Connor clapped both hands together with the energy of someone who had been waiting his entire life for exactly this moment and was not going to let three idiots take it from him.
"Guys come on, shouldn't we be enjoying this? Imagine all the fun we could have—"
All three of them looked at each other. Then back at Connor.
Diego was the first to speak. "Connor, I would rather cross the border than play D and uh P."
Zhang looked at him with a confused face like Diego had just started speaking a language Zhang almost but did not quite understand. "Diego, don't you already do that?"
"Huh? No, I'm saying I would do that before whatever this is."
Andre, who had been quiet as a mouse, spoke up. "Also how did we even get here? Wait. Are we high?"
Connor waved his hands. "No Andre, we're not high, we're just in a fantasy world. Also Diego, it's called DnD, get it right buddy."
Diego rolled his eyes so hard it looked like they might complete a full rotation. "Pfft, whatever. Anyway now what, do we just sit here in the dark?"
Zhang looked around the grey trees, the cold ground, the sky that couldn't decide what color it wanted to be. "Wait, where's Andre?"
The forest was quiet for exactly one second.
Then came the laugh. The specific one — high pitched and rhythmic, his head doing that side to side tremor like it was trying to shake something loose.
"Ahahahaha—"
He hit the ground and just stayed there, flopped on his back in the cold dark soil of Valdenmoor, cackling at the wrong colored sky like something had grabbed him by the ribs and wouldn't let go.
Tears streaming, one hand pressed to his chest like he was trying to keep something inside.
"Oh man Zhang you big back, you fuuuu— nnny."
Connor looked between them, genuinely lost. "Huh? All he said was where was Andre."
Zhang just stood there with a smirk. Didn't say a word. Didn't need to.
Diego's eyes went wide. It traveled across his face slowly, like a sunrise, and then it landed and his whole body went with it. He doubled over, actual spit leaving his mouth.
"Ahahah oh I get it now—"
"Bro what's the jok—" Connor started, and then it landed for him too. "...Ahahahaha."
The grey forest filled with the sound of four nine year olds completely losing it, which was probably not something this world had ever experienced before and was frankly unprepared for.
Then they heard it.
A growl. Low and wet and wrong, coming from somewhere in the trees. The kind of sound that didn't belong to anything normal. The kind of sound that made your body make decisions before your brain finished processing.
All four of them stood up straight simultaneously, grabbed each other, and formed the kind of huddle that would have been embarrassing under any other circumstances.
"What the hell was that?" Diego said.
Zhang's voice came out quieter than usual. "P-probably a wolf maybe?"
Andre turned to look at him. "Gang. What wolf makes a noise that sounds like someone gargling some balls."
A beat of silence.
"W-well," Diego said, his voice doing something fragile, "my dog makes the same noise."
Connor turned to him slowly. "Diego we've been over this. That was your mom making that same noise that night. Screaming Tyrone."
"NO SHE WASN'T, YOU GUYS DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT—"
Zhang chuckled, low and unhelpful. "The cope hits hard for someone who doesn't wanna believe the truth."
"ZHANG I SWEAR—"
The growl came again. Closer this time. Louder. And underneath it now, the slow deliberate crunch of footsteps moving through dead leaves, getting heavier with every step.
Nobody finished the sentence they were on.
The trees ahead of them were very still.
Until the shadow moved before any of them could process it.
It came out of the trees like something that had been waiting there the whole time, just deciding when, a dark blur that hit all four of them at once and the world went black, and then there was a sound — that sound, unmistakable, the Pokémon battle jingle playing from somewhere inside reality itself — and then the darkness peeled back like a curtain and they were standing in it.
A battle screen.
An actual, real life, floating battle screen hanging in the cold air of Valdenmoor like the universe had decided to stop pretending.
The monster stood across from them.
It was wrong in the specific way that only things that shouldn't exist can be wrong. Humanoid but not quite. Dark, not like darkness was dark, but like it was made of shadow the way other things are made of bone and muscle. Its eyes were hollow and dim. Its body gave off a faint dark aura that drifted off it like smoke that couldn't decide where to go. It smelled like shadow. Somehow. The smell of a room with the lights off. The smell of 3am. The smell of a feeling.
The Codex box appeared.
ZOMBIE SHADOW
HP: 15
Below it, their own box materialized.
WHITE, BLACK, SOUTH KOREAN OR CHINESE, MEXICAN
HP: 10
Zhang stared at it. His eye twitched. "What the heck is th—"
A scream cut him off.
Diego was on the ground, both hands wrapped around his right knee, rolling slightly, his white and gold paladin armor doing absolutely nothing for his dignity.
"AHHH, GOD DANG!."
Andre looked down at him with the expression of a scientist observing a result he had already predicted. "Diego already. I knew you was weak but I didn't think you was that weak."
"NO I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT HAPPENED—" Diego's eyes were shining. The tears were loading. "WHY, WHAT DID I DO!?."
Zhang had stopped listening. He was staring at the HP box again. Specifically at their side of it. His face was doing something complicated.
"South Korean or Chinese." He turned to Connor. Slowly. "Bro. What the f—"
"Zhang," Connor said, "now is not the time to worry about the race thing—"
"CONNOR IT SAYS SOUTH KOREAN OR CHINESE LIKE IT COULDN'T EVEN DECIDE—"
"YO NOTIFICATION." Connor pointed at the floating Codex box with sudden authority. "Show us something."
The box flickered. A new message expanded in front of all of them.
BATTLE NOTE: MEXICAN was attacked during the loading screen.
Everyone looked at Diego on the ground.
Diego looked up at them. The tears were right there, one blink away. "What. Why me first?"
"Because it doesn't smell small people," Zhang said, looking at the monster, "and I bet that thing right there specifically says the M word."
Diego's mouth dropped open. "So this punk is a smallist AND a cheater."
"So Tiger Woods?" Andre said.
Connor turned to him. "No Andre, it's called Zombie Shadow—"
The name on the battle screen changed.
TIGER WOODS
HP: 15
Everyone stared at it.
"Are you kidding," Connor said.
Andre looked around at the monster, at the battle screen, at Diego on the ground, and then at Connor.
"OK Connor what do we do now?" Connor gulped. Pushed his glasses up. Looked at Tiger Woods standing across from them radiating shadow and bad vibes and whatever smell shadow has.
"Uhh," he said. "Run up and jump him. I mean you should be good at that."
Andre giggled. It was quick and quiet and deeply unhelpful. "Right, sure. And afterwards we'll drink some pumpkin spice lattes."
Connor giggled too, he couldn't help it.
"GUYS." Zhang's voice cut through both of them like a blade. "Focus. We gotta stop Tiger Woods from cheating."
"Yes please," Diego said weakly from the ground, one hand still on his knee. "Get him. Get Tiger Woods before he uses his cheating powers on the rest of us."
Connor straightened up. Pushed his glasses up one more time. His Codex box flickered open in front of him and he looked down at his ability.
MAGIC ABILITY: ARCANE MISSILE BLAST
He stared at it for a second. Something shifted in his face. The nervousness didn't disappear exactly, it just got outvoted.
He looked up at Tiger Woods.
He cracked his knuckles.
"Okay guys," Connor said, and his voice had found something new in it, something that hadn't been there in the basement two weeks of planning ago. "I'm about to blast Tiger Woods' ass."