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A class of high-schoolers (probably seniors, idk how the American school system works) take a school trip up to a mountainous forest reserve for a project of some kind. Everyone has to be in pairs so no one gets left behind, and somehow star footballer Connor gets paired up with “just-trying-to-survive-til-I-graduate” Michael.
Something is very not right with this forest. There are shacks that should be long abandoned and derelict but have signs of being lived in, or never being abandoned at all. Trails vanish under your feet without you noticing until you’re way off course. Old men passing by tell tales of people going missing without trace. There’s no birdsong, or any animal noises, at all.
Connor and Michael get very, very lost. The sun is going down. There’s no sign of a search party. Connor is sure they’ll be fine. His uncle Joshua is a ranger up here, and the school wouldn’t just abandon two of its students on a mountain, right? Michael, used to having no one looking out for him, starts to prepare to at least survive the night.
And that’s when things go to shit, because there’s a cult on this mountain. I don’t know what kind of cult, because frankly I’ve never been a religious person, but they’re there, and they want these boys, dead or alive. So said boys fucking run, and manage to lose them, but become even more lost in the process.
The sun rises. There’s still no sign of rescue. They didn’t have a lot of supplies to begin with, and now they’ve got even less. There’s a literal cult trying to kill them. If they’re gonna survive out here, they’re gonna have to get serious, and they’re gonna have to trust each other.
So it goes for a few days. They search for food and water, they try to find safe places to hide and shelter, they steal shit from the shacks (when the cultists aren’t there), they run/hide/defend themselves from cultists and the unaffiliated serial killer who apparently didn’t die when he fell off a cliff into the lake 30 years ago and has been picking off trail-walkers since (he was one of the old men earlier), they try to find ways to help rescuers find them without tipping off the cultists to their location, they look out for each other, they tend to each other’s wounds, and they start to open up to each other.
Connor puts himself under a lot of pressure to be the popular jock, to be the son that his dad wants. He’s gotten physically hurt playing football, and been told to suck it up and keep going, so much that he’s stopped telling people when he’s hurting. He’s literally bleeding through his shirt and can’t put too much weight on one leg, but he’s fine, really, no really, he’s fine, stop worrying about it, it’s nothing, he’s fine, shut up. He comes off as selfish from the jock persona, but he physically cannot put himself and his own needs first.
Michael doesn’t speak much, and it isn’t because he doesn’t want to. It’s that any time he tries to, he’s punished for it. He doesn’t ask for help because he’s never given it. He doesn’t speak up for himself because that gets him called a liar by adults and beat up by teens. He doesn’t give his all anymore, because it’s never good enough anyway. He doesn’t have friends, because no one stays around him for long. He has no plans for the future, because they’ll only fall through. He just does what he can to make it through another day, and today, that means keeping him and Connor alive.
One day, it’s lightly but steadily raining, and they’re huddled in a ditch under a blanket they’ve stolen. Despite the constant danger, the ache of barely healing injuries, and they’re fact they’re both grimy as hell by now, it’s… nice. Almost serene. Connor asks if he can admit something important to Michael. Michael gives the go-ahead.
Connor comes out as a transgirl to Michael. She’s terrified of admitting it to anyone, her dad, family, friends, god forbid the school and football team. Everything her life is is wrapped up in being a boy. But for all she knows, she could die later today. Her life, right now, is being with Michael, and even if he rejects her for it, she wants him to know.
Michael accepts her in a heartbeat. He’s antisocial, not an asshole. He hugs her, and asks if there’s a name she’d like him to call her. Connor is henceforth referred to as Vanessa for the rest of the game.
Michael then asks if he can admit something important to Vanessa. Vanessa gives the go-ahead. Michael says that he used to think he was gay, but as of two minutes ago, he’s gonna have to change that to bi. It takes five seconds for the penny to drop. There’s no pressure, he hurries to add. She kisses him anyway.
Realising they’re both hopped up on adrenaline (and probably teenager hormones), they agree to work all of that out when they aren’t fighting for their lives.
There’s a boss fight against the serial killer in a thunderstorm, up on the same cliffs from 30 years ago. Michael gets a grapple on him, but gets pushed to the ground and slashed in the side pretty badly by the old man’s knife. Before he can finish the job, Vanessa gets his attention, and shoots him with a shotgun. Yeah, he definitely didn’t survive that fall into the lake. She got a headshot.
Michael’s losing a lot of blood from the slash, so if they aren’t rescued soon, he might not make it. Vanessa tries to carry him to shelter, but is hindered by her injured leg, which Michael is groggily prioritising over himself despite her command to shut up. She finally finds an outcrop of the cliffs, and it takes literally everything (i.e. all relevant supplies in the inventory) to stifle Michael’s bleeding. The blood trail washes away in the heavy rain.
The next morning, they’re found. Vanessa freaks out and grabs the shotgun again, only to realise that it’s her uncle Joshua. She tries to tell him all that’s happened, with the cultists and the serial killer, but he doesn’t believe her, thinking “he” and “his” friend just left the trail for kicks and got lost. Joshua picks up a semi-conscious Michael, and starts to take the two back down the mountain.
After a short while, Vanessa stops, and pulls her shotgun on Joshua again.
See, something that’s been subtly hinted at all game is that the symbol of the cultists (I don’t know jack about cultists, so don’t ask me what the symbol is) has been mildly familiar to Vanessa, but she couldn’t put her finger on why. Now she does.
It’s tattooed on Joshua’s neck, just hidden under his uniform collar.
Joshua tries to tell her she’s being paranoid, she’s scared from being stuck here so long, there are no cultists, put the gun down.
He just found two lost, starving, badly injured teenagers, Vanessa tells him, and he hasn’t reached for his radio to call backup. So something’s up.
Joshua’s got backup, alright. Just not the type she’d been hoping for, as the cultists step out from the trees, in broad daylight this time. She can’t pull the trigger without hurting Michael, so she’s quickly overwhelmed and taken hostage too.
Joshua explains that he and “Connor’s” mother were born into this generations-old cult, but her mother “betrayed the faith” and went to live a normal life. Joshua pretended to join her, but instead used his job as ranger to “overlook” the cult establishing themselves on the reserve, as well as the old man.
They’d intentionally disoriented Vanessa and Michael and got them separated from their class, so they could “reconnect the bloodline” by encompassing “the eldest son” into their ranks, using Michael as a sacrifice to appease their god for “Connor’s” mother’s “transgressions”.
Michael has woken up enough to hear all of this, and our protagonists have both. Had. Enough.
Cue escape plan from the cultists’ hideout, followed by a boss fight with Joshua. I don’t really remember how this one played out, I think I was getting close waking up at this point. Regardless, it occurs to the two teenagers that while Joshua could get away with hiding a stealthy cult on this reserve, a forest fire would grab a lot more attention from the actual authorities. It’s too wet to start a real one, what with the heavy storm last night, but since the cultists know where they are anyway, it can’t hurt to use the more drastic attention-seeking methods.
(Don’t ask me where they got the fireworks. Probably the same place they got the shotgun)
So yeah, the real rescue turns up, Joshua is exposed, most of the cultists are arrested (and those that got away will be tracked down), and the teens get taken to the ambulances which freaks Vanessa out because she now understandably has some trust issues and doesn’t want to be separated. Michael almost outs her by calling her name but manages to stop himself and call “him” Ness instead (I haven’t played Earthbound either). He promises her that they’re gonna be okay now, they’re safe, and as soon as he’s stitched up he’s coming to see her in her hospital room. Not if she comes to him first, she says.
Flash forward to a few months later. Michael pulls up to Vanessa’s house. He’s dressed in a suit of bisexual colours. It is very obviously prom night. The front door opens. It hasn’t been very long, so her hair is only a few inches longer, and she’s still built like a footballer, but nonetheless Vanessa looks beautiful in her prom dress. Well, pant-dress. She wasn’t that brave.
She’s been more than brave enough, Michael says, leaning up to kiss her forehead (She’s taller than him).
The Script’s “Never Seen Anything (Quite Like You)” plays over the credits.