“Admit that I beat you,” Joey taunted. “I want to hear you say that I’m better than you.”
Indira couldn’t help grinning.
“You are better than me, but you’re not better than us.”
A frown stretched across Joey’s face as Cavern appeared in his shadow. The antagonist roped one arm around him, pressing that ink-black hand to the Author’s cheek.
Dark magic blossomed.
They hadn’t been sure of this part. Would the magic work on someone as powerful as Joey? But Indira watched the black handprint appear. Joey’s bright eyes darkened. His shadow vanished with a whiplike swish. It worked. Indira didn’t know how long the spell would hold, but for now Joey’s spirit was trapped inside Cavern’s dark cave.
Allen Squalls glanced down from the opposite rooftop. In the house on their right, Minerva and Maxi peered out from the windows. Cavern set a firm hand on his captive’s shoulder. “We’ve got him,” he said with a grunt.
Indira nodded. “Take him inside. It’s time to send him back to the Real World.”
Cavern lifted Joey and leaped from Phoenix’s back to the waiting porch. Indira searched the rooftops and canals, wondering if Ledge Woods would make an appearance. They were challenged instead by an unexpected roar. Phoenix had lifted his head. Indira thought Cavern’s magic would have broken Joey’s control over Phoenix, but it didn’t look like it had.
Phoenix looked furious, thinking they were kidnapping his master.
Indira leaped across the distance to stand between Phoenix and Joey. Cavern had turned, backpedaling warily. Phoenix shifted his reptilian head, snapping sharp jaws.
“Wait!” Indira locked eyes with him. “Look at me! Phoenix! Remember who you are.”
Cavern used the distraction to slip inside the house. Phoenix’s eyes were starting to glow. If he unleashed his fire and burned down the house behind her, there was a good chance their plans would be completely ruined. Indira had to break Joey’s control of him. Instinct told her that the hammer wasn’t going to work this time. She needed to use a different kind of power.
“I have a secret.”
His head was still tossing angrily from side to side, but she noticed that those words had snagged his attention. Both of his coal-burning eyes fixed on her.
“Brainstorm Underglass told me why you were assigned to this tutorial,” she said. “It was a test run to see if you’d make a good…romantic interest. For me.”
Heat rushed over her cheeks and down her neck. Phoenix’s entire body had gone statue-still. Those great marble-like eyes watched her, unblinking.
“You’re one of my best friends. I’m sorry that I risked your life. I’m sorry that Joey did this to you. But your name is not Vesuvius.” Indira felt the truth tremble out of her. “Your name is Phoenix. You’re my favorite person. And I like you so much. And your story—our story—is only just beginning.”
There was a hiss of smoke. Indira watched as the great form twisted and shrank until there was an ordinary boy with dashing red hair standing in water up to his chest. She smiled down at him. “Want to help me save the world?”
He looked confused for a second, as if he’d just woken up from a dream, but then his eyes flickered with flame at the sight of her. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Above them, one of the second-story windows was flung open. Maxi leaned out with a scolding look on her face. “Could you two quit flirting and get up here?”
Indira grinned as Maxi vanished back inside. Reaching down, she helped Phoenix out of the canal with a splash. The two of them walked forward, shoulders pressed together, ready to face the final part of this adventure together. Indira led him to the very top floor, to the same room she’d woken up in when all of this had started.
A strange scene greeted them.
Cavern stood at the center of the room with one hand set on Joey’s shoulder. His other hand was pressed to his stomach. Every few seconds he grunted in pain. The spell appeared to be holding Joey captive for now, but Indira could see he was fighting with all his strength to keep the Author trapped. That was expected. In all their planning, they’d only hoped for ten minutes.
Meanwhile, Gadget was leaning down in front of a seated Joey. Indira watched as the girl carefully slid two of the prepared tutor devices into his eyes and then blindfolded him.
Maxi wielded an item that Indira initially mistook for a wand. A closer look showed that it was a red pen. Every time she slashed the air, something in the room transformed. The farmhouse dresser became a flat-screen TV. A pair of overalls shimmered into lacrosse gear. Item by item, Maxi slowly edited the room until it looked like the one Joey actually lived in.
The stairs behind Indira creaked. Minerva was there. Indira could hear the woman practicing her lines. She had traded her classic outfit for something a bit more modern—a pair of flowy sweatpants and a brightly colored sweater. In her right hand, she held a pair of pristine scissors. Gadget eyed them for a second and laughed.
“All this tech, and the most important thing in the room is a pair of scissors.”
Everyone smiled. All the details had been chosen with great care. Allen Squalls stood by the window, his eyes unfocused. The light in the room was dimming as gray clouds formed outside. Little dots of rain were already streaking down the window. That had been Allen’s idea. They didn’t want to risk a chance of breaking the illusion. Better to obscure the surrounding town with a little bad weather. Not to mention, it would hide the fact that it was still noon in their world, when they wanted him to believe it was night. Indira didn’t hear Allen muttering about all the possible deaths that awaited him, either. He was focused instead on doing his job.
“He’s getting close to escaping,” Cavern announced. “Move faster.”
Maxi circled the room, dedicating her attention to the gaming systems she had summoned. Indira knew she was carefully going back through a detailed list, making sure every title and controller was exactly the way it would appear in Joey’s room in the Real World.
“How is this going to wake him up?” Phoenix whispered.
Indira explained. “We realized he’s not afraid of dragons. Which makes sense. He plays video games with dragons all the time. But there is one thing that every eleven-year-old boy fears. Come on, I’ll show you.”
She led him across the room to an empty closet. Gadget was already pressed into the back corner, staring down at a screen, making minor adjustments to the tutor devices she’d programmed. Indira crawled into the right side of the closet. Phoenix followed her. Maxi had carved a hole in the wall there, and the back of Joey’s favorite video-game system was pressed against it.
“Can you make smoke?” Indira asked Phoenix. “Without setting everything on fire?”
He snorted. “Of course.”
“One minute,” Cavern announced. “Final preparations.”
Allen Squalls put a few final touches on his storm before joining them in the closet. He surprised Phoenix with a quick side hug. “Bestie! Welcome back!”
Maxi was still whipping around the room, making minor adjustments. There were dirty socks on the floor now and cups half filled with soured liquids. The whole place looked a little disgusting. Cavern carefully repositioned Joey in the chair. Maxi set a controller in the boy’s lap. She was heading for the closet when she remembered something. “The clock!”
She darted back across the room to adjust the time. Now it read 4:37 a.m. She sprinted back, slid into the closet beside Squalls, and closed the doors behind her. The group fell silent.
All their careful planning was about to be put to the test.
“I’m going to release him,” Cavern announced. “Ready?”
Minerva called a confirmation from the stairs. Indira leaned forward. She could just barely see the room through a crack in the wall. Cavern carefully removed the blin
dfold from Joey’s eyes. Silently, the antagonist darted toward the stairs.
Joey was staring blankly ahead.
The door opened and closed. For a few seconds, the only sound was the gentle patter of rain on the window. And then the television turned on. The explosions on the screen sounded exactly the same as all the cannons Joey had fired on them.
The Author blinked back to life.
He glanced around the room, clearly confused.
His eyes settled on the controller in his hand. One of his thumbs traced the joystick. There was another explosion on the television. The noise drew his eyes up. He frowned at the screen. Indira could see his confusion growing. He was asking the same question that every dreamer asks. Where was he? Had any of what he’d just experienced been real?
As he glanced around the room, all the details he saw would fit his memories of the Real World. Maxi’s careful design guaranteed that. And the tutor devices Gadget installed would color his vision, too, enriching it until it matched the intensity of the Real World.
Joey was still looking a little lost when Minerva burst into the room.
It was a classic scene. The mother catching her son staying up too late playing video games. She threw him a scandalized look, features brightened by the glow of the screen, and crossed the room like a strike of lightning. Indira saw Joey actually flinch backward.
Gadget’s programming would be rewiring the image in his head. Minerva’s features would be blending with the images Maxi had researched of Joey’s mother. The image was more than a woman wearing clothes similar to hers or acting the way she acted. Joey would actually see his mother standing in front of him.
“Joey!” Minerva exclaimed. “I thought I told you to go to bed by eleven!”
Indira saw him flinch again. That voice was the most frightening thing Joey could imagine. Minerva pressed forward until she was towering over him.
“It’s almost five a.m.! You’re still awake? Playing these video games?”
Joey swallowed. Indira thought she saw the bright colors of his hair and eyes fade just a little bit. He opened his mouth. “But I wasn’t—I don’t know what—”
“No excuses,” Minerva cut in. “You’re grounded.”
The room actually trembled with that pronouncement. The ground started to shake. Outside, Allen Squalls brought down a strike of lightning to punctuate the threat. Joey’s calm expression twisted a little as the nightmare kept getting worse.
“Mom,” he begged. “I promise—I wasn’t—”
Minerva ignored him. She marched across the room, and this was the part they’d spent so much time practicing. It was always messy trying to figure out which cord connected where and did what, but any real parent would know exactly which one to take.
Everything needed to happen at once.
Indira’s voice was barely a whisper in Phoenix’s ear. “Summon the smoke.”
At the same time, she lifted her hammer. And Minerva yanked out a very specific black cord. She held it in the air for Joey to see, swinging her pair of scissors around. All it took was one snip. Indira swung her hammer. It crashed into the back of the machine, shattering crucial pieces. Squalls brought down another bolt of lightning. Gadget scrambled the tutor devices so that the entire room would look like it was shaking violently. Phoenix’s smoke floated out from the back of the machine. All of this happened in less than a breath.
And then Minerva delivered the final, crucial line. “You’ll never play this again.”
Horror echoed across Joey’s face. He pointed at the smoke as his features twisted and a scream echoed through the entire room. The boy who didn’t fear dragons or dark caves or zombies most certainly feared this. Really, it was a string of his greatest fears, all chained together. The fear of being caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to do. Followed by the fear of actually being punished for it. And, finally, the fear of never getting to play his favorite games again. It was an unthinkable fate.
All that fear cut through Joey like a knife. Indira could imagine him waking up in the Real World with sweat on his forehead, breathing heavily. In the same moment, Joey vanished from the world of Imagination in a bright flash.
Minerva slumped to her knees. Maxi pumped her fists in the air. The crew rushed out of the closet, joined by Cavern from his hiding place on the staircase, and their shouts of joy were likely heard all the way in Fable. Indira looked around at the others, knowing each one had played their part perfectly.
She’d never felt more like a hero.
Joey’s disappearance rippled through the rest of the world.
Indira and her crew emerged from the house to find the streets of Ordinary as they’d been that first day when they arrived. The canals were gone. Even the scorch marks from cannon fire had faded. Indira’s challenge had already secured the safety of Ordinary’s citizens. She just hoped defeating Joey would fix all that had happened beyond the city walls. Had they saved the rest of Plot from his magic? And what about the Story Houses?
Their crew piled into a carriage and shot back down the country roads, Gadget at the wheel. When they reached the crowd by the monument, Indira saw the changes immediately. All the pirate gear had vanished. All the military armor, too. And all the characters had been restored back to their original costumes and roles. She saw Dorothy’s glinting ruby heels and Huck Finn in his dirty overalls.
Men and women in dark suits, wearing dark sunglasses, wove through the gathering. The Editors had finally arrived. Indira saw them wielding the same powerful red pens Maxi had used. Each swipe drew pieces of the monument back to where they had originally stood. Indira also spied Ledge Woods sitting off to one side in their custody. She could only guess how much trouble he was in. He’d gone far beyond the role of an antagonist. He’d actively worked with someone capable of destroying their entire world, and he’d laughed his way through the whole thing. Indira suspected Ledge would not be returning to Fester anytime soon.
Indira felt a final weight lift from her shoulders when the last piece of the monument settled back into place. It immediately began to glow, its restorative magic bright. Then the trapped characters began to disappear, one by one in the reverse order of their appearance, as they were returned to their Story Houses.
It had worked. They’d won. Indira’s heart soared.
Her advisors crowded forward, eager to get in a word before vanishing.
“Never a doubt you’d return,” Penelope whispered confidently. “Never a doubt.”
“And I suspect it was a grand adventure,” Wendy chimed in.
Juliet took Indira’s face in her hands. “If you want the job done right, send a woman.”
Indira couldn’t take all the credit, though. She gestured back to the rest of her team.
“It was all of us. We all played our parts. Thank you so much for your advice.”
Other characters crowded forward. King Arthur graciously thanked them at first, but ruined the kind words by pointing out he’d have finished Joey off much faster. Indira didn’t mind when he disappeared. Huck Finn simply tipped his straw hat to them before vanishing.
Only when the final characters had been safely restored to their Story Houses did Indira allow herself to collapse onto the grassy hillside. Maxi was farther down the road, reporting to some of the more senior Editors. But the rest of Indira’s crew stayed with her, lying back against the grass, their eyes tracing the clouds.
“A 1.7 percent chance of success,” Gadget said aloud. “I’m going to have to adjust some of my predictive algorithms. Pretty sure the computer wasn’t accounting for how awesome we are.”
Everyone laughed.
Phoenix added. “Minerva, that was some serious mom power.”
She was grinning. “Your smoke effect was a nice touch.”
“Not to mention Squalls with those perfectly timed lightning
strikes,” Gadget said.
Allen’s cheeks brightened. “We couldn’t have done it without your programming.”
Gadget sighed. “Speaking of programming, I returned the devices to their original settings. I know our scores impact our grades, maybe even our placement in a story someday.”
Phoenix groaned. “Don’t remind me. We basically broke the whole quest tutorial.”
“Well, there’s good news and bad news,” Gadget replied. “First, we actually accomplished a lot of the steps in the Hero’s Journey by accident. The bad news is that our scores are all in the negative. There’s a message waiting on each device that says, ‘You have failed to complete your mission. Return to Fable and report to Brainstorm Underglass.’ The word failed isn’t promising.”
Minerva pushed up to her feet. “I’m planning on writing up a full report. I’ll even go back to Fable with you if it will help. There’s no way you should be punished for what happened. No one would have been expected to complete the tutorial with a rogue Author on the loose. You’re all heroes in my book.”
“Whatever happens,” Indira said, “we report to Fable together.”
As the silence stretched, Maxi returned to the group.
“The Editors have this under control now. I’m being sent to Fable as your representative. I’ll do my best to explain to the brainstorms what happened. Come on. It’s time to get you home.”
Rather than risk another group portal, they traveled home in a larger version of the motorized carriages they’d been using. Indira guessed the Editors could have probably snapped their fingers and sent all of them back to Fable, but as she looked around the carriage, it was clear how much everyone needed rest.
Allen Squalls fell asleep in a pile of blankets in one corner, no longer afraid of being attacked by a family of wild owls. Gadget fiddled with a few of her inventions before drifting off too. Maxi settled her head in Indira’s lap and started snoring. Even her friend’s snores were kind of adorable. Indira was enjoying the rumbling lull of the road beneath them when she realized only she and Phoenix were still awake.
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