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, feeling thrilled by my newfound power.

“Ah, how lovely. It’s more fun when you try to fight back,” the hissing voice says. “Let’s see how you handle this…”

Then, I see two enormous snakes, with patterns of alternating yellow and light blue, approaching me from the tree line, hissing at me threateningly. Shit… I wasn’t prepared for this.

I waste no time in opening fire on my serpentine opponents. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work quite as well as it did with the vines, since the snakes seem to at least be smart enough to dodge a majority of the bullets.

What this does accomplish is provoking them further, and one of them charges straight for me. I’m momentarily at a loss for what to do; my weapon is a ranged one!

But something else changed when I got my weapon… I feel some sort of power within me that I didn’t have before.

Without really thinking about it, I raise my hand in front of me and snap my fingers. I am pleased, though honestly not entirely surprised, to see a huge flash of light split the air in front of me, leaving the snake clearly disoriented. I take advantage of this moment of weakness to rush towards it and smack it with my gun.

However, it doesn’t take the snake long to recover, and it begins wrapping itself around me…

Then, I’m flooded with relief to see Ashley burst through the trees!

“Ashley! I need help!” I shout at her.

She catches my eye, and then reaches towards me and casts some sort of spell that significantly weakens the hold of the snake that’s constricting me, allowing me to wrestle free. However, helping me came at a cost; the second one lurches towards her and sinks its teeth right into her shoulder…

I finish off the snake in front of me by grabbing its head and letting loose with automatic fire right into its mouth: the bullets form several clear holes all around its head and neck, which ooze blood that looks like black tar… then, the snake goes still, and dissipates into a sort of shadowy substance. Then, it fades into the air, as if it had never existed to begin with.

I immediately take off for where Ashley was. Ashley retaliates against the second snake with a wild strike that cuts it clean in two, causing it to dissipate as well. The force of the swing, however, caused her to fall over backwards onto the ground.

“Are you okay?” I ask her stupidly, as I huddle over her. She must be in a ton of pain; the snake’s bite somehow melted through the armor and left two huge gashes on her shoulder. However, the only sign of pain that she’s showing is a grimace that’s barely more expressive than the look she gives me when I make a bad joke.

“What the hell… are those fangs made of?” she says hoarsely. “Cut through my armor like… tissue paper.”

Once again, without really thinking about it, I lift my hand to her shoulder, which begins glowing brightly. When I pull it away, the wound is inexplicably healed. Ashley gives me a strange look, like she’s just now noticed that I exist.

“Come on, let’s get out of here before anything else shows up,” I urge her. She nods in agreement, and then transports us out with her phone.

I am fully expecting, based on my previous experience, to appear in some random part of the school; but thankfully we turn up back by the generator where we entered.

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

“Are you okay?” I ask.

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

“Well, let’s talk about it after school today when we can get some privacy,” I tell her. “Class is probably starting before too long now. You can come over to my place after band.”

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. There’s also a campaign sign for the US Senator from Texas who’s up for re-election this year. Well, she did say her parents were Republicans. Oh well, at least they’re not shilling the other Senator from here.

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. 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.

Psst… I obviously won’t say anything else to her mom, but I kind of have a theory that Ashley and Zoe are secretly in love with each other. I mean, Ashley gives me serious lesbian vibes. That’s honestly part of the reason I started talking to her. Not even to hit on her, I was just hoping to make friends with someone who won’t judge me for being bi.

“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.” I make a mental note of this, as it corroborates my theory.

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 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 an 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 doesn’t say anything at first. She spends a little while moving the record player onto her desk.

“Uh… wow, your room’s a lot more organized than mine is,” I say, feeling a bit awkward. “Um… Whatcha listening to?”

“Coltrane,” she says simply. She hands me the vinyl sleeve for the record, which was sitting on her nightstand. The sleeve has “A Love Supreme/John Coltrane” written at the top in blocky white letters. Below that is a black and white photo showing a side view of a black man, who is looking into the distance pensively.

“Oh, cool,” I say.

She takes the sleeve from me and sets it on top of the record player. Then, without giving any sort of warning, she fiddles with her phone, and we’re re-entering the… place, whatever it’s called.

“So… that’s a lot to take in,” I say, one massive exposition dump later.

She nods. “It is indeed. This was sprung on me only a few days ago, so I’m still trying to understand it all myself.”

I sit myself down on Ashley’s bed, head in my hands. Well, I was just thinking the other day that I wish there was something I could do to help Nova. Maybe…

“What do you know about Justice Pavia?” I ask Ashley.

“I know that he is the local Justice of the Peace, and that he’s running for re-election this year,” she responds. “That’s about it.”

“Hmm. Well, if we can target anyone we want using this Metaverse crap, I think he’s a good person to consider for that.

Ashley looks at me sternly. “Look, Anja. I told you what Lucy said; this is only for the most evil people imaginable. This better not be about some petty political disagreement that you have.”

“It’s not!” I insist. “It has nothing to do with politics. It has everything to do with the fact that this man is about to force Nova and his little sister to live with his abusive mother!”

“If his mother is really that bad, shouldn’t we be going after her?” she questions me. “What does the Justice have to do with this?”

“Well, he’s the one presiding over the trial,” I explain. “I guess maybe we could go after Nova’s mom. But like, I dunno. Getting a bad person to stop doing bad things is one thing. But could something like this make a mother start loving and caring for her own children?”

“Perhaps not. At any rate, before we do anything, we’re going to need to talk to Nova about this,” Ashley suggests.

“Well, yeah, obviously.”

“Also, I think we should try and learn a little bit more about this Pavia character. Just mismanaging one civil trial doesn’t make someone a despicable villain. We need to find out if this fits into a broader pattern of behavior.”

“I bet you that it does! My dad says that man is crooked.”

“Yes, but some people in this town believe that the president is Osama Bin Laden after faking his own death and getting plastic surgery, so let’s find something slightly more substantial than word of mouth.”

“Alright... fair enough,” I agree.

Seemingly satisfied with this, Ashley takes her phone out and returns us to the regular world.

As soon as we’re back, she begins striding past me towards her door.

“Hey, wait a sec!” I call after her. “What are we doing?”

“While you’re here, there’s someone I want to introduce you to,” she says, opening the door.

And so I hurriedly follow her back down the hallway, past the dining room table, and into the kitchen, where she opens the freezer door. However, all she does is just look inside of it and sigh heavily.

“What, you want to introduce me to someone who lives in your freezer?” I ask.

“I was going to offer you a popsicle, but… looks like my mom finished those off already.” She closes the freezer door.

“How do you know it wasn’t your dad?”

“Because my dad actually has self-control,” she says. “Also, he’s not home right now.”

“Where is your mom, anyway?” I ask, looking around the house and seeing the living room empty.

“Probably taking a nap. She played a gig late last night, and it totally destroyed her sleep schedule.”

“Surely she can’t be tired if she just ate sugar?”

“My mom actually does get tired when she eats sugar… just one of her many quirks.”

“Do you think she has some sort of medical condition?”

She shoots me a scathing look. “Do you have a medical condition which makes you ask 10,000 questions per second?”

“I’m a curious person!” I reply indignantly.

She rolls her eyes at me, and then makes for the front door.

Seriously though, I didn’t think it was that offensive of a question. She’s being totally ridiculous. You guys agree with me, right?

Ashley marches me down to the end of her street, where across the road perpendicular to hers, there is a church. The area is surrounded mostly by trees and is decently far away from any houses. The thin driveway eventually hits a fork, where a large, glorious stone sign says First Methodist Church. The sign is surrounded by a bed of flowers. The left fork leads to a currently empty parking lot, and the right fork, which is the one that Ashley takes, leads to the church itself, which appears old and humble.

Ashley walks past the building and to a few shoddy wooden picnic tables that are down the hill. Everything behind the tables is forest.

“Wait here,” she tells me. So, I sit down at the table. Ashley takes off into the forest. However, it is not long before she returns, holding an armadillo out in front of her, which she sets down on the table.

“Ooh, you have a talking armadillo friend?” I ask. “Hi little fella!”

“Howdy ma’am,” the armadillo says, in a gruff, deep voice with a southern accent. “I must ask that you not patronize me.”

But I can’t help but burst into laughter right there. I’m sorry, this is just the silliest thing I’ve ever seen. The blatant Texas-ness of this is just beautiful.

“Just a warning, Anja,” Ashley explains, “He was previously a human, which means that he has human intelligence. So treat Ted with some respect. He’s the one who saved me from the coyotes, and he’s the one who’ll be teaching us to use our Personas.”

“Right. My apologies, Armadillo-sensei.”

Ashley glares at me for this, but honestly, it’s worth it.

“Anyways… based on our experiences today, it sounds like we probably don’t want to enter here at the school from here on out,” Ashley states. “Which is a major inconvenience, given that’s the only place where we regularly gather.”

“Hold on, what happened when y’all were at the school?” Ted asks sharply.

“Yeah, it didn’t look like this at all, it was like the middle of a jungle,” I explain. “And then I got grabbed by a bunch of vines, and was probably on the verge of being tentacle raped when my Persona came to my rescue.”

Ashley shakes her head at me. “Are you serious?”

“I’m being dead serious!” I assert. “I’m not even joking! That whole thing was creepy as fuck!”

“Hmm… that is disturbing,” Ted comments. “Very disturbing indeed…”

“So, what’s the plan then?” I ask. “Make this place the base of our operations?”

“I think that would be easiest,” Ashley agrees. “Otherwise, I’d have to smuggle this one-” she gestures at Ted- “in my backpack to wherever we do meet.”

“That sounds kind of fun, though,” I comment. “It’d be like having a pet come with you everywhere you go. You could talk to him when you feel lonely during school… use him to help you study… he could make you go to bed on time every night…”

“I don’t need help going to bed on time,” Ashley says bluntly.

And that was pretty much what has to be the weirdest day of my entire life. I’ve done some pretty strange stuff in my time, but this has to be, like, number two or three on that list. Well anyways, tomorrow we’ll try and see what Nova knows about that one guy.