[Player Log Start!]

[Log Holder: Lucky Paine]

[Level: 1, Sub-Level: N/A]

“I am getting really tired of you.” Lucky told Burks, sitting down heavily in the chair set out for the dungeon guard. Which would be her now.

“Oh?” The man cocked his head, “What have I done now?”

“You know exactly what.” Lucky hissed, leaning as close to the bars as she could get, “I want you to spill everything you know about the Developers. You just dodge every question we throw your way, and have the audacity to act like you are cooperating!”

“But I am. To the best of my abilities.” Burks responded, looking for all the world as if he was sincere in his response, “My programming is working against those. Nothing except the most invasive procedures would keep me from keeling over to the threat of torture.”

This wasn’t the first time he had said something in that regard. Lucky watched him carefully, trying to detect even the slightest flinch that would give away his falsehood. Burks didn’t falter, but he had already shown himself to be an incredible liar.

“Hey, ma’am, you still in here?” Emmet, the guard who normally sat there poked his head in, “There’s a broken exhaust we need fixed apparently.”

“Of course.” Lucky agreed, rolling her chair away from Burks’ cell to move up the ramp that led back to the ground level. Before she left, she made sure to remind Emmet, “Don’t respond to anything he says. Plug your ears if he tries to speak to you.”

He nodded, taking the warning as seriously this time as he did the first seventy times. Emmet was a good man. Capable and down-to-earth, taking every unbelievable thing Lucky warned him about at face value.

They let her head fall back, looking up at the ceiling of the cathedral. There were windows built into it now, and they were open, showing off the beautiful blue sky, with yellow sunlight drifting in.

When she breathed in, the air tasted sweet and light. For once, there was no smoke or humidity, and the constant whine of machinery no longer echoed in her head. It had been two months since their ‘Apocalypse’ had ended, but it still surprised Lucky.

People were wandering through her creation, some of them recognizing her and giving her a friendly wave, others too caught up in their own tasks and simply treating Lucky as any other face in the crowd. Seeing them all here, staying even though humanity no longer had to huddle in airtight bunkers, made their heart swell.

They weren’t alone. People were here. And they were all going to support each other through this. Because that was what humans did.

Maybe it was because Lucky had gotten a look into what lay beyond, but they still couldn’t help noticing some issues they were having in their perception in the world.

For one thing, it seemed almost… small?

They had no other way to say it. The world was small. Geologically speaking, it was barely ten million square kilometers. She had no other scale, but it felt wrong. Like a world had to be bigger. This distance was starker when she was flying in her chair, where she could take in exactly how small everything was.

It was also apparent from any high surface, such as the roof of the cathedral, where a loose pipe was whipping around, hissing from the steam that was gushing out from one opening.

“Sorry!” Liann tugged at her hair nervously, “I tried to fix it on my own, and I know that I should not disturb you, but…”

“Hey.” Lucky interrupted gently, “It is okay. This is what I do for a living, remember?”

Liann blinked in surprise, before nodding, “Yeah. I guess I forgot.”

After so long of being reduced to only her position as a mechanic, Lucky found that almost endearing, especially coming from a person as young and well-meaning as Liann. She smiled, directing a robotic arm to clumsily pat her head, “Head down. I heard some people are bringing in chili plants and sacks of sugar.”

Predictably, Liann’s eyes lit up, “Score!!!!” She cheered, rushing down the stairs. Lucky watched her disappear, and then moved on to check up on the pipe.

It seemed to be connected to the thermostat system of Block C. She had been right to sector that off, otherwise the entire building would have been experiencing the problems that area most definitely had been. She located the tap to divert pressure to a standby chimney, and began the process of sawing off the rubber tubing she had conjured for this section.

Below her, on the horizon, a train was running, leaving no deathly fumes in its wake. They had all converted to solar energy in an effort to not bring about the Apocalypse all over again. For once, seeing a train did not bring up an instinctive shudder.

Then the train did something that was not unexpected, but still a pleasant surprise. It stopped. People came out, loaded with boxes to bring in their direction. Lucky should begin plans for building a train station. It was needed at this point, with all the people coming in and out.

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People were another problem, she decided, as she fitted another rubber pipe to connect the metal ones, uncapping her homemade sealant to paint onto the edges of the tube. There were too few people. Organizing a census was hard work only a couple months in, but the few reports she had gotten estimated maybe a couple thousand. It seemed like an infinitesimally small number to Lucky.

Maybe it was because they had seen what laid outside their narrow scope of reality, they reassured themselves. If they felt like she was being constricted, then maybe… maybe it was because they weren’t an NPC anymore. They were more than that.

And they had already idled in this level for far longer than she should have.

She watched the pipe intently, trying to see any gaps. Seeing none, she twisted the knob, letting the air gush back in and fill the rubber tubing. It held strong. The perfect patch.

As she made the absent-minded descent downwards, she went over her list of reasons to not progress.

They were the last of the founders to remain here. People needed someone to stand by them and remind them that this place was worth sticking up for.

(Plenty of other tumbleweed kids had been here from the very beginning, believing in the motion as much as she did. She was irrelevant. Maybe might be a more effective inspirer as a legendary figure.)

The other Harbingers could come back for Burks. They were dangerous, no matter how many weapons she had lined the walls of this cathedral with.

(Ciera indicated that she thought him to be useless multiple times. If they hadn’t come already, they never would.)

It was a cycle doomed to repeat itself, the same thoughts with the same counterarguments, and the same ceaseless worrying about what came next. Because there would be a next. The Developers might come back, or the gangs that had gotten the opportunity to amass power during the Apocalypse would rise up and claim power for themselves even in this new fixed world.

They would never have the chance to truly rest. It was one poison or another.

And every day since Ben had smiled at her, they had been picking the familiar one. Except today. Today, they wandered into the office where they had slyly hidden the Console away, and picked up the tablet. It came alive almost eagerly, as if awaiting her arrival. The same announcement was still displayed on the screen.

[Current Level Cleared!]

[Advance to Level 2?]

[{ } Yes {x} No]

She had been content with simply turning it off and moving away, but it continued to call after her. Some spell in the tablet had hooked into their soul, and refused to let them free. Not until they finished its Game.

So, reluctantly. She pressed [Yes].

The screen switched first to a loading screen, which seamlessly transitioned to a compass, pointing her off into the ether. A quest, then. How delightful. They had all mentioned the criminal amount of walking they had had to do to get to a teleporter, but somehow, Lucky had thought that she would be able to sidestep that issue.

Well, the ‘walking’ issue she had no need to worry about, but the constant puppetry required to keep her chair going would get tiring eventually. Maybe if they built in an automated cruise mode? It was an interesting project idea. Her fingers itched, and Lucky found themself being torn between going to her forge, and heading out.

Still, they had procrastinated for long enough. Time for them to finally step up.

She didn’t vanish into the day, obviously. She had inadvertently found herself in a position much too important to give up so frivolously. There were people she had to inform and bid farewell. Arrangements that needed to be made. Mechanisms that needed to be explained.

Richards, the resident engineer she had been training up seemed a bit nervous at having to take over so soon, but she patted him on the shoulder and assured him that he would do wonderfully.

“And if you do not, I have twenty manuals full of instructions!” She added, gesturing excitedly to the bookshelves straining with the weight of self-bound books.

“…You don’t have much faith in me, do you?” Richards laughed, nervousness increasing tenfold.

“Of course I do!” Lucky laughed, perhaps overly boisterous. They had been floating on clouds since the day in the mountains, when she had aimed a cannon at Ciera and nearly killed her. Maybe it was the joy of finally winning or just the thinness of the upper air she inhaled in her flights finally wearing away at her mind, but she relished it.

After all, that was the more appealing option from worrying about whatever was chugging through her veins, slowly burning her up from the inside, even as she flew high enough to skim the clouds with her outstretched canvas wings, as much a part of her as her robotic limbs.

She wondered what the world would be like. The kind of terrain it would have. How compatible it would be with her chair and its sharp pikes of legs.

All of these would undoubtedly be solved once she stepped through the portal they finally pinpointed to be right next to a manhole from one of the Rustage hideouts. She had been a little cautious of stepping in at first, but when no one stepped through to immediately slaughter her when she neared, they gained a little courage and landed their chair onto the rock, crawling solidly onto the Spawn Point.

[Spawn Point Reached!]

[Entering Level Two…]

They had gotten so accustomed to the green pixels blanketed other people that it was an honest shock to see it reach up and wrap all over her. It was an odd sensation, like a prickling series of needles that piercing into their skin painlessly, taking them apart, until even their sight was overtaken by that unrelenting green.

Instinctively, panic rose up in their throat at that, reminded fiercely of the smoke, and the way it clung at everything. They could not breathe. They could not breathe because they had no lungs.

And then they had them again. The chair was a solid weight against her, one that she gladly sank into, looking above, and realizing with a heavy heart that she would no longer be seeing blue skies for a very long time. This time it was yellow. A dark mustard that seemed like… nighttime?

[You have Entered Level Two!]

[Realm: L-32 | CephaloRaven]

They were thick with birds, almost blotting out the sky as they swarmed around something that Lucky couldn’t quite pinpoint. No, wait, gap in the swarm. She recognized that half-crouched stance. No one else was that prepared to bite an opponent.

Her legs were already buried in the sand, sinking down at an alarming rate. She paid them no mind as she wrenched her controls up and took to the air.

[Player Log End!]