here and kept here for the first twelve hours, on our own. More people didn’t start to show up until after that. Before we knew it, there were obnoxious crowds everywhere.”
“So it didn’t happen all at once…” I mumble.
“Our whole group stuck together for that entire time. We were all confused, and nobody knew what was going on, so even though some of us didn’t get along very well, nobody tried to go off on their own. Nothing really happened to us, unlike what’s going on with people right now, with the whole virus going around and all that.”
We listen intently.
“It was a good thing we had Djinn with us, otherwise traveling around would have taken a stupidly long time, I’m sure you know the details about that. By the way, if you’ve looked at the map, you probably saw that huge area on the north parts; those are the profiles. Pretty much people’s houses.”
“We have houses?” Mezlo asks.
“I did just say that,” Term continues. “If you go there you’ll probably learn more. I do know about the bosses as well. Did you learn about that or was it some random idea and you coincidentally ended up here as a result?”
“… Random idea,” Canary says.
“… I see. Well, anyway, there are eight of them, and one is obviously already down. Once they’re all dead, the gate to inner ZD will open. Do I need to explain any more?”
“How did your group split up?” Lemmy asks him.
“I, uh…” Term sighs. “Do I have to answer?”
“Well… if you don’t want to… I mean, it’s not really any of my business so--”
“GOOD! Watch out for the Duck Hunt virus. He’s kidnapping all the administrators and I’m pretty sure that after he’s done with that he’s going to kidnap the mods too.”
“Wait, did Djinn get kidnapped?” Seth questions.
“… Yes,” Term answers. “And he had his keys on him so we couldn’t take his car.”
The potential answers as to why Terminus is on his own right now begin flowing into my head after this statement, but I don’t say anything.
“Hold on, how did you manage to fit twelve people in the car?” Mezlo asks.
“It was crammed,” Term replies. “Can I leave now?”
“One more thing,” Seth begins. Term groans. “Do you know where to go next?”
“No clue,” is the answer he gets.
Seth figures he’s lying. “Are you sure about that?”
“Figure it out on your own. I had to,” Terminus grumbles.
Terminus starts to leave. I can pretty much see Seth’s look saying “why do you have to be so freaking hard to work with.” Then, suddenly, something hits me.
“… You never asked for our names,” I say. Everyone is looking at me now.
“It doesn’t concern me,” Term tells me with a dark tone. I feel a shiver run up my spine. I’m not used to being directly spoken to in a serious case, well, outside of my family.
“You’re hiding something.”
Term turns around in what seems like slow-motion, with his eyes wide. Right at that very moment, I felt something. Something very strong. I collapse to the ground.
“Blue?! Are you okay?!” Lemmy yells, running to my side. My vision blurs and I lose consciousness.
…
When I wake up again, I’m being held by… I don’t know, I can’t see yet.
“She’s waking up!” I think Canary exclaims.
“Where…” I say quietly, only half-conscious.
“We haven’t gone anywhere,” I hear someone say, not whoever is holding me up from the ground. I’m pretty sure it’s Az who just said that though. “You were only out for a minute.”
I start to gain my bearings, and I’m surrounded by everyone, but I’m still having a hard time telling who’s who. I actually didn’t point this out earlier; I didn’t have my contacts or glasses in when this whole thing started, but when I arrived, I got perfect vision. Guess that’s convenient.
I look up, trying to make out who’s the one holding me. I rub my eyes a little, to see that it’s Terminus. I thought he left… WAIT, IT’S TERMINUS?!
“AJSDHAJKLSH!” I spout nonsense and sit up immediately.
“Whoa, you okay?” Mezlo asks.
“Nonononono, ah, um, I-I mean, I’m fine!” I try to say, laughing sheepishly. I try to get to my feet, only to find that my legs are being stupid and not wanting to support my body correctly. I stumble a little, but thankfully, Lemmy catches me. I can FEEL Term’s skeptical look behind me.
“What was that about?” Canary asks. “Earlier, I mean.”
“Do you have some sort of condition or something?” Lemmy asks me. “Or are you sick? Or something like that??”
“… No, I don’t, that was completely random,” I answer after calming down for a moment. “I just felt this bizarre surge of… power… as weird as that sounds.”
“That’s odd,” Az points out.
“300, lulz,” Mezlo says.
“Shut up, Mezlo.”
“But what was that… I saw…” I mumble. My group continues to look at me. I am so uncomfortable with this attention.
“What you saw?” Lemmy asks. “You saw something?”
“… Term,” I say, turning to face him. He looks at me, raising an eyebrow. “You can see usernames, can’t you?”
He momentarily looks surprised. “… How do you know that?” he asks.
“I can just… tell,” I answer. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Okay, what’s going on,” Mezlo says.
“… This just happened?” Term asks me. I nod. “So I’m not the only one…” The rest of my group stares at him, wanting more answers. Term sighs. “I mean I’m not the only one with some random ability that I got soon after arriving here.”
“So uh, she can see… abilities?” Canary asks. “Do we all have hidden abilities?!”
“… I don’t get anything from you guys,” I say. “Not that I can recognize at least.”
“Perhaps it has to be active…” Term suggests. “Either that only some people have some kind of special ability. Well, this was a great new discovery. I’m afraid I do have to leave now.” He starts walking off.
“C’mon dude, we have a car!” Mezlo says.
“STOP TRYING TO GET ME TO COME WITH YOU!”
“Let him go,” Seth says.
Within minutes, we’ve all piled back into the car. We discuss for only a minute where we go next, and we settle with going to this ‘profile’ section Term was talking about. And once we decide on that, the questions start piling up in front of me, regarding my this random ‘power’ I just got.
“Guys, it’s simple!” I say, getting a little fed up. “I pass out, I wake up, and bam, I’m magically able to tell! That’s all there is to it!”
“Yeah, you guys should leave her alone,” Az says. He wasn’t asking me any questions by the way. “I’m sure she doesn’t know what’s going on, either.”
And the car hit something.
It was a road sign.
“Seth, you really have to stop murdering these innocent road signs,” Canary says.
“Leave me alone…” he grumbles.
CHAPTER FIVE
“… Twenty-four hours?” our group almost all says at once.
“How is that even possible?” Azure asks.
“All right, let me give you the short version,” Term says. “At a certain point, obviously before those twenty-four hours, me and eleven other people were taken here and kept here for the first twelve hours, on our own. More people didn’t start to show up until after that. Before we knew it, there were obnoxious crowds everywhere.”
“So it didn’t happen all at once…” I mumble.
“Our whole group stuck together for that entire time. We were all confused, and nobody knew what was going on, so even though some of us didn’t get along very well, nobody tried to go off on their own. Nothing really happened to us, unlike what’s going on with people right now, with the whole virus going around and all that.”
We listen intently.
“It was a good thing we had Djinn with us, otherwise traveling around would have taken a stupidly long time, I’m sure you know the details about that. By the way, if you’ve looked at the map, you probably saw that huge area on the north parts; those are the profiles. Pretty much people’s houses.”
“We have houses?” Mezlo asks.
“I did just say that,” Term continues. “If you go there you’ll probably learn more. I do know about the bosses as well. Did you learn about that or was it some random idea and you coincidentally ended up here as a result?”
“… Random idea,” Canary says.
“… I see. Well, anyway, there are eight of them, and one is obviously already down. Once they’re all dead, the gate to inner ZD will open. Do I need to explain any more?”
“How did your group split up?” Lemmy asks him.
“I, uh…” Term sighs. “Do I have to answer?”
“Well… if you don’t want to… I mean, it’s not really any of my business so--”
“GOOD! Watch out for the Duck Hunt virus. He’s kidnapping all the administrators and I’m pretty sure that after he’s done with that he’s going to kidnap the mods too.”
“Wait, did Djinn get kidnapped?” Seth questions.
“… Yes,” Term answers. “And he had his keys on him so we couldn’t take his car.”
The potential answers as to why Terminus is on his own right now begin flowing into my head after this statement, but I don’t say anything.
“Hold on, how did you manage to fit twelve people in the car?” Mezlo asks.
“It was crammed,” Term replies. “Can I leave now?”
“One more thing,” Seth begins. Term groans. “Do you know where to go next?”
“No clue,” is the answer he gets.
Seth figures he’s lying. “Are you sure about that?”
“Figure it out on your own. I had to,” Terminus grumbles.
Terminus starts to leave. I can pretty much see Seth’s look saying “why do you have to be so freaking hard to work with.” Then, suddenly, something hits me.
“… You never asked for our names,” I say. Everyone is looking at me now.
“It doesn’t concern me,” Term tells me with a dark tone. I feel a shiver run up my spine. I’m not used to being directly spoken to in a serious case, well, outside of my family.
“You’re hiding something.”
Term turns around in what seems like slow-motion, with his eyes wide. Right at that very moment, I felt something. Something very strong. I collapse to the ground.
“Blue?! Are you okay?!” Lemmy yells, running to my side. My vision blurs and I lose consciousness.
…
When I wake up again, I’m being held by… I don’t know, I can’t see yet.
“She’s waking up!” I think Canary exclaims.
“Where…” I say quietly, only half-conscious.
“We haven’t gone anywhere,” I hear someone say, not whoever is holding me up from the ground. I’m pretty sure it’s Az who just said that though. “You were only out for a minute.”
I start to gain my bearings, and I’m surrounded by everyone, but I’m still having a hard time telling who’s who. I actually didn’t point this out earlier; I didn’t have my contacts or glasses in when this whole thing started, but when I arrived, I got perfect vision. Guess that’s convenient.
I look up, trying to make out who’s the one holding me. I rub my eyes a little, to see that it’s Terminus. I thought he left… WAIT, IT’S TERMINUS?!
“AJSDHAJKLSH!” I spout nonsense and sit up immediately.
“Whoa, you okay?” Mezlo asks.
“Nonononono, ah, um, I-I mean, I’m fine!” I try to say, laughing sheepishly. I try to get to my feet, only to find that my legs are being stupid and not wanting to support my body correctly. I stumble a little, but thankfully, Lemmy catches me. I can FEEL Term’s skeptical look behind me.
“What was that about?” Canary asks. “Earlier, I mean.”
“Do you have some sort of condition or something?” Lemmy asks me. “Or are you sick? Or something like that??”
“… No, I don’t, that was completely random,” I answer after calming down for a moment. “I just felt this bizarre surge of… power… as weird as that sounds.”
“That’s odd,” Az points out.
“300, lulz,” Mezlo says.
“Shut up, Mezlo.”
“But what was that… I saw…” I mumble. My group continues to look at me. I am so uncomfortable with this attention.
“What you saw?” Lemmy asks. “You saw something?”
“… Term,” I say, turning to face him. He looks at me, raising an eyebrow. “You can see usernames, can’t you?”
He momentarily looks surprised. “… How do you know that?” he asks.
“I can just… tell,” I answer. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Okay, what’s going on,” Mezlo says.
“… This just happened?” Term asks me. I nod. “So I’m not the only one…” The rest of my group stares at him, wanting more answers. Term sighs. “I mean I’m not the only one with some random ability that I got soon after arriving here.”
“So uh, she can see… abilities?” Canary asks. “Do we all have hidden abilities?!”
“… I don’t get anything from you guys,” I say. “Not that I can recognize at least.”
“Perhaps it has to be active…” Term suggests. “Either that only some people have some kind of special ability. Well, this was a great new discovery. I’m afraid I do have to leave now.” He starts walking off.
“C’mon dude, we have a car!” Mezlo says.
“STOP TRYING TO GET ME TO COME WITH YOU!”
“Let him go,” Seth says.
Within minutes, we’ve all piled back into the car. We discuss for only a minute where we go next, and we settle with going to this ‘profile’ section Term was talking about. And once we decide on that, the questions start piling up in front of me, regarding my this random ‘power’ I just got.
“Guys, it’s simple!” I say, getting a little fed up. “I pass out, I wake up, and bam, I’m magically able to tell! That’s all there is to it!”
“Yeah, you guys should leave her alone,” Az says. He wasn’t asking me any questions by the way. “I’m sure she doesn’t know what’s going on, either.”
And the car hit something.
It was a road sign.
“Seth, you really have to stop murdering these innocent road signs,” Canary says.
“Leave me alone…” he grumbles.
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onebizarrekai
gay energy
~-o-~
CHAPTER SIX
MEANWHILE IN SOME OTHER LOCATION…
“Are we there yet?”
“We’ve only been driving for ten minutes. It’s going to take longer than that to get there.”
“Yeah, after all, we have to drive pretty much all the way across the map.”
“Ugh…”
Currently making their way towards the profile section in the land of ZD, by car, is a group that consists of Ari, Vanessa (the driver), Beauts (in the passenger seat), and Leaf Leaf, who is completely asleep in the very back seats of the car.
“Pendio…” Ari sighs, staring out the window. “Wherever art thou?”
“Don’t worry, Ari,” Beauts reassures her. “I’m sure we’ll find him somewhere.”
“Your true love will bring you two together,” Vanessa says. Beauts gags.
Suddenly, a sign randomly appears in the middle of the road right in front of them, not giving them a chance to stop. Vanessa accidentally drives into it as a result.
“Holy--! What was that?!” Beauts exclaims.
Vanessa gets out of the car to see. “… It’s a road sign. Okay, that was not there a second ago,” she says. “I swear it just appeared out of no where, right here in the middle of the road--” And then the sign disappears.
The three of them make O____o faces.
“… Haunted sign??” Ari says.
LIKE A HALF HOUR LATER…
“Okay, am I hallucinating or is that another car parked in that random lot over there?” Ari asks, pointing out the window.
“Nope, that’s a car,” Beauts says. “Huh. The license plate says ‘Seth’ on it…”
They pull into the lot themselves and Vanessa parks the car, since there seems to be no road here. The second she finishes, Ari jumps out as quickly as she can to look around.
This area has much less of a city-like appearence, unlike the forum sections, but has more of a large neighborhood look; after all, there are small-ish houses everywhere in sight, obviously because this is where people’s ‘profiles’ are, and people having the houses. Naturally, the houses are small because only one person owns each.
“Wait, Leaf Leaf is still asleep, isn’t he…” Ari says to herself. She turns back in the direction of the car and--
“GOOD MORNING VIRTUAL WORLD!!” Leaf yells with his arms in the air for some reason, apparently already awake.
Ari blinks. “Okay then…”
“Don’t worry, ladies,” he says in a tone that makes the others want to face palm. “We won’t get lost here, I know it.”
“Nobody was talking about that,” Beauts mumbles.
Leaf flips his hair. “Strangely, I seem to have this place magically already stuck in my head--”
“You’re not the only one,” Vanessa says. “This place seems oddly familiar.”
They walk along wide brick path of the area. For some strange reason, the world seems to pass by faster as they walk; like they’re covering more distance walking than they should be.
“Whoa, what happened to the world?” Leaf wonders. “We were not here a minute ago.”
“Where are we even going?” Ari asks.
“Well, we did see Seth’s car,” Vanessa says, being the responsible adult. “Maybe we should go and look for his profile, he and possibly others could be there. But it’s just a guess.”
After walking for about another minute, they all stop and turn to their left.
“Yep, this is it,” Beauts says, looking at the pretty normal-looking house before them. “Without a doubt.”
“How do we even know that?” Ari ponders. “This place makes no sense…”
They all walk up to the porch, and Ari rings the doorbell.
…
Pretty much all of us jump or flail our arms when we hear the doorbell ring. Including me. HOW. HOW IS THERE A PERSON OR PEOPLE HERE. Wait, would that mean that they’re users, right? Right?
We all stare at the front door that’s only a room away. I mean, we’re all either having this meeting-type thing in the living room, or we’re just chilling here because nobody’s actually talking about much except Seth. After getting out of our state of surprise, Seth goes over and answers the door to see…
“OMG!! ARI!!” Mezlo yells, instantly recognizing said person, throwing his arms in the air and standing up from the couch he had been sitting on.
“Wait, is that you, Mezlo?!” Ari exclaims.
“Heck yeah it’s me!” he says. “So uh… are we gonna hug or something?”
“Uh… I dunno…”
“Why are there so many people here?” one of the girls says. I think I recognize her. She’s um… Beauts? Probably. I dunno, I’ve only seen pictures. “Did you all travel here too…?”
“Indeed,” Seth says. “Would you all like to talk about stuff?”
“… Stuff? That’s pretty vague.”
“Catching up on pretty much everything that’s happened so far, probably,” Az says.
“Oh, okay, that sounds like a good idea.”
Wait, who’s that guy in the back? I can’t see him very well…
Within minutes, everyone has settled in the living room here. We’re pretty much going over absolutely everything. Once I figure out who they are, I quickly lose interest in the conversation--
“Erm, Blue, would you kindly explain what happened with you at the mafia area?” Seth asks me. Oops. I’m snoozing on the arm of the couch. Canary pokes me and I sit up almost instantly.
“Wait what do I have to do…?” I ask. Seth sighs. “No wait no wait, I know what you said, never mind. So like, this whole thing happened where I kind of randomly passed out while we were talking to Term and I magically gained the power to see what people’s abilities are. I mean, the ones that they might get after coming here. You talked about that, right?”
“Yes, we went over that.”
The rest of the conversation is blah blah blah to me.
“Is there anything else anyone would like to point out?” Seth asks everyone. And then I realize something… so I raise my hand. “What is it, Blue?”
“… I wanna point out that I would prefer it if people would call me Kylie,” I say. “I don’t really notice when people are talking to me if they call me ‘Blue’, if that hasn’t been very clear.” I laugh awkwardly. “Or you could call me Ky or something…”
“Sounds good!” Leaf says.
Oh wait. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention earlier. Yeah, I have been spacing out a lot and dozing off.
Leaf is here. Like, freaking LEAF. Wat.
“WAIT!” Ari exclaims. “Have you guys seen Pendio anywhere?”
“YES,” Lemmy instantly answers. “He was with Jimmy in the community area!”
“I HAVE TO FIND HIM! I HAVE TO!!” Whoa. She’s flipping out. Well, I can’t really blame her. Besides, I ship the crap out of them, so it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.
“I’ll call Jimmy,” Seth says, taking out his phone. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this, but oddly, when we encountered that group, Jimmy’s contact information (from his phone here) appeared in Seth’s phone automatically. Convenient AND strange.
Ringing…
“Hello?” Jimmy says through the phone. Seth put it on speaker.
“Jimmy, Pendio is still with you, correct?” Seth asks.
“Did you find Ari?” Wow. He figured that out fast.
“Yes. Where are you right now?”
“Oh, we were just on our way to this profile section place, because apparently everybody’s profiles are houses there and my group really wants to know what’s going on there. I have to admit, I do to.”
“What a coincidence! We’re already there. How long do you think it will take you?”
“Probably five more minutes.”
“All right then, we’re here at my profile, or house, or whatever you want to call it. By the way, in order to find a place, all you have to do is want to go there and you’ll end up there soon enough.” Seth hangs up.
I sigh.
“What’s the matter, Blue-- I mean, Kylie?” Lemmy asks me. Funny. Nobody would ask me what’s wrong from just that in real life.
“… Everybody here loves Ari,” I say quietly. “It’s not that I have a problem with that, it’s just that it makes me feel sort of alone…”
“You don’t need to feel that way,” Leaf says. Holy frick. He was not sitting next to me a second ago. Oh gawsh, he has his arm around me--
“Leaf Leaf, stop it,” Lemmy tells him. Leaf frowns.
“Okay, seriously, am I the only one who just calls him Leaf?” I ask.
“Maybe you should be the only one,” Leaf says, “It’s like that personal nickname a special person gives you.”
“Uh…”
Beauts appears behind the couch and karate chops Leaf in the head. “Leaf Leaf! You’re making her uncomfortable!” she says.
“Ow…” he mumbles.
“S-so, uh, we’re just gonna wait like five minutes for the others to get here, right?” I ask.
Suddenly, Seth’s phone rings again. He picks up. “What is it?” he asks.
“Bad news, Seth,” Jimmy says through it. “Apparently, all of the admins have already been taken by the Duck Hunt Virus!” Oh frick. Imaginary dramatic music commences.
“What?! How did you become aware of this?!” Seth questions. Oh yeah, we did talk about that virus with those guys earlier.
“My phone. It freaked out and was like ADMINS NOT FOUND! I don’t even know how it got Kitsu! He was flying around in a blimp!”
“Kitsu was flying around in a blimp??” Mezlo asks.
“Well then, we need to be careful!” I exclaim. “Terminus said that it might go after the mods next!”
“I’m going to try and get there as fast as I can,” Jimmy says. “See you all!” He hangs up.
Right after that, Seth’s phone flips out and starts making an obnoxious alarm sound. Just like Jimmy’s phone probably did. Maybe the call was cutting it off or something? I don’t know.
“All right everyone, this just got way more serious,” Seth tells us. He takes his car keys out of his pocket and tosses them to Az. “In case I end up getting taken as well, Azure Sage, you are now in charge of the car.”
“Got it,” he answers, pocketing the keys.
I thought the next three minutes or so would be really serious and intense but we still ended up doing pretty much nothing but waiting around.
After that, we all hear a loud knocking on the door. Ari jumps up saying “I’ll get it!” and she does. On the other side of the door is, thankfully, Jimmy’s group, and not the Duck Hunt virus.
Ari’s face lights up as she see’s Pendio’s beautiful face on the other side of the door. “Pendio…” she says.
“Ari…” he says.
“GUYS, COME INSIDE, PLEASE!” Mezlo yells at them. They all enter the room, Ari locking the front door behind them.
“So, at any given time now, the Duck Hunt virus could be arriving…” Seth says.
“Pendio…” Ari says again.
“Ari…” he says, putting his hand on her cheek.
“It’s like a dream come true…”
“I know right…”
You know how random romantic moments always get interrupted?
Yeah…
“Guys? What’s that?” Keiko asks, pointing out a window. We all look out to see a huge BIRD flying in the direction of the house. Specifically… A DUCK.
Pretty much all of us scream before we dive for cover. The giant duck flies straight into the house, probably knocking off the second floor entirely. Since when has there been a duck?!
“WHAT DO WE DO, WHAT DO WE DO, WHAT DO WE DO?!” Mezlo yells.
“Kill it?!” Canary suggests.
It is then (of course, right at the last second) that I realize something probably important.
“Ari! Did you randomly pass out as some point?!” I ask her. She looks at me and then awkwardly nods. “You know how earlier I said that I seemed to gain that ability to see others' abilities after the same thing happened to me?”
Her eyes widen. “Do I have one?!” she asks me.
“Yes, you do!” I seriously have no idea how I know this. I just do. “Hold your arm out and visualize an object appearing in it!” She looks at me like I’m crazy. “Just do it, okay?!”
Ari sighs, and holds her arm out. In a split second of sparkles and light, a large, gold-colored bow appears in her hand. “WHOA!” she exclaims. To be honest, I’m just as surprised. Her power is exactly what my mind told me. “All right then… BRING IT!”
She stands on the table in the middle of the pretty much destroyed room and holds her bow out, and some sort of magic silver arrow appears in her other hand; no idea how that works, but thinking logically hasn’t really been working too much here. It was like she instantly knew how to use it even though she should have been unfamiliar with it all.
Everybody stares as Ari jumps around shooting arrows at the giant bird. While many of the arrows she shot missed, she kept going. Unfortunately, her efforts to make the bird leave or even defeat it are pointless; it quickly remembers what it had come for in the first place, snatches up Vanessa and Seth in its talons and Jimmy in its beak (looks pretty uncomfortable), and flies off. It does look like it has been injured, but that’s not stopping it.
“DANG IT!” Ari yells, shooting one last arrow at the Duck Hunt bird, hoping to hit it in the head, but the arrow misses. “We shouldn’t have brought everyone to one place to begin with!”
Nobody says anything else. It seems like there’s nothing we can do right now. Man, this reminds me a lot of Wind Waker, to be honest. After about ten seconds, the house has already begun rebuilding itself before our eyes. All the broken pieces on the floor start to disappear and the walls of the house are filled in with green digital space before filling into pieces again. It actually looks pretty cool.
Az looks down and notices something on the floor. “Wait, are these car keys on the ground?” he wonders, picking them up. He checks his pocket to find that the keys Seth gave him are still there, meaning that they must belong to one of the other two mods.
“… That was pretty amazing, Ari,” Pendio says.
“But I failed…” she mumbles.
“How did you even do that?”
“Oh right, we didn’t tell those guys about the whole some people having powers thing…” Az says. “Well, apparently, some people here have gained powers after a while.”
“I can see other people’s powers,” I point out. “That’s how I was able to tell you about that. Though, it’s a little strange, I thought that you would have already known how it works from it awakening. Oh well, it’s not like I would know what goes on with others.”
“Huh, that’s interesting,” Pendio answers. Considering what he just witnessed, I’m not surprised that he’s not questioning it.
But, you know, three mods just got kidnapped by a giant duck. This is kind of bad.
Like, really really bad.
CHAPTER SIX
MEANWHILE IN SOME OTHER LOCATION…
“Are we there yet?”
“We’ve only been driving for ten minutes. It’s going to take longer than that to get there.”
“Yeah, after all, we have to drive pretty much all the way across the map.”
“Ugh…”
Currently making their way towards the profile section in the land of ZD, by car, is a group that consists of Ari, Vanessa (the driver), Beauts (in the passenger seat), and Leaf Leaf, who is completely asleep in the very back seats of the car.
“Pendio…” Ari sighs, staring out the window. “Wherever art thou?”
“Don’t worry, Ari,” Beauts reassures her. “I’m sure we’ll find him somewhere.”
“Your true love will bring you two together,” Vanessa says. Beauts gags.
Suddenly, a sign randomly appears in the middle of the road right in front of them, not giving them a chance to stop. Vanessa accidentally drives into it as a result.
“Holy--! What was that?!” Beauts exclaims.
Vanessa gets out of the car to see. “… It’s a road sign. Okay, that was not there a second ago,” she says. “I swear it just appeared out of no where, right here in the middle of the road--” And then the sign disappears.
The three of them make O____o faces.
“… Haunted sign??” Ari says.
LIKE A HALF HOUR LATER…
“Okay, am I hallucinating or is that another car parked in that random lot over there?” Ari asks, pointing out the window.
“Nope, that’s a car,” Beauts says. “Huh. The license plate says ‘Seth’ on it…”
They pull into the lot themselves and Vanessa parks the car, since there seems to be no road here. The second she finishes, Ari jumps out as quickly as she can to look around.
This area has much less of a city-like appearence, unlike the forum sections, but has more of a large neighborhood look; after all, there are small-ish houses everywhere in sight, obviously because this is where people’s ‘profiles’ are, and people having the houses. Naturally, the houses are small because only one person owns each.
“Wait, Leaf Leaf is still asleep, isn’t he…” Ari says to herself. She turns back in the direction of the car and--
“GOOD MORNING VIRTUAL WORLD!!” Leaf yells with his arms in the air for some reason, apparently already awake.
Ari blinks. “Okay then…”
“Don’t worry, ladies,” he says in a tone that makes the others want to face palm. “We won’t get lost here, I know it.”
“Nobody was talking about that,” Beauts mumbles.
Leaf flips his hair. “Strangely, I seem to have this place magically already stuck in my head--”
“You’re not the only one,” Vanessa says. “This place seems oddly familiar.”
They walk along wide brick path of the area. For some strange reason, the world seems to pass by faster as they walk; like they’re covering more distance walking than they should be.
“Whoa, what happened to the world?” Leaf wonders. “We were not here a minute ago.”
“Where are we even going?” Ari asks.
“Well, we did see Seth’s car,” Vanessa says, being the responsible adult. “Maybe we should go and look for his profile, he and possibly others could be there. But it’s just a guess.”
After walking for about another minute, they all stop and turn to their left.
“Yep, this is it,” Beauts says, looking at the pretty normal-looking house before them. “Without a doubt.”
“How do we even know that?” Ari ponders. “This place makes no sense…”
They all walk up to the porch, and Ari rings the doorbell.
…
Pretty much all of us jump or flail our arms when we hear the doorbell ring. Including me. HOW. HOW IS THERE A PERSON OR PEOPLE HERE. Wait, would that mean that they’re users, right? Right?
We all stare at the front door that’s only a room away. I mean, we’re all either having this meeting-type thing in the living room, or we’re just chilling here because nobody’s actually talking about much except Seth. After getting out of our state of surprise, Seth goes over and answers the door to see…
“OMG!! ARI!!” Mezlo yells, instantly recognizing said person, throwing his arms in the air and standing up from the couch he had been sitting on.
“Wait, is that you, Mezlo?!” Ari exclaims.
“Heck yeah it’s me!” he says. “So uh… are we gonna hug or something?”
“Uh… I dunno…”
“Why are there so many people here?” one of the girls says. I think I recognize her. She’s um… Beauts? Probably. I dunno, I’ve only seen pictures. “Did you all travel here too…?”
“Indeed,” Seth says. “Would you all like to talk about stuff?”
“… Stuff? That’s pretty vague.”
“Catching up on pretty much everything that’s happened so far, probably,” Az says.
“Oh, okay, that sounds like a good idea.”
Wait, who’s that guy in the back? I can’t see him very well…
Within minutes, everyone has settled in the living room here. We’re pretty much going over absolutely everything. Once I figure out who they are, I quickly lose interest in the conversation--
“Erm, Blue, would you kindly explain what happened with you at the mafia area?” Seth asks me. Oops. I’m snoozing on the arm of the couch. Canary pokes me and I sit up almost instantly.
“Wait what do I have to do…?” I ask. Seth sighs. “No wait no wait, I know what you said, never mind. So like, this whole thing happened where I kind of randomly passed out while we were talking to Term and I magically gained the power to see what people’s abilities are. I mean, the ones that they might get after coming here. You talked about that, right?”
“Yes, we went over that.”
The rest of the conversation is blah blah blah to me.
“Is there anything else anyone would like to point out?” Seth asks everyone. And then I realize something… so I raise my hand. “What is it, Blue?”
“… I wanna point out that I would prefer it if people would call me Kylie,” I say. “I don’t really notice when people are talking to me if they call me ‘Blue’, if that hasn’t been very clear.” I laugh awkwardly. “Or you could call me Ky or something…”
“Sounds good!” Leaf says.
Oh wait. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention earlier. Yeah, I have been spacing out a lot and dozing off.
Leaf is here. Like, freaking LEAF. Wat.
“WAIT!” Ari exclaims. “Have you guys seen Pendio anywhere?”
“YES,” Lemmy instantly answers. “He was with Jimmy in the community area!”
“I HAVE TO FIND HIM! I HAVE TO!!” Whoa. She’s flipping out. Well, I can’t really blame her. Besides, I ship the crap out of them, so it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.
“I’ll call Jimmy,” Seth says, taking out his phone. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this, but oddly, when we encountered that group, Jimmy’s contact information (from his phone here) appeared in Seth’s phone automatically. Convenient AND strange.
Ringing…
“Hello?” Jimmy says through the phone. Seth put it on speaker.
“Jimmy, Pendio is still with you, correct?” Seth asks.
“Did you find Ari?” Wow. He figured that out fast.
“Yes. Where are you right now?”
“Oh, we were just on our way to this profile section place, because apparently everybody’s profiles are houses there and my group really wants to know what’s going on there. I have to admit, I do to.”
“What a coincidence! We’re already there. How long do you think it will take you?”
“Probably five more minutes.”
“All right then, we’re here at my profile, or house, or whatever you want to call it. By the way, in order to find a place, all you have to do is want to go there and you’ll end up there soon enough.” Seth hangs up.
I sigh.
“What’s the matter, Blue-- I mean, Kylie?” Lemmy asks me. Funny. Nobody would ask me what’s wrong from just that in real life.
“… Everybody here loves Ari,” I say quietly. “It’s not that I have a problem with that, it’s just that it makes me feel sort of alone…”
“You don’t need to feel that way,” Leaf says. Holy frick. He was not sitting next to me a second ago. Oh gawsh, he has his arm around me--
“Leaf Leaf, stop it,” Lemmy tells him. Leaf frowns.
“Okay, seriously, am I the only one who just calls him Leaf?” I ask.
“Maybe you should be the only one,” Leaf says, “It’s like that personal nickname a special person gives you.”
“Uh…”
Beauts appears behind the couch and karate chops Leaf in the head. “Leaf Leaf! You’re making her uncomfortable!” she says.
“Ow…” he mumbles.
“S-so, uh, we’re just gonna wait like five minutes for the others to get here, right?” I ask.
Suddenly, Seth’s phone rings again. He picks up. “What is it?” he asks.
“Bad news, Seth,” Jimmy says through it. “Apparently, all of the admins have already been taken by the Duck Hunt Virus!” Oh frick. Imaginary dramatic music commences.
“What?! How did you become aware of this?!” Seth questions. Oh yeah, we did talk about that virus with those guys earlier.
“My phone. It freaked out and was like ADMINS NOT FOUND! I don’t even know how it got Kitsu! He was flying around in a blimp!”
“Kitsu was flying around in a blimp??” Mezlo asks.
“Well then, we need to be careful!” I exclaim. “Terminus said that it might go after the mods next!”
“I’m going to try and get there as fast as I can,” Jimmy says. “See you all!” He hangs up.
Right after that, Seth’s phone flips out and starts making an obnoxious alarm sound. Just like Jimmy’s phone probably did. Maybe the call was cutting it off or something? I don’t know.
“All right everyone, this just got way more serious,” Seth tells us. He takes his car keys out of his pocket and tosses them to Az. “In case I end up getting taken as well, Azure Sage, you are now in charge of the car.”
“Got it,” he answers, pocketing the keys.
I thought the next three minutes or so would be really serious and intense but we still ended up doing pretty much nothing but waiting around.
After that, we all hear a loud knocking on the door. Ari jumps up saying “I’ll get it!” and she does. On the other side of the door is, thankfully, Jimmy’s group, and not the Duck Hunt virus.
Ari’s face lights up as she see’s Pendio’s beautiful face on the other side of the door. “Pendio…” she says.
“Ari…” he says.
“GUYS, COME INSIDE, PLEASE!” Mezlo yells at them. They all enter the room, Ari locking the front door behind them.
“So, at any given time now, the Duck Hunt virus could be arriving…” Seth says.
“Pendio…” Ari says again.
“Ari…” he says, putting his hand on her cheek.
“It’s like a dream come true…”
“I know right…”
You know how random romantic moments always get interrupted?
Yeah…
“Guys? What’s that?” Keiko asks, pointing out a window. We all look out to see a huge BIRD flying in the direction of the house. Specifically… A DUCK.
Pretty much all of us scream before we dive for cover. The giant duck flies straight into the house, probably knocking off the second floor entirely. Since when has there been a duck?!
“WHAT DO WE DO, WHAT DO WE DO, WHAT DO WE DO?!” Mezlo yells.
“Kill it?!” Canary suggests.
It is then (of course, right at the last second) that I realize something probably important.
“Ari! Did you randomly pass out as some point?!” I ask her. She looks at me and then awkwardly nods. “You know how earlier I said that I seemed to gain that ability to see others' abilities after the same thing happened to me?”
Her eyes widen. “Do I have one?!” she asks me.
“Yes, you do!” I seriously have no idea how I know this. I just do. “Hold your arm out and visualize an object appearing in it!” She looks at me like I’m crazy. “Just do it, okay?!”
Ari sighs, and holds her arm out. In a split second of sparkles and light, a large, gold-colored bow appears in her hand. “WHOA!” she exclaims. To be honest, I’m just as surprised. Her power is exactly what my mind told me. “All right then… BRING IT!”
She stands on the table in the middle of the pretty much destroyed room and holds her bow out, and some sort of magic silver arrow appears in her other hand; no idea how that works, but thinking logically hasn’t really been working too much here. It was like she instantly knew how to use it even though she should have been unfamiliar with it all.
Everybody stares as Ari jumps around shooting arrows at the giant bird. While many of the arrows she shot missed, she kept going. Unfortunately, her efforts to make the bird leave or even defeat it are pointless; it quickly remembers what it had come for in the first place, snatches up Vanessa and Seth in its talons and Jimmy in its beak (looks pretty uncomfortable), and flies off. It does look like it has been injured, but that’s not stopping it.
“DANG IT!” Ari yells, shooting one last arrow at the Duck Hunt bird, hoping to hit it in the head, but the arrow misses. “We shouldn’t have brought everyone to one place to begin with!”
Nobody says anything else. It seems like there’s nothing we can do right now. Man, this reminds me a lot of Wind Waker, to be honest. After about ten seconds, the house has already begun rebuilding itself before our eyes. All the broken pieces on the floor start to disappear and the walls of the house are filled in with green digital space before filling into pieces again. It actually looks pretty cool.
Az looks down and notices something on the floor. “Wait, are these car keys on the ground?” he wonders, picking them up. He checks his pocket to find that the keys Seth gave him are still there, meaning that they must belong to one of the other two mods.
“… That was pretty amazing, Ari,” Pendio says.
“But I failed…” she mumbles.
“How did you even do that?”
“Oh right, we didn’t tell those guys about the whole some people having powers thing…” Az says. “Well, apparently, some people here have gained powers after a while.”
“I can see other people’s powers,” I point out. “That’s how I was able to tell you about that. Though, it’s a little strange, I thought that you would have already known how it works from it awakening. Oh well, it’s not like I would know what goes on with others.”
“Huh, that’s interesting,” Pendio answers. Considering what he just witnessed, I’m not surprised that he’s not questioning it.
But, you know, three mods just got kidnapped by a giant duck. This is kind of bad.
Like, really really bad.
Omg this is really entertaining. I like how Mezlo is the comic releif and I'm the voice of reason xD I think PanKeiko is my favoritest thing though because dat pun
Did i forget to mention that I love how Terminus is all :leavingforever:
onebizarrekai
gay energy
~-o-~
CHAPTER SEVEN
“All right, we need a plan,” Azure says.
“Plan for what?” Lemmy asks.
“EVERYTHING.”
“We need to nominate a new leader!” Mezlo suggests. “Right? Seth was technically the leader before, right?”
Everyone looks around, some shrugging, but basically in general nobody really knows.
“Who should we pick?” Ari asks. “What wouldn’t be objected against?”
“Probably Az,” I say. “Seth did give him the car keys, so maybe he was passing on the leadership.”
“But don’t we need two leaders?” Pendio asks. “After all, we’ll be splitting into two groups, right?”
“Ah, right. I guess it would be a better idea to split off into groups first and then pick seperate leaders.”
“How many of us are there?” Mezlo wonders and begins counting everyone.
“Do the groups have to be even?” Canary asks.
“Or maybe we should pick two leaders first and then people can go with whoever they want,” I suggest. “Or something like that.”
“I nominate Pendio as the other leader,” Ari points out. “I mean, of course this has nothing to do with me, I just think he would be a good leader!” Pendio laughs.
“Sounds good,” Az says, handing the second pair of keys to Pendio. “So, I’m not sure whether these go to Jimmy’s car or--”
“They’re Jimmy’s,” Pendio tells him. “I recognize them.”
“That makes this easier.” Az turns to everyone else. “So now, even groups would be good, because we know what follows this.”
Some people casually walk over to the leader they want to go with, while others are pretty unsure. I decide to stay with Az because we were in the same car before, while others are still making choices. The idea that we have to be in even groups thanks to our sudden quest to kill a bunch of monsters makes this all the more difficult, it seems.
Even though everybody knows by this point that I have the power to see people’s abilities, that doesn’t seem to make anyone want to go with us, and I guess that reason would be that they already know how to identify that a person’s ability just became usable.
“Canaaaryyyyy,” I randomly coo, holding my hand out towards her to try and get her to come in this car. I do this sometimes. She sighs and comes over here, not sure what else to do.
Lemmy ends up switching cars, deciding to go with Ari and Pendio; the others who ultimately choose to go with them are Beauts, Keiko and Mezlo. Though, I’m somewhat sad about Mezlo leaving, because he was our comic relief. Even so, their group sounds pretty legit if you ask me. Everyone else goes in our car, giving them six people and us five people.
“Well, this is gonna be interesting,” I mumble. I look at Azure. “So are we gonna look for the next boss or something? I mean, we know what we have to do, but where do we start?”
“Forward march, team!” Ari calls out, and that team obediently makes their way towards the front door of the house. Lol.
“Wait,” Az tells me, “could there be something important here, that could be useful?”
“Like… what?” I ask. “I mean, I guess it’s Seth’s house, and he’s a mod and stuff, but would there be something here?” Then it hits me. “Wait, Term said that if we go to our houses, we’ll learn stuff. And he had a machine gun that could magically be put in his pocket. You think he got that at his own house?”
“Well, what I had in mind was something a little different, but that’s also pretty important. I was thinking a spare phone so that we actually know where we’re going.”
“Oh. Duh.” I face palm.
After Pendio’s group files out, Az tells us all to look for something potentially helpful and we, rudely enough, start rummaging through the house. It’s for a good cause!
I don’t instantly start looking through things, I think for a bit where the best things would be. I start looking for a basement, and Lexy joins me in my search. Canary starts looking for an attic, Az goes upstairs, and Leaf stays on the middle floor.
I do find a basement. It just has a regular white door, and upon being opened, it’s easy to see that the basement is finished, much to my relief. Unfinished basements always freak me out a little, they just smell really damp, and they remind me of spiders. Eugh.
There isn’t much to find down here, except the carpet is really soft. How would I know that? Well… No shoes. Never had them to begin with, either. Yes, this entire time, I’ve been barefoot. It kind of sucks. Thankfully, there hasn’t been much walking at all and the ground outside has been pretty nice to me anyway, it’s clean, the paths are smooth, and there are no rocks to trip over or make you bleed.
Anyway, down here there’s a nice computer, a fuseball table, a TV on the wall with various video game consoles in a cabinet beneath it, a bathroom, and what I assume is an empty storage room. That seems to be it. The basement is nice and all, but nothing that helpful is down here.
“Well this is a bit disappointing,” Lexy says as we go back up the stairs and shut the lights off at the top.
We decide to go check out what was going on with the attic, so we go upstairs. There isn’t a ladder going down from a hole in the ceiling, or any sign of that, but at the end of the hall that has about four doors, there is another staircase. We go over there to find a finished attic (I always liked those), and up there we find a ton of cardboard boxes and Canary standing among them, inspecting some object, her back towards us.
“Hey, what’d you find?” I ask her. She turns around, and the object appears to be a smartphone.
“Found it in a box… and this was all that was in it,” Canary answers, holding it up. “I think it’s the spare phone. Not sure why it was in a box up here though.”
“Sweet. That’s pretty much exactly the thing what we were looking for.” We head back downstairs and find Az, and show him the phone.
“This is great! We needed this,” he says.
And of course… IT’S PASSCODED.
“Well frick,” I mutter. “What do we do?”
Az ponders for a moment, then an imaginary lightbulb appears above his head. He takes the car keys out of his pocket, and there’s a code engraved on one of the keychains. Sure enough, that’s the passcode we needed.
“What. How did you even do that,” Lexy says.
“I saw Seth do it earlier,” Azure answers. That’s a good enough answer.
When everyone has assembled in the living room, we all finally make our way out of the house, and we start walking back to the parking lot on the magic sidewalk that makes it seem like we’re walking way faster than we are. I’m not really sure why people don’t just have driveways here, but I guess that’s because there are few enough staff members that it’s just more convenient to keep the cars there.
“Augh, shoot. I forgot,” Az suddenly says. “We should go to our individual houses to see if there’s anything there that we need, because you know, what Term told us.”
“Oh yeah… that would be a good idea,” I mumble. I’m honestly hoping that I have shoes at my house. If I had to go the rest of the way barefoot, that could be bad.
“Knowing where you want to go seems to take you to that place here, so after we’re done, we can just meet up at the parking lot.”
And so we all split off. It feels weird to be alone, but within just a little while, I see what I can tell is my own house. It just seems so familiar, somehow. I enter, and just the sight of the interior makes me smile. It’s so me! Too bad I can’t stay here for long.
Firstly, it looks very modern. There are lots of large windows, and the whole place is very open. You walk in and there is a staircase fairly close by in front of you, but a lot of it is still open and visible from the first floor. The furniture is colorful, there are beanbag chairs and a spinning chair in the living room along with the couch (which is awesome), and the large kitchen has a tile floor that is still connected to the rest of the floor… so basically, most of the house is connected into one big room, with just wall dividers here and there, and no doorways or doors. There are actually two staircases on either side of the house, one is close to the front like I said, while the other is more in the back, near the basement door.
I go upstairs in this amazing place, and while the hallway is pretty much nonexistent and quickly becomes a second floor room that is visible from the first on both your right and your left from the first staircase, it has a three doors along the wall. One of them looks like the bedroom I always wanted, so I guess that one is mine, while there’s also a bathroom and a storage closet.
I quickly remember why I’m originally here, which makes me a little sad, knowing that I have to leave soon. Dang you place, giving me such an awesome house.
I go through my bedroom, opening all the drawers and the closet. Thankfully, there are in fact clothes here, but I decide not to change because I don’t really need to. But I do need shoes. I see what the closet has, and I pick out a pair of sneakers that look cool. They fit me perfectly. It’s kind of creepy, they’re more comfortable than any other pair of sneakers I’ve owned.
After this, I start wondering if I’ll find a weapon anywhere. I head down to the basement to see if anything’s down there, and I find some video games and the TV and all, more couches and chairs and stuff, and… HOLY CRAP IS THAT THE AWESOME HOCKEY FUSEBALL THING?! HOW DO THEY KNOW THESE THINGS?!
No, self. Stay focused.
I search some more, and find an empty storage room in the basement, just like at Seth’s house. Well, empty minus the single cardboard box right in the corner, eerily enough. I slowly make my way over there and open it and guess what I find?
A battle axe. Specifically, a greenish one with diamond patterns on it.
Are you kidding me? I never even told anyone that was my thing.
I pick it up, and surprisingly, it’s light and feels like I could fight with it without a problem. Well, it’s to be expected. Digital worlds, special weapons, made for certain users; you’d guess that it would be easy to use, right?
The blade of this thing, on both sides of it, is as big as my head, and I can clearly see my reflection on it. I wonder if I can do the magic purple thing with this like Terminus can with that machine gun.
I try to imagine it, and it almost immediately becomes this magic floaty purple thing in my hand, which easy goes in my pocket and feels like nothing. I just have to remember that’s there.
Oh crap, look at the time that I actually can’t see right now because there aren’t any clocks. I should go to the parking lot now.
-badly placed scene transition-
Whew, good to know I’m not the last one here. Looks like only Leaf is here, surprisingly enough. Maybe I just didn’t take as much time as I thought?
I see him leaning against Seth’s car (or rather, the car that he’s lending us now), and he quickly notices me.
“Hey babe,” he says.
I roll my eyes. “Are you kidding me?” I reply.
I go towards the front of the car and jump onto the top of it, with the help of the hood. It ended being way easier than I thought it would be, just like it looked like when Mezlo did it earlier. I went to the end and sat down. So basically, I was sitting next to where Leaf was standing, I was just on top of the car. I might as well get comfortable if I’m the second one here out of five.
“Hey, what’re you doing up there?” Leaf asks me.
“Sitting,” I answer.
“Hmmmmmmm,” his response is, and soon enough, he’s sitting up here with me.
“I can just imagine Az coming back and seeing us sitting up here, and then he’s like, really guys, it like hasn’t even been an hour since Seth got taken,” I say with an awkward laugh.
“And I can imagine a sunset happening right now, right in front of us,” Leaf says.
“Dude, knock it off. It’s getting a little weird.”
“Mehhhhh,” he… says. Does that even count as words?
“WELL, WELL, WELL!” we hear off in the distance, and we look over to see that the voice came from Lexy, who’s obviously making a dramatic entrance. “You two were having a bit of nice alone time, weren’t you?”
I actually face palm.
“Why, we were,” Leaf tells her. “Why’d you have to come interrupt?”
“Leaf, what the frick,” I say. He grins.
Az happens to show up right then. “Okay guys, really? Seth hasn’t even been gone for an hour and you’re already doing things he wouldn’t approve of?” he says.
“Called it,” I point out, jumping down from the car.
“Oh come on, Canary’s not even here yet,” Leaf says. “Why are you jumping down?”
“Don’t question me.”
And so when Canary does show up…
“Oh yeah! What’d you guys get in your houses?” Lexy asks us all.
“Shoes,” I respond, lifting my foot off the ground to indicate. “I also got a weapon.”
“The magic glowy thing is cool, isn’t it. I got a weapon too! It’s pretty cool.”
“I think we all did,” Azure says. “But I don’t think we should take any more time. We have to remember this is an important situation.”
“I wonder if Pendio’s group got their things as well,” Lexy points out. “Jimmy’s car isn’t here anymore, so they must have already left…”
“Where are we going?” Canary asks.
Az takes out the new smartphone and looks at the map for a bit. “The closest place is General Discussion… we haven’t been there, right? There must be something there. Where would another boss be?”
“… Mature discussion?” I suggest. “I dunno, just an idea.”
“Let’s head over there first, we’ll probably find something there even if it’s not in that location. It looks like the biggest area.”
We all pile into the car and set off. Lexy’s the one who gets in the front, and me, Leaf and Canary take seats in the back. We all end up taking our own set of seats because there are three sets, so why the heck not.
And so our journey to General Discussion begins.
But, I do have a feeling things are going to get annoying soon, considering the amount of information we don’t have.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“All right, we need a plan,” Azure says.
“Plan for what?” Lemmy asks.
“EVERYTHING.”
“We need to nominate a new leader!” Mezlo suggests. “Right? Seth was technically the leader before, right?”
Everyone looks around, some shrugging, but basically in general nobody really knows.
“Who should we pick?” Ari asks. “What wouldn’t be objected against?”
“Probably Az,” I say. “Seth did give him the car keys, so maybe he was passing on the leadership.”
“But don’t we need two leaders?” Pendio asks. “After all, we’ll be splitting into two groups, right?”
“Ah, right. I guess it would be a better idea to split off into groups first and then pick seperate leaders.”
“How many of us are there?” Mezlo wonders and begins counting everyone.
“Do the groups have to be even?” Canary asks.
“Or maybe we should pick two leaders first and then people can go with whoever they want,” I suggest. “Or something like that.”
“I nominate Pendio as the other leader,” Ari points out. “I mean, of course this has nothing to do with me, I just think he would be a good leader!” Pendio laughs.
“Sounds good,” Az says, handing the second pair of keys to Pendio. “So, I’m not sure whether these go to Jimmy’s car or--”
“They’re Jimmy’s,” Pendio tells him. “I recognize them.”
“That makes this easier.” Az turns to everyone else. “So now, even groups would be good, because we know what follows this.”
Some people casually walk over to the leader they want to go with, while others are pretty unsure. I decide to stay with Az because we were in the same car before, while others are still making choices. The idea that we have to be in even groups thanks to our sudden quest to kill a bunch of monsters makes this all the more difficult, it seems.
Even though everybody knows by this point that I have the power to see people’s abilities, that doesn’t seem to make anyone want to go with us, and I guess that reason would be that they already know how to identify that a person’s ability just became usable.
“Canaaaryyyyy,” I randomly coo, holding my hand out towards her to try and get her to come in this car. I do this sometimes. She sighs and comes over here, not sure what else to do.
Lemmy ends up switching cars, deciding to go with Ari and Pendio; the others who ultimately choose to go with them are Beauts, Keiko and Mezlo. Though, I’m somewhat sad about Mezlo leaving, because he was our comic relief. Even so, their group sounds pretty legit if you ask me. Everyone else goes in our car, giving them six people and us five people.
“Well, this is gonna be interesting,” I mumble. I look at Azure. “So are we gonna look for the next boss or something? I mean, we know what we have to do, but where do we start?”
“Forward march, team!” Ari calls out, and that team obediently makes their way towards the front door of the house. Lol.
“Wait,” Az tells me, “could there be something important here, that could be useful?”
“Like… what?” I ask. “I mean, I guess it’s Seth’s house, and he’s a mod and stuff, but would there be something here?” Then it hits me. “Wait, Term said that if we go to our houses, we’ll learn stuff. And he had a machine gun that could magically be put in his pocket. You think he got that at his own house?”
“Well, what I had in mind was something a little different, but that’s also pretty important. I was thinking a spare phone so that we actually know where we’re going.”
“Oh. Duh.” I face palm.
After Pendio’s group files out, Az tells us all to look for something potentially helpful and we, rudely enough, start rummaging through the house. It’s for a good cause!
I don’t instantly start looking through things, I think for a bit where the best things would be. I start looking for a basement, and Lexy joins me in my search. Canary starts looking for an attic, Az goes upstairs, and Leaf stays on the middle floor.
I do find a basement. It just has a regular white door, and upon being opened, it’s easy to see that the basement is finished, much to my relief. Unfinished basements always freak me out a little, they just smell really damp, and they remind me of spiders. Eugh.
There isn’t much to find down here, except the carpet is really soft. How would I know that? Well… No shoes. Never had them to begin with, either. Yes, this entire time, I’ve been barefoot. It kind of sucks. Thankfully, there hasn’t been much walking at all and the ground outside has been pretty nice to me anyway, it’s clean, the paths are smooth, and there are no rocks to trip over or make you bleed.
Anyway, down here there’s a nice computer, a fuseball table, a TV on the wall with various video game consoles in a cabinet beneath it, a bathroom, and what I assume is an empty storage room. That seems to be it. The basement is nice and all, but nothing that helpful is down here.
“Well this is a bit disappointing,” Lexy says as we go back up the stairs and shut the lights off at the top.
We decide to go check out what was going on with the attic, so we go upstairs. There isn’t a ladder going down from a hole in the ceiling, or any sign of that, but at the end of the hall that has about four doors, there is another staircase. We go over there to find a finished attic (I always liked those), and up there we find a ton of cardboard boxes and Canary standing among them, inspecting some object, her back towards us.
“Hey, what’d you find?” I ask her. She turns around, and the object appears to be a smartphone.
“Found it in a box… and this was all that was in it,” Canary answers, holding it up. “I think it’s the spare phone. Not sure why it was in a box up here though.”
“Sweet. That’s pretty much exactly the thing what we were looking for.” We head back downstairs and find Az, and show him the phone.
“This is great! We needed this,” he says.
And of course… IT’S PASSCODED.
“Well frick,” I mutter. “What do we do?”
Az ponders for a moment, then an imaginary lightbulb appears above his head. He takes the car keys out of his pocket, and there’s a code engraved on one of the keychains. Sure enough, that’s the passcode we needed.
“What. How did you even do that,” Lexy says.
“I saw Seth do it earlier,” Azure answers. That’s a good enough answer.
When everyone has assembled in the living room, we all finally make our way out of the house, and we start walking back to the parking lot on the magic sidewalk that makes it seem like we’re walking way faster than we are. I’m not really sure why people don’t just have driveways here, but I guess that’s because there are few enough staff members that it’s just more convenient to keep the cars there.
“Augh, shoot. I forgot,” Az suddenly says. “We should go to our individual houses to see if there’s anything there that we need, because you know, what Term told us.”
“Oh yeah… that would be a good idea,” I mumble. I’m honestly hoping that I have shoes at my house. If I had to go the rest of the way barefoot, that could be bad.
“Knowing where you want to go seems to take you to that place here, so after we’re done, we can just meet up at the parking lot.”
And so we all split off. It feels weird to be alone, but within just a little while, I see what I can tell is my own house. It just seems so familiar, somehow. I enter, and just the sight of the interior makes me smile. It’s so me! Too bad I can’t stay here for long.
Firstly, it looks very modern. There are lots of large windows, and the whole place is very open. You walk in and there is a staircase fairly close by in front of you, but a lot of it is still open and visible from the first floor. The furniture is colorful, there are beanbag chairs and a spinning chair in the living room along with the couch (which is awesome), and the large kitchen has a tile floor that is still connected to the rest of the floor… so basically, most of the house is connected into one big room, with just wall dividers here and there, and no doorways or doors. There are actually two staircases on either side of the house, one is close to the front like I said, while the other is more in the back, near the basement door.
I go upstairs in this amazing place, and while the hallway is pretty much nonexistent and quickly becomes a second floor room that is visible from the first on both your right and your left from the first staircase, it has a three doors along the wall. One of them looks like the bedroom I always wanted, so I guess that one is mine, while there’s also a bathroom and a storage closet.
I quickly remember why I’m originally here, which makes me a little sad, knowing that I have to leave soon. Dang you place, giving me such an awesome house.
I go through my bedroom, opening all the drawers and the closet. Thankfully, there are in fact clothes here, but I decide not to change because I don’t really need to. But I do need shoes. I see what the closet has, and I pick out a pair of sneakers that look cool. They fit me perfectly. It’s kind of creepy, they’re more comfortable than any other pair of sneakers I’ve owned.
After this, I start wondering if I’ll find a weapon anywhere. I head down to the basement to see if anything’s down there, and I find some video games and the TV and all, more couches and chairs and stuff, and… HOLY CRAP IS THAT THE AWESOME HOCKEY FUSEBALL THING?! HOW DO THEY KNOW THESE THINGS?!
No, self. Stay focused.
I search some more, and find an empty storage room in the basement, just like at Seth’s house. Well, empty minus the single cardboard box right in the corner, eerily enough. I slowly make my way over there and open it and guess what I find?
A battle axe. Specifically, a greenish one with diamond patterns on it.
Are you kidding me? I never even told anyone that was my thing.
I pick it up, and surprisingly, it’s light and feels like I could fight with it without a problem. Well, it’s to be expected. Digital worlds, special weapons, made for certain users; you’d guess that it would be easy to use, right?
The blade of this thing, on both sides of it, is as big as my head, and I can clearly see my reflection on it. I wonder if I can do the magic purple thing with this like Terminus can with that machine gun.
I try to imagine it, and it almost immediately becomes this magic floaty purple thing in my hand, which easy goes in my pocket and feels like nothing. I just have to remember that’s there.
Oh crap, look at the time that I actually can’t see right now because there aren’t any clocks. I should go to the parking lot now.
-badly placed scene transition-
Whew, good to know I’m not the last one here. Looks like only Leaf is here, surprisingly enough. Maybe I just didn’t take as much time as I thought?
I see him leaning against Seth’s car (or rather, the car that he’s lending us now), and he quickly notices me.
“Hey babe,” he says.
I roll my eyes. “Are you kidding me?” I reply.
I go towards the front of the car and jump onto the top of it, with the help of the hood. It ended being way easier than I thought it would be, just like it looked like when Mezlo did it earlier. I went to the end and sat down. So basically, I was sitting next to where Leaf was standing, I was just on top of the car. I might as well get comfortable if I’m the second one here out of five.
“Hey, what’re you doing up there?” Leaf asks me.
“Sitting,” I answer.
“Hmmmmmmm,” his response is, and soon enough, he’s sitting up here with me.
“I can just imagine Az coming back and seeing us sitting up here, and then he’s like, really guys, it like hasn’t even been an hour since Seth got taken,” I say with an awkward laugh.
“And I can imagine a sunset happening right now, right in front of us,” Leaf says.
“Dude, knock it off. It’s getting a little weird.”
“Mehhhhh,” he… says. Does that even count as words?
“WELL, WELL, WELL!” we hear off in the distance, and we look over to see that the voice came from Lexy, who’s obviously making a dramatic entrance. “You two were having a bit of nice alone time, weren’t you?”
I actually face palm.
“Why, we were,” Leaf tells her. “Why’d you have to come interrupt?”
“Leaf, what the frick,” I say. He grins.
Az happens to show up right then. “Okay guys, really? Seth hasn’t even been gone for an hour and you’re already doing things he wouldn’t approve of?” he says.
“Called it,” I point out, jumping down from the car.
“Oh come on, Canary’s not even here yet,” Leaf says. “Why are you jumping down?”
“Don’t question me.”
And so when Canary does show up…
“Oh yeah! What’d you guys get in your houses?” Lexy asks us all.
“Shoes,” I respond, lifting my foot off the ground to indicate. “I also got a weapon.”
“The magic glowy thing is cool, isn’t it. I got a weapon too! It’s pretty cool.”
“I think we all did,” Azure says. “But I don’t think we should take any more time. We have to remember this is an important situation.”
“I wonder if Pendio’s group got their things as well,” Lexy points out. “Jimmy’s car isn’t here anymore, so they must have already left…”
“Where are we going?” Canary asks.
Az takes out the new smartphone and looks at the map for a bit. “The closest place is General Discussion… we haven’t been there, right? There must be something there. Where would another boss be?”
“… Mature discussion?” I suggest. “I dunno, just an idea.”
“Let’s head over there first, we’ll probably find something there even if it’s not in that location. It looks like the biggest area.”
We all pile into the car and set off. Lexy’s the one who gets in the front, and me, Leaf and Canary take seats in the back. We all end up taking our own set of seats because there are three sets, so why the heck not.
And so our journey to General Discussion begins.
But, I do have a feeling things are going to get annoying soon, considering the amount of information we don’t have.
This was a fun read. I would have appreciated pointing out what all of our weapons were, but eh. xD Looks like things are gonna pick up next chapter. Nice. c: