Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 0-- My Own Personal Dialup

Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 0-- My Own Personal Dialup

I have to admit, out of all of the places to break into, a museum of vintage technology was possibly the most lame. 

It was late– late enough for the streetlights to be on. I always thought they were ugly. Their yellow hue made the attracted gnats and moths that much more visible, and it cast a gross light onto everything nearby. 

But at the moment, I couldn’t have been more grateful for those ugly lights. If it weren’t for them, I would have had to use a flashlight to disarm the security cameras of this museum. And my partner-in-crime was already becoming antsy and impatient. 

“Seriously, (Y/N)?” The dark-haired girl whined in a hushed tone. “It can’t be that hard to cut a couple wires.” She was bouncing in place, deep brown eyes flitting about the space for movement.

I turned to the younger, taller woman and narrowed my eyes. “Like you’ve ever done this before.” She pointed at the console I was messing with, her voice coming out a bit louder. “Well, if you’re gonna disarm the thing, then get it done already!”

A frustrated sigh left my cold, chapped lips as I turned back to the console. It was a little box attached to a power line pole, and it powered the immediate area. If I could just figure out which button to push, and which wire to cut, the entire museum’s power system would go down, and we could get in and out without a problem. 

“Got it!” I exclaimed, causing the other girl to hurriedly shush me. I shrugged apologetically. There was a brief crackling noise, followed by the sound of several switches flipping inside of the box. The next thing we knew, we were plunged into darkness as all of the streetlights, as well as the few remaining lights left on in the museum, flipped off. 

I stood from my knelt position and squinted, glancing around for any movement. There was nothing aside from my fellow soon-to-be criminal’s anxious shifting. 

“Okay. Let’s get this done and over with.” I whispered, nudging the girl. I could hardly see her, but she nodded hurriedly anyway. We glanced at either side of the empty street before darting across, our dark hoods obscuring us from any curious residents of the nearby apartments from peeking out their windows and seeing us. 

“Violet,” I hissed, grabbing at her shoulder once we had successfully crossed the street. “You scout the perimeter. I’ll get the ladder.” 

Violet only nodded, swallowing her anxiety before rushing to my right. I moved to the left and into an open alley, flipping the lid of a mostly empty dumpster open so I could grab the folded ladder we planted inside. I used what little strength I had to drag it out of the dumpster and onto the ground, where I then pulled it back to the front of the building. 

Just as I was finishing up my business, Violet jogged back around the corner, giving me a thumbs-up. “Help me out with this,” I whispered in her direction. She sped over to help me lift the ladder, propping it up against the museum wall and unfolding it so it reached the second floor. If we were going to have any luck pulling this off, we couldn’t go in through the main entrance. It was padlocked– and if there was one thing I learned from heist movies, it was that breaking a padlock was a surefire way to get found out and arrested. We were going to pry open and jump through a second-story window. I gestured to the ladder with a gloved hand. “After you.” 

My partner-in-crime made a mildly grossed-out face before taking a breath and beginning to climb the ladder. The sound of her heavy boots making contact with the rungs of the ladder made me wince. I really hoped that nobody could hear us. 

She reached the top and slung her legs over one of the rungs, effectively seating herself in a position where she could use her hands. She pulled her backpack off of her shoulders and reached inside, quickly retrieving a crowbar that we had bought from the Home Depot specifically for this. I hate to give Home Depot credit, but they have some nice chandeliers. And crowbars. 

Violet positioned the end of the crowbar at the base of the window to pry it open. Then she paused. She made a panicked, helpless gesture with her free hand before looking down at me on the ground. “It’s caulked shut!” She whisper-yelled. 

“It’s what shut?” I snickered. 

She frowned. I could see her displeased expression, even in this darkness. “I said, it’s caulked shut! Think brick and mortar. There’s no way I can get this open!” 

I placed my hands on my hips, beginning to panic myself. “...Can you try?”

“...Fine,” Violet huffed. She replaced the crowbar where it was before and pressed down on the opposite end, trying to get the caulk to break apart so she could pry open the window. She gave a frustrated grunt of effort, though it didn’t seem that she was making any progress. 

Then, in a moment of weakness, she gritted her teeth and reeled back, swinging the crowbar over her shoulder before slamming it into the glass of the window. It shattered after only one attack, sending glass shards flying into the building and out of the window frame. I watched, slack-jawed, as Violet covered her face with her forearm just in case any stray glass shards came in her direction. 

A moment of silence passed with Violet still seated atop the ladder and my body frozen in place. 

“...I hope nobody heard that,” I mumbled under my breath. Violet anxiously bit the inside of her cheek. “Yeah, me too. C’mon, get up here.”

I only hesitated for one more moment before beginning to climb the ladder. Violet slung her legs back over the rung and pulled herself through the broken window, myself doing the same. 

The museum was… nothing short of boring. It was just a bunch of vintage tech displayed. Typewriters, gramophones, rotary phones, radios… and not a single one in a case. That was why we decided to rob a vintage technology museum in the first place– none of it was in a case, and if it were in good enough condition, it would sell for a pretty penny at a pawn shop or antique store. 

I heard Violet huff before reaching into her backpack and pulling out a folded-up duffel bag. “Alrighty. Get grabbin’. Take whatever you think works or looks pretty enough to brag about to your cousins.” 

“...That’s oddly specific,” I muttered, but didn’t say anything more before I began having a look around. “And hurry,” added Violet, turning to kneel in front of a collection of borderline ancient typewriters. 

We spent the next ten minutes or so appraising various techs, from old keyboards to even older monitors. Then the conversation shifted to who would even buy something like this, which ended with us deciding that collectors and people still clinging to the past would buy something like this. 

I eventually got bored looking at the objects on this floor and gestured to the staircase with the hand that wasn’t holding the duffel bag. “Wanna head up?” 

Violet turned her head to look at me, eagerly nodding. Once we got past the initial break-in, it seemed that her easygoing personality re-emerged. She stood and jogged to meet me, and we then moved up the stairs. 

This floor was more my style. It was lined wall-to-wall with practically ancient arcade machines– pac-man, asteroids, space invaders, even the original Mortal Kombat. I couldn’t help but stare in awe. 

“Alright, forget the robbery, we have enough. I wanna take a peek at these,” Violet suggested. I immediately nodded in agreement. 

It was then that Violet and I’s easily-distractible nature got the better of us. What were we supposed to do? Not look at the awesome collection of arcade machines? To be fair, I was carrying around a duffel bag of incredibly heavy vintage technology, but it wasn’t heavy enough for me to let this opportunity go!

Because the power was off, we couldn’t do much with the machines, but we didn’t want to anyway. We were content with just looking at them. That was, until I was immersed in an anecdote that Violet was narrating to me about how she and her older brother would destroy each other at arcade games, and I saw a flicker of light out of the corner of my eye. 

I turned to face the light, immediately causing Violet to pause. “What is it?” She asked flatly. I pointed at what I was looking at, and she froze. 

One of the arcade machines had turned back on. It was the only source of light in the otherwise darkened room, and it illuminated the dingy yellow wallpaper and grey carpet. Man, this place was a dump.

I had never seen this arcade game before. It had quite a nice casing– one half of the machine was baby blue, the other half light pink. Various colorful characters decorated the sides of the case, all with some sort of old technology for heads. There was a vaguely heart-shaped logo on the marquee resembling two rotary phones, and on top of that were two large words in an attention-grabbing font.

“THE DIALUP.”

“Well, shit, who am I to not investigate something like that?” Violet scoffed before patting my shoulder and yanking me toward the machine. I wasn’t entirely sure why, but I was getting a little nervous. Well, I was nervous before this, but now I was feeling stomach-churningly nervous. 

Violet stood before the machine, leaning over to look at the characters on the sides of the casing. She chuckled and pointed at one in particular– a rather unfortunate-looking fellow with a phone for a head wearing a blue flannel. “Check out this guy. What a loser,” she chuckled. “Who wears a hoodie and a flannel?”

I gestured to my own clothing, which was largely the same. She shrugged. “I rest my case. You got a quarter?” 

My eyebrow raised before I fished around in my pockets, pulling out my only quarter. I knew it would be used for something. Violet snatched it from my hands and immediately inserted it into the coin slot. 

“Dude, no way you’re actually going to play this,” I snickered in disbelief as the title screen appeared on the monitor, accompanied by playful music. “It looks like some sort of terrible dating sim.” 

Violet moved the joystick upward and pressed one of the two buttons on the console, selecting New Game. A dialogue box popped up that read ‘What is your name?’ “Y’know what, just for that, I’m putting your name in,” she said smugly as she used the joystick to type in ‘(Y/N).’ I groaned. “Alright, whatever, but remember that we need to get out of here. We don’t know if anyone heard that glass break.”

Just then, the monitor went black. Violet frowned. “Damn. What a waste of a quarter.” She frustratedly slapped her hand onto the console. “I didn’t want to drown my loneliness in cartoon romance anyway. How was this thing even on in the first place? Didn’t you cut the power?” 

“You’re asking that now?” I chastised her. She shrugged nonchalantly. “I’m a ‘play mysterious cheesy arcade game now,’ ‘ask questions later’ kind of person.” I threw my hands up in a confused gesture. “It wasn’t even your quarter!”

Violet grinned, pressing the back of her pale hand to her forehead. “Oh, I mourn the loss of your quarter, my friend,” she droned in a dramatic, melancholy voice. I groaned loudly but quickly froze when I heard a distant high-pitched sound. 

My partner-in-crime must have heard it too, because she perked up, eyes widening. “Shit. We gotta go. Now!” She cried out just as I realized it wasn’t the whining of an arcade machine– it was sirens. Someone must have heard that glass break and called the police. 

I made a less-than-brave noise and turned to pick up the duffel bag from where I placed it next to the machine. But something caught my eye. The plug on the machine. It wasn’t attached to the wall. It was unplugged. What the fuck kind of voodoo demon bullshit was this?!

Right as I made to turn and get the hell out of that cursed museum, a high-pitched ringing sound attacked my ears. It wasn’t my tinnitus this time– it felt like it was in my head. Something was on the other line, and it wanted me to pick up.

I dropped the duffel bag and cried out in abject agony, gripping the sides of my head in an attempt to make the ringing stop. Before I clenched my eyes shut, I half-noticed the arcade machine flick back on, casting my shadow onto the carpeted floor with pale blue light. I also saw Violet rushing to my side before gripping my shoulders. 

Amidst the chaos, I could hardly hear anything. But what I did hear was Violet shouting at me, asking me what was wrong, what she could do to help. Then she yelled that the police were outside. I didn’t particularly care at the moment– I was on my knees, feeling like I was about to die. It felt like my entire head was melting off. 

I don’t know how much time passed. But I did hear the slamming of a door, which caused Violet to remove her hands from my shoulders. There was yelling and screaming from multiple voices. Some I recognized, some I didn’t. Heavy, departing footsteps. A distant impact. Glass shattering. Gunfire. 

And then there was silence. I could only guess that I had been beheaded– I was only missing the distant feeling of my head rolling across the floor. I never felt my body make contact with the dingy carpet. The blue light of the arcade machine enveloped my vision… and then it darkened.

Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 17-- Wireless

It was bright– agonizingly bright. But it wasn’t blue this time, rather a beautiful, blinding ivory. White light enveloped all I could see, hear, and feel. It was warm and numbing, and it made me forget what having a form felt like. I was just… energy in a void. And, quite honestly, it wasn’t all that bad. 

Sensation returned when I felt something shatter against my skin, followed by my body being dumped onto some sort of surface. Thankfully, I managed to remain conscious, but I still had no idea where I was. I opened my eyes–

…Wait, eyes?

I hadn’t gone crazy. And I hadn’t been dreaming. I lifted my hands to my face and found skin, eyes, lips– all mine and all very real. I felt myself begin to hyperventilate, my chest heaving as I processed my surroundings. I was in a somewhat cramped room, ugly wallpaper decorating the walls and horribly complimenting the oddly moist yellow carpet that had begun to mold and deteriorate. Dusty, ancient arcade cabinets lined the walls, yearning to be plugged in one last time.  

…Holy fuck. I was back in that vintage tech museum. The last place I existed in my original universe, before I was taken into that machine. I somehow managed to get out. 

“...(Y/N)?” I heard a familiar stunned voice emit from behind me.

I turned my head and regretted it when my vision swirled uncomfortably. But there, next to a battered arcade cabinet, wielding a wrench as if it were a baseball bat, was a tall, dark-haired woman. Vi. I silently stared at her for a long, awkward moment before gathering the courage to speak with my human mouth. “Am… Am I alive?” 

Vi sighed in pure, abject relief and closed the distance between us before kneeling and yanking me into a hug. “Dude, holy shit, I thought you were dead! I thought I had gone crazy while messing with the arcade machine, I didn’t think it would actually work!” 

Once she was done squeezing all of the air out of my lungs, Vi pulled away, eyes wet with tears. They didn’t spill over, though. Looking at her, I realized how much she had changed. Time hadn’t stopped while I was in that machine. Her skin had become somehow paler, even sickly, her hair less neatly trimmed, and there was an unmistakable dullness to her gaze that confused me to no end. Additionally, there was a long, thin scar that stretched across the length of her throat. Weird. 

Countless questions swirled in my mind, but I somehow managed to settle on the most basic one. “Vi, what… happened?” 

The dark-haired girl managed to catch her breath and sit back on her heels to respond to me. “I-I’m not entirely sure, I put your name into the game, and I think it was like, cursed or something, so it sucked you up.” She reached out to grip my shoulders. “I’m so sorry I left you in there for so long, I–... I kind of got into a high-speed, life-endagering police chase that didn’t end well. I’ve been in prison for like, two years.” 

I could hardly process what she was saying. It was all too much. What had happened to Dialtown? What… What had happened to Norm? “...Prison? Really?” 

Vi frowned. “Well, I wasn’t exactly equipped to run away from like three squad cars without killing somebody. I almost killed myself, dude, it was… honestly pretty rad.” She deflated with a sigh. “But yeah, prison sucked. I couldn’t really figure out what had happened to you while I was in a nine-by-five cell with a crazy lady named Rootin’ Tootin’ Rosemary.” I saw her visibly shudder, but I couldn’t help but wonder if she was being serious. She had a tendency to make things up on the spot like that, regardless of whether or not they were true. 

Okay. Wow. Um. I lifted a hand to press against my sweaty forehead. “No, no, I get it, I– I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything to help you out, but… yeah, you were right. I was inside of the arcade machine.” I stared at the battered cabinet over her shoulder. “I would tell you about the details, but I feel like my head is about to explode. Can you, like, take me to a hospital? I want to make sure I don’t have any malevolent tumors.”

She paused, gaze contemplative, before wincing. “About that…” She droned, guilt encompassing her expression. “You’re kind of a wanted criminal. And legally considered missing. If I were to take you to any kind of government facility, you would… probably be arrested instantly. Then I would be arrested for associating with you.” Her expression hardened. “And I don’t want to go anywhere near a correctional facility again.” 

I couldn’t help but laugh incredulously. This whole situation was completely ridiculous. I was legally missing, a wanted criminal, and probably about to keel over and die of shock. “I don’t know why I’m not surprised,” I muttered. “Instead, can you take me… anywhere but here? I want to get as far away from that machine as possible.”

“You got it,” Vi pushed herself to her feet and extended a hand to help me up, which I gratefully took. The shift of my weight caused me to stumble, but I somehow kept my balance even though my head felt light as a feather. I used Vi’s arm to stabilize myself and we carefully made our way out of the seemingly abandoned museum to her car. 

Ꚛ

I wasn’t hearing anything Vi was saying. Her words, along with the ambient sounds of her apartment, seemed completely muffled. All I could do was stare down at the glass of water I held in my trembling hands, knuckles white. 

I had somehow managed to make it back to my original universe. Making it back home had been my only wish for two years, so why did I feel so… empty? Incomplete? It felt like a part of me was missing– like I had just completed a puzzle and found that one piece had been removed from the box. That saturated disappointment mixed with a little bit of rage–

“(Y/N)?” Vi’s voice jolted me back to my senses. “Are you okay?” 

My gaze shot up from my glass, finding that Vi had ceased her anxious busywork to look at me with a worried expression on her face. My mouth hung agape for a moment before I assured her “Yeah, yeah, I’m listening.” I was still getting used to using my mouth to speak, rather than just… willing sound to come out of a speaker. 

I watched as Vi tilted her head and made a face that told me of her disbelief. She then continued her busywork, which consisted of wiping down her kitchen counters that had already been wiped four times. “But, yeah, I was saying, we might be able to get our hands on a fake ID and get you out of the state before…”

Her words faded into the background once again. I couldn’t stop thinking about what happened with Norm. Hell, I was still processing the fact that I had fallen in love with a fucking space cowboy from a video game. What if it was all a dream? Or… Or I was in a coma or something? That wouldn’t explain how two years passed without anyone finding my body, I was literally inside of the arcade cabinet! I kept trying to rationalize the impossible. It all felt so… real. It couldn’t have just been a dream! 

…Maybe I didn’t want it to have been a dream. 

“Okay, dude, you look like you’re on the verge of throwing up, curling into a ball and weeping, or both.” Across the room, Vi folded her arms across her chest. “You never told me what happened while you were in there. Are you, like… traumatized or something? If you are, I know a really good therapist who probably won’t tattle on us–”

I interrupted her. “No, no, I’m not… traumatized, I’m just still, y’know, trying to process the fact that I’m here.” I added under my breath “And that I’m alive.” I didn’t say it aloud, but I was also wondering what happened to the rest of the people– I mean, NPCs– in Dialtown. Did they die? Did everything reset once I got out? Why was I suddenly feeling homesick for a place that wasn’t my home?

Vi let out a harsh breath before approaching me. She took a seat next to me on her shitty leather couch and leaned back against the cushions. She gave me the same look that my mom used to give me before we had a serious talk– a look that immediately made me worry about what she was going to say. “Listen, (Y/N), I don’t know what happened to you in there. All I know is that you’re here now, and I have to get you somewhere where you won’t be arrested and rot in prison.” Her voice lowered to something vulnerable that I wasn’t used to hearing from her. “It’s been lonely as shit out here since you disappeared. I can’t lose you again, man.”

My heart sank. While I certainly missed my friends and family while I was in that machine, I never quite processed that they might have missed me as well. Suddenly, the homesickness I felt for Dialtown felt bitter– wrong. I only silently stared at Vi for a moment before looking down at my lap. At my worn jeans that I had apparently ben wearing for two years and some change. Maybe changing clothes was a good idea. “Hey, Vi?” I began, causing her to tilt her head in acknowledgement. I leaned forward so I could set my still-full glass of water on the battered coffee table that rested in front of us. “I think it’s best that I tell you what went down in there.” 

Ꚛ

It had been an hour. An hour spent yapping to Vi about what my life had been like for the two years we hadn’t seen each other. Of course, I omitted some information, but I simply had to tell her about Norm. We basically told each other everything, I wasn’t going to leave out the fact that I wound up kissin’ a fictional space cowboy and then instantly died. 

She made a mildly disgusted face. “Dude, I didn’t need to hear about the smoochin’. Normally I would love to hear about your love life, but… Im still a little confused about the whole ‘shooting a cat dead’ thing.” 

I shrugged nonchalantly, trying to act like I wasn’t still overwhelmed by it myself. “It’s important to the story.” 

“Yeah, alright, I believe you,” she waved a hand dismissively before pressing her hand against her forehead. “Christ. All of that happened while you were in there? I feel like I just listened to an audiobook. That is to say I barely processed any of it other than the very end. And the parts about the manic imp-child.” 

“Yeah, all of that happened. I know, it’s… absolutely fuckin’ insane, but I’m pretty sure we’ve both had the revelation that anything related to that cabinet is insane,” I muttered, gesturing leisurely with my hands as if I were talking about something completely normal and not a seemingly magical arcade cabinet that I had been stuck inside of for two years. 

Vi only nodded solemnly before lifting a hand to pat my shoulder a bit too firmly for comfort. “Thanks for telling me all this. I’m not sure I can ever really understand how you felt about that world and the people in it, but I can try to make you feel better about leaving them behind, right?” She retracted her hand and shoved it into her pocket, heaving a sigh. “I know you’re probably still grappling with the fact that the world you lived in for two whole years is gone–”

“Wait,” I interrupted her, holding up a hand to shut her up. “Gone?” 

She furrowed her eyebrows at me, likely annoyed at the fact that I interrupted her. “Yeah, gone. I beat up the machine with a wrench– it was the only way I found to get you out of there. I hit some weird boxes, and they wound up corrupting the save files.” When I only stared at her, she threw up her hands in confusion. “...What? I’m not good with computers, especially not ancient ones that look like they’ll explode if I look at ‘em wrong.”

My gaze trailed downward to stare at the ground. She corrupted my save file. That meant that… all of the work I had done to learn about the people and places in Dialtown, murdering the Mayor, bonding with Norm… it was all gone. Everything I had accomplished, destroyed in an instant. 

It was odd. I had been telling myself for years that I didn’t care about that dumb arcade game universe. It wasn’t my original reality, so why should I have cared about it if I wasn’t going to be there for long? Nobody in it was real, they were all just code that was programmed to act a certain way. But when Vi told me that it was all gone… I felt a strange, almost guilty twisting in my stomach. Like my entire being sagged. None of it meant anything in the end. I might as well have been in a coma this whole time.

Vi snapped me out of my dazed stupor. She had stopped talking, and when I looked over at her, I recognized sheer guilt flooding her features. “(Y/N)?” She began meekly. “Did I fuck up?”

“Can I be honest?” I leaned forward to rest my chin on my hands. She nodded, and I let out a long exhale. “...Yeah. You kinda did.” 

She laughed nervously, eyes darting back and forth. “Well, shit. Your dumb ass got attached to that place, didn’t you? And I destroyed everything that you did.” She sighed and pressed her hands against her face. “Oh, god, I’m so sorry, (Y/N). I was so selfish–...”

As she continued to apologize profusely, I continued staring down at the floor. I’m back at home, with my best friend– it’s all I’ve wanted ever since I got sucked into that machine. But it all felt completely wrong. Did I really get so attached to that other universe that being back home felt completely foreign? What in the hell happened to me? 

…Was this really where I wanted to be?

Now that I thought about it, when I was speaking with Norm after murdering the Mayor, he seemed somewhat reluctant to help me return to my home universe. And in that moment, I was ready to stay there– in Dialtown– with him. If I was able to offer that to him without remorse, then… 

I swallowed and looked up at Vi, causing her to cease her anxious rambling. “Vi, just… shut up for a second.” I took a breath and leaned toward her, expression flat and as serious as I could make it. “You’re my friend, right?”

“What kind of question is that?” She raised an eyebrow. “No, I hate your guts– of course I’m your friend.” 

“So, purely hypothetically, if I were to want to go back inside of the arcade machine… would you be okay with it?” I glanced to the side and winced. “Even after all the time you spent trying to get me out of it?” I waved my hands dismissively. “Purely hypothetically, of course.” 

Vi frowned. “That depends.”

“Hypothetically, if I were to miss somebody in there, and wanted to keep spending time with them…” I trailed off. 

She fell silent. I watched as her contemplative gaze fixed on the shitty rug in the middle of her living room. When she finally spoke again, she didn’t look at me. “...Hypothetically, if it was what you were sure you wanted, I would want you to do what would make you happy. I wouldn’t force you to stay somewhere you felt unhappy.” She paused. “Hypothetically.” 

I nodded. “And… in this hypothetical scenario, would you help me get back there?” 

“Alright, this is stupid,” Vi threw her hands up in the air. “Yes, I’ll help you get back there. If it’s what you really want, then I want you to be happy and feel like you belong somewhere. If this universe isn’t where you belong… then yes, I’ll help you.”

“Oh, thank Phone-God, I was worried you actually thought I was being hypothetical.” I sighed in relief, pressing a hand against my chest. “Do you actually not mind all your work going to waste?” 

“Dude, I don’t think you understand how little I care,” Vi muttered exasperatedly. “Go ahead and kiss a space cowboy or whatever. I won’t judge.” She furrowed her eyebrows. “Actually, I’ll definitely judge, but not out loud.” 

I shot up from my seated position on the couch, stretching my arms above my head. “Okay, then let’s get started!” 

“Right now?” She made a face. “You’re not gonna, like… relax or something? Enjoy having a face?”

“No time like the present– I’ll reimburse you for the gas money.” I grinned with my human mouth, prompting Vi to sigh. 

“Whatever,” she stood achingly slowly, then paused to look at me. “Also, Phone-God? Really?” 

I realized that I had, in fact, said ‘Phone-God,’ then cringed at myself. “Sorry, that’s how they referred to it.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “They really got to me, didn’t they?”

Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 12-- Interlude: Parole

If there was one thing I had always prided myself on, it was my attitude and behavior. Unless I was with someone I was comfortable with, I never talked back, never raised my voice, and always did what I was told. It got me a lot of special treatment when I was in school: I could cheat on assignments and never get caught, forge my parents’ signature on things and never be questioned, and generally get away with a lot of shit I wouldn’t have gotten away with if I were as outspoken as some of the popular kids.

My good behavior got me nowhere in prison. It got me walked all over by other prisoners, beaten up on by COs, and taken advantage of by all kinds of ilk. It wasn’t fun, but I stuck to it. I was a good person at heart, despite having, y’know… robbed a museum and shot an officer. I was going to be nice, damn it. And I was. And it sucked. 

Looking back on it now, being a selfish asshole likely would have made prison a lot easier to deal with. But I’m one stubborn bastard, and I did not want to leave that place any more of an asshole than I was before I stepped foot through those doors, coated in my own blood and the blood of a police officer, riddled with glass shards, and with several broken bones. 

Though I suppose being nice got me one thing: out of prison. I was sentenced to six years– rather light for what I did, I know, but I got an incredibly generous judge and a damn good lawyer. Two years in, and whaddya know, I got out on parole for good behavior. I wasn’t allowed to use any controlled substances, own firearms, or leave the state, but I was out. See, being nice does help out sometimes! 

The first thing I did when I got out of there was look in a mirror. It was the sun-visor mirror in my mom’s car, but it did its job. I had looked in a mirror that very morning, but I could never get too close to it for fear of seeing something I didn’t want to see. The mirrors were also far too occupied at any given time, and I didn’t want to be jumped for looking at my own reflection. I swear, people would get jumped for literally any reason in there. 

I immediately noticed something different: my eyes. While, yes, they were the same color, and the same shape, and overall the same eyes, the light in them had dimmed. I was still me, but I had been changed. I wasn’t sure if I could ever go back to what I was before, but I would sure as hell try. 

Getting therapy was the easy part. Some turned me away for my new status as a former prisoner of the state, but I eventually found one who was willing to take me. Her name was Linda– she was a tall, skinny black lady in her forties with the kindest eyes and the brightest smile. I remember loving Linda with all my heart. She listened, and she understood me despite my glaring flaws and the inherent traumas that came with having lived in a constantly hostile environment for two years. 

Once I felt I was safe in my own bed again, I had something bigger I had to deal with. I had to find (Y/N). They had completely vanished the night I was arrested, right after they had been screaming in abject agony and clutching their head as if it were about to fall off. The moment had been haunting me every waking moment for two years. I didn’t know if they were dead, but I did know that they were considered missing, as well as a wanted criminal. 

I had to go back to that museum. As much as I really didn’t want to, as it reminded me of times that I would have rather forgotten about, I had to do something. Guilt was swiftly eating away at my body, and if I didn’t track down at least something that aided in the search for my friend, I feared it would swallow me whole. 

Much to my dulled shock, the museum had closed. Completely shut down. Although, I suppose I should have expected that. It was the lamest tourist attraction in the city. Its brick structure had begun to crumble, and the bright red awning that I remembered falling off had been torn apart many hurricanes ago. Most of the windows were shattered, but I still recalled the exact one I dove out of. Good times. Not really, actually. Not good times. 

The door had been barred with wooden planks that had been haphazardly nailed to its surface, so I had to climb inside through a first-story window. I was immediately met with the sight of the dilapidated interior; worn, questionably-stained yellow carpet, a ticket counter that had been taken by the termites ages ago, torn-apart vintage paintings lining the walls and barely visible vegetation growing from the cracks in the foundation. It was a sight straight out of a movie set. 

I didn’t want to waste any time. For all I knew, my parole officer was right around the corner waiting to arrest me for trespassing. I found my way to the stairs and carefully climbed them, grasping onto the handrails to ensure I didn’t fucking die if they were to give out on me. I did give myself a splinter, though, so… fun. 

I quickly traversed the second floor, briefly admiring the intact nature of all of the abandoned vintage tech, and made my way up to the third floor. I was immediately overwhelmed by the scent of warm dust that only ancient arcade cabinets could emit. I spotted the bag of abandoned goods that (Y/N) had dropped and winced, knowing that it was probably worth nothing now. I also spotted that old cabinet, seeming just as intact as it was when I first saw it. 

I took a deep, steadying breath, surely inhaling a shit ton of airborne pathogens as I did, before approaching the machine. The screen was pitch black, as I expected– the power to this building had been shut off years ago. But that didn’t seem to matter last time. I knew it had to have something to do with the disappearance of my friend– I had done a lot of thinking on this while incarcerated, and while it seemed impossible and wholly unrealistic, I had always had an overactive imagination. I leaned over to get a look at the sides of the machine– the same, low-resolution character art was plastered onto the sides. The one with the blue flannel, the one with the fez, the printer-headed lady, even the stereotypical cowboy. But there was a new one– a somewhat higher-resolution character in a tan-colored flannel and hoodie with a red rotary phone for a head. That was strange– I couldn’t quite remember this one. I shook off my confusion. I didn’t have the best memory in the first place.

Cautiously, as not to accidentally break it somehow, I knelt next to the machine and located the power cord. I peeked into the gap between the back of the machine and the wall, then carefully plugged it into an outlet. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much dust in my life. 

The machine immediately jumped to life, causing me to take a step back in awe. That same pale blue glow illuminated my already-pale skin, and the high-pitched humming of machinery filled the air. The marquee lit up with those same words, though the light had dulled a bit. I tried to calm my racing heart as I stood and peered at the screen. It prompted me to insert a quarter. I hastily retrieved my wallet and pulled my only quarter from it, shoving it into the coin slot. The title screen menu appeared onscreen. The ‘continue’ button was highlighted, and I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if I pressed it.

So I did. I pressed the interaction button and the screen lagged for but a moment before a menu appeared. Several saved games had been logged into the machine, and it was prompting me to choose one. I only used the joystick to scroll downward, looking through the save files. All of them displayed different names and character avatars, as well as the members of their parties. An RPG, then. Strange. 

I scrolled all the way to the bottom, looking for any potential clues as to where my friend could be. When I reached the final save file, the most recent one, I took a good look at the play time. The play time was actively ticking upwards, which confused me to no end. I hadn’t opened this save. At that moment, it read ‘21974: 29: 04’. Was that… hours, minutes, and seconds? It seemed to be. This save file had been open for… just over two and a half years. 

My heart dropped into my stomach when I noticed the avatars and their respective names. A rat– bearing an empty can for a head– with a nametag that read ‘Spunch.’ The stereotypical cowboy fellow on the side of the cabinet with a nametag that read ‘Norm.’ And finally, that character I didn’t recognize from before, bearing the nametag ‘(Y/N).’ 

I took a step back from the machine, swallowing the bile that rose in my throat. What. The. Fuck. 

My borderline crazed, ridiculous mind whispered in my ears “What if they were sucked into the machine?” And I couldn’t help but entertain the thought. 

I shook my head. No way. No way that’s what happened. But it seemed to make the most sense! The light that enveloped (Y/N) before they disappeared, the character that mysteriously appeared on the side of the cabinet, the save file having their name attached to it, it all made too much sense. I rested a hand on my forehead, incredulously laughing. The sound echoed off of the walls of the empty museum. Why them? If my memory served me correctly, I was the one that was messing with the machine. I closed my eyes and recalled the events of the night. I remembered struggling to lift most of the shit we were stealing, finding the cabinet, then stealing (Y/N)’s last quarter. Then I selected new game, and…

I put their name into the console. Not mine. That’s why. I’m such a dumbass. 

I had to get out of there. If there was one thing I knew, it was that abandoned places were dangerous at night. They were havens for those who had none– typically wielding knives and other weapons. I didn’t have a weapon on me; I didn’t think I was legally allowed to. I definitely wasn’t allowed to own a gun anymore. Not only that, but my parole officer checked up on me every night. If I wasn’t at home by… twenty minutes from then, I would probably be instantly arrested. I’d have to come back earlier in the day. I frantically got down on my knee so I could reach behind the machine and unplug it. The screen immediately went black. 

Now that I thought about it, this was definitely some sort of magic bullshit. It worked when the power was out. So either they had forgotten to shut the power off in this building, which made no sense, or twelve-year-old me was right when she insisted magic was real, and everyone else was just too dumb to see it. I was more inclined to believe the latter. 

I stood and began my exit from the building, eyes filled with hope. I knew what happened to my best friend, and magic was real. Now I just had to figure out a way to set them free. 

Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 9-- Interlude: 10-80 In Progress

“(Y/N)! (Y/N), shit, dude, what’s goin’ on? You okay?” 

I knelt by my friend’s side, hurriedly placing a hand on their shoulder. They were screaming in agony, clutching the sides of their head and frantically digging their fingernails into their skin. Seeing them like this made me sick to my stomach. But we had to go! The police were practically up our asses at this point! I sucked in a trembling breath and leaned in to speak to (Y/N). “Dude, we gotta skedaddle like, now– the police are outside!” 

When they didn’t respond, I stood to my full height and cursed under my breath. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just leave them here to die, be arrested, or both! But I also didn’t want to be arrested. Then this whole thing would have been for nothing. The sirens were only getting closer. 

I frantically looked around for somewhere to hide, only to find nothing. I could hear my heart pounding in my chest, and in my panic, I reached down to my hip to retrieve my pistol. I had purchased it in a ‘why-not’ moment right before we were supposed to do this break-in. I didn’t think it would actually come in handy. With some quick thinking, I dragged (Y/N) to their feet and wrapped my free arm around their torso, using my pistol-occupied hand to point the firearm at the side of their head. They already seemed to be mostly unconscious, if not entirely knocked out, so they probably wouldn’t mind. 

Then I waited. I heard officers searching the building while I tried to calm my racing heart. The next thing I knew, several officers were charging through the door to the arcade-cabinet-filled room I was in. 

Before the officers could even see me, I took a deep breath and called out in my loudest, most ‘I-mean-business’ voice. “Don’t move a goddamned muscle or I’ll blow their fuckin’ brains out!” 

The officers’ guns immediately trained on me. Three of them. I saw one of them lift their walkie-talkie and mumble “10-32, 136” into it. I took another breath, forcing my expression to be blank. My eyes darted about the space, and I realized that I was relatively close to the window. I just had to get a little closer, and maybe I could jump out. 

But I had to distract the police. I didn’t actually have any intention of shooting (Y/N), but I had to pretend like I did. I opened my mouth to speak, but one of them interrupted me. “Lower your weapon!” He cried, his own aim not even faltering. Oh, how I wanted to point my firearm at him, but then they would certainly shoot me dead. I resisted the urge to commit first-degree murder and continued speaking. “No way I’m gonna put this thing down! You’ll riddle me with bullets if I do!” As I was speaking, I slowly crept closer to the window. 

“You won’t be shot, Violet,” that same officer spoke once more. I couldn’t stop my eyes from widening just slightly. They already knew who I was. Whoever reported a break-in to the police must have recognized me from somewhere. He continued, “We just want to talk with you.”

“Bullshit!” I yelled, causing their grips to tighten on their weapons. “As soon as I lower this gun, you’ll fucking kill me! Either that, or maim me so bad I can’t walk to the squad car!” Just a few more steps…

“You have two choices here,” began the officer, “You can either set the hostage free, or–”

Out of seemingly nowhere, the arcade machine from before lit up and bathed the room in a blue glow. Before I could properly process what happened, (Y/N) was gone, leaving me with no hostage, and no leverage. Well, shit. 

I darted toward the window just as the officers opened fire. They must have had stormtrooper aim or something because I managed to dive through the glass without being shot in the face. It would have been really embarrassing if the glass was reinforced, but thankfully, it wasn’t. The building was ancient. 

The glass shattered upon impact, sending me careening out of the window and plummeting toward the ground below. Maybe I should have thought this through. I was on the third floor!

Thankfully, my fall was broken by the awning covering the door to the museum, which I rolled off of before landing on the concrete below. It softened the blow, but my body was still severely battered and covered in a myriad of tiny glass shards. One officer had been stationed at the entrance to ensure that I didn’t try to escape, but it seemed that my sudden landing caught her off guard enough to allow me time to stand and grab hold of the pistol that I had dropped when I fell. 

In a moment of desperation, I pointed the pistol at the officer with the intent to shoot. My finger was literally pressing on the trigger. One of her hands was drifting near her own holster, the other poised in front of her. She had a wide-eyed, terrified look on her face. I hesitated for a moment– the biggest mistake of my life. She began to speak: “You don’t understand what you’re doing here. Put the firearm down–”

I pressed down on the trigger, clenching my eyes shut. The trigger simply didn’t press down all the way, making a dull clicking sound. I opened my eyes and glanced up at the officer, then back down at the pistol.

…The safety was on. 

I could only yell as she swiftly retrieved her own firearm from its holster and pointed it at me, immediately letting off two rounds in my direction. I bolted to the side and nearly fell over in the process. I cried out in pain upon feeling the skin and muscles in my side tear– I had been shot. Grazed, sure, but I had been shot. 

I darted behind one of the unoccupied squad cards and glanced down at my now actively bleeding bullet wound. It looked pretty nasty, but nothing I couldn’t deal with. I took a few steadying breaths and peered over the top of the car. The female officer was quickly approaching the vehicle, along with a few others who had left the building in pursuit of me. Shit, dude, I was a criminal. I was in too deep to back off now. I checked my pistol and flicked the safety off before aiming it over the roof of the car and letting off a few shots, one bullet lodging itself into the shoulder of an officer. 

Once I had stunned the group of police, I dropped into a half-squat position and frantically yanked on the door handle. It opened. Fuck yeah. 

I hurriedly climbed into the squad car and shut the door, finding the keys still in the ignition. Dumbass cops! At this point, they deserved for their car to be stolen. I turned the key and the engine roared to life. I instantly shifted it into drive and took off, ducking down just in case a stray bullet pierced the window or windshield. I heard gunshots clanking off the exterior of the vehicle and prayed to whoever was listening that it wouldn’t implode. An irrational fear, but a fear nonetheless.

Listen, I was panicking. I understand that stealing a squad car is like, the worst thing to do when fleeing police, but I was terrified! My friend had vanished, and I was alone and running away from the police! I even turned the sirens and lights on like a dumbass. But I must admit, it felt a little rad to just speed through traffic with everyone getting out of my way, though. 

When I finally got out of the range of the officers’ guns, I straightened my back and adjusted the mirrors, my chest heaving with panicked breaths. As I glimpsed myself in the rearview mirror, I noticed how wrecked I looked. My skin was covered in little cuts and spattered with blood, my eyes were wide and frantic, and I noticed an undertone of pure terror in my expression. It took all of my effort to flatten my expression into something neutral– if I was going out, I wasn’t going out scared. I didn’t even know where I was going until I reasoned with myself that I should get out of the city and to somewhere remote. There was an abandoned gas station just outside city limits that I could hide out in for a while.

There were a few moments where all was quiet aside from the loud sound of the sirens and my heavy breathing. I hurriedly buckled my seatbelt with one hand. Safety first, goddammit!

My mind finally processed what just happened– (Y/N) disappeared. Like, full-on vanished right in front of my eyes. Did I hallucinate that? No, I couldn’t have; the officers saw it too. They vanished when the room flashed with that blue light– the same blue light we saw emit from that strange arcade machine earlier. Did that have something to do with it? Was it a haunted machine or something? I shook my head. Be realistic, Violet. You literally stole a police vehicle and they’re bound to start chasing you down anytime soon. 

Just as I thought, I heard a second pair of sirens begin screaming their way toward me. I checked my mirrors and spotted the second squad car tearing down the highway, their lights illuminating the crowds of people walking down the sidewalks of the city. Shit, that’s right. I had to avoid hurting anyone not involved. Even when I was fleeing the police, I had to obey traffic laws the best I could. Christ. 

I cursed and slammed my foot on the gas, coming up to an intersection and veering the wheel to the left. I heard the rubber of the tires squeal as they skidded on the asphalt. I managed to make the turn safely despite the other cars on the road, which felt fucking awesome. 

Unfortunately, the squad car followed me. In my mirror, I noticed the officer in the passenger seat mumbling orders and codes into his walkie-talkie. Shit. I’d watched enough cop shows to know that they were probably anticipating my destination and laying spike mats on the main roads. Good to know– take off-roads!

I wasn’t too familiar with the layout of the city, as I had only lived there for a couple years and most of my time was spent traveling between work and home, but I did know that there were a shit ton of ways to get out of the city. I veered the vehicle to the right to take another turn, then rapidly made a sequence of turns in an attempt to confuse the police or lose them completely. It didn’t work, and I only scared myself. 

I’m not entirely sure how long this went on. No matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to lose the other squad car, and two more joined them in their pursuit after some time. It was becoming increasingly difficult to evade them as they kept splitting up and taking different roads. I did know that I was getting closer and closer to city limits, though. 

Then, just as I was about to exit the city entirely, I made a sudden left turn to get out of the way of a spike mat and found myself in a crowded street. A gasp fled my throat as I was suddenly tearing down a street toward a crosswalk filled with pedestrians. I had to make a decision– get caught and arrested, or commit vehicular manslaughter?

I glanced to my sides and found that there were buildings on either side. Fuck! There’s a reason I only shot that officer in the shoulder: I couldn’t kill somebody, let alone uninvolved passersby. My thoughts ran rampant, seemingly having thousands in the breadth of less than a second. Maybe if I was able to turn the vehicle all the way around and start heading the way I came, I could backtrack and find another way out. I jolted the wheel all the way to the left, turning the car around as fast as I could. 

My high speed was my downfall. The vehicle was going too fast to control the turn, causing the back wheels to hit the median. I felt a horrible lurching feeling in my stomach as the passenger’s side of the car lifted and began to rotate. In a tiny moment of luck, since I had managed to turn the car around, I didn’t go flying into a building. I also avoided hurting any pedestrians. But the thing is, the car fucking flipped. 

Before I could properly process what was going on, I was upside-down with my seatbelt pinning me to the seat. The roof of the car slammed against the road, which immediately dispensed the airbags. I heard a dull crack sound from somewhere in my chest, followed by what felt like pins and needles in that area. I think the windshield and some of the windows either cracked or shattered completely because there was glass everywhere. Honestly, it’s a complete blur. 

When my adrenaline-numbed mind returned to reality, panic flooded it. I could feel the dulled ache of several fractured or broken bones: definitely my clavicle as a result of the airbags, maybe a couple ribs, and I think something in my pelvis. As soon as the adrenaline wore off, I would be in a fuckton of pain, so I had to act quick before the police got their hands on me. I’m nothing if not committed. 

I reached up and unbuckled my seatbelt, causing my broken, battered body to tumble onto the ceiling of the car. I most certainly hit my head hard enough to leave a bruise, coaxing a pained grunt from my lips. I put all of my mediocre strength into pushing aside the airbag and opening the car door before crawling out of the vehicle, my hands finding the shattered glass that had scattered along the road. It hurt like a bitch, but I gritted my teeth against the pain and hauled myself to my feet. I looked up to find several officers charging in my direction. I cursed and turned, immediately regretting it when my pelvic bone screamed in pain. I winced but ignored it, beginning to run in the opposite direction. 

The police were, obviously, much faster. 

Without even being given the chance to surrender, I felt something hit my back. I grimly realized that it was a person. They took me to the ground, causing my chest to slam onto the glass fragments that littered it. A wheeze was forced out of my body when I hit the ground, and I writhed insistently in an attempt to escape the officer’s grasp, managing to elbow him in the face before he snatched my wrist. 

“You have the right to remain silent– anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law,” came a somewhat winded male voice from behind me. Hey, at least he read me my rights. He seized my wrists in one hand and shoved them against my back, pulling a strained groan from between my teeth. I only struggled for one more moment before I noticed another officer wielding a pistol brandishing it above my form. I went limp. There was no use resisting this any further. I felt the cool metal of handcuffs lock around my wrists just as I noticed the pool of my own blood coagulating underneath me. 

I closed my eyes and rested my cheek against the cold, glass-decorated asphalt. My memory ran through the events of the last several minutes and I swiftly tried my best to calculate the possible charges with what little legal knowledge I had: armed robbery, posession of a firearm, wounding an officer, taking somebody hostage with a gun, resisting arrest, posession of stolen law enforcement vehicle, crashing said law enforcement vehicle, endangering passersby– at least five years in prison. God. Fucking. Damn it. 

Yeein' On That 'Haw Ch. 4-- Pardners in Crime

“Waaaaiiitt…” I droned, stopping at a seemingly random point in my story. “Since we’re in such similar boats, maybe we can help each other.”

Norm, who had taken a seat opposite me and clearly just snapped out of some kind of immersed haze, straightened. “Help?” He scoffed. “I don’ need yer help. I can handle my own business.” 

“But that’s the thing, Norm,” I leaned forward so I could place my elbows on my knees. The recently-lit candle’s light glinted off of my plastic phone head. “You can’t. If you could, you would have done something about your exile by now. Mingus would be dead by now.”

He tensed. I got the feeling that I was on the verge of having a shotgun aimed at my head again. I continued, “I can help you get rid of the mayor. And afterwards, you can help me get back to my original timeline. If I got here in the first place, there’s gotta be a way back, right?”

I didn’t care about the lives of anyone here. I knew they were all just characters in an arcade game. So killing the mayor wouldn’t be a problem– it would be like a mission in a Hitman game. 

To be honest, I gave up on my mission to get back to my original timeline after two years of being stuck in that arcade machine universe. I thought if I just tried to forget it, I would get used to living like this and everything would turn out fine. But my thoughts constantly drifted to home– to my family, my friends, the life that I had before. Sure, I was likely a wanted criminal, but it was still home. 

I was about to say exactly that to Norm when he held up a hand. “Care t’ tell me exactly how you would plan on helpin’ me take out the mayor of Dialtown ‘erself?” 

“...I dunno. I didn’t think I’d get this far,” I mumbled, feeling a little embarrassed. “I concocted a plan to rob a museum, but not only was that with a friend, but it all went terribly wrong just because there was a caulked window that wasn’t accounted for.” I sighed audibly. “Surely we can just improvise.”

“Improvise?” The cowboy stood from his seat, appalled. “We can’t jus’ improvise while killin’ a political figure! She has bodyguards, traps, hell, she probably has an entire army at ‘er disposal.”

I chuckled. “I think an army is a little much–”

Norm cut me off once more. “We can’t improvise. It’s too risky.”

A realization emerged through my fog cloud of racing thoughts. “...So you’re saying you’d be cool with me helping you? And in exchange, you’d help me figure out a way to get back to my timeline?”

He fell into deliberative silence, bagged gaze fixed on the wooden floor. I held my breath. Having someone that used to work for NASA– not just that, but traveled through time– helping me find a way to jump timelines would make my job so much easier. A tiny speck of hope flickered on in my mind; an emotion that I hadn’t felt in two years. 

“How d’ya plan on sneakin’ me back int’ town?” Norm’s voice was low and contemplative. “Last time I checked, there’s a bunch o’ posters put up ‘round th’ perimeter of the city with my mug plastered on ‘em. Any passerby would report us instantly.”

I paused for a moment to think about that. I knew almost everyone in Dialtown, but not well enough to get them to smuggle a 6’3” space cowboy into the city in a wooden crate. 

“...We could dig a tunnel? Or… Or put you in a disguise?” I answered his question in an unsure, high-pitched voice. 

He shook his head. “Tunnel t’ where?” 

“Straight to the Mayor’s office, of course!” I was a little louder, more confident this time around. “Or I could threaten the fuckface guy to help us smuggle you into town in a crate. He’s done a lot of embarrassing shit. I’m pretty sure he pissed himself when a pigeon got a little too close–”

“No, an’ no. Fer one, like I said, the Mayor has guards.” I opened my mouth and took a breath to respond, but he continued with “an’ ‘er office is on the second floor,” making me shut my mouth. “An’ fer the sake o’ my dignity, I ain’t squeezin’ int’ a crate.”

“Dignity doesn’t matter here, Norm!” I launched up from my chair. “This is a revolution!” 

He shot me a look that spoke of death, and I slowly sat back down. 

“...A disguise, then?” I proposed meekly. I then looked around the room for a potential disguise before pointing at the dartboard with Mingus’ face taped to it. “You could use that. Better yet, tear your stove from the pipes and stick it on your head.”

Norm fell into another long silence, but this time it was out of annoyance rather than contemplation. I took it as a rejection.

I awkwardly cleared my throat. Okay, maybe my ideas were a little stupid. Actually, a lot stupid. Then something smart surfaced in my phone-equivalent of a brain. CPU? Is that it? Whatever.

“The sewers!” I leapt out of my seat. Norm froze. “...Sewers?” He repeated. I nodded enthusiastically. “Surely there’s a manhole somewhere outside of the city that leads into town! If we hop in there in the middle of the night, we can wander around like idiots until we find another manhole that connects to either the subway or Uptown Dialtown.” 

“So, if I’m hearing ya correctly,” Norm folded his arms across his chest. “Ya wanna wade through sewer water like blind rats until we find what we’re lookin’ fer.”

I nodded enthusiastically. “That’s exactly it! I’ve spent a lot of time in those sewers, I’ve probably developed a sixth sense to navigate them. Or I could just take some wild guesses and pray that works.”

Norm lifted his hand to his face so he could exasperatedly drag it down the length of the bag. As he did so, he heaved a sigh. “What ‘ave I got t’ lose?”

When I heard his response, I practically jumped in excitement. I was finally going to do something in this accursed place. I’ve spent the last two years learning everything about the characters that lived in Dialtown, and they were becoming boring. I could never quite keep a friendship with them– it was like I wasn’t meant to know them. It was an ironic existence, considering the fact that this arcade machine was supposed to be a weird RPG dating sim. But no matter how hard I tried, I was always alone. 

Okay, that created a few questions. Who the hell was the POV character for this arcade dating sim, where would I find them, and did they have a personality, or were they meant to be a blank self-insert for the player?

I shook off those questions for the moment. “Alrighty, let’s get crackin’!” I interlaced my fingers so I could crack my knuckles. “Norm, you’re the brains. I’m the braw– actually, you’re the brawn too. I’m the moral support.”

“Wonderful. Jus’ what I needed, another incessant voice yellin’ at me.” Norm muttered under his breath. I… honestly couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. Even after spending two years in this universe, the lack of facial expressions made it somehow harder for me to read social situations. 

Instead of trying to do that, I just flopped back into my chair. “Let’s do this. What’s the plan?”

Ꚛ

Dawn’s light filtered through the foggy windows of Norm’s shack. I was pacing back and forth across the room, running through our handy-dandy three-step plan in my head while the yeehaw man gathered a slew of items and haphazardly shoved them into a burlap sack. Neither of us had slept, either due to paranoia, not trusting the other, insomnia, or all three. So my vision was slightly blurred, and my body felt heavy. 

“I can’t believe I’m teamin’ up wit’ the likes o’ you.” I heard Norm mumble under his breath. “Y’could be tryin’ t’kill me. Y’could be an assassin er somethin’.” 

I halted my pacing to shoot him an incredulous look. “Norm, I promise, you’re not that important. You were exiled three years ago and haven’t been causing any problems since. Nobody wants you dead.” I flashed a cheeky grin. “...That’ll change soon.”

He froze in the middle of shoving a box of revolver ammunition into his burlap sack and gave me a confused look. 

“We’re trying to kill the mayor. She’s bound to find out and send hitmen after us. It’s basic common sense.” Plus, this is a video game. It’s never that easy, I thought. 

Norm nodded absentmindedly as he tied up the bag. I wasn’t entirely convinced that he was listening to me, but I didn’t particularly care at that point. I just wanted to get out of that dingy shack and get the mayor to die somehow so I could have some chance at getting home. 

Before I knew it, we had left the man’s sorry excuse for a house and ventured out into the great unknown– aka the woods that I knew very well at this point. The trees were still oddly tinted pink, and morning dew saturated the grass. Now that I was looking at the surrounding area from the porch, I spotted the many beartraps that had been placed in the grass. How did I not step in one of those?

I looked at Norm like he was a lunatic. He looked at me in the same way. He must have guessed what I was thinking about because he defensively raised his arms. “Defends against intruders.” When I only continued staring at him, his voice raised in pitch. “I can’t shoot everyone that wanders up t’ my doorstep.”

“Oh, but you had no problem firing at me? Twice?” I folded my arms. 

“No! I didn’t! ‘Cause I thought ya were dangerous!” 

I looked down at my body, then back up at him. 

“... Past tense,” he mumbled. 

Satisfied with his explanation, I nodded and hopped down the rickety steps and into the grass below. I paused before turning in a confused, awkward circle. “Uhhhh… town is…” I looked over at the rising sun. “East… west… um… west!” I pointed in the direction I initially came from. 

Norm slowly nodded, glancing in the direction I was pointing. “Good job. ‘S not like there’s very visible buildins’ that way.”

I ignored him, despite him being right. I lowered my arm and began marching toward the city. Norm followed a good ten paces behind, revolver in-hand. Paranoid weirdo.

Ꚛ

It had been… hours. And Norm hadn’t said a single word to me or anything else. My sound processors were buzzing from the silence. It was to the point where I was grateful for the random forest noises that filled the emptiness. I would have tried to strike up a conversation, but every time I said something, he either pointed the revolver at me or didn’t answer me. It was really awkward.

I had just about given up on having any sort of friendly relationship with this guy when he said something. “Y’said yer from some sort o’ parallel universe, right?” 

I glanced back at him, folding my arms across my chest. Despite my defensive stature, I was incredibly relieved for the distraction. “Uh… yeah? Why?”

He turned his head to the side, remaining vigilant despite holding a conversation with me. “What’s it like?” 

There was a moment of tense silence as I recalled what my life was like before. “Well… nobody had phones for heads, for one. That wasn’t even an idea that anyone had. We, uh… we had phone stores. Like, handheld phone stores. There were phone booths everywhere, since nobody could call people from their heads. People were relatively normal, aside from the occasional crackhead or kiddie-strangler. They didn’t go mugging people on the subway–”

“No muggins’?” Norm nudged a plant aside with the barrel of his gun. 

“That’s not what I said. There were definitely muggings, robberies, murders, shootings– their guns just always had bullets in them. Seriously, who mugs somebody with no bullets in their gun? Depending on the ammo, they’re like fifty cents a pop!” I threw my hands up in disbelief when I recalled how I was mugged on the subway. I had told the knife-headed fellow to just shoot me, and then he told me that he didn’t actually have any ammo. I remembered that I then stared at him in dumbfounded awe until he scampered away. 

“But yeah, that stuff sucked..” My gaze found the forest floor, watching how my boots kicked at piles of dead leaves. “But there were also good things. I remember how I used to hate seeing couples sucking face in the street, but now I honestly kind of miss it. People can’t exactly suck face when there’s no face to suck. I remember how my buddies and I would go into photo booths and make dumb faces, because we had those, then put the photos up on our bedroom walls to decorate them.” I sucked in a trembling breath and decided to change the topic to something that wouldn’t make me cry. “And God himself didn’t walk among us. It was still a religion based on faith, not fact–”

Norm held up a hand to stop me. “Hol’ on. God don’t walk among us, pardner.” 

I slowly turned to meet his bag-shrouded eyes. “You sweet, summer child. God is a shoeless, mostly-shirtless, basketball shorts-wearing hobo with a tv for a head that only displays a dog with a waffle in its mouth. And he knows all. We had a beer together. Which I paid for, obviously.” 

“Pardner, I am a God-fearin’ American; y’won’t trick me with this rabble. Y’did not have a beer with God.” His hand found his heart, and I could have sworn I heard an eagle screech somewhere in the distance. I blinked. Or I would have, if I had eyes. 

I turned ominously, facing away from him. 

“You shall see, Norman. You shall see…” I paused. “Probably. I feel like he always shows up where he’s not wanted.” Norm lifted a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, but he realized once again that he couldn’t do that with a bag over his head. “This is gonna be a looooong walk.”