Amity stepped into the portal, shortly followed by Raleigh on his phone, Himiko, and Katie. They all stepped outside, only light beyond a now dim moon from the portal and the flame. The leader stepped forwards, attempting to climb the first sand dune she saw, and it was tall, but Raleigh underestimated just how tall it was, Amity thought it was more like 10 or 15 times her height. At the top, she saw nothing but sand for probably a half mile out. Looking the other way, she saw the portal and her friends scattered about, but again nothing but sand besides those, although this side had a few scattered cacti and… Wait. Is that a tree? In the desert?
Amity carefully made her way down the sand hill she was on, each step taking seconds to ensure she was in a good spot before proceeding the next one, but once she was down she called over her friends.
“Yo, there’s a tree over there. I’m going to check it out, if any weird shit starts happening like the door starts closing like some fantasy book shout for me.”
With that note, she began a jog to the tree. It seemed closer than she thought from the top of the hill so she eventually decided to try sprinting. Maybe 10 seconds later, she arrived and nearly fell over as she attempted to cancel her momentum from the run. Inspecting the tree revealed nearly nothing odd about it, it seemed just like the one on her lawn at home, tall and strong.
At some point though, she heard a creaking, and looking near the bottom of the tree revealed sand shifting underneath the tree as it rotated and rose up, revealing a silver cylinder containing some… humans? They sure looked the part, but they were shorter. Maybe kids? But how would any kids be in this place. Wait, was there some sort of society? Would explain there being kids, especially since they looked maybe 10 at most, elementary school aged still. Amity had all these thoughts before the doors opened and a barrage of children ran at her with various items; a plastic baseball bat, a long stick, one of them had seemingly gotten… his? Her? Amity couldn’t really tell, they were all dressed up very similar and all had mid-length haircuts. Anyway, they had gotten a sort of training dagger, dull and soft but still hurt to get hit with.
“Get away! Who are you, what are you doing here?!” One of them called out.
“Ow, what the- I’m sorry, I didn’t know this was a house! I just came here!”
“How did you get here?”
“I, uh, shit how do i explain this. I walked. Yeah, I walked.”
“Don’t be smart with us ma’am, there’s no way you walked here. Papa said the closest town was probably a few hours away with his wagon, that’s probably a full cycle on foot!
What are you, one of those nomads or something? I learned about them at school, they’re-”
“Listen. I don’t know what the odds are that you speak English. I don’t know what the odds are that I happened upon your base here. I don’t know who the nomads are, all I know is that I didn’t know this was a house. I came here through that.” Amity pointed to the yellow rectangle in the distance.
“Wait, what is that? Did you really come here through that thing?”
“Yeah, it’s weird. Please stop attacking me, sorry for intruding on your tree up here.”
“You’re only going free because that’s awesome. Come on guys, let’s tell Mom.”
Amity sighed with relief as the group left her alone finally. She got up, brushed herself off and adjusted herself before seeing Raleigh running over to help her.
“Yo, are you okay? Who were they?”
“I live, those were some local kids apparently, they live under this tree. It’s weird.”
“Wait for real? This place isn’t uninhabited then… Actually, where is this place? This doesn’t look like it’s on earth, that sky is really weird…”
“It has to be on earth, those were literally humans. They had a plastic baseball bat, and they were speaking English! I imagine we’re in the Midwest or something, I think they have deserts there.”
“Oh, I can check on my phone. Let’s see… uh. There’s no signal. Maybe there’s an open WiFi somewhere? No… No WiFi networks at all actually. Where the shit are we?”
Raleigh sighed.
“We should probably head back, see what else we can find.”
Amity agreed, and the pair ran back to the portal. “You go find Katie, I’m gonna get Himiko.’
Amity ran off to get Himiko, and Raleigh the other way for Katie.
“Himiko! Where are you? Come here!” Amity shouted. After probably 5 minutes looking, she decided to climb the tallest sand dune again.
After summiting the thing, she noticed someone laid out on the distant sand on the far side of the dune. “Wait… shit is that her? Crap, crap crap is she okay??”
Amity managed to slide down the side of the unstable sand dune and ran to Himiko. “Yo! Himiko! What’s up?? Are you good??”
Himiko didn’t respond immediately, but flashed a thumbs-down at her.
“What happened?”
Himiko again couldn’t speak, so she pointed a finger at a human-like mass of water, congealed and moving.
“What the- are they made of water? How is it staying together?”
This time, Amity heard a muffled voice.
“Yeah, they’re water, but they hit hard. Watch out.”
Amity reached into her purse to pull out some of the purple goop, formulated for fire, and dipped her finger into it. She traced the circle, then the designs inside, then tapped it while running towards the water creature.
Noticing this, the congealed mass of H2O lost it’s human shape before re-configuring itself into the shape of Amity’s first girlfriend. This didn’t stop her, as she blasted the look-alike into mist with the slip of paper she wielded. Amity crushed the paper as it was still blasting, only to find it reshape itself into a blade from the paper handle. “Aw, sweet! Fire sword!”
Amity began swinging at the again shapeless blob, before it too reshaped into something Amity found sweet. She watched as the blob grew into the shape of one of her best friends, gaining the witches hat, coat, as well as the usual outfit of a gray shirt and a short skirt. “W- what? Himiko, it reshaped itself into… you!”
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Himiko was already looking when it turned into the fighter’s girlfriend, and now it was her?
“Yeah, I can see that. Why would it turn into your ex and then me? We have almost nothing in common, she sucked!”
“Don’t say that, she was fine before she, y’know…”
She was distracted, and lost sight of the water creature which was now charging at her from behind.“Amity! Be careful! It’s-”Amity fell, nearly burning herself on the sword which was extinguished shortly after by the flood of water caused by the water creature. It lifted itself up and reshaped to seemingly the same person as prior but now in a flowing dress which Amity had complimented her on a few months ago at their school dance.
“It’s you again, but now…”
Amity couldn’t think. She was entranced by the fluid’s new form sure, but she also physically couldn’t think. In the prior attack, the water creature had managed to latch onto Amity’s mind and was now affecting her, both by physically inhibiting her and by finding something that can mentally stop her just out of awe.
“Amity? Amity! Are you there?”
Amity felt a shake on her shoulders as she managed to get back out of what was seemingly a trance staring as the water shaped into her friend danced, and she managed to look away.
“What… I… what the shit just happened to me? I couldn’t…”
“Yo, it’s fine, I think I know what it was doing. We gotta kill this thing though, and I don’t want to kill something that looks just like me, it’d be like killing myself…”
Amity reached onto the ground and grabbed a rock, hurling it at the creature. The thing looked away, so was completely blindsided by the rock, which caused it to fall apart into a splash of water. It quickly re-coagulated however, and Himiko looked as it formed into something a little odder, Himiko in a puffy white wedding dress.
“Wh- is that me? Dang, I would look good in one of those.”
Amity raced in, giving it a solid punch before snatching the rock from earlier and bashing it into the water shape-shifter.
“You really would.” Amity said, unthinkingly. She immediately realized, and got flushed.
“Thanks!” Himiko was luckily taking it as a normal compliment rather than the comment it truly was, and she eventually found a rock to chuck at the beast.
“Hey Amity, watch out!”The rock nailed the beast directly in the back of the head, right before it would’ve shifted into some new form designed to stop Amity in her tracks, and it splashed into unformed water again.
Amity noticed a blue blob, and she grabbed it to inspect. It looked like a heart almost, but it was considerably bigger than any models she’d seen and also way more wrinkly, as if the brain of it was also the heart.
“Oh dang, I think I found the center of that thing. What should I do with it?”
“I don’t know, just like, kick it away I guess?”
Amity obliged, throwing in the air before giving it a solid kick sending it probably a hundred feet away.
“We might want to get out of here before that thing reforms. You okay to walk? I don’t know how hard you were hit earlier.”
“Ah, I’m probably fine, it was enough to pretty much topple me then but the pain is mostly gone now.”
“Alright, I guess we go then. Farewell, weird desert place!”
Amity began her way back, Himiko following shortly behind.
Once the duo made it back to the portal, they spotted Raleigh and Katie standing near it, as well as one of the kids from earlier.
“That’s one of the kids that was hitting me earlier! Why is he here now?”
Raleigh spotted the two.
“Yo morons, where have you been? Amity, you’re drenched, what happened?”
Himiko responded for Amity:
“There was some weird water monster, it like morphed itself into looking like Amity’s ex, then into me in a fancy dress, then again in a wedding dress, it was really weird. We fought it and won though, so it’s fine.”
“I don’t know why it formed my ex, then into Himiko, honestly they do have almost nothing alike.”
After this line, the kid from earlier came over.
“Hey. You’re that person that came onto our house earlier. ‘Sup?”
The kid extended a fist as he adjusted a lollipop in his mouth, and Amity gave the kid a fist bump, assuming they did that here too.
“Mom wants me to take you on a tour of our place as an apology for what we did earlier. Sorry about that, by the way.”
“No hard feelings, you didn’t know who I was and I figure you don’t get many people here based on the whole desert thing so it’s fair you defended your home.”
“Come on, my mom is probably gonna kill me if I don’t bring you back soon, I’ve already been waiting a while.”Amity followed the kid as he used some sort of remote device to pop the elevator back out from underneath the tree, and they both went in.
The ride down was relatively quick as she only stood for maybe 10 seconds before the elevator stopped at the main floor.
“Well, this is home. There’s a library over there, a few food spots, it’s not too different to a human neighborhood. Wait, you are human, right?”
“Oh, yeah, I’m a human. Don’t ask why but I thought this would be a little more dystopian somehow, maybe our fiction books were super unrealistic.”
“Dissy-topian? What’s that?”
“Oh, shoot, it’s uh, when a place is dark and gloomy and you have no freedom, its a common theme we have in books at home.”
“Ohh, alright. I don’t think this is a dissy-topia, we can mostly do what we want, I think its similar to what you guys call the United States of America.”
“Maybe that’s how it was, what, 50 years ago? But it’s really not that free anymore.”
“Huh? My teacher says that it’s the most free country on your planet, most people are super happy, right?”
“Uh, I’m not really in the place to be definitive about this but, most people aren’t.”
“Aw, that’s sad. Anyways, do you want to go to the library, or we can go to the next floor, the homes, or the one below that, the play areas?”
“Honestly, we should go make sure your mom knows you’re giving me the tour so you don’t get in trouble for not doing it, but then I do have to go home. I don’t think my mom knows I’m not at home.”
“Got it. Let’s go to floor two, then, then we can get you home.”
“God, how long is Amity gonna be down there with that kid. It’s been like 10 minutes, I want to go back home.”
“She’s probably coming back soon, I bet she’s more worried about getting home than we are since her parents don’t even know she’s not at home. Just give her a minute.”
“Here we are, this is our dorm section, Three-B! Let’s run inside and tell my mom that I actually did the thing, then lets go back up.”
The two went over to the left side of the section, then to a door labeled “3B8”, and hit the doorbell.“Yes, who is it… Oh! Hello! You’re the one that my kids wailed on. Sorry about that, we thought you were an intruder, or God forbid one of those nomads.”“It’s all good, they were just defending their home.”“Oh thank goodness. Alright, I just needed to know you were okay and not too angry, you can continue the tour.”“I actually do have to get home, my friends are probably getting impatient.”“Ah, well, I hope you enjoyed your time here. You’re welcome back here anytime, we don’t get real humans here very often, I think the last time was probably sixty-so years ago, when my mom was in school.”“Wait, really? Mom, you never told me about that! Once she’s back home, you’ve gotta tell me about it!”“Yeah, of course, go do that then I can tell you all about it!”
“Okay, it’s been like 15 minutes, we should check on her. I’m getting worried.”
Himiko said.“Yeah, my phone says it’s almost 7:30, her parents are probably looking for her. I imagine yours would’ve seen the huge portal, so we’re probably okay on that front. Come on, let’s go.”
The group set off towards the tree in the distance, running up until they made it to the now visible panel encircling it.
“Wait, how do we open this?”
“Uh, I’m gonna be honest, all I saw when I went to go help Amity earlier was it closing as the kids ran inside. It’s some sort of elevator, but I don’t think there’s a way to get it to open from out here.”
After a few seconds of inspection, Katie pointed something out.
“Oh, there’s a panel over here. It blends in but it has an open button. Should I hit it?”
“Yeah, do it!”
The tree elevated as the elevator rose underneath it. The three went in, and they started by hitting the button for floor three.
“We’ll work our way up.”
Once their lift stopped, they got off to see that most sections were blocked by some wooden boards.
“I’m gonna say its safe to ignore this floor, there’s like nothing here. I don’t think she could be stuffed into a pool table.”
They all got back into the elevator to ascend to the second floor. Once the door opened they were greeted by the kid, and Amity.
“Oh, shoot, hey Amity!”
“Yo! How did you get in here?”
“Panel on the tree. Come on, we gotta get home.”
“Yeah, I was about to go back up. See ya, dude.”
Amity extended her fist to the kid, and her gesture was returned.
“See you.”
Amity joined the group and got sent up, but as they exited the elevator and turned to head to the portal, they noticed something was missing.
“Where… Where’s the portal?”