Iker woke up with a racing heart and made eye contact with Bastian. They then glanced over together to Monica who was unconscious on the onyx spaceship floor.

Wait, the boys are on an Ember Tree spaceship? What kind?

The drones! Sadly, there was no way for Iker to communicate to them in this situation. Was the shipment that Hughmungus dropped before the fight still safe? The dog in the bizarre canister? What force out there was trying to defragment Iker down to nothing?

Iker had to make tough choices with the metal he had for his drones, and with the earthplexus being a thing and most cell towers no longer being maintained, he ditched mobile data altogether. That was the one advantage the internet had over the earthplexus; it was more stable at higher speeds. Well, the ship stopped as soon as Iker thought that.

Bastian grimaced when its influx engine made an unforgiving roar.

The floor was cold, the walls were warm, and their seats attached to the wall were padded with engineered velvet.

Other than the scent of peachy perfume and the luxury 1 platoon additions to whatever spaceship they were in, the area the boys were in was similar to the inside of an apache helicopter.

"Medic over here!" Pegasus yelled.

Indeed, Iker recognized the talking 1 platoon's winged horse's voice. It seemed ever since he got the moniker the world forgot his first name. Defined by the species only he would be classified under.

A pegasus on a spaceship... a new age was on its way indeed.

Yo I need whatever SPIDERLAND is smoki—

HUSH. NOW.

Yo why you gotta be so loud fo—

🎵i see the light—🎵

SILENCE IN MY SIMULATION.

What would be a horse's version of an Uncle Tom? Would I be insensitive to anyone to think that in my head? Not to Pegasus obviously, fuck that nazi, Iker thought.

"I have Primetime's mind hostage," Iker announced as a white wing flapped into his field of vision. "Give us all your pods and our friends Maverick and Camilo. And only when we all leave will Monica return to her body. I will not release her while we are still here."

Wait, was the adult lion Iker saw in Bolsà Magicà... Maverick? Also, why could he barely remember the training session he taught as an older man? Bastian's face said he was thinking about Maverick too when Iker glanced over.

The majestic and proud pegasus trotted past a silver crate and scoffed. It was obvious the pegasus relearned how to scoff so it did not go through his nose anymore. He must have trained himself to be more 'humanlike.'

Pegasus's sapphire eyes, filled with bloodlust, locked glares with the droneless boy. Pegasus could probably kill them all in an instant if it was not for Iker having Monica's mind or the mysterious... 'magic' that 'killed' Dominic.

He looked over his left arm when he was bewildered by the absence of pain... to find a prosthetic arm made of metal and Prunus Tantulum bark. Before their unconscious bodies were retrieved, the drone RNGesus must have patched up him and Camilo—

"Where is Camilo?" Iker yelled, his firm posture degenerating to a slouch.

"There's nothing I can do about it now, but you should not show desperation in situations like this," Pegasus said. "Not even for brief moments. It'll get you killed."

"Don't talk to me like that, I'm older than you!" Iker yelled, getting Bastian to put a hand on his shoulder.

Pegasus, with no incisors in sight, beamed his pristine teeth with amusement. "That's irrelevant when two different speci—"

"You're losing the charisma checks, just—"

Iker, inexperienced with Kaya, punched Bastian's hand away. Bastian's mouth gaped as he pulled the hand that deeply reddened in an instant.

Iker bit his lip as he was about to scream at Bastian, but he came to the realization of the pain he had caused.

The enhanced strike was nowhere close to playful.

Pegasus could have been at a comedy club at this point. "I'm sorry boys, but there is another reason why we should just agree to this exchange. Well, two."

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

He trotted away closer to the cockpit, a glimpse of blue sky was present if Iker bent his drooping posture enough. He glimpsed to his right to find Bastian with his back turned, his shaky shoulders either holding back sadness or anger. Well, most men during this century still were not able to tell them apart. O, the pointless agony machismo brought.

"If you're not going to tell me where he is," Iker murmured after a deep breath. "I'll go and find him myself."

"By the way, we are being held captive, by an actual UFO? It must be deepfake UFO we known t—it's actually real?"

Pegasus was talking to his esper out loud. So if Monica is also an esper... wait. Did Pager learn to distribute his powers to others? No, he would never do that. He would only copy and paste it for Monica. Pegasus's unnecessarily loud conversation was as disrespectful as a supersoldier woman wearing her heels during a fight.

Iker, as he leaped off his seat, already dismissed the pegasus's fake news as hundreds of thousands of dubious spottings were already claimed during the cyberpunk age, which was also known as the second dark age.

Was Iker ready to abandon a dear belief, or would he be the same as the people who desired to reimage him as a corpse on a fence?

Levitating extraterrestrial soldiers poured in the area, or at least Iker assumed they were as they all had the same bizarre gun. They had no clothes on, which meant they likely did not have sex recreationally. He was grateful for what he learned from stories as it gave him the language to report the priest from Pueblo that tried to molest him... which did not do anything. Well, he was able to protect himself at least.

It was the same pastor that became an Alkrezian priest. The same one that advocated against that lesson in schools so he could do whatever he pleased with his own home schooled children, one of them being Camilo.

Another memory he had with Camilo, and thankfully it was one without the priest, was interrupted as an arak jabbed Iker with a gun as he ran past them.

They did not want to kill him.

How were they communicating with each other?

Homeboy, I need to get you out of here. For beingkind, a voice said.

He had no way to explain it, but Iker knew which telepathic alien sent that message. It seemed as if Iker ignored the gun jabbing his round cheek as his Kaya protected him, and he looked across a bevy of crates to find ver with the bubble wrap lookin' eyes.

This is Uzi. Ve, ver, vis. My species is called arak.

Sorry, but someone else must be trying to steal a memory. Or maybe I lost that match in the previous session. Not buyin' it, Iker said.

It's also a mistake to mistake reality for a simulation, Uzi said. Don't make the assumption that aliens equals fake. Do the spiderland dance.

Iker somehow knew what ve meant. The dance took place in between the rifts of reality and simulations.

It's been more than a century since that form of machine learning took over the world. The one mistaken and marketed as artificial intelligence. It has been more than a century since fiction and non-fiction became one, so if real aliens came, would Iker, he himself, would he have a bias against them existing and visiting Earth?

Due to all the conspiracy scribbles pushed forward by the forces of evils, yes, Iker would have a bias against them visiting. However, Iker looked again to really analyze the guns the floating octopus-like spiders were wielding. They were all different.

Ransackers?

Pirates?

Raiders?

Colonizers.

It follows from what Iker deemed to be reality.

And with what seemed to be after a telepathic command, a few select araks that surrounded the boys and Pegasus, fired reconfigured darts towards Iker.

Uzi broke from the ranks of the other araks, and with a wave of vis needle arms, the projectiles were redirected back to the high ranking araks. Iker also just noticed the items they held in their needle arms to signify their ranks, the most beautiful of them among the araks that deflated to unconsciousness.

"I have no intention to fight you. Not yet at least," Uzi said with a lot of static in Pegasus's direction. Ve flung telepathically levitating crates at araks that were flying towards ver.

"Spiderland cultists, the worst kind of a species," Pegasus complained with a humanlike scoff.

Wait, he doesn't know their species? Iker asked himself. Is this first contact? Unofficial contact?

"You betrayed your own kind, both pegasuses and other talking animals," Uzi said bringing down a crate on the last conscious arak. "Why would I care about what you think after you wiped out all of the pegasuses in Candylender's simulation? Every. Single. One."

"Because I the best. Me the best. Numbah one, the last Pegasus standing."

O, the paradox of pegasus supremacy and pegasus replacement.

What are they talking about?

Knowing their priority as soon as they left Bolsà Magicà, Bastian already came back with Maverick in one hug, and Camilo over his other shoulder.

"It seems RNGesus got to him before he was about to die, but he's still in a really bad shape," Bastian murmured, the first time in years he said something without even meeting eyes with Iker. He bent a knee to let Maverick hop on the spaceship floor.

"I am sorry Bastian," Iker whispered, placing two fingers on Camilo's neck to check on his weak pulse. "I failed you as a leader, and most importantly a brother."

"You need to get to him soon. Everything is ready," Bastian mumbled, giving him a generous but vengeful pat on the shoulder. Iker was happy to allow it because he understood him. He would have done the same thing.

As roars of colliding objects and what looked like the flamiest rainbow laser show from numbuh !!!1 last living pegasus, Bastian leaped after Pegasus and gave Uzi an upnod. If the winged horse were to die, he would be pega💯extinct. Would not be a sus statement.

Supreme dead horse on the ground? In the ground?

Well, Bastian and Uzi had to beat Pegasus as Iker ran with Camilo over his shoulder. He glanced down to see Maverick awaiting instructions.

"Just watch over Bastian," Iker commanded as he tossed up Camilo higher onto his shoulder.

"I know everything. You should know who I am."

Iker ran backwards as it felt as if his throat tangled his lungs to glance back at a cub with... eyes that no English word could describe. Animals and talking animals had a distinct sentient look, but what Maverick showed was beyond that. There was a biblical word.

Omniscient?

What was his objective?

Friend or foe?

Where was his resources? How much of it was left? What path was it taking to him? What were the magic systems of all the places involved?

Was he here to stop him from saving Camilo?

Maybe he was here to allow it, as Maverick took a seat on the metal floor.