I picked up a rock and hurled it at the literally wooden man growing out of the walking tree. The rock smashed him into matchsticks. Druidon—this had to be him—grew out another part of the tree. If his power was to regenerate out of wood, this was going to be an annoying as fuck fight. The forest was full of trees! Or jungle? Jungles also had trees, right?

“That wasn’t nice of you, little lady,” Druidon said. The tree he was attached to changed course and headed towards me with bounding steps. Jubjub had melted into the shadows. “You kill my precious pet,” he said, “and now you hit me out of nowhere? Such unladylike beha—”

I destroyed his body with more rocks. Switching targets, I aimed for the many gnarled legs of the walking tree and destroyed its knees—or the joints that could be considered its knees. The tree fell with a loud crash.

I looked around for a way to destroy the whole tree in one go. I caught a blur zipping at the corner of my eye. It was Deen throwing a rock. At nothing?

But something did come out of the no-longer walking tree and jumped to the nearest tree. Deen’s rock hit that something—it was a naked man. He fell to the ground, but quickly picked himself up.

Was that Druidon?

I sprinted toward him. But I couldn’t reach him in time, and he dived into another tree. Dammit!

The tree he entered shook. No, it was the entire forest shaking. A bunch of trees around us uprooted themselves. The bastard tree man emerged from a trunk of a tree different from the one he entered. Were the trees all connected? Druidon was there to answer my question.

“Trees are connected by fungi, my dears!” He spread his arms wide as he cackled. More than a dozen trees were heading towards us, swinging down their branches full of leaves like angry cheerleaders with pompoms. “You should’ve learned that from science class. Think of the whole forest as one organism. This is my domain! We are one!”

So, is this a forest or jungle? I wondered, glancing at Deen.

She was just standing with a conflicted expression. I bet she mentally wrestled with her Guardian Angel who wanted her to leave—that meant this Druidon asshole would be a pain in the ass to fight. I could see why. He didn’t pose an actual threat if his power was just controlling trees and regenerating here and there. But it’d bog us down if we stayed here. This guy must’ve contacted his buddies about intruders. Not to mention the teleporting stuff going on; we didn’t know the schedule for those.

Jubjub was nowhere to be found. Was she trying to sneak into those trees to find the guy? He must have a solid form somewhere. Or did Jubjub decide to stay on the sidelines and just watch? She might not be necessarily betraying us, but she could be concerned about getting caught again. There was more to Druidon’s power if he managed to detect shadow Jubjub.

“In the forest, surrounded by trees, I am invincible!” roared Druidon, forgetting that Deen managed to hit his real body once.

A tree bent down to reach for me. I hopped on its sledgehammer of an arm that was many branches fused, and I traveled up to the point where it connected to the trunk. A cartwheel and a kick sliced off the arm.

How the fuck did I pull that off? I was like a fricking action star! Too bad no one caught that on camera.

The next scenes were pretty boring though. Deen and I got to work dismantling the trees. We couldn’t really kill them—it wasn’t like they had a brain and a heart or something—so our only option was to remove their limbs. Druidon popped up here and there, but he couldn’t damage me. Deen, of course, had her Guardian Angel and wasn’t in any trouble.

“And that’s eight trees!” I yelled at Deen while walking away from a tree monster as it fell. “How many have you taken care of?”

“Just three,” she said, frowning at me. “You’re treating this like a game.”

I gave her a sheepish grin as I dodged giant roots trying to entangle me. Fine, I was mature enough to admit I was being childish. Red Island might be for enjoyment, but I couldn’t have too much fun. Our time must be running short. I looked around for the weird tree man, wondering how to kill him.

Druidon was trying to dethrone Finlay as the most annoying opponent. He popped sideways from an ancient oak that towered over us. I just guessed it was an oak; I had zero clue about trees. More tree monsters came from the distance, add in mutated monsters like the ugly ass wormy fellow I had killed. We could take care of these. I could destroy them all.

But this was getting old. There was no actual danger. I wanted a real challenge, not a joke of an opponent.

“You ladies don’t take care of the environment,” said Druidon from high above.

“Stop controlling the trees to kill us,” I shot back. “We don’t have any other choice than to destroy them. This is all on you!”

Druidon’s wooden features materialized back into flesh as he glowered at me. “You’re a particularly strong one, missy,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re supposed to be, but I can’t have you destroying more of the precious environment here.”

“Fight me yourself then,” I said. “If you beat me, then that’s it. Come down here and be a man… tree. Tree man!” I didn’t think he’d fall for my bait. Which he didn’t.

He shook his head. “I’ll let the others deal with you.”

“The others?” I tilted my head. “Deal with me? Who are you talking—woah!”

Massive poles of wood shot out of the ground around me, as trees further away sunk. Did those trees tunnel underground to sneak beneath me? They quickly formed a cage. Deen dove in through the gap in the trunks, doubtless ignoring her Guardian Angel’s warnings. I kicked her stomach and sent her flying out before the cage fully shut.

I immediately went wild raking at the walls of the cage. I managed to open a hole. Outside were tree monsters closing in, using their bodies to make the cage thicker and keep me in. Were these the others supposed to deal with me? One of them plopped over the hole I made, its heavy body crunching down on my cage. The space became smaller and rounder. Violent shaking followed. I fell on my butt. Did this cocoon of wood go up? Were we moving?

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Wood wasn’t going to keep me contained. I had experience tunneling out of the earth.

Each punch of mine blasted away chunks of wood. Unfortunately, they’d quickly regrow to plaster over the hole I was trying to make. I had amazing super strength but didn’t know how one punch could blast away concrete or something, like in cartoons. Cartoons. I supposed that explained that. Just continue digging my way out then. Not sure what else I could do.

Problem was, my tiny space filled up with wood chips as I dug. Still, I didn’t relent. Those walking trees couldn’t keep this up forever; they had to run out of wood at some point. And I had to get out of here fast—the swaying and shaking told me this wooden cocoon with legs was carrying me far away from Deen. I left the bag with the maps with her. I was probably nowhere near the river that I could follow to lead me back to them. Consider my ass lost.

My ride suddenly stopped. My momentum banged me to the front. That side of the cocoon opened and I tumbled out. My ride was much diminished, just a ball of wood on many spindly legs. Its massive buddies were also reduced to puny twig people. They crumbled into firewood, having used up their body to keep me caged until they got me far away from Druidon.

So much for being a guard. He was supposed to kill or capture me.

Or maybe he was just cognizant he was no match for me and split me off from my girl-space-friends.

“Where the heck am I?” I asked, looking around.

I expected to see trees. There were still lots of those, and it looked like I was still in the forest. But the trees were far from me, ringing the sort of large crater I was in. It was around an acre in size and filled with all sorts of junk. From mounds of black garbage bags, rusted appliances and scrap metal, even wrecked cars.

“This is a landfill…” I climbed to a tall pile to get a better view. “Is this still Red Island?”

Must be. The tree monsters were quick, but the trip was short. Also, I didn’t sense any teleportation wave. If it did happen, shouldn’t the walking trees poof away and revert to normal trees? Then I’d be on Yellow or Green or whatever island was next.

“Why is all this garbage here?” I asked no one, guessing this was the dump of all the colored Islands.

Shouldn’t the teleportation wave get rid of the trash? My hair and finger, and also Romulus’ corpse, disappeared after it happened. A possibility was that it only worked on stuff that was once living. Or maybe all organic stuff? I didn’t find rotten food or the like around me. No corpses or even skeletons either.

I’ll let others handle you—those were Druidon’s last words. Maybe he didn’t mean the walking trees.

“Is there some garbage monster guarding this place?” I shouted. “Come out! I’ve got plenty of questions.”

But there was no one.

I checked the sun and tried to figure out where was north. Wasn’t helpful because I didn’t know which way I came from anyway. I sucked so bad at survival stuff.

“What’s that?” I squinted at a shimmer in the horizon. It fast approached me. The teleportation wave.

I shrugged and sat down on a television with a busted screen. Might as well get teleported. I didn’t know where Deen was and this place was getting boring. Even if I wanted to avoid getting teleported, I didn’t know the location of the nearest safe zone.

Deen could take care of herself. Jubjub too. We’d meet eventually, no biggie. Sometimes, it was fun to go my own way and try new things—that was what I used to tell my introverted cute self.

And the wave washed over me.

----------------------------------------

I was instantly in a different place, an unlit room. I closed my eyes for several seconds to adjust to the darkness. Opening my eyes again, I found snippets of light crawling from under the gap between the door and the floor. The room was tiny, barely a broom closet. It had tiny slats for air at the top, near the ceiling, that also let in light slivers. The door looked heavy. It had a small window secured by grills across, but it was shut from the other side so I couldn’t see shit.

“Am I… in prison?” I held out my right hand, mulling over whether to transform into Blanchette.

A commotion made me stop. I pressed my ears on the door. The mystery piqued my interest—I was warming up to this part of the theme park.

Shouting. Panicked voices. Banging. Cries for help. Like me, the noisy people outside didn’t have a clue where we were. Someone seemed to have broken out of their cell and was helping others escape. A few footsteps were getting closer.

“Is anyone here?” shouted a man’s voice.

What the fuck is going on? I expected to get jumped by Adumbrae as soon as I teleported. This was different, but might not be so bad. Just play along for now, I supposed. “Help!” I cried out in the most damsel-in-distress impression I could. “Help me! I’m in here!”

The window of my cell slid open. Stern green eyes peered in. “We got someone here!” he told his companions. “Don’t worry, miss. We’re going to get you out.”

There were smashing noises outside. And something cracked. The cell door flung open, revealing a bunch of people, six of them. Green-Eyed Hero, tall and built like an NBA player, held a sledgehammer with a bloodied end. He must’ve killed someone with it.

“Wha-what’s going on?” I asked, cowering at the end of my room. “I do-don’t know where—who are you?”

“I’m Tristan,” said Green-Eyed Hero, lowering his sledgehammer as he entered the room. “As to what’s going on, I don’t know. None of us do. We woke up in these cells. Phones, wallets, our belongings gone. I pretended to be having a heart attack and overpowered the guard who went in to check up on me. Come with us.”

“We have to escape this place before other guards come,” said a tanned shirtless guy who looked like he was on the beach when he was kidnapped by the 2Ms’ men.

This is a nice change of scene. The forest was bland, with annoying Adumbrae guards. Whatever was going on here could be more enjoyable. This could be a trap. But for what? Such an elaborate setup compared to just attacking me. Not that the bad guys of Red Island had the heads up to prepare this. Most likely, these were random people to be experimented on, and they had the good luck of escaping… to nothing. They’d just die soon enough.

I might find some use for these people.

Our little band made our way through the corridor lined with cells and up the stairs. We passed a couple of guards that Tristan, the Green-Eyed Hero, presumably killed. A nerdy girl with long hair—I wasn’t talking about myself; she had dyed her hair purple—vomited at the sight of the corpses. A woman in her late fifties, with the face and mannerisms of a strict professor, pulled Purple Nerd along. Beach Man kicked the corpses, hurling profanities.

“Let’s go, Carmelo,” said Green-Eyed Hero to Beach Man. “No point hitting the dead. You too, Francis. Don’t waste time.”

The ‘Francis’ that Green-Eyed Hero talked to was a middle-aged guy with too much white hair for his age. He also had weirdly frizzy hair. I labeled him Frizzy Detective because he was searching through cabinets.

“There’s nothing here,” said Frizzy Detective. “Odd. I expected files, weapons, and even food or drinks. Even if these scumbags intended to starve us, at least have provisions for the guards. Maybe the outside will give us clues.”

The outside gave us nothing. We exited a squat, square building—just concrete. No defining features or logos, no other buildings around, just this structure plopped in the middle of a clearing surrounded by trees.

“Odd. Very odd,” said Francis, the Frizzy Detective. “No electric lines, even pipes for this building. No solar panels. Water pipes? Roads are lacking. As isolated as could be. What is this place?”

“This is like the beginning of a bad movie,” said Purple Nerd, who might not really be a nerd. She was a bitch for bringing up movies though. That was my thing. She continued, “A bad movie in the sense it’ll be bad for us. It feels like a horror—Ah! Look over there!”

We all turned around and saw something crawling up on the building’s roof.