Ah, well isn’t this a surprise. I’m in the practice room doing my usual morning practicing, and who should barge in without knocking or any warning but Anja. (You see, I usually do not like to be interrupted while I’m practicing.)

I pretend to not notice her and finish off the second etude to see if she’s going to say anything. Thankfully, she does at least have the decency to let me finish.

“What do you want?” I ask her, as soon as I’m done.

She looks unusually serious, and points at me dramatically. “I know about the Metaverse.”

Whoah. All of the things I thought she would say, that was not one of them.

“What do you mean?” I ask, to see what exactly she thinks she knows.

“The app… on your phone. It’s the symbol of the Thieves In The Night.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I ask, genuinely alarmed at this point.

She falters a bit at this. “Where did you… get that app on your phone?”

I sigh. I thought that she might’ve seen it during lunch last week. I guess she’s been Googling stuff on the internet and found some conspiracy theory or something.

“Well, I can’t seem to get rid of it, can I?” I explain casually. “It’s almost like a virus.”

She looks visibly disappointed. “What happens when you click on it?”

I sit there for a moment, weighing my options. I could probably talk my way out of this and deny that the Metaverse even exists. But knowing Anja, she probably wouldn’t give up there. If she was curious enough about a random app on my phone she saw for a few seconds during lunch one day to do some sort of research on it by herself, maybe I should just drop pretense now.

After all, Lucy did say to bring others into the Metaverse. I guess it might as well be Anja.

I pull out my phone. “Well, how about we find out together?” I press the app.

When the world comes back into focus again, I’m surprised to see that we are in the middle of what appears to be a dense jungle. It’s bizarre, but I’m not going to complain; it’s better than the red and purple nightmare it was last time.

As I was hoping, the look on Anja’s face is priceless.

“So Anja,” I begin, “Why don’t you tell me everything you know about this place, and where you learned it?”

She’s taken to looking around nervously at the trees, as if she’s expecting something to attack us at any moment. She’s also trembling a bit.

“Well, uh… an anonymous source told me that… there’s this place called the ‘Metaverse,’ where you can go under… certain circumstances. And you can use it to change the hearts of evil people… and reform society.”

Mm. Well, it looks like she’s got the gist.

“I don’t like this place,” she continues. “Also, why are you dressed like some sort of knight?”

“Because I am one,” I reply, trying to seem as impressive as possible.

“You’ve… been here before, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, once. It didn’t look like this that time, though… it was all dark and veiny… it didn’t look like any place on Earth.”

“You’ve only been here once?” she asks. Her trembling stops, and now she looks annoyed at me for some reason that I can not possibly fathom.

“Yeah, last week.”

“You mean… you’ve had this power for over a week, and you haven’t been using it?”

“I’ve been busy!” I snarl at her. I really did not ask for a critique of my lifestyle.

“I’ve been watching you and Zoe make googly eyes at each other for a week and a half, when we could’ve been changing the world!” she nags angrily.

“That… is a gross oversimplification of what has been happening.”

“Why, though? Don’t give me that crap about being busy, you were too scared, weren’t you?”

“Excuse me?” I take a step towards her threateningly. “You’re the one who’s being all jittery.”

(I admit that I’m deflecting. Honestly, I was a bit scared of coming back here… I mean, after what I went through the first time… you would be too. Don’t judge me.)

“This place isn’t right,” she says, going back to looking around at the trees. “Don’t you just feel like… someone is watching you?”

I turn away from her and look around a little more closely myself. This place vaguely reminds me of pictures I’ve seen of the Amazon rainforest. The foliage is so thick that I can’t see five feet in front of me. I suppose that this would give shadows a prime opportunity to hide, and strike when we least expect it…

I draw my sword and begin circling around the area we’re in. No sign of anything yet…

“Why do you think… it looks different this time than the last time you tried it?” she asks me from behind.

“I have no clue,” I tell her honestly. “Maybe Ted will know.”

“Who’s Ted?”

“A talking armadillo. I can’t wait to introduce you two. You’ll get along famously, I just know it.”

“You’re… pulling my leg.”

I turn around and look straight at her. She indeed has an incredulous expression, so I shake my head no.

“That’s not all, though,” I explain. “If Ted can’t tell me something, I can ask Lucy, a talking book.”

“A talking book?” she gasps suddenly. “You mean like Tom Riddle’s diary?”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought of too,” I admit.

Now she’s looking at me with a hint of her usual smugness back. “Huh. I never took you for a Harry Potter fan.”

And that’s how much warning I get when several vines shoot out of the foliage, lasso one of her legs, and drag her off screaming.

And so there I was, being dragged through the jungle by a force I could not see, terrified for my life, my head bumping into trees and my face being scratched by branches and leaves.

Eventually, it drags me to a clearing, far away from where I was just talking to Ashley. I see my assailant; a bunch of disembodied vines, which are now shooting out of the surrounding jungle from every direction and tying my arms and legs, leaving me feeling extremely vulnerable and viscerally uncomfortable. It was then that I heard a hissing voice from every direction at once, that bizarrely sounded slightly familiar:

“Go ahead… try and fight back… but you won’t be able to free yourself… the small ones never can…”

“I am definitely NOT okay with any of this!” I scream back at it. “Let me go, let me go…” I struggle against the vines as hard as I can, but they’re gripping me too hard… I can barely even move… Terror, like none I have ever known before, grips me, as it dawns on me how totally and utterly trapped I am…

[Across from me is a man… an absolutely gorgeous man, with flowing blonde hair, naked except for a sort of curtain blocking his midriff, and, most interestingly, a bed of daffodils growing out of the top of his head.]

[“So,” he says, “you believe that it is your time… to choose what is right, rather than what the ease of your own self-absorption. You think you are prepared to change the world? To walk the path of true progress?”]

[“Hell yeah I am!” I reply. “But… uh… first, you’re going to need to help me with something…”]

[He grins at me. “Do not be worried… we will form a pact. If you are ready to accept the responsibility that has been thrust upon you, I will be your guide.”]

[“Hook me the fuck up, I’m in!”]

Though I am in the grasp of the vines, my body begins trembling, moving so forcefully that I can not be held still. As if following instructions I had agreed on long ago, I reach up to my face, where a white mask had formed, and I rip it straight off. For a moment, the pain is so intense that I can not help but to scream… but then, I am engulfed in blue flames, which burn away all of the vines; I can feel the relief of my limbs being set free. When the fire is gone, I am wearing a curious outfit; a red dress, covered on the back by a thick fur coat, and a tight necklace of small pearls around my neck. In my hands is some kind of gun with a long muzzle and a huge handle right past the trigger.

I see the vines moving back towards me to ensnare me again, but I act instinctively and open fire in every direction at once; I am pleased to find out that my weapon fires automatically, and so I let loose a spray of bullets, until the vines retreat back into the undergrowth.

“Yeah! That serves you right, motherfucker!” I shout triumphantly. “That’ll teach you to fuck with me, or anyone else, ever again!”

Eventually, I am able to follow the sounds of Anja’s screaming and the fire of a submachine gun to another small clearing. Nobody but Anja is around, and thankfully she seems unhurt, though she is screaming her head off like a lunatic. I notice that she’s now dressed up and holding a Thompson, and so I make an inference as to what happened.

“Well well, look who awakened her Persona,” I say as I approach her.

She jumps back about a yard in shock and points her gun at me; apparently, she had not noticed me until then. However, after a few seconds she calms down and drops it. “Whew… sorry Ashley, you spooked me,” she adds unnecessarily.

“Let's get out of here,” I say quickly, expecting the vines to attack us again at any moment. She nods frantically in agreement, and I take my phone back out and press the app.

I am fully expecting, based on my previous experience, to appear in some random part of the school; but thankfully we turn up right back in the practice room.

Anja looks as pale as a ghost, and as soon as we get our bearings back, she sits down on a chair in the room, breathing deeply.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“I don’t know…” she says. “That was… pretty fucked up.”

“You should come over to my place after school today. I was going to explain everything to you in the Metaverse, but… well, for whatever reason, it doesn’t seem safe to enter it here.”

She just nods silently, her eyes still wide with fear.

It turns out, Ashley actually doesn’t live too far away from me. She’s close enough to where I can ride my bike to her place after school. Who knew?

Ashley’s house is a reasonably modest one-story, not any bigger than mine. There’s a huge oak tree in the front, must be 50 feet tall. As well as a… John Cornyn campaign sign? Oh dear, oh dear… that does explain a lot.

Anyways, without further ado, I knock on the front door, and after about thirty seconds, a woman whom I can only assume is Ashley’s mom answers the door. She looks so similar to Ashley, it’s almost comical. They both have the long red hair, green eyes, and slender build while still having a chest… ugh, I’m so jealous. (What? Don’t look at me like that.) Anyways, apart from resembling Ashley, I can’t shake the feeling that I know her from somewhere else too…

“Hello, you must be Anja,” she says to me. She looks like she hasn’t been getting a lot of sleep recently. “Come on in.”

I step into the front hall. “Thank you very much, Ms… Davis? Is that it?”

She chuckles at me. “Well, technically I’m still Ms. Cooper. I didn’t change my last name when we got married. Still, Zoe’s been calling me Ms. Davis for years anyway. I just don’t have the heart to correct her, she’s so sweet.”

I look around the house to see if Ashley is around, but she doesn’t seem to be. What’s she up to?

“You may be the first kid other than Zoe to step into this house since we moved here,” Ashley’s mom continues, looking at me carefully as though scanning me. “Those two have quite a special friendship, do they?”

“Oh, um… yeah, I guess so,” I say. I remember that Ashley said their romance was to be kept a secret, so I don’t dare say anything more.

“Anyways, Ashley should be around here somewhere,” her mom explains. “Although I don’t know what she’s doing... She’s usually already waiting at the door whenever Zoe gets here.” (Which is the cutest thing I’ve ever heard!)

Ashley’s mom takes off down a hallway to the right of the front door, and I follow behind her.

We pass a couple of other doors and arrive at the one at the opposite end of the hall, on which she knocks sharply. “Hey Ash, your friend is here,” she calls. (Hmm, her mom calls her that too. Interesting.)

There is no response. After a few seconds, Ashley’s mom rolls her eyes and just enters into the room anyway.

Ashley is sitting on her bed, wearing a large pair of headphones. It seems as if she heard her mom enter the room, as she is now stopping old-fashioned record player that’s sitting on the bed next to her.

“Make sure you put that back before your father gets home,” her mom comments. “You know how particular he is about his stuff.” And with that, she is gone, leaving just Ashley and I.

Ashley’s room is remarkably organized. It’s fairly large, with a desk which her backpack is currently sitting on top of. Between there and the closet is a Manhasset music stand with has stacks of papers on it, and her french horn sits in its case next to it.

Ashley doesn’t say anything at first, just reaches over to her night stand and starts digging around in it. She pulls out a tattered old journal, which has a pretty pink gem right in the center. She gestures me over to the bed, which I sit down upon, and then hands me the journal. “Read it,” she says.

And so I open the cover and read what’s inside, and it says… Well, quite a lot.

After I finish reading, I just sit there dumbfounded for a few seconds. I have so many questions that I have no clue where to begin.

“Done reading?” Ashley asks me. I nod, and she takes the book back from me. Before I can say anything else, though, she gets her phone out and presses the app again.

For a moment, I’m afraid that we’re going to end up back in the hellish jungle, but instead, we end up in a replica of the room we are just sitting in, except darker and with red and purple veins on everything. While not aesthetically pleasing, I am relieved that we are at least somewhere more secure.

“Is that what this place is supposed to look like?” I ask her.

She nods. “It must have done that specifically because we were at the school.”

And then, when she doesn’t say anything, I say, “So… that’s a lot to take in.”

She nods. “I know it is. Now you know why I spent a week mulling this over instead of rushing in.”

“So, uh… what exactly are shadows?”

“Well, that’s actually a pretty good question. I met some the first time I was here who appeared like blood red coyotes, but they might appear in other forms too.”

“What did these coyotes do?”

Ashley gives me a weird grin. “Almost killed me. Until my life was saved by Ted the armadillo.”

“But wait… is this Ted a shadow too?”

She shrugs. “He says he isn’t. Now, I have a question for you.”

She looks at me intently, like she can see straight past my eyes into my soul. “You seem like you’re in a big hurry to jump into the Metaverse and change the world. What’s driving you to do all of this?”