134 Phase 116: The Seventeenth Night
All hell broke loose.
"My sister?!" Larry gasped.
"WHAT?!" Jonah was red in the face. "NO! She's MINE!"
Alicia flared up. "Since when?! You never even asked me! Who says I'll ever be {with} you?"
"But… but…!" Jonah stared. "I thought…"
"WOW!" Gracie jumped. "It's a {love triangle}!!"
Mom sighed. "I figured this was going to happen sooner or later… kids grow up so fast these days…"
Colin spluttered. "Wait! It's not like that! Those clothes…"
"Those are mine." Alicia dug through them. "Oh. But yours are here too."
"Really?" Colin blinked and found the jeans and t-shirt and fur-collared jacket he'd worn as a disguise yesterday.
"Wow, Colin! Did you pick those out?" Mom said, impressed.
"No, she did…" Colin started.
"You went {shopping} with Alicia?!" Gracie squealed. "They went on a {date}!"
Colin choked. "What are you…"
"Some date {that} turned out to be." Alicia grimaced.
"Don't make them misunderstand!" Colin barked.
Too late. Jonah pounced on Colin and grabbed his collar. "YOU! I'll kill you!"
"What, {again}?" Colin thought back to the last time they'd met on Nakama World. "I killed you too, remember?"
"I'll kill you for real!" Jonah grabbed the screwkey.
"HEY!" Mom shouted and all of them froze. "I'm standing {right here}!"
Sudden silence fell. Neither Colin nor Jonah dared move a muscle.
"I'm so sorry…" Alicia told Mom. "I can explain."
"You!" Mom pointed to Colin. "Wash the toilets! All of them, and I want them sparkly clean! And you!" she pointed at Jonah. "Rake the yard! Not a single leaf in sight! You hear me? Not one!"
"What about me?" Larry asked.
"Keep an eye on them and make sure they don't get anywhere near each other!" Mom barked, looking frenzied. "I'm calling your fathers!"
"Aunt Mirai…" Alicia tugged at her. "I…"
"You girls are coming with me. It's time we talked."
***
It was three hours later before Gracie finally came to hand Colin the phone.
Judging by Gracie's disappointed face, Colin guessed that Alicia had done some explaining. He took the call anyway, holding it in his hand facing himself as he pressed the button, wondering what all the fuss was about if the explaining had all been done.
Light shone from the phone, showing a 3-D image of the person on the other side of the line. It was Dad.
"DAD?!" Colin burst out. "What… where… how…?"
"I'm still in Dreamworlds, using a special comm." Dad told him. "I've got things I need to settle here. Something came up before I could warn your mom. Sorry about that. But what's this about Alicia? I thought you were getting together with Katrin."
Colin groaned. "No, Dad, we're just friends. We're way too young for that sort of thing."
"Maybe not." Dad didn't sound so sure of it himself. "Age and maturity are not the same things. I heard Alicia was with you when you called me for help last night."
"About that…" Colin began, eager to drop the whole mess and get on with the really important stuff.
"Tell me about it when you come into Dreamworlds tonight, Colin. I don't have much time now. Until then, try to stay away from Jonah."
"Jonah?" Colin blinked. "What's he got to do with anything?"
"He's upset." Dad summarized.
Colin waited. He waited, and waited for Dad to continue, but Dad didn't say anything more.
"Seriously?" Colin gulped. "He's not really going to try to kill me, is he?"
Again, a long, long pause.
"I can't believe it. It's just a misunderstanding!" Colin protested. "Gracie jumped to conclusions!"
"But Alicia dropped a very big bombshell on him anyway, and that isn't going to change." Dad pointed out. "He needs to sort things out himself, and he's at the age where these sorts of things mean a huge deal."
"Well, then, I'm glad I've got nothing to do with it…" Colin began.
"What are you talking about, Colin? You've got {everything} to do with it." Dad said, shortly. "I don't know how you got involved exactly - you're going to have to explain it in detail tonight - but it seems to me that you've gotten in between your two friends and their romance."
"Dad, I've been trying to tell you for years, they're not even friends with me! They've been torturing me…"
"Stop that. There are only a few people we can count on, really count on when we're in trouble, and the friends we have with us now make up most of them. I've been trying to tell you that for years! As far as I can tell, Gracie, Alicia, Larry and Jonah are the only friends you can really trust!"
"They're not my friends!" Colin yelled into the phone, and switched it off.
There was the sound of cloth hitting the floor behind him. Colin turned to see Larry standing there, face white.
"Larry…?" He glanced at the floor and saw the clothes Larry had dropped. The clothes he'd bought last night for himself.
Larry didn't say a word. He just turned around and walked away.
***
Dreamworlds is a psionic network that links the dreams of billions of people. Colin is a Dreamer, one of those who put on the Dreamworlds Headband when they go to sleep and share their Dreams with each other in Dreamworlds.
Last night, Alicia had forced him to pay for her purchases at a clothes shop in a Dreamworlds Mall. Only today did he discover the purchase delivered to them in the waking world as well. It caused great uproar at his house that day.
Oh well. At least he got the clothes he bought for himself too.
***
After the most tiresome day ever, Colin finally went to sleep on the Seventeenth Night since he began on Nakama World and found himself in the blue mists between Dreamworlds, offered the same choices as always.
"Nakama World." Colin said, shuddering as he remembered last night. He'd picked Gardens Dreamworld, the only other choice available to him, and he was regretting it very, very sorely ever since.
Stepping through the Gate, Colin expected to find himself at Crystal Cove, where he'd set his Starting Location. But instead, he found himself at his Home Base, in the middle of the Forest of Legends.
{Eh? Why am I here? I don't get it… but I don't really mind.} Colin took a look around, happy to be back and feeling at peace at last.
But there at the Heart of the Forest, Colin found a surprise.
"Alicia?! What are you doing here?!"
They were still dressed in the clothes they'd brought at Blossoming Gardens Mall, t-shirt, jeans and fur-collar jacket in his case, blouse, skirts+tights, red hoodie in hers. She was missing her necklaces, though, and he'd lost his staff. Those, they had dropped back at the mall last night.
"We ran through the Green Gate together, remember?" Alicia pointed out. "Where are we, anyway?"
Colin stared at her in a daze. "You don't remember anything after the Green Gate?"
"I woke up after that." Alicia said. "You?"
"I woke up too. I was late for school and everything." Colin frowned. "Did we spend that much time in the mall and… um…"
"Cody's Inner World? That weird under-world place with the Mecha and the dragon and the flying cat?" Alicia prompted. "Do you remember, or was it just me?"
"I remember." Colin said, feeling some relief that he wasn't the only one. "But after the Gate… shouldn't there have been more?"
Alicia's eyes widened. "You're telling me we lost a few hours of memories?!"
"I don't know." Colin frowned. "It doesn't make sense. When I lost hours of memories, it was after I went through a sudden Gate. But we came back from that sudden Gate with our memories intact. What happened afterward had nothing to do with sudden Gates. It was like the ground fell away."
"Yeah, what {was} all that?" Alicia asked.
"I have no idea." Colin confessed. "You got any clue?"
"I thought it was all part of some big plan of yours. Wasn't that giant robot one of your friends?" Alicia prompted. "The one that brought us to that under-world place?"
"I don't recognize it." Colin told her. "I don't even know where we were or how we got there all of a sudden."
"You're useless." Alicia shook her head. "Any idea where we are now?"
"This is my Home Base." Colin said. "We're at the Heart of the Forest of Legends."
"The Heart of…?" Alicia stared. She looked around. "I never… I mean… this is good, right?"
"This is great!" Colin said. "This is the safest place I can think of! Maybe Lynn is here… she's the Forest Princess. She's helped me a lot, you know."
"She's your boss, right? Since you're a Forester and all."
"I guess. But I sort of quit the Forester job, remember? Anyway, she could really help us. Do you see her around?"
Alicia glanced about. "Nobody else is here, but that looks like a letter for you."
"A letter?" Colin spun and saw an envelope 'floating' in the air behind him, with his name blinking in yellow writing above it.
Alicia touched it. Her hand went right through it. Nothing happened. "You try."
Colin reached out his hand. The moment his finger touched it, the letter opened up like a sheet of paper unfolding itself in mid-air.
.
Colin,
If you're reading this, it means I have run out of time. You've probably noticed by now; I've been losing power night by night and my reign is about to end.
I need you to finish the Quest. I need you to complete the Three Keys before it's too late, or all is lost.
Please hurry, Colin. The Forest is counting on you.
-Lynn,
The Forest Princess.
.
***
"Oh, scrap." Colin groaned. "Even Lynn is in trouble now. What am I going to do?"
Alicia inspected Lynn's letter carefully, thoughtfully. "You were really counting on her to help you, weren't you? And now it seems you're the one who has to help her."
"Yeah. I have to finish that quest quick and restore her power before she loses everything." Colin said, getting up.
"Just like that?" Alicia observed him. "No more whining? No more complaining about it being unfair that you're the one who's been pushed around?"
"Hey, what are you saying?" Colin protested.
"That's what you always do, isn't it?" Alicia pressed. "Complain and whine when things don't go your way?"
"That…" Colin trailed off. "That was a long time ago. Things are different now."
"That was just three weeks ago." Alicia pointed out. She studied him intently. "You can't have changed that much, that quickly."
"I don't care." Colin threw up his hands. "I'm going to rescue Lynn. Thanks for everything, Alicia, but I can take things from here."
"You?" Alicia barked a laugh. "I'd like to see you try! You can't do anything on your own! You've been…"
Colin rounded on her. "Look, either help out or get going, but don't get in my way with all your prattle. I don't have time to get depressed because you don't like me!"
Alicia blinked at him, dumbfounded for a long moment. "Okay… so maybe you have changed. A little."
Colin ignored her and got to work. He really didn't have time for Alicia's abuse. Lynn was in trouble now, and it was up to him to save her.
He touched his Traveler's Watch, which also functioned as a comms unit, among other things. "Lynn?"
The contact was in his list. The Watch tried to make the connection, it really did.
But there was nothing. Absolutely no response. Not even a 'connecting' notice, or a 'busy' notice, not even a recorded message or a 'whoops, something went wrong' notification.
"Huh…" Colin tried again. Well then… "Satrox?"
Again, the contact registered… and then nothing.
"Katrin? Abby? May? Scarlet? George? Michi? Iylara!"
Nothing. No matter who he tried to call, Colin got absolutely nothing.
{Maybe my Watch is broken…} Colin thought, turning to Alicia.
"Larry? Hello? Larry?" Alicia was also tapping her watch, trying to make a call. She wasn't getting anything either. She spun to Colin. "Is the Forest a no-comms zone?"
"Uh… I think the forest path is. But here…" Colin scratched his head. "Not sure."
"Well, I got nothing. Maybe what happened last night messed around with our comms." Alicia voiced the same thing Colin was thinking.
"Or maybe this really is a no-comms zone." Colin said at last, though he thought he remembered having calls and messages get through here before. "Let's get to Forest Village and try from there."
"Right…" Alicia tapped her badge.
{She's going to warp in her Comrades…} Colin thought, and was about to do the same when Alicia said, "Primary Armor. Primary Sword."
There was a flicker and there appeared before them Alicia's sword and armor.
"We can do that?!" Colin stared. "Warp in our gear?"
"How else?" Alicia asked, matter-of-factly.
Colin tapped his badge. "Lina Visor."
There was a flicker and in warped his Visor. Colin grinned. "Cool."
"Does that magnify?" Alicia asked.
"Sure. Up to a hundred times." Colin said, offering it to her.
She shook her head, both hands busy putting on her armor. "Well, then, maybe you could take a look at the smoke up there and tell me what those little figures are."
"Smoke?" Colin saw it and stared.
Now that he looked up, he saw it. Lots of it. The sky was filled with pillars of smoke, and there were little darting figures up there…
100x Magnification on his Lina Visor told Colin all he needed to know. Knights on flying Comrades were exchanging shots with Gaian Saucers.
"The Green Men are attacking." Colin reported to Alicia. "They're fighting everywhere. All that smoke… I think the towns are burning. I think that pillar of smoke there used to be Hot Springs Village…"
"We have to find out what's going on." Alicia turned to him. "Assuming, that is, that you're not too scared to…"
"Shut up." Colin said, but his heart wasn't in it. No matter how he looked at it, this looked bad. {Lynn is in trouble, and the Green Men are attacking, and everybody's fighting, and our comms don't work any more. Why? Why aren't our comms working?}
Alicia gave him a mocking look. "Aww. Gonna cry already?"
"Later." Colin brushed it off. "Right now, we need to get to Forest Village."
Once again, she gave him a strange look, but fell silent as he darted through the trees and headed towards the village at the outskirts of the Forest of Legends.
Raiki ran with him, Alicia trailing a bit behind. Colin glanced at Raiki. [Any idea what's going on?]
[Humans fighting each other. Chaos. Fire.] Raiki didn't skip a beat. [The usual.]
[Right. The usual.] Colin sighed. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised to find that the Wilds and Comrades of this world thought of humans that way, always fighting everything.
They ran into Sonic Wolves, the closest Clan of Wilds to the Heart of the Forest. Sonia was there with them. Colin greeted her. "What's going on?"
[Many humans flee into the Forest. Their dens are on fire. We allow them to hide, but we do not allow them to hunt.] Sonia shrugged. [My clan thinks I'm getting soft. What of that human behind you? She is not marked for safety.]
Alicia. Colin sighed. "She's with me, Sonia. Please don't attack her. Can your friends give us a lift?"
Sonia glanced at them. They reached a quick consensus. [They are willing to carry you anywhere, but they would not accept her touch.]
"Why won't they carry her?" Colin groaned. "Never mind. I'm not leaving her behind. We'll just run."
[Are you sure we can't just kill her and let her respawn elsewhere?]
"Yes, I'm sure. Don't harm her."
Sonia left Alicia alone and ran with them. A dozen Sonic Wolves followed, and with them around, none of the Forest Wilds thought to bother Alicia.
They reached Forest Village in good time, running as hard as they were, and found the place preparing for war. Barricades were being put up; Jijin had an entire army of Comrades surrounding the Comrade Home, and Florence was coordinating what appeared to be combined firing squads for artillery.
Fanny was there too. For once, the agent of Pepper Tourism wasn't trying to sell tourism information or guided tours. Colin called to her. "Fanny!"
"Colin! You're all right!" Fanny gasped. "I thought you'd have been taken by now!"
"I've been…" Colin stopped and panted for breath.
"Running, obviously." Fanny concluded, seeing him so winded. "Through the Forest of Legends, no less. But it looks like the local Sonic Wolves are friends with yours, so you got through all right."
"They're… friends." Colin agreed, still struggling to breathe properly. It had been quite a distance and they had been running most of it. Even in a dream, it took a lot out of him.
"You guys rest here for a bit." Fanny suggested, nodding towards the Comrade Home. "We're keeping the young ones in there, so it's our strongest defended spot. The Green Men don't seem interested in attacking us at any rate, but it's best to be prepared for the worst."
Colin glanced behind him and saw Alicia looking even more winded than he was. He gave her an apologetic wince, then nodded to Fanny. "Thanks. We will."
The 'young ones' turned out to be the baby Tames in the Comrade Home. Cubs and kittens and pups of all sorts scurried around in a central pen awaiting emergency evacuation if necessary. Colin and Alicia watched them play, completely oblivious to the conflicts erupting all across Nakama World, and slowly regained their breath.
Still, Colin said nothing. He watched the cubs jumping on each other, happily squealing at the sudden inflood of playmates of all sorts of species instead of their usual crowd.
"Colin?" Alicia, therefore, was the one who spoke first. She sounded uncertain. "Are you… well?"
"What are you talking about?" Colin frowned.
"You haven't been rude or whiny for a whole five minutes." Alicia mused. "Aren't you going to fall over and cause a mess or do something to make things worse right about now? Destroy the whole continent while trying to rescue another girl from her parents, maybe?"
Colin grimaced. "Do you enjoy taunting me that much? Is it really fun for you to throw all my mistakes in my face?"
Alicia thought about it. "Yep."
Colin's face clouded over, but still he said nothing.
"What? Can't find the words to justify the gloom you enjoy so much?" Alicia probed.
"What?" Colin stared.
"Admit it. You {liked} complaining and whining. You liked it when you got us in trouble with our parents for leaving you out." Alicia snorted. "There's something about being hurt and making noise about it that makes you feel like {you're} the one in the right, and everybody is at fault except you, because you're the poor, suffering victim."
"{You} guys always left me out!" Colin growled. "I was never good enough to play with you, always 'Clumsy Colin', always teased and laughed at! I was the butt of all your jokes, and all your snide comments! Even now, you just enjoy making me suffer! Why don't you admit it yourself?! You {like} causing me misery! It makes you feel superior, as if you're {better} than I am just because you can hurt me with words!"
"Then we get along perfectly, don't we? Me in making you suffer, and you in enjoying your holier-than-thou suffering!" Alicia hissed.
"We didn't get along at all!" Colin barked right back. "All I wanted was to play with you! You were my only friends! I didn't have anyone else!"
"So why didn't you make friends? It's not like Gardens World didn't have any kids other than the four of us!" Alicia scoffed. "What about your own sister, Gracie?"
"Gracie?!" Colin shuddered. "She's… she's…"
"Not Good Enough For You?!" Alicia threw it in his face. "Not fun enough? Not big enough? Your own sister! At least I never left Larry behind!"
"Larry's almost the same age as we are!" Colin blurted. "Gracie is years younger! She could never…"
"Keep up?" Alicia gave him a cold look. "You couldn't keep up with us either. It's all the same. Since it's the way you treated her, isn't it fair that we treat you the same way?"
"But… but she's my {sister}! She'll go on and tell mom everything we did, and she'd make it sound like we're doing bad things all the time, and I'd get in trouble…"
"Like how {you} complained to all our parents, and we got in trouble?" Alicia cut in ruthlessly. "We were stuck with you just as you were stuck with us! And every night, you'd get us into trouble with all your complaints! At least Gracie had the decency to leave you alone! Why couldn't you just stop chasing after us and leave us in peace?!"
{Ouch.} Colin sat down, hard. He found himself with nothing he could say.
"Would {you} want Gracie chasing you everywhere and telling your parents everything you did, no matter how hard you tried to get away from her?" Alicia pressed her advantage. "Would you?"
"No." Colin said quietly.
"That's all we ever wanted from {you}. Just to leave us alone!" Alicia turned away sharply.
Colin couldn't deny it. Looking back at himself now, seeing it from her viewpoint, putting himself in her situation… what would he have done?
{Probably the same thing. Or worse.}
"And you call yourself our 'friend'!" Alicia said in disgust.
"What do you want me to do?" Colin asked, in a low voice.
Alicia paused. She thought it over. She really did.
At last, she said, "You can't do anything about it. It's all over and done with. Even if you apologized now, it wouldn't make much difference, and we'd have to apologize back, so I'd rather you didn't. I like being 'superior', remember? I don't want to apologize to you. So just don't do anything. Just don't make things any worse. Leave us alone and stop complaining about us all the time."
Colin was silent for a while, but then he said, "I don't expect anything from you, but I {am} sorry. You don't have to apologize back. I really caused a lot of trouble for you. The least I can do now is help you rejoin Jonah and Larry. At least that way you can properly explain to them what happened last night before Jonah goes crazy. I'll let you kill me and claim the bounty; that should more than cover a Wind Knight express delivery."
He turned his back on her, waiting for her strike and expecting to respawn back at the Heart of the Forest.
But Alicia said, "No."
"Why not?" Colin asked. "You want more? Twenty thousand isn't enough for you?"
Alicia shifted. Her voice softened. "I was going to let you off easy. In the end, all you really wanted was to play with us, after all." Then she grinned. "But you make a good point. Twenty thousand Clira sounds really sweet."
She stabbed him with her sword, scoring a Triple Critical Hit directly into his heart, making an Instant Kill.
Colin respawned back at the Heart of the Forest.
"Great." Colin sighed, feeling sick. He sat down and took out his half of the leaf Lynn gave him for times like these and started sniffing.
Only then did he realize that something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. Something that shouldn't be there was right in front of him.
Or rather, some{one}.
"Colin…" Alicia said, looking at him dangerously.
"What am I doing {here}?"
***
Try as they might, neither of them could make any sense of it. Why exactly, would something like this happen?
When Travelers died on Nakama World, they respawned at their Home Base. That was the norm.
When their Travelers died, Comrades also respawned with them at their Travelers' Home Bases. That, too, was normal.
But for another Traveler, without being killed, to respawn at someone else's Home Base? It was unheard of.
On top of that, none of their Comrades had respawned there with them.
"Maybe they did something at Forest Village." Colin guessed at last, having had roughly half an hour to recover (which, given his special Leaf, was almost enough to recover fully). "This never happened before. I've died a few times and you never respawned back at my place."
Alicia had her own ideas. "Either that, or it's got something to do with our comms not working. Maybe Nakama World itself is messed up. Maybe the Green Men did something."
So they decided to go their separate ways. Colin headed back to Forest Village. Alicia decided to cut across the Forest towards Hot Springs Village.
Colin was sitting on Kirin about to scan his Comrades and check on their growth when the world turned white.
A moment later, he found himself at a little seating area off a carpeted corridor. A corridor with white padded sofas. And a round circular black rug under a coffee table. And pamphlets in a stand in the center of the table.
"What the…?!" Colin blinked. The Forest was gone. A sign on the corridor wall had an arrow pointing to 'arrivals' with a yellow symbol of a plane. {An airport?}
Then he noticed Alicia on the other side of him. She had a sickly look on her face. {That look… don't tell me…}
"Did you just… {die}?" Colin stared.
Alicia threw up over him.
