It was the day, today Pepe would go into the dungeon with the party, and to boot he had Michelle with them. He was not sure how he felt about her, well he was but he doubted the girl felt the same. It was alright, he would still enjoy her being there with them.

That morning Pepe was eager to go, he went down and planned to wait for the rest of the party. He of course wanted to be there before Michelle, but to his annoyance she was already sitting down waiting on them. Croos was with her, he had dropped off some food and was just looking at her, with what Pepe was sure was the same dumb expression he had looked at her yesterday.

She was wearing her hair down and it looked freshly washed and combed. How did girls do that? They always looked like they were fresh out of the shower. As for him, his clothes were rumpled, and his hair was a mess even though he tried doing something with it. They both wore similar clothes as both were Thief's, but she made the clothes look good, he not so much.

He sat down and nodded to both, “Good morning, ready to go?” turning to Croos, “can you rustle me up some food please.” He just wanted to get rid of the little guys so he could be alone with Michelle.

She smelled of something sweet, had she put on some kind of perfume? What did he smell like? He hoped he did not at least smell bad; he had taken a bath yesterday and his clothes were clean.

“Sure am, my daggers are cleaned, oiled, sharp, and ready to take down anything we find.” She sounded excited about the trip, maybe that was what he liked about her.

Croos returned with breakfast and put in front of him. He looked at what he had brought, it was a plate of what looked like eggs and potatoes, or whatever the equivalent was in this world. It looked delicious and he was kind of hungry, so he started to dig in.

“Slow down Pepe, no one will take it away from you, I promise.” He stopped and looked up; she was smiling at him. Again, with that smile of hers, color came into his cheeks, the red embarrassed kind.

“Sorry, kind of hungry.” He slowed down just as she suggested, the eggs were great, they were sunny side up and cooked to perfection, the potatoes were also good had a slight sweet taste to them. She began to eat her food as well. She was delicate, eating small portions compared to his shoveling food into his face. He did not really know anything about her. Where did she come from, who her family was, what her favorite color was? He would need to ask her about that.

She finished, cleaned her mouth with the cloth napkin they were given. Mr. Rowen ran a nice inn, he always set out cloth napkins for the customers and everything was clean. There were no wobbly tables or chairs at all in the place. Pepe saw the man, he was always cleaning the common room, pushing Croos to do the same and just making sure his inn was perfect. They did not even need to make their beds, though Erin and Bobby always did theirs, normally Pepe would leave his a mess only to return to it perfectly done.

He was about to start asking the questions he had been thinking about when his cousin interrupted, “Pepe, there you are, and I see you are trying to keep Michelle all to yourself.” Yes, he would kill him, slowly, even if he was his cousin, his Tia would not miss him he was sure.

“Primo, te voy a matar. Yes, we are just eating some breakfast.” He looked up to see that it was the whole group coming down. Well, the questions would have to wait then.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So, we just go in and we find the entrance to the rest of the dungeon?” they all pretty much shrugged, no one really knew. Guess they would all find out together.

The cave was just that a cave, nothing fancy, there did not seem to be any animals that they could see, no bats, no rats, no bears, wolves, or anything. It was just a lot of solid rock at least this was true for the entrance. They went in, this time they were prepared, they had brought torches. Using Josh’s little light ball spell was all well and wonderful, but it just did not provide a whole lot of light.

Pepe was carrying one of the torches, Michelle the other, they were on opposite sides to provide the most amount of light for everyone. The smell was not great, the burning pitch was smelly, the smoke making his clothes stink.

They walked for an hour and nothing, what they saw next though was just strange. From around a bend there seemed to be light shining, well thought Pepe of course there is, this was after all just like a video game. They came around said bend, he and the rest of the group just stood there, looking up at the sign, that read, ‘Caverns of Desbora Dungeon’ and just underneath another sign that said ‘Welcome’. The signs were freaking Neon, what dungeon had neon welcome signs?

Next to what they could only call the entrance hovered two cylindrical objects, was one of them Regi? What was Regi doing here? Even stranger was that they had hats on, not just any hats they looked like newsboy hats, the one on the left was wearing a red hat with a number on it. The one on the right a similar hat with a different number on it, this one green.

Looking over at the rest of the group Pepe saw that they were all opened mouthed at the display in front of them. He looked over at Michelle and she at him and shrugged, who knew what this silliness was about.

As a group they went forward, Josh took the lead as they got in front of the entrance? He turned to the Red Hat wearing Node, the number embroidered was 1337, with green hat a number 1 instead. They had not moved or spoken at all as they approached. It almost seemed as if they were off.

“Hello, is that you Regi?” Pepe had to agree he looked exactly like Regi, well so did the other one so who knew.

“Oh you know Reg… I know not of whom you speak of my name is DungeonNode1337.” The voice was not Regi’s this one had a different tone to it. The voice seemed older than Teen voice Regi had.

The other also spoke, “How do you now the Boss?”

“1 stay, in character!” These two obviously new Regi, but they had some kind of game going here.

“Um ok, I guess. Anyways how do we get into the dungeon?” Pepe was also eager to get in and be done with all this silliness, but he found it funny how the two nodes were clearly amateurs at this.

“Welcome to The Caverns of Desbora Dungeon.” The voice had changed to something deeper, making it sound like it was an ominous thing, especially after he said the name. His fellow Node giving him some background noise and even some music and a ‘ooh scary,’ after the name.

Pepe laughed at that last part, I mean it was just funny how hard they were trying and how they were failing.

“Enough of that 1, we agreed, I would present it then you would give them some more info. I am sorry about my fellow Node. He gets over excited.” That was an understatement, these two clearly were having fun with all this. Pepe recalled Regi having that same enthusiasm as he presented the roles, it was almost as if they did not talk to real people on a regular basis.

“I’m sorry 1337, please continue.”

The back and forth between these two was like a comedy act, something akin to those old movies his grandpa used to watch, the old man had learned English late in life, and it was horrible, but he could get by with what he knew. The old man started watching the old movies enjoying some comedy act by Bob Hop and Bing Cosby something or other, he was sure he was not remembering the names right. He recalled sitting with his Abuelo and watching it with him, some were in black and white which made no sense to him, they had color so why were they in black and white?

Back to the present, no time for memories they needed to get into this dungeon. Seemed that as he was remembering his Abuelo, the nodes had almost finished talking. “…. and you will need to worry about three bosses. Beat them and you will be rewarded.” This is all he caught the tail end of the explanation. Hopefully he had not missed any important parts, but what was more important, three bosses, beat them and you get the loot.

The whole explanation thing had taken way to long, and as the nodes finished with a “well?” Well, what? The nodes were waiting on them for something, Bobby began to clap, oh so that was it, Pepe started clapping as well to make the nodes happy.

“Thank you, thank you. Without further ado, let the games begin. Begin Transportation Countdown. HelpNode if you please.” Pepe had totally forgotten about Maria, silly him he could have asked about all this. And what was this Transportation thing they were talking about?

Analyzing Request…. Approved

10, 9…. 3, 2, 1.

Begin transportation, ensure to always keep hands and feet in during teleportation. See you on the other side.

Then everything changed, he started to feel strange, like when you go on one of those carnival rides and you go up then you have a drop. How your stomach feels, the sinking feeling, weirdness all around. Then he saw the room disappearing, his vision got blurry, and everything started to fade away. The feeling was probably a second, then it was changing, the room they found themselves in was like a locker room. He saw a row of lockers when his vision cleared.

He looked around, and it was like a gym locker room, lockers and a long bench seat. Behind them were what you would think off as uniforms on hangers. The uniform consisted of either a green or red shirt and a hat of the same color, blue overalls, large black boots, and white gloves. The boots and gloves were overly large, the gloves not quite as big as the foam hand you saw at sports events, but large.

The weirdness continued; this place was just wacko. There was also a big dress in the room hanging, it was pink and very frilly with delicate gloves and even a crown to go with it. He knew what Michelle would think about that. Probably a good thing they had multiple uniforms of the other kind.

Michelle looked around too, saw the uniforms, the single dress and she was not happy. Pepe had seen her when she was unhappy, the incident of the training coming back to him, “Not going to happen.” She grabbed the uniform with the red shirt. Had he missed this explanation as well? He did not recall hearing about uniforms the others grabbed the green shirt uniforms. Pepe looked and he sure as heck was not going to wear the dress and since his friends grabbed the green and Michelle had already claimed the red one, he went with the green as well.

Lucky for them they had a changing room with a curtain for privacy. You could hear Michelle complaining about the dress in her changing room. ‘I can’t believe this…’ and ‘Dress, I will show them, stupid nodes.’

He was sure that she would have looked great in the dress, it was very pretty and with her red hair. But alas he was not going to stick his foot in his mouth again with her. She had shown him what would happen if he treated her like a delicate flower of a girl. Yeah, he was not going to do that again.

He came out, and saw that the rest were already done, he had been the last to grab his uniform of sorts and they were just waiting for him to get done, they had donned the uniforms they had brought in there with them, and they all looked just plain silly. The large boots and large gloves were ridiculous he was not sure why they needed them.

“Now what?” To answer his question a loudspeaker went off, the sound a little distorted at first.

The voice that came through was that of 1337, “All indications show that participants are ready for the first floor. Activating uniforms skills, please do not be alarmed.”

Initiating Uniform…. Initialization complete

[Uniform of the Hero Plumber] has been activated.

Skills available: Jump, Punch, Kick

That was weird, they just seemed like regular things, jump nothing special about that, the other two anyone could punch and kick. What the heck are they for? Pepe just shook his head, what the heck is this all about. And the Hero Plumber part of the uniform name, like in the video game, why was it always about video games? How in the world did the Dungeon Nodes even know about their games and why were they like that comedy duo? Did they have a TV and video game machines? They must, that would explain it all.

“Initializing Floor 1, enjoy the dungeon and don’t fall.” What was that about, Fall? Pepe was sure that this had been explained while he was thinking about something else, what else did he miss?

Initializing Floor 1…. Initialization Complete

Floor 1 The Mushrooms is now ready to be entered.

Please proceed with caution.

“Please enter through the door at the end of the hall.” No more instructions came after this last announcement.

There had been no door, it was just wall when he had looked, they all turned around to look. And to no one’s surprise there was a door at the end of the hall worth of lockers. What kind of rules did this place follow? They made little sense to him, everything he knew from their world worked differently. It did not mater really, they were about to enter the dungeon.