It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps Axel had truly intended to just leave the girl here when he originally had started to walk away. The dude was so cold. How could he be like that when he had known Chrissie too? Swallowing back anger, I waited for the kid to catch up. The speed of our party noticeably slowed as we kept pace with her. Well, it was what it was.

After walking in silence for a short time, she said, “I’m Wren.”

“Oh, like those little birds?” Jye asked.

Axel shook his head. “You’re thinking of sparrows.”

Holding their hands out in front of them, they gestured a very small spherical shape and said, “No, they’re like puffy and brown. You know, friend shaped.”

“Mmm, that sounds like a finch,” I replied.

Axel scoffed. “No, now they’re describing a dunnock.”

“What in the fuck is a dunnock?” asked Jye.

“Language!” I shouted, outrage written across my face. I glanced down at Wren, hoping we hadn’t scarred her.

Instead, she chuckled. It was good to see her smiling. Who knows what she had been through in the past couple of days? And if she didn’t feel the same need to enter the Gates, why had she been so interested in them? Not only that, she appeared a little too calm. Then again, I didn’t know too many kids these days. Some of my online friends had them, but it’s not like we ever needed to speak to each other.

She said, “Wrens are small brown puffy birds.”

“See?!” Jye shouted. “I’m a bird savant!”

“That title is all yours,” Axel flatly said.

I asked, “Speaking of titles, Wren, do you have any, or traits, or abilities?” I thought for a second, and then added, “Oh, and what’s your class?”

The smile faded from her face. Oh, I’d stepped on some sort of emotional landmine. Several different responses ran through my mind, but I settled on remaining silent. Sometimes it was better to let others fill the quiet than asking questions. It’s how I managed to get through my sessions with my child therapist.

Jye, unable to read the room, confidently said, “I can’t read anything on my menu screen, so as long as you can read yours, they can’t be all that bad.”

Swearing under his breath, Axel whispered to Jye, “Ixnay on the itchglay.”

Jye frowned, and then replied in full volume, “I don’t speak French, man.”

“You can’t read your menu screen?” Wren asked, voice surprisingly timid.

Ignoring Axel to my pleasure, I answered for Jye. “Not a lick of it.” And hoping to assuage her of any concerns continued with, “And it doesn’t really matter to us that much. We can learn to work with anything. But only if you want to work with us.”

She thought for a second and then nodded. “My class is [Scourge]. I can use [Imperil] and [Death Mark].”

Scourge? That really wasn’t a class I was familiar with. Based on the name of her abilities, it seemed like a support class that focused on debuffs. I didn’t want to admit it, but having someone else in the backlines was just further unevening the balance of our party composition. It was already too heavily based on range with only Axel in the front. What we really needed was either a tank or someone who was frontline critical damage, like an assassin or rogue.

The disappointment must’ve been written on my face because Axel, of all people, nudged me on the shoulder and shot me a pointed look. Wren’s face was downcast. God, I was a shit person. The poor kid had shared information with us that they felt should be secret and here I was thinking about how useless it was.

Trying to correct the failing trajectory of our conversation, I asked, “Do you want to join our party?”

Axel’s glare was boring a hole into my forehead, and Jye’s curious gaze was on my back, but I didn’t meet either of their eyes. I probably should’ve asked them first… But what was done was done. We could talk about it later. Or rather Axel would talk at me about it later.

Wren clearly hesitated in responding.

“You can always leave it. I think. Wait a second, let me just make sure that’s true.”

I focused on the party menu screen and it popped up. Thinking about leaving the party, a small confirmation window appeared: Do you wish to leave Just Friends? Accept | Reject

Selecting “Reject,” I smiled at Wren. “Yep, you can leave whenever you want.”

She nodded. “Okay, I’ll join.”

A few moments after officially inviting Wren, I heard the confirmation of her acceptance. Wren has joined your party. The party information updated, adding her name to the list. It confirmed her class and level. Well, at least she wasn’t lying. That was a relief. After a brief discussion with the others, we agreed to give her one of the smallest knives from Kmart, so she could defend herself if the situation called for it.

After handing it over, now she was safely in our fold, it was time to get into the nitty gritty.

“You don’t need to answer if you don’t want to, but where are your parents?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did they go into the Gates, the black hole in the CBD?”

“No.”

“Why do you want to go into the CBD Gate?”

She didn’t answer that question at all. God, some shit must’ve happened to her. All right. It was time to back off. Pivot topic. Let her cool down. She probably didn’t trust us yet. I mean, if I was a kid and a bunch of randos asked me to join them I probably would have run off screaming. So at the very least, Wren had spunk.

“Me and Axel’s parents live in rural. You know where Charleville is?”

She shook her head. Yeah, figures. Most people know of Charleville, but don’t really know where it is. I’d seen a TikTok espousing Charleville as this luxury destination with at least six different biomes including snowy mountains, lush forest, and sandy beaches. Truth be told, Charleville was just another rural town with more than the average amount of derros.

“I thought you said you’re friends?” she asked.

I frowned. “What?”

“You said yours and Axel’s parents. You guys don’t look related.”

Axel and I exchanged a look before exploding out into laughter. It was the kind of belly laugh that wouldn’t stop. My eyes were watering as I tried to calm myself. Every time I went to correct her, the idea of being Axel’s brother was so ridiculous that I devolved into another fit of laughter. Axel too seemed to be laughing uproariously.

Jye said, “Nah, they’re just friends.”

“Oh, like our party name?”

Axel’s laughter stopped immediately and cleared his throat. The tiniest iota of guilt riled around in my gut. For some reason, the name had really hurt him. And now I was going to have to live that for however long this game lasted. That’s life, I guess. You make choices and sometimes they’re wrong.

Flatly, Axel stated, “Our parents are best friends. So we grew up together.”

“Yeah, in fact, this guy used to have stupidly curly hair when he was your age, Wren. Almost like an afro. I kind of miss it.”

“Shut up, Lee,” Alex growled. He’d hated the hair when he was young. One day he’d come to school with it completely shaved off. His mother had told me he had tried to cut it himself, and they couldn’t save any of it, so they’d decided to go with a clean buzz cut. I’ll never know what inspired him to do it. Having dead straight hair except when I slept on it funny, I’d always thought curly hair was really cool.

“Both my parents are retired now, thankfully. They deserve some peace and quiet.” I nodded at Axel, “Yours still freelance sometimes, don’t they?”

He scowled. “Yeah. I’ve told them to stop, but they keep on saying they don’t know what else to do with their spare time.”

“That’s capitalism for you,” Jye commented soberly. “Boomers suffering from zoochosis.”

As if in agreement, we all ignored Jye’s words. “At least there’s no way for them to do remote work now,” I said.

“Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

I smiled at the redheaded giant. “What about your parents, Jye?”

They shrugged. “I’m no contact with them.”

Yikes. I regretted asking. So, half of the party had parents they wanted to talk about, and half of them didn’t. I think I’d probably avoid the topic in the future. It had killed the conversation. We walked in solemn silence. I hoped my parents were okay. The closest Gate was the one in Brisbane, so even if they felt the compulsion it would be difficult for them to get here.

Tsssss.

It was the same static sound I’d recognised whenever someone used their abilities. But as I glanced around, it didn’t look like anyone was using any. I stopped on the spot, worried about someone ambushing us. It’s not something I had been expecting, but it was never far from my mind. Now we basically all had superpowers, there was bound to be people using them to their advantage.

“Guys, wait, I can hear–”

With a comically loud pop, a Gate appeared in front of us.

~Dungeon 9 cleared for the first time by Kimi Kishimoto. New Dungeons Active~

Oh.