Chapter 12

Thursday 10th September 1998

Before anything else…

ARGH! Homework!!!

Now that’s out of the way…

As I expected, the return to the mundane routine of school was an almost surreal shift from the weird and wonderful long summer I’d had. On top of that, the first week went past without any new occurrences. While I didn’t voice it (jinxing isn’t fun, kids), I was beginning to wonder if all of that madness had come to an end.

That in turn gave us less of an incentive to visit Dakota’s every day after school, especially when she was forcing us to lose up to a couple of hours just doing our homework immediately. Still, Neil’s warning about how lonely she can get kept coming back to my mind. I couldn’t stand to leave her alone. Even if school was giving her more chance to socialise, she’d still be spending several hours on her own.

Don’t get me wrong, I know she’s not some poor defenceless lamb or something. But the idea of her being lonely felt like a hand crushing my heart.

And in all fairness to Dakota’s homework regime, the weekend was free and fun. On the Saturday, Kendal took us to the local skateboarding park with some of her boards (I honestly hadn’t realised she had more than one), and tried to teach the rest of us how to ride. It… didn’t go well. We all suck, basically. But we had fun trying, and laughing at each other’s attempts.

Kendal also dropped two bombshells. Her birthday is on September 20th, meaning we had just over two weeks to figure out presents for her. I’ve already proposed we get her a personalised skateboard, and worryingly considering his track record, Bao opted to look into it for us. Also, once she turns 17, she’s immediately going to start learning how to drive. Which is awesome, and surreal to think that I’m almost at that age myself. And we’d have a Paintermobile! Zahid swore he’d never get in the car if we called it that. He also kept advising her about car models, trying to direct her towards what he considered the coolest.

The weekend ended all too soon, though. The routine picked up once again. The same old same-old-same-old.

… yeah, you know where this is going.

(Right?)

My alarm woke me up on Thursday morning, just as it had done the previous three days. My eyes struggled open and my brain steadily whirred into gear. Something was wrong… but I couldn’t quite figure it out. I simply turned off my alarm and prepared to hoist myself out of the comfort of my bed.

Was the alarm sound different?

After a truly massive yawn, I hoisted myself out of the covers. Though my vision was blurred by post-yawn wateriness, I could tell that… well, put bluntly, everything was different. I rubbed my eyes and let my vision adjust, and the difference became apparent. My entire room – and my legs – and indeed, my hands – all of it was video game-style 16-bit. For all intents and purposes, I appeared to have gone to sleep in the real world and woken up in Super Mario World.

I scurried out of my room and yep, the corridor was the same. Down the stairs, and a glance in the hallway mirror confirmed that I was now in full sprite form.

“Morning, Alex,” my father’s voice spoke up from behind me, while his words flashed up in front of me as a text box. “Come and get some food.”

I knew what to expect before I turned. He, too, was a real-life video game character. In all honesty, I struggled not to laugh… it was funny seeing him like that.

“You, err… you feeling okay, Dad?” I asked as I followed him off to the kitchen. The fruit bowl, boxes of cereal and the bagged loaf of bread were all bobbing slightly like items waiting to be retrieved.

“Of course,” he replied, again with dialogue floating in front of him. “Why? Do you think I look unwell?”

“Uhm…”

If he couldn’t perceive the change, what could I really say?

“I feel fine. It’s probably just the lighting,” he decided.

“Probably,” I nodded; better to agree and bring the conversation to a tidy end.

With that, I continued the day like normal, save for the pixelized nature of everyone and everything around me. The bike journey to school did feel like a weird game level, though. Whatever change had been wrought on reality, it seemed to be changing my perspective on the world ever-so-slightly. Which in turn made me consider how quickly I’d acclimatised to this, just like everything else. Maybe I just maxed out my weird-o-meter at the start of all of this…

“Hey, that looks like the bike from EarthBound!”

While hearing his excited voice was easy – especially when the accompanying text box helped bring it to my attention – it was a lot harder to spot Bao in the crowd than usual considering I wasn’t used to seeing him (or any other students) in 16-bit. Still, I quickly recognised him as the one bouncing over to me excitedly.

“I mean… it’s my bike. I think. This is all really, really weird,” I remarked while my friend checked it out from as many angles as he could.

“It’s cool, though!” he asserted. “It’s like we’re really inside a video game! I had a whole mini-game just based around getting all my books and stuff together.”

“Did food work like power-ups?”

“You too, huh?” Bao grinned. “Only way this’d be cooler is if it were like Spyro! That’d show the Americans!”

See, there’s this upcoming PlayStation game called Spyro the Dragon that Bao’s been hyped about. He’d already dubbed it the Crash Bandicoot of 1998. The problem is, the game came out on Wednesday in America and doesn’t come out until some time in October over here. Bao actually left Dakota’s earlier that day just to get on the message boards and read discussion amongst American gamers. I’m pretty sure this is the most hyped I’ve ever seen him over something, and he’d been cursing the region lock on the console and its games for at least a week.

“Maybe it is? I mean, how would you know? You’ve not plaaaaaaay-”

Abort, abort!

I’m not entirely sure what kind of look Bao was giving me, considering his face was currently made of oversized pixels, but I figured it was disapproving.

“Low blow, man. Low blow.”

We hung around for a few minutes as first Kendal, then Zahid, and finally Dakota joined us outside the school gates.

“Any signs of a way out of this?” our de-facto leader asked, devoting only a wave to greet us while otherwise cutting straight to the chase.

“No big tree or anything,” Kendal noted. “Are we gonna have to do school like this? That’d be sweet!”

“No real choice,” Zahid mused, leaning on the fence surrounding the school. “I reckon we’ll figure it out by the end of the day, though.”

At that, Bao grinned widely.

“Zahid’s gone plot-savvy!”

“Keep your eyes peeled. We’ll convene at break and lunch,” Dakota ordered.

“So, like we always do…?” I clarified with my tongue in the general direction of my cheek.

“You know what I mean,” she countered with humoured tone.

With that, we headed into our platformer-ified school grounds, and began the same-old-same-old with a bizarre new twist.

Form group, 16-bit.

Melody lounging with her feet on the table, 16-bit.

Mr Davies warning her to sit properly, 16-bit.

Lessons, teachers, classmates, 16-bit.

My classwork became mini-games and I even unlocked a couple of achievements.

I just felt fortunate that I didn’t have to knock my lunchbox open and chase after my food…

“Guys, this is the coolest thing that’s ever happened!” Bao declared as the five of us sat together in the Sixth Form common room. “I’ve been grinding and I’ve earned about six extra lives! And then I realised I’d zoned out in Art and Design so I threw myself out of the window and reloaded at the checkpoint!”

“… you killed yourself?” I double-checked. Surely that was said far too casually to be true.

“Alex. We’re living under video game rules. You get more than one life,” he observed like he was suddenly a gaming tutor.

“We don’t know how this all works,” Dakota began. “Even if that seems like a… well, an idea, we probably shouldn’t risk anything. What if you’re dead again when we resolve all of this?”

“But I’m alive so…”

Zahid exhaled heavily, having just taken a drink from his can of Fanta.

“In other words, you actually died and this new life might just be a product of whatever the hell’s going on.”

“Nah.”

No sooner had the words left Bao’s lips than… well, the arrangement of pixels that made up his face changed.

“Right?”

He brought his hands to his head as panic set in.

“I mean… it’s not like I felt myself die, it was just… I’m still here, s-so…”

“Hey, if you don’t die or stay dead or re-die at the end, that’s a hell of a thing to add to your gravestone eventually. 1982-1998, 1998-whenever.”

I hoped to at least alleviate the concern a little with that.

“Yeah… yeah, I could do that…” he muttered in consideration and relief.

“Baaaooo!”

Welp, I couldn’t quite place the voice from just one yelled word, but the text box read “Harriet” at the top so…

Turning around, there she was with her hands on her hips. Her long, braided blonde hair and her freckles were realised in pixel form, accenting what was quite clearly a disgruntled grimace.

“Oh crap-”

Bao almost instantly dove under the table. He’d been trying to avoid her every time their paths came close to crossing, afraid of what the eventual confrontation could bring. Evidently, he deemed hiding under the table to be a suitable way of dodging her.

“I’ll go check on him,” Kendal spoke before following him out of view.

All the while, Harriet marched over, stern and purposeful.

“Bao Thomson, get your butt out here!”

Dakota leapt from her seat, hurrying over to the approaching girl in full peacemaker mode.

“Let me talk to him, so long as you’re here I can try to get him to come around-”

“No. He’s mine.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was not Harriet’s voice.

My entire field of vision suddenly flashed between the altered reality and pitch black several times, disorienting me, before everything settled on what I could only describe as a heavy palette swap of the common room. The entire thing was now hued like a moonlit dungeon, and our fellow students were greyed over and static, statuesque.

And while myself and my friends remained the same, save for the apparent lighting change giving us our own darker shades, Harriet was now archetypal final boss material. Perhaps three times taller than before, exaggerated black armour from head to toe, draconic theming and a gigantic sword in her hand. A health bar hovered above her.

“Mine alone,” she grumbled in demonic tones.

“Bao, Kendal!” Zahid snapped, bringing the pair back out from their cover.

“Whoa. You really pissed her off, Bao,” Kendal said with concern lacing her voice. “I guess we do the weapon-summoning thing now?”

“Sounds like a good idea.”

I held out my hand and my sword manifested with a flash effect and a platforming beep. The paint-like explosion of colour as I donned my battle costume was more or less the same, but did give a similar sound to Mario using a power-up. By the time I’d done that, Dakota had returned to the table and we were all in our costumes.

Dark Harriet remained in place. I guess she was one of those stationary bosses.

“Bao, this is your territory,” Dakota spoke, keeping an eye on our newly-transformed nemesis. “What’s the plan?”

“Hold up. Let’s see her attack pattern…” he replied like an expert.

We didn’t have to wait long. Our transformed classmate took a sword slash diagonally downwards, then another the other way, and repeated twice. Each slash arced towards us… y’know, it made more sense here than when I used my Lokon sword… We did our best to dodge the strikes, after which she paused.

“And that’s us,” Bao remarked, before diving forward and slashing at her with his blades: she leant backwards and jittered in pain, and her health bar shrunk by maybe a fifth or a sixth. Job done, he dashed back to the rest of us.

“Like that.”

“Got it!” Kendal whooped.

And so the cycle repeated… until we landed our third attack on her.

“Is this all it takes in Mario and whatever?” Zahid asked, disgruntled, as we returned to our table again.

Slash, slash.

“It’s different when we’re doing it like this!” Bao insisted.

Slash, slash.

“Get ready, guys,” Dakota spoke coolly.

Slash, slash.

The five of us all went to move at once, only for Dark Harriet to throw her arms up. A fizzing ball of orange energy formed between her hands, and she threw it in our direction like a magical Indiana Jones boulder. Taken aback, we resorted to diving out of the way, completely disorganised by the new twist.

Bao groaned on my right.

“Awh, I hate bosses like this…”

“Bear with me!” Kendal cried out, firing an arrow right into Dark Harriet’s chest. She responded in the same way as the previous two times.

“Nice work!” I shouted out to her, returning to my feet. The enemy’s health bar was now half-empty.

The descending whistle of objects falling from above sounded out repeatedly – glancing upwards, we saw a patrol of minions sailing down towards us, reptilian creatures with snapping beaks.

(Definitely not Koopa Troopas.)

One touched down directly in front of me, about two-thirds my height. For fun, I bonked it on the head with my sword, which evidently was enough to defeat it. Another struck me from behind, sending what felt like a static shock through my body. I did my best to recover myself quickly, spinning around with my sword raised and striking it down. Then the combination of the shock and the spin saw me topple over.

Dark Harriet’s sword slashes began again while I was down, so I chose to stay there and remain out of the way (plus I was dizzy). It looked as though the others were out of the way, though, and by the time I fully regained myself, I saw Bao closing the distance between himself and the evil knight, diving around each pair of slashes. He then dashed forwards and attacked before she could launch her energy ball.

“Aha! I’m too good at video games, Harriet!” he cheered triumphantly, once again darting back to the opposite end of the battlefield. I made sure to scurry back too.

“You all good?” Dakota asked, and I nodded in response.

“Tingly, but I’ll live.”

More reptilian minions descended from the ceiling, though thanks to Kendal’s ever-improving archery skills, half of them never reached the floor. Dakota handled the rest, gracefully weaving between them and taking them down with her spear.

Not content to let us get a hang of this, Dark Harriet suddenly swooped towards us.

We only barely managed to avoid her, rushing over to where she’d been standing while she came to a halt at our table and turned to face us.

“What next?!” Zahid grumbled, axe raised in preparation.

“Erm,” Bao began, “she’ll probably-”

Our towering opponent repeated her last action, zooming towards us once more. We scrambled and reassembled back where we started.

“This is like the beep test!” Kendal enthused, reminding me how exhausting that had been in PE lessons past.

Bao ran forward once again as Dark Harriet unleashed another flurry of slashes, and struck before she could launch the orb. Her health bar halved. One strike left.

… so, yeah. More minions, more running back and forth.

And this time, the slashes came twice as fast.

The rest of us were thrown for a loop, but Bao was absolutely in his element. Honestly, the minions and a little Kendal archery aside, this fight was all on him. He evaded every attack and made his approach seem effortless.

I couldn’t hear him say it, but as he took the final strike at Harriet, a text box flashed up with “I’m sorry” accredited to him.

The ebony armour burst open, unveiling regular (pixel) Harriet within; the whole world flashed between the dungeon-common room and pitch black once more; and suddenly we were back to normal. Flesh-and-blood, real world normal.

Flesh-and-blood, real world, in full Painter regalia and holding Lokon weapons in school normal.

“No! No, no, not like this!” I cried out, dispelling my costume immediately.

“Alex-” Dakota spoke over my panic.

“I know they can’t see our faces but- but we’re in the same place and Harriet was looking right at us-”

“Alex!”

She pointed off towards Bao and Harriet. Hovering in mid-air between us and them was the word “Continue”. Once I fully absorbed that, I realised that everybody else but the five of us was completely frozen still.

“… right, yeah…” I winced. Dakota giggled in delight – if I wasn’t blushing already, I probably was thanks to that.

Since we were paused indefinitely, Dakota decided to take the weapons back to hers, borrowing my bike to get there and back faster. Which led to Bao pointing out to me that her butt will have been on my saddle. Trying my best not to let that cloud my thoughts, we worked on figuring out exactly where we were before the boss fight began.

Dakota returned about ten minutes later, weapons safe and sound at her place.

“We really need to figure out how to teleport them back,” she commented while taking her place next to the “Continue”.

“I’ll work on it,” I spoke without thinking. I’d discovered the teleport, so I immediately figured I would handle that task too.

“Ready?”

“If I do die, I want you guys to know this has been amazing and tell my parents I love them…” Bao called out from under the table.

Dakota pressed the button and life began again.

“YES!”

Bao immediately leapt up from his station, throwing the table on its side and very nearly trapping Zahid under it.

“I’m not dead!”

“Congratulations!” Kendal cheered, standing up next to him and grabbing him into a hug.

“… did I miss something?” a confused Harriet spoke up, her fury held back in light of Bao’s spontaneous outburst.

“Kind of…” Dakota chuckled.

Shrugging off her confusion, Harriet continued her journey to Bao, stopping right in front of him. Kendal released him, backing off a tad.

“We need to talk.”

“Yeah… we do…” he nodded humbly.

I didn’t get to see him for the rest of the lunch break. Harriet had led him off to talk in private, stating that she didn’t want to do this in front of everyone else. When we all convened after school, Bao was surprisingly breezy about it. “We’re good now,” he summarised. And apparently – without a hint of irony – he had recommended some games to her.