Hopping Celestial Fox

“Are you really fine?!” Frank told me via voice chat.

“Yes yes. I’m fine. It was just a scratch. Nothing a potion couldn’t fix,” I replied to him with a sigh.

Our scouting mission had been… probably a success. We’d found out that the portal was indeed not only inside the bubble but inside the boss colosseum as well. That was what we’d been there for.

Still, it felt a little bad that we couldn’t get all the way there. Just a single straggling monster took us out. How in the world were we supposed to beat the boss there if we couldn’t even handle one common monster?

“Well, I need to work on my tank skills for next time. Hell, I need a freaking shield or something!”

I recalled the dream for a second again.

“Oh yeah, you actually had a big tower shield in that dream.”

“Wait, really? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?!”

“Well, umm, I thought I did? Maybe I just kinda forgot? There was a lot going on, okay…?”

“Alright. To-do list. Get a freaking shield. Got it. Next thing, I should probably get my level up, and do the quest for water-breathing. That could be helpful.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

With the initial panic finally fading, we went over what had happened and tried to come up with our next move. We definitely didn’t want a repeat.

I heard a beep in my headphones, signifying someone joining our voice chat.

“Guys? I just noticed all the messages. What happened? What’s going on?” Casey asked, sounding a little panicked. She must have noticed the initial freak-out message from Frank in our group chat.

“Well…”

We proceeded to tell her about the bubble, the portal, and the monster that had almost killed me.

“Jesus Christ! Why did you enter it?! Didn’t we agree that you can’t respawn if you die?!”

“I… uh, yeah. I didn’t think it would be that dangerous,” I awkwardly replied.

“I mean, it was marked as an end game area… But I thought that just meant the boss would be really hard, not the minions too!” Frank quipped.

“Frank… That kind of mindset will get us killed!”

Casey chewed us out for a good few minutes before calming down. I couldn’t help but feel guilty for freaking her out this much. And yes, despite my posturing, I was fairly rattled about almost getting killed.

“Okay… alright. Lesson learned, I guess. You won’t see me charging head first into a dangerous situation unprepared again.”

Casey sighed.

“Fine,” she finally relented. “So what now? And don’t tell me you plan on going back there tomorrow.”

“Oh hell no! We’ll need to train for that! Preferably with some montage music playing in the background,” Frank replied, humor returning to his tone.

“How about we try a different portal first? You said there’s a lot of them, right?”

“Yeah there is…” I took a moment to recall the ones I remembered. “There’s one at our gym hall, one near a grocery store, one in the park… There’s a couple more that I remember, but those are the closest ones.”

“Soo, in other words, places we can’t get to discreetly. Well, unless you’re up for breaking into our school at night or something,” Frank said.

“Well, there’s still the portals in the game world. These should be easier to access discreetly, right?”

“Right… I don’t know exactly where those are, though. Except the one in the bubble, at least.”

“I mean, there’s no way all the portals are in death zones, right? We can go on another adventure!”

“Frank…”

“What? That was a new area, we didn’t know. The rest of the game shouldn’t be a problem!”

Another sigh from Casey. “I guess so. But I’m going with you two next time.”

“Of course! With you in the party, there’s nothing to fear!” Frank proclaimed with an almost audible grin in his voice. “By the way, how is your spying mission going?”

“Well… There really isn’t much to say. Either they are really good at hiding their true nature, or they really are just normal game developers.”

“Hmm… nothing is suspicious? That’s very suspicious.”

Casey ignored Frank’s comment. “One of the dev teams is doing a Q&A session on Saturday. I thought of using that somehow. Not quite sure how though.”

“Oooh! Let them accidentally out themselves!” Frank then pitched his voice higher. “Hey! Imagine, what if you could enter your game world for real rather than just with VR?” His pitch then dropped. “Hahaha, I don’t need to imagine! Oh, Whoops!”

I facepalmed at that.

“Or something like that! You know?”

“I mean… we could try, I guess. I doubt they’ll just slip up, though, considering they’ve been so good at hiding everything,” I said. “You said it was on Saturday, right? That means we have a few days to explore other portals. We might find something in the meantime.”

“True.”

“Oooh yeah, guys! I nearly forgot!”

“What’s up?”

“We need to come up with a cool team name!”

I opened my mouth, then closed my eyes and sighed. “Really? You bring that up now?”

“When else? No time like the present!”

“What’s with this team name now?” Casey asked.

“Frank thought we should have a team name as the rebel army going against evil dev gods… or something.”

“Oh… I guess…?” Casey didn’t seem impressed either.

“Alright, any amazing ideas?”

“No?”

“Not really?”

“Then here’s my pitch! How about… Fellowship of the Hopping Celestial Fox!”

“The… what?”

“It refers to you, our mighty leader!”

“Err…”

“Hopping, as in, World-hopping. Celestial, as in, you’re probably some god in disguise, all things considered…”

I sputtered at that.

“And… well, fox. That one is obvious.”

“Hold on, what do you mean god in disguise?” Casey asked.

“Oh yeah, you weren’t there when we talked about it…” Frank said. “I had another theory when we saw the bubble. Maybe the devs actually created the game world, and are fully aware that it’s a real world and not just a game!”

“Well… that could be true, I guess. But what does that have to do with…?”

“But! The devs just couldn’t create true life! And that’s when our friend comes in! H- She has the power to turn NPCs into real people! Sounds like a godly power to me!”

A moment of silence followed.

“... Are you a god in disguise?” Casey asked.

“I… I’m not? I don’t know! I don’t remember being a god!”

“Alright, got it! You’re the reincarnation of some goddess! But you lost your memories along the way!”

I groaned. I should stop humoring Frank’s wild theories. They were getting really weird.

“Anyway, what do you two think about the name?”

“It… uh, it’s cool?” Casey said.

“Err… it’s alright?”

It was kind of a weird name.

“Alright! It’s decided then! Our rebel army shall henceforth be called Fellowship of the Hopping Celestial Fox!”

Yeah, it was a really weird name.