Chapter Thirty Six – Friends Meet

“So… Tyrone. Uhm. This is Bugbear. Bugbear? Tyrone!” I introduced the two as Amy had taught me new friends were supposed to.

“GRrrrhhhAhhhhEeelll! ‘Vader! Gidaaway!” came Bugbears charming response as he growled and struggled with the vines. He was finally getting the better of them now that the Druid had fled, but he still had a ways to go till he would be free.

I beamed in delight and stepped up to the thrashing beast. Tangled as he was, I was easily in range of his thrashing limbs, but he stilled the moment I came close.

“You remember me?” I asked, tentatively. Almost afraid.

The Bugbear grinned. “Jaahh Jabberring! Jabberring Grrell!”

I turned to Tyrone in glee. “He remembers me!”

Bugbear followed my gaze to the false god and immediately roared in rage and began thrashing all over again, glaring at the man in hatred.

“Uhm. Good to meet you?” Tyrone said with a nervous chuckle.

The Bugbear was not amused and with a sudden burst of energy, he ripped free of the tangled vines and charged the false god.

I didn’t even think before reacting. I put myself between Tyrone and Bugbear and held my hands wide.

Thankfully, Bugbear slowed, a confused look on his face.

“V-vader! Ivader!” He exclaimed, pointing his menacing club at Tyrone.

Right. I’d called them invaders so many times. I’d told him of them so many times. He’d never remembered. At least, I thought he hadn’t. Perhaps he’d been retaining much more of what I told him all along.

“No,” I said assuredly before taking a step back and placing a hand on Tyrone’s shoulder. “Friend.”

“Friend?” He asked, confused.

Even as I spoke the word, I wondered. Would he help Bugbear? Or would he and Francis delete him? Could he, in all his power, even remove my memories of Bugbear to stay my anger? He’d said they would help but... How powerful was a false god? What could or couldn’t they do?

It didn’t matter though. I’d chosen to trust them. My decision was made. I hadn’t even thought about it before contacting them which probably said enough on its own.

As of now, I trusted Francis and Tyrone. Donna-Lou and the other False Gods I had yet to meet. I trusted them. They wouldn’t hurt Bugbear.

If they did... well. I’d find a way to make gods pay.

...Maybe not Tyrone. He was a weak god. Not in charge at all. If they hurt Bugbear it wouldn’t be his fault. He smiled at me and I felt my jelly innards go taut.

“Friend,” I confirmed.

Bugbear turned back to Tyrone and for just a moment I saw him warring with the Instinct. A fight in his eyes, wrestling with attitudes that had once controlled every part of him, now dominated by his will. It didn’t take long. Suddenly his face split into a wide drool-filled grin.

“Friend!” he exclaimed excitedly and engulfed Tyrone in a drool-filled hug, much more intimate than the one I’d given him.

I was ashamed at that moment. I’d defied the instinct the same way but I hadn’t been able to escape into the Great-Open. Maybe it was just because he was so much bigger than me, but I hadn’t been strong enough. He had.

“Ah, gaah! Gell! Get your friend off me!” Tyrone insisted. “Gah, Bugbears drool more than dogs!”

“Friend!” Bugbear agreed.

I began to laugh. Amy was dying, and I didn’t know what I would do when she did. But for now, I’d found my first friend again, and that gave me joy unlike any I could remember. The world might be dead but the people in it weren’t.

For the first time, I felt like I’d truly escaped Dungeon Home. I had friends, a profession, a goal, and I no longer feared for my life.

Everytime I’d felt that way before some new horror had cropped up.

“So… now that we’ve found him, is it possible to make him an adventurer like me?” I asked, with sudden trepidation.

Tyrone, still attempting to free himself of a bugbear-sized cloak, turned to me while trying to tug himself free.

“We’d discussed that. Yes, we can in the same way we did it for you. The only problem is that Bugbear isn’t an adventurer class. So… he would have to become something other than a Bugbear. I’m thinking Orc?” he said.

“An Orc named Bugbear?” I asked. “That’s… odd.”

He shrugged. “Your Namer ability is dangerous to use on adventurers because it causes clashes. Someone out there has the same name as the names you chose. If any part of the system were to try to reach out to two of them at once it could cause a clash. At least, that’s what we thought at first. Your code does work around this, but it’s still unsafe. If you choose a name no one else is using though, it’s perfectly safe.”

“Bugbear!” Bugbear exclaimed, surprisingly clearly, growling at the both of us.

“Doesn’t sound like he likes the idea,” Tyrone said before turning to Bugbear directly. Weirdly, this action broke Bugbear’s hug when all of his struggling hadn’t managed to do so.

“Hey Bugbear,” he said, “Friend. We aren’t going to do anything you don’t want, okay? We just want you to be safe.”

“Fffriend?” the beast responded.

Bugbear clearly didn’t understand, but that was okay. Maybe he could tell we were talking about his future but didn’t know exactly what we were discussing.

“Is there any way to help him learn to speak like I did? I’m connected to a dictionary you said, right? Can we connect him to it too?”

Tyrone blinked, surprised. “Uhm. I… don’t see why not. It still won’t happen overnight but he’s essentially no different from you except he doesn’t have the Fae-Touch and Namer abilities. Also, there was something weird when your race was set to human. Francis is almost certain whoever created you planned for you to be turned into an adventurer. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have a relatively normal human body.”

“So… what does that mean for Bugbear?” I asked worriedly.

“Nothing. Bugbear doesn’t have subtypes as you did. Change him to an orc and he’ll be an orc. Easy enough.”

Rather than assure me, this made me a little uneasy. “Can… you do that to me at any time too? Just? Change me? Make me an orc or a bat or a unicorn?”

He hesitated. “Technically, yes. We would never do that though.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I’d feel more comfortable if you couldn’t. It’s… scary to know that some nameless person I haven’t even met has the power to change me entirely at a whim.”

‘Or erase me,’ I thought. ‘This is a happy moment. Why am I ruining it?’

I turned to Tyrone and instantly felt guilty for the probing question. The man looked guilty as if he’d accidentally demolished a wall I’d just repaired and didn’t know how to apologize for it.

“Sorry,” I said before he could find words.

“No, ‘I’m’ sorry,” he replied. “I’ve been trying to put myself in your shoes. It’s not fair for you to be so confined but… I don’t know how I could help you with anything like that. You really scare people. There’s this article that’s calling for Gypsenergy to shut down entirely just because you exist. And it’s by a big name author. Someone people read just because they wrote it.”

“I don’t see why,” I replied, glumly. “It seems like you have more to fear from the passage of cycles than anything I could ever do.”

He scoffed a laugh at that. “You might be right, in the end.”

I sighed. The conversation fell into awkward silence. Bugbear kept looking between the two of us like a mob who couldn’t decide which invader was closer.

“Why would you want to wear my shoes?” I asked, blushing immediately after I asked.

“Huh?” Tyrone replied awkwardly.

“My shoes. Why would you want to put yourself in them?” I asked.

He laughed. “It’s--!”

“An expression?” I interrupted. “How many of those do you Real-Worlders have anyway?”

“As many as there are stars in the sky.”

“Three hundred and ninety-one?” I replied.

“Hmm?”

I grinned. “A… a little expression of my own. On clear night cycles, when I was staring out into the Great Open wondering what was out there, I spent ages just counting the stars. There were three hundred and ninety-one in the small opening that I could see from. After I got out though… there were so many more. So many many more.”

Tyrone stared at me, a look of profound sadness on his face.

“Fuckin’ Plato’s Cave, IRL,” he muttered.

“Another expression?” I asked.

“Two at once,” he said with a grin. “A lot of people are afraid of you, but a lot of them are excited by you as well. I… I know I am,” he said with a smile.

I blushed, furiously.

“Th-thank you.”

“Gell. I don’t know what I can do, but perhaps I can show you a little about your world. Just… don’t tell Francis, okay? It won’t be anything more than little stuff. Programming one-oh-one.”

“You’d really do that!?” I asked, excited.

He scratched the back of his head, wincing with every fiber of his expression. “I am so getting fired… yes, if I can. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Grelll!” came a sudden growl and jumped. I’d almost forgotten about Bugbear. How stupid. After all my effort to find him!

“Bugbear!” I said happily.

“Geelll!”

…

“Real font of intelligence isn’t he?” Tyrone asked.

I flushed, but Bugbear beamed. I was so glad he remembered me. Today was a happy day.

“So… what are we going to do with him? You know? After we make him a player? Take him to Variak?” Tyrone asked, curiously.

…

Jellycrap.