The ZQ Wiki

So, you may have noticed that several of the recent ZQ Retold stories have been using really strange words. These are words in the Goblin language. There's a page on it on the ZQ Wiki, which can be found here. However, I used a few words that Arthur hasn't added to the page on the Goblin language, which are below.

• Taqua- send
• Ral- for
• Rycelikar- Goblin general
• Yorkrah- Guard (verb)
• Alyek- by
• Rysar- power
• Bek- of

ZQ Retold Part 8: Target Practice

Warning: More than mild graphic content

The waffles were closing in. Abe clutched his toaster, and toasted waffle after waffle. But now, reinforcements were coming in. A line of pop tarts were visible over the next hill. Suddenly, a 70 foot tall Thomas Jefferson arrived, and killed all the bad guys. “Brush your teeth”, he told Abe.

As Abe dreamed, his cousin was having problems of his own. Taking unsteady, deep breaths, he turned on the television. He quickly muted it when he saw the blaring emergency broadcast, as not to wake Abe and Caleb. He twisted the dial through channel after channel. Most were displaying the same text scroll, except for one, which aired Totally Real News.

“This just in”, the tired newscaster said into the camera. “Alien creatures have assumed control of the planet. It’s the liberals’ fault. Thanks a lot-” As the TRN reporter finished his statement, an arrow hit him in the neck and he slumped over. Goblins swarmed into the studio, and destroyed the camera.
Eventually, Tony arrived at the channel reserved for a DVD player or similar device. Static swam across the screen. He took out a key, and opened a padlocked door on the cabinet the TV sat on.

Inside was a strange Goblin device. He pushed a button, and the static slowly became a video feed of a Goblin wearing a long white coat.

“What is it?”, the Goblin hissed.

“Karab, you can’t come next morning. I have visitors.”, Tony said. “A family member and his friend”

“Fine. But they have to be gone by tomorrow evening. Also, you’d better not be giving them weapons. Your people are giving us a hard enough time as is”

Tony paused. “Don’t worry, Karab”, he eventually said. “They’re just kids. How much damage could they really do?”

“According to Dornac, a couple of kids managed to take out a quarikar by themselves”

“Doesn’t sound like him. Goodbye”, Tony pressed the button on the Goblin device, switching it off”

“I had the weirdest dream last night”, Abe told Tony and Caleb the next morning over breakfast.

“So, can we have some weapons?”, Caleb asked. “It was really hard to take out that Giant with just a shovel. We barely survived.”

“Wait, you took out that thing?”, Tony asked in shock. “Anyhow, pick out your weapons. We can do some target practise at your place”

Abe picked up the pistol he had tried to take the last time he had visited Tony.

“How much for it?”, Abe asked.

Tony and Caleb laughed. “Dude there are no stores operating anymore. Why would I need cash? In the meantime, I’ve got a holster for that in here”, Tony said as he pulled a holster out of a cabinet under the sink.

“Thanks”, said Abe.

Caleb ended up choosing a fat-barreled revolver, which he thought could aid in fighting Giants and Dragons. Tony decided to accompany them back to the garage to teach them how to shoot.

“Guys!”, Caleb suddenly shouted. “There’s a battlecart coming!” Abe, Tony, and Caleb jumped into the doorway of a church as a battlecart sped by.

“I’ve got to go!”, Tony shouted, running after the battlecart. Before Abe and Caleb could respond, he was gone.

“What was that?”, Caleb angrily asked. “He gives us weapons and just abandons us on the street? I told you he was a jerk!”

“He’ll probably be back soon. Maybe he’s just going to make sure that the Goblins don’t destroy his house or something”

“Come on, Abe. I guess we’ll have to teach ourselves how to shoot”, Caleb said.

Ten minutes later, Abe and Caleb had dragged bags of fertilizer out of the gardening shed, and leaned them against wooden stakes. Caleb took aim at one, but Abe asked him to wait. He ran inside (the house seemed to be void of Goblins lately), and returned with a permanent marker. Quickly, he drew snarling Goblin faces on each of the bags.

“I wish we could find some green paint”, Caleb said amusingly. “No offense, but I also wish you could draw”

“A friend of mine is a really good artist”, Abe said “I wonder if he made it”

Caleb locked his hand around the trigger, carefully aimed it at the fertilizer, and fired. He was launched back by the recoil. The bag was obliterated, spraying fertilizer across the yard.

“That poor Goblin!”, Abe laughed. He took aim at another bag.

Suddenly, a real Goblin fired a very real arrow, which whizzed past Abe. Abe and Caleb turned in shock, seeing a Goblin standing in the driveway, bow at the ready. Abe fired at the Goblin, killing it. It was then that Abe noticed the second Goblin, who had heard the fighting and come to see what the matter was. It was bedecked in rusty, metal armor, fastened with a leather belt that seemed to be made of the same material as the tunics of the Goblin soldiers. It shouted something at Abe and Caleb, and unsheathed a broadsword from a sheath on its back.

Abe fired shot after shot at the Goblin. He might as well have been throwing tissue paper. Each bullet bounced off the Goblin’s armor. Eventually, it kicked Abe to the ground, and held a sword to his neck. As it’s sword swung through the air, toward Abe’s throat, Caleb ran up to the armored Goblin. He fired a volley of bullets at the Goblin’s head, killing it, along with staining Abe’s face with Goblin blood.

“This stuff smells horrible!” Abe shouted as Caleb helped him up. He ran to the house, and came back with paper towels, to wipe Abe’s face. Abe looked at the dead Goblin.

[This paragraph has been redacted due to extreme graphic content]

He picked up the Goblin’s sword. “I’ve always been better with melee combat”, he said to himself.

“I think that was more than enough training”, Caleb told him.

“Yeah”, Abe replied. “Hey! Whatever happened to Tony?”

“Care to explain this? Karab snarled at Tony. He pressed buttons on the device hooked up to Tony’s TV, until it showed a view from a traffic camera on Abe’s street. It showed footage of Abe, Caleb, and Tony walking down the street, guns in Abe and Caleb’s hands.

“How much damage could they do? They’re just kids!”, Tony protested.

“Oh surrre”, Karab sarcastically sang at Tony. “Two kids who can kill an entire quarikar, not to mention a zeahir? Couldn’t possibly pose a single threat to us”

“Please! I’ll do anything you want”, Tony pled to Karab.

“What I want you to do right now is die! I’m going to tell Dornac to send troops here immediately!”, Karab snapped at Tony, storming out of the door.

Tony cursed under his breath, and ran up to the loft where he slept. A hammock made from a ratty bedsheet was slung between two posts Tony had taken from his fence. Leaning against a bedside table covered with old fast-food wrappers was a light machine gun.  Tony took the gun, and ran down to his porch, waiting for the Goblins.

Five hours later, Tony had fallen asleep, the gun on his lap. After a few hours of sleeping, he awoke to footsteps. The Goblins had done the unthinkable.

They had entered through the back door.

The Cow Chronicles Part 7: Farmer Joe's getaway

The sun lowered down over the fields, casting the shadow of a distant radio tower across the narrow highway. Telephone poles whizzed by, the wires seeming to rise and fall.

Farmer Joe gunned the engines. He had no idea where he was going. If somebody had asked him why he was driving at 79 mph down a rural highway in a police van with sirens blaring, he would have replied “away from prison”

Judging by the angle of the sun, he was driving north. As he did, he began noticing signs reading PLUGERVILLE, followed by a number of miles. Eventually, the rolling fields, farms, and tiny towns gave way to a massive divot in the ground.

Thousands of years ago, when Wisconsin was mostly rolling forests, and the only humans living there were Native Americans, a meteor had hit the future state, leaving a 25 mile wide crater. Years later, when European settlers “discovered”, the area, they came across the crater. After finding extremely valuable materials in the area, they decided to start a mine. As more people came to the area for work, a mine was started.
The people of Farmer Joe’s town hated the people of Plugerville. Although Farmer Joe was neutral on the issue, say a word of support for the local college football team: the Plugerville Plutonium Compounds, and you would be placed on a rung of the social ladder lower than even the people with no cows.

Plugervilles urban sprawl had spilled out of the crater, lining the streets into the city with bars, department stores, and cheap motels.

The neon refracted through the smudged windshield of the police van. Farmer Joe had switched off the sirens on the way into Plugerville, as to not attract attention.

The Majestic Mesa Motel had originally been built in 1953 in the New Mexico desert. Unfortunately, an accident at a science laboratory nearby had teleported the entire motel, and a seventh of the mesa the motel had been built near straight into Plugerville in 1983

Farmer Joe maneuvered the police van through the empty parking lot. The Majestic Mesa wasn’t a popular place to stay, due to local rumors that it was haunted. In addition, many questioned the legality of the business’ existence, as the property deed was for New Mexico, not Wisconsin.

“Come in, Wachowski. Joe’s gone to Plugerville. He’s at the Majestic Mesa Motel”, said the government agent who had been hiding in the back of the van since Farmer Joe had escaped from jail.

“Tell that to the Plugerville authorities. They’ve likely heard of who Farmer Joe really is”, Agent Wachowski replied. He was at an airbase 2 miles out of the unnamed town.

Mr. Chuckles sadly mooed as the cardboard boxes were transported onto the government jet.

Farmer Joe’s cows weren’t the sort of cows that you would see at a normal farm. The cows were as alien as you could get. Not only were they not from Earth, they weren’t even from the same dimension. How Farmer Joe came into possession of the cows is a long and complicated story.

These cows were from an alternate universe, and from a planet that does not exist in our universe. It was possible for them to gain super strength, and, although not all cows had this trait, laser eyes. However, Farmer Joe and representatives from the cows’ native dimension had agreed to deactivate the cow’s abilities, as to prevent the raising of suspicious by people in the area.

However, the cows had a fatal weakness. They were completely immobilized by cardboard. Thus, Farmer Joe had banned all cardboard from the farm limits, much to the annoyance of delivery people. He had even lobbied the city council to ban cardboard from the city limits, but that was quickly condemned by the townspeople, as much of the town’s income came from a cardboard factory.

Meanwhile, Agent Wachowski lay back in the airbase control tower. As he watched the radar for any suspicious activity, he radioed with the jet pilot. “How much of the cows are on board?”, he asked.

“Most of this load. We should be ready to take off in ten minutes or so”, the pilot replied. “There are still a few million still in custody, though”, she added.

“Roger that. I’ll have the team get most of them on the transports. We can take them to the airport at-”

Suddenly, the transmission cut out. Agent Wachowski wheeled around to face Farmer Bob, holding a pair of wire cutters.

“Farmer Joe specifically requested that I take control of the cows”, he spat at Agent Wachowski. “Why are you packing them onto a plane?”

Agent Wachowski’s face turned a deathly pale. “Uh, we were. . .going to take a few to Washington. Examine them. We think that the cows may have helped in the terrorism”

“Farmer Joe requested. . .”, Farmer Bob threateningly told Agent Wachowski as he walked towards him. “. . .that every last cow be taken to me”, He pulled a pen from a desk and pointed it at the government agent’s heart, as if it were a dagger. “Every. Last. One”, he enunciated.

“Carry on”, he said in a sarcastic, sing-song voice as he skipped out of the control tower.

Agent Wachowski watched in horror as the engines of the jet started. He grabbed some semaphore flags from the control desk, and ran out of the door, waving furiously the symbols for STOP STOP STOP.

The pilot gave him a quizzical look, and began accelerating. Agent Wachowski took off after the jet. He had no idea about how to stop the plane. Then, it hit him. He pulled his standard-issue 9mm pistol from the holster on his belt, and fired shot after shot at the engines. Nothing worked, and the plane rose higher and higher into the sky. To Wachowski’s horror, he saw wisps of smoke emerging from the left engine.

In the plane’s cockpit, a red light began flashing. Then a loud, obnoxious alarm began blaring. ENGINES CRITICAL flashed over the screen of the plane’s GPS in bright red lettering. The pilot dove the plane down, skimming over the cornfields as she searched for a place to land. Eventually, she came across a near-deserted highway, and turned the plane towards it.

The plane lowered closer and closer to the road below. Savage, orange flames had begun burning from the turbine. The pilot knew she had to find a landing spot sooner. After narrowly clearing a semi truck, she saw an overpass rushing up to the plane. Swearing under her breath, the pilot maneuvered the plane up again. If she couldn’t clear the overpass, she would die. The bridge rapidly grew in size. The pilot could make out the trash littering the sidewalk, and a government SUV crossing the overpass. It was probably headed to the airbase. The SUV screeched to a halt as the driver saw the terrifying spectacle of a jumbo jet flying 15 feet above your head.

Finally, the pilot found a stretch of highway where she was able to land. The plane thudded onto the rough country highway, leaving wheel sized divots in the pavement. The wheels let out a screeching wail as the plane slowed down. A wooden highway sign was ripped off its post and devoured by the engine. Down the road, the pilot noticed cars pulling to a stop.
Finally, she walked into the cargo hold, which was filled to the brim with panicking cows. She opened the door, and stepped into the sunlight.

“. . .narrowly avoided a catastrophic accident on Route 42, when a government plane caught fire mid flight.”

Farmer Joe lay on the pull-out couch in Room 13 of the Majestic Mesa Motel, watching the evening news. He had checked in under a fake name, and the news hadn’t published pictures of his face yet.

“We now go live to Bryson Air Force Base, where the flight took off”, the reporter said. The camera cut to another reporter, standing on the tarmac of the airbase outside of Farmer Joe’s hometown.

“Few were at Bryson Airbase when the plane took off, but the entire event was witnessed by a man who many here in Bovine County will recognize: CIA operative Rick Wachowski.” Agent Wachowski walked up to the reporter.

“So Mr. Wachowski, how did the incident play out?” the reporter asked Agent Wachowski.

“Well, it all started last night. I had decided to help the base staff out, and volunteered to watch the CCTV cameras”, Agent Wachowski began. “Around one in the morning, I saw a figure run out to the plane, and fiddle around with the engines. I figured it was just a mechanic working a night shift, but it was someone much worse”

“I see. Do you have any idea who might be behind the engine failure?”, the reporter asked.

“I know who the culprit is”, Agent Wachowski replied gravely. “You likely don’t know this, but infamous radical terrorist Farmer Joe has escaped from prison!”

“He’s done it again! If I ever find that son of a gun, I’m gonna-”, screamed a person in the room next to Farmer Joe’s. He turned up the volume on the TV.

“Tell me, Mr. Wachowski”, the reporter asked. “If such a dangerous criminal is out on the streets, ought the government to have notified us immediately?”

“There was some trouble. Anyhow, I had a team do a fingerprint scan of the plane engine. We discovered Farmer Joe’s fingerprints”, Agent Wachowski responded. “I believe Farmer Joe implanted a bomb in the plane’s engine”

“That’s horrible! Can you people at the studio get a picture of Farmer Joe onscreen? People outside of Bovine County need to know what he looks like”, the reporter said. A few seconds after, a picture of Farmer Joe flashed across the screen.

“Not again!”, Farmer Joe muttered under his breath as he ran out of his room. He knew that half of the people in America now knew what he looked like.

“Bye!”, he shouted to the motel clerk as he ran into the parking lot.

“Wait a minute-”, the clerk said, looking away from the TV news stream on his tablet.

Farmer Joe ran from the Majestic Mesa, searching for a getaway place. Alas, he was too late. . .

The Rise and Fall of PBP Chapter 3: The Bottom of the Barrel

Arthur, Seanathan, and I refer to Arthur’s 2014-2015 school year as “the dark ages”, and we had a good reason for it.

Arthur was bullied constantly that year. Thus, he was constantly miserable and angry, and his imagination developed a darker streak. For PBP, this meant a dramatic change in the winds.

Arthur had begun to watch the TV show “The X-Files” in Summer 2014, which was where he got the idea for Aperture Sleuths, A.K.A: The stupidest idea ever. As an X-Files fan, he wanted PBP to be more like it. However, the X-Files generally takes itself very seriously, while PBP at the time was a lighthearted, quirky comedy.

At one point while we were acting out an episode, Arthur told me to pump out all the jokes I could. When I asked him why, he responded “Because PBP is going to become more serious, and we need to get rid of all the jokes now.” When I asked why we were eliminating humor from PBP, he replied simply “Because I like serious things now.”

In Aperture Sleuths, we ripped off the X-Files, among other things, quite a bit. That was nothing compared to what we did in Episode 26, the first episode of PBP Season 5. We outright stole the Black Oil parasite from the X-Files. Just read this episode description he wrote: 26.Black Oil: The Oracle, Seanathan, completes his duty as Oracle for a mysterious alien parasite. Meanwhile, Arthur is having parent issues when he finally meets his parents.

The subplot of the episode, where Arthur meets his parents (apparently, he was stolen by the evil orphanage), brings us into the second change in PBP. In addition to the LARP becoming more serious, the series became much less fun to produce. Arthur was constantly criticizing everything we were doing, and yelling at us. I got into the habit of dreading going to his house. Once, during PBP: The Movie 3 (more on it later), I was bored of being serious and was skipping around. Here’s the exchange between Arthur and I.

Arthur: [Astatinius], STOP SKIPPING!

Me: Why?
Arthur: It’s costing us trillions of dollars in CGI!

I think that the reason Arthur bossed us around so much is, because he was bullied so much, he just wanted a sense of power. In any case, production became a nightmare.

After the episode Black Oil, Arthur decided that the new villain of PBP would be demons. Because why not? I should also point out: at this point, the series had nothing to do with Portal. Aperture was gone, and the only link besides the name was the addition of GLaDOS, and a few cameos.

Then, came PBP: The Movie 3. In my opinion, this was easily the stupidest of the PBP movie trilogy. An evil villain named the Pi Killer is on the loose. Why is he called the Pi Killer? He kills people by burning 𝛑s into their dwellings. There was also an army of demons in there somewhere, and everybody in Michigania joined together with Arthur to fight the demons. It was supposed to be the series finale, but Arthur had no mercy in his heart.

There was a plot twist, where due to a neurotoxin leak, everybody had passed out, and had collectively dreamed everything except the first season. M. Night Shyamalan, eat your heart out! This was Arthur’s lame attempt to satisfy my want for the series to return to Aperture.

Thus began the sixth season, which was even more unoriginal than the last. Arthur was now simply lifting ideas from conspiracy and legend websites, and pasting the “characters” into them. I put ‘characters’ in quotes because nobody had any personality. GLaDOS was the flattest character ever, Chell was a generic tomboy, my character was a generic inventor, and Arthur was a jerk with a huge ego.

The first episode of Season 6 involved a ghost only visible by thermal imaging haunting Arthur. It was a kind of creative idea, and I think it was the only episode in that series with an original premise. Then, we investigated UFOs in Stonehenge, the Nazca Lights, and the Australian Black Mountain. It was as stupid as it sounds.
Seasons 7 and 8 were similar. Out of episodes 34 to 41, only four episodes were original.

Though there were more original ideas in Season 9, they were pretty stupid. For example, in Episode 45, Wheatley’s evil clone, Oatley, takes over Aperture. Then, there was Episode 44: Rats.
If you’ve played the Portal games, you probably know about Doug Rattmann, a schizophrenic Aperture scientist who tried to help Chell escape Aperture. There’s a comic about him called Lab Rat, that’s clever, funny, and actually sort of emotional.

Well, according to PBP, Rattmann was actually a deranged robot.

In Season 10, we went back to ripping off, with the Illuminati invasion of Michigania. It was probably the best of our rip-offs. In it, the Illuminati take control of the minds of the Michigania city council, and order the construction of a massive pyramid. Then, the pyramid is revealed to be a power source that mind-controls every Michiganian except Arthur, Seanathan, and I, because, plot convenience. I actually had a lot of fun with Season 10. It was the first time in awhile that I was having fun with PBP.

Around this time, Arthur started his blog, and began chronicling PBP in a short story format. Meanwhile, the LARP was coming to an end.

Great News!

Remember the PBP Wiki?

As much as Arthur would like you to forget it, too bad.

After two days, I have archived all 48 pages of the PBP Wiki to the Wayback Machine. He never bothered to delete the site, so I decided to archive it in case it was lost.

Here's the link

ZQ Retold Part 7: Tony

“I still don’t think we should go”

Caleb was still having doubts about seeing Tony the next morning.

“Caleb, we don’t have any weapons. If we stay here, the Goblins will finish us off in days. We have to go see him”, Abe told him. Caleb eventually grudgingly agreed to tag along.

Affadax Avenue was just down the street from the street Abe and Caleb lived on. After waiting for a Goblin cart to pass by, Abe and Caleb ran across the street to a nearby gym.

Tony was right, Caleb thought to himself. His house was hard to miss.

Most of Affadax Avenue was lined with brick stores with apartments above. Tony’s house, however, stuck out like a sore thumb. Wedged between a beauty salon and a bar was a tiny, clapboard house with a barbed wire fence in front of it. In the driveway next to the house, was a rusted, beat-up moped that had seen better days.

As Abe and Caleb walked down the walk to the house, they noticed that the yard was littered with cigarette butts, bullets, Styrofoam boxes with NOT DRUGS scrawled in ballpoint pen, and dead skunks.

The tiny porch was screened in, and large, plywood boards were leaning against the screens that prevented anyone from seeing into the porch. Abe tried the porch door, and the rusty thing immediately fell off of its hinges.

The porch was even shabbier than the yard. The floor was littered with rusty nails and pieces of siding. A bench was piled high with boxes of ammunition. Abe and Caleb plugged their noses as they saw a stack of cardboard boxes labeled SKUNKS-DEAD. Nearly all of the paint had peeled off of the door, and the door was covered with pink slips of paper. EVICTION ORDER, each one read.

Caleb slowly reached for the doorknob, and tried it. “It’s locked”, he said.

Abe eyed an ancient-looking window with yellow, warped glass. “I’ve got an idea, he said, picking up a monkey wrench on the ground. He smashed open the window. The glass was so fragile that it practically disintegrated into glass dust.
Abe carefully climbed through the window into a revolting-smelling mudroom, with Caleb close behind. A walk in closet held a ratty, torn-up trench coat, and still more boxes of dead skunks. A door on the wall facing the front door had a grimy keypad, while a door to the right of them had a sign reading KEEP OUT!.

“What lunatic hoards skunk corpses?”, Caleb asked, eyeing the closet and holding his nose.

“Skunks are in high demand by the gangs in the area. The big gang war six years ago was all about who controlled the forest area on the west side of town. It was a big skunk breeding ground”, Abe replied.

He knocked on the door on the right.

“Gordon, if you want a refund on that crowbar, screw you!”, a voice shouted from the keypad door.

“It’s me, Tony, Abe”, Abe called to Tony.

The door was flung open, and out stepped a young man. Atop broad shoulders bedecked in a green Army jacket was a scraggly face covered in stubble, bruises, and scars. A holster held a long automatic pistol, and Abe counted at least eight ammunition clips held in his belt.

“I thought you were an old ‘colleague’”, Tony told them, putting air quotes around “colleague.”

“So, you want us to stay here?”, Caleb asked Tony uncomfortably.

“Who are you?”, Tony asked.

“Caleb. I’m a friend of Abe’s”, he said, following Tony into his living room.

The living room had nothing but an old, rabbit-ears TV, a moth-eaten sofa, several tables covered with guns and ammunition boxes, and another table covered in air fresheners.

“I need ‘em to keep out the skunk smell”, Tony told them, catching them staring at the air freshener-covered table.

“Yeah, about that. . .”, Caleb began. “Why do you keep so many skunks here?”

“They’re in high demand by the gangs here”, Tony replied. “You probably don’t remember this, but the gangs in this town had a big war back in 2007. The war was over who controlled that forest on the south side of town. Big skunk breeding ground. I have live ones in the backyard, but I think the Goblins got to most of them”

“You know, we might need something to defend ourselves here”, Abe said, eyeing a handgun.

“Oh, forgot to ask. Do you need to go get stuff from your house?”, Tony asked Abe.

“So we can stay here?”, Caleb asked.

Tony laughed. “This old dump? Are you kidding? I asked you to come here so we could go to the IDC place on the outskirts of town. I didn’t want to leave you here to die”

“Wait, we’re going where?”, Caleb asked.

“Haven’t you heard? This military group came in and set up a bunker on the west side of town so people have a place to escape the Goblins. I’m taking you two there”

“What, so I’ll be living in some stupid bunker for the rest of my life?”, Abe asked.

“It’s not permanent. We’ll leave once things are back to normal”, Tony replied.

“Back to normal? When? Are the Goblins going to just pack up and leave?”

“Abe, listen to me. I’ve watched enough 1950s sci-fi movies to know that the Goblins are going to be wiped out by our diseases or something”

“What a reliable source”, Abe grumbled, rolling his eyes. “Am I supposed to just let the Goblins have Earth? I want to fight!”, he shouted, picking up the pistol he had been eyeing.

“Put that down!”, Tony shouted, wrestling the gun out of Abe’s hand.

“Why am I always the one who has to sit and watch arguments?”, Caleb murmured as he sat on the sofa”

“You’re the only person who actually trusts me!”, Tony cried. “Everyone else wants me to be executed! You think I want to live here? If I go to the hardware store the cops will get me the moment I open the door! Just go! Hopefully your parents can find your arrow-strewn corpses!”, he screamed, pushing Abe and Caleb out of the door.

“Jeez, what a jerk”, Caleb said as they sat in an abandoned minivan, waiting for a procession of Goblins to pass by.

“You know, maybe he was right”, Abe said under his breath. “I mean, how do two kids fight against an alien army? Plus, I really want to find my parents”

As the two existed from the van, they noticed something they hadn’t had the time to notice, the state of the city.

Affadax Avenue was littered with abandoned vehicles, many of them with broken windows The siren still flickered on and off on an overturned police car. Most of the buildings were at least sort of unscathed, with just broken windows, but Abe could see a church several blocks away with its steeple torn off. In one area, a Goblin battlecart had smashed into a bookstore. The ruined storefront was littered with plaster chunks, wood splinters that looked razor-sharp, and corpses, both Goblin and human.
Turning onto the block where the Jones house was, Abe noticed a heap of rubble in the parking lot of a chiropractor. A large, steel cross had crushed a sedan. It was the steeple from the church.

That night, Abe and Caleb awoke from their slumber to banging on the garage door.

Abe grabbed a club, which he had taken from one of the Goblins, and ran to the door.

“Wait! It might just be Frank, bringing Tyler back”, Caleb called after him.

It was neither Goblins, nor Frank. It was Tony..

“What do you want?”, Abe growled.

“I’m, uh, sorry”, Tony told him. “If you’re wondering, I tried to drive to the IDC bunker a bit after you left. I found your parents. They told me they never wanted to see me again, and that I had to bring you to them if I found you”

“I’m not going to that bunker”, Abe said, defiantly.

“Want to come to my place? I figured that if you’re going to stay out here and fight the Goblins, you’re going to need better weapons than a trowel”, he mockingly said, eyeing the trowel that sat on the garage shelf.

Dear Mom,

Please do not worry about me. I’m living with Tony and Caleb. Tony is helping me fight the Goblins. He’s not giving me drugs, and he’s not conscripting me into his gang.

Abe typed away at Tony’s typewriter. He would ask Frank to deliver the letter to his mother at the bunker the next day.

“So, why do you type on a typewriter? I’m sure that someone in your gang would be willing to give you a computer.”, he asked.

“The company tracks everything you do on it. If they found out what I’m writing about, they’d notify the police”, Tony replied.

“Why not use the dark web?”, Caleb asked.

“The less I’m involved with that, the better”, Tony replied.

“Even gangsters have moral standards”, Abe said, laughing.

After setting the letter on Tony’s desk, Abe and Tony moved the sleeping bags from the garage to Tony’s house. They would stay the night, and return the next day.