Rising Shards

Every few sections we’d pass by a monitor, and each time Iris tried to yank the one on her side. They were all just playing ads for the company’s toys. One for Mr. Sleebo, their signature character, who I guess was just a teacher, played. He was in an old looking classroom talking to two sisters, one with braces and the other in full goth attire. My attention was off of the shopping game completely, now focused on the monitors as we passed them by.

”You two shouldn’t be fighting,” Mr. Sleebo said. ”This is the fourth time I’ve caught you brawling through the school halls. Now what the heck do you have to say for yourselves?”

”Uh, hey...” I said. Had I seen this before? Why was it so familiar?

”Brawling? That’s...” The braces sister said.

”I’d say it was quite the brawl, you two were so focused on punching each other that you knocked Mrs. Morning’s flower pot down!” Mr. Sleebo said. ”Well? Not a single thing to say about it? Anabelle, how about you?”

”But she started it,” Anabelle said.

Mr. Sleebo scoffed.

”I gotta do it, I gotta call Glump in here.”

”Wait...” I said. Glimmers of memories came back to me. I talked to that guy, he said that stuff to me and...”

The commercial airing didn’t go exactly how my memory went, Mr. Sleebo summoned a blob of ooze called Glump and everyone started dancing as a narrator whose voice came through the classroom’s speakers announced we could order our own Mr. Sleebo and Glump school edition two-pack for two easy payments of $19.99, and get the expansion pack for Make-Good-Decisions School 2 with an extended first person shooter sequence of Glump exploring a dungeon and fighting monsters.

”Anastasia!” I said out loud. ”I was with her, and...wait, something’s wrong!”

Oka put the brakes on, concern immediately forming on her face. ”What? What is it?”

”Hey, why are we stopping?” Tay asked.

”Yeah, what the hell, Oka?” Iris said.

”We were just in the void,” I said. ”Mr. Sleebo...he fought us, but it was an imp...”

”Huh? Are you feeling alright?” Oka asked.

”I...think?” I said. ”But we were all just in a thing! We should probably like...figure that out in case we’re still in danger?”

”The only thing we’re in danger of is losing this game!” Iris said. ”Start moving Oka, and get to shoveling more toys in the cart!”

”The carts are pretty much full already,” Lillia said. ”I’m more curious about this. What do you mean?”

”We were in like this TV world that looked like that!” I said, pointing as Mr. Sleebo did a backflip in another commercial. ”I had braces, and it was all retro, and...”

”You looked so cute with braces,” Oka said, then paused. ”Wait, when did I ever see you with braces?”

At that moment, the others seemed to remember in unison, all babbling at once about our experience just then, from Oka smashing Mr. Sleebo with a door, to Lillia defeating Glump, to Iris throwing a bunch of stuff in a pool for some reason.

”Wait, so are we still in the void?” Maia asked.

”I don’t think so,” Lillia said, doing a test ping with her wristband. ”Just...a strange blip. Even stranger we didn’t remember it. Hold on...” She did another ping, that sent a green wave around us this time.

”Whoa, what’s that?” Iris asked.

”A health status ping,” Lillia said. ”Surely you’ve been taught how to use that, haven’t you? It checks us over to make sure we weren’t in any recent physical harm.”

”Oh, that thing,” Iris said.

I probably should have pinged that myself, but I tended to get way too anxious whenever I used the health status ping even if it just told me I was fine, and usually ended up in a 3WMB spiral afterwards.

”We’re all clear, so whatever happened didn’t do any damage.” Lillia said. ”Void history isn’t there, but...”

”I thought we won!” Iris said.

”Well, we did win,” Tay said. ”Just...that memory bit is very troubling.”

I didn’t like this. What if we were still in some maze, never to get out? Even if we weren’t in the void, what if whoever did that to us was just watching us now, ready to pull us back in?

”What do we do?” I asked.

”What can we even do? Void imp did a thing, we got out, we forgot, we remembered,” Iris said. ”It’s not like we can turn around and go back in this thing, can we?”

”No, but we can do...” Oka sighed, fidgeting with her awkward control handles. ”I don’t know, actually...”

”We gotta at least finish this game,” Iris said. ”It’ll be a pain if we tell a teacher and don’t even get to pick our dresses. Can we at least do that?”

”Maybe just finish this, get our dresses, and then tell a teacher?” I suggested.

It wasn’t satisfying, but without an immediate, pressing threat, I couldn’t come up with a good enough reason that we’d stop mid game. All the Mr. Sleebo and Glump stuff around us felt like it was taunting me, too, so maybe I wanted to just get this over with first. It would’ve been easier if I just remembered this after the game, but that wasn’t in the cards.

* * *

”Oh, that one’s nice,” I said as Oka looked over a sky blue dress on a screen.

”Yeah, let’s do it, it matches yours, too!” Oka said, clicking a bright green button to confirm her choice.

We finished our shopping cart race and got 431 points for our efforts, and got to pick out one toy at a $19.99 value from our cart, a Mr. Sleebo and Glump set, and a bonus plushie. I didn’t really want that last one but I picked a cute enough bunny plush. Then we got our measurements done before we got to pick our dress or tuxedo on a touch screen. The concern over the unknown void incident loomed over things, but at least we got prom dresses out of it that actually looked cute.

Once that was squared away, we had to tell someone about what happened. Iris, Maia, and Tay didn’t join us, but Oka, Lillia, and I tried to find the nearest teacher or chaperone. Ms. Corinani was in the void with us, and luckily we spotted her first. We explained the story, expecting her to have a sudden flash of memories coming back to her, but she just nodded along.

”Yeah, I called it in already,” Corinani said, giving us a thumbs up and winking. ”All good, I think?”

”What do you mean, all good?” Oka asked.

”Yeah, is that all?” I said.

”Apparently,” Corinani said. ”Weird one, huh? Memory wiping void bloops are scary, but the ol’ noggin stores stuff up there so they can never fully erase something, just find the right trigger and blam! But maybe I’d been through enough that I remembered pretty quick and that nothing real bad happened. I phoned it in, school folks are aware. That’s pretty much all we can do now.”

Ms. Corinani was a lot less comforting about this sort of thing than Dr. Diast.

”Is it really?” Lillia asked.

”They said they’re handling it!” Corinani said. ”We get to stay out of it. You can call some school staffers but they’re gonna tell you the same thing. But maybe in a nicer way than they said it to me.”

That wasn’t satisfying at all, and she wouldn’t budge on doing anything about it, basically telling us to just sit around until we got back on the bus.

We stood in annoyed silence, unable to figure out what to do next. We had to do something, though.

Lillia gasped as someone passed us by.

”Amara.” Lillia said.

The fox Kanibari girl stopped in her tracks, a bag full of plushies in her hand. ”Yes?”

”I’m sorry to ask out of the blue, but when you spoke to Tik earlier, was it about Kalei?” Lillia said.

”Kalei?” Amara’s nose scrunched up like she smelled something bad. She considered if she should tell us or not. ”No, it was...” Her eyes went wide as she pointed past the crowd.

”About her.” Amara said, pointing to Caeda, who was leaving into a side hallway of the mall with Chickadee by her side.

In a roundabout way, we at least met one objective we were trying to earlier. Amara was investigating something that potentially had something to do with Kalei’s situation. Was the imp thing part of this too? Was all this linked in some web of strange happenings that I couldn’t see the bigger picture of?

Amara didn’t say anything as she went after them. I wasn’t sure if we’d follow either, but then I saw Anastasia headed that way as well, and knew none of us could ignore this now.