I sat up with a gasp, powdered meth snow all around me, and a lot of it stuck to the skin of my face. Fortunately, it wasn’t able to cling to my unicorn suit, which would’ve just looked ridiculous.

  “You’re lucky All-Mommy is so benevolent,” Bee said. “Although the message she sent along with my curative fruit seemed mixed about saving you or not.”

  “I feel like I kissed a sledgehammer moving at Mach 3,” I remarked.

  But then I jumped to my feet in a single fluid motion.

  “Alright, I’m feeling better, let’s get going!” I exclaimed.

  Panda and Bee shared a worried glance.

  “You didn’t inhale any of that ‘snow’, right?” Panda asked.

  “He was face-down in it for a while,” Bee pointed out.

  I took off running before they could bog me down with questions like “Are you sure you’re okay?” and “Why do your pupils look like that?”

  After running through the village, I reappeared outside the alleyway we’d originally entered. A moment later Bee emerged with Panda on her shoulder, and I pulled out the compass. It was still pointing into the alley, but now that there were green pillars of light rising from the city, it was clear that it was leading us to somewhere behind the buildings immediately in front of us.

  My Skater Boy was still on cooldown, so I ran around the bone-white structure as Bee followed me from the air, the mushroom net with the Crack Wizard and elf bodies dangling below her. Distant sounds of fighting and the roars of monsters echoed through the Singing City as we followed the compass and nearby beacon to a literal hole in the ground. It was shaped like the outline of a five-leafed clover and sat in the middle of a small courtyard between towering buildings.

  “Is this the way to Balloonia?” Bee asked, looking down into the dark hole. It was impossible to tell what was down there, but the compass was pointing right at it and the green pillar floated above it, so it was clearly our destination.

  “Only one way to find out!” I told her and nose-dived into the darkness.

  Bee must’ve followed right behind me, because I heard her excited squeal as I plummeted down for what felt like 5 minutes straight.

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  Then suddenly I emerged out from a hole in the ceiling of somewhere. Bright colors assaulted me from a clearly-fake painted sky, as well as from the strangely-shaped terrain below that was rising up quickly to kiss me on the forehead.

  The moment I struck the ground, I just simply bounced back up into the air, narrowly missing Bee who had to engage her wings to get out of the way of my body.

  I fell back down as she alighted atop a bulbous and latex-covered tree, only to bounce back up. This repeated for about 2 minutes until I eventually settled unto green and flexible ground.

  From what I’d gathered as I’d been mid-air, as well as what I saw as I looked around, it was clearly a medieval kingdom we found ourselves in, except it had been re-rendered in the style of a bouncy castle where everything was made of inflated latex.

  Brock suddenly made a sound on my right arm.

  “What is it, buddy?” I asked him.

  “I don’t feel so good, Gamby…”

  “Isn’t this like being back home?” Panda asked him.

  “Yiz don’t get it,” he muttered mysteriously.

  Suddenly a scream from above pulled my attention up to the hole in the painted sky ceiling.

  Two figures came plummeting down towards us at great speed.

  “We should move,” Bee said.

  “There’s no way they’ll hit us,” I replied.

  “They’re going to hit us,” she said.

  “You should listen to Bee,” Panda said.

  “Can’t you just make another net and catch them before they hit us?” I asked.

  “Why are you being stubborn about this!?” Panda exclaimed. “Move out of the goddamn way!”

  “Fine!” I said and went under the balloon tree Bee was sitting atop of.

  She came down to join me just before the first of the two figures struck the ground and was sent flying back up.

  For a brief moment I saw a blue suit and blonde hair.

  “Wait, was that…?” I started to say until the second figure smacked into the ground and bounced up as well. She wore a brown business suit with a skirt and had brown hair.

  As they started to fall back down again, I jumped up to catch the woman in the blue suit, and Bee caught the other one in a mushroom net that somehow stopped all her momentum.

  “Set me down, you oaf!” Samantha shouted as I landed back on the ground and only bounced slightly.

  “Relax,” I told her and put her down.

  “Gambit??” she asked in confusion. “What are you doing here?”

  “Same thing as you,” I told her.

  “We’re hunting the balloon guy,” Bee said.

  “Who?” Camilla asked after untangling herself from Bee’s net.

  “Yeah, who?” Samantha echoed.

  “John Ritter?” Bee replied, unsure.

  “You mean Richard?” Camilla asked. “The mid—?”

  “We came here to escape that masked guy with wings,” Samantha said, interrupting her.

  “I think she means Matthew Twine!” Panda exclaimed.

  I looked back up at the hole in the ceiling. “Is he following you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Samantha said.

  “Well, we’re going to find the looner guy and collect some materials on the way,” I told them. “You can tag along, I guess.”

  I was feeling incredibly restless and my body was shaking like a leaf.

  “Why are your pupils like that?” Camilla asked. For some reason she was still holding onto the same clipboard she’d had when I first met her, which I thought was strange.

  “I just inhaled a lot of snow,” I replied and then clapped my hands. “Alright, let’s go!”

  Before they could protest, I started running through the balloon forest towards the medieval castle town in the center of the strange kingdom of Balloonia.