Beyond the Boundary

The living room housed every member of the team, save for a particular Abyssinian who came down the stairs much later than the rest would have preffered, wearing an expression that said she was unwilling to partake in their task but couldn't argue her way against the majority of them.

It wasn't that Sierra couldn't convince them that playing a game was a waste of time; in fact, she didn't think that at all. She was practical and objective, and everyone knew that for a fact, but she was never the type of leader to let her work attitude get in the way of her subordinates having their fun (or in this case, forcing her to have fun with them.)

"C'mon, if you don't hurry up, I'll choose your avatar for you," Scott threatened in a voice that was too jovial to be threatning, wagging a pig warlock figurine at her.

She wore a sullen expression, but eyed the character. Unbeknownst to everyone, it was actually her favourite in the game.

They were all seated on the floor, surrounding a moderately wide table that was short enough to level their torsos as they loomed over the flat sheet that served as a platform for the game they were about to play, each finding their own comfortable ways of sitting.

The table itself wasn't the usual living room table that was regularly in the living room; they'd moved it out of the way to make room for the their game, curtesy of Henry's persistence when he'd discovered the Ogres and Oubliettes that Abigail hid in her room, much to her own chagrin, and told everyone to play.

Due to his size, Kong had to be slightly distanced from the table, since he couldn't tuck his indian-seated, thick legs under it, a rulebook held in his paw.

Henry chose to stand while Scott, himself, greedily stretched his legs under the table.

"You want to make a decision for me? Go ahead; I never wanted to play so you'd be doing me a favor," Sierra answered as she took her seat beside the human.

She actually liked the game all things considered. It didn't take away her stress, but it kept it at by, and for what it's worth the game was actually pretty fun. It was imaginative, and it even helps exercise team-building which was easily something she was all for.

If she had to pick, the warlock was easily her favourite in the game. He was strong, took initiative, and stroke fear in the hearts of injustice, but they didn't need to know that; as far as they were concerned, she's only forced to play, and because Scott was already going to pick him for her, things were going her way.

"Don't feel lonely. Right now, we're in this together, since this is my first time playing Dungeons and Dragons," Scott said. "You," he pointed the figurine to her chest, "who doesn't want to play, and me," he pointed it back to him, "who doesn't know how to play."

"Ogres and Oubliettes," Henry interjected, feeling like he'd corrected him for the millionth time.

"Well, as you know, I'm kind of forced to integrate into a different society against my will, so you'll forgive me if I want to preserve a little bit of my culture." Scott placed his figurine on the table. "I'm calling it Dungeons and Dragons." He scratched at his stuble, "So who should I pick for Sierra..."

If Sierra was even slightly surprised, she didn't show it through years of practice. She, instead, opted to raise an eyebrow at the human, "I thought Wardor was my character?" She made sure her voice was just curious and nothing else. She was a master of keeping her feelings to herself afterall.

Abashed, Scott pulled the warlock close to his chest and wrinkled his brows at her, "Wardor's my guy. I haven't really thought of who I'd pick for you, so you can chillax; I'm gonna atleast make it female." Scott picked the other figurine, an Abyssinian thief wearing ragged clothes, and placed it in front of Sierra. "Here, you'll be Zenari the thief; a perfect match for you." He looked to Kong then asked, "Zenari, or Zenara?"

"Ashinda," he answered, confirming just how far off Scott was.

"Alright, let's start, I guess."

Everyone got ready. Henry held his dragon knight figurine, and placed it onto the table. Abigail raised her unicorn sorceress to eye level, and smiled at it, before placing it before her on the table.

Scott sneaked a furtive glance at an internally disappointed Sierra from the corners of his eyes as he placed his figurine in front of him.

He knew.

He knew about her secret love for the game, and he knew how much she actually wanted to be Wardor despite herself, and he especially knew how much she thinks she's good at hiding it from him.

He didn't like deliberately putting her in a situation where her interests battled with her pride, but the look she gave her character was just too much.

She was obviously displeased with her character.

She was definitely looking down at Ashinda the Thief with dissatisfaction. A look that said 'you're not Wardor' with disdain, and Scott, for one, could not stop himself from smiling.

"Ok, let's start," Kong said, the DM. "Everyone ready?" He gave Henry and his dragon knight a curt nod, "Murdock the brave?" he looked over to Abigail and the unicorn sorceress she was idly playing with, "Mystica the Numinous?"

"Aye aye," she replied, not sparing a glance.

"That's not the right sound you make for—"

"It is. It's the right sound."

Kong turned to Sierra, who hasn't taken her eyes off her character yet, and asked her, "Ashinda the Thief?"

She looked up, meeting his gaze, before looking back down again. "Yeah, ready," she answered, never losing the control in her voice or the stern look in her eyes regardless of the great disappointment she felt deep down.

"Captain Wardor the Executioner?" Kong then turned to the human.

"Actually," Scott said, taking his character between his fingers and turning to Sierra, "could we change?"

She furrowed her brows at him, "You want to change characters?"

He looked down to Wardor. "This one kind of reminds me of Josiah," he pointed to her figurine, "plus I actually want to be a sneaky thief," he lied.

Scott figured he'd had enough. It was fun while it lasted, but it was time to be the good guy now.

With a paw, Sierra slid her thief over to Scott as he did the same for his warlord. Skeptic, her eyes trained on the human. She doesn't see through his act, but his last second decision slightly bemused her.

"Cool," he said as her gaze slowly drifted down to her new character. She didn't know why he suddenly changed his mind.

Does he know? Is he playing with her? It didn't matter. Because she was Wardor the Executioner again, like how she always was everytime she played the game—which was a lot more often than she'd ever admit to Scott.

"Ok, we can start now," Kong announced, causing everyone to perk up in attention. "You arrive at the Stealy Eyed tavern..."

"I'm excited," Scott said, leaning over to Sierra.

"Upon entering, you glance around the mostly empty establishment. Customers were scarce but a particular table in the far corner catches your attention. Sitting in it was a lone seer with a glowing orb floating by his side. He wore a long, hooded garment that reached up to his ankles, and he—"

"I walk up to him, and sock him right in the jaw, saying, 'That's what you get, you filthy sack o' shit.'"

Silence stretched the room.

Sierra was the first to voice a confused "what?" for everyone.

Deliberately not picking up on their bewilderment, Scott looked around with innocence as if nothing about what he did was remotely questionable.

"What—why did you do that?" Abigail asked.

Scott figured he'd explain, "Well earlier, you told me about the characters' bio, including their pasts, right?"

"We did, yeah." But why in the hell did you punch the seer? Scott could see their faces say.

He held up his figurine, then explained, "Well you said Zenari's parents were killed by a rogue wizard." They nodded. "I figured if she were to see someone that fit the description, she'd be a bit... I want to say jumpy...? While the backstories were a nice little unnecessary detail, you didn't exactly include any personality traits so I decided to get creative."

"So Zenari is a... short tempered brute?" Abigail concluded. Unlike everyone else, she was intrigued by where he was going with this.

"Well her past is pretty grim, so it wouldn't be too far fetched if she had some control issues."

"But you can't just punch the seer in the face," Henry said.

"Why can't I? I thought in Dungeons of Dragons, you could do anything. Isn't that the point of the game? The wide amount of freedom that sets it apart from any other game?"

Sierra interjected, "The point of the game is to go on a quest that will be given to us by the seer, and right now, we don't even know what that quest is since we're too busy explaining this to you. We haven't even gotten to the actual game yet, and what you're doing is unnecessary stuff we don't have time for."

Scott tightened his smile remorsefully. "Right. Sorry. I pick up the seer off the floor, because my punch was so hard he fell off his chair, and tell him I'm sorry."

"You don't need to do that. We could just start over," Sierra said, but then Kong indulged him with a response.

"The seer accepted your apology out of propriety, but decided that he didn't like you."

"That's fine," Scott answered. "So what's the quest?"

"We're getting there," Sierra told him, sick of hearing him talk.

Kong cleared his throat as he got ready for his explanation, and everyone was relieved to finally be resuming.

Without even making an effort to change his voice for dramatic purposes, the very uninspired DM briefly explained their main goal: they basically had to travel south—as ridiculously unspecific as that sounded to Scott—and find a particular amulet for the seer. When Scott had asked what value it held for the seer, he was scolded by the others again for digressing too much.

Eventually the four got to the adventuring part, and Scott decided that he liked the game. It served as a fun platform for his very creative mind, and he wondered why he never actually thought about playing this game just until it was suggested to him by close friends, and just until he'd already found himself as earth's first inter-dimensional traveler.

"The giant bat stretched its mighty wings to prepare for a powerful wind attack," said Kong as they prepare themselves for the third monster they had to fight in the dungeon they entered.

"I use a barrier to shield me and my friends," Abigail provided.

The dice left the DM's paw and rolled across the table. It landed on a 10, and the curious rabbit looked up to the DM with a questioning raise of her eyebrow. "Your shield failed to reach everyone, and you only shield yourself and Murdock," Kong explained for her.

Left open, Sierra came up with a counter of her own, "I use my giant axe to block the attack."

Kong rolled a 15 for her, and she smiled. "It succesfully blocked the attack."

Scott was the only one left to fend for himself, and had to think of a way to either evade or block the imaginative gale of wind.

He was a thief; everyone else had characters that were more competent in a battle, while his specialized in lock picking and pickpocketing. He wondered why the creators of the game even bothered including a character whose only purpose was to get the team into certain places they may or may not need to go to in a game where fighting dangerous creatures took the larger portion of events.

Running out of options and time to internally think before his prolonged silenced turned too awkward, he did the only logical thing he could think of. "I stand still and let the cool breeze hit my body."

With a questioning glance at the human, Kong continued, "The strong, cool breeze hit Mystica's shield, and it gets nulled by the magic. Wardor remained planted to the ground as his axe resiliently blocks the gale's full force. Ashinda the Thief gets blasted by the wind, and is sent careening into the dungeon's cobble wall, cracking her skull against the stone and instantly dying from blood loss."

"Shit."

"Great. Now our lockpicker's dead," Sierra said.

"No biggie. I'll just catch up with you guys after getting revived.

Everyone looked at him like he was stupid.

"What? Are you telling me there aren't any revivals in this game?"

The stares they gave spoke for itself. Scott, at that moment, had a sudden realization: within the few minutes of playing DnD for the first time, he'd already been kicked out of the game.

"Well shit. Great game, guys. That's just awesome."

"You're telling us?" Sierra said. "With you dead, we won't have comeplete access to the map. Plus, if there's a safe we might need to open, we won't be able to get to its treasures now without your lockpicking skills."

"I mean are you kidding me? Is that really it? I can't play anymore?"

"Ogres and Oubliettes is a progressive game," Henry explained, "The players are to find a way to survive and fight their way till the very end of the story. A player dies, and they can no longer progress with their comrades."

"That sucks."

"It's genius. It really makes you feel like you're in an actual adventure. The looming danger of the harsher consequences makes the struggles feel more real, and players are encouraged to be more careful with what they do and how they do it; it's the perfect family friendly game that exercises team building and decision making."

Scott thought about it. Did they really feel this way for a game? The moment he landed in this dimension, he had the impression that their world seemed to be a whole lot closer to actual fantasy. There also doesn't seem to be a shortage of exciting things you could do in terms of mythic struggles and adventure—what with all the literal mythic creatures and magical artifacts that seemed to riddle their world with what Scott assumes is in a never-ending abundance—so it was weird for them to feel the need to invent games that replicate those fundamentals.

"Hmm, I don't know," Abigail said. "That's really insightful and all, but I think there's still a good amount of winging it that doesn't necessarily make the game any less fun. I mean, it still is a game; you still have to enjoy it, and all that complicated talk about being more careful with your moves and the looming danger of harsher consequences is kind of making it more complicated that it actually is."

"I respect your opinion," Henry answered. "If that's how you interpret Ogres and Oubliettes and you enjoy it all the same, then by all means. All I care about is that I have people who I get to play it with."

Smiling, Abigail gave an approving nod. "That's right! What's more important is that we're a group of like-minded individuals who enjoy the same thing, right, Sierra?"

"Could we kill this bat now?" she flatly replied.

Abigail turned her attention back to the game, and made her move. "I drop the shield to summon a powerful lightning spell aimed towards the bat," she told Kong.

Kong rolled the dice, and it landed on a 16. "The spell was successful. You struck the bat with powerful lightning, and it goes down smoking," he said.

"Ooh yeah! Take that, bat."

"I can't believe this," Scott said. "So am I, like, stuck watching you guys play now? Atleast until you find some sort of reviving thingie majigie later in the game?"

"Oh, there's no such thing as a revival elixir in Ogres in Oubliettes, I can assure you," Henry said. He turned to Kong then asked him, "unless of course this is the Moonlit Cavern Edition that came out a few years back which didn't sell too well because people didn't care too much for the horrible map design and its even worse story line."

Kong looked down onto the rulebook he held, and read the title and description for the game. "I don't think so. It says here 'Aspect of Dusk edition'," he answered.

Scott stood up, all but ready to leave.

"Don't worry, Scotty. Next time we play, I'll make sure to prioritize shielding you against a powerful attack like wing gale," Abigail consoled.

"I guess it's kind of our fault for not telling you about the one life rule sooner. Maybe you would have come up with a more sensible strategy instead of just standing still," Henry said.

"It's fine," Scott told him.

"Why don't you go make yourself useful, and wash the dishes?" Sierra told him. "Kong has been doing most of the household chores, and ever since you got here you haven't lifted a single finger to clean anything."

"That's not true. I clean my room," he defended.

"Cut him some slack, boss," Abigail told Sierra. "I mean, hasn't he been helping us enough as it is already? Do we really have to start guilt tripping him now over some chores?"

"I'm just saying: if he's got nothing better to do since he's dead, then why shouldn't he wash the dishes."

"It's okay, boss. Washing the dishes has always been my responsibility. I could do it later," Kong provided.

"I appreciate the defense, guys, really, but your kitty leader actually has a point," Scott said, surprising Abigail and even Sierra herself. "If I'm going to be sleeping within the same four walls, I should atleast help around with cleaning it. I'll wash the dishes."

Just as he was about to approach the sink, Kong puts a paw on his shoulder, causing him to halt in his steps, look down to the paw, trail up to Kong's tree trunk of an arm, and meet his determined gaze.

With conviction, Kong told him, a lot firmer this time, "I'll do the dishes."

That seemed to be enough to convince the human. "Sure thing, chief," Scott answered.

Kong let go of Scott's terrified shoulder, and Scott clears his throat. He knows how soft Kong actually was despite his physical appearance; In reality, he could even say that if he were to compare Kong to Abigail, Abigail would probably easily floor the guy on a one-on-one fight if a heated dispute were to hypothetically arise between the two them, which incidently would be very unlikely, considering how much of an extreme pacifist Kong was. Despite all that, however, having the big scary dog grip him by the shoulder, and give him such a threateningly serious look was a first for the human in all the time he'd known him, and he couldn't really blame his internal instincts for blaring warning signs at the sudden touch.

Moving on, Scott approaches the front door, and tells everyone that he'll be 'out for a bit'. He leaves, and they resume to their game.

Moves were made, and dices were rolled, and Scott wished, from outside the house, that he'd picked a different character.

He leaned his elbows against the front porch's railings while his hands were clamped together against his mouth, in deep thought.

It's been 3 weeks.

If only this world didn't have mirrors, he would say that he was starting to forget what humans look like. Obviously that would have still been an over exaggeration for just 3 weeks, but the fact of the matter is that he's been away from home for too long. Any amount of days was too long to be honest. No one should ever be stuck in another dimension for any amount of time exceeding what was originally intended.

He looked down to his hands, and opened them to reveal a circular, black device. There was a red button in the middle. He flipped it over to reveal a crack on the unlit lense that suggested the device hadn't been working for a long time.

It was supposed to be his way back home, right before the unexpected incident that ultimately stranded him here.

He realized his head was too cloudy at the moment, and that he needed some way to clear it. Standing on the porch just wasn't gonna do so he decided he'd take a walk around town.

He pocketed the device, and left the hideout for a stroll. It was just starting to get dark out, and the sky was still blue enough to make the chill breeze of the atmosphere the more calming. The planet obviously functioned similar enough to earth for the same phenomenons to occur, and he was glad it did; he was sure if the sky was somehow green in this dimension, he would probably go mad.

He looked up more into the sky, making sure to not get even a slight glimpse of any of this world's infrastructure from his peripherals. He figured he'd tune out everything else, and focus on the one thing that actually reminded him of home, and the thought that the sky was the only thing left to have that kind of effect was kind of depressing—

"Oh! woops, sorry," Scott said to the griffon he bumped into. "Lemme help you with that."

"Watch where you're going," the griffon said, standing up.

"Sorry, I was just—" Scott shook his head, "nevermind. Here's your, uh..." He didn't know what he was looking at. It seemed like some sort of rudimentary mechanical device he couldn't pretend to know the use for. It was rectangular and metal, and he hadn't seen anything like it. Honestly, it kinda looked like a slightly larger beeper if he was being honest.

The griffon snatched the device from his hands, and examined it for any damages. "That's my alarm clock," he spat, "I just got it repaired, and you're lucky it didn't break otherwise you would have to pay for the damages, and I'm tellin' you, these things aren't easy to come by."

Scott had a thought. "Uh, repaired?"

"Yeah, I just had it repaired. Are you deaf?"

"Uh, may I ask: what's your... alarm clock powered by?"

"This one's powered by electricity."

"Electricity..."

"I wouldn't be surprised if somecreature like you didn't know of things powered by electricity; not a lot of folks can say that they've owned anything like it since most things are powered by magic nowadays. This alarm clock was a family heirloom, and I just got lucky that I happen to stumble upon a mechanic within the area that knew how to work on electric mechanisms."

An alarm clock for an heirloom? Scott mused. "Where's this mechanic?"

The griffon, much to Scott's surprise, was actually kind enough to give him the directions despite seeming like he would be unwilling after being bumped into.

Not long after, Scott arrived in front of the establishment. 'Maximum Repair' was poorly written in red ink on the sign above the door. From within, an 'open' sign was plastered against the door window, and Scott was just about to knock when he saw it. He pushed open the door, and was met with a moderately small shop. Backed up against the walls were shelves filled with mechanical parts of some kind and other miscellaneous objects that had some relation to machinery. Scott, with his lack of knowledge for engineering, couldn't tell if they were actual engineering apparatuses that could be similarly compared to those back on earth or if they worked differently and served comepletely different purposes; he wasn't even sure if the same rules of physics that governed the science behind earth's machineries applied in this dimension.

The counter of the shop seemed to be absent of its cashier, and as Scott got closer, the sound of loud hammering and sawing and other sounds of metal against metal bluring in the background became more apparent.

"Hello?" Scott loudly announced. "Any people in this joint?"

No answer.

Louder, he said, "Knock knock!" whilst knocking twice on the wooden counter.

There was yet an answer, however he noticed that the background noise had stopped.

Assuming his calls had somehow been heard, he decided he'd continue. "You know your, uh, shop is ungaurded?" he said, looking around whilst gesturing his hands around the place (as if he would be seen doing it).

"Come here!" a voice, female, beckoned from somewhere within the room of the open door behind the counter. She sounded busy, but not at all tired.

Scott raised his eyebrows, but approached the counter. Judging by where the voice was coming from, he assumed there was some type of back room workshop to the place where she was working on something. "Over there?" he asked, eyeing the counter that didn't seem to have a door to it.

"Yeah, come here." This time, she wasn't shouting. It was like she didn't care that her voice was only barely hearable—like she was busy with something, and couldn't be bothered to raise her voice twice.

"But the counter doesn't seem to have a—"

"Just jump over it."

"Jump over—" Scott looked around the counter; it was full of things, tools and a few other stuff a counter usually had including, of course, the cash register.

After a few hesitant steps backward, Scott readied himself for the jump of his life. He carefully judged the height and distance of the counter before anything, then made a sprint for it.

He leaped, positioning his hands forward to support himself against the counter for a monkey vault, and then...

He fell flat on his face.

The counter had split apart with a series of mechanical clanks and a hissing of steam to make way for his gullible self.

Through the open door and deeper within, a head peaked out from around a corner. "Actually, it opens by my command. I can't believe you actually tried jumping over it," the owner of the earlier voice said to him.

With a pained groan, Scott stood up, a hand pinching the bridge of his nose. He poked himself inside the room, looking around the messy place, before approaching the creature that had casually went back to her earlier task.

The room, as he'd suspected, was indeed some type of mechanical workshop. Heaps of mechanical parts stacked themselves ungraciously all over the floor; some tools and equipments dangled from above in chains, and Scott swatted them away as he approached closer to the girl.

She sat indian seated, and worked diligently on something he couldn't quite clearly see from where he stood. "No one's posted up front at this place; you're really gonna get your stuff stolen with this style of management," he told her. Sitting there with her back turned to him, she seemed to be using a wrench to tighten the knobs on some sort of mechanical arm which caused Scott to raise his eyebrows as he leaned slightly to the side to get a better look. "I do assume you're the owner of this place, right? I mean, seeing as you're the only one... here." He noticed she was, like he'd learned most of them were, some type of anthropomorphic mammal, a squirrel.

She spun around, looked up to him, and resituated her eye protection goggles to her head. "Yep, that's right," she answered, giving him a greasy cheeked smile. "You weren't what I was expecting," she added, gesturing her wrench to his general direction.

Her fur was matted in grime; she smelled of smoke, burnt metal, and motor oil; her engineering pants were baggy; her gray tank top was no longer just gray, and her working gloves didn't fare any better. It definitely looked like she devoted her lifestyle into all things mechanic, business or no.

He looked back to the room he came from, asking, "Are you really fine with just leaving your stuff out there unatended?"

When he'd asked the question, she'd already turned her attention back to her task, and waved him off with a paw. "Eh, no one comes here anyway. Plus, even if someone did have the guts to steal my stuff, I doubt they'd even know what to make use of it—no one's familiar with mechanics in this place."

"You seem to have already given the answer to that question a lot of thought," Scott noted. Truthfully, he didn't think it was enough of a reason to be so loose on the security of one's bussiness, but he didn't come here to counsel her on her managing skills—plus, what did he know? "So, uh," he gestured to the mechanical arm, "you buildin' a robot?"

Without sparing a glance, she nodded. "Are you my second customer for the month, or are you just feeling lonely and needed someone to talk to?"

For the month? "Actually, I was wondering if you could, uh" he fetched the device from his pocket, and brought it up just right beside her face, "fix this for me?"

She turned her head to it, stopped in her work, and resituated her goggles again. She took it from his hand for closer examination. "Hmm."

Scott didn't know if she would even be familiar with earth technology, but figured it would be worth a shot if it meant there would be even a remote chance that he could contact the lab.

"Is it, uh, something you've ever seen before?" he asked.

"Honestly, I haven't seen anything like it. I'll have to take it apart first—that's if, of course, you'll let me."

"If I let you take it apart...—"

"There's a chance I don't even know what it is, and I would've potentially stopped any chance of it ever functioning again."

But if I don't do anything at all, I'm guaranteed to never have the chance of ever enjoying Shawarma again. "Do it. Take it apart."

"Give me a two days. I can't promise I'll have it fixed by then, but I'll atleast have an answer for your question."

"Which question?"

"If I've seen anything like it."

Scott sighed in relief. It was small, but he was making progress. Up until now he hadn't had an actual plan in terms of getting back home; he wasn't even a hundred percent sure if he'd ever see his mother again, and he can't get himself to venture in the possibility that he wouldn't, but alteast now, he was a step closer to... something.

"One more thing," Scott said, before she could go back to what she was working on. "Earlier, you said I was your second costumer for the month. Also, you said that if someone were to steal your stuff, they'd most likely not be educated enough to make any use of it; now, from where I come from what usually happens is the opposite. Is all this stuff really that... unpopular?— engineering I mean."

"You know, honestly, I wasn't gonna say anything, because I didn't want to be all judgy—and I've learned that the folks in this place are sensitive to that kind of stuff—but something told me that you weren't from around here."

"Was it the beard? It's the beard isn't it," Scott humored, lightly scratching at his stuble.

"Mechanical engineering isn't too popular here because of magic, believe me I know. Crazy, right?"

"Right... so magic makes mechanical engineering unpopular? How does that make sense?"

"I know, right? Exactly my thoughts when I first came to this town. Imagine my surprise when I decided it would be a good idea to run a business in a place that barely has any technology to begin with; turns out, folks here don't care much for things too complex for their tiny brains, and my techy choice of merchendising apparently bogs their inferior minds."

"Crazy," came Scott's half-hearted but misleadingly jovial sounding reply.

"With the way things are right now, I'm barely even able to manage sustaining myself."

"So you're saying: because magic is a lot easier to grasp, people think it's the better choice over technology?"

"Pretty much. You know it's nice to finally meet someone like me in this place for once. You said, from where you come from, people were more dependent on technology—kinda like my hometown, right?"

"I guess you could put it that way."

"I'd like to go there somewhere. Where's this place located anyways?"

"Oh it's just this humble little town somewhere west."

She fished through a box she had lying on the floor, and took a piece of old, rustic paper out.

Of course she has a map. "Oh you won't easily find it on a map. Like I said, it's a humble little town in the west; we don't get too many visitors, and the terrain around it remains mostly uncharted."

She seemed to buy it instantly as she refolds her map, and places it back in her box where she kept a few other things disorderly. "Oh. That's too bad."

"Anyways, I need to head back. I'll check up on it in two days, ok?"

"I'll be here." There was nothing much she could do. She pretty much had zero plans other than finishing her project, and she loved every minute of it.

"By the way, I didn't catch your name," He asks as she goes back to her task.

"It's Rudy."

"Rudy. Great. Thanks, Rudy."

She doesn't spare a glance, and proceeds working.

And just like that, Scott leaves with even more in his mind than he'd initially had when he went out to clear his head.

To think that he'd landed in a full fledged fantasy world where it was just as modern as earth with the huge exception of magic and the absence of humans. All this time, there existed what he assumed were a race of cute little, engineer squirrels.

Scott returned to the hideout with everyone packing up the game. There seemed to be a lack of Sierra in the room, and Scott prompted to ask, "Where's boss lady?"

"Upstairs," answered Henry. There was something wrong. Henry wasn't his usual happier, eager-to-learn, self.

"And you guys are just doing all this cleaning up without her?"

"She's upset," said Abiagail.

"Oh, she's not upset cause I left, is she? I just went out for some fresh air. I promise I didn't replace you with another bounty hunting team."

"No, silly. Kong broke the Wardor figurine," Abigail explained, showing Scott the lower half of the executioner.

"Oh."

"Hence the upset," Henry said.