“That’s it,” Gavin said. “Now rip out his spine and and use it like a rope to hang him by. Fatality!”

“You know Gavin,” a frustrated Ethan said setting down the controller, “don’t people usually root for the underdog?”

The remains of his character on screen were now hanging from the rafters of the temple complex while Alex’s character posed with the word perfect in the foreground.

“I only root for winners Ethan,” Gavin replied, “and you are just plain terrible at this game.”

“If you think he’s bad at this you should see him try to shoot aliens on the Xbox,” Alex said laughing.

It was April, nearly two months after the incident with The Black and their month of detention which had actually turned into nearly six weeks of detention. While Gavin initially tried to keep a distance from them, he quickly grew more friendly with all of them. It was hard not to become friends with people who not only saved your life but that you were forced to spend time with everyday after school.

One positive thing about detention was that they were allowed to do homework during it which forced Ethan to immediately start his homework every night right after class. His grades were definitely improving as a result. It also didn’t hurt having two of the smartest people in his grade available to answer his questions pretty much all the time now.

His drawing grade was still likely to be a C but hey that was better than the D he got before. He also thought that wasn’t bad considering he had less talent at Drawing than at video games and he was really bad at video games. It was like there was some kind of thumb coordination he never learned as a child and because of that he was way behind both Alex and Gavin.

Surely he’d end this semester with better than a 3.0 GPA which meant that with any luck Tanaka would have to allow him to play on the soccer team at the start of the next school year. Quin probably would never let him live it down if he didn’t play. He was getting to know the girl better slowly and priorities for her definitely went something like: soccer, exercise, exciting challenges, air, water, food, school, and finally last, people’s opinions.

In the time since Valentine’s day they hadn’t been back down to the dungeon. None of them except Quin had any desire to push Tanaka further but Ethan knew this was going to have to change. It was only a matter of time before dungeon creatures started coming after them again and the longer they went without returning the more likely this was going to be.

Privately Alex also voiced this same opinion to Ethan, but neither of them were quite confident enough to mention it to Gavin who’d made it very clear he wanted nothing to do with the place. Sure he liked the armor and spear minus the terrible color, but as far as returning to the dungeon he was a definite no.

Bella would do whatever Ethan did. He knew that and he also knew that she probably also knew they’d have to return sooner or later. Even though his friends group was growing she was still easily his best friend and the person he knew he could rely on the most.

She was much more helpful with his homework than Alex was, who had little to no patience for anyone who couldn’t keep up with his line of thinking on things like math. The problem was that almost no one aside from Bella could keep up with Alex and she didn’t exactly need help.

She was also his number one supporter on the get Jenny interested in him club which admittedly consisted of just him and Bella. Ethan just didn’t feel comfortable sharing his crush with the others. Gavin and Alex would both make jokes and give him a hard time and Quin probably wonder why he cared what another person thought of him. She’d probably just tell him he needed to focus on his soccer drills and getting his running speed up.

Quin would be even easier than Bella to get to return to the dungeon though. She’d actually mentioned during every run how they should head back in and keep going. When Ethan brought his concerns about Tanaka she replied with, “So what?” She was a rich kid after all and lived in a different world than he did.

“We should get going,” Ethan said scowling. “We promised to meet the girls for lunch and it wouldn’t be nice to be late.”

“We’ve got plenty of time, you just don’t want to get your butt kicked any more,” Alex replied.

“To be fair to Ethan,” Gavin said, “there are legally blind children that don’t lose as badly as he does at this game.”

“Remind me, why do we keep letting you into our dorm room?” Ethan asked.

“Because without my charming personality and witty banter you’d be bored out of your minds,” Gavin replied, “but also because the school insisted you two have a responsible chaperon.”

“Yeah okay,” Alex snorted rolling his eyes. “You’re many things Gavin, but you might be the single least responsible person at this school.”

“Hey,” Gavin said with mock indignation, “I’ll have you know I’m mostly responsible for all the A’s in our P.E. class.”

“How do you figure that?” Ethan asked. “You don’t don’t do anything in P.E. You’d probably fail if Rockfort didn’t like you so much.”

“I single handedly took it upon myself to lower the curve for everyone else,” Gavin replied puffing up his chest. “I’ve made that sacrifice so that all of you kids can go home to your parents with a good grade. I put the needs of the group before myself.

Ethan couldn’t help himself he smiled at laughed and just like that his annoyance for being made fun of for his video game play was gone. That was the effect Gavin had on people. He’d irritate you with a quip one second and make you laugh with another the next and it was impossible to stay mad at someone who made you laugh.

“Let's actually go though,” Gavin said getting up off of Alex’s bed where he’d been sitting. “I’m starving and if they run out of the good food again, the kind with gluten, I’m going to be livid.”

“Remind me again how you aren’t 400 lbs with diabetes?” Alex asked as the three of them left the room heading towards the dining hall.

“Superior genetics,” Gavin replied. “Sure my good looks are obvious to everyone, but beneath them unseen is a perfect metabolism that insists I eat a lot of fried food and ice cream lest my body eats itself to death.”

“I wouldn’t let Quin overhear that,” Ethan muttered. “She already lectures me about using a mixture of ketchup and mayonnaise to dip my fries in.”

“Obviously she’s concerned that you’re using medicore condiments,” Gavin replied. “Everyone knows that ranch dressing is the best condiment followed closely by barbecue sauce and honey mustard.”

“Pretty sure she’d say those are bad too,” Ethan said shaking his head. “The girl is a health nut.”

“What is wrong with her?” Gavin asked as they walked across the quad towards the dining hall. “High School kids are supposed to eat poorly because these are the years we can. Personally I go out of my way to eat specific things in front of adults that can’t have them anymore just to remind them what life was like before they got old and their body’s betrayed them. Quin should at least be waiting until she’s an old maid at like 25 to be worried about nutrition.”

“Who’s going to be an old maid at 25?” Quin’s voice asked.

Turning quickly to the right the saw Bella and Quin walking towards them from the direction of Wildcat House.

“Clearly not you,” Gavin said, “because you’re already an old maid now lecturing Ethan on his condiment use.”

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“There is little to no nutritional value in gobs of mayonnaise and ketchup,” Quin said giving Ehtan a look like he ratted her out or something. “At are age all of us are still developing and our bodies need good fuel to grow bigger and stronger. With the almost exclusively sugar-based diet that you eat, lack of physical exercise, and general ignorance about health you’ll be lucky to make it to 25.”

“Hey don’t knock sugar, it’s the jet fuel of the food world and my body requires the best,” Gavin replied. “In fact I’m thinking some Cinnamon Toast Crunch would make for an excellent lunch.”

“Quin was just about to respond when Alex cut in, “Quin don’t. You’ve made your point. People are going to eat what they’re going to eat so just worry about your food. And Gavin,” he added, “ please don’t antagonize, just eat whatever disgusting concoction you think of and let us discuss more important things.”

“What could possibly be more important the the ice cream sundae that I’m going to have after my cereal?” Gavin asked as the five of them scanned into the cafeteria.

“The dungeon,” Alex said giving him a look that said shut up. “It’s high time we discussed it and before you say anything, ignoring it is not an option. Ethan tried that before and it worked out poorly for all of us.”

This actually did shut Gavin up. The dungeon was one of, if not the only thing guaranteed to do it. Ethan understood where he was coming from, actually. He really didn’t want anything to do with the place either and if you compounded that with the fact that Gavin’s first experience with the place was being kidnapped and almost drowned it was rather reasonable.

The five of them went in and made their way through different stations before meeting back up at a table in the back corner. If they were going to discuss something like the dungeon at least this would give them some privacy.

“Okay,” Alex said after eating a few bites of his stir fry. “There are really three or four things to discuss here. The Black and whoever he’s working with, Showa 11, which I did some digging into, and the ticking time-bomb that is ignoring the dungeon, and how we’re going to get around Tanaka’s banishment.”

“That’s easy,” Gavin said slurping spoonfuls of milk, “We don’t go back down there.”

“That’s not an option as I already said,” Alex replied sighing. “As the dungeon mentioned if you were listening, which I suppose is always an if for you, the longer we go without visiting the dungeon the more likely one of these dungeon-born creatures is going to come after us. You weren’t there, but it happened with Ethan last semester. This giant winged dog attacked him as well as Bella and myself who were with him at the time. This was out in the open in broad daylight and not something I especially want to go through again.”

“We’ve been trying to give you and all of us some time after the struggle on the fifth floor, but Alex is right,” Bella said gently setting down her fork.

She was actually eating a grilled chicken salad which wasn’t her standard fare, but over the last couple of months she’d actually been taking Quin’s advice about nutrition very seriously which is more than Ethan could say. He was currently eating a cheeseburger and fries with extra mayonnaise and ketchup just to annoy Quin. Who was she to tell him what he should be eating?

“Personally, I think we’ve waited too long,” Quin said. “We should have checked out the sixth floor the following Sunday and just ignored Tanaka.”

“Yeah, no,” Ethan said. “The guy already has a grudge against me, probably for being a Shipper or something, and that would just give him more of an excuse to come after me.”

“Yeah, we don’t want to make an enemy out of him,” Alex said. “He could make our lives miserable or even get you kicked off of the soccer team Quin.”

“Not if he wants a team that can win,” Quin replied with just a hint of anger in the stare she gave Alex as if he was trying to kick her off the team.

“I’m just saying, it would be better to be stealthy and have a reasonable excuse as to why we’re in the basement of Hinan Hall,” Alex continued. “This means that Sunday is out for now as that’s the least likely day we should be down there. Do any of you actually have classes in the basement?”

“I have drawing and painting at the end of the day on Tuesday and Thursday,” Ethan muttered sourly. “That teacher hates me though.”

“That’s okay,” Alex continued. “What you’re going to do, and anyone else that has classes in the basement is you’re going to stay late after class occasionally working on homework or practicing.”

“Seriously you want me to stay late in that room with Ms. Phelan?” Ethan asked not liking this idea at all.

“Yes, because then you can occasionally head to the dungeon instead and if Tanaka catches us down there you’ll just say you were working on your drawing for class which Ms. Phelan will back up since you will actually be doing that on occasion,” Alex said. “I personally don’t have a class in the basement, but with my grades and the fact that you are my roommate I can probably get away with saying I was trying to help you improve your grade or something.”

“Sounds good to me,” Quin said. “When do you want to head down again?”

“I think directly after classes on next Tuesday,” Alex replied. “Tanaka should probably be busy still administrating or whatever he does and it gives us an excuse to be there. Just make sure you actually stay late in the meantime.”

“Great,” Ethan muttered thinking about how awesome it was going to be to spend extra time around Ms. Phelan.

“You’re not going to bend on this are you?” Gavin asked unusually serious.

“No Gavin, I’m not,” Alex said. “Look none of us are going to force you to go, but just know if you don't you will get attacked. I think all of us, well maybe not Quin, would prefer to simply not have to deal with the place, but it marked us and now until we figure something out were just going to have to keep playing it’s game until something changes.”

“Fine, I’ll go with you at least the first time,” Gavin muttered dropping his spoon onto his tray. “Not making any promises after that though.”

“That’s fine,” Alex answered. “Now onto The Black, he’s still out there and I was correct he isn’t working alone. He definitely said we a couple of time and I don’t think he was using the royal we.”

“He’s probably not too happy that we rejected his offer, saved Gavin, and got away,” Ethan said thinking.

“He surely can’t handle all of us,” Quin said. “He ran after you dove in the lake and that left only three of us and now we have five.”

“That’s a good point,” Alex said. “There’s no doubt that he knows more about the dungeon that we do and that he is more skilled than any of us, but I think it’s safe to assume he isn’t about to try to take the five of us head on together.”

“So what he’s going to come after us in our sleep?” Ethan asked.

“I don’t know about our sleep, but I could definitely see him or whoever he is working with trying to get us alone,” Alex said. “We should at least for the time being try to always make sure we’re around other people.”

“Should be easy enough at school,” Ethan said shrugging.

“Yeah, and we should see if we can come up with any research on dungeons or people they mark since he also mentioned this wasn’t the only one,” Alex continued. “I already went through the entire library and there wasn’t anything, but if they’ve been around as long as he implied there’s got to be some information out there somewhere.”

“I’ll start looking too,” Bella chimed in happy to find someway to contribute at something she was good at.

“Finally,” Alex said. “I looked up Showa 11 and I was right, it is a year on the traditional Japanese calendar. It’s 1936 which if accurate opens up even more questions for me.”

“Why would that open up more questions for you?” Quin asked. “The dungeons almost a hundred years old big deal.”

“It opens up more questions because that year doesn’t make sense,” Alex explained. “The town of Hinan, or Misty Oaks as we call it now was founded by Japanese-Americans from the Manzanar internment camp after World War II in the late forties. The Black just told us that the dungeon was created a decade before that when this area was basically supposed to be wilderness.”

“That is weird,” Ethan said thinking. “Could dungeons perhaps come about naturally from nature?”

“Maybe,” Alex answered, “but from what he said I’d say that seems unlikely. It sounded like humans are involved in the creation and if they are it couldn’t have been created by the refugees from Manzanar.”

“Who created it then?” Ethan asked.

“That’s the big question,” Alex answered. “We’ll have to find out more, especially about this town’s history.”

“Sounds like we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Ethan said.

“And it all starts with you practicing your drawing,” Alex replied with a wink causing Ethan to scowl.

Like Alex suggested over the following week Ethan stayed after in drawing to work on improving his drawings and his grade. Ms. Phelan wasn’t exactly pleased with this situation but seeing as he seemed to be trying to get better at her class she could hardly complain.

For Ethan it was even worse than his regular classes because for whatever fault they had at least there were other people for her to focus on. When it was just her and him she never failed to let him know he was doing something wrong and in this classroom he was always doing something wrong.

The days crept by slowly until finally the following Tuesday came around and he snuck out of Drawing at the bell and made his way down the hall to the ancient double doors leading into the dungeon.

Ethan was the first to get there which wasn’t a surprise. He was the closest after all. One by one the others showed up, all of them grim-faced except for Quin who had just a hint of excitement in her eyes.

Once they were all there Ethan pressed the button to call the elevator. It opened instantly and they all piled in activating their spirit armor.

Reaching out Ethan hit the button for the sixth floor and said, “Gavin let me be the first to officially welcome you to the Diving Club.”

“Worst club of all time,” Gavin muttered as the doors to the elevator shut and they began to descend.