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THE CHRONICLES OF FINALGAMER Love Shall Win "I look at you and see the rest of my life in front of my eyes." Unknown

In the midst of a thundering darkness, two creatures ran through the muddy streets with desperation. Rain battered down across their dome-shaped heads glistening white amidst the storm as they dodged through the streets narrowing before their very eyes. They struggled to rest upon a corner leaning against a solid brick wall of an old destroyed house, claws streaked by a deep gaping wound upon the former remnants of the structure. The short creatures with human faces of a simplistic design of button eyes and mouth, beneath white stridant caps perfectly shroom-like upon their heads were gasping with fear, one of them wounded severely with scars down his hands. "W-w-we have to get out! We can't-" "J-j-just calm down we got time we-" "WE DON'T GOT ANY TIME LEFT, THAT THING IS GONNA EAT US!" "CAN IT! I just...I just need sumthin' first." "You can't go back there. It...i-it's too dangerous!" "I have to. I need to remember what she looked like, it's the only thing I have left of her." "You're insane!" "YOU'RE insane, you created all this!" "I NEVER MEANT THIS TO HAPPEN! I swear by the Stars I never meant this, this...THING to come out from the laboratory." "Well it's your mistake. We'll get through this together but you let me make my mistakes too, because I got no reason to save your butt if that monster comes running." "YOU CAN'T JUST LEAVE ME HERE!" The one that was wounded suddenly grabbed his feverish comrade pushing him up against the wall by the vest, sneering into his eyes. "I...can do whatever I want, Fows. T. I'M not the one who dirtied his hand in all this, I just had a normal day, I had everything I wanted...but YOU wanted to play monster maker. Well you got your wish doctor, and now we're all paying for it." "RUFF-RUFF!" "J-JEEZ!" The viewer was startled by a noise coming from his right as something barked up from the floor, a black sentient ball of iron skin with sharp white teeth and clear simple-minded eyes barking towards the window. The wind was starting to pick up as the koopa turned his head with a disgruntled look, his yellow beak and right blue eye glinting in the light of the television with his left side hidden in the dark. "Charlie, it's just the wind, please." "RUFF WUFF! RUFF!" "Charlieeeee...come on. Come here." He patted on the sofa next to him trying to beckon the chain-chomp over but he wouldn't move. Growling with the scent of something, the koopa simply rolled his eyes and turned back towards the television watching the two toads frantically run throughout the darkened city. Ruins from around them, the fountain desiccated with a sombre look of a child's toy left upon the side rim. Giant molehills seemed to cover the length of the city square, piling up in thickening mounds of loosened dirt as the scientist murmured: "Wh-what if...what if they're still here?" "Then we have to run," said the wounded toad. "You can't run in your condition!" "I'm not letting that stop me." "...we have to find the boats...we need-" "We'll get to the boats when I get my daughter's memories back." "I wish-what was that?!" Trembling soil rustled from one of the mounds next to them. Then another, then three before soon every single one of the mountainous dirt hills was starting to fall and shudder with something coming. The ragged toad grabbed his friend's back. "Go. Now." They ran fast as they could, but would it be enough? Suddenly thick earth pounded upon their shroom-capped heads from behind as something shrieked with a violent cry as they dared not turn back. Something monstrous cast its shadow across them, thick and bulbous like a tentacle with a vicious spiked point upon its head. The camera panned as soon as they cut a corner through the streets, keeping the monster's face away as the tension grew, panicking the viewer with an instinctive unease from the shadow turning larger tearing across the street gravel. But it would all soon be lost when they found themselves at a dead end. They turned towards their fate as the monster rose itself up before its prey. A screeching centipede-like creature with the face of a koopa warped and melting, its beak twisted into a sharpening point like a spear. In that moment, there came a knock on the door. "WHU-HHHH!" The koopa jumped, almost yelping before he stifled his breath panicking suddenly as his heart raced, with Charlie barking in response almost before the koopa could breathe. The chain chomp barged itself towards the door barking defensively as the koopa paused his movie as he murmured under his breath. "Wh-who...WHO the heck is out in this weather I swear to stars..." He knew he had reasons to distrust any night visitors as he braced himself, looking towards Charlie with a firm nod and motioning him to go for it the moment he could. He braced his other hand into a firm fist as he opened the door swinging fast as the chain chomp jumped out at the shadow. " RUFF-RUFF!" Charlie piled into the doorstep as the shadow dodged forwards with a straightened pounce right over the chain chomp before piling into the koopa knocking him down onto the floor. He reacted almost instantly with a solid hook cracking across the intruder's jaw before shoving him off with furious strength against the inside of the door. "GET, OFF OF ME!" The TV's staticky light wasn't enough to reveal the shadow in the sudden fight as the koopa readied himself for another attack, watching the stumbling visitor groan with his head banged against the doorjamb. "WHO ARE YOU!? You better tell me or else I'll sic my chomp on you, cummere Charlie! CHARLIE!" Like a guard attentive the chain chomp bounced his way back in but upon seeing the visitor's hand out on the doorstep he became curious and sniffed at it. He suddenly began panting with happiness on his face, wagging his chain behind him like a tail as he hopped straight onto the darkened form and began slobbering him with his thick tongue. "Ch-charlie?! What are you doing?!" "H-h-hey, get off!" said the shadow. "C-c-come on, Charlie l-let me, let me jus-FUCK'S SAKE Charlie!" "...fu-...h-huh?!" Gently moving towards the light switch, he turned it on. The moment he did his heart stopped beating in a quelling shock as his lungs caught themselves suddenly. Lying upon the floor, pressed up against the door closing, was a familiar-looking creature that never existed anywhere else in his world. A brown velociraptor with green eyes and purple markings, looking dazed with a new bruise on his cheek being covered in saliva shining from Charlie's tongue. Koopin himself was looking worse for wear with a white cotton patch covering his left eye swollen with purple ring around the socket. "......J-...J-j-j......J-james?" "Hhhh...I uh...g-god, it......are you alri-...s-sorry it's hard to-Charlie please." But Charlie was not having it, nuzzling against the raptor with the happiest whining sound he could make as he wrapped his arms around the feisty boy. Koopin fell to his knees from being simply overwhelmed with several emotions all at once, and all he could do was crawl forwards softly. Slowly, wanting to make certain that he wasn't hallucinating. His hand reached out, pudgy and yellow to stroke across James' cheek. Smooth scaled texture like pebbles locked fiercely together just as he always remembered it. His hand was shaking until James grabbed it for him. "Hey...um...h-hi...Koopin." He had no idea what to say. Neither did FG as he slowly pulled Koopin close into an embrace with Charlie. They said nothing for the next two minutes before it suddenly came to him, and Koopin broke down into tears against James' chest, bare like always. James followed suit, smiling up towards the ceiling with eyes watering like clear slices of watermelon green as the forest. They struggled to speak, saying half-words and gasping with sudden chokes of each other's voice before Koopin finally could. "You...y-y-y-you're...is it...really you?" "I...I hope so," said FG, "that's kind of a...w-weird thing to say I mea-hean?" "Oh...oh my...s-stars, James...ohhhh stars."

He couldn't stop himself even if he wanted to. Neither could James as Koopin thrust his face forwards and pressed lips against James' own panting with hot breaths down his beloved's throat. The raptor pulled him close with one hand round his head and embraced him deeper. Their tongues did not move for at least a few seconds simply waiting to feel the other's warmth, before the gentlest of suckling sounds came from each other's throats moaning sweetly. They almost tasted their tears mixing across the bridge of their snouts until they parted gasping. "Please...t-tell me this is real," whimpered Koopin. "T-tell me...tell me it-" "Was that not...proof for you?" "I-it just...just, this...th-th-this...always happens, e-every dream I have involving you...we're always like this...d-d-don't...p-p-please don't leave me again..." James stifled his tears for Koopin's frayed panic as he pulled him close to his chest, breathing in deep as the younger koopa felt his heartbeat pulsing thickly from within his lover's body. The warm breaths rumbled against his ear until they both managed to stop crying with hiccuping lungs and reddened eyes as Koopin slowly stood up, taking James' hand with him. The raptor stood up slowly, staggering slightly weak with a wincing sting on his right cheek that he rubbed. "Hhhheheh...kept your training up I see." "O-o-oh...d-dammit I just, I thought you were s-somebody, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, I-" "Hey...it's alright, not like you weren't defending yourself but uh not as bad as you...what happened?" "I um...th-that's a long story." Koopin became conscious all of a sudden for his cotton eyepatch, rubbing it gently as the raptor came close to kiss him on the beak. "Tell me later...I just wanna stay here for the rest of my life...if that's okay?" "Y-y-y-yes...oh...ohhh jeez, I hope it's real, I can't do this again." "Is this a way I can prove it's real?" He pulled out from his satchel something that Koopin would never expect to see. It was a little worn, the edges were frayed and marked with dirt, but it was almost perfectly the same photo that he had given him. The texture around James' face smiling before him was oddly much cleaner than his copy even, as if someone had been scrubbing at it rigorously before his smile widened. He felt his eyes turning moist again as he clutched the photo to his chest. "You...you kept it...you managed to...even after...oh...now I know it has to be." "What are you saying?" "Th-that...and all those, I could...oh, J-james." Becoming just aware of his lover's body, he pointed towards James' many scars and thicker welts rippling across his chest. There were some that went far deeper than he could imagine, some of which were burns and strange blackened marks, but the worst he saw were the lean but aged perforations stretching over his belly scales. Koopin had read enough stories of wayward travellers to know what it meant. "Th-th-those weren't...on you before. Oh my stars I am so...s-s-sorry, h-how did it even...what...what happened to you, wh-what did they DO to you?" "Hey, hey...shhhh, it's okay. Come on...touch them, they don't hurt me anymore. Go on, prove to yourself I'm real." "I...don't, it...I mean-" "Just think of it like a story...a story about all the things I did." He took Koopin's hand and placed it upon his chest, softly letting him touch each and every scar he could note on his body, remembering at least most of them. "That one was a dude with a flaming sword. This one is when a monster tried to bite me. This one was when someone tried to burn me and that one just recent was when a guy stomped on my chest with a boot." "H-h-h-hhhhhh...I-i-i...I can't...believe, I'm just trying to, oh gosh...wait. W-w-wait a minute." His yellow hand went up towards James' left shoulder, feeling across the newer flesh with an odd lining that set apart a different stroke from the rest of James' body as he noted another texture. "What is...what's wrong with this, James? Are you alri-...what is that?" The raptor looked solemn for a moment with a heavy sigh as he steadied his nerve to tell him. "That's where my arm...used to be." "......wh-wh-what?" "They got a replacement for me...back about three years ago, maybe?" "Replace...no. N-n-n-no, no it's not-...o-oh no! No!" Koopin grabbed at his left arm and pulled it against his face whimpering with tears as the raptor brushed his claws upon his cheek. He suddenly had an urge to kiss it and try to heal it in a vain but sweet effort to nurture his wounds as James simply smiled bashfully, feeling more upset to see his dearest shuddering next to his replicated limb. "You know what...the worst part of it was?" "Wh-wh-what? Wh-what could be...a-any worse than losing...wh-what monster did this to you?" "There was only one wound that ever hurt me most. Here." James placed Koopin's hand back onto his chest, pressing it directly above the heart. "Right here. The day I left you, it gave me made a wound in me that would never heal...until this day." All it did was make Koopin break into a stifling chuckle as he wiped his tears with a little help from James' left hand, feeling it to be slightly colder than the rest of his body but not by too much, whimpering as he gulped his breaths back to ask him: "Did you manage to...to fix...everything?" "Almost. Almost everything...but I'm home with you Koopin...I want to be here at home with you, if you still want...to be with me." "Of course I do. Y-y-y-you think, that I waited for four-and-a-half years just to turn you away? I-i would never do that, not after all that we've gone through." "I...I know Koopin, I just wanted to not pressure you. I'm...I really want to stay with you, but I don't want to force you to do anything you don't want to do-" "I want you to stay. Please. P-please promise me one thing." "Alright...what?" Koopin took his hand gently as he pulled him up. "Come to bed with me. Don't...don't leave me to wake up with an empty bed. I want you to be the first thing I see when it's morning again." "Oh...okay. I promise I won't leave your side. Come on." James pulled him close to his side as Charlie followed from behind still panting with happiness. "Let's go sleep."

He woke up the next day, fearful of what he would see. That last night had become so vivid to him, that he remembered every single trickling of his emotions across his face ranging from surprise to joy to disbelief and fearful sorrow. He cast his eyes upwards, saw his ceiling yellow like always. He saw the living room ahead of his bedroom with the bathroom to his right with but a shower, sink and lavatory. He turned slowly to his left as he bit his lip, the birds' morning chorus chirruping not far towards the great forest near his home. "Morning." There was a smile to greet him. A large toothy grin showing pointed canines like a shark pup's teeth, within a snout of scaly brown and purple marks with two clear green eyes glistening upon him. Koopin was so overwhelmed with relief he almost fell right back into sleep from emotional exhaustion as he sighed falling his head back into the pillowcase. "It's not...it's not a dream. It wasn't a dream." "Mmmmnope," said FG. "I made a promise. Was tired as hell but I slept good...the first good sleep I ever had in years." "H-how long...oh...I just want..." Koopin simply pulled him close, his arms wrapped round of James' neck and desperately clutching him with eyes clenched shut in his blissful need to feel his warmth against him. The raptor hugged him back, seeing Koopin had become too tired from last night to even take off his shell, chuckling at the cumbersome grip he had to make. He still had the cotton patch on his eye. "You were watching a movie all night?" "Y-y-yeah...I was just...did I turn it off?" "You did, I remember." "It wasn't...hhhhh...ohhhh...stars I'm so glad, I mean I've been waiting for this...hhhhhoh." "Hmmmmm...I know...I've been waiting for this too. I love you." They pulled back from their embrace to stare at each other's eyes before Koopin said: "I love you too. James." A kiss was all it took to seal it between them, locking their lips into a tender smooch which soon opened the way to a deepened sweet suckling of their tongues briefly to taste their love towards each other as they gasped silently. With blushing smiles as if it were their first date all over again, Koopin couldn't help but bring himself to ask: "How...long were you awake for?" "Said sixteen minutes," replied FG, "on the clock you've got anyway." "You didn't...try to wake me?" "I didn't wanna wake you, you looked all tired plus that eye, you wanna heal up on it." "OH...jeez I forgot about this." He rubbed his cotton patch tenderly but still it stung enough for him to keep it away. "You really worry about me with this, I mean you lost...you lost a whole limb." "That was long ago, I mean...I got over it, trust me, it took ages but I did." "How long did...did it take?" "About a year. Heh, half of that was me recovering on a bed in a weird hospital. The other half was me just getting my head down and just moving on with life." "H-how could you have...I mean, I guess it would be better than just having some wooden thing but still I mean, I'm sorry I-i-i just can't get...get over this." "You get used to it. Trust me, you will." "Alright then," murmured Koopin. "Do you want...it-um...gosh this is so weird." "What?" asked James lifting his head up with his arm. "You being back here...I-i just...ohhhhh and I punched you in the face, the FIRST THING I do when you come back-" "Yeaaaaaah that was a real surprise, first Charlie ambushed me then I fall on top of you and you clock me, what the fuck?!" "D-DON'T...use that, word-okay fine you're allowed it gosh did I hurt you?" "Pfffft, nah. Not worse than a boot to the face that's for sure." "I'm...I'm sorry." Koopin put his head into his hands all completely jumbled up in his thoughts. "I-i-i just, there's been so much, I wanna explain to you." "What matters is that you're safe. And I'm here now safe with you, and even more I know that I never even needed to worry about you." "R-r-really?" "Yeah, I mean the first thing you did thinking I was an intruder was gimme a solid hook, that made me feel kinda happy knowing that you clearly managed to keep looking after yourself." "Hhhahahaha...u-u-um...well, it...I guess, you're right um, do you, need...something? Like, food?" "Yes...I'd love to have something thank you." "Okay...I'll uh just...d-don't go anywhere, okay James?" "You gonna serve breakfast in bed?" James smiled as he put his hands behind his head against the bedrest chuckling neatly whilst Koopin slipped free from his sheets. "I-i-i suppose I should...I mean after all you've been through I just-um...would bacon and eggs do?" "That's perfect, thank you." Heading into the kitchen, Koopin slowly disappeared from sight as he went through to the living room then made a right into the kitchen just before he reached the sofa. His hands were weary yet still they shook as he began to prep the cooker top with streaks of bacon and fried eggs before crying out: "Can you...do me a favour?!" "Yeah?! What?!" "Could you...um...keep talking while I'm here?!" "Something wrong?!" "No no I just...I-i-i-i just......hhhhh what am I doing?" His voice turned quiet as he watched breakfast sizzle before him, a few tears splashing into the cooking oil of the pan before he felt someone's arms wrap around his body from behind. Gasping from the touch, he heard James' voice whisper into his ear with a gentle kiss. "I'm here for you...what's wrong?" "I-i-i...s-sorry...I keep...I was starting to worry you were gone for so long that...I'm afraid I'm going to wake up andthisisnthappening..." James hugged him tighter, puling his arms completely around his waist. Gently rocking him back and forth, he helped Koopin calm down simply savouring his lover's heat pressing against him, the shell making it so only his claws managed to reach as he pressed his head on the back of Koopin's neck as he continued mumbling fearfully. "Y-y-you take me...to our bed, we kiss, we sometimes make love...then we sleep but when I wake up you...you aren't there...I still wake up to an empty bed, and I'm afraid...th-that I'm going to...wake up again..." "Ohhh god...Koopin...I'm so sorry." "N-no...you're not the one who keeps...hurting yourself with these dreams." "Shhhhh...it's okay...come on, let's eat." Eventually breakfast was ready, and so the two retreated to their bed to eat on plates balanced on their legs which were hidden underneath the blanket. The raptor tucked in rather gladly as if he hadn't eaten for a week savouring the selection of spices Koopin gave to the easy breakfast. "Mmmmm...so good," murmured FG. "How long since you eaten?" asked Koopin. "I had pizza yesterday, with Sarah and her friends." "Oh...wait, Sarah you...you got back home?" "Heheh yeah...took me a few years but I finally did it. I have a lot of stuff to show you whenever you're up for it." "Show me? You brought me souvenirs?" "Oh I totally have, I found a lot of stuff you may like from other places, if you wanted." "Th-that...that would be amazing, I-i-i would love to see!" "Alright then, after breakfast." "RUFF RUFF!" Charlie was panting at the bottom of the bed looking fiendishly ready to jump, but before James could stop him Koopin shouted with a stern authority: "Charlie! Off!" The chain chomp suddenly pulled back with obedience that surprised both him and James who simply chuckled in startlement. "Hohoho wow...Koopin you really took charge around here." "I had to teach him a few things, managed to get that down at least." "Yeah I remember we had problems trying to eat in bed because he would keep jumping in." "Or when his daddies are 'wrestling' as you like to call it." "We can't talk about ess-eee-ex around the child Koopin." James rolled his eyes with judging tuts as the koopa giggled up at him, softly sighing as he felt his fears starting to melt away. Once they were done with breakfast, they took a shower together to clear all the dirt and any of Charlie's spit from last night. Koopin had to take his patch and shell off showing James his own bruises, a swelling mark of indigo pulsing over Koopin's left eye that turned James bitter at the sight of it. He also saw on Koopin's body some marks in the form of hefty bodyblows not unlike that of a boxer's wounds, along with some rather disturbing scratchmarks raking down his right arm. It took him a great level of restraint to keep his anger checked as he rubbed along the scars and bruises murmuring: "......who did this to you?" "Bad people," said Koopin with an awkward smile, "you should see what THEY look like." "Hhheheheh...god...are you...is anything...are you alright?" "They'll heal, this wasn't that long back, don't worry about it." "You worried all over me last night with my scars now lemme worry about you." "Okay." The raptor washed his lover with a bar of soap from the side kissing him as their bodies grinded nakedly against each other. Neither of them became hard due to their worries and exhaustion, but James slowly rubbed his lathering hands all over Koopin's bruises as he gasped and winced. Everytime he did James would kiss him until they couldn't resist a much deeper embrace, pulling closely with their mouths together again as the koopa slightly lifted himself onto his toes to reach his lips fully. Their eyes closed as the warm water rushed down their skin, their quivering members beginning to pulse with a needful love. "I missed you," whispered Koopin, "you h-have no idea..." "I know," said James, "can I ask...something?" "What?" "......do you forgive me?" "...what?" "For...for what I did. Everything." "Yes. Yes I...I do. I-i-i mean...all these scars, all your...your arm, h-how can I-...you don't deserve any of this." "Okay...I just......thank you for waiting. Did they...did those bad people do those scars too on you?" "...no. That was...s-something else." "Huh?" "I'll...tell you all about it later." "Okay."

The two hugged tightly to let the water slicken between their chests before cleaning up fully. Koopin lended James a pair of his own boxers whilst his own clothes were still cleaning out by themselves next to his side of the bed, as they sat down and watched TV. The morning news and weather was on, daytime becoming the chewing gum of people's minds as various presenters sat on odd ergonomically-stylish sofas in brickwork studios with impressive vistas of a city behind them. All this presentation to talk about studies involving chocolate as they cuddled together in peace. "You don't have any work?" asked James. "No...not today, I'm still off for about a week." "Heh, lucky I timed it huh?" "Yeah actually...mmmmm..." They were afraid of speaking too much to disturb the peace of a longful warm easy morning as two toads and a goomba were explaining the science of chocolate for those who never passed high school. James did not care, he simply enjoyed the warm voices and light-hearted conversation to make it feel as if there was another voice in the room whenever Koopin was uncertain to speak. It was perfect. Tranquil. He started to understand Koopin's fears of this being a dream as it crept into his own head too feeling that this was all too perfect. He was only glad that he had slept already so his eyes had no reason to feel heavy. They weren't even paying attention to what was being talked about despite the occasional shots of delicious-looking chocolate amidst survey quotes that had them wondering if this wasn't some thin-veiled excuse to advertise free chocolate. But they said nothing apart from licking their lips softly, not wanting to say what the other might be thinking at this point to not appear weak to the media's ploy. Eventually the raptor asked softly whilst leaning his head towards him: "You wanna just...stay inside the entire day and not...do anything?" "I'm so glad you said that," murmured Koopin, "I was just thinking the same thing." "You have no reason to get out? No food, no visiting?" "Nope. I had all my food stocked when I came off just in case...I don't think I have any arrangements for the whole week so...I'm yours." "Thank. God, cuz I needed you so badly." "Ohhhh same here. Hhhhhmmmmph..." He pulled him closer until Koopin's head was resting against his chest. The raptor occasionally looked up and around him to see the walls were more decorated than before with photographs and certificates. Koopin's parents were of course there smiling away in the backdrop of their desert town, a small group of mixed creatures from presumably his workplace along with a very awkward-looking shy guy that stood close to Koopin in one shot on a tropical distant jungle. His tour guide certificate was there like it had always been along with his toad-kwon-do certificate showing his impressive rank, but there also stood new athletic records stating he won seventh place in the Dry Dry Desert Marathon, as well as second in the Crescent Island Climb. He was surprised considering Koopin did not appear to be much more muscled than he was previously, still with that adorable pudge on his belly but groping his arms a little proved him otherwise for they were indeed quite firm and thick underneath the skin. Not as squishy as they had once been. "Somebody's gotten good at staying sexy." "Heehehee! You like them?" "Oh yeah, I saw your certificates, that's pretty amazing." "Heheh...well I had to keep busy, I-i mean...it was a hard fight after you left and I had to...push through a lot of things." He gave a crestfallen look upon Koopin in sympathy. "I'm sorry." "No no, I...was just saying that was my reason to keep pushing, so I wouldn't stop and think." "I know. I understand, I did the same thing too. How's your parents?" "They're good! Mom's still at home but occasionally gets like a chance to kick back into the big concerts and such from old contacts, so that's always fun. Dad's still running his shop, did you know he used to do wrestling in high school?" "Hah, no way!" cried FG. "Yeah, I sorta forgot about that but it came up kinda recently, he wanted to call himself the Iron Shell but eventually his parents sorta pulled him into the family business." "He ever miss it or regret not doing it?" "Not really, I think he always kinda knew he wasn't really that strong." "That's no reason to stop, you can always just practice and get stronger 'til you do." "I guess..." As normalcy began to hit them fully once again by a slow release, sliding back into their old rhythmic beats of mundanity in a cosy little house in a cosy little village, it was as if his entire journey had been nothing but an old fading memory. It was a happy feeling, one that allowed his muscles to relax completely for the first time in several years as he then ventured to ask: "You wanna see what I got you?" "Uh...later, if that's okay, I kinda wanna see the end of this now...need to let my head wake up a bit before I start hearing you telling me all about weird stuff from other worlds." "There's a lot I admit, but I'll keep it swift." "No...please, tell me everything." Koopin pressed a hand on James' lap as he stared up at him. "I wanna hear all the stuff you did, what you've gone through, at least as much as you want to tell me." "Alright. Let's watch this first." After the programme was over, James and Koopin retreated back towards the bedroom after grabbing some chocolate from the fridge and sharing a bar between themselves as they sat up on the bed. He brought over his satchel that he had placed hanging on the wardrobe on his side of the room, the scissors also sitting rather peacefully against the wall as Koopin shuddered upon realisation asking: "W-w-wait, wait what about......you-know-who?" "Oh, Him? Pfffft, lemme tell you about how I kicked his ass HARD to the kerb hohooooo boy." "You...y-y-you actually...have you stopped him?! You actually beat him?!" "Let's...not get too ahead of ourselves, I wanna tell you alllll about what I've been up to since I left." "Alright...I-i mean, I've got nowhere else to go and I don't want to be anywhere else but is he...that THING actually gone?" "Gone enough, he won't be bothering us any longer." "Ohhhh thank the stars...ohhh gosh James I'm so glad to hear that." "Well hold on, lemme just...get you up to speed cuz I got a LOT of things to tell you, are you ready?" "...yes, hokay!" He slapped his knees with anticipation for a good story before he put his hand up. "I'm ready, just! No stories that are TOO violent, alright?" "Alrighty well let's see, after you left, I wandered around a few places, then I came back, the end." "Wha-...JAMES!" "What, you said nothing too violent, I couldn't tell you-" "C-come on, don't tease me like that pleaaaase!" "Okay okaaaaay...hahaha, it's fine, it wasn't THAT horrible, actually there was a lotta good parts so...first off, I have some souvenirs but I wanna show you them when it's part of the story I'm about to tell you." "Ah huh, oh jeez I'm all excited now, I-i-i-i mean you're back and that's wonderful but I get to hear about all these places and...actually, if I'm honest...I'm...kinda maybe a bit jealous of you." "A bit?" "...okay, a LOT, I mean, you told me before about all these places you've been to and now you've got MORE to tell me. So...tell me. I know that all these travels weren't always the best I always wished I could...travel along with you and see the sights." "I would have loved you alongside me but...to be honest, I would be so terrified of things happening to you." "How do you think I feel? I don't even know what's out there." Koopin rubbed his arm tenderly in a shameful admittance, torn between eagerness to listen and a mounting jealousy as the raptor giggled at such, chewing on his chocolate before he started.

"So after I left," began James, "I ended up on an island known as Myst, with a why, not the letter aye." "Ah huh." "I had a dream before I left about this place, someone was guiding me to it and I'm not really sure why, at least not at the time, and I found this weird little place, with like a boat and maybe a clock tower and this small library. But one of the books was a trap and I got sucked inside of it and ended up in a prison." "Oh jeez, really?! You got tricked by a magic book?!" "I wasn't tricked! I just gone and picked the wrong book, anyways, there's this asshole wizard an-...sorry, jerk wizard I mean, and he was basically imprisoning all these different creatures from every world that he could find in order to feed off of us to make this magic spell so he would become immortal. Yeah I don't even know how that works either but-" "No that makes sense. Twisted but it makes sense, magic requires a lot of spirit and some more...dark fiendish arts have involved um...other souls so uh-" "Right, so...he had this anti-magic barrier on everyone so nobody could escape, except I was not using ANY magic because of my nanos, it's all science technically so I bust my way out of there, then start breaking people free!" "You broke out of a magic prison!? ...gosh." Koopin blushed with pride overwhelming before FG. "I always said you were a hero." "Well I got better thanks to you. If it wasn't for you I would not have made anywhere near as far as I did." He patted the koopa's hand with a smile in return as he continued. "So we all started breaking free, I made friends with these two birds who were also great wizards, and this mole guy who was a brawler and all of these...lemming guys who were all suffering and blinded by this evil wizard's magic. So we all started leading them to safety, rallied up, beat the wizard with his own magic and freed everybody! I wasn't really that much help other than the fact I broke people free, all the real stuff came out of the friends I made." "That's awesome...what happened to them after, did they all get back home?" "Most of them did...not all of them made it out but...we tried." "I'm sorry." "It's fine..." An awkward apologetic grin came over his face as he moved onto the next world. "So I get another clue, from the same person in my dreams like kind of a mystic thing, towards this island called Kanto. And it was a beautiful place, it was this island big as the Mushroom Kingdom but with all these towns and cities full of humans. JUST humans, but they also had all these animals called Pokemon." "Poh-keh-mon?" asked Koopin. "Yeah, there's like hundreds of them all these different creatures that live out in the wild, and on this island the humans create bonds with them in order to build a society. They're given a pokemon when young to become best friends with, and so those two go out into the wild, fight and challenge other pokemon and win them over with strength to become friends." "So they're like...pets, like Charlie?" "Not exactly, they're kinda more than that, definitely a much deeper connection, some of them can talk, most of them are pretty smart and seem to know what people are saying to them." "Right, like Charlie." The raptor looked over towards the dumb sweet eyes of the chain chomp looking up at him perfectly with idolisation, like all good pets do towards their most beloved in life as James gently patted him. "Alright, you made your point, so...I made friends with one of them, a ghost type called Kirie. She told me that she was the one who was calling me through my dreams, across dimensions because-" "Ghost, right, like the Boos." "Exactly, and she had a mission for me. She wanted to help me solve a murder, one of her friends got killed by a human and she wanted me to find out." "Wait...um...why would she ask someone not even from her world instead of...a person?" "Because she went wandering across dimensions, other places for years and um...she spotted me and I guess she kind of felt a connection to me? I'm not sure honestly, but she chose me and I said sure okay might as well so we brought up a team together, all seven of us. There was her, me, Red, Spike, Sarah, not my Sarah, Shin and Isaac. Red was this big fierce dragon dude about the size of me, like a real buff dude kind of a bro, Spike was this um...giant wasp dude, he was always very much focused on fighting guys, never had much else to enjoy, kind of a single-minded guy." "This is some team...you got a photo or something?" "I wish, I woulda loved to show you them but uh...anyways, Sarah, this other Sarah was a biiiig beautiful old lady of the sea, like a big...koopa with a long neck and blue skin and a hard grey shell but had only flippers instead of feet. She was nice but sort of uh...well, old and hitting her twilight years, she was very sweet around kids though, loved them. Shin was this scary guy that looked like a yoshi but with wings like a giant insect and these big scythe-shaped hands, like huuuuuge blades that would slice the grass every time he walked." "Woah jeez! Like...blades on his hands?" "No no his blades WERE hands, I mean his hands were blades, he was very much like a warrior, very focused on cutting them down, fast as possible, pure professional. And then there was Isaac. He was this...cute little reptile boy, about this high, he had a bone club, swinging it around like he was some big hero, all happy and cheerful he was gonna be on a big...adventure with somebody. His mom was a friend of Kirie and well...she was the friend that got killed." "Ohhhh no," gasped Koopin, "that...that's so horrible, who would do that?! And you took this little kid because he had nobody?" "I guess because he reminded me of myself when I was little...I think. But still, he was very sweet, I really liked him a lot. So we all managed to go through at least a month together, and then we found the killer, he was this jerk hiding out in a big base way off at sea and then we took him down and sent him over to the police. He got his sentence, the case was cleared and everybody got to go home." "I bet Isaac and Kirie must have felt so relieved but...why did you take this kid with you?" "He wanted to! Kirie said it was okay as well, he was a good kid. They...managed to find peace and I'm pretty sure Isaac is much happier now wherever he is. When I had to move on, my pokemon decided to stay in this nice park where they'd be looked after by some good people." "Awww that's good......are you okay?" "Huh?" "Just..." Koopin gently moved forwards with a brushing finger across James' eye as a small tear trickled out. "If this is getting a bit emotional for you we can stop." "No no, I'm...I'm fine, I'm more just...well, happy to be here with you and sharing all these stories." "Oh good. Cuz I mean I know we got all day to do this but I uh-" "I'm good to go if you are."

James grinned with shining optimism that gave Koopin the very same infectiously, smiling back at him as his boyfriend continued with his smile slowly starting to fade. "So the next part isn't...great, the next place was really...I was having problems with...him." He motioned his head behind him towards the scissors as he clasped his hands together rather fearfully. "And I ended up in this bad city, a place called Raccoon City that was full of humans and everything had gone to shit." "James." "S-sorry...just this next part is gonna be a little rough, I'll try not to be too...descriptive. So...I lost myself in that place...when I woke up I dunno how many hours went past, I was certain that he had done something terrible to a lot of people and I was just starting to move forwards trying to ignore what could have happened before I heard someone crying out for help. In an alley, this kid was about to be attacked by monsters, so I managed to save him. He was this scared little kid, maybe about ten or so and he had nobody. He had just gotten out of school when everything had gone insane in his home city." "Oh stars...wh-what kind of monsters?" "Sorta...zombies?" "......zombies? Like, in the movies?" "Yeah, like the movies um...that must be kinda weird huh?" "Um, we already met dry bones like Mortimer so it's...not that weird but still kinda unusual." "Right...who was he again?" "Remember Koopmar's sister, and then we met their dad who was a dry bones and had all that...dark sorcery stuff going on, like uh...a year or two before you left?" "Ohhhhhhhh..." James briefly recollected that whole strange turn of a journey as he nodded. "I remember. Alright so, this kid was called Michael and he was scared like crazy because he had no idea where his parents were, but we found out that they escaped to where a whole group of survivors were gonna escape the city. But then this OTHER guy came in and tried to attack me, guess who? That black raptor that came here fighting me, the one that accused me of killing his parents." "HHHHHHH, you're joking," gasped Koopin, "REALLY?!" "Yep, same guy, Roy his name was. Roy MacGregor, we had a biiiig fight about it, he was trying to kill me, the guy was off his head about this desperately trying to believe I had something to do with his parents' death but I didn't. That was when MIchael came out and defended me and then vouched for me, so it got a little bit sorta complicated and in the end, he agreed that he would join me just to get the kid safe home with his parents. But after that, it was back to us in fighting again." "What a nutcase! I mean what sorta jerk would even accuse you without anything to prove?!" "Well, hold onto that thought for me cuz...it gets a little less easy once we're further down the line so uh...just listen." "Oh-kayyyy?" "We dodge throughout the city, hiding around buildings and escaping zombie hordes, like that one movie um...The Tremoring Terror." "That was just on last night!" "Wait really?!" "Yeah you interrupted me while I was watching it, it just got to the part where Fows T. and Feiss T. were in the city after the attacks, and then the Tremorings came." "Ohhhh god that part freaks me out! Like holy shi-UM-d-dammit it just-UGH, that part with the face I mean NO it...u-uuuu-u-u-u-u-uugh...I am so glad I was not paying attention when we turned that off I mean jeez." "So, you were saying about the...city you guys were in?" "Me and Roy managed to get Michael out, there were a lot of guys who were desperate to survive as well, and some of them kinda tried to kill us or even capture us as hostages because they were pretty much up themselves but we made a good team! Roy was kinda cool to be with when he wasn't trying to murder me." "Hahaha...so uh, what happened with him?" "After we got Michael free and the other survivors out on a train to escape the city, I left quick as possible before Roy even noticed, so then I ended up in a way nicer place, a huge tropical island that was half-covered in old machinery and weird junk." "An island full of scrap?" asked the koopa. "Doesn't sound that great." "Well it was a lot less trouble than zombies, and at least it was more fun when I made friends with these two robots who got dumped in the scrapyard for not being well...good enough." "Awww! That's so mean, you can't just dump someone in a scrapyard like that, I-i-i mean robot or not-" "Totally! So their names were Scratch and Grounder, Scratch looked like a robot chicken whilst Grounder was sort of like a mole thing with drills for arms, and they were thick as shi-bricks, I mean, bricks." Koopin crossed his arms seeing the raptor straining to contain his foul vocabulary with a little chuckle as he spoke further. "So they were idiots, I mean not to sound rude or anything but...seriously they were um pretty thick, but they got dumped to the side unfairly and I wanted to help them out, plus also because they mentioned a scientist who was super-techno-advanced and I thought maybe he knew a way to get me back home, with like portals or something. So I just sooooorta tricked the two robots in thinking I was some kinda recruitment scout, like a new model of robot with all my nanos and stuff, and they completely fell for it." "Why would you do that?! I mean you couldn't have asked them?" "They were REALLY believing in their creator, like they called him their dad practically so they weren't gonna help unless I managed to convince them otherwise. I feel bad and they found out eventually but in the end we all sorta became friends over a week of being together, plus I trained them up to be real fighters rather than just idiots clunking about. We got up to the guy's base, he had no idea who they were which was uh...pretty awful for them and they felt like...well, being forgotten by the one that made you definitely sounds terrible." "That's awful...this guy sounds like a real jerk." "He was, seriously, I mean Scratch and Grounder weren't smart, but they had a real thing together, like they were bros. You ever see two brothers arguing all the time but they like NEVER leave each other's side? That was what they were, so we all fought our way out and made it back to the island, Scratch and Grounder were severely beaten up, but luckily I managed to find someone who was able to fix them. After that, well I just wanted to leave them be to enjoy their new lives of freedom, without any master to worry about pleasing." "So where'd you go next?" James slowly grinned with a beaming look upon his face, gently pulling out the first few items from his satchel. The first being a small keychain with a piece of stone attached to it that he handed over to Koopin who looked at it oddly. "What...what's this?" "That," said FG, "is a piece of an asteroid. From space. In another dimension." Koopin's eyes became wide with amazement as he felt he had just been given a holy grail. "Th-...a-a-are you...are you serious?" "The next place I went to...was in space, there was a huuuuge city floating up in the stars, half of it was all really white and perfect and pristine around the top but once you went down underneath into the lower city it was all like, blue and very sleek and not as rich but still had some pretty good stuff." "You went into space? A-again?! And THIS is-" "Piece of an asteroid from another world, I mean okay it's sorta kitschy but I know you love geology." "This...this is such a weird texture I...w-wow...that...th-thank you James. I love this." His smile was genuine with a sense of overwhelming awe as James grinned with his own excitement. "That's not even the best part. So this arm has something special about it...now, brace yourself." The koopa almost wanted to joke about if it had a salad slicer attached to it but kept schtum thinking it would be insensitive before James sweeped his right hand over it. Suddenly there came orange lines running down his left arm with an ending point in a large radiant circle of amber glistening before Koopin's blue sparkling gaze. "Wha-...w-wooooooaaaaah...what is THIS?! Is this...is this magic, that HAS to be-" "Nope," said FG, "hard-light omni-tool, it's got everything inside this." "Inside?" "It's basically a data storage, it holds videos, transcripts, digital downloads, everything!" "But it...it's just lines, how can it-wait, is there something IN your arm?" "Yeah, they integrated it, gave me a cool feature to make up for 'hey sorry you lost your arm, here's a sweet-ass tool to work stuff with', I could even hack stuff if I remembered how to." "Oh jeez, that...that-um...what-" "And now I can show you, finally...what other places look like, are you ready?" "......what?"

James tapped a few buttons across his skin and brought up a screen between him and Koopin, flipping it around towards the koopa himself who saw the most startling thing. In a large blue steel building with radiant sunset-dappled banners composed of intricate data textures, there was a small mixture of strange creatures behind what was clearly James himself, standing in front of a giant scoreboard with numbers upon it as a voice came through. To the raptor it was a young feisty female with a tremulent warble of a processing filter, but to Koopin it sounded like the most bizarre gibberish all except for one name very clearly that he knew. "Okay, we are here live at the Armax Arsenal Arena with Jaaaaames Campbell-and me-with a mindblowing score as you can see behind him. We haven't had such an unsubstantiated record of greatness in quite some time so Mr. Campbell, do you have any words on your recent awesome victory?" "Well firstly I'd like to thank the academy for these sweet-ass numbers, thank you, and secondly my ass-kicking friend Leiah'Dahlael who has...how many grenades, because you seriously never run out!" "That's for me to know and YOU to find out, hehehee...huh?!" The recording cut out as the scoreboard suddenly went wild in glitching its numbers out but not before Koopin babbled out: "Wh-wh-wh-...what was...was THAT the city?!" "Mmhmm," said FG smiling. "I-i-i-i...that was NOWHERE like the Mushroom Kingdom, that was some...crazy technology a-a-and that language! What was that voice talking to you?!" "That was my best friend in the galaxy...you uh...can't understand her can't you?" "N-no! That...that was...oh jeez, tell me there's more of it!" "Oh there's plenty more of that Koopin. So this galaxy was FULL of creatures, not just humans like Princess Peach, but also other kinds that I'll show you in a bit. I met this girl named Leiah while I was out in the city, I had no place, no social ID, nothing, just a vagrant and they had all this security set up to make sure that well, unless you had some ID on you, you couldn't get a job. So I went back and forth and then I met her and she was the same too, a vagrant just like me! So we teamed up as friends and I'll show you what she looks like." He skipped the recording onwards to a bedroom on a ship, the sight of the starry window to the left of the view startling Koopin with how quaint it looked in the oddly-vacant-looking place of steel bluish-grey. Before him was a strange thin creature with a glass covering across its face, whilst wearing black-and-blue fabrics around its body to completely cover itself. "Is that...her?!" asked Koopin. "Mmhmm, I'll translate for you what she's saying." "I really hope I can keep this thing now," said James four years ago. "Oh, why's that?" asked Leiah. "Well...if I can take it out of this world, that means...I could show Koopin all the worlds I've been to, and all the friends I make!" "Oh yeah! That's a good idea!" "Hey you know what, maybe next time the gang's all together for something I can ask them to say hi, be like aaaaa scrapbook!" "Heheeheh, that's a great idea James, I'll start off for you if you like." "Sure, go for it, just yanno say hi and stuff about where you live, what you like and such." "Okay, mm-hmmph..." She cleared her throat and turned fully towards Koopin's gaze. "Hi theeeere, my name's Leiah, and um...I'm a quarian, and this is the galaxy! I was born in the Migrant Fleet on the starship Guuha in 2168, and I'm an engineer, like most quarians." "Nice to meet you Leiah," said James politely, "could you tell us more about what a quarian is?" "Oh, well, quarians are a nomadic race who travel on starships and live on them, because we used to have a home planet until we...kiiinda accidentally made an entire race of AIs that took over us and forced us off our planet and...the galaxy didn't like that. We also can't really go and make another planet our home because our immune systems got so weak over time living on ships that it...well, makes things really difficult." "Well that sucks." "Oh, totally. I mean quarians aren't really liked because we keep getting blamed for that, as if we ALL wanted robotic servants waiting on us hand and foot and get all surprised they wanted to rebel! I mean, keelah come on, it's been two hundred years!" "Right, right...heh, getting off on a rant there are ya?" "S-sorry...I didn't mean to ruin your vid." "Nah it's fine, it's more honest like that. Anything else you wanna-" A knock on the door interrupted as a voice more male came through with Koopin asking: "Who's that?" "That's my other friend Lirem, don't worry I'll uh introduce you to them. So what you think of Leiah?" "She's really nice! Wow I mean...she lived on a starship? She kinda reminds me of the nomads out in the desert the way she wraps herself, especially that hood covering." "Yeah um, they kinda are except they're more nomads across space, they kinda have this legit incredibly horrible immune system, her species, so they can't really...survive handling a flu or something." "Awww jeez...so the suits are sanitary?" "Yeah basically." "And she said that...robots they made took over her world?! That's insane, that's NUTS, that's like that one movie yanno, 'Ravens From The Moon'." "OHH MY GOD THAT MOVIE!" James almost resisted the urge to fall back knowing that nothing was behind him at the edge of the bed. "That was SUCH a good movie!" "I know right?! I always feel really bad about the leader at the end because of-" "The daughter yeah...I mean I always sorta hope that the leader's second-in-command, Rohvur, would take care of her, I mean that was his last wish. God I mean that's such an old movie but it holds up really well." "It totally does, I mean, it's not my favourite but it's so well-written, Van Shellsing is my favourite...but it...did you ever go to...oh gosh I almost hope there's a world like his." "What you mean?" "Yanno like a spooky old castle full of monsters being lorded over by this great evil fiend of darkness, and then a brave hero comes in armed with a whip to take back the night from his grasp, was there any world like that?!" "Not...as far as I recallllll, at least not any I remember going to. I'm sure there has to be, okay so...you wanna see my other friends?" "PLEASE!" The more he talked with James the more excited he became, feeling as if it was their first days together all over again hearing about all the strange and wild places that he had been to. His eyes became pure with fascination as the next recording started up, showing a rather cold-looking promenade trickling with snow against the backdrop of an ocean. It was oddly romantic but at the same time frigid and uninviting as the koopa gazed at the odd creature sitting around the table in front of him. Another quarian with brown and green suit, two strange similar-looking creatures resembling giant crickets one of whom had orange clothes with red-painted face whilst the other had black-and-green clothing with also red paint. But the one that really caught Koopin's eye was a much larger tan-skinned beast dwarfing the rest of them and resembling a toad encased in rock. James' voice came from behind the camera's view as he set the scene whilst James in the present did his best to keep up with the dialogue for his boyfriend's sake. "So this is...an alternative Earth I guess to the one I used to live in, we're at a pretty cold place called Stockholm in the country of Sweden. Uhhh...and these are the guys I've been travelling with, in a much nicer winter setting for the fashion catalogue this year." "Hahaha," said the other quarian, "I'm still freezing by the way." "So, you mind introducing yourselves while out in this nice weather?" "Alright," said the orange cricket. "I'm Lirem Hallaher, head of this little ragtag buncha guys, main guitarist, singer, ladykiller-" He clicked his tongue with sexy point-and-wink. "-and a damn good shot with a rifle." "And I'm Norem," said the one in green, "I'm this idiot's brother and I'm a sniper expert. Also handle the bass, songwriting and a little bit of the money better than most." "I'm Areh," said the quarian, "I'm the keyboard guy and I handle some of the songs." "An' I'm Jax!" said the krogan. "I'm the big guy, the drummer, the heavy lifter, the number one brawler of this band who'll kick anybody's ass into space dust!" "So basically the drummer," said FG of the past, "right, cool story bro." "Hhhahaha!" started Koopin. "What a weird group! Like...damn he is HUGE!" "That's a krogan," said James here and now, "they're big mean dudes but some of them are pretty nice, all about the bloodsport and fighting but you get one for a friend, they'll go through death and back for ya." "Haha, like Charlie!" "Are we just gonna compare everything to Charlie?" "Noooo, just when it suits him right buddy?!" "RUUF-RUFF!" Charlie agreed quite happily at the comparison as James rolled his eyes as the conversation went on between the various characters untranslated. "So these two, Norem and Lirem, they're both brothers and they're turians. In their galaxy turians are all military-trained, like every single one of them knows how to fight, they're kinda literally-minded, they don't really have subtleties about them but these two are pretty great." "They were talking about drums and keyboards, are they a band?" "Yep! These guys are a rock band and I was their groupie." "You got to coast with a rock band?!" "Not exactly, they also sort of did mercenary work on the side, you know, rescue, retrieving things, kinda make extra money so I help them out on that." "I can't begin to imagine what sort of music they would have." "I recorded some of them on this." Koopin glimmered with the eyes of a child on Christmas Eve at midnight. "...gimme. Show me, now." "Now now, just lemme explain, it's all part of the story Koopin I gotta let it flow." "NNNNNGH yer getting me all excited Jaaaames!" "Hahahaha, awwww...okay so, these guys took me and Leiah along with them because we kinda ended up in trouble, I had a fight with someone and it kind of escalated-" "Really James? REALLY, I am not surprised." "Oh come on lemme explain!" "Mmmmm-hmm." The koopa crossed his arms with tongue flicking across the inside of his cheek despite James trying not to stammer. "The guy was being a real jerk, he insulted Leiah really badly like being super racist so I taught him a lesson. But I admit...I could have done better about that, I wasn't gonna let it go but...it does come back to bite me later on." "It always does. James what did I tell you about violence, it always begets." "I know, I know jus-...hhhhh." He had to stop for a moment with remorse rubbing his head as Koopin nodded understanding. "Sorry just...sort of keeping the story straight in my head." "It's alright. But I DO hope you learned some things, I know I'm glad to see you back but...I always hope you gather some good experience." "Oh...trust me I did. So this band had us on, and I was a bartender for them on their ship, they had a nice bar with all the little things and such, was really great. Lirem and Norem left the army to become musicians, their dad was not happy about this and there's a big family rift going on between them. Areh, this guy here, was on a pilgrimage because Leiah and him have to undertake a whole journey across the galaxy when they're of age and then come back to their people when they have something worthy." "That sounds kinda big," murmured Koopin, "isn't that a little much? I mean okay travelling a kingdom is fine but a GALAXY? What are you gonna find?!" "I dunno, and Jax here, the big guy...his mom died when he was little so his dad raised him all on his own. Then his dad fell in love with another krogan who was gay and then they sorta raised him." "Awwwww that's so sweet!" clamoured Koopin. "What a wonderful guy, I mean it's not easy taking in someone who's got a kid." "Apparently it all turned out good," said FG kindly, "Jax talks about his dads being pretty great right here. Him and Areh are best friends, apparently Areh saved his life once from when somebody was hunting him down, so the two just became good friends and stuck close together." "Heheee, that's adorable...I love seeing a huge guy with a small little cutie...do you think they-" "No, I'm pretty sure Areh's not...that eager." "Hmmmm...they just seem really close, the big guy's always looking at him as if checking that he's okay, like...what you'd do with someone you care deeply with." "I think it's just bromance. Alright, now lemme show you their music." "YES, PLEASE!"

Flicking the scene ahead, there was soon a big concert showing before Koopin's face which began to light up with the amber glow of the holographic screen. There was music piping through, surprisingly well in its audio capturing as he heard enough of the symphony to catch most of the notes. The lights went out at first to plunge the room into darkness before a bassline started revving like an engine. A synthetic whoosh, the drums kicked in before another synthetic blast came through sounding like a false trumpet. On the stage before him was the band itself burned into the light of a private impressive stage at what appeared to be some sort of housing theatre in some estate with white walls, ceiling and columns before a mixed race of creatures. Lirem sang with a purple six-stringed guitar showing three circular builds on its bulbous body, whilst Norem's darker two-toned bass of red and black resembled an upside down question mark with a filled in curve. Jax's drums were of a hardened whitish-grey bronze as if sculpted from rock, and Areh was beside him with two keyboards layered on top of each other in cobalt blue lighting up an array of colours. "Ohhhhh my stars ohmystars ohmystaaaaaaaars!" Koopin began to flap with his hands with sudden frenzy as he started to squeal in a higher pitch trying to stuff his fists into his mouth. "This is so COOOL!" "Pffffthahahahaha, oho my god you are freaking out." "I AM! THIS...THIS SONG IS AMAZING!" "I think this one is called 'Glad I Am', that's what he's singing at the starting riff." "It is, just, amazing, this...this bluesy riff is so GOOD and I dunno WHAT he's saying but that voice is OHHH! They must be huge, they sound incredible!" "Hhhhehehehe, if I ever meet them again I'll let them know they got a new fan." "Hhhhhhhhh...wooooow this...is there a way we can like, record this onto my player?" "Uhhhhhhh...not unless you actually play my recording and put it next to something else to record?" "OOOH like what my mom used to do with the radio, we can do that!" "I got like three, no, four songs they did on here, if you wanna hear the others?" "Oh please please PLEASE lemme hear them, I can't believe this, other worlds having music so...so STRANGE but also so familiar somehow, it's fanTASTIC!" The raptor slowly flicked through the various memories he had of his time in the galaxy, allowing Koopin to experience it all before him. A synth-metallic dirge in the form of "Goodnight Miss Dark" taking place in a rather seedy-looking red-painted bar with sordid dancers of purple skin; the grandest concert in the open air of what appeared to be some otherworldly colony with an ocean of creatures in grey, pink, brown, black, red and indigo. One song which James mentioned was called "On The Run" had Koopin almost welling up with tears in the passion of the sole singer on the grandest stage in the form of Norem. A synthesiser's hymn, a slow conscious drumbeat before the Norem's deeper melodic voice came through and despite not knowing what he was even saying, the koopa certainly felt the emotional quantity amidst a very silent sea of people. But the song that came afterwards would blow his mind right out into space. Despite the bizarre title which James called "Rachniphobia", it was an amazing complex beat at least for Koopin to experience as he suddenly dipped into a deep fugue of pure focus. James was a little worried at first before he saw him gently nodding to the beat and closing his eyes. The constant chattering of the keyboard's electronic, the everlasting diatribe from bass to lead and lead to bass guitar over and over all whilst the drumbeat never stopped. Never ceased hammering like a thousand fists pulsating into the beat as Koopin's breathing became frantic and shallow. Eventually it ended and he was almost upset that it did, gasping for air as if he had just been pushed underneath the waves of sound for a good breath longer than he should have as he finally spoke. "That...was awesome." "Hhhahahahahaha, holy shi-jeez you REALLY got into that beat huh?" "I-i-i just...I just can't believe I was hearing a song from another world and it was the BEST, that Areh dude is just...hhhhhhoooooooo he has this incredible sense of music! I mean he was just hitting the vibe just right, he never went too far on his pitch, the way he reverbed on the openings and such was just flawless!" "R-...r-really?" "Oh yeah, that keyboard he had, both of them, they gotta be synced up super good to achieve that, I saw the way he was alternating between them so that means he must have some kind of crossfeeding setup between them in order to create that sorta 'huuuuuuu' sound? Yanno when he starts things up with a sorta chorus sound, that's the crossfeeding there, he's got like one piece on delay, an-...um." Koopin blushed hotly with a sense of awkwardness while the raptor stared at him blankly smiling. "S-s-sorry I um...well, the thing is he really knows his tech." "Mmhmm, well, that's not the end of the story yanno, you wanna hear more?" "Um, actually can we stop here, I think I need a drink." "Alright then. Yanno I had a naughty magazine for you but I totally lost it." "Awww really?! Wait, of what?" "Turians...maybe that big krogan boy if you wanted." "Awww jeeeeez...and you LOST it?!" "W-w-well I...it's okay, it was only like, twenty-five credits or something don't worry about it." "Right cuz...I'm not sure on those turian guys but that krogan...hooooo, he uh, reminds me of King Bowser but without the face and snout." "Yeaaaaah I know what you mean, I bet they're big." "Stop it please, I'm already overheating from this." "Heheeeheehee!"

They stopped for a short intermission as they grabbed a drink to recover from losing their throats with all the talk as they gulped back some sweet orange juice, checking what was on TV for the time being just to give some bit of variety to their day of staying in the house doing absolutely nothing. The phone didn't even ring which James found unusual but he was immensely thankful for it as they took time to watch a game show that James remembered seeing several years back. The format was slightly revamped but he still had the same pleasure of mocking idiots for obvious answers. The banter was light, the questions were medium difficulty and every time maths would come up James suddenly lost interest by a coincidental occurrence of something distracting him to his left. Koopin simply rolled his eyes pulling off most of the math questions without fail, whilst any technical questions on machines usually got answered by James. It was a good exercise to clear their minds despite Koopin rather hyper with both his lover's return and also from hearing the music constantly looping in his head desperately wanting to beg FG to replay it for him again. It was now nearing around 2pm, a whole day stretching out still to them as they were adamant to keep to their promise concerning not to leave the house for an entire day for James' return which suited them both perfectly. The raptor let any show wash over him from the TV, boring news of finance concerning the Beanbean Kingdom's economy, weather warnings for Yoshi's Island and lastly a sitcom involving a strangely charming couple of a goomba and pianta living in an uptown neighbourhood. Once they had relaxed enough, they returned back to the bed so James could continue his story, but not before Koopin went on the phone to make a call shushing James quietly with a stern finger warning to his lips. "Hi mom! ......I'm good thanks, how about you?! ...listen, are you and dad available to have a sit down and chat about stuff, I got some news you might wanna hear. .........hehehenaaaah it's not like another gig it's just something cool that came up and I don't wanna talk about it over the phone, so you free this week? .........tomorrow sounds good!" Koopin gave an eager thumbs up to FG who gave two thumbs back. "Sounds great, I'll be there usual times okay mom?! Love you too, byyye!" The receiver clunked down as he grinned and hopped onto the bed with a beautiful smile. "Might as well not wait to get you reintroduced back with everyone if you really plan on staying here." "I totally am, got no reason to leave anymore with all my business done and sorted." "So, back to the story, you and your friend were out with this rock group-slash-mercenary force and well, anything cool happen to note?" "Well they were pretty cool with us, despite their boss being kind of scary." "What was he like?" "A giant blooper, like literally just a foot taller than me except all purpley-blue without a face, his voice was TERRIFYING." "W-wow, they have bloopers in other worlds?!" "He was more like...well, he LOOKED like a blooper, what with all the tentacles but you get the idea. So we're doing missions, I looked pretty snazzy in this nice armoured suit all red and purple that never really kept me down weighted anywhere. We did some rescue stuff, we did some recovery missions, one time we got to explore ancient ruins of another civilisation that was pretty good!" "Hhhhhaahah, I bet if you told this to Kolorado his head would just go." "Well it soon got pretty real when we found out some people were robbing someone else's mine, and we had a BIG fight. Then a while later, just after that concert at the white hall you saw, someone tried to actually kill the lady who ran the place!" "Wh-what?! Woah sheesh, was she okay?!" "Oh yeah totally, cuz I saved her life, I saw the assassin and just went tackling her into the fountain outside." "You...tackled the lady?" "No no the assasin." "Ohh." "She was REALLY vicious, like Shellina was except this was a turian with these THICK claws that could poison you." "Awww that's just cheap!" complained Koopin. "I hate people who use poison in fights, they are dirty, DIRTY people like that one guy in wrestling a few years back, Cheep Shot! MAN I hated that guy!" "Well at least he had a name to warn you about it." "Jus-UGH, what a jerk tool he was. So go on, what else did you all do in this galaxy?" "It started to get even more serious from that point onwards. Leiah's dad was working on a space station, and she comes running in screaming that something happened and somebody attacked her dad's place!" "Noooo way!" "So we all rush over, these are all missions that we did, and we find this whole group of turians taking over her dad's place stealing technology. The guy who was leading them beat the utter hell out of me and then left, then we all had to run out because he rigged the station to blow! So most of the people survived but the space station was gone completely." "Ohhhh jeeeeez. Was her family alright?" "Her dad made it out yeah," said FG, "but it was pretty close, and then we found out that all of these attacks were from the same organisation called Facinus, a terrorist group." "...terrrrrorist? What's a terrorist?" James' heart tweaked softly at Koopin's questioning innocence. It was one of the most favourite things about his boyfriend and something he envied Koopin for. "Hhhhhhmhmhm, ohhhh Koopin." "Wh-what?!" "Nothing...you just have this...look on your face that is so sweet." "Wh-wha-...ngh, J-jaaames you're kinda making me feel-" "Adorable? Precious?" "S-s-stoppit, pleaaase!" The koopa blushed intensely covering his face with his hands as the raptor leaned forwards to smooch him on the beak as he deviated in his explanation. "It's just a technical term they used in the galaxy, but...basically, these guys were bad people, they were fighting for some sort of rights to be a nation or something independently, and they wanted to complain to their government, which they did by hurting a lot of people and stealing things to build a huge operation to attack the government buildings themselves." "That's a little extreme!" stammered Koopin. "C-couldn't you just write a letter?! Yanno when people need planning properties in Toad Town they just send a letter to the castle and it gets done in like two weeks!" "What if it's Bowser you have to write to?" "Well firstly you need fireproof paper because it's going someplace pretty far, then you have to pay an extra tax to the mail office purely for the sake of covering damages to their workers yanno on the big journey, it's kinda dangerous!" "Well...okay that sounds a bit troublesome." "Still, I don't think attacking the people in their offices is gonna make anyone wanna...agree with you! If anything you just look like a huge jerk!" "Well that's what they were, and things did not go...really well. And on top of this, Roy comes back chasing me down with MORE of his problems!" "Are you-...are you ju-" Koopin slapped his knees with a little rage of disbelief. "I mean-okay, okay I am REALLY getting tired of this Roy guy hunting for you, what is his PROBLEM!?" "Well it was a pretty fun fight all out on the city, but eventually I beat him away again and THIS time I was damn sure to tell him that, if he was so certain that I was the one he was looking for, go home and find out what you can from 'the Armee'. Cuz if they're the ones that told you, they must have evidence right?! And I was pretty convincing about it, so I encouraged him like, if you go back and all the evidence just completely points to me, then go ahead and kill me because I SWEAR to you I had nothing to do with it." "Are you swearing to him, or me?" "Both. So he left and then it's back to Facinus who decided that since we got caught up in all this, they decided to target us, even out on the city because we were interfering with their big plan, so we were like 'fine let's do this' and went straight to their base with a lot of help from friends and found out they had this BIG cannon that they built with parts they stole all around the galaxy. So we took it out, stopped their big plan to attack the government buildings and they were not pleased." "Oh jeez...so they just turned into bullies?" "Yeah...they were really bad people." "How...how bad were they?" He lifted up his left arm in a response as simple as he could. Koopin's shock only came through about two seconds later when he put his hands to his lips gasping. "HHHH! O-ohhh no...m-m-my...wh-what horrible people would-" "I know. That wasn't even the worst of it." "Oh no...n-no no no what did they-" "First they attacked our ship," started FG, "we had all of the group stuck together and they did their best, Lirem, Norem...Areh was badly wounded from a previous fight, he almost got burned alive but Jax saved him, just walked straight through the fire of a burning wreckage and pulled him out safe. Then they followed us back to our ship and well, they attacked us and then Leiah and me got shoved into a jettison pod to escape and we had no idea what happened. Both me and Leiah fell out onto a cold planet, a pure icy wasteland, like Mt. Shiver but worse." "How is it worse?" "You know the top of the mountain when it's REALLY cold and windy? Now imagine that constant, non-stop, even when you're beneath the mountains." "Ohhh jeez," murmured Koopin. "You're not great with the cold, I remember you were shivering badly during that one winter." "Heheh, yeah...well, me and Leiah found a small warehouse to hide in, and we struggled to make a fire but we had a beacon out to send rescue signals. But then..." He rubbed his left arm with a cursed rememberance. "They...the people sent out a small group to make sure we wouldn't be...found, and I......I-i-i-i...that's when they took my arm, they burned it right off...torched it, blasted it jus-" "S-s-stop." Koopin was trying to cup his tears with one hand across his face. "S-s-s-stop...d-don't...I know I wanted to hear everything b-but I jus-" "I know, I'm...I'm sorry I'm trying not to be too-" "No no it's not...that, it's just I don't...I don't want you to feel hurting again from all this, I don't wanna put you through that again." "At least I'm still alive. I'm thankful for that." "Right...that's good." "I just wish Leiah could be the same." "Wh-wh-what?! ......wait...w-wait, you-...no." James looked down with a pitying look, his hands grasping each other tightly as he struggled to speak. He never saw Koopin approach until he felt his arms around him, clutching him tightly with a warm empathy. "Ohhhh gosh, James...I-i-i'm so...I dunno what to say I jus-......I-i'm so...sorry." "It's okay...I wanted to blame myself for what happened for a long time, and...a part of me still does, I won't ever get rid of that guilt. But the thing is..." He pulled his lover away to face him directly with an earnest look. "Leiah told me that she had a really good time with me, always running around and adventuring with me, she went on to say that...she never regretted ever being with me and not to blame myself for what happened. If anything I just learned...well, the same things you kept telling me about...not wanting to go out and hurt people for the sake of it, or just to prove a point. I should have listened to you better." "What matters is you're okay. I'm...sorry about your friend but I'm just happy you're here. Was that it?" "No. There's more and again this is kind of a...bad spot. I spent days freezing inside a warehouse in the middle of nowhere, with no food, drinking snow melted into water...I started hallucinating, about things, trying to get my mind off...stuff. I was in that place for two months...alone except with Leiah beside me...I would talk to her about you even long after she...I talked about everything you and me did until they found me. I was so weak...I only remember wanting to see you again and just saying sorry for everything, j-just everything I-" "J-james." They hugged each other again, hearts bursting with overwhelming need until they both managed to calm down. James knew he was going to hate this part, but he had to keep going. He wanted to tell him everything, knowing that Koopin was not going to stop him unless he wanted to. "So they...found me after, and I spent six months in hospital getting this arm. I hated it, at first, felt like it wasn't my own, I just looked at it like...like someone shoved a rotting beef steak onto it but...eventually I left, and not in the best mood. I kinda wish I said something more to my friends, they were all okay by the way. Lirem, Norem, Areh and Jax...they all managed to get out safe." "Thank the stars," said Koopin, "I mean at least they're alright." "That's when I left. I went off into another world, just a place to bury my head into the sand rather literally, and came out into a wasteland. Like a dead, horrid empty wasteland, I had a new arm that I wasn't used to, I was just feeling straight down at my worst place, I wanted to just...lay down and stop. You know?" "I do..." He gave a glum look, the koopa rubbing his arms nervously. "It's...sorta how I was feeling when you left, I wasn't able to...just sorta shrinked from everybody, didn't wanna do anything or talk or even just smile. It was the worst thing to smile at my job every day, at least for the first few months?" "Oh god...really? Th-that's not like you." "I know...I hated it, I hated myself, I just-there was this emptiness when you left and I couldn't...do anything anymore. It was so bad that my mom came down and basically forced me to work out my problems, she was down here every week helping me out with my problems. She had a solution for me which I think worked out pretty well, we sorta started on music, remember that turntable you bought me?" "Yeah I remember, before you left. Heheh, Klair actually was the one to help me on that, she said it was the one you wanted." "Well...she made me use it, properly, start getting into it, just work out my problems, the real problem was I had nobody to...be honest with, I couldn't scream or...o-or cry or...I just had to be this nice smiling koopa at my job and my family already knew what I was feeling so I felt selfish just giving MORE of that to them...so I couldn't find a way to get it out of me until music. Then I made a song, in fact mom told me, she sat down and told me 'you are going to make me a song at least three minutes long, I want to hear you scream in it. I want you to scream, I want you to cry, I want you to get angry for whatever reason whilst you make this song, no matter how selfish you think you'll be'. So I made it. That was almost four years ago." "Did it work out okay?" "It was great...it really helped me." Koopin gave a tender bite of his lip in a sense of self-aware embarrassment. "I got a lot of things done after I started making more music, j-just personal projects and stuff, sort of really helped. Some people paint or shout when they wanna vent, I just made songs that were...really dumb." "Well if you want me to listen to any of your music I'll be up for it." "M-m-maybe in a bit...or at least tomorrow, right now I wanna hear about what YOU have been up to. It's all you today James, let me hear it." "Alright...hokay."

James braced himself for his next story knowing this part would be potentially hardest for him to explain. "I was out in this wasteland, and it was just emptiness, barren, completely isolated from everybody, I never met more than a hundred people out on the wastes." "Wow that's...really, that's...that's even less people than in Dusty Dunes." "The Dunes are a freaking club rave compared to the hot wastes of Illinois, basically all life was just...completely wiped." "What do you mean wiped?" He debated on how much he would need to explain such a grim future of another world knowing he had to set a few explanations up. "Imagine...someone constructed a huge deeply powerful spell. That spell got put into a big metal case, and shoot straight up towards the stars before falling straight back down to the very place it came from, no, jus-...hhhhh this...this is kinda hard but...imagine a bomb, right of course, that could turn the entire world into a worthless desert. No life. No trees. No sand. No water. No hope." "Th-th-that...that's not even...no, I...I-i-i can't imagine that. A bomb, that BIG? I mean I think the biggest one I heard was maybe the side of a mountain but-" "L-lemme put it like this. Imagine somebody...made a wish that was so powerful in its hatred, that it sent a star down onto the earth and killed everyone." Koopin felt something sink in his stomach hard to its very pit of despair. Rarely the feeling of existential dread came upon him, not that he had never experienced it before, but it was not a sensation that he missed. "N-no...no one could...could be that cruel. N-not even King Bowser would...w-would ever ruin the entire world like that..." "No one you know. That's why I love being with you. Because I know that, no matter what happens...there will never be something so cruel in a world like yours." "H-h-how do you...why would you say that?" "Because my world...someone made that wish too, many years ago, like way before I was born. I just found another world that went through the same thing, it was scary...horrifying. I almost fell into a really bad place, but then someone rescued me, this big creepy beast called Gruthar who was really monstrous and terrifying but actually was really sweet. He was a lonely monster way out in the world with nobody to talk to, and the humans were all scared of him so he just left them alone and to repay him for...keeping me alive basically, I went out and did stuff for him out on this empty desert. Then I found this girl, a young human called Diana, she was a slave." "Slave? Aww jeez tha...how old was she-" "About eight." "...that is awful." James was starting to worry that this was turning too dark for Koopin as he did his best to skip through the misery as fast as he could, seeing his lover's face become more and more uncertain of a happy ending after all. "I helped her escape, but she said her mum was still being enslaved inside a camp, so I said 'let's go find someplace where there's lots of people, then we can find some help'. So Gruthar gave me a map, because he was so good at making maps and had all the place dotted out, and told me to head north to a place called the Beech, two ee's, not an ay." "Ah huh." "We found this entire colony of people, but not just only humans because some of them got mutated by the...way the world was and there were like mutants, ghouls, kinda zombie-looking but they weren't, they were totally cool people and they were friendly! They were all part of this group called the Brotherhood of Steel and they let me and Diana in whilst we all started to set up a plan to break free Diana's mother." "And did you?" asked Koopin with a pitiful hope. "Well I'm coming to it...I had to work my hands someplace, which was good because I needed it. They said I had to work to be part of the group and make myself useful, I then also became Diana's legal guardian and she hung out with me. We were a great team, she was always really feisty and trying to keep hope but at the same time was a rather fierce no-bull kind of girl who wasn't going to be tricked by any grownups telling her any 'it's all gonna be okay' kinda stuff." "So a pessimist." "R-right, yeah. I did lots of toiling, lots of agriculture, working the fields with nothing but my jeans, the sweat on my back, was good. I did all these little missions gathering food, supplies, fighting off any evil raiders that came round to start stealing things and so on but...we also had these people that ruled us, there was Jerry who's a real nice guy that fixed things, then there was Darryl his friend who runs the place like a big chief, kinda sour, had a lot of things on his mind, I think he was just one of those people that was just focusing on keeping people together, and then there were people above him that only visited us once, known as Hawk, Swan and Crow." "Sounds pretty official." "They were all practically military...but the thing is, they kinda went off on their own little mission, apparently Crow was this super scary dude that killed all of his bosses because he had his own plans to...well, make a bad wish on the wasteland again." "Oh no...oh n-n-no, that, wh-why would...please...please tell me he didn't get to-" "Well...I went out on a mission, found this old bunker hidden underneath a pizza parlour, it was kinda weird. I met these four old robots, Thomas, Theodore, Martin and Jackson. They were all pretty cool, really knowledgeable guys who knew what was up, and so they found out about the big plan that was going down, more or less. Crow found another bomb hiding underneath the earth, so I took the robots back to the base and we all started to plan out some things. We got enough supplies to stop him, and in turn we ALSO had enough...to save Diana's mum." "You did?! OHHH thank goodness!" "The rest of the Brotherhood, including Diana, went down to the slave camp to bust them all out and she managed to save her mum. I however went off to face against Crow, he was a BIG scary guy, all this steel armour on him with this flaming sword like it was literally on fire!" "Oh wow, you mean like one of those fire traps King Bowser has?" "Right, those! So we fought off against each other, he had the device for that bomb and I had to stop him in like two hours or something or else it's bye bye civilisation once again. It was a rough fight, just us out in the wastes but I took him down, I got myself back up out of my bad place and stopped him. All by myself, it's actually the first, maybe the only time I was able to stop someone that big by myself, I mean normally I always have friends beside me to help. And I can prove it." "I was wondering when you would show me that thing again on screen." The koopa was starting to feel James' enthusiasm pick up again out of the dark side of his memories as the raptor showed his screen to him once again. It was as James said, a hot wind blowing across the open wastes, much more harsh and arid than any of the deserts that Koopin had seen. Nothing but harsh uncultivated land reset back to a reduced moistureless state of completely barren existence. The omni-tool's view gently panned upwards into the sky where there was a small glinting light of what seemed to be a star slowly rising upwards, the raptor's right hand showing whilst holding a large transceiver with a big red button counting its numbers slowly up. James' voice came from the past rather exhausted and shaking in his grip. "Hhhhhhh...alright...here goes. Make a wish Koopin. This star I made just for you." He clicked the button. A burst of light came flickering from the sky and burst to an empty harmless void far too above the world to cause any danger. Koopin was in awe knowing from the distance alone it had to have been a tremendous explosion as he became torn between a deep sense of pride and an outright overwhelming sense of honour as he softly whispered: "...d-did you...make that wish for me?" "To save everyone in that place...yeah. I thought you'd might appreciate it. Wanna see them?" "S-s-sure...wow...you...that looked strange to see a...well maybe it's not a star but it...was sort of scary. I'm glad you managed to stop it." "I'm glad too. Thanks to you inspiring me." The koopa smiled fondly with a beaming look, nodding as he swelled up in his cheeks with the darkness now beginning to recede from the worrying times of the wasteland. James swiflty pulled up the interviews he had with his friends showing Koopin at last the strange desolate world of which a tiny hope could soon sprout from the soil to become something great. A ruined town of steel and twisted wood, farms struggling to nurture crops with strange hairless beasts of giant horns and twin heads. In the centre of the view were two humans of dark skin and ragged yellow clothes smiling happily, a mother and child clearly sitting down together with the backdrop of the settlement framed behind them. "Alright we're rolling, so uh introduce yourselves for me." "Hiiii, I'm Diana, an' this is my mom!" "Jemimah Watterson...hmhm, the diamond killer." "Oh that's your nickname now huh?" said FG. "Well I mean you DID get wrecked today." "Well how was I supposed to know you had a sweet batting arm?! Anyways, what do you two do for a living?" "Ah go to school," said Diana. "An' kill people." "Diana!" said her mother. "Not ALL thuh tahm, jus' when anyone gonna hurt us!" "Well...even so, let's make this a nice memory for him, anyways I work at the general store in town taking inventory." "And how's life going for you?" said FG to both. "It's...ever since we've been rescued I mean how can it get any worse, it's been fantastic. My health is back, most of my friends made it, I have my daughter with me and I feel protected for once, these...people all around me are such good people and wonderful friends I'm so very glad to have made to come rescue me...and...well...thank you too James." "Wh-what?" "Well you DID save my daughter...even though I still don't know how you quite managed that." "He drugged me," said Diana truthfully, "made me look like ah wuz dead an' took me waaaaay up here to Beech, then we got all up on plannin' a way out to save you!" "Wait what?!" replied Koopin. "You...you drugged a kid?!" "I had to pretend she was dead to get her out of the slave camp! I know it was super risky but it worked out, trust me I knew what I was doing!" "Wha-the-buh-you......well, I mean it SEEMS like it went down okay and she's back with her mom but still James that sounds really dodgy, what the heck is wrong with you?!" "You can punish me later if you want, I still feel bad about it...also...w-wait, did you...did you hear what she said?" "Um, yeah I was gonna ask, they're speaking my language, I just noticed." "...but...you don't speak English." "Noooooo that's...that's not what my language is called-" "Okay you know what I'm just gonna accept that a thousand other universes have some languages come out the same because I REALLY get my head all twisted up about these okay?" "R-right...heheheh, well...they seem really nice, and that kid looks sweet but she's got a real fire in her from the way she was speakin-woah who is THAT?!"

The recording flicked on towards a rather burnt-looking human, his hair half-gone combed over to a fiery brown like burnt umber with dark buggy eyes and a bony complexion, his nose rotted off completely. "My name's Jerry Delgado, I'm a senior knight fer the Brotherhood of Steel, an' I like to fry things with lasers. Also bikes. I've been around fer at least two-hundred years, wandering the wastes hopin' to find out who my father was...can't remember if he was a ghost lion or an evil guy in a black cloak or maybe just a really big black guy with a voice that could melt the polar ice caps if he REALLY wanted to. Nah I'm just kiddin', I just wander around hopin' to be in a safe place, turns out I found one here with my ol' pal Darryl." "You two been together a long time huh?" "Oh yeah, musta been about...twenty years, thirty? I dunno, my memory kinda goes like a wet rag sometimes but it's not so bad...pretty nice around here, could be worse. I don't got much else to say so, is that enough for ya?" "Is he okay?" asked Koopin. "He um...looked kinda sick." "That's a ghoul, they're like humans that um...survived the bomb that took out the world but they all got kinda messed up. So he's been around for years." "Two-hundred is way longer than a human should live...that musta been some bomb." "Hehehe...I dunno how it works really, but hey, how about them robots huh?" The raptor soon showed three of the robots. One who resembled a floating orb of steel with three eyestalks and three limbs hovering by a jet engine, whilst another was but a much tinier ball with fluffed-up hair half-circling around its shape, whereas the last one was a monstrous barrel-chested fiend with a gatling gun in one hand and three legs tripod-built. "I am Martin Van Buren, the former ninth president of the United States of America. Master controller of the digital dignitary and all things not of digitigrade preference." "And I was his predecessor, Andrew Jackson, formerly the eighth president. I now serve to protect these people with a gun damnably large enough to sink through the earth." "And last but certainly not least at least usually, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., twenty-eighth former president and a man of action, woodsman, explorer and commander of these wretched wastes when able to!" "All of us have been dead essentially for some time," continued Martin, "in absentia postmortem for over at least five hundred years. But you can't keep a good man down which is why me, Theodore and Thomas are all still about. Jackson I...don't really understand why he came back." "Because," stated Jackson, "unlike you Martin I have a backbone." "Of what? Hickory?" "Don't." "You made me your vice president you knew what you were getting into my volatile master of precedence." "Now now lads," said Theodore, "this isn't the debate, we can quarrel some other time but as for James' radio visuals I must stress that we were revived ceremoniously with the intent on teaching a future generation all the merits of this great land. Suffice to say our chance did not come soon enough once the wretched fates above blew the skies apart with scorched fire and whatnot, I daresay there are few who would ever want to share the experience of having one's soul bound to this steel coffin. But at least unlike an eternity box this one can damn well move and fight, taking blood from the egregious villains who dare take and enslave the lives of others! They say I only have one life to give for this country well DAMN THAT LIFE I HAVE THREE ARMS TO GIVE AND ALL OF THEM DRAPED WITH VICTORY!" "Iiiiii think that's good enough," said FG's past self. "You guys really give a big show when you're on camera." "A man must not look weak before a crowd, that soon can turn ugly." "Please don't talk about the bullet," murmured Jackson. "Did I ever tell you James that I was shot during a speech?! Damn thing hit my papers and dug into me but I damn well kept going, takes more than that to take down a bullmoose!" "Hahahah seriously?!" said FG. "Wow..." "Hehehee!" sniggered Koopin. "They must be real good friends to all be like that, although I'm surprised someone made good robots to last for...five hundred years?! That's incredible!" "It is...well it's more complicated than that but they're certainly lively!" "I thought you said there were four people?" "Thomas was kinda...well, shy about being on camera so he didn't turn up." "Awwww...that must be some club, considering one of them's the twenty-eighth president of...united states? Is that like a chairman's directorate or something?" "Moooore or less, and yanno with Crow dead and the world safe, the former slaves turned their old prison into their own town where everybody could be welcome, yanno, no hatred, none of that, once we got rid of all the bad people it was just smooth sailing, rebuilt the place and all the slaves got to be free to live their lives wherever they want. Guess what they named the new town?" "Uhhhhh...I dunno what?" "Jamestown." Koopin bent his head forwards to almost crick his neck in surprise with jaw dropping open. "A-are you...no WAY are you serious?!?" "They all took a vote! Everyone was all like 'should we name it this or that' and eventually it just came up as Jamestown, and everyone was like 'yeah okay why not?!' I mean sure!" "You have a TOWN named after you?! Ohoho my stars James...that's...okay I guess for being able to free that many people that they would wanna thank you by that, that more than makes up for me worrying about you drugging that poor kid!" "I know it wasn't great but...well, turned out for the best, not gonna excuse it but it...hehehe...I still can't believe they did that, I was overwhelmed I mean I was blown away." "I...gosh I...I just wanna say I'm really proud of you." "You...r-really?" "Yes." He gently moved himself forwards to clasp James' right hand. "You are showing me all these incredible things, you're showing me at your worst and your best without being any worse for it like you normally would back when we first met. I mean even back in our first days you always had this urge to run into things helping people but now I see you doing this everyplace...I'm...I am so proud of you James. You are the most wonderful-" "No." James gently gripped his hand in return. "YOU'RE wonderful. It was because of you I turned out like this, I was just some real wide boy when we first met but because you were the one to help me through my problems and gave me a chance, you made me turn out like this. I could never have done this without all the stuff you did for me. I love you." "I-i love you too...gosh we're just saying that all day aren't we?!" "Yeaaaaaaaah it's pretty lame," said FG mockingly, "just in this boring life back with you again oh jeeeeez-seriously I'm really happy to be back and I never wanna do this travelling stuff again." "You really mean it?" asked Koopin. "I do. Absolutely, so now that you saw the most depressing world finally come out good, let me tell you about...the world of Ivalice." James readied himself to bring out the largest chunk of his omni-tool's memory as another world sprouted forth. It was a desert city, one that was much more established than worn rickety remnants of the post-apocalypse. Stone foundations that rose brilliantly high above with intricate colourings of blue and cream pigments painted upon the rock texture amidst closed market streets and spacious open plazas. It was a city that Koopin understood the very nature of the moment he saw it which made him feel a little homesick as he gasped with surprise at such difference between worlds. All sorts of creatures from reptilians with long spear snouts to soft-faced creatures with donkey ears along with humans once again amongst huge piggish beasts and children-sized creatures resembling rabbits. Clamouring voices clearly of another language he could not understand this time were heard on both channels of the audio, briefly transporting the koopa to that very same market that James had once stood. Bottles of ointments, large yellow birds screeching as they pulled carriages through the streets, people arguing amongst people recounting or courting even. "Oh my...wooooooow this...this looks just like a big version of Dusty Dunes!" "Heheheh yeah!" "What was this place called again?" "Ivalice. And that city is...Rabanastre, took me a bit. I ended up in some ruins and that little rabbit there, that's a moogle. She was the one that became my best friend, her name is Navarro and we sorta became this clan because apparently in order to do anything and get some real money, you have to form a clan which is like a sort of mercenary group." "What is it with you and mercenary groups, do you LIKE fighting?" "Well...yeah or rather I used to. Not so much nowadays, so we had to get an official permit from somebody who was already a serious player in the clans and luckily Navarro had a friend, called Berniere. He was a really cool dude, we had a fight, playfight really just to test each other out and after saving a village from monsters, he was like 'you know what, you're alright James' and then he stamped us with an official seal." "Oh cool! O-ooooh...ohhhh he's handsome." Koopin pointed towards a very robust-looking creature of scaled skin and long snout with a hefty set of thick arms and strapping husky gut of raw copper tones in an open shirt. But it was the beard on his snout with dark greying hairs that made the koopa bite his lip as James grinned feverishly from above the screen. "You like him? That's a bangaa, they're an awesome species." "Hhhhhhooooooo...he looks really handsome." "He had a musk on him too. VERY musky, not filthy, but clean and real manly." "Uhhhh-h-h-h-h-h-hhhhhh...nnnnngh..." The gentle twist of Koopin's legs against himself made FG cackle boldly as a conversation came between the moogle and the bangaa. "Yeah I couldn't resist, he is one sexy dude." "I-i-i wouldn't...mind being in that shop, what does he sell?" "Potions, healing stuff, lot of ointments and remedies to cure poison and such." "Oh so he's just a chemist. Must be smart too...hhhhmmmmm...I-i-i may want to-" "Yyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeees?" James leaned closer with a fiendish look in his eyes as the koopa whimpered pressing his hands to his upper chest. "W-wouldn't mind...freeze-framing him for a little...bit." "Ohohoooooo Koopin...are you having naughty thoughts of the big muscly bangaa daddy?" "H-he's a dad?" "Mmhmm, has an adorable little son." "Ohhhhh jeeeeez he's a dilk." "Dilk?" "D-dad I would...Love to Cuddle with." The raptor blinked with an embrassed chuckle." "Hhhhahahahaha, oho my god you are seriously cute as hell." "Wh-wh-whaaaaat?!" "You...seriously, my god...Koopin I...forgot so much about all the cute things you do." "S-s-so?! I can appreciate a good handsome dad, so do you!" "Totally! SPEAKING of handsome...let me just show you what I was wearing while out in Ivalice."

Another recording popped up, the older bangaa disappearing to show FG in front of a mirror showing himself off whilst in a resplendent new set of digs. His waist was covered by a leather belt around his belly like a sporran on a kilt, with leather gauntlets, cloth leggings and greaves covering his limbs and a red sash which looked fancifully shaped like a V across his chest connecting the pauldrons of his shoulders to the rest. Koopin gave a coy wolf whistle towards his boyfriend's image of the past. "Verrrrrrry handsome! Wow you look like a real warrior out of a storybook!" "Hhheheh, thanks. The omni-tool works pretty well no matter what you're wearing on your sleeves." "I can see that, wow you look...um...y-you look really strapping. Though I um...notice your eyes look really...tired out, are you...you look like you haven't been sleeping that well back then." "I had nightmares often...courtesy of mister scissors over there." "Oh for...Peach's sake, can I just KICK it or something?!" "You can try but it is a large piece of steel so I wouldn't recommend it." "Alright then...still, I love how you keep your chest exposed but that doesn't seem like the best choice for armour." "It's odd really, just Ivalice has some pretty strange rules of fashion. Glad you like at least, now uh lemme just show you some bits and pieces around the world, so Ivalice is this one big continent with lots of land borders on different kingdoms, they all use magic for everything. Using them in fights, using them to read things in a dark room, even use them for airships! No real technology besides that, you know they don't even have electricity as a public thing." "Really?!" asked Koopin derisively. "Why not?!" "Cuz apparently they got all these magic stones to act as power sources. It's pretty weird, but it all seems to work. So eventually me and Navarro, that rabbit girl there, we met up and hired on some other people. A nu-mou called Dahlia who was a healer, and two bangaa brothers called Fayne and Baldwin." "When do you decide to leave a world? Actually I always wondered." "Usually when things get too deep beyond my control, or when I realise there's nothing in that world to help me get back once all is said and dealed with. Was hoping that galaxy where Leiah lived in had some sort of science-y portal but maybe Ivalice had some form of magic to help me instead." James let his omni-tool run on with various shots and images of Ivalice. The cities were unique from each other for whereas the desert themes of Rabanastre was evident, some other places relied on much more granite-hewn sculpts of temperate climates more grey and less brown. The vividness of the scripture and language that Koopin could see and hear was already showing a deeply fascinating history that he had no idea on where to start asking about as he caught glimpses of James' friends next to him. The moogle in leather armour with a stern look on her face, debating with the viewer and lecturing him on various important-sounding tasks; the nu-mou who had the kindest eyes and sweetest smile with hands clasped together constantly within her white-and-red robe; and lastly the two bangaas in different robes that focused on either the long-cloaked sweep of intellectual authority, or the lithe body-wrapped fist-clenching force of bravado. They walked amongst grand plains of open green and beauty, roamed throughout cities of ancient establishment, trekked across great mountain ranges that turned red with deep blood tones against the setting sun. It was all a beautiful experience to Koopin but he noted most especially the sudden cut between a very normal day of walking as his clan bantered between each other, and then suddenly at a seaside port town. Their mood had changed considerably as the bangaas rode on top of the great yellow birds strolling onwards with the one closest to James being entirely black and scruffy beyond belief. But already the koopa could see they were arguing from their tones in Ivalician, the clerical bangaa with long robe having his foot bound in thick wrappings as he asked: "Is he...is...something wrong? He looks injured." "Yeah...um...we had a bad mission where Fayne, this guy, got kidnapped along with Dahlia, her. Fayne lost his foot basically, they almost tore it off completely before we came and rescued them in the same day, but they had to amputate eventually." "O-ohhhh jeeeez. What...happened exactly?" "We got ambushed in a forest. Luckily some guys came to help us and we all made a big effort to free Fayne and Dahlia, so that all went way better than I thought." "His brother must have been worried like crazy." "He was, really worried, he never left his side in the hospital, he was okay but well, you know an amputation's kind of a big thing but at least I understood hehe." Koopin felt it wasn't right of him to smile at this despite James' own overcoming as they strode through the town. It was at this point that James pulled out a set of playing cards and gave them to him the moment they popped up on the video recording of a market down the street. He also handed Koopin a reddish tome dull in texture with rather strange script embeddded upon its front. "This is something for you, just to show it's all from another place." "W-wooooooaaaaah...hooooooo jeeeeez this is awesome. What is it?!" "Some kind of compendium, I think I can read some of it nowadays but I may have to get back to you on that. It's a reference book, it's all Ivalician." "This is fantastic...huh, looked bigger coming out of your satchel, I mean it's not that big but...it's pretty excellent." "I was worried I was gonna lose it from the damp in some places but, turns out my satchel was pretty secure about keeping water out. Then again it is from a pirate ship, musta planned ahead on that." "And what are these?" "Triple Triad cards." The koopa briefly looked through the playing cards and was confused by the numerals and picture references of strange creatures painted lovingly upon them. "They're from a game they play in Ivalice, Fayne is REALLY good at it, world-class champion actually!" "Oh wow...kinda looks difficult, I don't really understand thi-wait, do you just...place a card down and then the number that's facing towards it, if that one is higher you get to flip it?" "......how the fu-jesus christ god I hate you." James pressed his right hand to his forehead in exasperation as he closed the omni-tool briefly to give his left arm a rest before he started laughing. "Hhhhnhnhnhnhahahahaha, how the fu-did you figure that out so quickly?!" "It's still numbers! At least I THINK those are numbers, I know you always have problems with them bu-" "It's not even in YOUR language how the ffffffffrick did you just-I mean-GOD!" "I'm sorry! It just sort of came to me!" "You are jus-hhhhhhahahahaha, goooood I cannot play this game and you already figured it out." "Well I mean it's...just...well they are really cool, I mean the pictures are really nice. So I mean these'll look great to look at, thank you!" "You're welcome...so I hope you're ready for the biggest surprise of all." "Wait, really? Also um, when are you going to talk or interview with these friends of yours?" "Later, much later, but firstly...there was an unexpected friend of mine that came to Ivalice." "Oh jeez...please tell me it's not that freak who keeps following you?!" "No no, no no this is someone else. Someone I told you about years ago, do you remember I told you about my friend Kruz who was a pirate out on a ship?" "Ah huuuuh?" asked Koopin worried. "So, just to catch you up on things, Fayne is in hospital and we have another mission to take this dangerous artifact way over to Lea Monde where Fayne and Baldwin live because the church there has the best place to keep it safe." "What's a church?" "...it's like a building where you go to pray to the heavens and sort of wish people good luck-" "OH, like you mean a chapel!" "Ahh...um, yeah, how did you...is there a chapel here?" "Yeah there's one in Marrymore, it's a marriage resort I told you about it a few years back, people get married inside it." "Ohhhh right that place, yeaaaah your mom was telling me that too. Alright so, yes, the chapel they were gonna keep this safe, but we need an airship to get back because there's this border crossing that's not really accessible. So I have to find a ship, and I go wandering across the port looking for someone to take us back and GUESS who was actually there, in another world, FAR beyond his own, just waiting for me." ".........wait. Are you sayi-NO! N-n-no James James...James." Koopin put his hands up with a sense of delirious incomprehension shoving them towards FG. "Are you...saying that...your friend Kruz? The swarthy pirate friend that you and him had a thing with?" "Yep. Wouldn't believe it myself but he was right there, had his own ship, had his own crew, and was like 'hey brah! Seven years, howsit going' like NOTHING happened!" "Ohohoho my stars, REALLY!?" "YEAAAH! So we hug and we kiss and we're like 'awww jeez it's been years where the fuck you been' and I was-s-sorry-" "It's okay, you're all excited I'll allow it." "So he starts telling me...get this." James leaned closer with conspiratorial voice almost struggling to hold back his excitement. "He somehow managed to escape his own world using MY portal." "Wh-wh-wh...wait. Wait, wait you said...that no one could go through the portal you make but yourself." "That's what I thought! But turns out, if I portal myself out of a world whilst some crazy magic energy is going haywire and desperately trying to suck all the energy it can into itself, it tends to stay open! So Kruz being the crazy idiot that he is just jumps through because well his island was about to sink because its generator source was going into the sea! So he ends up in Ivalice, seven years he's hung out there, just this kremling, walking about, learning the usual stuff, knows a lot more than I do about it!" "Are you saying that, if somebody managed to like create a huge power surge next to you whilst you were escaping out of a world via portal...you can actually...take them with you?" "Kinda, see, it depends on where YOU want to go as well, so uh Kruz's thoughts took him to Ivalice but MINE took me to someplace else. So it seems kinda random but maybe not, it's only been done once and I don't really wanna test it." "No but...j-just imagine if I was able to...somehow go with you. Th-that'd be cool wouldn't it?" "Oh...I-i-i mean maybe but...ohhh just...I dunno, I mean I would just be worrying about you all the time." "I know but," stuttered Koopin, "how do you think I feel when you were out there and I had no idea what was happening to you?!" "That's...truuuue I admit, yeah okay." "Besides wouldn't it be awesome? Just you and me out there travelling? Not that you ever wanna really travel anyplace again I know you're kind of tired of all it, just a sort of...yanno, what if." His eyes turned dreamy for a few seconds to contemplate, despite all that James had shown him, a little sense of wanderlust was still burning thick within Koopin Kennidon. The raptor could not help but grin at him nodding at understanding. "Fair enough...well, Kruz gave me a ride back, and we joined up as good friends again, he didn't join my clan exactly but he did get in good with all my friends in Ivalice and for the most part it worked out pretty great! And NOW is the time I'm going to show you all the interviews. First off, one of my closest friends that I always...kinda wanted you to meet someday, somehow but I guess this'll have to do."

Ticking on through the omni-tool's recording memory, he eventually found Kruz himself sitting up against his desk with a perfect scene behind him. A grand window from the interior of his ship's cabin, gorgeously resplendent wood panelling as his hook hand glinted within the warm tender light of a lantern hanging up near him. Koopin almost blinked thrice from the sight of the handsomely-sculpted kremling male who spoke, much to his own surprise as FG's past self started: "So, why don't you tell us your name and occupation?" "Ahoy there, my name's Kruz an-...naaaah cut, can we redo that?" "What?" "That sounded corny, that 'ahoy there', I don' wanna do that." "I'm...not going to stop recording Kruz." "Wha-aw come ooooon you gotta make me look good!" "When do you not look good?" The kremling shook his head with widening smirk "...khheh, you...khhheheheheh, alright wise ass let's do this ah-heh-hem..." "Um, I-i-i can understand him," replied Koopin, "Wait what?!" "Yeah! I...I dunno how but I totally understand him! How is tha-" "Okay jus-...I mean that's great at least it sures saves me some hassle but god damn this is getting kinda weird, okay." He nodded as he let the kremling speak. "Hello there, my name is Kruz, an' I'm the captain of the Broken Petal. I wuz formerly part of King K. Rool's Kremling Krew, until a portal...made by James here, went kinda psycho an' got trapped remainin' on my island home. Now he dunno how it happened but I do, the energy of the island went all supernova an' tried to suck all the energy out the portal so I dove right in...otherwise I wuz gonna sink with the rest of the island right down to the sea." "And so you end up in Ivalice," said FG. "Yep. Still dunno why it happened, but hey, now you know you can bring yer friends to other worlds all you need to do is just cause a huge-ass magical reaction!" "Suuuuure...Koopin I'm not gonna do that don't worry." "Awww why not?! I'd love to meet your boyfriend, he seemed cute." "No I know what you're like, you're not coming!" "Khhahaha, what's wrong? Afraid I'll steal his heart too?" Kruz winked at the omni-tool grinning toothily which made Koopin blush with a giggling as he heard his boyfriend stammer out: "What do you mean steal HIS heart too?" "Oh right, like you weren't fallin' fer me at one point?" "W-we were bunkmates!" "Yanno he's blushin' behind that camera so it must mean I hit sumthin', khhahahaha." "W-whatever, what you been up to since then?" "Well..." The captain leaned forwards slightly as he put his "hands" together. "I spent a long time tryin' to make sense of this other world, had to learn the language from scratch, took some night classes an' well I manage to speak it well enough. The writin' I'm better at frankly but hey, always wuz kind of artistic." "Is that what they call it?" "Watch it, I kicked yer ass with that artistic talent of mine." "Yeaaaaaaah no one's gonna believe you, besides it's not caught on tape." "Oh...well in that case how about I DO show you what I know, hmm?" "You wanna show off to the camera a little?" "Is that an offer?" "...alright, yeah go on, show the people at home what you can do!" "Alrighty then! Stand back." James allowed the next part to run showing Koopin what the kremling meant as he saw a strange routine of dance. Left leg came up, arms slowly lift before he spun his leg out and lowered once again within five spins slowing down into a twirling bend. The koopa was watching with a great intent out of respect for Kruz's impressive muscular body so lean and athletic, but so composed and strengthened to turn his entire body into a singular tale of romance and loss. He danced an imaginary waltz, spun closer to James with a sensual passion that brought a gentle lump to Koopin's throat. "W-w-wow...just...he's amazing." "Hehe, I know," said FG mutedly, "he really takes his dancing seriously." "I know you told me that he was a ballet dancer but he is just......I-i-i can see why you both became pretty close." "Just for the record I never did anything with him while out in Ivalice, I made a promise to you and he respected that." "Alright...I mean, I know you wouldn't but thank you for being so faithful...even if we never said anything-" "You're my beloved. We should never have to, I know you're not the sort of person into the whole open relationship sort of thing-" "I know. I never worried about that with you, I know you would always stay true to me." They smiled at each other before Kruz managed to finish his dance, which both of them had been mostly watching as he finished with a serene look upon his face, balancing his body on the very toes which made Koopin wince along with FG before resting back on his heels. "Hhhhhh...so...that good?" "That...was...pretty cool yeah." The kremling cocked his head whilst tapping his foot. "I-i mean it was great yeah, awesome I mean it...wow...you really had something going on there huh?" "Khhheheh...yeah I...hard not to be emotional for that stuff." "It looked kinda painful right at the end." "Takes a lot of practice...that wuz the first dance I ever did perfectly, my own routine to...please my mentor. It's...kinda special to me." "What sort of dance is it?" "It's called the Sticklebrush Symphony. It's the story about the petal from a flower who lives perfectly in the garden, dancing with his beloved until one day he's caught up in the winds, twirling away until it lands in the sticklebrush, thorns and jagged edges all around him tearing, twisting...deforms him. He has a new home but instead of mourning simply all his life, he embraces a new identity and becomes the only leaf to ever grace the thicket, thorns never knowing what sort of life he had but knowin' he is not one of them. But he can dance through them in the winds and learn to live amongst them." "...wow...I...I can kinda see that yeah." "I hope so, normally it's a lot longer cuz it's an entire story but that was the more uh...cut-down version......let's not mention the fact I kicked yer ass dancin' like this." "Yeah riiiiight you toooootally did, no one's gonna believe you." "OHOHO I see how this is!" The omni-tool suddenly began to shake in its field of vision as Kruz wrestled with the raptor making Koopin giggle bashfully. "G-GET! OFF!" "Ah-ah-ah, you didn't say the magic word!" "KRUZ COME ON!" "Ah-ah-ah!" "Y-YOU-PFFT-c-come on quit fucking around!" "Not until you confess who won, come on! Who won when I wuz showin' you my ballet du sang?!" "OKAY FINE YOU DID, BUT I WASN'T PREPARED!" "Thaaaank you." "Did he really?! He actually fought you with...ballet?!" "Yeaaaaah um," stuttered FG, "I-i-i really wasn't prepared, I underestimated him. Heh, was my fault, o-oh, um..." "...oooooh." The last thing the omni-tool showed of the kremling was him stripping off his body fully, pants and all to show the gorgeously toned scale, which was making Koopin raise his eyebrows invitingly as Kruz said: "You gonna make this a strip show too?" "Wha-naaaah," said past James, "I won't." "Why not?" "I think I'd wanna get paid for it." "If you were strippin' they'd have to pay more fer that sexy body." "K-KRUZ! Dammit, um...I'm editing that out." "Suuure you will, khheheh..." "So that's...Kruz huh?" said Koopin fondly. "Yeah, kind of my best friend." "He's definitely a lot like you...I can see why you two were so close." "He's really a great guy, ever since he ended up in Ivalice he just really opened up, I mean back on his home island he was this swarthy pervy dude who made me feel just so chill and relaxed, like I never had to censor myself around him. But then I saw him again and he grew up along with me, like we both started to feel that there was more to life...and now he has someone of his own." "He seems...kind of sad. Was he having problems or something? Because I notice he forces his smile a little often." "At the time yeah but...he fixed them up." "Not really...then he told me that he did when we met up again but I told him I was with you. Was pretty sad about it but he got over it...found someone." "So...you're not the only one who can go to other worlds if Kruz was able to do it...that means I could too?" "If we manage to recreate the same thing that he went through yeah...but I'd rather not because I have no idea where you'd go, I didn't know anything about Kruz, remember that was seven years apart." "Oh no I'm definitely not gonna do it that just sounds scary but I was just wanting to make sure." "You were totally thinking about it though." "I very much was." "Trust me, your world is the best place I ever went to and I never wanna leave. There's nothing out there you can't get here." "I guess...heh, I mean I do explore more than most people do, I guess I shouldn't be so selfish. What about the rest of your friends out in Ivalice, you got interviews with them?" "I sure do, lemme just bring it up." Bringing up what he remembered to be the last of his interviews, he knew already that Koopin did not understand his Ivalician friends as he readied himself to translate for them as the clan appeared individually. The first one was the moogle, looking firmly neutral towards the omni-tool as she crossed her arms sitting up on a chair across the other side of a table in a very low-key tavern. The sounds of drinks clinking and people mumbling in the background were faded from the dialogue as James started. "Alright, tell us your name and occupation." "If you insist. My name is Navarro Rocino, I am the deputy of Clan Koridai, kupo." "And what does that mean exactly?" "It means that I am the treasurer, planner and head financier of our group." "Basically the brains of the operation." "You said it not me, but I agree kupo." "Hhhehehe, I walked into that one fair enough. What sort of stuff do you enjoy doing outside of your duties?" "I enjoy my tasks as they are, I have little time to sit on my haunches playing games." "Do you not have like ANY hobbies? You must have something you enjoy doing." "Not particularly, however I enjoy tending to the husbandry of chocobos." "And why is that?" "My family own a ranch where I was raised amongst such fine beasts, as a result I have learned greatly about their various tendencies. At least until I decided to go to the knights' academy." "Was there a reason for that?" "No, I simply wanted to expand my horizons, kupo. I also enjoy the theatre." "Yeah I can tell, you really crack up on a good pun." "Only when fitting for it." "She's rather surly," added Koopin honestly. "Yeah she's always rather uh...firm about things." "Not very social...how did you even get along with her?" "It's...I basically had a clan permit because I got lucky and she needed one, so I basically bribed her for it and in exchange she was a guide for me around Ivalice. We never really got on that well frankly but, we at least respect each other. Lemme pull up the next one." The scene changed to a rather pleasant little bedroom, a small wooden fit with a soft-looking kindly nu-mou smiling up towards the viewer with bifocals perched upon her snout. Her head was rather smooth to almost look bald despite the fur, and her cloak of white with red triangular banding on the outer ridge gave a humble sense of formality. "Is...i-is it working?" "Yep, so tell us your name and occupation." "My name is Dahlia Orosco, and...I am a white mage." "So what do you do for a living?" "Well I'm mostly a healer, I generally love to assist people and nurture any wounds that they may be inflicted upon them with using my magic. I also study the sciences and love to debate with people." "Any particular topics you love?" "OH yes, absolutely! Um, at the moment I am most fascinated by electricity, it absolutely amazing to think such a concept we could harness quite easily, if we only just knew how to create a generator safely allowing us to exert as much energy as that of a magicite engine! It's but a shame that we have not managed to find any funding for such things when everybody wants to use magicite since it's far more easy and with a higher output capacity. ...u-um...s-sorry." "Heheh, it's alright, it's great, it's just you being honest that's what I wanna see. You really love reading up on the sciences don't you?" "Why wouldn't I?! Knowledge is but a tonic for the mind! ...um...th-that was very corny c-could you delete that?" "What noooo I think it's cute, you're adorable when you get enthusiastic." "Hehehehe, James please I-i'm blushing!" "You two seem to get on well," said Koopin. "She's a really great friend, has her moments when she gets a little...crazy but she's very cool with me. Before you ask, she's a lesbian." "O-oh...I...wasn't even-why would you tell me that-I wasn't gonna even-" "I'm just saying!"

Koopin gave him a weird look pensive with his mouth before it skipped to the next character, a rather shiny copper-looking bangaa of orange slacks, red belt and padded green over his fists with the thickest muscles on his arms raw from exercise. The scene showed the backdrop of the clear open sky as if they were on a ship as the bangaa leaned against the railing to his side, smiling at the viewer cockily. James felt a slight fondness breaking into a sombre look from his eyes upon seeing the creature's feisty-looking eyes and warm-coloured tone as he did his best to translate cheerily. "The name'sszh Baldwin Sszhmithee, an' I'm a white monk over up at the church of Lea Monde. And uhhh if any ladiesszh out there, yesszh I keep ALL my musszhlesszh big." "Uuuuuugh..." The koopa giggled at such raucous masculinity. "Just tell us about yourself then, what do you like, what do you do?" "I like to protect the people, I love a good drink like any other good-blooded male an' I love nothing more than a good bed with a warm lady by my sszhide. Heh...mosszhtly though I usszhually wander off along the land with my brother Fayne, he'sszh got the brain an' I got the brawn, we're a perfect team." "You've known Fayne all your life then?" "Long asszh I can remember! He'sszh got more memory than I do, I had a bad fall or sszhomething when I wasszh a kid sszho it'sszh kinda iffy. He might be about eight yearsszh younger than me but he'sszh got way more going on for him than I ever could, I'll be fine with my musszhlesszh anyplasszhe, I can fit in like, a door or sszhomeplasszhe be a bounsszher or a guard but Fayne, he'sszh got a BIG name in the Triple Triad tournamentsszh, fuckin' sszhelebrity!" "Haha...you seem really proud of your brother, aren't you?" "I love him, he'sszh like one half of my sszhoul right here." Baldwin tap-tapped his heart with a fist. "Long asszh my heart'sszh sszhtill beating, Fayne will alwaysszh be my brother. Nothing'll ever break usszh, nah-uh, jusszht you watch. Heh, sszhorry, yer asszhking about me arentcha, not that molly." "Well why did you become a monk then?" "Well me an' Fayne ended up at Lea Monde cuzzh our parentsszh fucked off or sszhomething, I dunno, I don't care. Fayne wanted to be all sszhtudiousszh and booksszhmart sszho I wanted to punch thingsszh. I dunno what really got me into it, I jusszht alwaysszh liked to be the big guy, sszhtrong, reliable...maybe it'sszh becausszhe I wanted to protect Fayne cuzzh he'sszh alwaysszh younger than me, maybe it's becausszhe I jusszht wanted to punch sszhit harder. I jusszht really got into being a sszhtrong one, I wasszhn't sszhmart but I could take a hit." "Are you alright?" asked Koopin. "Hmmm?" "You were...you just look sorta upset." The raptor's eyes were moistening to a reddened tint around his pupils as he wiped his tears out with a soft hiccuping. "N-n-nah just...I miss them you know. They're okay no worries just...I was with them for almost like, two years, maybe a year and a half, that doesn't really go away." "Awwwww...they must really care about you." "They do. Alright next-" "W-wait what did he say in that last part?" "Sszho isszh that me?!" said Baldwin in the past. "Yeah it is." "You uhhh...gonna interview Fayne nexszht?" "Um, yes?" "Oh, cool cool, um...you gonna do it...alone?" "Baldwin, come on." "WHAT?! I'm jusszht sszhaying-" "I won't lay a finger on him, honestly." "Th-th-tha-thaa-that'sszh not what I'm sszhaying, I jusszht wonderrrred...iiiiiif Fayne wanted me to hang around sszho I can lisszhten to sszhtuff." "You can listen to it fine when I'm done recording, the point is I want you guys to be open about stuff with me. I'm your leader, you can talk about things without someone else peering over your shoulder." "What are you a fucking psszhychiatrisszht!? Come on!" "He's funny," added Koopin smiling, "seems a really nice guy but he's awfully protective about his brother." "Yeah he...he kind of is," said FG oddly, "it started to cloud his judgement a few times, lotta trust issues. But they're real great together and I know they'll be happy. Alright next up." The next clip was of the other bangaa, a more yellowish-brown texture than his brother whilst wearing a robe of baby-blue and white, with the sturdiest mitre reaching a few inches above his head. He sat in the room of what appeared to be a small inn, the light dappling across his face from a short-ended window next to him as he asked rather slowly with a concise voice: "Be that activated?" "Ah huh," said FG past tense, "so tell us about yourself." "My name be...Fayne Smithee, I am a prelate of the Lea Monde cathedral. I am an adjudicator of many a clerical duty, but normally I am...chaperone one may call it to my brother Baldwin." "And what does that entail?" "Mainly I guard him from any...temptation from the Light of Kiltia, my brother can be rather...impulsive and though I would never want to be apart from him, I have made it a full-time duty to be part of him." "What other duties do you have that don't involve your brother?" "Prayer, funeral duty, I am well-read in canon law and can act upon the very matter of legal attorney, I can form marriage between people and generally keep to my faith. I am...also well-trained in the art of healing and the...purification of malevolent demonkin." "Tell us about your faith then." "The Light of Kiltia be but a grand religion forming over...two-thousand year ago, brought to our land by the great prophet Ordalia and to teach the great...balance between good and evil while a great pantheon of many a benevolent deity, watch over the land beneath the greater eye of Faram. We do not however take part in governmental duty, keeping the church...and-state apart." "You must have had a lot to deal with, taking care of your brother when you two were orphaned, plus not many bangaas become mages or priests." "The impediment of my kind dealing in the...oratory be rather difficult, but by no mean can it retard me from my own reach into the higher level of faith and academica." "It also gave you the most impressive vocabulary I've ever heard, seriously I think I learned like six new words from you every day." "Hmhmhmhmhm...I aim to be an educator, but not even I know everything and I only need to learn more in life. Every day I learn." "He seems very guarded," said Koopin, "the way he was saying his words made me feel like he was keeping up a shield from you." "He had some issues...actually no, a lot of issues, it's hard to explain." "I won't ask if it's too personal." "Well, I'll tell you that Fayne was really suffering badly from some of those issues and it hurt him into a real depression. I wasn't there to help him through it but Kruz did. Kruz ended up really close to him and before long they eventually just...became a couple." "W-wait...whaaaat? Awwwwwww that's so sweet!" "Yeah I was surprised! I never thought Kruz would like a guy so down to earth as Fayne but in the end it just...worked out pretty well between them, I was really happy to see them get together, Kruz was really lonely and Fayne was struggling with things that he couldn't even tell Baldwin." "I understand how that feels, some issues are a little too bare to tell those in your family." "Exactly. Now there's one more person I wanna show you...and it's uh...kinda odd but I'll let him explain." "Okayyy?" James nervously put up the next recording showing a rather muted scene. A village square in twilight, the dark evening sky turning dark blue with the lights of many streetlamps flickering along the row of streets that lead to the small plaza. A fountain was rushing softly very close to the viewer's right as there sat a raptor in full black scaled skin, wearing a suit of armour rather reminiscent of a traditional medieval knight as Koopin's face soured slightly. "...him? Wh...what's HE doing here?" "Just listen." "So let's have it out finally," said FG of younger days, "tell us who you are finally." "Alrigh'...mah name's Roy MacGregor, ahm from New York City back from FG's world. Ah wuz originally huntin' for him but...turns out those reasons were not as legit as ah thought they were an'...now we're friends cuz ah apologised for everythin'. Heh...lissen ah know you wanna show this to Koopin so lemme jus'...say that ahm sorry abou' all the shit ah put you through. Ah wuz wrong, an' ah wanna make amends." "That's good, now I have proof anytime you fuck up an order at the bar." "Whut, naw you ain' usin' that shit!" "Hahaha I'm kidding...so what do you like then?" "Whut you mean lahk, food, music, TV?" "Well yeah, what do you like to do in your downtime?" "Hmmmmm...well ah luv ice cream, mah fuckin' favourite food. Music ahm mostly into heavy metal, just anythin' that pushes me down into a steel grinder for mah ears, that's thuh shit. Movies...or TV ah mostly prefer cartoons." "Haha really? I never thought you'd be into that mister mathlete." "Hey ahm a PRO mathlete, ah can run fast, ah can hit you lahk a train AN' ah got trigonometry down lahk mah BITCH!" "What else would I expect from a hall monitor?" "UH, PREFECT thank you, ah wuz keepin' thuh peace! You try dealin' with kids blowin' up thuh water pipes or perverts in thuh bathroom or that muthafuckin' Carlos Ortega!" "Alright alriiiiight jeez don't pop your jockstrap, you told me all about it...hehehe so, you're the only person, next to Kruz at least, that I know has gone to another world. What's it feel like travelling through all these places?" "It's awesome. Well...mostly it's awesome, ah mean eventually it wears off then you get kinda scared an' angry at sum shit, lahk wi' all thuh prejudice you see in other places. Sum worlds don' have it, that's good, bu' other places do an' that pisses me off. Lahk you see so many kinds of amazin' shit out there, stuff that's MUCH bigger than all thuh petty bullshit that these people go through, you got bangaas bein' spit upon in this place, you got argonians gettin' beatdown in Skyrim, you got all that shit! But sum places at least manage to get past that and become better." "Like Koopin's world, that's a perfect place to be." "Ah wuzn't long in it but it seemed kinda nice, sorta too perfect but ah guess that's better than nuthin'. Would hafta go back sumtahm an' see it more for mahself." "You should come sometime, I mean...let's face it, out of all the places I been to, the one place I was happiest was in the Mushroom Kingdom, there's just no real evil there like any other place, even the problems they have are just really piffy little things that you can solve in at least a day." "Hahaha, ahll keep that in mind." Koopin nodded with a little better understanding, feeling somewhat bad for his past judgement as he rubbed his neck. "Okay I...see what you mean about Roy he doesn't seem that bad after all." "It was just a deep misunderstanding because he got tricked, basically. Roy caught up with me and then talked about how he found some of the evidence not really fitting, so he wanted to start a clean slate. We worked with each other for a good while, because he wanted me to help him out to get an artifact. It took us a whole court case because somebody got murdered and hilariously, Roy had to be the lawyer." "Wh-what?! How did that happen?" "He offered apparently, said he knew the guy didn't do it and wanted to prove his innocence which he did." "Oh wow...that's pretty good of him, he must...jeez he's a lot more righteous than I thought he would be." "Sure surprised me, but then things took a real bad turn for the worse. Somebody broke into the cathedral where Fayne and Baldwin lived, because remember that artifact I told you about?" "Briefly." "Well somebody wanted it, so they stole it and brought a whole army down to attack the city. It was really insane, there was a lot of things going on, people getting killed left and right. Kruz lost almost all his people and even his own life, Baldwin almost died and Fayne was just completely broken, Navarro was in hospital because um...h-him...you know, HIM?" "Ah huh? ......oh no. Noooo tell me he-" "Took over me again and it...was getting worse because each new month I was passing in Ivalice was...getting closer to him almost completely taking me. I was this close Koopin. I felt him crawling in my skin, creeping around in my head just twisting my dreams and it was terrifying. I almost killed Navarro, but she forgave me because she knew it wasn't...me." "It wasn't you." Koopin repeated this sentiment with a hand on James' shoulder. "I know it wasn't. Was she okay?" "She...she survived...all my friends did...well...m-maybe Roy but we couldn't find him. We lost him in a big fight, fell over the side of Kruz's ship and just disappeared...it was a pretty long drop." "Oh no...ohhhh I hope he's okay, I-i-i'm sure he is!" "I haven't heard anything...so I hope. A huge war came down on Lea Monde, lots of people died...the artifact got stolen and in the end we had to rush out to stop them because it...was going to summon a great evil towards Ivalice. But we managed to stop it, me, Kruz, Fayne and Dahlia. Baldwin stayed to keep things safe, Navarro was wounded so..." "What was this great evil?" "Some kind of...monster, I guess, he came from another world and tricked people to summon him. We fought him back and it was...pretty insane, the next part of this gets pretty blurry for me so I don't remember this much. I found this portal, an actual one, for real where the monster came from and I hoped that maybe it would lead me to someplace. I remember some...really cold place, like where lots of water was. And maybe a garden full of plants, I thought I'd really died honestly but...next thing I know I'm on a roof being covered in moonlight with Kirie by my side, the pokemon ghost!" "R-r-really?! She can travel between worlds too-oh wait, she's a ghost, of course." "She said she had been looking for me to try and tell me that...she found a way to beat Scissoraptor. Like legit a way." "No way. Oh please tell me it worked."

James smiled gladly with the slowest sweetest grin upon his face. He nodded as Koopin balled up his fists into a pure joy and relief bursting from his chest. "It did. I can't really explain it but a good friend of hers, called Mz. Ruby, helped me out a lot with a perfect ritual to weaken him. I can explain all about it much later but I wanna finish my journey's story." "OHH! Ohhhohoho James, JAMES ARE YOU SERIOUS! Tha-that THING is...finally gone, James I can't believe it I MEAN FINALLY YOU DID IT!" He threw himself against James almost overbalancing him to nearly fall off the bed, panicking suddenly as the raptor pushed himself back up. "K-koopin, KOOPIN JEEZ!" "I'm sorry, I'M SORRY I'M JUST SO HAPPY HE'S FINALLY GONE!" "He's not GONE per se." "And we-...wh-what?" "Let me explan. I went through a ritual to weaken him, he's not gone out of me completely BUT...I have an idea on how to perfectly get rid of him, just trust me on this." "But...James, wha-I thought you were gonna-" "Koopin." He clasped the koopa's hands firmly after letting him pull away from the hug with a fierce look in his eyes. "We are going to destroy him. You and me. Together, okay? He's weak now, he can't fight, he cannot hurt me, and it's only going to take one ritual that both you and me know to get rid of him, remember? That one?" "......ohhh...right. Of course, I...I-i understand now. So uh...what was it like fighting off against him inside this...ritual?" "It was insane, I mean it was PURE mental focus I mean...it felt like I was fighting him inside a dream and I had to win or else I would have lost everything. Luckily I won, and then this one odd creature came out of...nowhere frankly and told me that he had a way to send me back home because Kirie asked him to." "An...odd creature?" Once again the omni-tool showed another stranger verse of an empty land. A beautiful void of an entire sea stretching beyond a sunset horizon of an alien eclipse as the sun gently sunk into the waves. James' view was showing a bridge made of light particles twinkling like the tinsel of a christmas tree buried in the snow, with five enormous spires of solid mountain rock circling around a single walled crater half-buried into the sea. Before the omni-tool's vision was the strangest creature Koopin had ever seen, the winged towering creature with clawed legs like some sort of beakless gryphon. "Who...what IS this place?" "It's Cocytus...apparently. That's the name of the world and this dude is...a Cocytan." "He's...h-he's saying something but I don't...understand anything he's saying, i-i-it sounds so...weird, much more than anything else you have shown me." "His name he said was Hau'rhun, not a bad guy but uh gets...too wrapped in his own work and I kinda think he doesn't really comprehend how much he can interfere with other people." "Huh, so a typical scientist, sounds like Dr. Gadd really." "Oh yeah, how is that guy doing?" "He's great! I just went to see him for a little thing couple of months back, he's doing alright!" "Awesome, I should check in with him as well...so uh, Hau'rhun said he wanted to show me some things and well...if I wanted to record anything to show people maybe this." James did not feel certain about mentioning the entire story of his reason for being with Hau'rhun, the strange tumultuous journey that seemed to begin with Isaac and the anomaly, along with Kirie having shadowed him for much longer than expected. It felt too difficult for him to explain, and he was starting to run down with a slight exhaustion for how long he had been talking and showing things to his dearest. But Koopin became slowly enraptured by the odd museum of another world, seeing the panel of a cold green cave activate before a large pale crystal of a dried minty colour. Diagrams began to twist and undulate, flickering into composite blueprints that disassembled and refitted in some form of creative process. James still never understood it, even when he was focusing on it properly and in truth neither did Koopin. "Apparently this um...thing here is to help you understand Hau'rhun's language but I dunno." "I'm not seeing it," said Koopin, "it just all looks...wait...w-wait wait this is kinda like those glyphs we saw in the old ruins remember with Kolorado?" "Ohhhh yeaaaah. Huh, maybe that's how it is." "It's not exactly clear...hoh man, Kolorado would flip real bad if he saw this and heard about what you been through." "Or rather he'd just pet me on the head and call me not a real explorer like he always did." "Hehehee! Well this uh...maybe I can look at these diagrams later because I feel you wanna wrap this up soon." "Oh yeah totally um...so he tells me he can get me back home, he's a nice guy so he sends me back." "Really, just like that?" "Uh, yeah pretty much...just took enough warping around to get his attention, plus he waited for me to take down Scissoraptor first." "That's good...so...did you get home finally?" "I did. And it took me about four months until I could finally make things good again." "What you mean?" "Well...firstly, I wanted to show you what my world looks like for...a long time. Are you ready?" "I am. Show me." His fingers began trembling for some reason as he pulled the most recent files of his omni-tool out before Koopin. It was the last leg of his story and with it there came a sigh of relief amidst shaking breaths as the holoscreen changed its image. From the pure serenity of Cocytus there came a harsh reality set upon them. A dark city with towering skyscrapers and a constant rain that came down thick entrenching across the slick rooftops. There was darkness in shapes with little lights bleakly faint against the cold mist of the cloudy air throughout the Windy City. The view from the omni-tool was high above the roofs, showing a scene panoramic of the grim futility of his world, at least back before things had changed for the slightest hint of hope somewhere across this cityscape. Koopin was in shock seeing such a desolate yet bustling city, so full and yet so empty of its existence as he gasped watching the people walking to and fro down beneath. All different species of various animals that were somehow familiar to him and yet so very different. "This...th-th-this is your city? Oh my stars it...it's awful, no wonder you wanted to leave!" "Heheh, yeah...Chicago isn't a great place...at least before but now it's...kinda hitting back on the road to recovery." "So what did you do back...home, I mean...is it ALWAYS this miserable?" "Yes, absolutely, as long as I can remember but it's way more worse. So the A.R.M.E, the people that experimented on me, they got SUPER powerful like way more than they ever did, and they planted all these cameras around the city to stop anyone they wanted, even just plant stuff or make up crimes that they did just to control the city." "Wow...what...wh-how do you keep meeting these awful people?" "I dunno...but things were getting really bad, people were being kidnapped and never seen again to be made into bigger experiments like me except...instead of all the things I could do, they wanted to turn these people into living weapons, like built only to kill, nothing else." "Wha-...actual people? But...th-that's just twisted!" "It is, so I went back to well, Sarah who I think I told you enough about before." "Yeah um...you said she was a leader of a large group or something right?" "Right. So...she has her reunion, we hug, we kiss, we fight, more or less fight, but then we eventually just get down to business. She had an army set up, and I just came in time to be a part of it once I showed off all the things I could do. She was planning an offensive, a huge invasion of the A.R.M.E headquarters, like we were storming a castle." "You were in a war?!" cried Koopin. "So so wait, that whole thing we said to my parents was actually TRUE in the end?!" "Yep," replied FG, "well it's more like a riot but, pretty much yeah." "Jeez...I mean awww jeez after all you've gone through I thought...that you would wanna be just through with all this and not fight anymore." "I was, but I had to fight. I didn't want to fight for the fun of it...heh...that's not really something I've felt in years frankly, I-i-i just...I just wanted it to be done with but I had to do it. So we raided the place, maybe three hundred of us all taking these guys down, they were all ex-military, like real pros but we had our best and skilled, a small group lead by Sarah broke into the side and worked its way upwards. I was along with them, we were gunning enemies down, there was bombs, there was shooting, there was crazy fire all over the place, reaching up through at least seventy floors of chaos." "Seventy?! Woah jeez that must be one tall building." "It was, damn it was a climb up those stairs but we made it. We had to...we had to beat the commander of the A.R.M.E and just everything done with. Once he was down the city would be free, we had to expose all the truths of his big projects towards the people of the city, like the mayor and such and show them what we were dealing with, what people suffered with. He had this huge rifle, the commander guy, that shot out huge lightning sparks and one shot direct could probably have killed me. You know I'm not good with electric stuff." "I remember...that one time you got a really nasty shock and you almost went to hospital. I was really worried." "Well...this thing was worse, but eventually we managed to beat him, me and Sarah together. We had other friends like the chief of police who teamed up with her to take back the city for the people, he was a cool guy, big and kinda scary, didn't talk much but he was cool. But it was Sarah and me that stood alone on that rooftop, taking down the head of the A.R.M.E and finishing it once and for all." "Heheh...like mother and son?" "...yeah. Like that. Wanna see her?" "S-sure. I'd love to, but is...the city free now, is your home okay now?" "Yes. It is, once the A.R.M.E was down and we got out all the info about them...well, we started to rebuild. Sarah was right in there out front with all her peeps and some of my closest friends from way back when I was young. One especially." "Who was that?" "Ashwin. I never told you about him because it was a long long time ago. He wasn't available for an interview because of uh...security reasons, he was from a very...special group." "Ooooh, sounds mysterious...like some sort of squadron, like King Bowser's elite guards?" "Yes, exactly that. Alright, lessee...this is my girl Sarah." He smiled heartily with a sense of relief as he pulled up his omni-tool for the last time at least for that night, showing Koopin finally one of the most influential people of his life. Sitting on a couch in a rather dull blue-painted room, her arms laying back across both sides of the sofa, was an old grey-skinned female creature with bottlenose smacking her lips as she sighed showing a white vest and brown slacks upon her body. Koopin looked at the image rather puzzled adding: "W-wow...she's a dolphin." "Hah, yeah like the ones in the sea." "I-i-i just...wow it's...so weird, I mean normally they got like goggles on them but...this is just strange." "Alright recording," said FG four months back. "Yanno you'd make for good security," replied Sarah, "I bet that bodycam's rather difficult to 'break'." The airquotes accentuated both sides of the couch as James chuckled whilst she leaned forwards. "Hahalright, you don't pay me enough for that." "Oh yeah, a bed an' a roof without payin' fer it you must be soooo impoverished. Hhhhhhnnnnn...alright, start this thing." "Introduce yourself." "My name is Sarah King. I have a longer name but you don't need to know that, I work as a bartender and was formerly the leader of the Fishnet. I dunno how much James has told you about my activities but, suffice to say, that's not needed anymore thanks to our little Die Hard operation." "All I wanted was to come out to the coast and have some laughs!" "Hhhehehehee, it's never that simple kid. So..." Sarah leaned her head to one side whilst resting two fingers upon her bulbous melon. "I'm retired officially from my real job and now have the honour of running this place right into the ground with my assistant Jenny. After all is said and done, I guess I coulda done worse." "That's true. So what do you like to do in your downtime?" "I love movies, particularly old pre-world movies, 20th-century stuff. I know there's a lotta shit past that, like of course but...there's something so magical about the early beginnings of movie history back when everybody was just layin' down the foundations of what would be a big beautiful commercial waste of everybody's time." "Hahaha, you're such an old geezer you realise that? OHHH back in maaaaah dayyyy we had only TWO dimensions of height an' length an' we wuz fine with 'em!" "Shut up, you don't even know what yer talkin' about." "Sure I do! Second dimension is height, third dimension is depth, fourth dimension is time! Hell I can give you the rest of them if you want." "Please don't." The dolphin rubbed her head smoothly with a groan clearly exhausted with her eyes drooping slightly. Koopin was amazed to think that this was the legendary Sarah King whom his boyfriend held with such high regard and enmity but he let the omni-tool's recording peter out to its final lone clip. "Anything you want to add?" replied James in the past. "You mean fer you or this...Koopin guy?" "Well really us but...sure." "...alright." Sarah moved forwards with a rather solemn look on her face before a smile came briskly crackling across her face like ice breaking across a lake. "I dunno what sorta person you are but, if you were able to make HIM turn out alright then you are officially a better person than I am." "That's really not saying much," said FG off-screen. "Fuck you, it's a hell of a compliment coming from me, not many people I'd claim to be better than me." "Considering you're almost in retirement, yeah." "You know how many Americans are struggling to walk at this age? Or Europeans for that matter, let's see YOU get to sixty-five without shitting in a bag and then I'll tell you." "Hhhahahahaha, alright alright. So, was that it?" "No." She stared fully towards Koopin's sight with a firm gaze that swiftly paralysed him to not blink. "I heard lots of things about you, about how honest, pure and sweet that you are. I don't want James to think he got fooled by someone but if you're gonna be that good to be able to make him learn a lot of things, and to learn how to be able to just simply...let go of stuff and be able to relax and have a normal life and not need to fight anymore...I trust you. I never even met you apart from this photograph that he showed me...but you have a very kind face. If you were able to turn him into somebody who wanted a normal life...you must be someone special. Take care of him for me. Okay? Mother's blessing." With flashing grin she dispelled her grip on Koopin's sight as he blushed with a sudden sense of humility, gasping nervously as he rubbed the back of his neck gently before the omni-tool closed off to reach its final log. James simply smiled at him before pulling out his last thing of rememberance to show Koopin. A photograph and a strange-looking device with a glass screen and simple four-button input. The raptor offered his lover the photograph as Koopin's eyes widened with a raw amazement upon recognition of the three raptors upon it. Or rather, one small infant held between their hands. "H-h-hhhhh...is...i-i-is that...your...p-parents?" "Yes," said FG. "Mary Elizabeth Campbell. Gerald Campbell. This thing is a PDA I got, someone went and found every single piece of data about my family, because...you know what? I think it's been a long day, and I wanna show you this when I'm ready, I've talked a lot of stuff and I'm pretty sure you're just really tired out bu-" "I...y-yeah...I'm sort of really tired from all this, I mean my mind is just...fffffwoooooh...just completely overwhelmed by all this, I mean all those worlds, all these...people! I just can't...believe, I-i-i mean frankly I ought to believe but it feels so unreal." "I understand. But uh, this...this special thing I wanna show it to you. I haven't...um, looked at it yet?" "You haven't?! But why, I thought you wanted to know about your family." "I do! It's just...j-just that I...it...it's been a long time coming and I'm sort of......afraid of what I might find, and I'd rather have someone to be with me when I discover what...they used to be." "Alright then. When you...when you are ready, I will be there for you in case you need me." "Thank you. Hhhhooooo...man I am tired." James stretched out his arms feeling his left one turning numb as he put the PDA and photograph away into his satchel, before placing it safely inside his wardrobe. "I think it's time you and I watched some late night TV to chill out too." "If not I can always dig out some favourites," added Koopin, "maybe you wanna watch 'Ravens From The Moon' like old times?" "I would love that right now. Seriously, I would." "Heheh, alright then! You know you missed my birthday two months ago." "Really?!" cried James. "Awwww maaaaan! I never brought a gift!" "You brought me YOU back, you dummy! What more could I want?!" "Aw that's no excuse, I come back with a rock, a book and some playing cards that make no sense, I had a porn magazine and it just disappeared somewhere out in that galaxy!" "Well I mean it WOULD have been nice buuuuut I really appreciate that you care about getting me things whilst you were out trying to deal with your own stuff. Thank you." He kissed him sweetly upon the cheek, the raptor smiling gingerly with a hot blush as the subject of birthdays kept on his head whilst the two moved from the bedroom to the couch. Charlie had long since gone to sleep, getting bored from the story as he slept beneath the bed as James further added: "So uhhh I have another secret to tell you, something I never knew before." "What is it?" "...turns out I'm actually two years older than I actually am." Koopin almost stopped to the point he practically stumbled against the couch. "You...wh-wh-what?! What the heck!?" "Yeah I know right!? Kind of a real surprise to me too!" "James you don't just-...I-i know you had problems guessing which day your birthday was but two YEARS?!" "Yeah...I um...sorta forgot two years of my life back when I was young and stupider." "......oh-kayyyy soooo that makes you officially six years older than me." "Yep. Sure does." "Wow...hey, um, since you...does that omni-thing have a watch function?" "Actually it does! Lemme just check something." One little tweak to the orange-glowing hard-light and he soon had his date revealed to him. "How many days ago was your birthday? Like, actual days?" "Ummmm...f-forty-seven?" "Okay lesseeeeeee.........huh. February 26th on my world's calendar." "Really?" "Well, happy birthday cutie." James hugged him close with a simple kiss to his lips as he slowly pulled him down onto the sofa to watch a movie together. Sure enough there was a classic on for them to enjoy as the black-and-white came to a flickering upon the screen as they sighed to swiftly relax. They felt as if nothing had changed the moment they stopped talking to enjoy each other's warmth, tenderly beating their hearts as their breaths began to soften. As the movie title came up, entitled "The Volcanic Fiend", James could not help but make one swift comment to murmur in Koopin's ear. "At least that just makes the age gap a little more sexy between us." "Pfffft...don't be such a weirdo." "Hehehehe..." It would be the single greatest sleep that he ever had that night, fully content, back within his home in the arms of his beloved smiling as they fell into slumber together as the grey visuals of the TV screen drifted across their bodies. With hands held tightly amidst their dreams, they could only wait for what the next days would come and greet them with in the form of strange endings and a possible new beginning.