Well, here I am again. Walking under a starless sky. Walking through my familiar town, made strange by its bulging veins and jarring colors. Walking the same route that we drive every Sunday- or, more accurately, the one that we used to drive. Knowing that dark fog surrounding us conceals inevitable dangers. But we’re almost done for today, so surely we can survive whatever is still coming for us.

I guess it was only about a month ago that I walked this exact same path, except then, I did it scared, alone, helpless, clothed in pajamas, and with nothing but my fists for self-defense. This time, I walk with…

“…I mean, recently there have been a wave of Tea Party judges elected across the state. You should know, we fought one of them,” Anja prattles on. “They have recently been responsible for giving too much power to landlords. We already kind of had a problem with that. San Marcos is infamous nation-wide for college students getting fucked over by landlords.”

“Okay, nice theory,” I reply. “A couple of nitpicks, though- Pavia has been in office for a while, he was here before the early 2010s Tea Party wave. Second- I don’t understand the correlation you’re drawing here between deficit hawking and the rights of property renters.”

“Come on, Ashley! Don’t be naïve. You know the real reason why these people want to cut government spending.”

“Yeah, I do. It’s so that you and I won’t have to be burdened with a fifty trillion dollar national debt by the time we’re the age of our parents.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. What’s your big fixation on that, anyway?”

“Well, more deficit spending means more money available for lenders; aka Wall Street, whom liberals weren’t super happy with last I checked; faster inflation, higher interest rates, and eventually a national security risk as foreign adversaries will start buying up our debt to use as leverage. We need to start dealing with this now, because by the turn of the decade, the baby boomers will be retiring, which means that Social Security is going to be running at even more of a loss than it is now.”

“Yes, well, first of all, if the money is managed properly and is aimed at helping the working class, the benefits of the program will outweigh the negative side effects, creating a net positive for poor Americans- unless the deficit spending is more giveaways to the super rich or corporate welfare. Second, the current rate of inflation is… AAARGH!”

That is the scream that can only mean one thing: there are wasps amok. Sure enough, I see three of them coming from my left.

“Finally, something to smash!” Nova shouts, actually sounding relieved.

“You ought to have been paying attention just then, Nova,” I tell him. “Someday we’ll all be voting age. There’s more to life than just video games, you know.”

“Don’t make me zap you, bitch!” Nova retorts, branding Mjölnir at me threateningly.

On that note, we get into battle positions. By this point, we’ve pretty much figured out some solid team strategies for dealing with each different type of enemy. Wasps go down the fastest when you get up close and personal, but you have to keep your wits about you, as those fuckers are fast. Since Anja and Ted don’t really have a great up-close game, they hang back and provide ranged support. (Anja also hangs back partially because she’s a wuss.) Nova and I go in with our respective melee weapons. In this case, we’re able to take them out pretty easily between just the two of us. Anja only has to use her wind attack once to disorient them so they don’t attack our backs after we take out the first one. I have to hand it to Nova- he’s actually fairly decent at this. He has good reflexes when his head is in the game.

After dealing with the wasps, however, something isn’t right. I swear I feel something rumbling…

“Ha! No insect stands a chance against us,” Nova brags.

I see something running up to us from behind him… it looks like an enormous black bear.

“Nova! Get out of the way!” I shout at him frantically.

He frowns at me. “What? Why?”

The bear promptly knocks him aside and into a tree.

Yeah… “When his head is in the game,” isn’t all the time, unfortunately.

“Wow, look at that!” Anja shouts. “I guess I’m finally going to become a true Texan and use my right to bear arms!” She takes aim at the bear.

“Anja, I’m pretty sure you’ve made that joke before,” I say. “Anyways, don’t get a trigger finger, I want to do something first.”

Normally, when we run into larger enemies, I like to weaken them up with my weird light attack, but… I don’t think I have one of those in me right now, I’ve had to use a lot of magic today. Thankfully, I unlocked another move last week which accomplishes a similar purpose.

I take my sword and swing it behind me, switching it between my arms a few times. I do this so quickly, that it becomes imbued with some sort of golden aura. Then, I send my sword crashing through the enemy, slicing apart the very fabric of space-time itself. It doesn’t use any magic, but there is still a drawback: I’m left feeling exhausted immediately afterwards.

Once I’m done with my attack, Anja takes advantage of the few seconds that the bear is stunned to open fire, slowly closing in on it. It seems to do a pretty decent damage. I start creeping up behind, hoping to jump up onto it while it’s focused on Anja and slice its neck.

However, the bear does something odd. It stands up on its hind legs and then slams its whole body into the ground. It sends a shockwave through the ground that knocks me straight off my feet. My head hits the ground, and I lose consciousness.

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Unsurprisingly, I wake up to Anja using her healing move on me. She’s looked better- she has a large, bleeding cut on one of her cheeks.

“How… did you get cut?” I ask. “You have a gun as your weapon.”

“You’re welcome!” she replies cheerily. She reaches out her hand helps pull me to my feet.

I survey the rest of the team. Nova doesn’t look physically hurt, but he is panting and sweating. Ted has several scuff marks on his shell.

“So, did you win against the bear?” I ask.

“Yeah, but he was… pant… a tough son of a bitch,” Nova responds.

“And by the way… wind attacks do not affect bears,” Anja comments. “I got to learn that the hard way.” I am only barely able to bite back my sarcastic reply.

Ted uses his party-wide healing move on us. Anja’s cut stiches itself shut right in front of my eyes.

“Team… we’ve made a decent amount of progress as a team since the last palace,” I declare. “But yet… there is still work to be done. C’mon, let’s continue on.”

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We finally arrive at the First Baptist Church, and I am very startled to find it looking quite different than it did when I first awakened my persona here. It doesn’t even look much like a building anymore; its walls and ceiling have become soft, fleshy, and pulsating.

“Well, that’s… utterly disgusting,” Anja remarks. “I’m guessing this is not what it looked like before?”

“No, not at all,” I reply. “I have yet to see anything like this. Got any ideas, Ted?”

“I don’t think that this transformation happened overnight,” he comments.

“Hey! There’s something on top of it!” Nova shouts, pointing.

I squint my eyes, at first expecting him to just have seen the pulsating… but sure enough, I can just barely make out a figure on top.

I recognize the outline of a cape…

“It’s her! It’s the Dark Trooper!” I tell the others.

“Uh… the Dark Trooper?” Nova questions. “You mean like the class from Star Wars Battlefront II?”

I ignore him. “She’s the one who ambushed me after we got separated at Pavia’s… Let’s try and see if we can get up there and ambush her back.”

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“Uh, Ashley… I don’t think that’s gonna happen,” Anja says.

I look back up just in time to see a flash of electricity- she teleported away already.

I let out a sigh. “Oh, well that’s great,” I say.

“Well, if there are no other immediate dangers, I’m going to take this opportunity to report everything we’ve seen today to Lucy,” I explain as I pull out my phone to call her.

“Be my guest. I’m going to rest my legs…” Anja says, sitting down onto the floor.

I start the call, and am greeted with, “Hello there, Ashley.”

“Uh, hi. We have finished sweeping the town like you suggested. We’ve found a few points of interest.

“First of all: We went to the high school and examined it from the outside. It looks like one would expect: the whole building is obscured by dense jungle. We still have no clue who it could belong to, but given that we’re imprisoned there five days a week, we should be able to figure it out eventually.

“Second: We actually think we found a completely different palace. It’s an area that usually is an apartment complex, but now appears as some sort of gothic mansion. Anja has a theory that it might belong to the manager of the complex- but we don’t know that yet.

“Other than those two, we haven’t found any other palaces yet, but we did find something… different. I went back to my church like you suggested, and… it’s all pink and fleshy now. It’s like a huge, pulsating organ. Have you ever seen anything like this?”

“Uh… it looks like what now? A fleshy organ?” Lucy inquires. “No, I have never seen anything like that. I guess it just goes to show that even though I’ve spent decades of my life in this world, it still contains many mysteries. I suppose that’s the nature of research. Is the portal to the SR still inside?”

“Actually… we haven’t checked that yet. We’ll do that right after this. There’s one more thing- the Dark Trooper was just here. She teleported away shortly after we walked up.”

“Shit! It really was a stroke of bad luck that you got onto Moloch’s radar so quickly. If she didn’t try to fight you or confront you… I need a while to think about this. But that’s… not good. Would it be possible to take your posse inside your house with you?”

“Uh… probably, yeah. Why?”

“It’ll make sense later- but basically, I need to get them close enough to my journal to do something.”

“Do I need to bring Ted too?” I ask.

“Who’s Ted?”

Shit! I wasn’t supposed to… actually, you know what? There’s no real reason to hide his existence at this point.

So I spill the beans. “A talking armadillo we met. He’s been helping us out here and there.”

“Huh. I’ve never been able to actually recruit a shadow before. I didn’t think you were much of a people person, but maybe I was wrong.”

“Well, he’s not exactly… it’s complicated.”

“Ah, okay. Well, does he have a smart phone?”

“Uh… no.”

“Then I think it’ll be okay if only your human friends come along. Talk to you later.” She hangs up.

“Okay then… guys, you are formally invited to visit my house after this,” I tell Anja and Nova. I look down at Ted. “She said that you need to have a smart phone, so…”

“No matter,” Ted responded. “I have no patience for pleasantries.”

“Uh… okay. I guess it all works out, then.”

I turn towards the church. “Let’s check and see if the portal is still there, and then we’ll head back.

“Ew… we have to actually go in there?” Anja whines.

“I bet the walls and stuff in there are slimy!” Nova points out. “I wouldn’t want to slip and fall.”

“Okay, fine, I’ll do it myself!” I growl at them. “But for the record, you are both pussies.”

“Tsk… Bitch, shut the fuck up!” Nova protests. “You know what? Fuck you. I’ll do it.”

“No, I’ll do it. You never saw it before, so you won’t know what to look for,” I argue. And so, I head inside the church, this time going in through the front like I normally would’ve.

Nova is right- everything is slimy. The whole building looks just like the outside, and the slight pulsation makes it hard to walk through. I step very carefully through the entrance hall.

Jeez, what happened to this place? I remember back to how it looked the first time I was here. I do remember there being more veins inside than there were anywhere else… perhaps that was the early stages of this building becoming a giant, human heart?

I manage to tiptoe into the sanctuary, where I see that the portal is indeed still there… sort of. It seems to have a different property- it has lost it shimmer. Instead of looking like a wall, or any sort of solid substance at all, and now just looks like… a void. I’m curious as to what would happen if I tried to touch it again, but I don’t want to bother walking all the way across the sanctuary to find out, so I leave.

“Okay… it’s still there. I think,” I announce to the others when I return to them. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Alright, lead the way,” Anja says, getting to her feet. “I was saying before… the current rate of inflation is considered acceptable for maintaining a stable economy. I don’t care what the gold bugs say, I think that everything is going to fine if we keep the course with the Federal Reserve.”

I sigh. This is going to be a long walk back.

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After we finally return to the regular world, Anja is kind enough to drive us to my house, though it’s only like less than a block away from where we entered. I can’t believe that it’s not night time yet. The passage of time in the Metaverse plays weird tricks on me. However, it thankfully doesn’t seem to actually throw off my circadian rhythms.

We arrive and walk in through the front door. My mom is in the kitchen, cooking, and my dad is reading in the living room.

“Oh, well look at this!” Mom calls to us, setting down her pan and walking over to greet us. “Hello! I’m Ashley’s mom. As you can probably guess. Let’s see… I’ve met Anja already. And you are…”

“Nova,” Nova mutters. He’s not making eye contact, and is instead staring at the wall awkwardly.

“Nova, huh? Nice to meet you!”

“Is it okay if I bring these two in here?” I ask her. “We wanted to get out of the heat for a little while.”

“No problem! Hmm… Do you two need dinner?” Mom asks.

“What are you having?” Anja inquires.

“Bacon and egg omelets,” my mom explains.

“Breakfast for dinner! I like it,” Anja says, grinning. “Okay, I’ll just have to text my dad and let him know.

“Where’s Zoe?” I ask.

“She should be in her room,” Mom says. “I haven’t seen her since you left.”

“Alright. Follow me,” I tell Anja and Nova.

I walk into the side hallway, turn towards Zoe’s room, and knock on the door. “Hey Zoe. The gang’s all here. Want to join us?”

“Um… In a m-minute,” she calls back. Something’s wrong. I can tell by her voice.

“Can I come in by myself?” I ask.

“Y-yes.”

“Wait here,” I tell the other two. I open the door.

Zoe is currently sitting on her knees on the bed, staring at her phone, and trembling slightly. She’s still wearing the shirt she wore during band, and doesn’t have any pants on. It looks like she got halfway through changing into new clothes and was interrupted.

“What’s going on?” I ask, sitting on the bed next to her.

She hands me her phone, which is showing a recent messaging conversation between her and her brother Collin.

I read through it, and… Oh boy.

“Okay… wow,” I say. “Get yourself dressed, and we’ll discuss this as a group in my room.”

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“Your brother is right, you do not want to go to one of those places,” Anja is explaining to me. “They’re actually illegal in California and New Jersey. I think they should be illegal everywhere. The conversation around this all started when…”

It’s hard to listen to her. My heart is beating faster than is comfortable. My vision is blurry.

Around me, Ashley is sitting on the bed next to me and is furiously scribbling in that grimy journal and not talking. Anja is sitting backwards in Ashley’s desk chair, ranting away. Nova is on the other end of the bed, just sitting in place and fidgeting, seemingly not knowing what to contribute.

“…and the bill was signed into law by Governor Chris Christie.” Suddenly, Anja stopped. She made eye contact with me, and her expression softened, the previous fervor she had melting away.

“Zoe, you look really anxious about all of this. Here…” Anja hops out of the chair and starts rummaging around Ashley’s desk. After a few seconds, she hands me a pencil and sheet of notebook paper.

“Zoe, I want you to just take a minute and write down… things that you know are true. Things about your surroundings, for example.”

I look down at the paper, and start slowly writing.

“My name is Zoe Parker. I’m the daughter of Abram and Marie Parker. I have three brothers: Patrick, Derrick, and Collin. I’m currently sitting on Ashley’s bed. Her bed sheets are pure white. Her room is fairly organized. The walls are tan and have a bumpy texture. She has a chest of drawers that looks old and ornate on the other side of the room. On the other wall are Ashley’s French horn, her trumpet, and her black Manhasset music stand, that has music piled onto it.”

I take a deep breath and look up from the paper.

“Feel any better?” Anja asks me kindly.

“A little,” I say. I still feel anxious, but I at least feel more focused than before.

Ashley suddenly slams the journal shut. “Anja. Nova. Phones.”

“What about them?” Nova replies.

“Give them to me.”

Anja and Nova look confused, but give their phones to Ashley. Ashley holds the phones near the journal for a few seconds, and then tosses them back to their respective owners.

“Um, okay,” Anja says. “What was that all about?”

“Lucy thinks that Moloch and/or his cohort may try to attack someone in one of our families to keep us down,” Ashley explains. “She gave both of you the app so you can protect them without having to wait for me to get there.”

“Wait a second, hold on,” Anja frets, now looking a bit panicky. “How can that even happen? Nobody in our families have palaces or personas or anything.”

“There are other ways of hurting someone using the Metaverse,” Ashley explains. “They’re just rather more… complicated. If you’re doing to do good in the world, it’s usually best to just focus on fighting those who have palaces. If you’re trying to do evil… all options are on the table.”

“How will we know if someone comes to our place in the Metaverse?” Nova asks, deeply focused on the conversation for once.

Ashley flips the journal around and shows the pink gem on the cover. “I didn’t realize this, because I always keep this thing hidden away, but the gem has the ability to detect Metaversal activity. It will shine very brightly if someone messing around in the area. When this happens, I will call your phones and we will all enter in unison. But this means that you all have to keep your ringers on while you’re sleeping.”

“That’s okay,” Anja says. “Nobody ever messages me other than you three, so it’s not like I’m going to be kept up by my notifications.”

“Also… another thing,” Ashley continues. “This situation with Zoe’s parents is looking like it may become a big problem for us. Lucy thinks that this may not be a coincidence. She thinks that the weird state of the Metaverse version of the Baptist Church is a sign that it may have become some different type of palace. However, we are not sure, so we need to gather more information.”

“So, who do you think it belongs to then?” Anja asks.

“That’s the thing- we don’t know. For now, we should see if tensions escalate further. We may eventually need to go for some… unorthodox options to get to the bottom of this.”

And she doesn’t elaborate on what she means by that.

“Ashley… I’m confused,” I cut into the conversation. “What is it that’s happened to our church?”

“We’re not sure,” she admits. “But probably something very bad. And we may have to take decisive action soon… for your safety.”

I don’t feel anxious anymore. Now, I just feel cold. I feel like I may start trembling again. Ashley scoots over and wraps an arm around me.

Nobody speaks for a while. Ashley and Anja in particular share an extended look. They both have the same expression- it’s one of a mix between horror and uncertainty. Like both of them are thinking, “What have we gotten ourselves into?”

The moment is interrupted by a shout from the next room. “Dinner’s ready!” Ashley’s mom calls to us.