At the end of the large boulevard of smoothly-formed organic bone was a big beautiful swamp puppy.

  “Oh my God, what is that!?” Cooper exclaimed.

  “Gambit, that is not a puppy!” Panda yelled.

  “I want to pet it!” Bee insisted.

  “It’s coming closer!” Cooper shouted. “Turn around!”

  The puppy had fifteen reptilian eyes and eleven legs. Each leg was a patchwork of various skin-tones, as though it had been wrought from the bodies of people from all over Earth. Its mouth was wide enough to span almost all the way around its spherical head, revealing hundreds of serrated dagger-shaped teeth. The curling toes on its legs grabbed onto the buildings as it pulled itself towards us, dragging a slug-like body from which the legs sprouted at random.

  “Go the other way!” Panda yelled. “It’s gonna eat us!”

  I frowned.

  “Fine,” I grumbled and spun the board around as the giant creature hurried towards us, leaving a glistening trail of mucus on the ground behind it.

  “Aww,” Bee muttered disappointedly, but flew alongside us.

  I took us down a narrow alleyway between two tall towers and the organically-shaped houses that clung to them like barnacles. We quickly started speeding up as the ground in the alley sloped down rather aggressively, and before I knew it, we were flying down into the city, chased by the sounds of the swamp puppy eagerly wanting tummy scritches from us.

  The sloping ground started to spiral as we dipped below street-level and, as we left the surface behind, the narrow tunnel we were in just carried us deeper and deeper.

  “How are we going to get back to our base??” Cooper panicked as the sloping tunnel led us to a wide chamber with enormous pillars holding up the ground above. “And what the hell was that thing!?”

  I brought us to a halt next to one of the pillars and lifted Cooper down from my shoulders. The chamber seemed to open up for hundreds of meters in every direction, and there were puddles of water everywhere, fed by fat droplets that fell from the high ceiling.

  “I think that was one of the Flesh Sculptor’s creations,” Panda said.

  “Looked like a cute little guy to me,” I said.

  Bee nodded.

  Cooper looked between us, an unreadable expression on his face.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I have no idea, but I think we sh—”

  Before I could finish, sounds of screeching rubber came from the tunnel ramp that’d led us down here.

  Bee and I moved out in front of Cooper as something golden-yellow slid down the spiraling tunnel, carrying a figure on top of it.

  “It’s the balloon guy!” Cooper exclaimed.

  I frowned. He looked very different from before the initialization, which was a bad sign I thought.

  And the thing he was sliding on was rapidly letting out air as its rubber burned from the intense friction along the ramp.

  As the balloon creature reached the floor of the chamber, it simply popped and vanished, leaving behind an unscathed man in a strange outfit who was covered in clown make-up.

  “He looks very similar to—” Panda started.

  “Gambit!” the clown exclaimed.

  I froze, because I recognized that voice.

  “Ahh fuck…” I muttered.

  “Steve?” Bee asked.

  My Appraising Eye activated as I took in his features. Steve’s face was caked in white make-up and the skin beneath was an off-putting shade of purple. His torso was dilated like a pressurized balloon, and his legs were overlong like stilts and had two knees. He wore yellow-and-blue overalls, and his teeth were like needles.

  [Appraisal x ]

  Level 20 — ‘Steve McGiggles’ — Player

  “Why not have a little joy?”

  Class: Birthday Clown

  Main Attribute(s): Vitality & Wisdom

  So, it turns out that you and your moth-turned-Elphin friend aren’t the only two who completely violated the whole sanctity of timelines thing. I swear, the REPD have their hands full chasing down all the dimension-hoppers that followed you to our timeline.

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Steve should’ve been dead.

  He turned into a Boss Monstrosity named Joysworth McGiggles and he was destined to reap giggling terror on the Region of Castleburg.

  But then your benefactor gave you a skill that frankly shouldn’t exist and all logic went right out the window.

  Steve's entire being was overwritten by the version of himself from your original dimension that’d turned into a Monstrosity, but since it happened before the GREAT GAME’s initialization, he stayed human, although he now permanently looks like this. Also, he has some scary Skills up his sleeve…

  He’s been looking for you all this time.

  “This is like what happened to Gambit,” Panda said.

  “You know this guy?” Cooper asked me.

  Steve glared daggers at the MLP Society captain. “Did you already replace me?” he asked.

  “What are you talking about?” I replied.

  “You came to this world and collected all your friends, but not me!” he shouted.

  “Uh oh,” Panda muttered.

  Bee tensed up next to me. “Steve, where’s your team?” she asked.

  “I don’t need them!” he yelled. “I can do this event on my own!”

  He was giving off major clingy-psycho-girlfriend-defying-a-restraining-order vibes.

  “It’s not like that,” I told him. “Cooper here is just someone we met while looking for Chris and his brother.”

  Steve narrowed his eyes. “Then you don’t need him, right?”

  “Is he threatening me?” Cooper asked, glancing between Steve and me.

  “We need him,” I said decisively. After all, Cooper had a powerful-sounding Class, and he was the glue keeping the MLP boys together. Plus, I kind of liked him.

  “You never needed me!” Steve shouted.

  I frowned. “Chill the fuck out, man. And yeah, to be honest, you are a fucking douchebag. And you got me killed while I was trying to protect Bee.”

  “I was just trying to help!” he screamed, his voice changing tone and becoming warbly and weird.

  “You shouldn’t push him too much,” Panda warned me.

  Steve looked right at the plushie on my shoulder. “Are you afraid I’ll do something bad, huh, Panda?”

  Bee changed her stance slightly, and it was clear she was contemplating using one of her skills to shut down Steve before he could do something. He was level 20, so not an insignificant threat, and the appraisal had warned of powerful skills in his repertoire.

  His eyes flicked back to Cooper.

  Then he said, in a voice that sent a chill down my spine and made the hairs in my ears wriggle uncomfortably, “Steve says: Cooper turns into a balloon.”

  Before I could parse the words that’d left his mouth, Cooper’s body started to bloat, and his feet left the ground.

  “Guys! Help!” he wailed as he floated up towards the ceiling of the large chamber, quickly gaining speed.

  “Oh fuck!” I exclaimed. “Bee, Bounceshroom me!”

  Bee tossed down a mushroom at my feet, and I jumped on and launched into the air, with her following right behind me.

  I wasn’t fast enough to grab Cooper’s legs, but I reoriented myself mid-air and used Blink to go up above him, quickly falling down towards his massively-bloated body. Just as I was about to grab him, Steve’s voice sounded again.

  “Steve says: The Cooper balloon flies south.”

  Cooper immediately flew sideways, passing right under me before I could catch him.

  I managed to grab a nearby pillar to slow myself and then used SPRING_HEEL to shoot my body after him. Bee flew past me, having picked up more speed, but Cooper was moving even faster than her.

  “Goddamn it, Steve!” I yelled.

  The freaky Birthday Clown started giggling to himself as we hurried after Cooper, the disturbing sound echoing through the underground chamber.

  “I don’t want to pop!” Cooper wailed desperately as he outpaced us.

  “We’re coming, Cooper!” I shouted, using Blink to close the distance, only to miss him by a finger’s breadth.

  As I plummeted towards the floor, Bee swooped in to grab me by the shoulders and swing me towards a pillar that I could launch off from using SPRING_HEEL.

  “Use your .fish ability!” Panda told me.

  “Reel ‘im in!” Brock squealed.

  “But it has a 3-hour cooldown!” I protested as I leap-frogged from pillar to pillar to keep up with the Cooper balloon flying south.

  “Gambit!” Bee exclaimed in a scolding tone.

  “Fine!” I replied and activated the ability.

  A fishing pole of a bright-red material that felt like glass appeared between my hands. It had an obsidian hook at the end that connected to a spool of crimson energy, reminding me of the Red Pawn and the powers it’d possessed.

  “Here we go!” I shouted and flung the hook after Cooper.

  The hook flew at Mach 3 across the chamber, snaking around the pillars as it chased down its quarry. The line of crimson energy flickered and sputtered as it unspooled, but there seemed to be an endless amount of it still on the reel.

  Then it caught Cooper by the mouth, instantly hooking him.

  “Urgh!” he exclaimed as he came to a sudden halt, though Steve’s ability still tried to pull him south.

  I reeled in the line, trying to get Cooper back to us, while Bee flew towards where he’d stopped.

  Then the fishing rod transformed in my hands, the handle changing and sprouting four random doodads: something that looked like a large screw in bright yellow; a red button labeled ‘Smack!’; a cord with a green pull tab; and a blue motorcycle throttle.

  “Uhh…” I muttered as I hung suspended in the air impossibly, looking at the stuff that’d appeared on the handle.

  [Smack it!] yelled the fishing rod.

  “It’s the Mini Game that the ability described,” Panda told me. “Hurry up and do as it says!”

  I frowned but smacked the red button nevertheless.

  A wet slap sound came from the fishing rod as though emitted by cheap speakers buried inside it. The sound was immediately followed by a man’s sexual groaning.

  [That’s it!] encouraged the rod.

  “Goddamn it,” I muttered.

  [Rev it!]

  I revved the blue motorcycle throttle.

  [Vroom, vroom!]

  [Yank it!]

  I pulled on the green cord tab and the sound of a toilet flushing emitted from the fishing rod.

  [Screw it!]

  I turned the yellow screw. Polish cursing came out the speakers.

  [You’re doing it!]

  [Screw it, again!]

  I screwed it again. This time it was some kind of Polish folksong.

  [Again!]

  “Ugh,” I groaned, repeating the instruction and getting applause in return.

  [Yank it!]

  I pulled the cord.

  [Smack it!]

  I slapped the button.

  [Harder, daddy!]

  “No!” I yelled. “I’m not fucking doing it harder!”

  “Do it, Gambit!” Panda exclaimed. “Do it for Cooper!”

  “Are you getting off on this, you fucking sicko!?” I accused him.

  “Gambit, you have to smack it to save Cooper!” Bee yelled from where she hovered next to his bloated body. “I can’t help him!”

  Cooper mumbled something incoherent.

  “Goddamn it!” I shouted.

  “It’s okay, Gamby. Brock’ll help yiz.”

  I punched the shit out of the button.

  The fishing rod groaned and vibrated a little.

  I felt absolutely vile holding it in my hands.

  [One last time!]

  I punched the button so hard that the fishing rod spun out of my grip, and I immediately started falling down towards the floor. But then the rod made a little jingle, and the line was reeled in rapidly, pulling Cooper towards it.

  I landed on my feet, cratering the floor of the chamber, and went over to grab the fishing rod as Cooper floated down towards me with Bee flying next to him.

  The moment the big guy touched the ground, all the air left his body and he fell to his knees.

  I carefully pried the hook out from the side of his cheek and then the fishing rod vanished.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here before Steve decides to chase after us,” I said.