Today's Earth date: February 28, 1992

I haven't written in this for a while. It's starting to feel silly, to be honest. Being a Hero takes up all of my focus these days.

We rescued the twins. They were better than the drawings, and they both preferred being with a Paladin. I still think about her sometimes, but it's not dishonoring her to enjoy a few conversations, right?

Is she doing the same thing right now? Probably. I don't like it, but probably.

Anyway, we found the archaeologist. He fell hiking and was super dead when we got to him. The water situation? A bunch of goblins dammed the river up. It wasn't a very pretty dam, but it was enough to keep fish and most of the water from going downstream.

The XP wasn't very good, but we did the right thing and stashed a little more gold away.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

Wayne duped so much rare candy in his time as a Pokemon fan that he was likely to forget his own family before he forgot about MissingNo.

In short, the original Pokemon Blue and Red contained an exploit that enabled players to duplicate items. Like most old-school exploits, the steps were a bit convoluted, but part of it was surfing up and down a specific beach in the game until you fought a Pokemon named MissingNo. Though the game presented it as a Pokemon, it was not a named part of the roster. Instead, MissingNo. was a byproduct of a memory error that enabled the dupe bug.

The enemy Wayne fought now named missing number might be a result of a similar bug, Wayne thought briefly. The monster stood nearly eight feet tall and occupied a five by five square space. The ever-shifting nature of its glitched body made its exact shape difficult to discern, but the whole of the beast seemed to be represented as one solid rectangle, like a hitbox with no enemy model inside.

Missing number glided forward, hovering a few inches above the ground. It never stopped or pivoted to navigate around an obstacle. It simply sailed forward. Anything that came into contact with the hitbox disappeared. At first, Wayne thought the monster was clipping through the environment, but he saw that was wrong when he caught sight of the trail it left.

The rainforest had a starkly clean path punched through it, and the refrigerator-box dimensions stayed constant throughout.

"Ranged attacks only! No one touch any of the enemies if we don't have to."

The proelium ranae used the cover of the jungle to sneak up on the party. Though its accompanying mini boss was glitched, this ranae ended up looking like any of the other frogman warriors they fought previously. He had iridescent scalemail, a trident, and was quick to blow paralyzing bubbles.

Hector activated Oh Go Away! And the frog man spun to run. Armond put it to sleep with Rock-a-Bye and Margo finished the rest.

In those same moments, Wayne used Gra on the glitched monster and called for Fergus to help him halt its charge. The wizard summoned vines to entangle the rectangle and then threw a coat of ice over top of that with Freeze Place. With Rock-a-Bye on cooldown, Armond cast Shiza in the hopes that he could block any special attack missing number might have.

When one of Margo's arrows hit the shape, the arrow stuck and made the thump of having hit flesh. Missing number flickered solid white and then went back to fighting to free itself.

Wayne hoped that meant the monster took damage because he wasn't taking any chances on this mini.

He hit Insult Duel to debuff missing number's intelligence.

"My name is feared in every dirty corner of this island!" Wayne shouted.

Then he activated Super and pumped a stream of Dynamite at the menacing hitbox.

Fergus cursed about being so close to so many explosions, but Wayne felt relief when he saw missing number's health bar rapidly deplete. It was dead soon after. What was once a kaleidoscope of real-life glitching horror fell to the ground as a cow corpse. The cow was plastic white, as in no color anywhere on its body, and it appeared undamaged.

It also didn't move.

And it definitely didn't moo.

Wayne saw four reds circling the three blues on his HUD and knew he didn't have time to investigate the cow body. He hoped the other reds were plain ranae as well, but then he noticed his count was off. One of the red dots he spotted before was missing, and his party hadn't killed it.

After several hurried steps toward the party in danger, Wayne saw where the dot had gone. A ranae had pierced its own throat on coral and still twitched occasionally where it hung.

Screams came again. One of them rang with agony.

The Zero Hero pushed himself to move faster, struggling to restrain himself to move smart and methodically for his party's sake.

Running Back.

Linebacker.

Quarterback.

Now was an odd time to test his new football bot from Cyberball, but Wayne wanted every possible tool on the field, especially if they could draw aggro away from innocent people.

Quarterback bot was about the same size and proportions as Running Back bot, but his build was sleeker with far more rounded edges and curved surfaces. The back of Quaterback's bot head was the thick rounded glass of a CRT screen. That screen faced Wayne now.

The top of the screen read, "Choose your play," but the only button beneath it read "Create Custom Play."

This was the first unlock to come with some assembly required, and Wayne wished he had known that ahead of time.

"Charge the reds!" Wayne commanded.

He was relieved to see the three robots zip off to do just that, with Running Back bot quickly outpacing the other two.

Wayne followed the trail they blazed, hoping it would be obvious if one of them happened to step in a puddle. Ahead, he heard the sound of his robots' thin aluminum crunching.

Wayne emerged into a small but open area of the rainforest. Three ranaes pierced the football robots with tridents while the fourth ran a man through the stomach. He had the attire of belonging to the Iomallach Defense Force.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

He saw Kryss, outfitted for exploring the jungle, sitting on the ground, digging her heels into the dirt. She held someone's arm with two hands and pulled with all her might. The person at the other end of that arm was likely also a Defense Force member at one point, but everything beyond the elbow of his right arm was awash with glitches. Were it not for the flesh Kryss clung to, Wayne would have guessed the man to be a missing number variant.

By the way the man moved and how Kryss pulled, Wayne was certain he had already died from the glitch. Those were the lurches of someone wrestling with deadweight.

"Blues are ahead! Watch your friendly fire!"

Skulduggery.

-100 gold.

Skulduggery.

-100 gold.

The two closest ranaes turned on their comrades. Wayne cast Gra on the ranae attempting to kill the soldier. He hoped the increase in gravity would buy him time but was pleased to see three of Margo's laser arrows hit the ranae in the head immediately after.

The soldier yanked the trident free and hugged the wound with one arm. He thrust his sword under the jaw of the ranae. The frog punched the man in the face. He staggered, but he rallied long enough to summon one more burst of strength, putting the monster down for good.

Breaking his own rule, Wayne moved and finished the remaining frog warriors with his sword. The chaos of the fight worked in his party's favor. Between the surprise attack from the rear and the volume of ranged attacks they could employ, the ranaes didn't have enough time to adjust their strategy.

Wayne pointed Armond to the wounded soldier and went to help Kryss. She had succeeded in pulling the other soldier free of the puddle, but Wayne could barely tell the glitching form on the ground had ever been a person. Kryss knelt over him, her hands in hair, desperately trying to decide what she should do next.

"Don't touch him," Wayne said, approaching Kryss with his hands out. "I know you want to help, but it's too dangerous."

Kryss looked up. "Wayne? How…"

"We were exploring the Dead Zone. Seems like you decided to do the same?"

She nodded. "What do we do?"

"I've only seen this once before, and there was nothing that could be done. When was the last time he moved?"

Blinking, Kryss lowered her eyes. "I don't… I don't remember. Was he dead already?"

"It's possible."

"We were managing fine until those things came out of nowhere."

Armond approached the spot where Wayne squatted next to Kryss. He shook his head when the Zero Hero looked up at him.

"Boy was already gone," Armond said under the privacy of Voice. "I apparently can't resurrect people outside of our party either."

"You did everything you could," Wayne said out loud. He repeated it to Kryss as well. "Kryss, your…"

Kryss looked down at her left arm. From her elbow to the ends of her fingers, her arm glitched in and out, cycling randomly between different renderings of her limb.

"Oh," she said, softly. "I can sort of feel it, but only for an instant. Then it's not there for another few seconds."

"She's in shock," Armond said.

"Am I going to die?" she asked, looking up at Wayne.

Wayne and Armond exchanged glances. They frowned.

"There's only one thing I can think to try," Wayne said, bluntly. "This is pretty bad, but I'm willing to go for it."

"Okay," Kryss said, her voice still slight and weak. "Let's try that one thing then."

After checking his party for injuries or any sign of having contracted the glitch, Wayne explained the plan. He would lead the party out of the Dead Zone, or at least get them back to where they left Kenny. That was close enough to the border that he felt reasonably confident in their ability to get out safely from there.

Once they were out of the Dead Zone, they would rush to the wagon. The party would take turns steering Outlawson so they could travel day and night until they got back to Iomallach.

While the party pushed the party's giant bug to its limits, Wayne would punch out of the canopy overhead and Blitz to the Lighthouse. That was the closest first dwarf workbench he could think of, and it was conveniently close to a town as well. Once he wrestled it out of the Lighthouse, he could stuff it into Goods Storage or Colds Good Storage and Blitz back to the Cuts.

Instead of rejoining the party, he would revisit the location of the Charybdis fight and dig up the Charybdis steaks he and Vanilli buried.

If he could carry them while he Blitzed, he'd drag them to the Lighthouse and drop them into Storage there. If he couldn't manage flight with that much demon meat strapped to his back, he would attempt to carry it all the way back to Iomallach on foot instead, catching up with the party somewhere along the way.

Anticipating the worst, Wayne made the mental note to grab basic supplies for a sled while he was at the Lighthouse. Dragging the meat would be better than carrying it.

Kryss was unsteady, but she could walk on her own and insisted on doing so. She said she didn't want to be the reason anyone else died on this excursion and distanced herself from the party. She put herself last in line where she was least likely to touch someone accidentally. They didn't know if the glitch was contagious, and she wasn't willing to risk it.

Wayne agreed with her caution but felt for the pain he saw in her eyes. Kryss was strong. She had to be to turn the Swiftwood Trading Company into what it was today, on top of spearheading all manner of research projects that she funded personally. This likely wasn't even the first time she had come close to death, but Wayne knew that this brush was different. The outcome could already be inevitable for how little they knew about the glitch.

"Where'd she come from?" Kenny asked when she saw Kryss. "Aw shit, she touched a puddle."

Kryss didn't say anything. She just looked at Kenny, confused.

"We're going to try to save her," Wayne said. "We've got a plan but have to move fast."

"I know you're some kinda hero," Kenny whispered, "but ain't no fixin' that, I'm sorry to say. Don't care how pretty you are."

Was she saying Kryss was pretty or that Wayne was pretty?

No matter. Not the time for those kinds of questions.

"I know it's not good, but we still have to try."

Wayne explained the plan to Kenny as the group hurried back to the road where their wagon waited. She agreed to rough out a nonstop wagon trip to Iomallach and declined Wayne's offer to let her out when they passed a junction that led to Mudsville. If Kenny was going to be a part of something, she wanted to see it through.

While the rest of the party loaded the wagon, Wayne pulled Vanilli aside and told him the plan.

"I'll try, but I'm not sure I'll understand how to use the tools that quickly."

"I know," Wayne said. "Is it unfair to ask you to do something like this? Fuck, it is totally unfair to ask you that. I'm sorry."

"I'm fine. I understand the nature of failure."

"Thank you."

Wayne took a deep breath and then took off, beginning a sprint that would last nearly two days.

He did everything he promised, from securing a workbench for Vanilli to dragging half a ton of monster meat through the jungle, and now the weight of the effort was squarely on the demon's shoulders. Wayne had the interdimensional door open to Cold Goods Storage in a Blackwell bedroom, and left it open, so Vanilli could do his work.

Fergus sat with Vanilli at first, intending to help him with any potential problems or conundrums, but Vanilli politely asked if he could be alone instead. He had no practice collaborating with anyone and felt that the present moment was not the best place to learn. However, Vanilli did request several more sweaters. He was working in Cold Goods Storage because that was best for preserving the demon material, but the demon had little experience with any temperature approaching a chill.

Fergus went to procure the sweaters and said he would stay nearby, regardless.

Kryss was still cognizant, but Wayne could see the beginnings of a vacant, limp stare creeping into her expression. She was far from being as disconnected as the prisoner he saw, but she was on her way. Asking to be alone until Vanilli was ready for her, Kryss claimed a room and disappeared.

Wayne wanted to check on her, to see how much time they might have left to work, but he resisted the temptation.

Armond came up behind Wayne in the hallway. "You should get some rest. I can get you if there's news."

"I don't think I can sleep."

"Then wash up at least. Don't want to ruin Billium's nice furniture."

"Yeah, okay."

Wayne got to his room and dropped his gear. The exhaustion of the last few days caught up with him right in that moment. He needed more than a minute to find the energy to move his feet toward the bathroom but succeeded, eventually.

He opened the door to find Kenny in his tub.

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