Phoebe shifted from foot to foot. You might think she had a rock in her shoe or a growing need for the restroom. That's a perfectly reasonable supposition and, in many cases, would be spot on. In this case, Phoebe was made restless, not due to a need but, from uncertainty.

For the most part, they'd been accepting the character sheets at face value.

Phoebe's eyes flicked toward the hole in the breakroom door they'd blocked off. They hadn't even had a chance to start asking where the giant rodent that Angie killed had come from, let alone the video game stuff. They weren't so clueless that they didn't realize the strangeness was connected to the green clouds that had smothered the planet recently and had encircled Forest Lake.

Those things were above their pay grade, and they had little choice but to accept what was and move forward. So far, Angie was the star of taking things as they came; the girl didn't seem to have a single concern.

Phoebe was discovering that the flaw in this strategy was that the path forward was beyond absurd; it was outright silly.

"I don't have a quest or anything," Phoebe started before backtracking. "I think it's important to gather information. And um, I have an ability called 'MadLibs: Routine' that's supposed to help me remember things from past loops."

Leo snorted but immediately held up a hand in apology. "No, sorry, I'm just glad my quest system isn't the craziest part of all this. How's it work?"

"Oh, umm," Phoebe said, looking again at her skill sheet for direction; like the rest, there weren't any instructions.

"Just use it," Angie said with a shrug. "You figured out the character sheets; it's all just intuitive. Do what feels right."

No sooner had Angie said those words than a prompt appeared before Phoebe's eyes. [MadLibs: Routine Lvl 1.[Noun] (subject of inquiry), [Verb] (action related to [Noun]), [Noun] (a price paid)]

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"That's a pretty short mad lib," Leo said when Phoebe told them about the popup.

"What can you expect from level 1?" Angie said. "Most of my skills don't give me anything until level 10."

"Is anyone else bothered that we all have individual character sheets and skills?" Igor asked, turning his focus to the icon of the beating heart in the corner of his vision.

"Wouldn't it be stranger if they were all the same?" Angie asked. "Everybody has different strengths and remembers things differently; seems like we get sheets that fit us."

Though altogether correct, her comment only garnered her strange looks from her companions. Of her party, Angie alone was inexperienced with RPG games, which meant she made the fewest assumptions. "Well, whatever. Did you use your ability yet, Phoebes?"

"Umm, what do we want to know about?" Phoebe asked, still uncertain about her new ability.

"We should test it first, so we know if it's safe to rely on," Igor said. "Maybe the store is the subject?"

"Ok, good idea. So then maybe the verb is 'searching?'" Phoebe suggested.

"What was the last one? Something about a price? Ominous." Leo commented.

"Doesn't have to be," Angie said, "Make the price something we don't want, like..."

"Uncertainty?" Igor finished after she trailed off while trying to come up with something she wouldn't want to keep.

"Ok," Phoebe said, mentally filling each of the blanks. The popup faded, and a new sentence appeared.

["The Store has a customer. Searching the area will result in a new contact. An uncertain power, when trusted, is born out."]