“I don’t get it.” said Isaac, “What did you mean by ‘powers’? How the hell does that work?”

“I don’t know exactly,” he answered, “but I was told that whatever power or weapon you were thinking of having as you entered is what you should have.”

“So THAT'S why I’m suddenly holding a bucket!” he exclaimed.

“Seriously, you wanted a frickin’ bucket!?” exclaimed Stuart.

“I can finally cross having a power off of my bucket list!” said Isaac.

“Ugh,” I said, “how long until you KICK the bucket…?”

“Hey!” he exclaimed.

“Y’know you don’t the power to make puns, right?” asked Catherine.

“Hold on a minute!” I exclaimed, “I never got to choose, so why’d they-!?”

“Because deep down, you wanted cats.” answered Matthias.

I went silent, realizing that he was probably right.

“Shouldn’t we go over the powers?” I asked, “Just so nobody’s confused.”

“Right,” responded Matthias, making a scroll appear out of thin air.

“How?” I said.

“You didn’t notice?” said Matthias, “I can make materials appear out of thin air. My sister can do that too, but only if it has to do with spiritual power.”

“What about Charles?” I asked.

“He can make any kind of gun appear,” he answered, “but Iris- she hasn’t figured out what her power is yet, so none of us know.”

“She… actually has a power?” I thought to myself before saying, “Anyways, what’s on that scroll?”

“The powers all of you guys have,” he answered, and then started reading, “Ron’s power is cats, Mikaela uses a scythe, Simon uses a Katana, Catherine’s power is people, Isaac’s involves buckets, Stuart’s involves dragons, James’ has to do with paper… And then… I already said what I have.”

“You… know all of our names?” said Catherine.

“This list is from Matilda herself,” answered Matthias, “the one who gave you all of your powers. She knows about everyone and everything, despite not being the most powerful being to exist. Anyways, first of all, we need to look for the first key.”

“Where are we going to look first?” I asked, “Does anyone have any information we could go off of?”

“I think Jon might know,” answered Lucas, “He’s been trying to figure out what this one document he found means. He seems to believe that it is connected to that hidden dimension that we’ve been wanting to get into.”

“Jon’s here?” I responded.

“Jon and Lilith settled down in this country.” answered Lucas, “Lilith continues to defend and Jon is now a judge.”

“Geez,” I said, “a lot of crap has changed since I first met you guys.”

“I believe I remember that document,” said Matthias, “he’s always looking at that, trying to figure it out.”

“Figure what out?” asked Stuart, “How to delete his browser history?”

“It’s… nothing of the sort.” Matthias answered.

“Well,” I said, walking off, “let’s go look for Jon.”

Everyone else followed me as I headed for the nearby courthouse. Luckily, Jon was already there when we got there, just sitting still, staring at a paper, on the front steps.

“I see you brought them all here.” Jon said.

“So, you’re a judge now?” I said.

“Not just any judge,” responded Jon, “I am the head judge- the most powerful judge in all of Mihr'hai.”

“So,” I said, “why are you a judge now? Why are you staying in this country?”

“Originally, Lilith and I were going to return to Dovacath, but with last year’s ‘incident’, a lot of people have been ‘erased’, if you catch my drift.”

“Ron,” said James, “what the hell are you two talking about?”

“Is there any reason you never told us about this stuff before?” asked Isaac.

“Um… it never came up?” I responded, “But there’s a better question to be asked.

“What’s that?” asked Simon.

“If Mikaela’s always been there watching,” I replied, “why did she wait until last time to join in?”

“Because I FELT like it.” answered Mikaela.

“And then there’s YOU, Simon.” I said, “Why did you even join us in the first place?”

“I was bored and hunted you down.” answered Simon.

“Those are some… interesting friends you have.” commented Jon.

“Oh, right!” I said, “As you were saying earlier…?”

“A lot of Mihr'hai’s legal staff have been murdered,” continued Jon, “so we needed replacements. Even Iris is here as a new attorney. Also, Charles has left his old job to replace our former chief prosecutor. But enough about that. This document I have here in my hands may have something to do with our search.”

“I’ll take a look at it.” I said, grabbing it from his hands, “this looks like a bunch of gibberish.”

I stared at the piece of paper for a few seconds, noticing random letter and numbers. After a bit of scanning, four of the numbers caught my attention: 7734. There was also a letter “J” right after it.

“I got it.” I said, “You enter ‘7734’ on a calculator and you spell ‘hell’ if you hold it upside down. These numbers are followed by a J, and if you say ‘J-hell’, it’s pretty obvious what that sounds like. Anyways, Jon, where did you get this?”

“It’s something that Jeff had from back when he worked for Greg and Amy,” answered Jon, “and he couldn’t figure out what it meant.”

“Speaking of Jeff,” I said, “where is he?”

“He went to one of the dimensions that contains a key: Dimension F.”

“Wasn’t it destroyed?” I asked.

“No.” answered Jon, “It’s just been there, empty.”

“Why would it-?” I started.

“Apparently, he had some kind of magical key back from when he was working for other people.” said Jon, “He said he had it at Dimension F, but he lost it.”

“Will that be all?” asked Matthias.

“Yeah,” I said, “I think we’re done here.”

“Good.” he said, “So if your solution is accurate, we should be heading for the dungeon.”

“Right.” I said.”

“Is something the matter?” asked Matthias.

“We’re going to places I’ve been in the past,” I said, “and it’s not going to be nostalgic. It’s probably going to hurt a bit.”

“Why is that?” asked Matthias.

“A lot of things I cared about are gone.” I said, “And they’re probably never coming back. Now, we’re going back to places where crazy things have happened. I still remember when I first came to Dovacath several years ago, and I rarely ever spoke, but then I’d come back later with the friends I had at the time. We found out that this was a test, but we had a more serious trek several months later in the town of Mirai. The following year, every world had begun to fall apart, with their pieces joining together to form a new one. The next year, we were in a recently created dimension: Dimension F. All that was in it was one building: a hotel, for some stupid reason. Later that year, I would come to the kingdom of Mihr'hai for the very first time. What a mess that turned out to be. I’m still upset that there exists a villain that looks exactly like me and kinda sounds the same too. We never did find out who this ‘author’ was, he was just sort of there. He’s the most mysterious of them all.”

“What other villains have you gone up against?” asked Catherine.

“The first one was named Miles,” I answered, “And that was my first time in Dovacath. He was an interesting one: capable of all kinds of magic. Although, then I was defenseless, so I had to rely on people already there, which included somebody named Jean. If she hadn’t been there at the time, I probably would have died. When I got back to Dovacath a few years later with actual powers, we thought Lilith was a villain but that was all a part of some kind of training, or something stupid like that. We dealt with Miles again in Mirai and again when all worlds were falling apart. We also met his boss at the time, Jeff, who worked under a couple of people named Greg and Amy. We ended up killing Miles, Greg, and Amy right in front of him. When we were in Dimension F, we all discovered something that hurt: Jean is Jeff’s daughter and she was on HIS side the whole time. I ended up killing Jeff, and Jean later killed herself, but because the rule about dying in dimensions that aren’t your own, they’re back, but luckily they’re done with evil. And now, it’s this ‘author’ jackass that we need to be worrying about.”

“Wait.” said Catherine, “If you killed those people you say you killed in front of Jeff, would that mean that they’re… alive now?”

“Ah, crap.” I responded, “It never even occurred to me.”

“Wait,” said Lucas, “…this could be bad.”

“Actually,” said Jon, “you might be getting worked up over nothing.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Matthias.

“There is a way to make sure people will be dead for good,” answered Jon, “no matter where they’re killed.”

“How does that work?” asked Catherine.

“There is a book that I’m sure Ron remembers.” said Jon.

“Ah,” I said, “that would be the one I seemed to have misplaced somehow.”

“There is a section of that book that functions as a ‘death causer’ of sorts,” continued Jon, “and Jeff wrote down the names of people that he did NOT want to come back. It can also bring back the ‘permanently’ deceased that have been ‘erased’ with this method.”

“I’m going to assume that Jean didn’t know,” I responded, “because if she did she would have written her name in there and I guess even if her death was done through that method… since she came back her afterward, that explains why I couldn’t bring her back with the book.”

“Jeff told me that he wrote down certain names like Evan, my ‘would-have-been’ father-in-law, as well as Greg and Amy,” said Jon, “writing these names down would guarantee that none of them would ever come back.”

“Hold on,” I said, “you never mentioned Miles.”

“Jeff never planned on Miles dying,” said Jon, “nor did he truly care if he did. His name was never written down.”

“So, your evil brother is probably out there somewhere,” I said, “and we don’t even know what he’s doing!”

“Oh, crud,” said Lucas, “I forgot about that.”

“That guy was and probably still is a complete asshole,” I said, “first was the incident in Dovacath and then tries to defeat us all in a courtroom in Mirai. That dick killed me by giving me a health bar and draining it! Next, he disguises himself as Lucas and waits until we’re closer to our goal to reveal himself. After that, he gets injured and reminds Jon of his past and makes it SEEM like he gave up, but no, that bastard had to come back and make a mess and NOW it seems he’s out there… somewhere… doing something… but we don’t know.”

“Well,” said Jon, “you guys will just need to look into this. Perhaps it has something to do with your current adventure.”

“You’re not coming with us?” I said.

“No, I’m really busy these days.” he said, “Last year, you ended up changing this country’s legal system. The defense is no longer hated here. Sorry I won’t be helping you, but Lilith is in Dovacath since we believe that one of the keys needed in your search is there.”

“Well, okay then.” I said, “I guess we should just head for the jail now.”

Then, we all headed for the Mihr'hai prison, which was a very dark place. Inside, the walls were dark gray and extremely hard, but somehow extremely smooth.

“It’s great that you were able to figure that stuff out and all,” said James, “but do you really know what we’re supposed to be doing here?”

“I was hoping things would just happen, to be honest.” I answered, “That’s just how my life is.”

“It’s nice to see you again.” a voice I’m familiar with said.

“You too, Charles.” I responded, looking at the adult now in front of me.

“You seem nervous.” commented Matthias.

“Well, something happened.” responded Charles.

“What is it?” asked Lucas.

“A prisoner escaped…” answered Charles, nervously.

“W-which one?” asked Simon.

“Leah.” answered Charles.

“Oh, crap.” I responded.

“Anything left behind?” asked Matthias.

“Just this note.” said Charles, handing it to me.

‘The author’ was what I read.