A silver lining in everything that has happened is that my saxophone lessons are now much less of a hassle to get to, now that I literally live in the same house as the teacher. It’s a pretty thin lining, but I’m trying to look for anything I can to keep myself going.

It would’ve been nice to get a break from everything else to process things, but school and band do not stop. Even if I’ve been suddenly uprooted from the home I’ve lived in for almost fifteen years, living off of my best fr- my girlfriend ’s utilities and even needing to use some of her clothes, which don’t quite fit me. For some reason, talks between our parents don’t seem to be going well. It apparently took quite a bit of negotiation just to get my school things and instruments here.

As hard as it is to do, I need to put that out of my mind for right now. I need to focus on our lesson… I need to remember what Ashley told me yesterday. I can play a D natural, but only over the I chord. I shouldn’t play it over the IV, unless it’s as a chromatic passing tone, because it’s too dissonant. I can play it over the V, but…

Ms. Davis is stopping me.

“You look like you’re concentrating really hard on this.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Loosen up. You know how to improvise over this, I’ve heard you. You need to trust yourself. Be confident.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” She sighs. “God bless you, Zoe. I can only imagine you’ve had a lot on your mind recently.”

I don’t say anything to that.

“The truth is, I’ve had a lot on my mind recently as well.”

“You have?”

“Yes…” For a few seconds, she doesn’t say anything. She just stares off into space. Then, she asks me, “Do you know who Billy Strayhorn is?”

I think about this. “Um… I think I’ve seen his name on my music in jazz band before.”

She grins. “I’d be surprised if you hadn’t. He’s one of the most famous jazz composers of all time. He worked closely alongside Duke Ellington.”

“Oh!”

There’s another pause. Then, she says, “Strayhorn was openly gay.”

This surprises me so much that I almost cut my lip on my reed. “He was?”

“Yep. And this was way back in the day, before I was born. I don’t even think Stonewall had happened yet.”

I don’t know what that is, but she continues on before I can ask.

“The others in the Ellington band knew that. They didn’t care, they all loved him. He passed away in… 1967. Of cancer. The band was devastated. They dedicated an album to him afterwards.”

There’s a few more seconds of silence. I don’t know what to add. I’m not even sure why she’s telling me this, to be honest.

“While in the hospital, he wrote one final song- ‘Blood Count.’ The Ellington band played it on their tribute album. In the middle, there’s an alto saxophone solo- I believe it was played by Johnny Hodges. They say that partway through the solo, you can hear the exact moment that he breaks down in sadness over what happened. You can hear it in his sound…”

She trails off yet again. I look at her, and I’m surprised to see that her eyes are wet.

“Ms. Davis? Is everything okay?”

“Oh- yeah. Sorry about that. Let’s get back on task. How’re you doing with the third etude?”

The rest of the moment went mostly as normal, but for some reason I had trouble getting that story out of my mind. Why did she stop to tell it, when it was seemingly irrelevant to what we were working on? Why did it affect her so much?

Welcome back to another episode of Anja, Ashley, Nova And Ted’s Supernatural Non-Partisan Government Takeover. In order to progress through the Palace, we had to go back and try doing the courtroom fight again. This time, we thankfully were able to come out on top! It makes a big difference, having talked beforehand and planned it out (also having Nova’s Persona from the get-go was a game changer. He’s actually got some pretty decent abilities!)

Anyways, it was the exact same encounter as before, with the same enemies. I decided that it’d probably be boring to describe the whole thing again, so here’s the tl;dr (or tl;dw in this case): I used my firepower to knock out the winged things before they became a problem. In the last match, they were weak against Ted’s gun, and also I wasn’t able to do jack diddly shit against the metal giants. Without the winged distractions and with Nova’s lightning, the other three were able to take them out without nearly as much trouble.

Anyways, after winning the fight, something unusual (but welcome) happens- the room shrinks around us, and we all end up on the floor, now back to our regular heights in proportion to a real world courtroom.

“Wow!” I quip. “That’s the first time I’ve grown since fifth grade.” Nova laughs at my pitiful existence.

“Well that went… noticeably better,” Ashley says, still suspiciously looking around the front of the room, as if expecting more to appear.

But none do. It returns to the eerie quiet that the room had before.

“He went out that door, right?” Nova asks, gesturing to the door to the right of the witness stand.

“Yep… let’s give chase,” Ashley says. And with that, we go through the door.

On the other end is… not at all what I expected. We end up in some sort of... sports stadium? There’s a football field just like you’d see on TV, except the stands are utterly deserted. The door we came out of is actually one of ten that are just kind of randomly in the middle of the endzone, Monsters Inc. style.

“Um… what the hell?” Nova asks.

“Well, looks like this place is not even trying to follow the laws of physics anymore,” Ashley comments, observing the doors that seemingly lead to nowhere.

“In all of my travels… I’ve never seen a place like this,” Ted comments, sounding strangely fearful. “Keep your wits about you, rangers.”

Anyways, we walk past the door area and past one of the goal posts. I think that we’re all by ourselves… when I hear a new voice from behind me!

“ Why hello there .” It says.

Naturally, we all do an immediate one eighty to face it. There’s some guy casually leaning against the goal post who most certainly was not there a few seconds ago. This guy is… oh. Oh my.

He’s… hot. Like, Hollywood hot, like he wouldn’t look out of place acting in a movie alongside Brad Pitt. Dark hair that is styled to the side just right. Big pretty eyes, a striking jawline, and just the right amount of stubble… Not to mention that he’s tall and lean, and wearing a cool black vest that is unbuttoned to reveal a tight red undershirt, and skinny jeans.

“State your name and business,” Ashley commands, immediately brandishing her sword at him.

“Hehehe… my name,” he begins, slowly swaggering towards us with a big grin on his face. “I kind of go by a lot of different names. Some call my God; others call me Satan. Some call me a disease; others call me the cure.”

“I’m not in the mood for fucking riddles,” Ashley cut in bluntly.

He just continues wearing that big smile. “You’re not fun… what’s the matter, girl? You kids having trouble in this Palace?”

“Stay your name and business, or I’m going to fucking cut your head off. You have five seconds.”

“Ashley… we don’t know what his motives are,” Nova mutters to her, his eyes glued to the stranger. “He could be friendly.”

“Okay then, Miss Prissy Pants,” the man says tauntingly. “You may call me Moloch. And my business is, I’m going to lead you to the boss himself, Timothy Pavia… but only if you can pass a simple test.”

“Oh, that doesn’t sound too bad,” I say.

“Okay, and if we don’t do your test, what happens?” Ashley asks.

“You don’t fight Pavia,” Moloch says simply. “You can, if you choose, turn around and leave. I won’t stop you.”

“Either/or fallacy,” Ashley retorts.

“What exactly is this test?” Nova asks him.

“Like I said, it’s simple. Each of you four individually has to defeat four enemies.”

“We can do that, that’s easy,” I say.

“I think that you’re full of shit,” Ashley says sternly to Moloch. She looks even more pissy than usual for some reason. “What exactly are you supposed to be? Are you a part of the Palace? Or a separate entity?”

“I’m a separate entity,” he says. “I’m here to help you guys out.”

“Do you know Lucy?” Nova asks.

The smile drops off of Moloch’s face. “Yeah, I know her. We go way back.”

“Name five things about her,” Ashley commands. (By the way, she still has her sword brandished.)

“One: She is a human who has spent most of the last few years in the Metaverse. Two: She never gives up. Three: She has the ability to create enchanted objects for means of communication and travel to the Metaverse. Four: She believes strongly her in ideals, to the point in which she’d do literally anything to further them. Five: She’s still obsessed with her high school girlfriend.”

“What is your relationship to this woman?” Ted asks, stepping forward ahead of us. “Do you consider her an ally, or an enemy?”

Moloch laughs at him. “I’m gonna be honest… up until this exact moment, I thought that you were a Build-a-Bear.”

“Answer the question,” Ashley demands.

“Why are you guys being so weird about this?” Nova asks. “We just need to do the challenge, and we can finish this up.”

“You wouldn’t get it, Nova,” Ashley says. “This guy is clearly not trustworthy. I can tell it by his demeanor. Now, your name, ‘Moloch.’ Is this a reference to the pagan god of the same name?”

“I think that your ginger friend here might be afraid of my challenge,” Moloch says in a simpering voice, the grin coming back to his face.

“Of course I’m not. I am certain that I could clear it easily. I just don’t see why we should be wasting time on it.”

“Hey Ash, remember what we literally just talked about?” I interject. “It’s not a waste of time if it helps us get better as fighters.”

“I could use a chance to learn more about my Persona before we fight the boss!” Nova says in agreement. “Admit it, you’re just scared that you’d lose.”

“No, I most certainly would not lose.”

“This is our only way to the end, Ash,” I tell her. “Don’t chicken out.”

“Fine. Fucking fine. But I’m kicking both of your asses in this.”

“We’ll see!” I taunt. Man, this is cool. We’re getting some friendly competition going here!

“Very well then,” Ted says. “We accept your challenge.”

Moloch lines us up along the front side line, each of us on a ten yard mark.

“Man… am I the only one getting marching band practice vibes from this?” Anja comments.

“Oh God… I hope that part of the challenge isn’t doing weight transfer mountain,” I reply.

“Come on guys… can you be serious? We’re about to start,” Ashley nags us.

“Yeah… it’s time to put on our mean faces. Get angry!” Anja shouts.

Hmm… I’m supposed to “get angry?” Well, that’s easy. I just need to think about my bitch of a mother. Or wait, I can think about Pavia. That smug son of a bitch, he thinks he’s better than us just because we’re poor. I’m gonna show him in just a minute.

“Okay… round 1 begins now!” Moloch states from behind us.

In front of me, appears one of those winged things that we fought earlier. I’m just glad that it’s not one of the knights. Those guys were tough. (And annoying little shits.)

The first enemy in the challenge was one of those winged assholes we fought earlier. Thankfully, I knew just the thing for them. They were quickly finished off by a well-aimed round of my… uh… what did Ashley say this was again? My… probably illegal gun.

I look to my left and see that the others have finished round 1 quickly as well. I watch Ashley dispassionately tearing the thing’s head off with her bare hands. It’s gross, but also kind of awesome. (I wouldn’t be okay with this level of violence if these were real creatures… but this is the Metaverse, so anything goes.)

“Round 2!” Moloch shouts, and in front of me spawns a fjsifjlaksdjf;lkasjfl;kadsjf;lk;j nononononono it’s a wasp it’s a giant fucking wasp I HATE them it’s the same size of one of the war wasps from metroid prime that always scared the shit out of me im feeling faint bye

The wasp is nothing before the power of my hammer. I turn to my left. Ashley and Ted defeated their wasps already, but Anja is straight up passed out on the ground. I guess that’s what the scream I heard was. Fuck! We’re down one.

“Round 3!” Moloch shouts. The next enemy is some sort of snake creature I haven’t seen before.

I know I can’t afford to lose, so I wind up a huge strike, and slam it right down into the middle of the snake’s body. It leaves a pretty impressively sized crater in the ground, but… misses the snake, who moved out of the way the millisecond before my attack landed and is now wrapping around me like an anaconda. God damn it!

The last enemy was a coyote, just like one of the ones who ganged up on me a few weeks ago. I was determined to not let it end like last time… and I was successful.

I look around me after I finish. Ted is still standing, but the other two seem to have failed, for they are both flopped on the turf like dead fish. How disappointing.

“Well, congratulations you two!” Moloch says, setting up to the field and clapping. “You two have proven yourselves strong enough to take on the boss!”

“Of course we have,” I say. “I mean, honestly. ‘Get angry’ is actually pretty bad advice if you’re about to enter a fight. You want to stay calm and collected… so that you can unleash all of your anger in one precision strike. That’s how real champions do it.”

“Hehe, well… you sure showed me. Good luck, ‘champions’.”

He begins spinning his right hand, and a sort of weird purple vortex starts forming around Ted and I. Soon enough, I begin to feel weightless… and I am teleported away from the stadium.

It must have been quite a while later when I came to. I slowly get up to my feet, ignoring my heavily protesting ribcage. Thirty yards away, Anja is doing the same. I run over to where she is.

“Man… I feel like the biggest pussie on the planet,” Anja tells me, rubbing her eyes. “I just saw that fucking wasp, and went out like a light… there wasn’t even a battle.”

“I made a stupid tactical error…” I admit. “Join the club.”

We both look around. Ashley and Ted are gone, but Moloch is still standing on the sideline, watching us.

“Hey! Where did the other two go?” I ask him.

“They already went ahead and started fighting the boss fight,” Moloch explained. “But you haven’t been out for long… if you hurry, you two may be able to help finish it.”

“Lead the way! Let’s go rejoin our team!” Anja shouts excitedly. Moloch nods and begins jogging towards the end zone opposite to the one we entered. Anja and I follow closely behind him.

“So… that redhead girl,” Moloch asks us as we run. “She the religious type by any chance?”

“Yeah… well, I think,” Anja explains. “I’m not sure how religious she still is after all the shit she and Zoe have been through recently… Personally, I’ve never been religious.”

“Well… that’s probably for the better for you,” he says.

We jog past the endzone, and to a pair of large, metal doors underneath the stands.

“The boss is behind these doors… good luck, you two.” Moloch tells us. Using some sort of telekinesis, he opens the doors, which reveals some sort of tunnel that goes down into the Earth.

“Alright, killjoys, let’s make some noise!” Anja shouts excitedly. She runs into the tunnel, but then stops in her tracks only a few steps in. “Oh… my… god.”

“Yeah, she did a good job on him, didn’t she?” Moloch says, his smile seeming to become more twisted.

“Wait… who is this ‘she’?” I ask.

Moloch looks at me with a big tooth grin. “The girl reading this.”

“The… what?” I’m so confused.

“N-Nova… run.” Anja says. There’s something weird about her now- she’s trembling, and her eyes are as wide as saucers.

“What? Run from what?” I ask, leaning forward to try and look and see what’s in the tunnel. However, I can’t. Anja pushes me backwards. “Just run the opposite direction! RUN!” She screams.