32. Change in Plans

Deon and Skrili stared at Pang through the TeamTrack, unsure of what to say.

"…What?" Skrili finally asked.

"Don't make me say it again…" Pang uttered, her usual energy now totally deflated. "Phillip is dying. He has been for a long time."

"You two need anything else, or what? We're closing!" barked the old lady from behind her desk.

Skrili and Deon made their way to the door and stepped outside into the evening chill, their eyes still set on the TeamTrack.

Pang took a long sigh. "He's from Horror Country, and they have this rare disease there called Bryotellosis that, like, makes your veins shrink over time and weakens your heart. There's no cure for it, just a treatment. And the treatment is insanely expensive."

Skrili leaned against the wall of the building, so Deon joined her. "How much is it?" she asked.

"90,000 ghost notes, which is around 30,000 scale cards—and that's per dose. And the doses only last a couple months."

Deon's eyes widened. They had just earned two thousand scale cards from Kotono Inoue's signature, and Skrili said that was enough to live off of for a while. But this treatment cost many times that.

"We've been trying to get that kind of money, but it's just too much, and we're running out of time," continued Pang. "That's why we used your TeamTrack, Skrili, instead of starting a new team. We could get certified sooner and get into tournaments, as long as Phillip could use illusions to disguise himself as you. And that's why we've been stealing people's cash after fights along the way. It's our only shot—we can't get this kind of money anywhere else. Not as fast as we need it."

So this whole time, they weren't just stealing for the heck of it, Deon thought. While he wasn't convinced it justified their actions, it certainly painted them in a different light.

"But since you got your TeamTrack back, I…need your help," Pang explained, barely forcing the last part out. "Skrili, if you help me win the Fantasy Country Conscious Competition, we can save Phillip. Then you won't ever have to fight with me again, I promise. Phillip and I will have time to get certified on our own after his first couple doses, and we'll enter more Conscious Competitions to pay for more treatment."

As Pang laid out her proposal, Deon began wondering if Skrili would ask what was in it for her. But instead, she kept listening quietly.

"We can split the prize money fifty-fifty," Pang added quickly. "You know how much the winning team gets this year, right?"

"300,000 scale cards," said Skrili.

"Yeah—and 150,000 is plenty to get me and Phillip on the right track—and you and Deon will be loaded as a brand new team." She gazed even closer into the TeamTrack, her large golden eyes glistening with desperation. "So…what do you say, Skrili? Fight with me one last time? Please?"

In this moment, Deon realized she really did have feelings other than sheer superiority.

"I think…" Skrili started, "that I have to think about it. I'll let you know in the morning."

Pang looked down, growing silent for a moment. "Okay…" she muttered. "Message me?"

"I will."

"Love you, honeybunch."

"Bye."

The TeamTrack's screen went dark, and Skrili put it back in her bag wordlessly. They stood in silence for almost a minute.

"So…" began Deon awkwardly. "You gonna do it?"

"Let me make one thing perfectly clear," said Skrili, her eyes meeting Deon's intensely. "As far as I'm concerned, you're my teammate now, not Pang."

Deon couldn't help but smile at that.

"But…" Skrili continued. "I know the right thing to do. I can't let someone die when there's something I can do about it. I just…can't…"

"Yeah…I couldn't either," agreed Deon, though his heart began to drop. "As much as I can't stand Pang, I think you should go do it."

Skrili broke her eye contact and looked away. "You don't have to wait for me," she said.

"Huh?"

"Conscious Competitions last for days. I can't expect you to wait all that time just to team up with me. It's not fair to you. If you…want to find a new teammate…I won't blame you."

She remained averting her eyes, until a sound caught her attention.

It was Deon's laughter.

He couldn't hold it in, though he felt a bit guilty when Skrili was being so earnest. "Wait—you kidding?" he managed to get out.

"W—what?" wondered Skrili, growing annoyed.

Deon calmed himself down. "Sorry, sorry. You were just being so intense. Like, do you really think I'd ditch you because you have to go save someone's life for a few days?" He put his hand on her shoulder. "When I said I wanted you to be my teammate, I meant it. This doesn't change that at all."

Skrili's eyes widened for a split second, before she recovered her emotionless expression. She grabbed his wrist and removed his hand from her shoulder. "Alright, then you're coming with me."

"Huh?! For real?!"

"If Pang and I manage to make it past the preliminary rounds, the top sixteen teams get free hotel rooms and are allowed one guest per-fighter. Usually that's for personal trainers and managers, but I'd use mine for you."

Again, Skrili looked away, repelled by the utter elation on Deon's face.

"I get to go with you?! I get to go watch the best teams in the Multiverse fight in a huge tournament?!"

"Hopefully."

"THIS IS AMAZING!!! I CAN'T WAIT!!!"

"Okay, but bring it down…it's getting late, and this city isn't all that friendly." She turned and began walking. "Speaking of that, let's go find a place to set up my tent. I don't trust the hotels here, judging by how this place feels about outsiders."

Deon followed her with a giddy spring in his step. "You know, you're kinda sweet when you want to be."

"No I'm not."

~

Skrili placed a rolled-up blue blanket on the ground. She pulled a string at the end of it, and it abruptly began unfolding. Within moments, it had transformed into a round tent.

"Cool…" uttered Deon. It seemed to use the same technology as the tree hammock she also carried.

They were on the outskirts of the city now, a few paces from the edge of the plateau. They had managed to pick a relatively level spot to set up their camp. Beyond them lay the beginning of the Mainland Desert: an empty, lifeless plain of sand. Under the bluish moon, it looked like the end of creation.

The sky, however, was filled with life. Stars glistened everywhere, and the distant, multicolored orbs of other Worlds loomed with dull glows. If it weren't for how freezing the plateau had gotten, Deon would have wanted to stay out here and gaze at the view all night.

He followed Skrili into the tent and they sat down on the thin padding. They both fell awkwardly silent, because they had no choice but to practically sit on each other.

"It's meant for one person," explained Skrili before Deon even got the chance to comment.

Deon nodded, beginning to get back up. "I get it, my bad. I'll give you some space."

"No," said Skrili. "It's freezing out there. We'll just make it work. If we're gonna be a team, we might as well get used to it."

Deon sat back down. "What, you're not gonna say 'Don't try anything?'" he asked. "Seems like something you'd tell me next."

"I assumed I didn't have to, since I figured you prefer living."

Deon laughed. "There it is."

Skrili briefly checked her TeamTrack, and then put it back away. That reminded Deon of his own fancy new device. He pulled it from his pocket and held it uncertainly, wondering how Skrili got hers to do…well, anything.

"Here," said Skrili.

She took Deon's TeamTrack and pushed a button on the side. It lit up, revealing the "TeamTrack" logo on a white screen. From here, Skrili began walking him through all of the setup steps and functions.

"Can you read this text?" Skrili asked as she pressed through the setup windows.

"Yeah, I'm not that dumb. Why?"

"You didn't even know what the Multiverse or consciousnesses were until I told you," said Skrili. "So I was just checking."

After the system setup was complete, Skrili briefly introduced Deon to the TeamTrack's main features. The first was TeamChat, an application for communicating with your teammate and other pros. It allowed messaging and calls.

Next there was TeamStats, where he could enter and find data on his wins and losses. With an upgrade, as Skrili explained, it could observe its owner's fights and record extensive data.

Then there was CashTrack, which handled all collecting and transferring of digital money. It used a currency unique to the League, which could easily transfer to other Countries' currencies.

When Skrili opened the Healer function, Deon quickly recognized it: this was how Phillip healed the severe wounds Deon had given Pang.

Once she was sure Deon was keeping up, Skrili opened up his Profile. This displayed all of the personal information he had told the old lady while registering, underneath a blank circle titled "Deon Stutter."

"That's where your profile picture goes," said Skrili. She pressed the circle, and then Deon saw a live image of himself and Skrili on the screen. "Press the square at the bottom to take a photo."

Deon took his TeamTrack. He leaned closer to Skrili and gave a big grin, taking the picture. There was a flash, and he beheld the image: he was smiling boomingly, while most of Skrili's face was in the shot, staring blankly.

"You're not supposed to put other people in your profile photo," Skrili muttered.

Deon shrugged. "Why not? We're a team!"

Skrili took the TeamTrack back for a moment, opening one last application: the Map of the Multiverse. Just like when Skrili used it on her TeamTrack, a blue light rose from the screen, projecting a colorful map just within the round walls of the tent. But this time, it began zooming in on an area of Fantasy Country until it displayed a sky-view image of Crooked Plateau. The plateau, along with the neighboring areas and the Mainland Desert, were all labeled with floating text.

Oh, right—when you're logged in to the TeamTrack, the map has additional features, Deon recalled from when they had first used Skrili's locked one.

"We're here," said Skrili, pointing to an orange dot on the northern edge of Crooked Plateau. "And every year, the Fantasy Country Conscious Competition happens here…"

She typed something in his TeamTrack, and the map zoomed back out a bit. It panned west of Crooked Plateau for a few seconds, and then focused in on a circular region color-coded with silver.

In the center of this seemingly flat area was another circle, popping out a bit from the surrounding map. The map loaded in more details, until Deon realized they were looking at the colossal, dome-shaped roof of a building. The text above it read "Gloat Center."

"I cannot wait to see this place in person," said Deon.

Skrili read some of the small text at the bottom of the Map. "Looks like half a day's trip from here by dragon."

"Dragon, huh? Time to call up your pal Gibblezgorv again!" Deon declared, nudging Skrili playfully.

Skrili smirked in spite of herself. "Yeah. The Conscious Competition starts in four days. I'll use that scale he gave us to contact him."

"We should probably train in the meantime, huh?" Deon thought allowed. "Maybe head into the desert, like Alex and Ving? They're preparing for the same thing as you, after all."

"That's what I was thinking," said Skrili. "Let's start in the morning, after I get my password fixed."

"Look at us—being all team-like and agreeing on stuff," Deon commented.

While Skrili grabbed a blanket and pillow from her bag and got comfortable, Deon pulled a pillow from his own, and then imagined a blanket out of the same material he'd memorized for his tunics (that way, it wouldn't disappear once he stopped thinking of it). He lay down, trying to give Skrili as much space as possible, but they were still practically back-to-back.

Still too alert to sleep now, Deon opened his TeamTrack once more and began flipping through the apps.

He managed to request Alex and Ving as friends on TeamChat, and then opened his Profile. Deon observed the photo of himself and Skrili—their polar-opposite expressions made him smirk. Underneath, he noticed it said "Available" for his team status. The only option provided was to "Add teammate."

He thought of the image on Skrili's TeamTrack when Pang had called. The two of them looked so close, like him and Lammy. He wondered if there was anything left of the bond the girls once had.

They were teammates for a year—undefeated, at that, Deon recalled. And both of them seem pretty confident about entering this major tournament together…but the stakes are pretty high, if it's all to save Phillip's life…

He realized Skrili had been oddly restless since she lay down—it didn't sound like she had fallen asleep yet.

"Hey," started Deon softly. "You're up still, aren't you?"

"Why?" came her response.

"Are you…ready for this?" asked Deon carefully. "Like, you're about to fight for someone's life, against some big-timers. Alex and Blade are gonna be in this tournament, and they just won a championship. And then there's Kotono and Hiroko—they're the best in Fantasy Country. And isn't this your first tournament?"

"What's your point?" Skrili asked detachedly.

"Sorry. What I mean is…you've gotta be pretty nervous, huh?" Deon asked.

"No…I'm…" Skrili stammered. "…Yes. Extremely."

Deon didn't expect to hear her transparency that easily. He shrugged under his blanket. "Well, you guys are gonna bring the whole place down. I just know it," he said. "Let's kick butt in our training tomorrow."

Skrili was silent for a while.

"…Yeah…" she finally uttered.

Deon closed his eyes, satisfied with his attempt to ease Skrili's mind.

"You better not whine about the heat…" she added in a low mumble.

~

Deon wanted very badly to whine about the heat.

He stood in the whitish sand of the Mainland Desert, the blistering sun pounding down on him. Crooked Plateau and its surrounding highlands stood as a towering wavy background far behind.

That morning, after Skrili went back to the registration center and got her password squared away, she had accepted a request from Pang on her TeamTrack to enter them in the Conscious Competition. Then, she and Deon headed for the desert to begin their training. They had been at it for hours, now.

Deon imagined away his shirt, and turned his pants into shorts. Drenched in sweat, he slid into a defensive fighting stance for the thousandth time today. He smiled: despite the harsh environment, he wouldn't want to be doing anything else right now.

Skrili stood a few paces away in a blue tank top and shorts, preparing her own offensive stance. She leaned low, and then darted at Deon, running unevenly to throw off his aim.

"Alright, I got it this time," Deon told himself. "GO, MY CHILDREN!!" he cried. Just then, four sharp-toothed squirrel monsters about the size of his head appeared before him, floating in place. One by one, he launched them headfirst at Skrili.

Ever since he imagined that giant squirrel beast, Twitchy, as an illusion to defeat Phillip, Deon had wanted to turn it into a real attack. This training created the perfect opportunity to refine and control it—getting the squirrels to a point where they could influence reality, and eventually, advancing them to a level where they could fight by his side.

For now, all they could do was fly in one direction and pack a punch, similar to his leather ball attack. But at this rate, he was pleased with the progress.

When the first squirrel monster zoomed at Skrili, it missed entirely. But the second came straight for her stomach. With a jump and flip, she avoided it. The third, however, grazed her shoulder and threw off her balance.

Deon was certain the fourth would get her. But as it closed in to head butt her, Skrili regained footing. She managed to grab it, and with a spin, launch it back at Deon.

The squirrel slammed into Deon's gut and disappeared as he splashed into the sand.

"That's for trying to cuddle me last night," Skrili gasped.

"For the last time, it was in my sleep!" exclaimed Deon.

Skrili walked up to him and offered her hand, lifting him to his feet. "Stop pulling punches," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"If you were able to knock Pang out, you should be having an easier time against me," explained Skrili. "I want to see that strength."

"No, you don't—trust me," Deon urged. "It was freaky—something just came over me…it's hard to explain. I got super angry, and then all the sudden I could imagine without any limits—it's like I unlocked something. But…I had no control. All I wanted was to hurt Pang. I almost didn't stop myself in time."

"So your anger heightened your powers," Skrili noted. "That's odd—that's not how Imaginers' powers usually work."

"I want to tap into that strength again, but be able to control it," Deon said. "But not with you—it's too dangerous."

Skrili nodded. "We have time to figure it out."

Something occurred to Deon during their discussion. "Wait a second—aren't I supposed to be the one helping you train?"

"We're in this together," Skrili said. "It's a cliché teammates say a lot, but it's true."

Deon felt his TeamTrack vibrate in his shorts pocket. He checked it to find a notification that Alex and Ving had accepted his friend requests.

Then abruptly, a gust of air shot up to the side of them, sending sand everywhere. When it settled, Alex and Ving stood before them.

Ving calmly covered herself in her dark cloak, and then bowed to them with a disarming smile.

"We thought we saw a couple familiar faces in the distance!" Alex greeted. "You guys getting in some desert training?"

"Yeah—I guess we stole your idea," Deon said with a laugh.

Alex waved a hand of dismissal. "Eh, it's a smart move. This place will toughen you up," he said. "Everything work out at the registration center?"

"Yes…I suppose…" Skrili uttered. "It's…complicated…"

Deon smiled at Skrili's shyness. Once again, interacting with a team she admired altered her demeanor. He nudged her shoulder. "Actually, I'm helping Skrili prepare. She's got one more big fight with her old teammate."

"Really? Against who?"

"You!" Deon exclaimed. "They're gonna be in the Conscious Competition!"

Skrili averted her eyes uncomfortably.

Then Alex's smile, which had seemed like a permanent feature up until this point, vanished as he glared at Skrili.

Deon gulped.

"So you're our opponent, huh?" Alex asked darkly. "No…our enemy? Think you got what it takes, huh?!"

Ving looked back and forth between Alex and Skrili quickly. She brought her hand to her mouth. "Please Alex, they do not realize you are joking…" she hummed.

Alex keeled forward with a hearty laugh. "Sorry, sorry! I'm just messing!" he insisted. Then, he shot Skrili a thumbs-up. "That's great! I wanna see you in the finals, okay? We'll be there!"

Skrili smiled. "I'll see you there."

"Anyways, why did we come over here again?" wondered Alex.

"To offer hydration," Ving sang.

"Oh—right!"

Alex closed his eyes for a moment. Then a cluster of sand shot up with a burst of air in the distance, and Deon barely noticed two dark specs launch into the sky. After several seconds, the two objects landed perfectly in Alex and Hawk's hands: they were bulky, metallic bottles. They each tossed the bottles to Deon and Skrili.

"We always carry a few extra of these with us, just in case," Alex explained. "You wouldn't believe how many teams come out here unprepared."

"Yeah…who would do that…?" Deon muttered awkwardly. He and Skrili had been sharing Skrili's cheap water bottle all day, and its warm water had run out hours ago.

"Again, thank you," Skrili said.

"We're just trying to look out for the other pros," Alex replied with a shrug. "That's always been a mission statement of ours."

Ving gave each of them a bow again.

"Well, if we don't see you before the Competition, then uh…see you at the Competition!" Alex said with a wave. "Oh, and Deon—thanks for adding us on TeamTrack. It's always great to connect with another Imaginer."

The air around them shot up suddenly, sending sand everywhere. Once it cleared, Alex and Ving were gone.

How the heck do they keep doing that? Deon wondered.

"If Pang and I end up fighting them in the Competition," started Skrili, "I have no idea how we'll be able to win."

"So optimistic," Deon noticed.

"You'll know what I mean once you see them fight."

Deon took a lengthy sip from his new canister. "Well, we'd better get back to training, then!" he declared. "I'm not going all the way there with you just to see you lose. And besides—you gotta give me my fill of fights before you run off and have all that fun without me!"

Skrili drank from her bottle, and then tossed it into the sand. "Fine," she agreed. "Let's go again."