Frank and Casey both had their ruby seed teleport waypoints at Casey’s place, but I’d never moved mine from my room. That meant that I had to make my way over to her place once we all calmed down after our realization.

The walk there didn’t take too long, but it also meant that I saw the unnervingly empty streets. Maybe I was just imagining things, but I couldn’t help but think about all the people who must have gotten infected by the stupid plague. It wasn’t as if us being gone for a single day would have allowed it to spread any further than it already had, but now that I knew about it, I couldn’t help but notice the eerie lack of people.

Or maybe that was because it was just before noon when most people were at work or school.

I shook my head as I finally made it to Casey’s place again. Frank opened the door for me with a grin, although I could tell that it was strained.

“Alright, I’m here. What’s the plan?” I asked as I closed the door behind me and immediately transformed.

“Well, uh… That’s what we were discussing. You know how visible it was when Casey used the crystal thingie on us?”

I winced, remembering that.

Right. We probably didn’t want to cause everyone to panic by unleashing a strange city-spanning phenomenon.

“Did you come up with a way to hide it somehow?”

“No, not really…” Casey said from the living room with a groan-sigh. “I’m so dumb… I didn’t even think about this. I should have made something that wasn’t as flashy…”

“It’s fine… It probably won’t even work anyway…” I said bitterly.

The others just grimaced and I winced at my own words.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“No, you’re right. We’ll probably end up having to go fight the octopus monster anyway,” Casey said in resignation. “And we can’t even call for help from the others now…”

“Uh… Yeah. Sorry about that. I wasn’t really thinking… I wanted to quickly tell you the problem and teleported. Kinda forgot that I could have told everyone else first…” Frank admitted while scratching the back of his head.

“But this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t even try this thing. Maybe it will work. Or maybe it will delay the plague’s effects long enough for us to fetch the real cure from the monster or something,” Casey argued, a hint of determination in their eyes.

“Right… So how do we do this then?”

“Well…” Casey frowned, staring at her crystal-tipped staff. “This thing is strong enough to cover the entire country… hopefully even the world. But I’m going to need a high vantage point. The higher the better.”

“Uh, the whole world? Do we really need to go that extreme?”

Casey eyed Frank.

“We have no idea how far the plague has spread. People could have traveled to other countries, taken an airplane, used the Starlift…”

“Ah, shit, you’re right…” Frank groaned.

I… hadn’t thought about that.

“But… if someone used the Starlift, could we even reach them?”

Casey bit her lip.

“I… don’t know. That’s why I said, the higher the vantage point, the better. Whether the effect can reach space… I don’t know.”

I couldn’t help but feel despair. We’d thought that we had the solution in our hands and yet…

“Not to mention, we still need to try and hide the fireworks…” Frank murmured. “Shit… We haven’t really solved anything yet, have we?”

I grimaced, trying to think of potential solutions.

“Maybe… Maybe we don’t need to hide it?” I suggested.

“We don’t?”

I shrugged.

“I don’t know… I mean, if we hide the fact that we’re the ones who caused it, the world can think of it as some strange unexplained event, right?”

“Huh…” Frank blinked before putting on a mischievous grin. “Oh, creating mysterious events? Where nobody but us knows the truth? Well, I’ll be! You’re much better at this secret conspiracy organization thing than I thought!”

I glared at him in annoyance.

“Well… I think that in the worst case scenario, we could just forget about subtlety,” Casey admitted before frowning. “Actually… didn’t you feel something when it hit you?”

I deflated, realizing what she was getting at.

“Uh, yeah… It was very intense, and made me feel totally refreshed, and… There’s no way we can make this subtle is it…?” Frank groaned.

There really wasn’t.

Casey gave a tired sigh.

“At least that makes this simple. If we’re not even going to bother masking it in any way, we just need to find a tall building or something where we won’t be seen. Any ideas?”

The three of us thought about it for a good while. Most tall buildings were private property and were inaccessible for the public. There were our apartment buildings, but those were only eight storeys high. The only higher vantage point we could access was the Mendel tower… which was swarming with tourists most of the time and there was no way we were going to avoid being seen there.

“I guess we can go mountain climbing?” Frank suggested. “Shame that we don’t have our fliers with us, though…”

I licked my lips as I thought about it.

Traveling out of the city and going to the mountains would take a while… but it would give us a high vantage point in a somewhat secluded place. Was this a wise idea? Should we waste more time climbing a mountain while the plague kept spreading?

“That might not be a bad idea,” Casey murmured. “We’re all tougher and have more stamina in these forms, right? We should be able to climb a mountain.”

I blinked in surprise.

“You want to go out in public in these forms…?”

“Well…”

“Eh…” Frank shrugged. “Why not? It’s actually better that way, isn’t it? It’s like wearing a mask. Even if people see us, they won’t know it’s us! And we’re already unleashing a mysterious magical event upon the world, so if someone sees a bunny, a fox, and a bull, it won’t be that big of a deal, right?”

I pursed my lips. It felt like we were starting to make a lot of concessions… But he brought up good points.

“Well, I don’t know about you two, but I’m for this plan. I think we shouldn’t worry too much about it, to be honest. And anyway, the more time we spend plotting, the more the virus spreads, right?”

I grimaced and conceded the point.

Frank had been making an awful lot of good points lately…

Casey sighed and her shoulders dropped.

“Alright. Let’s go with that then. We leave the city, head to Mt. Jerico, and then climb it in our true forms. Any arguments or questions?”

I pursed my lips, mentally glanced over everything we had, everything we could do, and the plan. I felt anxiety well up in my stomach just thinking about what we were about to do, but I couldn’t think of any better plans.

“None. Let’s do it.”

Unfortunately, we couldn’t go right away. The officers around the city were prone to raise eyebrows and ask questions when they saw teenagers running around the city or riding buses.

So in the meantime, we planned the details of our expedition, repacked the backpack – I hoped Cradence would feed and take care of everyone we’d left behind now that we’d taken the supplies in our hurry – retrieved new ruby seeds, and cooked ourselves some lunch since it was about noon.

“It just… feels wrong to be having lunch right now,” I muttered.

“Hway, cwibwin mowtuns on anh ahmpty shtomagh houd ee wwong!” Frank exclaimed without swallowing first.

I looked at him in disgust.

“We can’t risk being caught by the police. That would just delay us even more,” Casey said.

“Yeah, I know… I… I’m just nervous. What if someone’s already turned into a zombie and we can’t revert it…? We don’t even know how much time we have… We aren’t even sure whether it will work…”

Neither one of them had a response to that.

So I brought that thought to its logical conclusion.

“Or rather… We know it won’t work because of that dream… Maybe we should just go and fight the boss right away…”

The two stiffened.

“Hey, hey, hey! None of that doom and gloom! Casey did her best to replicate the true form thing! We don’t know for sure whether it will work or not, but maybe it will! Maybe we’ll have to fight the tentacle thing for an entirely different reason some other time!” Frank argued.

I hummed as I continued eating. Frank could be right… or he could be wrong. We had no idea and it irked me. If we were to abandon the current plan, go after the octopus, and it didn’t hold the cure we needed? Then we would have just wasted time. But the same was true about climbing the mountain and using the staff rather than going straight for the octopus.

Regardless, we soon finished our lunch and after double checking that we had everything we needed, we set out at about the time school would let us off.

We took the bus to the edge of the city in our human forms, trying to draw as little attention as we could with the stuffed backpack. The damn staff was too big to fit in and drew a couple of questioning gazes even with only its less eye-catching end poking out of the bag, though.

The three of us collectively let out a sigh of relief as we got out of the bus just outside of the city’s limits without any trouble.

With that said, our journey had only just started.

We took the nearest path to Mt. Jerico, Frank carrying the backpack while hiding his still-equipped Bull king’s bracers under his sleeves. The plan was to transform and run to the top as fast as we could, but unfortunately, because of the time of day, there were a lot of tourists following the same beaten path. We had kind of forgotten about that.

“I say we go through the forest,” Frank suggested. “Can’t be worse than a magical fantasy forest filled with giant acid-spitting spiders.”

Casey and I agreed and we purposefully walked off the road into the forest far enough that we couldn’t see it anymore.

Then the three of us transformed. I immediately perked up my ears, listening for any people who might be nearby. I was nervous. This was the first time I’d transformed in the real world out in the open and as soothing as being in this form was, it still made me jittery.

Luckily, I couldn’t hear anyone nearby and from Casey’s look, she probably couldn’t either.

Next up, we reached into the backpack and took out our disguises. I wore my battle dress as well as a big blue masquerade mask, Casey took the old ‘suspicious conspiracy robe’, as Frank called it, as well as a white masquerade mask. Lastly, Frank just pulled off his shirt, revealing the bracers, and put on comically large sunglasses.

We didn’t expect to run into anyone who would recognize us, but we didn’t want to take any risks. We were about to cause a global event, after all.

Finally, with a bit of embarrassment from both of us, I picked Casey up in a princess carry, Frank fastened the bag on his back…

And then we ran.