An hour passed, and all four idiots sat down on the dark grass. It felt good — and honestly, that's not even a bit — it genuinely felt good. Cool, soft, almost peaceful. Though they were still a little traumatized by the whole Tiger Woods situation.
"Man, my pee pee hurts," Andre said, completely casually, like he'd just commented on the weather.
Connor, Diego, and Zhang just looked at him. Then slowly nodded.
"...Ok hell no, I'll say it then." Diego turned to him, already fighting a smile. "Andre, why did you say that out of the blue?" He giggled a little despite himself.
Andre rolled his shoulders back. "Because I wanted MY FRIENDS to know WHAT'S up with ME. Like, god dang — can I not tell MY FRIENDS stuff now? Like holy!"
Diego tried not to laugh, turning his face away. "Andre, I mean, yeah, you can tell us stuff, but what you said was——" Zhang couldn't even finish the sentence before he completely lost it, guffawing into the night air.
"Man, screw you bums. I ain't telling you nothing no more."
A beat of silence.
"Guys, shouldn't we be more focused on our current situation?"
Andre raised an eyebrow. "What, that we're in the middle of a dark forest that might have celebrities in it?"
Zhang's eyes went wide. "OH MY GOD. WE'RE ON EPSTEIN ISLAND."
Diego choked on his own spit. "Agh——" He coughed hard. "We ARE?!"
Connor waved both hands. "Ok — Andre, yes, that's true. Zhang, no."
Zhang slowly shook his head. "Tsk tsk. Poor, naive Connor."
"Look." Connor straightened up. "Right now we're in a game. A DnD game. And it's a turn-based one."
Andre's face scrunched. "Turn-based? The f*** is that?"
Connor cleared his throat and raised his glasses slightly. "Well, according to my calculations, turn-based is a system where players or characters take actions sequentially rather than simultaneously, allowing for methodical planning and strategic decision-making within time-limited or action-point-based turns." He paused. "And I definitely did not search that on Google yesterday."
Andre stared at him. "Aww hell nah. Sequentially? That's f***ing ass, bro."
"MOTHERF***ER." Zhang stood up slightly, personally offended. "I would rather work at MAPPA than play that bullshit. Let the Reddit nerds have that."
"Yeah, it's ass," Diego agreed, nodding solemnly. "I played Baldur's Gate 3 and had no idea what I was doing. And it's not because I didn't read the tutorial — I'm just brain dead."
"CAN YOU GUYS PLEASE JUST PROGRESS!"
All four boys stopped and looked around.
The voice had come from nowhere and everywhere simultaneously, bouncing off the grey trees like it knew the forest and was annoyed at having to be in it.
Zhang's eyes went wide. "Shit. Epstein's ghost is pissed off."
Diego nodded gravely. "Or maybe he really did fake his death to play Fortnite."
"Guys this isn't EPSTEIN—" Andre said.
"Yes, listen to Connor the nerd," the voice rang out from everywhere at once.
"Hey," Connor said.
Then it appeared.
Pixels began to form in the cold air in front of them, assembling themselves piece by piece like a loading screen that was taking its time, and what materialized was — a creature. A small one. Cute, almost aggressively so, like something designed in a lab specifically to be non-threatening. A glossy blue slime-like body, big sparkling eyes that caught the grey light of Valdenmoor and turned it into something warmer, a single small fin sitting on top of its head with great dignity, and tiny little limbs at the bottom that it stood on with surprising confidence for something that was essentially a water droplet with ambitions.
All four boys looked at each other.
Then back at the slime thing.
Then at each other again.
Andre spoke first. "Uh. Guys. You remember when we watched The Matrix and I said I'm team blue pill?"
"Yes," all three said.
"Well now I'm team red. Because I am not trying to be a blueberry."
The slime thing wiggled its entire body in what was very clearly anger, its fin trembling, its sparkling eyes narrowing to something that was trying very hard to be intimidating and was about seventy percent of the way there.
"I am NOT a blueberry," it said, with the energy of something that had been called a blueberry before and was exhausted by it. "I am BePo. Your guide. I am here to guide you four idiots throughout your entire journey, every step of it, whether you deserve guidance or not, which based on the last hour, you do not."
A pause.
"Hi BePo," Connor said sincerely.
Diego shook his head with the energy of a man making a business decision. "Nah. Nah nah nah. I ain't playing any more of this game. I wanna go home and eat some tacos."
"I'm not even surprised at that," Andre said.
Zhang nodded thoughtfully. "I expected him to say something about corn or flour tortillas, beans, chili peppers, and salsa. He proved me wrong. Growth."
"Guys come on," Connor said, turning to them with his hands out, his floppy hat slightly crooked, his glasses reflecting BePo's faint blue glow. "We should be enjoying ourselves. Having fun adventures."
BePo wobbled up and down enthusiastically, its fin bouncing. "Yes. You should. And also you are all still level one and have not explored literally any of the world yet. You defeated one enemy. One. Tiger Woods. Who you named yourself."
Andre looked out at the grey trees, the dark soil, the wrong colored sky. Then back at BePo. "Buddy. I don't think a forest is beating the hood. The hood is too iconic."
Zhang raised both hands and threw gang signs. "On Blood gang—"
Andre turned and looked at him.
Just looked at him.
Zhang slowly lowered his hands. "...Sorry."
"Thank you."
BePo looked between all four of them with the expression of someone who had accepted something very difficult about their life.
"I have been assigned to the wrong group," it said quietly, to no one in particular.
"Ok. Look. Here is the situation." Its fin pointed upward with authority. "If you four can escape the Dark Forest, you will gain enough experience to reach level five. That is the deal. That is the objective. That is literally all you have to do."
Connor stepped forward before anyone could derail it. He turned to face the other three with the expression of a man who had been waiting for this exact moment and was going to use it correctly.
"Guys. I get it. I know you don't wanna be here." He paused. Pushed his glasses up. "But be honest. In the real world right now we'd be in my mom's basement arguing about DnD that nobody wanted to play. We wouldn't have a cool world. We wouldn't have powers. We wouldn't have actual weapons and actual monsters and actual—" he gestured broadly at all of Valdenmoor, the grey trees, the dark soil, the sky that still couldn't decide what color it wanted to be— "whatever this is." He looked at all three of them. "And we got each other. Making fun of each other. Like always."
The three boys looked at each other.
Something passed between them that none of them would ever acknowledge out loud because they were nine years old and acknowledgment wasn't available to them yet.
Andre exhaled through his nose.
Zhang ate a chip that had somehow survived in his robe pocket.
Diego uncrossed and recrossed his arms. Then uncrossed them again. Then sighed the sigh of a man accepting a prison sentence that was actually pretty reasonable.
"Fine," he said.
He lifted his hand toward Connor, palm out, waiting.
"But if this gets boring we quit. That's the deal. You feel me?"
Connor looked at the hand. Looked at Diego. Nodded once with complete seriousness and shook it.
"Deal."
Zhang turned to BePo.
"Alright. Hey. Fat ass." He pointed at it. "How do we get out of here."
Diego and Andre simultaneously turned to look at each other and said "YOU TALKING?" and then both lost it, Diego doubling over, Andre's signature laugh filling the grey forest, his head doing the side to side tremor.
BePo's sparkling eyes went flat. Its fin lowered slightly. It wiggled once with a dignity that the situation did not deserve.
"I have a name," it said. "It is BePo. And if you continue this particular line of behavior—" its tiny limbs planted themselves more firmly on the ground— "it is North Korea for you."
"OHHHHH," Andre said, straightening up, pointing at BePo.
"Burn," Connor confirmed.
Zhang raised one finger. "Hey. You can't say that."
"I just did," BePo said simply.
Zhang opened his mouth. Closed it. Pointed at BePo for a long moment. Then lowered his hand and nodded slowly. "Ok. Respect."
BePo cleared its throat again, fin straightening back to full professional height.
"Anyway. A word of warning before I go. The Dark Forest has more monsters like the shadow zombies you encountered. Plural. Multiple. More than one. Significantly more than one."
Diego held up a finger. "Um, actually. You mean Tiger Woods."
BePo stared at him.
"The monster," Diego said helpfully. "Tiger Woods. That's his name."
"It was ONE monster—"
"His name is Tiger Woods."
"IT DIDN'T HAVE A NAME, YOU NAMED IT—"
"And his name," Diego said, with the patience of someone explaining something very simple, "is Tiger Woods."
BePo looked at Connor.
Connor shrugged slightly. "It's on the battle screen."
BePo closed its sparkling eyes for exactly three seconds. Then opened them.
"Yes. Tiger Woods. Whatever. The point is there are more of them and worse things besides and you are level one and have approximately zero idea what you are doing and I would very much like all four of you to not die in this forest on the first day because the paperwork alone—" it stopped itself. Took a breath. Composed itself. Its fin settled. "Just call me if you need help."
It looked at all four of them one last time — the chaos mage in the floppy hat, the paladin with shadow blood drying on his armor, the shadow rogue who hadn't been quiet for a single second, the berserker who was somehow already done with everything — and something in its big sparkling eyes suggested it was doing very rapid mental calculations about its life choices.
"Byyyyyyyyyye," it said, with a brightness that was mostly real and only slightly a performance.
And then BePo wrapped itself out of reality, pixels dissolving in reverse, the blue glow fading until the grey forest was just the grey forest again.
The four of them stood there in the quiet.
"I liked him," Andre said.
"He threatened me with North Korea," Zhang said.
"I liked him more after that," Andre said.
Connor looked out at the dark trees ahead of them, deeper into the forest, where the path went grey and then darker than grey and then disappeared entirely into something that probably had more Tiger Woodses in it.
He pushed his glasses up.
"Alright," he said quietly. "Let's go."
Nobody moved for a second.
Then Diego cracked his knuckles.
Then Zhang finished his chip.
Then Andre put his phone in his robe pocket(how did he even have it?), which was the most commitment any of them had seen from him yet.
And the four idiots walked into the Dark Forest together.