If you ever need noodles, why not come sit in the shade under Paradise the Enchant's hospitable trees? Buy lunch from any of a dozen carts and enjoy it amid the calm burbles of a dozen fountains. A UR Flood Warper from Commandment of Hero might yell something about how if you have the time to eat noodles, you have time to begin the restoration of the great host, but earplugs are available at many outlets.

Quircy Rau yanked earplugs out left and right as she organized expeditions of exploration and rescue. “We can't stop until we have everyone back and locate Commandment of Hero and Holy Legend. After that. We still won't stop!” Only a few colleagues could be present to clap for her the first time she said it, which encouraged her to repeat it as the army grew ever closer to its former size, much as when a player starts a new account as part of a video series intended to be a guide for free-to-plays and ends up recreating his old, reliable roster. Dungeon Express Re:Development harbored Ivar, Wiffle, and Luau Lua, rescuers discovered, and Furious Galaxy coughed up Rylweadh of Mercy and Throne. Each discovery sped up the process by adding to the personnel available for operations while the operations themselves were tweaked according to lessons learned through practical experience.

An explorer such as UC Angel Throne looked for arrays of button and sliders, dropping markers along the way. Pin-shaped markers. That were pins. Bowling pins. Next, High Command, as Quircy pleaded for her rescuees to call her, dispatched a rescue group which always included at least one character of rarity, preferably two, to carry the glitch item from Paradise the Enchant. After that? Adventure.

“Who's here? Um, you. Ivar.” Quircy tapped her foot on the blue floor near the PtE options menu between dramatic pointing poses.

“At last the song of widows will be sung.”

“Wiffle.”

“Ready to go, Quircy Rau!” The phoenix spread her blue wings and lightning burst out.

“Kindo.”

The buman snapped his suspenders and saluted.

“Acolyte.”

“I pray for success on the mission,” the Holy Legend Army Ultra Common Cleric said.

“You do that. And, hm, you there. Scimitar.”

“I go by 'Robes' these days.”

“As long as you go. That's five, if my math is right.” She glanced at Zimley Boe, who gave her a thumbs-up. “You look like a noodle kind of group to me. Or maybe I'm hungry? Either way. ” Ulrik and Acolyte hoisted the cart and followed the three higher rarities out to the endless plain while workers left behind Backed up and appeared again with more furniture not designed for sitting.

“I was ignored again. She really does hate me,” Lua said to Zimley Boe after Quircy returned to PtE on what she claimed to be a noodle emergency.

“Nah. She figured you were busy spreading elementercise in Paradise. 'My authority will take a hit if Lua argues about being sent out,' she said. Right now she only hates Tendradius. She thinks he's a threat because people listen to him sometimes.”

“Oh, I was being silly, wasn't I? I suppose I'm frustrated by the lack of progress here. Those kids have trouble wrapping their minds around Storm. What kind of elements are Courage, Sincerity, and Kindness?”

“I don't get it either. Hope we find Endless Disco soon, or somewhere else fun.”

“I couldn't agree more.”

Perhaps the game targeted by Ivar's group was that very Endless Disco. How exciting! The odds discouraged the idea, but if that got people down, no gacha gamess would exist in the first place. Not that any of the travelers heading there wanted it to be. Kindo hoped for nothing but to catch some sight of the paint trails along the way, though the orthodox theory in Quircy's camp held that the Gacha Core had cleaned all that up, based on the thing's evident joylessness. Ivar anticipated battle and plunder, Wiffle looked forward to a lovely gift shop, and both Acolyte and Ulrik desired nothing more than to put down their burden. And alts.

“I'm an acolyte myself,” Ulrik told his co-hoister to start a time-passing conversation, which would have been better done an hour earlier.

“Indeed?”

“A Nightmare Acolyte.”

“Good heavens!”

“That was my evil boss name.”

“Pray, might we return and request a change of members?”

“Nay, Acolyte. Almost have we arrived already.” Ivar paused and pointed at the bumps already visible to the far-sighted. He paused a moment longer after the noodle cart bonked him in the back of the head. Immediate movement might have given the others the false impression he noticed so trivial a blow as that. Let the cart back up, his unflappable attitude implied his sentiment to be. Ivar moved only when the prospect of slaughter summoned him to the fray.

Which it did, unless that Back button offered access, or maybe regress depending on perspective, to another one of those card games. Even some of those had characters. S********** for example, or H**********. Trusting in a high tussle probability, the adventurers jumped on the button, or else maneuvered the cart across it while standing on either side before they stepped toward each other in a feat of coordination seen at cheerleading competitions and few other places.

Orange and brown! Those colors impressed the eye first, and then the fine distinctions came. Lighter brown, darker brown, lightest brown, reddish orange. Over thataway, farther than that, past the brown rock, a width of gray nearer to black than white split the brownness and orangeness for miles.

“Oh! It's nice to see a highway in the middle of all this dust,” Wiffle said. “We know it's not all barren. Any ideas what game this is?”

“Fields are an essential component of Fields of Steam. If steam cars drive on that highway, all that's left is 'of.'” Ulrik's 20-INT glasses glinted.

Kindo was not impressed. Maybe he had missed it. “Might be Lunacy Bike. Kind of a long straight, though.”

“'Tis a thought only, but so barren a land as this is suited well for a game that sets its action not on the earth but in the clouds above. Project Contrails mayhap, or Brave Cumulus.”

A plausible suggestion, Ulrik and Kindo agreed, but Ivar glared at Acolyte for suggesting the enemies they were bound to encounter might be ones none but the phoenix could fight, and that only if her lightning-laced wings gave her enough speed to catch up to either jets or girls who had the capabilities of jets for some reason. He raised his terrible ax.

Ulrik demanded attention for his own concerns. “A choice must be made. Drop the cart here or take it with us? I vote to drop it. The reason is obvious. If I'm outvoted, I insist on a carrying partner with the following qualifications. First! Has arms. Second! No wobbly buman muscles.”

“I really think we should bring it with us,” Wiffle said.

“Can't disagree, but I'm a little sad about having these wobbly buman muscles.” Kindo poked his own arm, which wobbled a bit.

Ivar watched, and the sight stirred his sympathy. “Not for a moment are we to hesitate here, to argue where to put the cart. Strife awaits at one end of that road or the other, strife to harden your body and change it to iron.” He headed for the road without another word. Behind him, Acolyte assured the others of his gratitude through words and tears.

The crew walked on the road, and then alongside it. The pavement gathered heat like a mention of a mobile game in a general game discussion area. Even worse, from the highway itself both right and left looked like rock and sand, whereas beside it, the left gave a view different from the right's. Tired of that? Cross to the other side. Nothing was a problem from then on.

“I hope we find a place we can get an acoustic guitar soon. For twanging.”

“Sure, but who would twang it?” Kindo asked Wiffle. “Serdon Miloz isn't here. Hold on, let me change that. Serdon Miloz ain't here.”

“Maybe he is.”

“Oh! Could be. If so, think he's conquered the world with song or something?”

“No. He hasn't even conquered the Rare closet. We prefer fanmade music videos of that time Cadmos was shipwrecked by a submarine.”

Kindo spun and walked backwards while pointing at Ulrik, which spared both of them the usual scenery. “That's just it. Don't like him much myself either, and I've seen by now the trends always go the other way from what I want.”

“Any world that prefers Serdon Miloz to 'Subthumping' deserves nothing but the sword. I want to make a dramatic gesture here, but what prevents me is that I'm hauling a noodle cart.”

“Flames and thunder!” Ivar ran to the rear, hoisted the cart long enough for Ulrik to Inferno Strike the world itself, and handed it back. The world subdued, the journey continued.

No steam cars appeared. Neither did anything else of interest, not even a mutant rat, and the landscape showed nothing but orange, brown, and gray. And blue. In the fantasy games which produced those brave heroes, an ocean or two could pass by without attracting comment, but the artists of that desolate landscape must have gotten out their blue paint brushes for a reason. A road split off the highway toward the patch of water, and the travelers let it guide them.

Water, trees, and birds perched in the trees mentioned earlier. Palm trees? Were the artists sure about that? Of course. Every oasis needs a palm tree or two. “Shall we place here the cart, think you? Noodles have need of water, as much as we have of grace,” Acolyte said.

“Need of customers, too.”

“I don't think that's true, Kindo. We aren't actually getting into the food business. Besides, there are some customers now.”

Wiffle pointed, but nobody could tell. They had all skipped their phoenix body language courses. In better news, they had eyes themselves, and saw some genuine gameplay opportunities coming toward them. Over the uneven ground, so unfriendly to greenery and fans of aesthetic variety, ahead of billowing clouds of dust, rode a fleet of motorcycles.