Source. [Video-Game Multicrossover]

[TripleMRed]

Wake Up and Smell the Ashes, Pt. 1.

-

Arizona, May 14, 200-

There was little as wonderful as sleeping in. Nothing quite like snuggling up in your bed, letting the wonderful world of dreams come in to entice the imagination, and bring wonder and joy to even the most tired of minds.

"Mike, wake up!"

Unfortunately, as with all good things, it had to come to an end. Such it was for young Mike Cohen, the little boy doing his best to pretend to have not heard his mother's call. The little boy snuggled deeper into his bed-sheets, hoping that she wouldn't come up and would let him sleep in. It was a hope that was doomed for disappointment, but the stubborn young boy was determined to try anyway.

"Mike? Miiiike. I know you can hear me, young man." Mike remained silent as he continued to try and return to the land of dreams. He had been having a rather nice dream, though already the memory of it was becoming lost in his awoken mind. Something about portals and other worlds. Fantasy stuff, even he knew that, but he still found himself wishing it were all real.

"Michael S. Cohen, you get your little butt down here, that's an order soldier!" In an instant, Michael was out of bed and rushing down in his pajamas, the voice of someone he hadn't seen in person for months driving any futile thoughts of dreams out of his mind. Getting down the stairs as fast as his little legs could take him, Mike grabbed the wall-frame to twist his rapid momentum around into the living room, where he made a beeline for the hulking man in combat BDUs standing in the middle of the living room, hands on his hip in a stern, militaristic fashion. The effect, however, was ruined by the big smile on the man's face, a gleam in his eye as he watched Mike run over and hug his leg.

"Tommy!" Mike shouted as he hugged his older brother. "I never thought I'd see you again!"

"So I take it you did miss me, squirt!" Thommas 'Tommy' Cohen laughed as he ruffled his younger brother's black hair, their mother watching from the sidelines with a smile on her face. Getting down to one knee, Tommy looked Mike in the eye with an enormous grin still stuck to his features. "And guess what, squirt." He lifted a red beret from behind his back before putting it on his head. "I now officially outrank you!"

"Ah man, no fair." Mike huffed as he let go of his brother to look at the cap he wore: The red beret covered his brother's close shaven hair completely, an emblem whose meaning was lost to mike just off-center to it's right side.

"Sorry kid, but you know how it is." Tommy shrugged. "Little kids don't get into training, this was always going to happen." Mike rolled his eyes as he looked over his brother's uniform, an set of urban camo pants and an assortment of green pouches on a black armored vest standing his brother out as a true military man. "Though between you and me," Tommy stage whispered conspiratorially to Mike, "Officer training's a real ball-buster." Saying such a crude thing to his little brother earned him a quick smack on the shoulder by their mother.

"Tommy, language!" She hissed.

"Sorry ma, you know how it is." Tommy laughed.

"I was married to your father, rest his soul, I do know, and I refuse to have that kind of language in this house-hold!" The Cohen matriarch declared, to which even Tommy, who stood over a foot taller than her and out-massed her by a hundred pounds of extra muscle mass, could not help but wince under her gaze. "Am I clear?"

"Yes ma'am!" Tommy said with a grin, though the fear of riling his ma' up put an edge to his eyes. Mike couldn't blame him: Marisa Cohen was the best mom a kid could ask for, but when she got going, nothing could stop her. Deciding to give his brother an out, Mike was quick enough on his feet to point at Mike's vest.

"What outfit are you in, Tommy?" Mike asked. "Are you a Marine like dad was?"

"Sorta." Mike blinked at Tommy's odd answer.

"How can you 'sorta' be a Marine?" Mike asked innocently enough. Tommy stood up to his full height and brushed his uniform straight.

"It's a special unit I got selected out of basic for thanks to my scores." Tommy cryptically said. When he saw the pleading look for more details from his little brother's eyes, he cracked, if only a little. "But yeah, us grunts in this outfit are Marines. Though, not going to lie, they seemed to have picked up a little of every Branch for this uniform."

"Lord forgive me, but thank goodness your father isn't around to hear you say that." Marisa shook her head as she clicked her tongue. "I still remember his rants whenever your Uncle Floyd came over." The problem with being a military family was that sometimes, once in a blue moon, you got a maverick. And in the case of the late James Cohen, his brother's Floyd's decision to go Army instead of Marines was somehow worse than if he'd remained a civilian altogether.

"God, he'd chew me out for rubbing shoulders with Army Medics. I'd never hear the end of it." Tommy shook his head as Marisa waved for her boys to follower her to the kitchen for breakfast, which they obediently did.

"He'd chew you out just for wearing that beret." Marisa couldn't help but laugh. "You look like Army airborne!" Tommy blinked as he took the beret off his head and inspected it out.

"....Oh shi-" Marisa snapped her head to look at him with a glare. "-ttake mushrooms, you're right." He groaned.

"You boys take a seat, and I'll cook us up some eggs and bacon."

"Thanks ma, yours is always the best." Tommy said a genuine smile. Mike took his seat opposite of his brother at the small breakfast nook they had in the kitchen. All that talk of dad made him a little sad, but he'd died long enough ago that Mike only really had pictures and stories from his relatives to go off of. Though, he couldn't find it too upsetting. He had Tommy, who was always there for him before, so it wasn't all bad.

"Hey squirt, I got you something." Tommy said, leaning forwards with a wolfish grin on his face. Mike looked up, curious, when his brother reached into a pocket and took out a gift-wrapped object. Pushing it across the table, Mike took hold of the gift with wide eyes.

"My birthday isn't until next month, Tommy."

"I know, but I got word back at base that me and the boys might see a deployment before then." Tommy admitted, only wincing when he realized he'd said that loud enough for their mother to hear.

"Where are you going?" Marisa asked as she continued to prepare breakfast.

"They're pretty hush-hush about it, but word is something about a training mission right here in the States." Tommy honestly replied. "I just got my rank, so they haven't given me all the details just yet. I'll know closer to when it happens in a couple of days or so."

"You're going away already?" Mike asked, the disappointment etched on his face. "But you just got here!"

"It's not going to be for forever, squirt." Tommy said with an apologetic look. "I promise, I'll be back before you know. Now, you going to open your gift or not?" Mike paused before grabbing the wrapping paper and ripping it off in one go. One look at the item within and Mike's eyes widened with shock and awe.

"Is this a Zune!?" Mike gasped. Tommy gave him two thumbs up.

"Happy Early-Birthday, you musical goon! Try it out, I took the liberty of downloading some of my favorites unto it!"

"Nothing inappropriate I hope!" Marisa said with a dangerous edge in her voice.

"Nothing too bad." Tommy playfully uttered with a shrug. Turning it on, Mike hit the play button on the first song in the playlist, and all at once familiar chords from one of Tommy's favorite bands started to fill the air.

"This is great!" Mike squealed in delight. "Thank you, Tommy!"

"You can thank me at the birthday party with an extra helping of cake." Tommy chuckled. As their mother came over to deliver their respective plates of scrambled eggs and thick cut bacon, Tommy reached across the table to playfully tussle his younger brother's hair again. "Don't worry, squirt, this assignment will be over in no time!"

"Promise?" Mike asked hopefully as he pressed pause on his music player.

"Promise." Tommy said with a confident smile.


-

Eastern Europe, 'City 17', 202-

Tommy hadn't kept his promise. He hadn't come back from his assignment, and the world went to hell not many days after they had last seen each other. First had been the portal storms. Even from as early in his childhood as it was, he still had vivid memories of those chaotic first days: Their neighbors, the Johnsons, screaming in the middle of the night as some strange two-legged squid thing broke in and started to trash the living room. Of the mad scramble he and his mother had gotten into to get out of the neighborhood, the memory of what had once been their post-man shuffling towards them with his midsection ripped open as some strange creature had seemingly replaced his head.

Of when the Combine arrived and subjugated the world in a matter of hours.

Life after that had been a blur, after they had finished setting up their new rule and crushed any remaining holdouts of rebellious activity at the time. He still remembered being in his early teens when his mom was forcibly separated from him in one of countless transfers to various cities. Cities whose names were now long forgotten outside of backroom whispers, replaced by cold, unfeeling numbers.

So it was little wonder that as he inspected his MP7, Mike couldn't help but feel a grim sense of satisfaction as the stolen APC he and his fellow Rebels were in rumbled through the street.

"Alright, boys and girls, listen up." Mike glanced over at the speaker seated at the head of the APC's troop compartment. Joe Weathers, a dark-skinned man little older than Mike himself, and the man to break him into the Rebel life, looked over his subordinates as they settled in for their mission. "The job is simple: While our friends closer to the Citadel are giving our dearest Dr. Breen our sincerest regards, our job is to handle a group of Overwatch soldiers gearing up in the outskirts in one of the run-off junctions." Joe looked to each of them, his eyes locking into each of theirs in sequence. "We lost contact with the folks there, and their last transmission confirmed that Overwatch had sent a detachment to secure the area. Now that everything is in full swing, we're going to need to take out any Combine squads we can before they reach the inner city. Any questions?"

Mike raised his hand.

"Mike, your question?"

"Any Striders?"

"Thankfully no, it'll just be us and our mirror stooges." Joe uttered as he locked and loaded his magazine. "If there are no other questions, gear up people: It's going to be loud."

-

To say it was 'loud' was a quaint understatement: As Mike bobbed and weaved between the scant cover in the grass covered canal, it was pure cacophony as grenades were thrown or launched, rockets were fired, and explosive barrels were fired upon. Pure chaos. He managed to make it to a wayward shipping container just in time for it to block an incoming rocket, which he responded to by launching a grenade at the Overwatch soldier who had fired it. The grimly satisfying distorted yelp somehow managed to make it to his ears past the explosion, to which he grinned ferally.

"How'd you like that, you jackboots?" He asked to nobody in particular before taking aim and firing a score of rounds at an incoming enemy shotgunner, putting him down before he could make it to his position. That made it 5 under his belt already. "Joe, how many of these guys do we have to put into the dirt to win this thing?!" Mike asked through his comms device. The gunfire on the other end paused for a moment.

"Intel said this place was crewed by 50 soldiers!" Funny, it felt like they were only fighting, what, 16 at a time at any one point? Actually, now that Mike thought about it, the Rebels had sent in 50 of their crack shots to this place, him included, and yet it also seemed like there was only 16 of them in total fighting out there. He shook his head back into the game. Questions for later, right now they had Unis to take down. "Ah shit, listen Mike, we're trying to make a push for the bunker up here, but we're getting pinned down. I could use some help."

"On my way." Mike declared as he dumped the rest of his current magazine into a soldier that had run around the container but hadn't noticed him in time to react. 6 now. An alarm began to sound. He didn't know what that was about, but he took it as a sign to get moving.

Mike started the mad dash up the near by ladder towards the control room, hissing as stray bullets bit into him as he climbed as fast as his arms and legs could carry him. Just as he reached the top, he was just in time to see the bunker doors start to close. A harried sprint fueled by adrenaline saw him barrel towards the doorway before it could shut completely. He was already sliding beside Joe over some make shift cover as it was half-way closed behind them. "Oh geeze, you weren't kidding." He mumbled as he noticed an array of bodies in the bunker's main room. More makeshift uniforms than padded ones.

"I count 5 of them on the other side of the room." Joe declared. Mike took a look around and saw it was only him and Joe behind the makeshift barrier weathering the Combine's fire.

"Ah hell, we've had worse odds." Mike grumbled as he reloaded his weapon. "What the hell is that alarm?"

"I think the Combis ordered a strike in the area." Mike looked at Joe in shock.

"What!? Everyone's still out there! Hell, their guys are still out there!"

"Since when did Breen's boys care about little things like that?" Joe took the brief pause in the enemy firing to start to firing back, only to hiss as he grabbed an injury in his side. "They hit me bad out there. How're you looking?" Mike's response was to use the pause to take aim and nail any Combi's he could. 7. 8.

"Damn, I'm good." Mike quipped as he took cover again to give Joe a grinning thumbs up.

"You're killing machine." Joe chuckled. "Okay, so it sounds like they're down to 3. Between them and the air-strike, I think if we kill them and wait out the strike, this place will be under out control again. Mike pointed a thumb back to the where he just came in from.

"What about everyone still outside!?" As if to answer his question, the sound of the door slamming shut not too far from them reached his ears. Joe just gave him a sad look before reaching behind himself and taking out a shotgun from where he had it stored.

"Let's make this count." Mike sighed as he readied a regular grenade. He tossed it over their cover, and Joe gave the count down. "3. 2. 1. Now!" The detonation was followed by the two of them breaking cover, yelling their lungs out as they charged the enemy position. Mike fired at the one soldier caught out of cover while Joe kept the other two pinned with blasts from his shotgun. This soldier in particular wasn't just going to stand there and die without a fight, which it gave by raising its SMG and fired back at Mike. He wound up winning that little match up when the soldier crumpled first, but not before Mike found himself staggering from the bullets that had impacted him. Worse, he'd used up the entire magazine on that one soldier. Sloppy.

The remaining two soldiers tried to repeat their trick by tossing in a grenade, but the pair just kept charging forward, Mike switching to his pistol. Joe reached the enemy's spot first and blasted the first Combi he saw, killing it instantly. Unfortunately, the other was armed with the same weapon as the rebel and, with one trigger pull, sent Joe flying backwards.

"You son of a bitch!" Mike howled as he dumped his entire pistol's magazine into the Combie, which managed to get another shot off that struck Mike in the arm. But the angered rebel's munitions found their mark, hitting the shotgunner in the head and leading to its quick demise. 10. "That's what you get." Mike huffed and wheezed, his arm twitching from the damage done to it and the SMG rounds from before now being heavily felt in his chest. "Joe, sound off!" Mike turned around only to see his friend laying on the ground, motionless. "Joe?" Mike stumbled forward, getting down to a knee as he stared at his friend's face. In a way, there was a serenity to Joe's expression, his face blank and eyes staring endlessly at the ceiling. "Joe....Oh no." No sooner did this happen did the alarms stop and mere seconds later, the deafening impacts of explosive munitions outside detonating shook the world.

No sooner did it start was it already over. The strikes ended, and what followed was a deafening silence. Mike crumpled down next to Joe, eyes staring at the ceiling as he breathed heavily. He was sure he could find a med-kit to patch himself up, but at that moment, he felt too numb to do much more than lay beside his dead squad leader and friend.

"Well, we did it." Mike coughed out. "And all it cost us was, what, 49 people? For 50 dead jackboots? Yeah, real winning numbers there." He sighed as he let his hands fall to his stomach. He felt tired. Enough so that his lids were getting heavy. "Huh.....I guess it's going to be 50 for 50. Damn." Mike felt the sense of heaviness grow. ".....Ugh." With great effort, he turned himself over to his side and pushed himself shakily to his feet. "Nah. I didn't get this far to go out like this." He grunted as he forced himself to take one step after another to a storage area in the bunker. Sure enough as he entered, he spotted what he was looking for. "Bingo."

Stumbling over, he barely caught himself against the table as he reached out to grab a health vial and injected it straight into his arm. In seconds, he felt himself breathing easier as the regenerative gunk within healed his body to a state from 'dying' to just above that. Taking as many vials into himself as he could, Mike sighed as he stretched and walked back into the room. Standing over Joe with a mournful look on his face, Mike shook his head at the sad state of his friend before reaching down to scoop him up into his arms as best as he could.

"Come on, buddy, I'm not leaving you in here." Mike quietly declared as he lifted his friend into his arms and began to walk towards the exit on what had been the Combine's side of the bunker. "....Oh, what the hell." No sooner had he gotten outside was he faced with the sight of the Citadel, roiling clouds forming over it. As lightning crackled and thunder split the air, Mike winced as what could only be described as the mother of all explosions erupted and began to expand from the Citadel's top. "So much for my new lease on life." Mike uttered as he looked down to Joe with a frown on his face. "See you in a little bit, man." With that, the whole world turned white.

.....Mike wasn't sure what he expected death to be like, but he was fairly certain 'blank white void' was not up there in his assumptions of the afterlife.

"....Uh, hello?" Mike called out. "Anyone out there?"

"Mike?" Mike's eyes widened and his head snapped to look down. Still in his arms, Joe's previously static face was now scrunched in confusion as he rubbed his beanie covered head.

"Joe?" Mike uttered in disbelief, only to mentally catch himself. Right. Dead. "Joe, I don't mean to alarm you, but I think we're dead." Now it was Joe's turn to look bewildered as he took a look around at the white void they were in.

".....Man, I really hope this isn't Heaven, because otherwise I think we were ripped the hell off." Joe finally said after a moment of thought, earning him a laugh from Mike.

"God, that would really suck." He agreed with a grin. "How're you feeling man?"

"I don't know if it's the being dead thing or not, but I definitely don't feel like I got hit with a shotgun to the chest." Joe said as he patted his vest. Sure enough, the wounds were gone, as was all the blood that had covered him.

"Then I guess that means you're good enough to walk on your own." Mike dryly quipped before casually dropping Joe to the ground.

"Ow, that hurt you dick!" Joe complained as he rubbed his back as he got up.

"Okay, so we still feel pain. Not sure if that's a good sign or not on the this being Heaven thing." Mike said as he rubbed his scruff covered chin and looked around. As he turned around, he found himself shocked to see, in the distance, the rest of the assault team......And what looked to be equally confused Combine soldiers. "Joe, you seeing this?" Joe stepped over next to Mike and his eyebrows shot to the top of his forehead as he stared at the sight.

".....I don't think we're in Heaven, Mike."

"Damn, I think I see Mickey. I was really sure he'd make it there out of all of us." Mike winced as he squinted at the rebel in question. Before either of them could say anything further, a golden light started to shine from behind them. The pair turned around on a dime and got into uneasy stances, realizing they were lacking their weapons and were unsure if throwing a punch would matter much in the apparent afterlife.

"Congratulations, Denizens." A deep, rumbling voice called to them as the light grew closer and closer.

"....Is that you, God?" Mike cautiously asked.

"What? Oh, right, hold on." A mundane click fell upon their ears and in an instant, the golden shine disappeared, revealing-

"Is that a fucking yellow rat?" Sure enough, standing there with a little, speaker equipped bowtie was a 2 or 3 foot tall yellow rodent with a jagged tail, black tipped ears, and red cheeks was staring at them, a little cat's smile on his maw as it stared up at them.

"Greetings, former Denizens of-" The rodent took out what looked to be a cue-card from behind its back. "Half-Life 2! I am happy to report that due to your game being launched to the public, it has been completed and thus all viable Denizens of your world are welcome to join us in the Noosphere!"

".....Holy shit, a talking yellow rat!" Mike stared with a slack jaw before the creatures words finally processed in his mind. "Hold up....We're the 'denizens' of what? Our 'game'? The what-o-sphere?" At that, the rodent just smiled as with a snap of its diminutive fingers, the white void behind it disappeared in favor of what could only be described as some sort of processing area.

"Please, follow me for your registration and introduction seminar, and everything will make perfect sense when it's done." Mike took a hard swallow as he listened intently to what was being said. He glanced at the yellow rat creature, the expanse of void around them, then the almost DMV esq processing area behind it.

"Ah, hell." He stated. "We've gotten this far. Let's see where this goes."

[Hello, everyone! I'm TripleMRed, and this is a massive-multicrossover project I've been planning for some time now that I've decided to start the new year off with its first upload! All franchises and characters within this fanfic are property of their respective IP holders, and any and all music used also does not belong to me. I hope you all enjoy what I'm planning to cook up, so Happy New Year all!]

 

[TripleMRed]

There had been many things Mike had expected in his life, up to and including the certainty of death fighting the Combine. Hell, he even expected, if only by some small chance, that their rebellion would succeed and they would kick the Combine off Earth. He had expected upon dying a cessation to his existence, with a small part of him expecting to see his mother and brother again in the here-after. He used to like to hope for that second one in particular.

"Greetings, Denizens, and welcome to the Noosphere Introduction and Registration Seminar!" Needless to say, being strapped in by DMV style personnel to what seemed to be a ride right out of Disney world as he and several of his fellow Rebels were taken on a ride through an amusement park version of a welcome committee after finding out not an hour prior that everything he knew was a lie.

A video game character. Him, his friends, hell even the damn Combine. Their struggles. Their lives. Their world. All of it was ones and zeroes made for entertaining people via an interactive data file in a computer somewhere.

And yet, in a twisted, demented sort of way, it all made an eerie sort of sense to him as he looked back. Hell, the battle before they'd wound up here had some red flags down to the number of people fighting at any one time for a giant battle with a hundred combatants in it.

"Either this is hell and they're fucking with us, or God is a computer-programmer with a thing for dystopic fiction." Michael murmured to himself as he sat next to Joe, the ride they were on moving at a slow but steady pace as the voice droned on about the world they had been in their whole lives. Their world.

"I'm going to be real with you, Mike, I don't know which one is worse." Joe admitted from his spot next to his friend and fellow freedom fighter, eyes staring directly at the projected images and mock up theme park ride versions of scenes pulled straight from their old reality.

"Could be worse." Someone from further down in their seating arrangement said. It sounded like Mickey. "We could have wound up being in the Sims."

"The hell is 'The Sims'?" Mike asked Joe as he leered at what he dearly hoped was an animatronic of a Headcrab zombie as it moved its arms robotically up and down.

"I remember that, it was a computer game where you took people you made and controlled every aspect of their lives." Joe uttered as he eyed as mock up of a gunship fighting a stand in for the hero of the Resistance, though it seemed that instead of using a full recreation of the legendary Gordon Freeman, whoever had made this ride had opted instead to just slap an HEV suit onto a mannequin and called it a day.

For his part, Mike shuddered at the idea of coming from a place like the one Joe had just described. The Combine were bad enough as is, but at least you could resist and fight. The hell were you supposed to do when your very will and life was at the tender mercies of someone sitting behind a computer monitor?

"Not going to lie, you're taking this a lot better than I am." Joe freely admitted to his friend. Mike looked at him in surprise as Joe continued to stare wide-eyed at everything around them. "I'm kinda freaking out inside, man."

"I guess I'm just glad to see you and everyone else alive again." Mike had to admit to himself, if he had to choose between somehow surviving into the future with the added guilt of losing even more friends, or finding out he was some sort of video game NPC and that his friends weren't actually dead, he couldn't lie when he decided he vastly preferred the latter. The full existential implications could wait another time, damn it!

"Heh, yeah, dying wasn't exactly fun." Joe admitted with a shaky smile and a forced chuckle. "Can't deny I'd take this over taking my chances with whatever was on the other side back home."

"I know, right?" Mike said with a more easy smile of his own. Before they could continue their conversation, however, both heard Mickey speak up.

"Hey guys, I think we're getting to the part about this place!" With that, the pair looked forward and sure enough, the last vestiges of the odd ride they were on showing their world disappeared, and what replaced it was something that made their already wide eyes widen even further and Joe's mouth to drop.

"Holy shit." In front of them was what could only be described as a downscaled model of countless cities, biomes, and even what looked like entirely different worlds altogether.

"-izens of Half Life 2, we here of the Noosphere greet you! What is the Noosphere you ask? Excellent question! The Noosphere is here, all around you, and beyond, as demonstrated by our small sample of dioramas before you." Mike gulped in awe. Small sample!? "Nearly every video game character, since the dawn of gaming, appears in our, and now your, new home, once their game is completed, released to the public, and completed for the first time. This isn't to say incomplete games or one-off demos are excluded however: While there are certain restrictions for these individuals of these unfinished or unreleased products, if their game is confirmed to be canceled and unreleased in its development, they too can find a place here!"

The scene changed to reveal a kaleidoscope of figures Mike could only dream of imagining. Regular humans wearing normal clothes instead of blue jump-suits, in a wide plethora of styles; countless kinds of soldiers, from the sleekest of sci-fi designs to the most rugged of fantasy armor; aliens and monsters in all shapes and sizes, and so much more, all of them standing side by side on either side of their ride, robotically waving their hands in greeting towards those onboard.

"We here in the Noosphere get a new lease on life: What you were in your old life does not need to define you or control your future. Were you the grunt of an oppressive regime?" Spotlights activated to highlight several soldiers in varying appearances of threatening armor.

"You can find new meaning in your new life and become something more. Were you Pidgeon-holed into being a monster or grunt enemy, at the mercy of others?" The spotlights shifted, showing a plethora of creatures. Mike was surprised by what look like a Vortigaunt amongst their numbers, as he'd only known of them as allies to the Resistance than any 'monster'. He also made note that in the assortment of creatures, there was also an example of that odd yellow rat thing that had greeted them, minus the bowtie.

"Now you too can be a part of society, enter a career path or enjoy the peaceful life without having to worry about your next meal or becoming the victim of a Player Character. Or, perhaps, you were just an NPC, someone to fill the world and spout canned lines for players to hear as they went about their day." Another spotlight shift, and this time Mike found his heart having a jump. There, amidst a sea of people and aliens in ordinary clothes, donning a blue jump-suit, was him. Or, perhaps more accurately, it was his face at least. As he watched his own face smile at him while cheerfully waving him along, Mike had to take a deep breath before forcing himself to push out the creeping existential thoughts out of his mind. Don't focus on that, he thought to himself. Focus on the 'new lease on life' you're getting.

"No longer do you need to be just another face to fill the world. Now you too can become the hero of your own story! Your dreams, your aspirations, and your future are now all yours to fulfill!" Mike pointedly ignored his own look alike and nodded along with what the voice-over was saying. Okay, okay, yeah. His future was his to control now. Yeah!

"Here in the Noosphere, we believe in fresh starts and second chances where possible. However, we are aware that, due to certain limitations inherent in some of the entities brought here, not all can be rehabilitated." As if to make a point, holographic displays of various creatures, some of which Mike recognized, appeared in front of the ride. The highlight for him was the appearance of the Headcrab, and he could already see where this was going. "Some entities from the worlds we hail from are unfortunately incompatible with rehabilitation. Some are purpose built to destroy, machines engineered for destruction. Others are flora and fauna that, in simple terms, are too animalistic to be sentient or sapient and thus cannot be reasoned with. While unfortunate, and we are looking into finding ways to help many of these entities, if you encounter one in the field of your new life, it is well within your right to defend yourself through whatever means necessary."

"Not that I need someone's permission to shoot a headcrab." Mike murmured to himself, which Joe agreed with a 'mhmm' of approval.

"While we are on this topic, we also would like to explain how certain elements of our dear new home work. For example, where you might have feared death in your old life, here in the Noosphere we all benefit from a term we borrow from our Player Character Denizens as 'Respawning'. In the Noosphere, wherever you consider to be your home, whether your literal place of residence or just somewhere you feel the most comfortable with staying at, death simply causes you to reappear in that given location in no time at all." That was the part that managed to get Mike at ease more than anything.

So, it was over then. No more worrying about his friends dying. No more about himself dying.

No more fighting against the Combine. No more struggle against an immeasurable enemy. No more worrying about never seeing tomorrow.

He'd won. They had all won. As this knowledge settled in on Mike's mind, he couldn't help but lean back into the ride's seating and allow himself to, for the first time in a long time, let his guard down and fully relax. He was pretty sure this wasn't Heaven or anything, but compared to the alternatives, to Michael Cohen, it was the next best thing imaginable."

"Like a fucking weight off my chest, holy shit." He breathed. He didn't even bother to try and stop the tears starting to flow down his face as he half snickered, half choked up in his seat.

"God.....It's over." Joe breathed next to him, taking off his wool beanie to run a hand through his hair. "....Fuck, I.....Shit man."

"I know." Mike snicker-choked out. "I know." As much as he wanted to just lay there and tune out everything, Mike managed to force himself to refocus on what was being said. They'd won. But the celebrations could wait for another time. Right now, he had to learn how his new home worked.

"-derstand that some individuals will take the opportunity of the lack of permanent consequences to run amok. As such, there are numerous Zones within the Noosphere to accommodate these individuals. If you ever feel the need to blow off steam or otherwise indulge in guilt free havoc, please make your way to the nearest 'War-Zone' region at the earliest convenience and have all of the chaotic, violent fun your heart desire. Please note that attempting to have your violent rampage in non-War-Zones will be considered breaking the law and will be dealt with swiftly to the fullest extent of Noosphere law by any near by enforcement officers. Please also note that, if you notice someone going on a rampage in your area, you and those around you are within your rights as Denizens of the Noosphere to perform self-defense actions against the aggressor."

"Finally, at the end of today's opening seminar, you will be taken in for final registration where you will be logged into the system as a citizen with full rights, education and career opportunities, and the opportunity to begin exploring your new home at your leisure. You will also be provided with some Play Coins, a form of universal currency accepted by all above board vendors, and several other items to start you off, including a copy of the Noosphere Law Book and a self-updating guide to inform you of your current location in the Noosphere. If you have any further questions at the end of your registration, please feel free to ask any employees of the Welcoming Committee department and we will be happy to assist you to the best of our abilities."

With that, the ride seemed to reach its end as it began to approach what appeared to be a disembarkation area.

"We hope you have found this seminar informative and insightful, and if you have any suggestions or ideas for improving the Welcoming Committee experience further, please be sure to let us know in our official survey stations!" As the ride came to a complete stop, the bars holding everyone in place lifted and one by one they began to leave the ride towards an archway reading 'Registration Offices'. "Thank you for your time, and we sincerely hope and wish for you the best with your new life here in the Noosphere!"

"Come on Mike," Joe reached out and shook his shoulder, a genuine smile now on his face as he too understood the full implications of what they had just heard. "Let's get this over with and then, hell, I don't know. What do you wanna do?" Mike looked Joe in the eye after wiping the tears in them, a hard look in them."

"You know what I want, Joe?" Mike began. "I want to find the greasiest, fattiest calorie bomb burger place we can find in walking distance and pig the fuck out."

"Hell yeah, brother!" Joe grabbed ahold of Mike's hand to hoist him up as the pair went into registration.

---

The line wasn't very long, partly due to the sheer number of booths to take some for registration, but there were more than enough people-'denizens' of his former world it seemed-that it still took about 10 minutes for him and Joe to reach a booth each. While he waited, Mike took an opportunity to look around the registration office: Aside from the borderline comically large amount of booths in front of them, to the left hand side of where he stood was an large entry-way with the words 'Welcome Station' overhead. To the right hand side was a similar entry-way, with the words 'Survey Station' embalzoned above.

The walls were of white and grey bricks, the floor a white and black checkerboard pattern polished to a sheen with what seemed to be a non-slippery coating. On the walls were advertisements of establishments he'd never heard of, but which invoked a nostalgia in him of the old world before it all went to hell. He made a note of some of the names to try them out another time, as none that caught his eye immediately evoked the image of the unhealthiest burger place you could dive into.

Overhear was a banner-red and woven of a fine, silky material instead of a hologram-that read 'Welcome to the Noosphere, Established Circa 1996.' 'Circa 1996'? So he supposed that however this place started, nobody was quite sure of the exact date. He'd have to hit up a library or whatever they had here for a history book, as he had to admit his curiosity of his new home was increasingly peaked.

"Next in line, please." Mike blinked as he realized he had made it to the front and quickly stepped up to the booth. On the opposite side of the glass separating them was a strange, squat figure in what looked like wizard clothes and an oversized wizard hat. Their actual appearance was obscured by a heavy shadow-or at least, Mike thought it was a shadow, as for all he knew the being before him was black as pitch-with only their glowing yellow eyes visible. "Name, gender, and former occupation?" The entity spoke in an androgenous voice, with the same intonation of any beleaguered office worker going through the motions for a registry like this. Mike took that as a good sign: It meant there was an actual person behind the desk talking to him.

"Uh, Mike Cohen, male, and I guess 'freedom fighter'." Mike stated. The figure nodded as they started to type into a keyboard, glancing at a screen only they could see from their side. Pressing enter, the figure blinked their glowing yellow eyes as something apparently popped up on screen.

"Michael S. Cohen, correct?" The individual asked. Mike blinked at that.

"That's right, yeah."

"When you go into Welcome Station, please go down the red line path on the ground." The wizard stated. "Now, anything to declare before you go?"

"I mean, I had weapons on me before we all got here but I think I left those behind." Mike explained.

"That happens to all first timers. Please check your pockets sir." Mike raised a brow before patting himself down. "My apologies, I meant your weapon selection dimensional pocket."

"My what?"

"Just picture your weapons in your mind and just do what comes naturally." Mike's already raised brow raised a bit further before shrugging. What the hell, might as well. He focused his mind and almost jumped when in his mind's eye-no, right in front of his face-Images of his weapons appeared before his eye, like some sort of selection screen.

"Wow, that's handy." He said as he chose his SMG and found it suddenly pop into existence in his hand.

"Indeed." The wizard agreed. "Please declare any and all items on your person before proceeding."

"Well, I don't have much, just the SMG, my pistol, this grenade I have left over-" Mike uttered as he quickly ran through his small arsenal of gear. "Oh, I also have this." Reaching into one of his pockets, he took out his lucky charm and placed it in front of the glass separating them.

"Music player?" The wizard asked, clearly already familiar with the concept.

"Yeah, a Zune." Mike said. "It stopped working a long time ago. I kept it around for sentimental reasons." He didn't know why he felt the need to explain himself, but it just sort of felt.....right. The wizard behind the desk just nodded sagely, in complete understanding.

"I see, one moment." Pressing a button on their side, a panel opened up next to Mike and the figure pointed at it. "Please place the music player into the receptacle for refurbishment."

.....'Refurbishment'? No, no, it couldn't be what he thought the wizard was meaning, it was too good to be true even for what he'd seen of this place so far.....Right? Without another word, Mike placed his Zune into the open panel and a moment layer it shut tight. Electronic sounds and lights began to emit from the panel's seams, and a moment later the thing opened up. Daring not to hope, Mike picked it up.....And felt himself smiling like a complete idiot as for the first time in almost two decades, his brother's final gift to him lit up once more.

"Please feel free to test it before you go, sir, your registration is now completed." If Mike didn't know any better, he could have swore he heard a smile in the wizard's voice. He almost hit the play button but stopped himself. If he was going to celebrate this-all of it-he wanted to do it right.

"Come on, where is it." He said as he opened up the musical library, his happiness leaping to new heights as he saw that all of the songs his brother had downloaded were still on there. "Ah, there it is." Pressing the button on his selection, the music began to play from its small, but powerful speakers-did they always have them be that strong?-and Mike took in a deep breath of satisfaction as the song played and began to reach its lyrics. "Hell yes."

"Good taste." The magician nodded in approval. "You will find your law and guide book as well as money added to your inventory once you reach the Station. Thank you for your cooperation."

"No, thank you, you have no idea-" Mike took a breath before nodding. "Thanks." He said again before walking towards the entrance of the station, Joe waiting for him, his old friend bopping his head to the lyrics.

"Now that's just beautiful." Joe declared as he looked at the Zune blaring music in Mike's hands, fellow Rebels around them cheering along with the lyrics.

"Damn right it is." Mike said with a grin. "Oh hey, the booth wizard said for me to go down the red path."

"My guy told me to go down the yellow, but since we're going to the same place anyway, I think I'll stick with you." Joe said before the two of them began their way down the red line on the floor that Mike had been told to walk down.

"Wonder what's down here that made my guy look surprised." Mike said as the pair of them entered what could only be described as the mother of all stations. Mike had never been there, but he was sure the enormous chamber they had just entered would have made Grand Central Station back home look puny.

"Well, I figured it was going to be a surprise of some kind, like maybe you won a sweepstakes or something." Mike laughed.

"Yeah, maybe I won a boat, or a plane, or-"

"HEY SQUIRT!" If Mike's head had moved any faster as he looked to where he'd heard those familiar words, he would have broken his neck form the whiplash. His eyes widened as he saw the all-too familiar military get up he thought he'd never see again charging right at him.

"T-Tommmeeeeeee!" Mike's yelp of surprise was lost as his older brother, looking no older than he did 20 years ago, charged up to him, wrapped his arms around Mike in a bone crushing hug, and lifted him up.

"YOU MISS ME, YOU LITTLE PUNK!?" Tommy shouted through his tear-stained face as Mike found his own tears starting anew.

"TOMMY!" He managed to call out as he wrapped his arms around his brother as best as he could, the two of them twirling in place, laughing and choking sobs like idiots as Joe stepped back to watch the reunion go down unimpeded. A warm smile was on Joe's face as he watched his friend get one more win in their new world.

"I stand corrected: That's just beautiful."

---

TripleMRed Presents:



Source. [Video-Game Multi-Crossover]

Starring:

Michael S. Cohen as the Resistance Elite.

Joe Weathers as the Egghead.

Jerold Riva as the Cultural Rebel.

Skink-Priest Skitz as himself.

And many, many more.​

 

[TripleMRed]

"Oh mah Gah-"

There had been a lot Mike missed from before the Combine invasion and subsequent rule. His family. TV. Eggs. Real earth animal meat. After decades of subsisting off the gunk the Combine passed off as 'food', and then what little the Rebellion could grow or catch, he had come to appreciate the little things.

Which meant that as he bit down on the greasy, dripping mess of a burger in his hands, he took his time to truly enjoy it. Joe sat beside him, similarly, enjoying his own burger as on the other side of the dining room table they were at, Tommy was grinning as he watched the pair of them eat.

"Not exactly my first choice, but hey, this new Burger Shot place is alright if you want something quick and dirty." Tommy chuckled before checking his watch.

"I can't believe we've been missing out on stuff like this all our lives." Joe uttered before taking another measured bite of his meal.

"I looked up what went down while I've been here." Tommy uttered with a sad look and a shake of his head. "That just ain't right."

"Tell me about it." Mike muttered as he got to sucking grease off his fingers. He paused as a thought came into his mind and he looked to his older brother hopefully. "Tommy, wait: If we're here, does.....You don't know if Mom made it too? Like, there's some sort of a chance she made it here with us, right?" The sad look on Tommy's face became downright melancholy as he reached behind his head to scratch at his neck.

"Right, yeah, about that.....Listen, I've actually got some friends coming over to meet us here, so why don't we wait for them to arrive so we can explain some things that tour you went on probably didn't cover." Mike already felt his heart drop in his chest at those words and Tommy's expression, but quietly decided to just focus on his burger for now. He mentally kicked himself for daring to have hope that his mother somehow made it with them, but ultimately it was cushioned by the fact that he at least had Tommy back.

"Frien's?" Mike forced himself to ask through a mouthful.

"Yeah, a couple of the guys I've known for a while now, plus this new lady who arrived the other day, wouldn't you know it." Tommy stated. "I think you'll like 'em! Just ugh, quick question. Joe, right?"

"Yeah?"

"You're not allergic to dog hair, are you?" Tommy asked seriously.

"What, are they bringing their pets with them or something?" Mike asked. Before Tommy could give a reply to that, the doorbell rang as someone walked into the establishment. Snapping his head to look over, Tommy smiled as he waved at who had just entered. Mike finished up his meal just in time to look up and see the oddest set of individuals he'd seen walking together in a long time.

To the left of the approaching group was an older, dark skinned man, hair greying on the sides while the top was still black. He wore a blue shirt and a pair of khakis, complete with a belt and pair of dark brown shoes. To his left was what was almost certainly a military woman: Buzzcut short hair, green P.T. gear, the works. She looked Hispanic, and there was a fire in her eye as she walked each step with confidence. And finally, to the left of her was a dog man. Mike blinked. Straight up, walking on his hind legs in brown boots, purple-pink pants and shirt with an open, light blue vest and a green helmet on his head, casually walking with his hands behind his head like it was a totally normal thing for dog people to exist.

Then Mike blinked. Of course, it would be a totally normal thing. If every game and its characters came to the Noosphere, then that meant a wide range of different species would come along with them. He mentally smacked himself for being stunned.

"Tommy, how's it going man? This the guy?" The dog man asked as his group reached the table and nodded to Joe. For his part, Joe took to the concept of being talked to by a dog person much more smoothly, raising an amused brow as he looked at the man in question.

"Yeah, Tommy, am I the guy?" Joe asked teasingly.

"Knock it off, Rob, we've been over this." Tommy huffed before motioning to Mike. "Everyone, this is my brother, Mike, and his friend Joe. Mike and Joe, meet everyone."

"Greetings." The dark-skinned man of Tommy's group said with a friendly smile and a wave of his hand. "I'm Luther. This is Bella-"

"Yo." The military woman said with a snappy salute.

"And I believe Robert already had his introduction." Robert flashed them two thumbs up, a dopey grin on his muzzle. Tommy scooted over as the three took seats that were open around the table.

"Hey, you guys going to order something?" Before they could get into it, the employee at the counter called out to them.

"Does it matter if we don't, or do they pay you enough to care?" Tommy was quick on the draw. The employee, bored expression etched on his face, just shrugged and let them be. "Thought not. Okay, so, everyone, feel free to get to know one another!" And with that, an awkward silence fell over everyone as the two sides stared blankly, trying to see who would be the first to break the silence.

"....Okay, so, rebellion, huh?" Robert eventually blurted out. "Heh, in our game, the rebels were the bad guy. I take it it's different for you two?"

"Huh, oh, uh, yeah." Mike uttered. "We're the good guys. Definitely the good guys."

"Your brother and I kept tabs on our old home as your game was nearing release." Luther shook his head in disgust. "To think our mistakes could cause such calamity." Mike and Joe both blinked.

"Hold on, 'our' mistakes? Are you from Black Mesa?" Joe asked. Luther just gave them a tired smile as he nodded.

"Then you know Eli, and Kleiner, and Magnusson?" Luther actually seemed to perk up at the mention of Eli and Kleiner, before notably becoming stone faced.

"Ah....So, Arne made it out then? That's.....Good to hear." Luther managed to say in an almost convincing manner. Almost. "But yes, I know them. How are Eli and Kleiner? Oh, don't tell me actually, I'll look them up later to catch up, I'm sure they'll love to see how many of the old team was able to esca[e."

"Freaking aliens, man." Bella huffed. "What's with them and wanting to kills us all? No offense."

"Some taken." Rob shrugged.

"They're definitely not all bad." Joe nodded. "We wouldn't have gotten as far as we did without the support of the Vorts."

"I can believe they came to our side." Tommy shrugged. "After Luther and me, our game that is, came out, turns out they weren't so bad once they were free of their enslavement."

"We have to introduce you to Jermain; he is quite the talented drink mixer." Luther said with no small amount of pride. "I knew minoring in mixology would have its side-benefits." As Mike listened to Luther and Joe talk it out, he looked between those in Tommy's group with an analytical eye. Rob was a good guy, going by his comment before. He guessed that Bella, some kind of soldier, was probably a good guy too, as she didn't seem to have an air of being the 'bad guy' in whatever game she came from, especially with her alien remark. Probably something where humanity was being invaded. Luther was a scientist from Black Mesa, so by dint of knowing Eli and Kleiner on good terms, he was a good guy too. He didn't even bother to categorize Tommy, he knew his brother couldn't be a bad guy, right?

"-nd that's how Vortigaunt electrical discharges can be used to help make the perfect Mint Julip." Luther chuckled as he finished his story.

"Wow, I've got to see that for myself." Joe chuckled. He looked at Tommy before talking again. "Oh hey, you mentioned that there were some things you guys wanted to say that weren't covered by that introduction thing?"

"Yeah, what's that about?"

"Okay, so newbies-" Rob placed his hands on the table as he glanced back and forth between the two friends. "Some things you gotta know. First off, I'm not sure if you noticed while you were in processing, but you'll notice a lot of familiar faces. Maybe even see some dopplegangers. That's normal for NPCs like us, so don't be freaked out if you go to the store and see your face manning the counter or whatever. That's just a guy who shares your model, so nothing to get freaked out over."

"That might need some getting used to." Mike coughed into his hand, already seeing the mental image of running into more of himself popping into his head.

"Second thing you need to know is that there's certain limits to who and what gets brought into the Noosphere, at least when a new game releases." Bella leaned back in her seat as she explained. "I had a lot of friends and family back home, but they didn't have a model, or in-game art or whatever to be bring them in here. Basically, no model or art or whatever, no being brought in." Bella snorted. "Though, lots of NPCs like us tend to come from all walks of life despite sharing faces." Mike nodded along, his heart low. So, that was it then. Most of his world was left behind, and even if his mom was still alive out there, she wouldn't be brought with them anyway due to lacking a model.

"Thanks, good to know that now before getting my hopes up too high." Mike sighed. Tommy reached out to grab him by the shoulder and give him a firm, but affectionate shake.

"Got to take what we can get, Mike, and enjoy our new lives going forward."

"Right. Yeah." Mike gave a halfhearted fist pump at the prospect.

"Now now, I know it's a lot to take in, but it's important to embrace the second chance at living we all are given when coming to this place." Luther declared with a warm smile. "Surely there's things you've always wanted to do without the, what was it, the 'Combine' looming overhead?" Mike and Joe both blinked before looking at one another.

"I kinda always wanted to learn medicine." Joe stated. "Be a doctor and actually help people."

"I'm sure I can help you along with that." Luther uttered.

"Whoa, you serious doc?" Joe asked.

"Absolutely, health care is always in demand even with the respawn system in place, and we could always use another doctor who genuinely wants to help." Luther was earnest in his tone, which Joe smiled in appreciation at.

"What about you, little brother, any big plans now that you can do anything?" Mike blinked as all eyes fell on him. To be honest, he didn't know what he wanted to do, as some part of him always assumed he'd be long dead before they succeeded in freeing Earth. Plans for the future tend to be nonexistent when one believes they have no future.

Still, that was then. Now? With the opportunities in front of him?

"I guess.....I want to figure that out for myself." Mike admitted. "Do some exploring. Maybe that soul-searching mumbo jumbo." He snapped his fingers. "Oh, and finish school. I definitely know I want a high school diploma to my name."

"We can work with that." Tommy stated with a chuckle.

"I think the floor in my building has an vacant room." Bella stated as she rubber her chin in thought. "I can hook you up with a place to stay, at least."

"What's the, uh, what's the rent situation going to be like?" Mike asked as he focused inward and looked at the 'status' screen that popped up in front of himself, eyes focusing on the Playcoins on his person. "I'm not exactly drowning in cash right now."

"We can work something out with the guys living there, don't worry about it." Bella waved it off with a hand. "I've like, only been here a month and they were able to set up something alright for me with no problems."

"And hey, if you don't mind staying on the couch, my place is always open." Tommy said with a teasing grin.

"Really feeling the brotherly love, Thommas." Mike stated with a lidded expression. "Okay, so, anything else we should know?"

"Oh, right, can't forget." Tommy said with a finger snap as he just realized what else he should say. Leaning forwards, he looked Mike in the eye with an uncharacteristic expression on his face. "Okay, so this one isn't really relevant for NPC's like us, since just about all of us with our models make it out no problem.....But, for some reason nobody knows for sure, if someone dies in their game in a scripted sequence, they stay dead." Mike blinked.

"Hold on, didn't the ride say we get 'updated' every new game?"

"That is correct, but it stands as is: If a character in a game is dead by the end of it, and they don't come back or there's no ghost or whatever, they stay dead. If that character survived one game, but dies in another, they get updated with the memories, but there's no splinter duplicate or whatever." Tommy stated slowly. "This is very important to remember, because some people around here lost those who were very close to them that way, and unless there's a spin-off, prequel, or whatever that allows that character to be brought in in another game, they're not coming back. Some people are.....senstitive about it. So be careful about bringing that up if it ever somehow does."

"Alright, seems simple enough."

"I'm serious, Mike, not everyone takes to the Noosphere that well, and that bit makes some of them even less stable." Tommy explained with a genuinely serious tone.

"Listen to him, kid." Rob grimly nodded. "We can't really die, not for real anyway, but that just means some people start getting creative when they want to hurt others."

"That directly leads us to this: Remember that bit it said about going into dedicated War Zones to blow off steam and all that junk?" Mike and Joe nodded. "Well, people with anger issues aren't the only ones who hang out there. Some really messed up folks won't hesitate to snatch someone new up that goes there and practice what the boys back home liked to call 'enhanced interrogation techniques' on them for fun." Mike wasn't sure where the sudden lump in his throat came from, but he definitely felt it as he swallowed.

"....We'll keep that in mind." Mike stated, imagination conjuring up all kinds of twisted scenarios. If there had been any doubt in his mind that this wasn't Heaven, they were soundly laid to rest with that. Tommy kept staring into his brother's eyes with a serious expression for a moment longer before nodding and sitting back in a normal position.

"Good." Tommy sighed as he rubbed the back of his neck. "Good.....Anyway, now that you've had lunch, how's about we all head over to my house? I hear there's going to be a game on, and I think our newest additions could do with a sports party in their lives!" Tommy's mood had done a complete 180 and he was now back to his mischievous self. Mike quickly decided he infinitely preferred 'fun' Tommy to 'serious' Tommy.

"Hell, I'm down." Joe said with a genuine smile. "What game is it?"

"Does it matter as long as we drown ourselves in chips and soda?" Bella asked genuinely. Mike gave it a moment's thought before shaking his head.

"No, no it does not."

 

[TripleMRed]

Mike didn't know much about sports, but the 'game' that night had been quite the experience to watch on the TV. Between himself and Joe, the pair of former Rebels found themselves constantly asking questions about it. Apparently, the release of the first 'Mario Party' saw their 'Party' game format get turned into a competitive sports game where four teams switched members between various 'games' to win and rack up points before reaching the end of the match, with the team that won the most games winning the whole thing.

"I didn't know you could make a sport out of molding people's faces to match a picture or popping water balloons." Joe had stated, leaning forward as he found himself the more engrossed of the two friends.

"Wait until you see the Bowl Over matches." Grinned Rob as he checked some sort of communication's device with a touch screen. Multiple alien languages crawled up and down the moving screen, with the occasional Earth language that Mike could recognize popping up on occasion. "Bets on those are always a ride."

"You had better not be betting anything of mine again." Luther sharply remarked as he froze while reaching for the chips on the coffee table before them.

"I told you it was a mistake!" Rob stated, hands up in a defensive manner.

"Forgetting to turn the AC down is a mistake. betting, and losing, the toaster your friend let you borrow is a bit more than that." Luther dryly declared. For their part, Bella and Tommy were both trying their hardest not to laugh, while Joe and Mike could only look to one another with bemused looks.

"Is this like the casserole thing with Magnusson?" Mike softly asked his friend. Joe just shrugged as the dog man tried to reason with the annoyed scientist over a misuse of borrowed items.

"You got me, man, I just got here." At that, the two friends shared a dopey smile before returning to their observation of the game in progress. Currently, the contestants-a pair of cutesy short animal people, a mushroom man, and what looked like a soldier ripped straight out of World War 2, were passing around a live bomb with eyes and feet, its fuse ticking down and its black colored body pulsating red. Mike's eyes widened as he could only imagine the gruesome mess the explosion would result in, only to have his answer when one of the animal people wound up the one to hold it. The resulting explosion obscured the lion for a moment, and when it cleared up he was on his ass, shaking his head and covered in soot.

"Bud Loses!" The announcer cheerfully declared as the other contestants did their own respective poses to celebrate victory.

Right. Video games. They were all from video games, himself included. That would take some getting used to, to be honest. As the creeping feeling of the existential implications began to lurk out of the back of his mind, Mike shook his head and opted to instead ignore it. Just ignore it and it'll go away, right? Right. Mike quickly sipped the Nuka-Cola in his hand and pushed the creeping thoughts out of his mind again. The appreciation for the carbonated, sugary beverage quickly supplemented everything else.

"I missed soda." Mike finally spoke up. "After a while back home, the only soda you'd find had gone flat years ago. This? This is freaking fantastic!"

"I hear ya, man." Bella declared with a nod. "During the war, we'd sometimes get cut off from resupply for months on end. There was this one time where we had to scavenge for supplies to save up on our rations on this one colony that had been abandoned. The only thing they had still preserved was all the cans of pet food they'd left behind!"

"Anyone makes a crack about those things and me gets a fist to the jaw." Rob declared matter-o-factually.

"Ah yes, the 'dog food survival diet'." Joe chuckled while Mike's face just twisted in a grimace. "We're very familiar."

"Unfortunately." The younger Cohen huffed.

"Say, since you fellas just got here, you givin' any thought on where you're going to be looking for a place to stay?" Bella pointed out as she sipped her own drink. Mike looked to her with a look of curiosity as she brought that up now. "I wasn't joking before at the restaurant: if you guys want, I can set you up at the place I'm staying at, if you don't mind a lot of roommates." On the one hand, sleeping in cramped, overcrowded conditions was something Mike would rather not go back to. A room of his own would be a blessing he'd actually say a prayer of thanks for, if anyone was really listening up there. That being said, he did admit that he would feel safer with numbers.

"I mean, I'm down for it." Joe declared. "I don't suppose you also know where we can get jobs to make these, what did they call 'em, Play Coins? Going to need to make some money if we're living here from now on, right?"

"I told you guys back there and I meant it, we can worry about finding you guys jobs later." Bella said with a wave of her hand. "Trust me, the folks in the apartment I'm in are a real welcoming and understanding bunch. You can unwind and get used to your new home for a little while before we can start thinking of what your share of the rent will look like." The Latina soldier grinned. "Besides, don't you boys want to spend some time getting to see the sights yourself before you have to worry about all that?"

"You mean just....explore the city?" Joe asked slowly.

"My friend, the Noosphere is quite the place!" Luther nodded sagely. "Our humble Network Central is but one of many wonderful places you can go to! Why, you should see the Noosphere's recreation of Xen, it's truly a breath taking sight to behold."

"I like to spend my vacation days on this one beach on this big ring world." Rob declared cheerfully. "Best damn beach outside of Zoness that I know of." Mike looked to his brother, who was happily staying quiet as he observed his brother with a proud look on his face.

"What do you think, Tommy?" Mike asked.

"I think," The older Cohen began, "That my little brother and his friend should sleep on it here at my place. Got a guest room me and Luther have been prepping just for this day to come." Mike blinked before he relaxed with a soft smile. Tommy smiled back with a joyful grin. "What do you say, Squirt?"

"We get our own beds?" Mike asked.

"It's got a couple of bunk beds, so you've got four to choose from!" Flashes of distant memories of days in his childhood room with his friends staying in his bunk bed on weekend nights filled Mike's mind, causing his smile to grow a bit more.

"Good enough for me."

"Oh shit, hot rope jump!" Rob practically squealed as a new minigame started on the TV. "I love this one!" Mike turned to look at the TV to find four contestants playing a game of jump rope.....while the rope was on fire.

"I think I have a new favorite sport." Joe declared with a twinkle in his eye.

---

As night came and the party ended, Rob and Bella both left to make their way home. Luther, turning out to be a housemate of Tommy's, stayed behind to help with the post-watch-party cleanup. For their parts, Joe and Mike found themselves showered and changed into the freshest set of clothes they'd been in in decades. The fact said clothes were comfy pajamas with night caps did nothing to even touch their dignity as the pair made their ways to their own respective bottom bunks.

"Man, this still feels like a dream." Joe murmured loud enough for Mike to hear.

"Don't even joke about that, man." Mike said with a frown. "If this is a dream, then you're dead for real. And I am not burying my best friend."

"Aww, you really do care." Joe teased. "But for real man, it's so......"

"Nah, I get'cha." Mike nodded as he stared up at his top bunk. It had been so long since he'd been so comfortable, that in a strange way, it felt uncomfortable. Still, if this was the new normal, he wasn't going to complain. It would just take some getting used to was all. "Before today, I was sure we were all going to die. Die fighting, but still. This? A second chance? It might not exactly be what we were fighting for back ho......back there. But don't take this the wrong way, but I think this might be better."

"S'fucked to say it, but I don't ever want to go back to our Earth." Joe sighed as he rested his hands behind his head. "Good food, good people, good everything? Shit man, I wish I was in whatever first game Tommy was in so I'd have gotten here sooner!" At that, Mike had to chuckle.

".....So. You thinking of taking up Luther on that offer of his? To get started on learning medicine and stuff?"

"If the price for that was a foot, you could saw mine off, stick a metal bar on the stump, and call me Eli Vance." Mike felt horrible for laughing at that, but he couldn't help due to how matter-o-fact Joe sounded. "What about you, dude? You going to get that education you want?"

"Yes." Mike was as blunt as a stun baton strike. "I'm going to get that degree, I'm going to learn everything I wanted to learn, and then.....I'm still not sure after that, but I'll figure something out."

"Cool, cool." Joe nodded. "What about Bella's offer?"

"What, join up with her apartment?"

"Yeah. I think I'm going to take it." Mike looked to Joe to find his friend already looking at him. "Call me crazy, but I kind already miss being part of a place with a bunch of people. Don't get me wrong, this house is.....It's fucking awesome. But I kinda miss the sense of community like back before, you know?"

"I know." Mike nodded. "A part of me wants to stay here with my brother.....But I can always just stop by and visit now, hang out for a few days at a time, that sort of thing. Being part of something is....It would be nice to still have that."

"So I guess it's settled then."

"Hold on a second, now." Mike waved his hand towards his friend. "Let's just go over and check the place out, see what it's like first. I mean, see for ourselves how much of a community feel her place actually has, you know?"

"Heh, always the cautious one." Joe shrugged. "Alright then, how's about tomorrow we pop over and give it a look."

"Yeah." Mike uttered as he settled back into bed, looking up at the top bunk again. "Tomorrow." It was a strange feeling, knowing with certainty that they would both actually wake up alive and well the next day.

It was a feeling Mike welcomed with open arms.

 

[TripleMRed]

Mornings came with certain expectations for Mike. Certain 'things' one could expect, and would dread, dealing with. A Combine raid, an animal attack from a feral Houndeye or Bullsquid or, heaven forbid, Headcrab. Even in the relative safety of the Resistance, there was always a mission or patrol for Elites like Joe and himself.

So it was absolutely refreshing to wake up, not to the sounds of new orders or an attack within the uncomfortable hold of a long broken bed and instead found himself in the warm, comfortable embrace of an intact bed, in a full set of pajamas, and with his best friend on the other side of the room, alive and well, yawning and stretching as he worked to get the last of the sleep out of his body. Neither of the two said anything, instead just sharing a toothy grin each as the smell of something cooking met their noses.

Getting dressed in fresh clothes-Joe in khakis, an open jacket and what seemed to be an old band T-shirt for a Noosphere band simply called 'The Slayers', while Make opted for cargo shorts and what he recognized as matching his brothers taste gaudy vacation shirts-the pair made their way downstairs into the kitchen area to find Tommy hard at work cooking breakfast while Luther nursed a steaming hot coffee mug and a local newspaper in his hands at the table.

"Good morning, gentlemen. Please, pick a seat." Luther offered.

"Hope you missed ma's eggs, squirt, because I made sure to remember her recipe before I left home!" The mention of their mother caused an ache in Mike's chest, but it was a sense of loss he was long familiar with by now that he was able to push past as he took a seat, Joe sitting next to him after taking the coffee pot and pouring himself a mug.

"I can't tell you how much I've missed those things." Mike sighed wistfully as his eyes traveled the room and settled on something on the wall opposite of the breakfast table. There, clashing with the otherwise mundane 21st century kitchen was a rather advanced looking wide-screen television of some kind, a model and make Mike could only assume to be from a futuristic worl-game. A futuristic game.

It seemed to be set to a news channel, the morning routine just starting as a pair of news anchors took the screen. A seemingly normal looking olive skinned man in rather mundane business wear one could expect from a normal news anchor sat beside a well dressed anchor woman who seemed to be some sort of feline woman with pale-blue skin and large, green colored eyes.

"Welcome back to another fine morning in Nexus City. We here at Nexus City News are happy to announce the arrival of yesterday's newest additions to the Noosphere, the Denizens of Half-Life 2!" The human male declared with an award winning smile and a disarmingly friendly demeanor.

"That's right, Jerry, our Noosphere family continues to grow as the November season brings a lot of new entries to the table as per usual. To our newest residents, we are happy to see you and wish you the best in your new lives and your new homes. And now, Sammy with the weather." The feline woman nodded as the camera cut to the next news anchor, a four armed humanoid with blue skin, yellow lips, and fiery red eyes. He wore a suit like Jerry, but the sleeves-all four of them-had been ripped off to reveal massive, well muscled arms.

"Thanks, Mei. Today we can expect clear skies here in Nexus City, though our Network Central neighbors in Northtown and the connection point to Liberty City can expect to see light showers in the late afternoon." As Sammy smoke, a collar like device activated, seemingly translating whatever language he spoke into understandable English. It reminded him of a similar device that odd, yellow mouse thing Mike had first seen just before arriving to the Noosphere proper was using. Rather than pointing normally, Sammy flexed and posed with each motion towards what needed gesturing to on the weather board behind him. "The current estimates for cross-dimensional alien or hellspawn invasions is at a measly .5 percent today according to our friends at the Black Mesa Memorial Foundation Institute."

"Whatspawn invasion?" Joe asked with a blink as he finished preparing another mug of coffee and handing it over for Mike to try. Mike took the mug, but he just looked surprised at the blunt knowledge the news just dropped like it was a normal occurrence. Which, giving it a second of though, it probably was around here.

"Don't worry, we've got the best handling stuff like that." Tommy stated as he paused to point at Joe's T-shirt. Joe looked down at his shirt with bewilderment.

"I thought this was a band Tee!"

"It is!" Mike leaned in to look at the shirt: Underneath the name of the band were the images of a white haired man playing a guitar, his red coat open and frozen as a frame of it flowing in the wind; A green armored man with exposed biceps and abs hammering away at the drums; a white haired nobleman looking pretty boy in black and gold victorian style clothing on the vocals; a ninja with exposed arms on the bass; and a man in the back covered in a red cloak using magic to perform pyrotechnics.

"Best demon-slayers/heavy rock band in the industry." Luther nodded sagely. "I should take you boys to one of their concerts some time."

"We'd, uh, appreciate it." Mike stated with wide eyes as he finally took a sip from his coffee.

Mike had never been a coffee sort of person, partly because none of the varieties the Rebellion could scrounge up did anything for him and partly because he wasn't a fan of the bitter taste. But even he had to admit, the instant coffee his brother and Luther made was pretty tasty once one added sugar and creamer. Even without it, the baseline taste was smoother and creamier than any he had tried before.

"What kind did you say this was?" Joe, the older and more experienced of the two friends politely asked. As Tommy cooked some eggs and bacon while humming to himself, Luther lowered the news paper he was reading to answer.

"Columbian, I believe."

"Nah. My guy says it's some new kind they bred in that Azethoth place."

"You mean Azeroth." Luther corrected.

"Yeah, that one." Tommy nodded.

"New coffee breeds from new worlds, huh?" Mike asked. "Any from any we know?"

"I know the Vorts tried to make something on Zen, but that didn't turn out too well. Apparently, the Coffyceps outbreak makes it illegal to try cross breeding with anything from Xen for making new crops." The veteran explained.

".....Coffyceps?" Mike dared to ask.

"You don't wanna know." Tommy said with a shudder. "So boys, I took the liberty and talked to Bella and she said she'll be coming around to take you guys on a tour of her place in about thirty minutes." The older Cohen stated. "I'd tell you what you can expect at her apartment, but where's the fun in spoiling the surprise!"

"Really feeling the love here, Tommy." Mike said with lidded eyes as he stared at his brother. "Luther, mind helping us out? What's waiting for us at her place?"

"Sorry boys, she's more Thommas' friend than mine to be completely honest." Luther said with a genuine shrug. "Though, knowing what the apartments on her side of town are like, you can expect quite the menagerie from all walks of life."

"Any Vorts? We can always count on the Vorts to be friendly." Joe asked. That earned a laugh from both Luther and Thommas that caused Mike to raise an eyebrow.

"Maybe now, but you should have seen them during Black Mesa." Tommy said with a shake of his head, a grin on his lips. "Let me tell you boys, fighting more than one at a time is a nightmare in the makin'. Literally, I still get nightmares from fighting three of them at once!" Mike wasn't sure if Tommy was actually being serious about that or not, but decided he could live without knowing for sure.

"Quite the wonderful people they are, after they were freed from their enslavement." Luther added. "I would like to have you meet some of my work colleagues, Joe, given your interest in the scientific fields. See if becoming a doctor is really what you want to do if none of the other fields catch your eye."

"Appreciate the gesture, doc." Joe nodded. He elbowed Mike in the arm with a grin on his face. "Hear that, Mike? I'm already meeting people, moving up in the world!"

"Yeah, because being a gun toting rebel squad leader is exactly the kind of experience they need in the scientific field." Mike calmly replied as he sipped his drink, using the mug to hid his own smirk.

"Oh please, everyone knows the best scientists are packing enough artillery to blow up a city block." Joe smoothly returned. "Just look at Dr. Freeman!"

"Ah, Gordon Freeman." Luther chuckled. "Now there's a lad with a good head on his shoulders."

"Shame none of the boys were able to blast it off!" Tommy declared as he finished his cooking and brought over a plate weighed down with enough scrambled eggs and bacon to be shared by everyone at the table and still have enough for seconds. Even as he said that, however, Mike noticed the twinkle in his brothers eye and the smile on his face, the hallmarks of Tommy not actually meaning what he said.

"You're just being a sore loser." Luther sniffed as he reached over to begin filling his own plate's worth of food.

"What do you mean by that, Tommy?" Mike asked as Joe took his turn to fill his plate. "Weren't you guys sent to help out Black Mesa?" He only knew the most basic of details about the whole ordeal, as unlike Joe, Mike's interest in the event began and ended at 'And then the fabric of reality became wet tissue paper and that's how the Combine came knocking.' Joe and Luther both shared a look. "What?"

"Yeeeeah, about that." Tommy said, suddenly sheepish as he rubbed the back of his head. "It was kinda sorta.....a clean up op."

......Oh.

"But, it all worked out in the end!" Luther declared, interjecting to try and disarm the suddenly awkward situation. "The game ended, we wound up in the Noosphere, bygones were bygones and now we're all one big happy family!"

"Yeah." Tommy said, getting his mood back as he nodded excitedly. "Plus, the Black Ops tried to kill us all and nuked the place, so really they're the ultimate bad guys here." He added but it sounded weak even to him. Mike just slowly nodded as he wondered how he should look at his brother. He looked Tommy up and down. It was still Tommy, big, friendly, goofy Tommy. And he was housemates with Luther, the two of them clearly good friends, so the bygones thing was obviously true.

But there was something that nagged at him that even this obvious information couldn't assuage, and he felt the image he had of his brother in his head.....well, it wasn't tarnished. But it wasn't on the same pedestal as it had once been, as it hit Mike like a truck that his brother was as human-as fallible-as anyone else.

"You good, man?" Joe asked, a look of concern on his face.

"Huh? Oh, no, yeah, I'm good." Mike said with a half shrug as he piled on his plate. "Just a bit of a whiplash is all." Tommy's shouldered untensed as he clearly seemed relieved that his younger brother wasn't taking it as hard as initially feared when he had asked if they had been sent to help out their then-targets.

For his part, Mike just pushed those feelings deep down alongside the rest of his existential feelings and instead turned his attention to his breakfast. As Mike bit into the eggs, he had to hold back a sniff and rub his eyes as they began to water.

"Ah shit, Mikey-"

"Damn, Tommy, you were right." Mike mumbled as he held up a fork full of scrambled egg. "You really did memorize her recipe." Tommy sat a little straighter, an unabashed look of pride taking his face at that high praise.

"To ma'." He said raising his coffee mug towards his younger brother.

"Yeah." Mike nodded as he raised his own to meet his brother's mug. "To ma'."

 

[TripleMRed]

There wasn't much to say about the time between the end of breakfast and Bella came around to pick them up. Mike and Joe spent the free time waiting by keeping an eye on the news on the TV, finding it a pleasant comfort that it was so....oddly ordinary. The weather, a segment on sports, and even an interview with some of the new arrivals from their game.

"Hey, is that Jeremy?" Joe asked, pointing at a Resistance member still in the uniform of the rebellion.

"Huh, I think it is." Mike noted before glancing at the news paper that Luther had left on the table after breakfast to go get ready for work. While the news was having its interview segments, the news paper mentioned something about a 'cross-dimensional alien invasion' being foiled as if it was just something this world dealt with like a common weather occurrence.

Which it probably was, in an odd sort of way. The news had mentioned earlier about the chances of a demon invasion, so such events of all breeds had likely become a calculated affair that they could monitor and keep track of like any other natural phenomena back in the old world.

"Ah shit." Mike groaned as realization hit him. "I guess this means Antlions are going to be a problem here too."

"Huh?" Joe looked to his friend before he realized what he was saying.

"Shit, you're right. Well, as long as they don't come crawling into the city, they can go do whatever big bug things they do wherever they end up." Joe shrugged. "New lease on life for everyone I guess." Mike couldn't help but frown at that.

"Yeah....About that. I got some thinking done about that and like, I get it. Hell, I'm for it. But.....Joe, buddy, you have to admit, it's going to be really Goddamn weird to go pick up milk at the store and see an Overwatch soldier manning the counter or some shit like that." Joe actually broke out in a belly laugh at the mental image, leaning over in his seat and smacking his leg.

"O-OHOHOHO! AHA, Oh man, I would pay actual money to see that!" He wheezed out. "Shit, they can be running the car wash in a week and I'll be happier than Magnusson on casserole day!" Mike couldn't help but chuckle at that himself, even as he rubbed the back of his neck.

"Yeah, I hear ya.....But I meant like, it's going to be kinda......hard, to get over them rubbing shoulders with us now. We lost some good buddies to the Combine over the years." With that, Joe's mood took on a more somber aura, yet a thoughtful look didn't leave his face.

"I get what you mean man, but I've been giving it some thought, and honestly? I say they should get a second chance too." Mike blinked as he looked at Joe like he had grown a Barnacle for a head. "Just hear me out for a sec, okay?"

"Alright, let's have it then: Why do you think we should just live and let live with Combie goons?"

"Well, think about it man." Joe stated, repositioning in his seat to be facing Mike face to face. "We're from a video game, right? All of us are video-game characters, programmed in some computer for people to play, right?"

"I'm following you, yeah."

"Well, doesn't that mean everything about our old world was the result of someone sitting down and making it be that way?" Mike paused as he leaned back, letting Joe continue and allowing his words to sink in.

"....Yeah. That is true."

"Well, that means whose a good guy and whose a bad guy where we come from is like, predetermination shit. No real choice. We lived our lives and chose to be in the Rebellion and fight the Combine, and those guys lived their lives and chose to go through the Overwatch augs for the better living conditions they promise......but was it really our choices to be this way? Is it really a thing about us being 'good' guys and them being 'bad' guys, or is it just when the programmers were making our game, we won the cosmic lottery and they lost it not by our choices, but because the game needed good guys and bad guys for the players to interact with and that's just how the coin landed for each of us?" Joe finished his explanation with his hands on his knees as he looked to Mike with that same thoughtful look in his features.

For his part, Mike found himself with his arms crossed and his leg shaking as he gave it a long, genuine thought. As much as he hated to admit it, Joe's philosophical proselytizing on their natures as game characters made a lot of sense to him.

"......Goddamn, maybe you should become a scholar instead of a doctor, man." Joe chuckled.

"I mean, hey, nobody said I can't get a minor degree when I start working on that medical major." Joe's grin was infectious as it got Mike's icy shell to completely melt and he found himself smiling right back.

"You'd make for a good philosopher or some shit." He said with a shake of his head. "So....Yeah....I guess when you put it like that, I can see why yo-we....should give them a second chance." Joe nodded.

"I imagine breaking from what is familiar is going to be hard for some people, so we'll need to be patient and understanding, lend a helping hand for the ones who take the opportunity for their second chance at a life for themselves." Joe added sagely.

"That's fair." Mike admitted. "I guess we can try.....What about the ones who aren't willing to change?"

"Oh, then fuck 'em." Joe declared as if he were making note of the weather. "They want to bring their shit with them, then we show them we aren't going to stand there and let them ruin it for the rest of us."

"Amen to that!" Mike declared with excited glee. Joe let out a bark of laughter.

"Careful man, it almost sounds like you want them to stay horrible people just so you can have an excuse to mess them up." Michael didn't respond to that.

---

As the time drew closer for Bella to pick them up for a tour of their potential new home, Mike and Joe found themselves standing outside of Tommy's house, waiting for their ride by the curb. As they waited, Joe killed time by reading through the news paper Luther had left behind when he and Tommy left for work, while Mike spent his minutes waiting by just exploring the neighborhood with his eyes.

On its own, there wasn't much to really say about the place: It was a typical quiet suburban neighborhood within city limits. Maybe a bit classier and cleaner than such places had been in the old world pre-invasion, but overall a nice place to live either way.

For Mike, however, it was prettier than it actually was. The suburban homes lined up in rows, the picket fences, the friendly neighbors greeting one another on the way to and from work. It gave him a sense of nostalgia for his own childhood home, and it was that thought that made him certain that Tommy felt the same way.

"I've missed this." Mike blurted out, catching Joe's attention. His friend looked up from his newspaper to look around at where Mike was staring at and gave a nod.

"Yeah, it's nice around here. Quiet, safe. Like the good old days."

"You can say 'our childhoods', that's about where the good days began and ended back home." Mike declared with a dark chuckle.

"Yeah yeah, you know what I meant." Joe rolled his eyes. "But as nice as this is, I still feel something missing. Hustle and bustle of living with a bunch of other people."

"Yeah." Was all Mike could say. Before either could continue, a massive hulk of a car came down the road before stopping right in front of them. Seated in the driver's seat of the behemoth of a vehicle was Bella, smiling at them.

"Alright, boys, you ready to meet your future roomies?"

"Potential future roomies." Mike felt the need to say. "But yeah, we're ready." He took a moment to look over and appreciate the monster car before him: Black undercarriage and wheels bigger than his torso, Mike couldn't help but like the flashy gold-yellow paint scheme on the chassis and the upholstered leather seats. "Nice car." He stated dumbly, unable to really find a better way to phrase his appreciation for the mean machine.

"Thanks, these babies were all the rage back home with the civvies." Bella stated as she patted the steering wheel affectionately. "I can't tell you how happy I was that these things made it this side with us. Anyway, who wants shotgun and who wants to ride in the back?" Mike and Joe shared a look with one another before turning to look at the car again. Sure enough, aside from the passenger seat, there was a massive open back plan for the rear of the vehicle, with what seemed to be a seat that had been added on through post-purchase modifications.

"Dibs on the back seat." Mike declared without another moment of hesitation, hopping up to the back and eagerly taking the back seat while he gripped to the structure of the chassis, an gleaming look in his eye.

"Like a kid in a candy store." Joe chuckled as he hefted himself into the passenger seat.

"Alright, let's get going." Bella stated as the vehicle began to move. "Just so you boys know, if we want to get there in a reasonable amount of time, we're going to have to take the expressway to avoid the morning traffic."

"What's wrong with the expressway?" Joe asked.

"Nothing wrong with it as long as you don't mind going stupid fast." Joe nodded before pondering a moment.

"How fast?"

---

"OH MY GOD!" Joe yelled as the trio barreled down the expressway at speeds that in any world with actual consequences would be illegal three times over. The worst part, however, wasn't how fast their mini-tank of a jeep was going, nor was it the fact that fact that every other car was being driven by a speed freak.

No, the worst part for Joe-

"FUCK YES!"

Was the fact that as it turned out, Mike was a speed-freak at heart.

"FASTER, CHICA, FASTER!"

"No!" Joe tried to counter. "Not faster, not faster!"

"Sorry, amigo!" Bella laughed as she hit the throttle. "This is the law of these lands!"

"WOOOOOOO!!!"

 

[TripleMRed]

For the inhabitants of Nexus City, a drive through the maddeningly quick expressway would be the highlight of the average day, followed by the mundanity of the rest of the city they had grown accustomed to. For Mike, however, the Expressway was just the start of a day of wonders. A tooth filled grin plastered on his face, Mike's head whipped to and fro as he took in the sights.

Vehicles ranging from the most mundane Pre-Combine cars to some of the sleekest hover vehicles he'd ever seen road side by side alongside ramshackle hulks with no business working as good as they did. Buildings, tall and sleek and ranging in styles from corporate skyscrapers to columns of glass were covered in floating holographic advertisements for a thousand businesses from a hundred worlds. The thing that caught his eye, however, was the wild life.

As Bella took the turn to exit off of the expressway, slowing down into the less active lanes of the normal streets, Mike could see animals that had long gone extinct back home. He didn't bat so much as one eye at the more alien wild-life like the quad wing reptilian creatures or pterodactyls that flew high overhead, becoming engrossed in simply watching a squirrel of all things munching away on a nut in the closest tree as Bella came to a stop sign. Joe wasn't far behind his friend, enraptured at the sight of a humble bluejay. As the traffic before them rushed by while they waited for the light to turn green, the female marine took note of her companion's distractions.

"What's up boys, they don't have woodland animals back where you come from?" She teased.

"By the time we left, not really." Joe shrugged.

"Before the Combine came, there were these Portal Storms. Dropped all kinds of alien animals all over the world." Mike elaborated. "Wrecked the whole ecosystem in no time. Birds were about the only things to make it out okay, everything else was varying levels of gone."

"Yeesh, I can't imagine life without horses." Bella shook her head with a down turned look on her face. "Raised on a farm back where I'm from, or at least that's what I remember."

"You know what I miss?" Joe looked to her. "Shrimp. Calamari and crabs and salmon. Most of the seafood I had as a kid was gone thanks to the damn Leeches."

"Tell you what, once you get settled in, I'll show you boys this nice place not far from where I live." Bella said as the light turned green and they began to move again. "Best seafood this side of the city!"

"I'll hold you to that." Joe chuckled. "I don't suppose you can also help me and Mike find some jobs after we get 'settled in'? We want to get our diplomas and all that, but I think I speak for the both of us when I say we'd feel bad not pulling our weight with the rent."

"How many times do I have to tell you boys, we'll deal with that later." The Latina let out a bark of laughter.

"I guess that means you don't have a job yet either?" Mike gave an inquisitive verbal poke. "Tommy said you'd new here too."

"Yeah, I got here about a week or so before you guys. Tommy was there as part of a sort of military help group that heard our game was coming out and went to help us grunts get settled in." Bella explained as she took a turn. The buildings had shifted from the tall sky-scrapers of down town to smaller but still large buildings of a humbler, less sleek design: Brick and mortar, some genuine wood-plank buildings. The names and signs emblazoned on them spoke of more mom and pop type places-'Perry's Pawnshop', 'Crazy Lukas' Deal Store', 'Tom Nooks Home Renovator's Inc.'. "As for a job, I actually managed to get one already!"

"Seriously?" Mike blinked. "That fast?"

"I was already a Marine, trained and everything, and already passed high school before that from what I remember." Bella gave a one armed shrug. "Getting signed up for the Nexus City Defense Force was as simple as just following Tommy to the recruitment office on day 2 of being here. He's good people, your brother. Still getting to know him and his friends, but he helped me and a bunch of my old friends find a place for ourselves here in no time."

"Yeah, that sounds like Tommy." Mike allowed himself a fond smile, even as the truth of his brothers deployment back home left a bitter taste in the back of his mouth.

"Whelp, we're just about here." Bella said as she navigated past some more small business shops and stores into a row of identical multi storied structures that stretched from one end of the block to the next. The design was different, being something he would have seen back in the States than the Eastern European bloks he'd grown used to in adulthood, but he immediately recognized the apartments for what they were.

"You live here?" Joe asked.

"Oh yeah, got set up on day one thanks to this one guy from, uh, the first game." Bella spoke the words in a hesitant, clunky cadence. Mike smiled slightly to himself at the reassurance that he and Joe weren't the only ones still getting used to everything going on. "Anyway, he's a guy who lives here and he helped me and some others get some places here." She paused as she looked at her two companions. "Quick question, how do you guys feel about aliens?"

"As long as they're not trying to enslave or eat us, I'm good with anything." Joe said matter-o-factually.

"Yeah, what he said." Mike nodded.

---

Despite the endless flights of stairs spread across the various buildings of the apartment complex, the two friends found they only had to go to the second floor of one 'Apartment 14', with Bella leading them to a door with the letter 'F' emblazoned on it.

"Here we are, 14-2F. Me casa es su casa, and all that good stuff." She chuckled as she knocked on the door. "Charlie, I'm back! Can you open up, we got company!"

"Charlie?" Mike asked as he took in the sights of the hallway and doors; the ceiling was with evenly spaced lights that gave no florescent hum; the floor a short, thin built in carpet rug arrangement; the walls seemingly made of plaster and painted a stark white, dutifully kept clean by whoever did janitor work here; and the doors made of what seemed to be faux wood. Each door had their respective apartment identifier letter on them, a little eye hole at head height to look through, and seemingly every tenet had taken it upon themselves to customize their respective apartment entry ways. In the case of 2F, the door handle had a cute little pair of bells tied to it with a bow, the letter was framed with a suction cupped heart decoration seemingly straight out of one of the near by neighborhood mom and pop shops, and there was a little welcome mat that read 'Bless this mess' written on it to greet them.

Mike didn't even try to hold back the smile on his face as he found himself taken in by the little ornaments.

"Yeah, he's the guy from our first game I mentioned." Bella stated. She knocked on the door again. "Ayo, Charlie, you there man? I told you what time I'd be back!"

"Just a minute." A deep male voice called out from within. "Rook and I are helping Micky get unstuck: Her other mouth got bitey with my knitting supplies again."

"I can't help it if it gets like that!" A synthesized feminine voice piped up.

"Wow, this is like, what, the fourth time this week this happened?" Another female voice piped up, smile in her voice.

"S-shut up, Kitty!"

"Can it, you two, don't make me get the Fusion Cutter again." Another, accented man's voice declared in an annoyed huff.

"Please don't!" As the voices behind the door went back and forth, Bella could only shake her head in amusement.

"Sounds like most of the gang is there." Bella chuckled to herself. "Anyway, speaking of Charlie, he's uh.....How to I put this. Okay, so you know video games right?"

"We are from one, yes." Joe's drawling reply did little to hide the mirth in his eye at his own dumb little joke.

"Ha ha. No, I mean, you know how they work, right?" Bella said. "With the characters in it?"

"Oh, yeah." Mike piped up. "There's the main character and the characters you don't play as."

"Right." Bella nodded. "Well, in the Noosphere, we're broken up into categories. There's the ones you mentioned, which are 'Main Player Characters' and 'Non-Player Characters'. But, there's sort of a third wheel to that category system, 'Secondary Player Characters'. We nickname 'em 'Aces'."

"'Ace'?" Joe asked, intrigued now.

"In games with single player stuff, the first two categories are involved." Bella explained, making a show of standing upright and proper as she clearly spoke in recitation of an explanation she had received from someone else. "However, if the game has a multi-player component, the characters available to play there are categorized in the third category." She relaxed as she went back to her normal tone of voice. "Basically, we call 'em 'Aces' because they usually aren't as good or powerful as a 'real' Player Character, but they're almost always head and shoulders above NPC's like yours truly." She shrugged. "Can't say I'm jealous though. Going by Charlie and Rook's way of explaining it, dying over and over again in multiplayer matches is a real bitch." Mike blinked.

"Multiplayer? As in, two opposing teams of a limited number of people on each side fighting one another until one team wins?" He slowly laid it out. Joe side-eyed his friend, a brow quirked up as he seemed to be picking up what his friend was putting down.

"You don't think....."

"Joe, I think you and me might be Aces man." Mike declared as he brushed a hand through his hair. "It just makes too much sense from the fight before we got here."

"Well hot damn, now I'm definitely out numbered in this house." Bella chuckled good naturedly.

"Done." The first voice, Charlie, declared. "Hold on, I'll get the door for you guys."

"So Charlie's a Marine like you then?" Mike asked. Bella looked at him with a skewed expression like he just said something particularly funny.

"Not exactly." She snickered. A series of thumps began to approach the door as something big and heavy neared them from the other side. Mike blinked as he shared a quick look with Joe as the door knob twisted and began to open inwards. As it did, Mike looked up.

And up.

Standing at the doorway, clad from the neck down in a bulky black and orange colored set of armor with a fanny pack of ammo pockets around his midsection and a size-too-small 'Kiss the Cook ' apron limply tied around his neck that barely covered his armored chest, was a 7'2 giant of a man. As Mike's vision finally met the man's own eyes, he saw a ghostly pale face, the red eyes and white hair of a man with albinism, facial features indicating Asian heritage but a having something off that made it difficult for Mike to quite place what it was. It was almost like his face was too perfectly symmetrical. Almost artificial.

"Fellas, meet Charlie Juggernaut!" Bella cheerfully declared. "Charlie, meet the new guys I told you about!"

"Nice to meet you two." Charlie gave a muted smile as he stepped aside and motioned them to come in. "Please, I was just getting started on Lunch. I hope you like calamari gumbo." Joe was the first to snap out of his shock at coming face to face with an armored giant who looked like he could snap any of the three normal sized people before him in half like a tooth pick.

"Yes." Joe hissed under his breath, even doing a little pump with his fist. "I already love it here!"
[Hey all, sorry for the long delay. Been juggling various things to update and was slow to come back to Source. Now that this update is out, hopefully I can get into a more even update schedule to keep it updated more frequently than the past several months mini-hiatus.]

 

[TripleMRed]

As the trio entered Apartment 14-2F, Mike instinctively began to look around at everything that caught his eye, taking in his surroundings as they entered their potential new home. immediately after the entryway was a small hallway that led into the main living room. Lining the right side of the mini-entry hall were stock pictures of what seemed to be places from various other games, some fairly straightforward forest landscapes with alien skies, and some what seemed to be active battlefronts between raging armies. Interestingly, one of the pictures looked like the ones Mike had seen of Xen back in his old world.

The left side of the mini-hallway was dedicated to a set of double sliding doors, one of them ajar enough to reveal boxes with decorations for various holidays spilling out from their corners. The sight of what seemed to be Halloween and Christmas ornaments stirred something in him, a sense of comfort that hadn't been there in almost two decades.

Smile now on his face, he followed Bella as she stepped up to the front and led him and Joe into the living room, Charlie closing the door behind them and following along as he did.

"Hey all, look at your future roomies!" Bella enthusiastically declared. As the living room came into view, Mike's attempt to look over the room itself stalled as his eyes fell upon a trio of beings who seemed to be the owners of the voices he had heard prior. His eyes widened as his gaze fell upon a heart-hoodie wearing bipedal white cat with purple tufts and stripes on her tail and ears, a set of clawed yellow and orange striped gloves over her hands.

"Holy shit, Gatomon!" He found himself blurting out before he settled on a familiar Kiwi man who had grown out a beard, his casual clothing a black undersuit of some kind. "And a Clone Trooper!" He blinked as the duo chuckled at his proclamation before he sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. "Uh, sorry."

"What. No love for a Mawile?" Complained a kimono wearing, short snouted yellow biped with what seemed to be a bell-adorned black venus flytrap growing from the back of her head as she crossed her arms in a huff, her throat-bound electo-speaker processing her alien speech into English.

"Sorry, he's not the Pokemon fan of the two of us." Joe said with a friendly smile as Mike continued to wince in embarrassment at his prior outburst. "I'm Joe, Joe Weathers, and my tongue-tied friend here is Mike Cohen. Pleasure to meet you all!"

"Uh, yeah, what he said." Mike dumbly added.

"Nice to meet you guys," The Gatomon purred as she hopped unto a near by recliner chair and leaned back on it in a relaxed posture. "I'm a Gatomon, but everyone calls me Kitty since there's a lot of me's running around." She pointed a thumb over to the 'Mawile', who continued to give Mike a pouty glare, "Her name's Micky, she likes cartoon mice. Say hi, Micky!"

"Hi." Micky grumbled to Mike before giving a much friendlier wave towards Joe. Joe, in kind, returned it with a little wave of his own. After Joe's wave, Micky returned to a pout towards Mike before she made her way over to the recliner chair and hopped on, getting settled in right next to Kitty, the two perfectly comfortable sharing the seat with one another. The pair seemed to get a little more comfortable now that they were next to each other, in fact.

"And Mr. Beard over there is Rook." Kitty finished, nodding towards the Clone Trooper. For his part, the bearded Clone gave a nod to the two of them, mouth hidden by his facial hair but the corners of his eyes crinkled the way human eyes did when smiling.

"Pleasure to meet you both." He declared.

"And you've already met the big boss himself." Kitty added as Charlie walked past the 3 normal humans to head into the kitchen area to the left of the room, a doorless open air design that had the kitchen in one half and a dining table on the other one. Every thing, from the marble countertops to the equipment, was black and orange, a reflection of the armor of the man who got to work stirring a large pot of what was undoubtedly lunch, the scent of seafood wafting in and making Mike instinctively lick his lips.

"Another 10 minutes and it'll be good to go." Charlie declared as he took a moment to taste test his creation, using a tasting saucer so as to not contaminate the dish by tasting directly from the ladle, nodding to himself in satisfaction over the taste.

"So boys," Kitty piped up, getting everyone's attention back to her. "Where are you from?"

"Earth." Mike and Joe both replied instantly in unison, before both winced at realizing the error they had made. For everyone else's part, they just gave good natured laughs at the answer. Kitty pointed to herself.

"I'm from Digimon World 3." She declared. She pointed a thumb to Micky, who dropped her pout again to cheerfully declare her world of origin.

"Pokemon Ruby!" Her shout was full of infectious cheer as Rook took the opportunity to raise his hand up to get everyone's attention.

"Star Wars Battlefront." The Clone said. Bella stepped up and thumbed herself in the chest.

"I'm from Halo 2, and Charlie over there is Halo: Combat Evolved." She said. She made a show of looking around before looking to Charlie behind her. "Hey, big man, where's Sparky, Vash, Roger, and Jaramiah?"

"Sparky's in his room watching his 'toons, Suamvash and Roger are out getting groceries I asked for, and J's visiting family who arrived same time as our new friends here." Explained Charlie. "They'll be back in an hour or two."

"You two will like them, they're a fun bunch." Bella chuckled as she turned her head to her two new compatriots. "So boys, now you know what we mean, why don't you tell these good people where you're from?"

"Right, right." Mike nodded. "Uh, I think they said we're from 'Half-Life 2'."

"Yup, Jaramiah's gonna love having you guys around." Rook stated as he rubbed his chin. "He's been wanting a roommate or two from his world."

"Great, now Micky, Vash and me are out numbered by not two, but three whole groups of people from the same worlds." Kitty said, her words lacking any real bite to them as an amused look came over her eye.

"We should file a complaint with management about this." Micky huffed, hands on her hips as her head-hair-venus flytrap thing snapped seemingly in agreement.

"Take it up with the HR department." Charlie called back, a low chuckle in his throat.

"Vash isn't even here!" Micky pointed out.

"Then I guess your complaint is going to have to wait." Charlie stated. Mike and Joe shared a look of amusement between each other, already charmed by the back and forth going on. As Micky returned to a pout, Bella gave a little laugh as she shook her head and walked over to the couch in the living room. "Come take a seat, boys, while we wait for lunch. We can all talk shop while stuffing our faces."

"Sounds good to me!" Joe cheerfully said, eyes practically twinkling at the promise of the gumbo being prepared. Mike followed his friend and the pair sat side by side on the couch, which allowed Mike to take the opportunity to finish looking around at the place: The living room was spacious, easily having enough room as to fit two blue couches that were placed side by side to allow for as many of the occupants of the place to sit together and still had enough room for a recliner chair to the left of the couches and a beanbag chair on the opposite end. The couches were in front of two side by side glass coffee tables and an extra large holoscreen filling in for a living room TV set, a series of add ons underneath allowing for both VHS tapes and disks. All of the physical objects had embroidered textiles in creative designs lovingly draped over them all.

The holoscreen was on, but kept silent, what seemed to to be a different News Station with a short, business suited blue bird, the name plate on his desk reading 'Ace', as the anchor. He seemed to be going over the latest sports news, and in addition to Baseball scores there was also the list of winners from the game show Mike remembered watching yesterday night.

The rest of the room was adorned with paintings, both the familiar of Earth to the more unfamiliar alien pieces whose meaning were lost to Mike. He glanced back behind himself and saw that, lining the walls, were doors into the various rooms belonging to the residents of the place. One door was adorned with military paraphernalia and a 'UNSC' eagle embroidery pinned to it. No guesses to whose room that was. The one next to it had a holographic display of an unfamiliar galaxy on it, which Mike tentatively guessed belonged to Rook. Interestingly, there were sounds coming from within, which Mike was actually able to recognize as the slapstick violence of an old cartoon.

The next door after that had a heart surrounding a bell, which seemed to be Micky and Kitty's room. Finally, the door after that was with an unfamiliar alien symbol on it and what seemed to be a collar and two shackles nailed to the door which, by process of elimination, Mike concluded belonged to the as of yet unseen 'Vash' and 'Jaramiah'. He then noticed another couple of doors past that one, both of which lacked decorations of any kind. It seemed he found his future room in this place.

As he finished his visual inspection of the place, a thought dawned on Mike.

"Say, is it just me or does this place seem bigger on the inside?" He asked.

"Oh no, that's normal." Rook said with a handwave. "There's a lot of people that arrive from games that even with a place as big as Nexus City, it's standard issue for apartments to be bigger on the inside."

"What, like Doctor Who?" Joe asked, being the more pop culturally sophisticated of the two friends.

"Yes, basically like that." Rook said with a snap of his fingers as Joe got a good comparison point.

"Sick, I loved that show as a kid." Joe said, a smile on his face as he recalled distant childhood memories. Mike decided to take the opportunity to ask the question he was now curious of after hearing the cartoon sounds coming from Rook's room.

"So, out of curiosity, do you guys get like, Earth television programs and stuff around here?" The young man asked. Rather than answer him verbally, Kitty picked up the remote on the recliner and channel surfed until she found what she was looking for, tapping the volume button so the living room was filled with the sounds on the Holo Screen.

There, playing in perfectly crisp HD detail was a scene from an old movie Tommy had sneakily let Mike watch as a kid. As the sounds of gunfire filled the room, Mike's eyes widened as a sunglasses wearing, duel-wielding Arnold Schwarzenegger tore through a police station as bullets impacted in futility his jacketed body.

For the first time in what felt like forever, Mike was watching an honest to God movie that likely hadn't been seen by any living person in his home reality for who knows how many years by the time the Rebellion spilled out into the streets.

"This place somehow manages to keep getting better and better." Joe whistled as he got comfortable in his seat, Mike leaning forward as he took in the sight before him with more than a little awe at seeing once-lost media play before his eyes.

"Preaching to the choir." He murmured.

"Alright, pause the show, dinner's on people." Charlie's deep voice called out from the kitchen area as he casually picked up the massive put like it was nothing and set it down at the center of the table. "I'm giving Vash and Jaramiah 5 minutes to get here before we dig in, after that they can get their plates on their own time." The armored hulk of a man declared.

"Pause?" Mike asked in confusion as he looked to Kitty. "Isn't this movie playing live?"

"Yup!" The Gatoman declared before casually pressing the pause button and freezing the film mid action.

".....I'm so doing an old movie marathon." Mike uttered in awe.

"I'll join you." Joe declared, unable to hide his own amazement at the pausing of an on air movie. "God, what the hell did we miss out on while the Combine was in charge?"

"Tell you what, you boys come have a seat and tell us all about your old worlds, and I'll give you the holo to do whatever you want the rest of the day." Charlie chuckled out, the head of the house hold clapping his hands together. "Alright everyone, let's eat!"

 

[TripleMRed]

Years under Combine rule meant that one didn't get the chance to stay with their loved ones long. The oppressive extra-dimensional regime were big believers in a concept that Mike had heard from an older member of the Resistance who had been a sociology teacher before it all went to hell: Social Confusion. In essence, the Combine made it an unspoken policy to periodically and randomly shift around people, moving them from their current homes to new places without prior warning or time to prepare. It came as suddenly as it was seemingly random, but even the most seemingly innocuous instance of waking up one day with an official document handed to you by a Metrocop had a more sinister motive: Prevent the formation of long term cohesion among the populace.

Early on, it was less pronounced, and focused on the more obvious targets for such a strategy: Anyone who was popular in the community, anyone who was respected or looked up to or listened to would be 'randomly' selected to be moved somewhere else. Rarely killed outright, part of the strategy was for them to begin making new networks of people in their new homes, only to again be moved just when their community became too comfortable having them around. That way, when the next time they were moved, the sudden departure of a pillar of the community would lead to widespread confusion and loss in cohesion among the whole.

It was as diabolical as it was ingenious, or at least it was to the old man he had listened to talk about the concept. However, at some point, whether by attrition of these 'inspirational' people or just plain a tightening of the noose around mankind's neck, soon it wasn't just 'leader' figures. Soon, it was just about anyone, at any time, anywhere, with as little notice to the man who delivered rations to their disabled friends as it was to the hardest worker in an area.

Nobody had been safe, and so it was how at the young age of 11, Mike remembered the last time he saw his mother. She had been selected for a move to another City, while he hadn't been. He remembered the last time they ever were together, her with her black hair tied in a bun in winter clothes, giving him a hug as she left him with an older couple they had befriended during their time in City 2. That was all the time they had to say their goodbyes before the Metrocop behind her brusquely told her to hurry it up, and the next thing he knew, she was gone.

She had been the pillar of no one but her son, just a factory worker who lost the metaphoric lottery and got selected. By the time he had reached City 17 with his own displacement papers, he was more than ready to jump at joining the Resistance building up at the time underneath the very capital city of the Combine's rule over the world.

Over a decade since that final goodbye, Mike glanced around the large dining table he and Joe sat at as the members of the household took their own seats. Aside from some empty places for those who were still out of the house, Mike and Joe found themselves on one end of the table, sharing the so called 'place of honor' as the guests of the house. On the other end of the table, needing the space of two people for himself due to his size and armor, was Charlie, the apparent head of the apartment, the pillar of this little community. The albino man hummed a tune to himself as he set down the large cooking pot, the gumbo's juices still bubbling fresh from the stove.

To Charlie's right was Kitty, the blue eyed white feline chatting away to the hulk of a man about someone called 'Franky' asking him for help with a 'pest problem', while to the right of her sat Micky, the Mawile patiently waiting for the the go ahead to start ladling in food into her bowl. To Charlie's left was Rook, the Clone chatting with Bella, who despite being the newest member short of the two guests, was seated to Rook's left, the Latina giving him her thanks for the 'tune up' he gave her car. The remaining seats past the current household were empty, leaving Mike and Joe alone on the other side of the table. Charlie seemed to take notice of this and moved to correct the unintentional faux pas.

"You boys can take a seat closer to us if you want." His deep voice rumbled. Joe opened his mouth to say something, perhaps politely turn him down, before he thought better of it and shared a look with Mike. The two nodded before getting up and taking their places closer to the others: Joe sat beside Micky to her right, and Mike sat beside Bella on her left. Charlie's face broke out into a muted but still palpable smile at the sight. "Much better. Now you won't need to lean over to fill up your bowls." A little round of laughs broke across the table before Charlie took the ladle and started filling up everyone's bowls himself, starting first with the two guests before moving backwards from them until he finally reached his own bowl. Once everyone had their food, piping hot and steaming, in front of them, the massive man nodded. "Dig in, everyone!"

With that, an organized chaos followed as everyone took a minute to dig in. As Mike spooned in his first mouthful, he found his taste buds exploding with a mixture of flavors both familiar yet almost forgotten and completely new as spices he never tasted before both danced on his tongue.

"Oh," He uttered after swallowing down his first bite. "Oh, this is great stuff!"

"Thank you." Charlie nodded as he spooned himself slower mouthfuls than the rest. "I took up cooking when I first got here and didn't know what to do with myself. It was the first real hobby I ever had, and it's been something of a passion of mine ever since."

"Which we are all very grateful for." Rook chuckled as he sipped some of the broth on its own before taking up and biting down on some shrimp.

"Very." Joe said, almost breathless. Mike blinked as he looked to his friend and found his dark skin had slightly reddened, his bowl already three-fourths gone. "God, I missed this stuff."

"Gumbo's a rarity where you come from?" Micky asked him as she paused from her meal to smack her back mouth when it started to act up.

"A lot of stuff's a rarity where we come from." Mike admitted. Charlie nodded as he stopped eating to set down his spoon and tilt his fingers together, looking at the two newcomers.

"Tell us about it, we've all got stories from our worlds when we first get here." The large man said, inviting the two to start speaking.

"Man, where do we even begin?" Joe whistled as he took finished his bowl and reached to pour himself seconds. "If we're from Half-Life 2, you guys know about Half-Life 1 or whatever it was called?"

"Do we ever." Kitty giggled.

"Your series is something of one of the 'big names' in the Noosphere." Rook declared.

"What, are you saying we're famous or something?" Mike asked teasingly.

"Well, one of you is." Micky declared. "I hear Mr. Freeman is a respected teacher at Black Mesa Memorial College." That caused Mike to blink.

"Dr. Freeman's a teacher here?"

"I met him once while on the job." Charlie piped in. "Quiet fellow, but he said 'after last time', he'd rather teach what he learned than stay as a scientist." Now it was Mike's turn to whistle.

"Wow." He murmured.

"What's he teach?" Asked Joe.

"Advanced Practical Physics and Trigonometry Applications." Charlie casually mentioned. Mike found himself scratching his head.

"I gotta admit, I never got the chance to finish school, so that sounds like a new one to me." He admitted. "What's it mean?"

"Solving physics puzzles and firing guns."

"You can teach that?"

"Oh yes." Charlie nodded. "The way the Noosphere works is.....complicated, and yet also simple at the same time. The physics of the various locations tied to this place varies wildly, but one commonality is that what works in game logic tends to work here."

"I don't know if you guys noticed yet, but there's a lot of people in Nexus City alone." Bella added in. "And the majority of them are like yours truly: NPC's. We kinda don't really 'get' game logic the same way Aces or Player Characters do, it seems to come naturally for you guys. So if we want to learn all the tricks and stuff you guys can just do on instinct, we kinda need a teacher to show us the ropes." She threw a thumb at Charlie's direction. "This big guy's been teaching me how to carry two weapons and switch between them."

"Wait, you can't.....just do that?" Joe asked, confused. "Like, can't you get a holster for a pistol or something?"

"Here folks can, which lets a lot of people circumvent weapon limits for those of us from games with them." Charlie said. "But if an NPC like Bella wanted to carry, say, two rocket launchers and switch between them, it doesn't come naturally for her to do that within our game system we're native to. So, I have to show her how to do it." Mike and Joe nodded in understanding.

"Okay, that's.....weird. But we're starting to get it." Mike declared.

"Ohohohoho!" Rook let out a hearty chortle. "Trust me, kid, you ain't even begun to see 'weird' yet if the carry limit is the thing that stumped you!"

"We'll get to that when we get to it." Charlie said as he nodded back at the two. "Please boys, tell us about your world. We know about the events of the first game, it's kind of a big deal in certain circles around here, but we don't really know your stories from the second one."

"It came out yesterday, the news is still spreading about your guys' stuff." Bella elaborated. "Gonna be a bit before everyone's familiar with all that."

"Right, that's fair enough." Mike nodded. "Well, we can't exactly tell you the story of our....uh, 'game', whatever Mr. Freeman was doing anyway, but we can fill you in on everything we know about what happened to our world." He looked around. "Where does the knowledge end on our world?"

"Outside of the personal stories of the people from it who get here, we know all about Black Mesa and the stuff around that." Kitty stated. "After that, we got nothin'."

"Well, there was talk about the Beta build, but all the stuff about that hasn't really left Beta Central." Charlie admitted. Mike blinked. Their game had a Beta build? What was he saying, of course there was.

"Well, I'm going to go ahead and assume whatever was in the, uh, 'Beta build' didn't make it to the final version if it didn't leave wherever that is." Mike stated. "So, I'm just going to start from the top. Okay, so, you know about Black Mesa, all that jazz. Well, after that stuff happened, the Portal Storms began-" For the next 20 minutes, Mike and Joe took turns giving a roughly summarized history of their world from their combined knowledge both in personal experiences and in second hand knowledge after joining the Resistance. The Portal Storms and ensuing chaos, the Xen wildlife overtaking the natural ecosystems of Earth, the Seven Hour War with the Combine and their subsequent rule. They could have talked about it all for hours, but the two friends mutually decided to give the 'highlights' to get everyone up to speed.

"-And right after Joe died, the artillery came down outside and the Citadel blew up and....Well, now we're here." Mike finished with a shrug. "That's about everything important to the two of us, anyway." After he finished, he glanced around the table to see expressions. Micky looked on in pity, and even the sassy Kitty seemed to wince at a few parts of their shared tale. As for the others, Bella looked on sympathetically while Rook and Charlie barely reacted in mutual professionalism.

"So, it seems Tommy missed a lot." Charlie declared.

"You know Tommy?" Mike asked, feeling less surprised than he probably should have been.

"We worked together once or twice." Charlie admitted with a shrug of his own. "He's the one that sent Bella our way and now you two are here."

"Wait, did your brother work with Bella to get us here behind our backs?" Joe asked in bemusement. For his part, Mike could only give a heavy lidded look to Bella. The Latina Marine just gave him a big shit-eating grin but said nothing.

"....Right, moving on," Mike coughed out the words into his hand. "That's our story. What about you guys?"

"Well, if you guys already know Pokemon and Digimon stuff between the two of you, Micky and me don't have a lot to tell." Kitty shrugged. "We were two Mons in our respective games, which is enough to count as an Ace apparently by the Noosphere's standards. We had teams back home, but when we got here we were basically free to do whatever we wanted."

"We met at a 'Mon's United'' meeting and I was already living here, so I convinced Kitty to come stay with us and now we're here." Micky added. Eyes turned to Rook as he cleared his throat, clearly wanting to be next.

"Well, you seem to know about Star Wars, so I'll skip to the personal part," The Clone Trooper nodded as he thoughtfully rubbed his chin. "Me, Sparky, and Roger are from the same game, so when we arrived here a couple of months ago and found out we were all video game characters, we kinda put aside our differences and banded together. We used to live in a co-op with some of our respective brothers, but I met Jaramiah on the job and found he lived closer to where we are working. So, me and my roommates moved in first chance we got." With that out of the way, that only left Charlie and Bella. With attention now on them, Bella gave a whistle as she leaned back in her chair.

"Oh man, where to begin?" She asked, mentally trying to find a good starting place.

"I can get us started." Charlie answered her. "It all started with a game called 'Halo: Combat Evolved'-" Before Charlie could go any further into his explanation, however, there was a heavy knock at the door. Charlie blinked as he glanced over at a digital clock on the wall to the right of the dining table before nodding. "That's odd, I'm not due for my shift yet." He said, seemingly already aware of who was at the door. Getting up, he marched out of the dining area to head towards the door. "Scuse me, all, need to see what's going on." Curiosity overwhelming him, and taking the opportunity to look alongside Micky and Kitty, Mike found himself sliding off his own chair to lean over past the dining area to get a good look at what was going on, much to the shared amusement of the three still at the table. Charlie wasted no time opening the door, and stepping aside and offering the people at the door inside with a hand.

"Alpha, Bravo, what's going on, boys?" He asked. Mike blinked at the sight of them: Standing on the other side of the doorway were two hulking giants near identical to Charlie, only in purple and green armor respectively. The man in purple armor had the facial structure implying Caucasian descent, while the man in green seemed to be African American. Both, however, had the same ghostly pale skin and hair and red eyes of albinism they seemed to share with Charlie, and just like the head of the household he was in, there was a jarringly too-perfect symmetry to their faces that didn't look right for humans to have.

"Sorry for hitting you up so early, Charlie, but we got the call from the guys upstairs." The man in purple, Alpha perhaps, stated, his voice similar to Charlie save being an octave or two deeper.

"The new game that came out yesterday had a few species' that is already starting to be a problem in the wilds and they want our teams to head in and handle them before they reach a terminal and start spreading to populated places." The green armored man, maybe Bravo, added. Mike couldn't see Charlie's face from the angle he was at, but he could hear the frown in his voice when he next spoke.

"That bad?" He inquired.

"Apparently. Ectoparasites and eusocial tunneling swarm organisms tend to be bad on their own, but both at the same time is something the rangers weren't ready for." Alpha declared. Mike didn't need a degree in animal husbandry to deduce what they were talking about.

"Shit, Headcrabs and Antlions made it here too?" Joe asked from the table. Charlie glanced back behind himself, not even batting an eye at the trio who peeked behind the wall to directly observe the proceedings at the doorway.

"Headcrabs have been here since the first game and expansions." Charlie explained. "But these 'Antlions' are new." He turned his attention back to the pair at the doorway. "You two go on ahead, I'll just wrap things up here and be right behind you."

"Copy that." The other two giants declared in near unison before turning around and heading down the hall and out of sight from where Mike was at. Nodding to himself, Charlie didn't bother to close the door as he marched back to the dining room, removing his apron to place it on a hook he had in the kitchen.

"I think you all heard that, so I'm going to sum it up: We've got some unexpected wild life problems Pest Control needs dealing with, so I'll be out for a while until we manage to get it under control." Charlie declared as he brought up his inventory screen, eyeing through it before finding what he was looking for. Pressing a finger against a floating image, the screen disappeared and a golden visored helmet matching his armor colors appeared in his hands. He wasted no time putting it on, the thing locking to his head with a snapping hiss of a pressure seal activating. "Get the others up to speed when they get back and give our guests here the rest of the tour." He paused to nod at Mike and Joe both. "It was nice meeting you boys, but I've got to run. Hope you don't mind."

"No no, please." Mike said with a wave of his hand. "Go right ahead."

"Last thing we need are Headcrabs and Antlions mucking about." Joe added in agreement. With a nod, Charlie wasted no further time as he headed back to the door, closing it behind him as he left. A stunned silence followed shortly thereafter before finally being broken up by Bella.

"Would be rude to tell our story while he's away." The Marine offhandedly declared before motioning to the couch. "Whose up for movies and game shows?"

"I'll get Sparky, he should meet his two future house mates." Rook declared as he headed over to his room to retrieve his cartoon addicted roommate.

"He sounds pretty confident that we're staying." Joe said with a twinkle in his eye at Mike as he sipped up another spoonful of gumbo. For his part, Mike headed to the couch and was the first to sit down, inspecting the remote as he did so.

"Charlie's deal was that we share about our world and we get control of the TV the rest of the day, right?" Mike unpaused the movie that Kitty had left behind when they went to go eat. "Hope you all like 80's action schlock!"

 

[TripleMRed]

As the film began to near its climax, Mike found himself comfortably laid back on the Couch, Joe by his side as the household watched the film progress. Sitting next to him on his other side, for a given definition of 'sitting' was the humble rectangular cube with legs that was a Gonk Power Droid, one 'Sparky'. The droid was unusually quiet for his kind, never once saying their signature sound and instead focused all optics to the movie on screen. Why the sapient mobile battery had chosen to sit next to Mike, he couldn't say, but the younger Cohen found himself internally giddy at sitting next to one of his favorite sci-fi robots, a fact he managed to hide well with a professional level poker face as he kept his eyes on the screen as well.

"An assassin droid covered in living skin." Rook murmured out loud as he popped open a Sprunk soda can, the man leaned forward on the edge of his seat next to Bella. "What will they think of next."

"I've seen creepier." Kitty piped up from her and Micky's spot on the recliner, the two practically cuddling as if they had sat down to watch a romcom together. "You should see some of the absolute freaks people design for their games."

"I don't like those popcorn things from your game, Bella." Micky said as she shuddered. "They're awful!"

"Tell me about it." Bella declared with a shudder of her own. Mike wanted to ask what these 'popcorn things' were, when the nature of the conversation hit him like a runaway truck.

"So, I'm not sure if this is like, taboo or whatever," Mike slowly began, catching the others' attention away from the movie. "But like.....We're video game characters. From games people play. And this movie we're seeing was made by the same kinds of people who made our games, right?" Mike shifted in place as he tried to find the right words. "Basically what I'm trying to get at is.....Is there a 'real' world out there, making all this stuff?"

"Yes." Kitty was the one to answer, her tone as blunt as it was blase. Mike found himself unsurprised that the Digimon would have an immediate answer to that question.

"So....Is it working on Digimon rules or something else?" Mike asked. "Because if there's a 'real' world, and we were all made by people in this world, and we're getting movies and other stuff from this world, does that mean we can like.....cross over to the other side?" For their part, everyone turned their attention to Bella. It was undoubtable that everyone save Mike and Joe already knew the answer to these questions given they'd been here longer than the two of them, but they waited to see any new insights their housemate could give. For her part, Kitty just shrugged the shoulder she wasn't using to lean against Micky.

"If it's possible, it's never happened before." Kitty declared. "Most everyone who's from a game who survives their game winds up here, but nobody can really go back and forth how they want. You get in here, you stay in here. The only real times people can go back to their game is like, when there's a sequel or something with them in it, but from their perspective, it's less like they're actually going back and more like....." The Gatomon paused as she searched to find a good analogy before her eyes landed back on the movie on the holo-screen. "For them, it's like being an actor in a movie or something. You go in, say your lines, do the stunt scenes, and when you come back out you have all the new memories of it and get updated based on whatever upgrades they made to you in the next game."

"Huh." Joe said outloud. "That seems pretty simple, but also.....Who designed this place?"

"Probably God." Kitty somehow managed to say that even more bluntly and matter-o-factually than her previous words. Everyone just stared at her with slightly wider eyes now. "Look, that's about the only answer I can give you because nobody knows who, or what, or whatever built this place." She said with her free hand raised defensively. "One day, this place just 'poofed', game characters from before and after popped in and the rest is history."

"So we don't even know if this isn't some like, elaborate program or something someone made in a super-computer or something?" It was Bella's turn to pipe up as the 'god' comment clearly threw her for a loop. "I just figured we were smart AI in some big science experiment or something."

"Look, I'm just telling it how it is how I know it to be." Kitty huffed. "Do you guys think I know everything about the digital world just because I'm a Digimon?"

"Yes." The unanimous, simultaneous response from everyone else filled the room.

"....Fair enough." Kitty conceded. "But I'm being honest here, guys, us Digis don't know much more than you guys. The most we get is being hired to do stuff like maintain systems and code for this place that the automated systems don't handle themselves, and I'm not going to lie, I think whoever or whatever runs this place just did that for us so we would have something to do." The Gatomon never really lost her cool attitude but it was clear that thinking on the specifics of her new world was revealing just how baffled by the entire thing she was same as everyone else on the inside.

"......Well, you know what?" Mike said. "Fuck it. My best friend is alive, I'm alive, we're all alive and meeting new people and living new lives. At this point, I don't care who made this place or why: Some scientists, or some programmer with a nuclear powered basement computer or.....or God. I'll fucking take it, this is a way better deal than what we had back home."

"Amen to that." Joe chuckled as the others began to settle back down, quickly accepting that line of thinking as Kitty shot Mike a quick but grateful look at giving her an out. "....Just one more question, though." Everyone looked at Joe as he scratched his neck. "So.....Are we actually digital code and all that? Are these bodies of ours digital models, or is whatever that's going on with this place making us, I dunno, real flesh and blood while we're here?" Kitty opened her mouth to reply but nothing came out. In fact, for the first time since Mike and Joe had met the digital creature that day, her look of confidence was gone and replaced by one of uncertainty.

"......Yes." She finally said.

"Yes to which one?"

"Yes." She refused to elaborate and rather than allow them to go down another increasingly awkward line of questioning, Mike decided to give her another out by cutting the knot entirely.

"Digital meat monsters, got it." His joke came out so suddenly that it caught everyone off guard and earned him a chorus of laughs.

---

The movie was nearing its end, its protagonist having just crushed the titular assassin cyborg in an industrial press when the door to the apartment opened up.

"Charlie?" An accented man's voice called out from the door way. "We got what you asked for."

"You should have seen the lines." A synthesized, borderline monotonous masculine voice followed up after him. It wasn't long before, rounding the corner with groceries in both of their respective hands, a hooved, bluish-grey skinned alien man with a pony tail and vertical slit on his face in place of a nose walked in alongside a B-1 Battle Droid with blue markings. The alien was wearing loose, red tinged clothing that looked like a hybrid between eastern style clothing, with carefully maintained folds and tied down midsection, and more informal western shirt and pants in how breezy and 'slip on over head' they seemed to be otherwise. The B-1, meanwhile, was differentiated from others of its otherwise identical kind by the presence of a magnet button on its chest with a smiley face on it and the presence of a sticker to the opposite side of the chest that read 'Go Dodgers' on it.

It didn't take long for the pair to realize where everyone was seated and to notice the presence of two unfamiliar faces among their number.

"Oh, you two must be the potential recruits Bella was going on about." The alien man declared. He raised one of his grocery laden hands to his chest. "I'm Shas'La T'au Shaumvash. This," He motioned to his mechanical friend, "Is Roger."

"How-Dee." The B1 declared with a wave of a grocery carrying hand.

"Howdy, I'm Mike, Mike Cohen, this is Joe Weathers." Mike piped up first, shooting a smug look at Joe for stealing his chance to introduce them, an act that caused Joe's normally friendly demeanor to change to a stony, lidded gaze at his friend's sudden but inevitable betrayal.

"It is good to meet you both." Saumvash stated with a nod. He motioned to Roger to head to the kitchen as they went to drop off the groceries. "Where is Charlie? He said he wasn't due to leave for his shift until," Saumvash paused to look at what seemed to be a high tech watch on his wrist. "Until 20 minutes from now."

"Boss got called away." Rook said as he got up to go to the kitchen, sipping his second soda can of the day. "The new guys are from a Half-Life game, came out yesterday. Turns out there was some nasties waiting in the wilds that got out on arrival here." Saumvash passed by Rook as he headed for his room.

"That explains it then. Headcrabs?" He asked the pair.

"And Ant-Lions, apparently."

"Wonderful." The sarcasm practically dripped out of Saumvash's mouth as an annoyed expression took over his facial features as he brought up one of his four fingered hands to rub his temple. "Loathsome creatures. Still, if Charlie got called in, it's only a matter of time before I get called up as well. Might as well gear up and go on ahead then." He looked over his shoulder. "Rook, you free to go with me?"

"I'm on the clock today with my actual job, Vash." Rook declared as he and Roger came out of the kitchen, dusting off what seemed to be excess spice powder off their hands. "Sorry."

"You sure you don't want to hang out with the new guys today, Vash?" Kitty chimed in.

"I'd love to, truly." The alien man declared. "But better get this handled with as many hands as possible, not have to worry about it later."

"We can help." Mike stated. "We know our way around 'crabs and bugs."

"That we do, it'd be no trouble." Joe began to get up, only for Vash to practically appear behind the two of them and gently, but firmly, placed his hands on their respective shoulders to keep them seated.

"No, you two relax." He practically ordered. "Besides, if the higher ups found out two fresh new arrivals from just yesterday were already fighting our battles for us, they'd have all our heads in this apartment."

"Just let 'em go, boys." Bella waved a hand at them. "I'm not even allowed to chip in at the defense force until I'm done with the month long 'integration' period."

"A month, you say?" Joe asked.

"Oh just.....Getting to know this place? Not have to worry about life and death situations?" Mike added.

"You will miss these days when they are gone." Roger of all beings was the one to declare those words as the droid looked them over. "Cherish this time of peace while you can."

"What?" Mike and Joe practically said in unison.

"He's being dramatic." Rook said, rolling his eyes. "But it's true, things will start to pick up in a month or two. By that point, you'll have gotten the hang of this place."

"Besides, didn't you boys want to get your degrees?" Bella asked. "I can help you look into that, plenty of the guys where I'm training know a thing or two about getting higher learning." The two friends paused as they shared a look before nodding.

"Yeah, that sounds....Pretty good, actually." Joe said as he forced himself to relax. The two now having been sat down again, Vash let go of their shoulders and headed towards his room again.

"Roger, you want in on this? You're rated for it." The alien asked. For his part, the B1 just slightly slumped forward with an overly dramatic synthesized sigh.

"I'll get my launcher." If it was possible for a monotonous electronic voice to grumble, that was likely what it sounded like. As the pair headed to get geared up, Rook checked the digital clock before sipping his can of soda once more.

"Still got time before my shift." The clone said. "What's our next movie, boys?" As the eyes on the couch returned their attention to the holoscreen, the title of the next movie was already showing up: Predator.

"Oh man, can't believe those jerks started out as movie villains." Kitty snickered. "Fitting." Mike laughed a little nervously.

"There's been, uh, Predator games?" He asked.

"And Alien games." Micky declared.

"And crossover games between them." Rook said as he rubbed his neck. "I still remember the first time I met one of them. Took my head clean off."

"Oh.....Terrific." Joe said with as much fake cheer as he could.

"Actually, horrifically painful before I respawned back here." Rook casually declared as he went back to his seat. That left the pair of friends quiet for a while afterwords.

---

The rest of the day came and went. As people left for their jobs, soon it was only Mike, Joe, and the ladies of the household left. They spent much of the rest of the day watching old movies before at around 7 PM, the door opened up and trudging back into the apartment were Charlie, Saumvash in his orange and red armor, and Roger. All of them were practically squeaky clean, as if all of them received a full soap and water cleaning after work. Despite this, all three still smelt of the tell tale smells of burnt headcrab, antlion, and a more artificial cooked smell that was familiar to the two friends but hard to quite name.

"Sooooo, how'd it go?" Bella asked. The trio were quiet as they paused, looked between themselves, before turning their collective eyes to look at Mike and Joe.

"Joe. Mike." Charlie began, slowly. "Remember those 'synths' you mentioned during your summation of your world?"

"Yeah?" The two said in unison, not entirely sure they wanted to know where this was going.

"The Striders and Gunships in particular?"

"Oh yeah, those things were a menace." Joe whistled, before a sudden realization appeared in his eyes. "Wait.....You don't mean-"

"Apparently-" Saumvash took over, rolling his shoulder as if it had been put back into place from a dislocation, "They are animalistic enough to count as 'miscellaneous wild life'." That caused the two friends to instantly wince mutual empathized pain.

"Oh, we are so, so sorry."

"I want you two to know, I hate your world immensely." Roger declared with as much concentrated hatred as his monotonic voice could muster.

"Preaching to the choir, man." Mike rubbed the back of his neck. "Preaching to the damn choir."

---

"So boys, how was your first day?" Tommy asked over the connected line in one of the spare rooms. While there were many technological advances the Resistance had managed to develop using their scientific acumen from Black Mesa survivors and ingeniously repurposed Combine Tech, Mike still found himself enchanted by the holographic wall phone, or at least that's what it seemed like to him, on his side of the room they were staying at for the night.

"It was pretty great, actually." Mike said. "The people here are really nice!"

"I knew you'd like it there, they're good people." His brother said with a smile on the other end of the line. "So....You two going to stay?" Mike blinked as he looked to Joe, who was inspecting some generic grey pajamas that seemed to be part of the default set up for an unclaimed apartment room in the Noosphere. Indeed, until they got the chance to customize the room, it was a spartan place of grey and whites, from the simple beds to the unadorned dresser. Even the standard issue wall mounted TV set up seemed painfully blocky and uninspired compared to the rest of the apartment just on the other side of the door into their new room.

They would have to change that.

"Yeah." Mike said with a nod. "Yeah, Tommy, I think we're going to stay." Mike smiled at his brother. "I love you, man, and I've missed you for so long.....but I don't think me and Joe can live in that big old house with only two other people for company."

"Hey, whatever makes you comfortable, little brother." Tommy declared with a proud smile. "Besides, we're in the same city and it's a 30 minute drive tops between us. We can visit each other any time we want when we've got free time."

"Yeah." Mike nodded. "Yeah, I'd like that." Joe quickly got in on the call, sliding into view with a smile of his own.

"Bella said she can help us look into that education we both want, but I was wondering if someone as high up as you can help us with that?"

"'High up'." Tommy chuckled. "Well, I can definitely look into it for you two." He paused to check the time before nodding. "Listen, I gotta turn in early tonight, start work early tomorrow. I'll give you a call to see how you're doing another time, so goodnight for now, alright? I'll be sure to send your stuff within a week if you don't come pick it all up."

"Thanks, Tommy. Love you, brother." Mike said with a little salute.

"Love you too, squirt. See you another time." Thomas said with a salute of his own before terminating the call. With that, Joe began to head into the complementary bathroom in the wall opposite of the entrance door, opening the door to it to head in and get ready for bed. "Hey, Mike, how's about tomorrow you and me go on a little walk around the neighborhood, get to see where we're going to be staying completely."

"Sounds good to me." Mike sighed as he let himself collapse unto his bed. It was comfortable, but in a minimal sort of way, just enough to fall asleep but not enough to do so quickly. "First thing's first: Finding better furniture." He said with an unimpressed frown as he hit a fist against the bed. "I'm done with subpar mattresses the rest of my life."

"Amen to that, brother."