“So the warlord ended up taking the wrong path around the mountain, coming across a completely different kingdom, and despite people from both that kingdom and his own telling him it was the wrong one, he just took it over anyways!”

I laughed harder than I thought I would, covering my mouth while I smiled with mirth.

“Then when he eventually took over the right kingdom, he tried to burn books and rewrite history to make it look like he’d taken a huge chunk of the other kingdom’s territory in that war. And the only reason we figured out otherwise is because of something his consort- “Oh, crap, we found… Vincent!?” She stopped dead in her tracks.

They’d stepped into a kitchen to find none other than the scientist himself laying on his back, staring listlessly up at the ceiling. I furrowed my brow in confusion and Amanda quickly rushed over to check his pulse, only to flinch back as he gasped, looking at us with wild eyes. “No…no, stay back! You’re not real!” He rapidly scrambled backwards, only stopping when his back pressed up against the cabinet.

The redhead froze, glancing back at me before crouching down and softening her voice, like coaxing a wild animal. “Yes, we are real Vincent. We aren’t a horrible hallucination. We’re from the search team from the Extradimensional Research Service, and we’re here to rescue you.”

He shook his head rapidly, “N-no, you are not. You are demons of my own making, torturing me via some sort of sleep paralysis induced hallucination,” his words were clipped and deliberately even, as if trying to calm himself down.

I stepped forward, finally asking a question that had been on the edge of my lips, “Have you seen me before?” Why did I ask that? My memory felt sluggish whenever I tried to think too hard, and it was all I could do to put words to my half formed thoughts.

“What?” He seemed to gain a sliver of lucidity, looking me up and down as if genuinely considering the question.

“No, I- I don’t believe I have.” he concluded.

My brain couldn’t put the pieces together, ideas dancing beyond my grasp as if I were trying to grab a feather midair. Then Amanda froze, turning over shoulder to look me square in the eyes. “Is this a body you put the mask on?”

For one moment I looked back and saw Vincent, the scared and confused scientist furrowing his brow at being ignored. The next I saw the woman’s corpse flop over between her legs and face-plant into the metal floor like a puppet cut from its strings. I cursed, and Amanda screamed, rapidly backing away and hugged my arm. The pieces clicked into place, no longer shielded from view, and the one curse turned into a storm of increasingly creative swears while I stepped up and kicked the dead bitch’s shoulder, ribs, and legs repeatedly for no good reason.

Sighing, I reached an arm around to hug the scared redhead while I breathed to calm my heart rate. I was surprised at just how much that got to me, honestly. It was one thing to be the mindfucker and the mindfuck, it was another thing to be a straight up victim of it. Even if I technically did it to myself again? I was the one who put the mask on her.

Who the hell knows, emotions are bullshit.

After a moment, the woman extracted herself from the hug, but she still couldn't look at the body and she didn’t let go of my hand. I used the new freedom to bend down and extract my mask from the dead body. Luckily it didn’t seem bent out of shape from its impromptu makeout sesh’ with the ground.

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“…At least it worked?” I stated, awkwardly.

She just hummed affirmatively, and I noticed she wasn’t looking at me either.

“…Do you want to try again?” I asked.

She huffed and let go of my hand, “I mean, this is what we expected, it was a little creepy but-”

“Just do it.” She grounded out, voice tinged with frustration and something familiar I couldn’t recognize.

I paused in shock, before nodding. I turned to put the mask on, but… I couldn’t help but keep glancing up at Amanda.

“I…” I tried to speak, but as soon as she turned to look at me the words jammed in my throat. I wanted to speak but if I asked her what was wrong, I just knew for a fact she would change her mind about the dead bodies thing. When good things happen you don’t ask questions, you don’t boast about it, and you don’t even show it on your face or it’ll be snatched away from you. Unless you think it’s a trap, but I don’t think she’s the type of person to do that. Maybe it’s one of those “tests” like people with abandonment trauma tend to do, though? If anime is to be believed some women just do that in general too, but I’m not sure.

“It’s not like we’re bringing them back to life. They’re constructs based on my own mind, limitations and all.” I eventually settled for.

She nodded, looking away again. Damnit, that didn’t help at all, did it? Faith would be so much better at this. Or would she take Amanda’s side? It was hard to tell for certain, now that it had been so long my memories have started to lose detail and nostalgia glasses made my biases harder to spot over time.

I remained trapped by indecision, looking between the corpse and Amanda, until a weird whooshing sound broke me out of my funk. Wind dinged with the scent of rain flooded the room until a random whole-ass man suddenly appeared, tripped over the corpse, and smashed his head into the wall.

“Ow! Fuck. Okay, okay, come on…!”

One hand brought up to rub his temple while the other grabbed at the long trail of rope attached to his wrist. He tugged, but the other end of the rope was attached to nothing. Once he saw that, he sagged, letting his head fall back and rest on the wall with a frustrated, desperate cry of disappointment.

Amanda and I looked at eachother, down at the mask in my hand, then further down at the middle aged woman’s corpse still laying there, dead and unmoving as she ever was. What the fuck.

“What the fuck?” Amanda mouthed, unknowingly parroting my thoughts.

The man’s head snapped up and he froze, staring at us wide-eyed, hand twitching toward his waist where I now noticed was a gun holster. “Woah, woah, calm down!” Amanda exclaimed when he pulled it out, but he only pointed it at us, forcing us both to raise our hands and back away. I squeezed my mask to make sure it was real before dropping it with a clatter. Searching my memories, I didn’t even run into that same brain-molasses either, fully able to remember the last minute with stark clarity. It was way too much to be a coincidence, right? It can’t be real.

“It can’t be real,” the man breathed, once again parroting my inner thoughts.

Amanda, despite being held at gunpoint, narrowed her and asked, “Are you real?”

I couldn’t help but sigh as I felt a wave of exasperation wash over me. Upon seeing he wasn’t going to fill us full of lead at the drop of a dime, my mouth moved before I realized.

“Am I even real? Who cares! Big guy, can you penetrate holes?” I demanded.

His expression screwed up, “What?” and Amanda slapped a hand to her face.

“Can you go through 4D wormhole thingies?” I clarified.

“Yes- no, kind of- who are you?” He tried to project a facade of confidence into his voice, still pointing the death stick at us.

My more sociable friend jumped in before I could say anything more. “I’m Amanda Kelly, from the Extradimensional Research Service. This is Obake, she’s a civilian,”

“How flattering,” I said in mock offense. “So, what’s your name, dude?”

The man slightly lowered his gun, brow furrowed in consideration. “Eustice Ferdinand. Mapping Scout of the Interdimensional Exploration Front.”