Archive of Our Own ^beta

INTRODUCTION

It is the sixteenth evening since Tallulah had first read that letter. This, much like the rest of the letters that she’s read, never fails to make her feel loved. She knows that these words hold the warmth of her Papa’s love for her.

This is why Tallulah spends a great deal of her waking hours writing. It’s how she speaks to her family and her friends, after all. Tallulah cannot speak with her mouth the same way her parent and her tíos and tías can—nor can her siblings. So she, much like the rest of her egg-adjacent family, writes her words and feelings on colored canvas signs that she could place and replace for her loved ones to read.

Every night, she gives a little bit of her time to write one, special letter. Prior to tonight, those letters have always been addressed to her papa. For the past three days, however, he seemed to have missed the opportunity to send her back some letters.

Tallulah doesn’t hold it against him. She loves him unconditionally.

For tonight, though, she thinks that she could spend the night writing to someone else. There’s nothing wrong with that. Her papa is surely just a bit busy.

Who will it be?

Continue to write to Wilbur, her Papa

Start writing to Phil, her Abuelito

Write to Quackity

Tallulah continues to write to Wilbur, her papa

Unsurprisingly, as Tallulah had come to expect in the past few days, she didn’t receive any letter back from her papa. She tried not to let it hurt, but it still stung a little bit. Her papa was doing something very important, and would be back very soon. There was no need for her to get this worried.

Thinking back on her letter, Tallulah thought about Phil once more. Even if she had not talked to him much, reserving her signs mostly for her papa, he seemed to be a good source of entertainment while also being able to protect her. She also remembered talking with Quackity a few times, he who seemed to be very close to her papa. Could he know where her dad had gone? Tallulah still somewhat wanted to write to papa again, but she wasn’t about to stay locked inside while writing him letters every day until his return, right?

What will she do?

Write to Wilbur again

Write something for Philza

Write to Quackity and ask him where Wilbur is

Tallulah writes Again

Signing off the letter and sealing it, Tallulah sighed. Her papa was gone , she realized; and as if that wasn’t enough to worry about already, the island’s residents were becoming more and more on-edge by the day. People were hurt, eggs were killed, and the disappearance of her dad didn’t help to reassure people.

She had to deal with multiple people coming to her house the Casa Bonita every day, all the way from Quackity worrying about his ‘friend’ to Philza fretting over her directly, and it was slowly taking a toll on her. The idea of shutting herself off in her room sounded better by the second, even if she knew it wouldn’t be good for her. As much as she cared for her papa, he had taught her to care for her personal wellbeing before anyone else’s, and this seemed to be the perfect situation to apply that advice.

Philza had offered her to go and hang out with him and Chayanne earlier today, but she had refused. Maybe he wouldn’t mind if Tallulah wrote him a letter to tell him that she accepts? Or maybe she should reassure Quackity that she would be alright?

Write to Wilbur again

Write to Phil about wanting to go out more

Tallulah writes Again

She knows the letter is short, but she doesn’t feel herself able to write any more than that without going insane. She has already been forced to lock herself in the bunker to stop people from asking her about her papa all day long, and each second spent writing him letters made her feel worse.

What if he’d stopped answering her letters because he…stopped caring?

A few days ago, she wouldn’t have even considered the possibility, but now…

People come by every day to ask about him, and he still didn’t respond. Tallulah wrote to him every day, and still, no answer. Maybe he found something more important than them. Something worth more than a poor little egg, even if said egg is was his ‘daughter’.

Thinking about it, there really was no other option she could see. Ever since the beginning, her ‘papa’ had been forced to play and interact with her just to keep her alive. He never actually cared, he just didn’t want Tallulah’s yolk on his hands. Even then, he’d left her alone for just about 5 days now, so maybe he never cared about that to begin with.

Tallulah wants to hold onto the hope that her papa Wilbur cared, but it is becoming more and more ridiculous to think so.

Frustrated by what she had just learnt and out of people to complain to, Tallulah does the only thing she could still do.

She writes.

Tallulah doesn’t know if anyone would receive this letter, or if Wilbur would even read it, but there is one thing she knows for sure.

She’d recognize this specific letter anywhere.

After all, rare were the few who would send a letter stained with water drops.

And day after day, she writes.

Letter by letter, word by word, tear after tear staining her papers, Tallulah realizes.

She’s well and truly alone.

Wilbur stopped caring long ago, that is, if he’d ever cared. She is now left behind, loving Wilbur like a father while also hating him for abandoning her, even if she knows that no one is left to hear her thoughts.

Sometimes, she wishes she had a voice, if only to scream out her feelings instead of being bound to ink and paper.

Sometimes, she wishes she ran out of things to write on, if only to make her stop thinking about the ever growing feeling of loneliness in her heart.

And sometimes, on her darkest of days, she even finds herself wishing to have never been found in the adoption center’s attic, for while this place has everything she could ever physically need, it no longer has the only person that used to make her want to stay.

Still, she waits.

Because she is a good daughter.

BAD END: FOREVER WAITING

Tallulah thinks that she should open a conversation with her Abuelito in these letters, much like she did for her papá—talking about something, anything to fill the paper, just to start a conversation in these letters. She decides, that night, to talk about the night before. It had been a weird dream, and it had started out in a way that made her think that it wouldn’t be a good one.

So she opens with her dream.

She pauses. This is a very long, nonsensical letter, but she’s grown used to writing long letters. It’s how she thought she could connect to Wilbur about her days, after all. She has a lot to say without the speech to say it.

But Philza might be confused if she gives this to him in the morning when he wakes her up. So she writes her intentions.

When she had gone to sleep that night, she had no expectations for her letter to be read so soon—much less that morning, when she blinked awake to the sight of Phil sat at the foot of her and Chayanne’s beds, reading the very letter she’d left on his usual seat.

Chayanne had already woken up, and he stands on a wooden block reading the letter from over Phil’s shoulder, looking curiously at its contents.

Tallulah slowly sits up, and at the sight of her Phil looks away from her letter.

She didn’t really think this through, about how awkward it would be to send letters to someone you live with. They live under the same roof, after all; anything she could put in a letter could just go on a sign or in a book. So, shyly, she looks down at her blankets, thinking that the threads look rather interesting.

Tallulah could see from her peripherals as Phil stood up, and Chayanne jumped off of his wooden block and stashed it back into his inventory.

Next thing she knows, he’s sat at the side of her bed. Tallulah looks up, biting the insides of her cheek. He’s going to laugh at her. He doesn’t take these things seriously, does he? She could play it off as a joke—

Phil takes a book and quill from his inventory, and he writes something in it. It doesn’t take too long before he tears out the page, folds it, and offers it to her.

Surprised, Tallulah takes the letter from him. She looks at the folded piece of paper, confused, and then back up at Phil who seemed to be expecting her to do something about it.

“Go on, Tallulah. Read it,” Phil says in an encouraging tone.

So she does.

Tallulah gasps, and she looks up to her grandfather with a smile. She sets the piece of paper on her bedside table before lunging at him for a hug. Phil yelps at first at the suddenness, before he laughs. “Alright, alright.” He pats at her back and shifts so that he could fully carry her in his arms. “We’re going to go do some quests today.”

Tallulah doesn’t get prompted to get off of Phil, though, so she doesn’t—not until they had to actually start the quests.

And it had been a fun and easy adventure that day. Tallulah had come back holding many more flowers and even a new pet in her backpack—courtesy, of course, of Phil and Chayanne, who insisted on spoiling her. It was on their way home when she noticed something particularly odd with her vision.

One blink, and Phil and Chayanne had been in line with her as they walked.

Then in the next blink, suddenly they were way ahead of her.

This had only happened once, fortunately, so it shouldn’t be a cause for concern. She’d shrugged it off as her sleepiness.

When they had come home, Phil had told them a story to fall asleep to. Chayanne had fallen asleep, rather soundly and tucked into his bed. Tallulah had also been tucked into her bed, but she hadn’t fallen asleep.

When Phil finally leaves, she opens her eyes, and she sneaks from her bed so she could sit at her bedside table. Tallulah takes out her stationery and sets it on the table.

She is really tired, and she could only really write one more letter after such an eventful day. Who should she address this to?

Write to Phil about her favorite parts about today!

Write to Pomme about a potential sleepover!

Write to Phil about her favorite parts of that day!

Tallulah writes to Philza about her day.

She folds the letter, addresses it to Phil, and leaves it at her bedside. She tries not to have high expectations. It’s not unlikely that he won’t wake up today and see it. Tallulah knows better than to expect anything. Besides, it makes things sweeter, and more exciting.

Tallulah finds solace in her dreams. In her dreams, she can speak—her voice matching her papa’s. And more than that, she could sing. Tallulah would love to sing one day, like her papa. She wants to make music with more than just instruments.

In her dreams, her voice is one.

There is a gentle shake of her shoulders, one that is beyond her dreams. Tallulah wakes up, facing Phil.

Tallulah blinks and sits up. Tallulah grabs her signboard from the side of the bed on the floor, and she writes: Good morning abuelito!

“Good morning Tallulah!” Phil greets fondly. “Sleep well?”

She nods and writes on her board: I had a good dream! Tallulah only then remembers that she had a letter for Phil, so she turns to find it on the bedside table. She blinks, not finding it where she left it.

“That’s good, I’m glad you’re having good dreams.” Phil says, and he notices that she’s looking for something—the letter, he assumes. “I read your letter before you woke up,” Phil laughs, and he hands Tallulah another piece of paper. It’s a different type of paper, not a ripped up piece from a book like the time before. Tallulah takes it, and looks up at Phil. “Go ahead.”

Tallulah gently rips open the envelope, and she reads.

Tallulah looks up, and grins.

Phil looks equally as happy.

“Alright. First thing we have to do is wake Chayanne up, and get a few quests down,” Phil says, and he moves to the other side of the room where Chayanne’s bed is. Tallulah watches amusedly (and covers her ears) while Phil begins to yell at the top of his lungs, and still not seeming to bother Chayanne at all despite how Tallulah’s ears are already ringing. Tallulah giggles when Phil even jumps on top of the foot of Chayanne’s bed to disturb his sleep.

Finally, Chayanne groggily sits up, rubbing his eyes slowly as if Phil hadn’t been jumping all over the place and cawing to wake the kid up.

Tallulah sighs. She adores them, her family.

Eventually they do get through the quests—they’re pretty simple: Fishing in a place that the egg hasn’t been to before; eating a liquid food; farming potatoes (that had to be catered to Chayanne!); and singing a song together with the egg (is that… supposed to be targeted to her?).

At the end of the day, Tallulah got to visit her home so she could tend to her garden. The flowers in her backpack that are still fresh are planted in her garden, surrounded by the numerous poppy flowers.

When she’s in the middle of planting roses in the corner of her garden, something in the corner of her eyes flutters. It draws her attention, so Tallulah looks up from her garden.

Butterflies. They’re so pretty.

Tallulah watches them in awe as they flutter over the garden, and eventually over the garden’s fence. She looks at them, entranced. The wings are so pretty, much like the ones Tia Jaiden gave her before. These ones are prettier, though. Glittering, almost.

“Tallulah?” She snaps out of her daze, and she turns towards the voice that called to her. “Chayanne and I finished our corners of the garden. You need help with yours?” Phil asks, and this causes Tallulah to blink.

Right, the garden.

The roses are the last part of the garden that she has to do. She looks down, and is surprised to see that she isn’t where she was a moment ago. She frowns.

She writes on a sign, Almost done! Don’t worry! Tallulah tells him. She then hurries with her part of the garden so they could go home.

Before they do, Tallulah goes back into her room, and she adds to the shelf for her papa. An amapola for the chest, one for each day he’s been gone; a pressed petal between the last book of letters from him. She stares at the small shelf for a moment, eyes lingering on the dusty box where she used to put each letter she wrote for him .

She’d promised to write him something every day. Tallulah had been trying, but it feels…it feels lonely. Tallulah likes how things are now, likes the replies to her letters. Loves the attention. It fills that hole left behind in the silence of her papa’s letters.

But…

Tallulah pauses at the sight of the signs. Her signs to her papa, the ones he’d insisted she leave up (and then replaced when her papa renovated). Her gaze then shifts to the pictures, moments of love and joy frozen in time so cold it makes her heart ache.

She takes one frame, and places it in her inventory.

When Tallulah leaves—to go sleep in a windowless room filled with light and greenery and love—she leaves a bit sadder than how she’d arrived.

The night finally comes, and Tallulah is now being put to sleep alongside Chayanne. She’s just tucked in when Phil pulls out an envelope from his coat. “This is for you,” Phil tells her when she’s feeling a tad bit drowsy. “Read it when you wake up, okay?” He then leaves the envelope on her bedside table.

When Phil leaves, Tallulah sits up and reaches for the letter immediately.

She would love to… She really would. But she could spend that time writing to her dad again. Write small stories about her days in the book, for that shelf for him to return to i— when he returns. Tallulah can survive off the bare minimum. She could. She’s been alive for less, and happy with even just a bit. She could continue, with just a bit more waiting.

(She had to hang on to that hope, the light at the end of the tunnel. He’d promised , after all.)

What should she do?

Take up Phil’s offer to get out more and participate in things other than quests!

That feels unfair… maybe we should write to Wilbur again.

Tallulah watches with what she hopes is a neutral but happy expression as Chayanne and Phil prepare for the adventure. They’ve done their quests for today, and they’ve dropped Tallulah off in their bunker before preparing to leave again for a dungeon.

She doesn’t feel left behind. She did choose to do this. Tallulah has to be able to wait patiently, of course, and in the time that Chayanne and Phil would be outside and fighting monsters in the dungeon, Tallulah could be writing for her papa—just as she should have been.

The shelves that her papa made for her to fill aren’t full yet, and that’s her job right now—to fill them while she waits for him.

Despite that, however, she can’t find the words to fill the pages.

To Papa,

She knows the letter is short, but she doesn’t feel herself able to write any more than that without going insane. Tallulah has already decided to lock herself in the bunker to avoid people asking her about her papa all day long while Chayanne and Philza aren’t here, and each second spent writing him letters made her feel worse.

What if he’d stopped answering her letters because he…stopped caring?

Is this because she’d skipped out on writing a few letters to him? Is he mad at her?

A few days ago, she wouldn’t have even considered the possibility, but now…

People come by every day to ask about him, and he still didn’t respond. Tallulah wrote to him every day, and still, no answer. Maybe he found something more important than them. Something worth more than a poor little egg, even if said egg is was his ‘daughter’.

Thinking about it, there really was no other option she could see. Ever since the beginning, her ‘papa’ had been forced to play and interact with her just to keep her alive. He never actually cared, he just didn’t want Tallulah’s yolk on his hands. Even then, he’d left her alone for just about five days now, so maybe he never cared about that to begin with.

Tallulah wants to hold onto the hope that her papa Wilbur cared, but it is becoming more and more ridiculous to think so.

Frustrated by what she had just learnt and out of people to complain to, Tallulah does the only thing she could still do.

She writes.

Tallulah doesn’t know if anyone would receive this letter, or if Wilbur would even read it, but there is one thing she knows for sure.

She’d recognize this specific letter anywhere.

After all, rare were the few who would send a letter stained with water drops.

And day after day, she writes.

Letter by letter, word by word, tear after tear staining her papers, Tallulah realizes.

She’s well and truly alone now. She’d done this to herself.

Wilbur stopped caring long ago, that is, if he’d ever cared. She is now left behind, loving Wilbur like a father while also hating him for abandoning her, avoiding Phil’s affection like the plague because he would do the same—he already has a son.

Sometimes, she wishes she had a voice, if only to scream out her feelings instead of being bound to ink and paper.

Sometimes, she wishes she ran out of things to write on, if only to make her stop thinking about the ever growing feeling of loneliness in her heart.

And sometimes, on her darkest of days, she even finds herself wishing to have never been found in the adoption center’s attic. Maybe she wouldn’t have sought out the things that she wasn’t even supposed to ever have.

Still, she waits.

Because she is a good daughter.

BAD ENDING: FOREVER WAITING

Tallulah sits cross legged on her bed, rereading Phil’s latest letter to her. Chayanne is asleep on the bed next to hers and Phil had logged off, so it’s still just her alone in the house.

It would be quite interesting to tag along with Chayanne and Phil on their adventures. Tallulah reminds herself that there would be no losses if she does come. She has time. She’ll continue to have time. So she takes her stationery out, and begins writing a new letter to Phil.

Tallulah bites her lip, trying to think of something more to add to the letter, as it seems rather short. A bird hops outside the window; she watches it in slight wonder. Tallulah places her pen to her side when something weird happens with her vision. One moment the bird was hopping around in the window sill and the next it was on a different window sill.

Like it glitched out.

It reminds her of the last time she blinked and suddenly Chayanne and Phil were way ahead of her. It reminds her of the butterflies. It was like she was delayed… lagged a little. That was a little concerning.

She should probably add that to her letter to Phil—that something was wrong. But also what if it concerns Phil and he doesn’t let her come on their adventure like planned? She didn’t want to be excluded from the fun for something that might not even be anything serious.

If Tallulah doesn’t tell Phil and just fold the letter up for him to find, she could have fun in flower fields and dungeons with Chayanne. Tallulah won’t be holding anyone back. She could keep it a secret and deal with it without Phil. That way they all could have fun! Tallulah knows that Phil has the tendency to overcompensate. He would have them stuck in their rooms because of all the Code monsters if it weren’t for the quests.

She twirls her pen in between her fingers and decides.

Fold up the letter without addressing the newfound issues!

Write about the issues to Philza.

Tallulah pauses, and she breathes for a moment. She’s not selfish, right? For not wanting to be left behind? Tallulah looks at the letter, and she decides that maybe it’s for the better that she tells the truth. If anything happens, someone will get hurt. Tallulah doesn’t want that.

Tallulah signs off the letter and folds it before she can talk herself out of it and take it all back. She tucks herself into bed again, facing away from her bedside table so she doesn’t go to sleep looking at it. Why is she so scared of it? It’s nothing new, and it’s not a big deal if they go on adventures without her—it’d be for her sake, her safety if they decide to do that.

They just want her safe.

The thought of it, though, is as intimidating as the thought of dying. Tallulah forces herself to go to sleep, tries to shut down her thoughts.

It works.

She sleeps dreamlessly, that night.

When she wakes up, though, she finds that Phil is at the foot of her bed, reading the letter. Tallulah’s gut sinks at the realization. Is this it, then?

She’s being overdramatic. This isn’t a death sentence. This is her telling Phil that she might be a bit slow. That’s it. That’s all. Why is she so nervous?

She can’t help it, though. The way he’s frowning as he reads the papers—Tallulah can’t help but feel nervous.

When he finishes reading, Phil looks up to meet her scared gaze. He looks concerned, and worried, and everything that she’d expected him to look like.

“Tallulah,” Phil says softly, “We won’t leave you behind.” Those words alone lift the weight of the world off of Atlas’ hands. Tallulah only realizes that she’s been holding her breath when she finally breathes it out.

“Don’t worry, this would only change things slightly—thank you for telling me. It’s a good thing that you did.” Phil says. “If anything happens, then it means we’re prepared. That’s all it’s going to be.” She’d been afraid that he’d overcompensate, that he wouldn’t go to extra lengths to bring her along and keep her alive. Tallulah wouldn’t have put it past Phil to do that.

So she’s glad.

That day, when Tallulah, Chayanne, and Phil come out for adventures, they rendezvous with Fit and Ramon, BadBoyHalo and Dapper, as well as Forever at a dungeon. Tallulah really did feel the power of safety in numbers, with the rest of her siblings protecting her alongside the very intimidating group of very prepared parents.

Whenever she’d have the lapses, Tallulah would end up in the arms of someone who would carry her out of danger while someone else covered them. Tallulah had been worried that she would drag them down, but she witnesses Forever toss Ramon over his shoulder when a Nightmare Stalker came too close; and despite the way she shudders with the memory of their shared nightmare, she’s glad.

She’s not the only one babied and protected. She’s not singled out for being different, for lacking in a way the others don’t. She’s still loved and cherished and treated the same, not treated as lesser.

Tallulah, by the end of the day, doesn’t forget to thank those that came with them—who sheltered, and protected, and encouraged her.

Forever ruffles her hair. BBH and Dapper engulf her in a hug before they leave, and Ramon slings his arm over her shoulders in a half-hug before running off to follow his dad.

She, despite her fears, felt so happy that day.

NEXT: Arc 2

It had been a while since Tallulah was given any quests involving dungeons.

So really, she shouldn’t have been here in the first place.

But it had been a while since Tallulah had done any dungeons with her siblings—even her brother. And it wasn’t like she was scared to go with them. Abuelito and Chay were some of the strongest people she knew, and had already done so much to keep her safe. They’d trained her to defend herself. She could do it.

Even her usual insecurities couldn’t hold her back. Tallulah was determined to prove to herself that she was just as capable as the rest of her family. Determined to prove the loneliness eating away at her soul that she was not, in fact, alone.

So, how could she have turned them down?

(How could she have known what would happen next?)

She should have been afraid.

Today marks the third week since she’d been to a dungeon. She had finished her quests today, and she hadn’t felt like doing more than the quests. She didn’t need anything more than to survive. Tallulah, instead, decides to face the consequences of her actions– as she had been for the past three weeks religiously.

Tallulah is left at the top of the roof she lives in. While she had once been welcomed into it, she doesn’t feel like she belongs. It feels like she’s intruding, despite the fact that she’s been living in this space for longer than she remembers being in any other place.

She stands at the end of the potato farm that Chayanne absolutely loved to take care of.

Tallulah has been the one to take care of it in his stead.

At the end of the potato farm stands a solid surface. It’s made of terracotta, and pumpkins. There is a deflated flotation device at its surface, displayed and immortalized for anyone who would visit this edge of the wall.

Tallulah sinks to her knees, and like the past three weeks she recovers her stationery from her inventory and she places it flat on the surface before her.

And she writes a letter addressed to her brother who is six feet under the ground she is sat on.

She feels pathetic– she doesn’t deserve to feel this grief, does she? Not when she’s the reason that she’s writing to someone who would never read her letters again.

Still, selfishly, she indulges herself.

Tallulah clenches her fist. She should have said something.

She even thought to, but because she was selfish, because she didn’t want to be left behind, Chayanne is the one to pay for her actions. For her in action.

She remembers that day. She remembers how she’d frozen in one second, frozen in both the lag and the fear of the creature that towered threateningly over her. It wasn’t the only creature there. It was a mob of them– probably more than a dozen surrounding the both of them and Chayanne had been the one closest to her.

Tallulah had frozen, one second.

In the other, she is being shielded by a cold and lifeless body.

Chayanne had died for her.

Phil had witnessed his son die for her.

Tallulah hasn’t seen Phil in three weeks now.

BAD ENDING UNLOCKED: LAGGED OUT

There's an idea!

After rubbing some of the sleep from her eyes, an idea strikes Tallulah. With a bright smile she straightens up, excitement replacing her exhaustion from the day.

After she finishes the invitation, Tallulah doodles a few pictures in the margins of the stationery, and at the bottom a picture of her and Pomme holding hands. As a finishing touch, she tucks a dried flower into the envelope before sealing it. She places it on her bedside for her little messenger crow to deliver. Tomorrow the letter will arrive in Pomme's mailbox, and hopefully Pomme will write back.

With her letter completed, Tallulah lets out a yawn and crawls back under her blankets. It doesn't take long for her to fall asleep, and she drifts away listening to Chayanne's soft breaths from the other bed, a smile on her face.

When she wakes up the next morning, she's greeted enthusiastically by a crow on Philza's shoulder. In its beak is a slightly wrinkled envelope that it is really dedicated to holding.

Tallulah giggles when it flies away from Philza and flutters around her head. She reaches out a hand for it to land on, and she grins at the sight of it. 

It proudly presents to her a letter with an apple sticker stamped in the center.

Tallulah reads the letter with a smile. Pomme never fails to make her so happy. She's her best friend, after all, and they're much closer since only the three of them-- Tallulah, Leo, and Pomme, are the girls of the clutch of eggs. Tallulah looks up, and she sees Phil chatting with his crow who seemed to be ecstatic to be in the bunker. 

She's so excited!

N E X T!

When Tallulah wakes up the next morning Phil is kneeled next to her bed, gently shaking her shoulder. It takes a second for her to blink away the sleep, and when she finally sees how much the sun has risen she nearly jumps out of the blankets. It's well past the time they normally wake up in the morning, nearly noon! Had her letter writing kept her up so late she’d slept in? It must have been if Chayanne was awake before her.

There's no time to dilly dally if they're going to have enough time to explore and complete tasks today. The flowers filling her backpack from yesterday get carefully arranged around the house, leaving enough room in her pack to collect more treasures. A plate of breakfast is already waiting for her, and as quick as she can she scarfs it down much to Phil’s amusement. While Tallulah is busying herself with getting ready, Chayanne stands outside making faces at her through a window—as if that would help her go any faster!

One of the tasks for them to do is “Teach your egg a new skill”. Phil seems to know exactly what to do, smiling when the two ask what they'll be doing today.

“It's a surprise!” he grins, giving a cheeky wink. “I got the idea after yesterday, and we can kill two birds with one stone—having fun and taking care of a task!”

The three of them set out together, enjoying the warmth of the midday sun as they walk. Talluah passes the time by telling Phil about her idea for a sleepover with Pomme, and he contributes ideas for what they could do with each other to make it a special night. She’s so caught up in her excitement that Tallulah nearly runs right into Phil as he pauses suddenly in the middle of the path. His eyes are locked on his communicator, but when Tallulah tugs at his sleeve with concern his smile is as reassuring as ever.

“Give me just a second kids, gotta take care of something. Why don't you two go play while I do this?” he suggests, motioning to the dark oak forest that surrounds the path they've been on.

Chayanne wastes no time pulling out his sword and batting at one of the low hanging branches a few feet away, practicing his parry and riposte with careful concentration. With her brother occupied, Tallulah decides to venture a bit further off the path to find her own adventure. Parting bushes and branches in her way, she soon finds a small clearing illuminated by sun streaming through a gap in the foliage. It's the perfect place to pull out her flute and enjoy the breeze.

Sitting cross-legged in the soft grass, Tallulah bobs her head along with the happy tune she improvises. The sounds of the forest almost seem to hum in harmony with her, bird calls and rustling leaves weaving in and out with her melody. As her song comes to a close, a tickling sensation on her cheeks startles Tallulah from her music, her eyes fluttering open with surprise.

Perched on her flute is a butterfly, its wings just barely brushing her cheek. Just as her eyes focus on the little creature, its wings twitch, and it flutters off her flute into the air. Like a leaf in the wind it loops and flips just overhead, bright red wings the same color as her favorite poppies. With a giggle, Tallulah stretches out her fingers, watching the butterfly swoop around them until it comes to rest on a bush on the outskirts of the clearing.

She's just about to step closer for a better look when movement in the forest beyond catches her eye; there's a flash of movement, red and blue popping out against the green trees. Half tucked behind a tree is…

Pomme?

Why would Pomme be all the way out here, so far from her home? Tallulah opens her mouth to call out with a whistle that only she and her siblings could hear, but before she can say anything something in her stomach lurches—

And Pomme is gone, along with the butterfly that was there just seconds ago. In their place stands Chayanne, his face a wash of concern as he squeezes one of her hands. Once her eyes focus on him he places down a sign, scribbling down a quick message.

You okay? Dad was calling and you didn't answer, did something happen? he writes.

Tallullah just shakes her head and lets Chayanne lead her back to the path where Phil is waiting. She’d probably just imagined seeing Pomme after spending so much time thinking about their sleepover, and seeing the butterfly. If Pomme had been there, she would have come to say hi to Tallulah at the very least, right?

Putting Pomme to the back of her mind, Tallulah turns her attention towards the rest of the day with her family. Phil leads them out of the forest and through a long stretch of grassy plains, and it doesn't take long for their destination to come into view. Sunflowers dot the grass as far as the eye can see, painting the scenery bright yellow. Tallualah is immediately racing off through the field of blooms, filling her bag with as many sunflowers as she can fit. Phil guides her and Chayanne to the flowers with the most flexible stems, and once they each have an armful they take a seat on the grass.

With careful precision, Phil shows the two eggs how to weave the stems under each other until they form a tight garland. Once they're long enough that Phil seems satisfied, they weave the ends around into a circle, making the perfect sunflower crown. It takes a bit of practice for the motions to become familiar, but before long each of them sports a bright crown of blooms.

The sun is hanging low in the sky when Phil points out a familiar form in the distance, headed their way. Baghera approaches them with a tired smile and a wave, but her eyes reflect nothing but worry.

“Hello Phil, hello little ones,” Baghera greets. “I know it's a long shot, but have you seen Pomme anywhere? I haven't seen her since this morning, and I’m getting really concerned. It's just not like her, y’know?”

Tallulah shoots up at the mention of her friend, wiggling her fingers to get Baghera’s attention as she places a sign.

I saw her in the forest down the path a few hours ago, she writes. I thought I just imagined her, but maybe she was out exploring?

Baghera reads her sign with a thoughtful gaze. “But why would she… Thank you Tallulah, I really appreciate it.” She sighs, looking even more tired and worried somehow.

“Let me know when you find her, okay?” Phil says as Baghera turns to go. The two adults share one of those Grown Up Looks, the kind kids aren’t supposed to notice. It’s hard to not notice though, and it leaves a sick feeling in Tallulah's chest.

The walk back home is quiet, and her abuelo seems lost in his thoughts. They make it back just before darkness falls, but before Tallulah walks through the door she pauses.

What if Pomme isn't okay? She has her family of course, and they’re more than capable of taking care of her, but if something did happen… Well, if Tallulah was in that situation, she’d want to know her friends were there. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to see if there's any way to help. But what if helping gets in the way?

“Tallulah, sweetie?” Phil calls from inside, looking at her from the doorway. “Is everything okay?”

If she's going to do something, she has to decide now.

What should she do?

Leave this to the adults.

See if there's anything she could do to help

Convince Phil To Check.

“Tallulah?” Phil prompts gently, waiting for her response.

It's silly to think she could do anything when the adults are already taking care of it, and it's getting late— staying home is probably the best thing to do right now.

Tallulah follows her Abuelito into the house, and watches as he makes dinner for the two eggs. The rest of the night passes in a blur, and soon enough it's time for bed. Phil tucks the two of them in and turns out the light, but even as Chayanne drifts to sleep next to her, Tallulah remains wide awake staring into the darkness. All she can think about is Pomme—if something happened to her friend, if Baghera found the forest, or she’s still out there all alone in the night.

Did Tallulah make the right decision, or did she just make the easy one? The cowardly one? Is Pomme out there right now wondering why she didn't come help?

Why didn't she come?

BAD ENDING UNLOCKED: ALONE

Maybe she would write to Quackity. It’s been a while since she’s seen him, after all.

She reads over her letter one last time before nodding decisively and folding it up to send it off. Hopefully, he’d respond to her, and maybe they could spend some time together. Or, if she was really lucky, he’d tell her that her dad was on his way back to her. That would be wonderful.

The next morning, she wakes up safely in her bed and smiles. It was a good night’s rest, and she was excited to get started with her day! And maybe if she was lucky, she would get a letter from Tío Quackity sometime soon.

She walks over to her mailbox and pulls it open to reveal a response letter. Wow! Tío Quackity had never answered her this fast before. He must have some good news for her. Eager, she pulls it out and starts to read.

To Talullah,

Tallulah reads the letter but is confused. She's written to Tío Quackity before. This…doesn’t sound like him at all. It is weirdly formal, but maybe he was just tired? Or stressed? He did mention how he also hadn’t heard from papa, so maybe that was it. She isn’t sure, but she feels like she could talk to him again and try to get more answers. Or maybe she could talk to someone else? Helping Quackity would be nice, but she also deserves to rest and not worry about others all the time. Maybe if she wrote a letter to Phil, it would be more relaxing.

Relax and just write to Phil instead

Worry about Quackity, write to him again

Tallulah looks at the letter from Quackity again, rereading it. At a second glance, it sounds even stranger. Tío Quackity has never written to her like that before, and it was delivered to her really quickly. He usually takes a lot longer to send her a response. And he hadn’t really mentioned her dad that much. He did seem like he wanted to spend time with her, so maybe he was just feeling lonely?

Tallulah heads outside, still trying to figure out what could be going on. She wanders around, humming a song she remembers hearing. As she’s walking, she runs into her Abuelito and perks up. She runs up to him as fast as she can and does a little dance, which he laughs at.

“Tallulah! It’s good to see you. I was just about to head your way.” She nods and then quickly grabs a sign and writes on it before placing it down for Phil to read.

It’s a nice day so I decided to take a walk! And she wants to figure out what could be going on with Quackity. His letter was just so out of character, but maybe Abuelito knows more about things going on. He probably could give her some insight into the problem.

“It is pretty nice,” Phil agrees, and he extends a hand out for her to take. “Do you want to come with me and Chayanne for a walk today?” Tallulah grins and quickly takes his hand, ready to spend some time with her family and hopefully figure out what was going on with Quackity. She hums happily as she travels with Phil, the green scenery passing by and various animals wandering around. When she sees a butterfly, she tugs on Phil’s hand and points. He brings her closer to the insect, and the two of them watch it perch on a flower for a minute before it flies away.

When they get to where Chayanne is, he joins their little group and the two eggs happily kick a rock back and forth between them as Abuelito keeps a careful eye out for anything that might attack them. He seems to be guiding them towards a large flower field, which makes Tallulah happy. It’s so pretty! They spend time there together and Abuelito teaches her and Chayanne how to make flower crowns. Chay’s not very good at it, but she glows with happiness when he places his unwieldy crown on her head.

“Alright, Tallulah, let’s get you home,” Abuelito says after a few hours. Tallulah nods, then pauses and quickly pulls out a sign to write on.

Abuelito, do you know Tío Quackity’s favorite flower? I want to bring him one!

Phil’s face quickly falls flat, which makes Tallulah frown. “I want you to stay away from Quackity, Tallulah. He hasn’t been the same since he disappeared a few weeks ago. He’s a lot more…unstable. We need to keep you safe and sound, and I don’t know if he’ll be as devoted to that as I am.”

Tallulah frowns. She didn’t know that Tío Quackity had disappeared. Maybe that was why he sounded so strange in his letter?

Okay, Abuelito. But she slips an extra blue flower into her pocket anyway.

When she gets back to her house, she says goodbye and then quickly heads to her desk, where her letter writing materials sit. She sits down and begins to write to Tío Quackity.

Tallulah sends the letter off, making sure to place the flower she got inside the envelope.

The next day, Tallulah wakes up to see a new letter in her mailbox. She blinks at it, surprised. It’s from Tío Quackity again, and, curious, she tears it open. This one had come even faster than the previous letter had.

Tallulah frowns at the letter. Why was he asking so many questions? He sounded worried about her, but that was weird, because he hadn’t ever been so concerned before. And did he ever know about her lag? This seemed really weird, especially after knowing that he’d randomly disappeared for a while.

But she was curious.

Why did he want to know so much about her? Maybe he was trying to get to know her better. Maybe he wanted to form a relationship with her. He answered her questions, so if she answered his, they could get to know each other better! He did mention that her papa trusted him, so maybe he wanted to be worthy of that trust. She wouldn’t know unless she talked to him more—but there was still that nagging feeling of something a little off.

Tallulah sat for a second, trying to figure out what to do. Maybe there was someone who knew Tío Quackity better than her who could give her some more information? She paused for a minute, then thought about Richar. He was close to Tío Quackity, so maybe he would have some good insight! But who to write a letter to tonight?

Write a letter to Richarlyson to find out more about Quackity

Write a letter to Quackity to build a relationship

Tallulah bites her lip, considering her words carefully. She doesn’t want to offend Richar by making it sound like she doesn’t like one of his fathers, but some of the things Philza had mentioned had really made her nervous. She weighs her options—explain her full fears, or brush it off and continue on without worrying.

After a few moments, she sighs, putting her pen to the paper once more. She doesn’t need to pull Richarlyson into her anxieties. Certainly, he has enough to worry about without her adding to the pile, right?

Before she can worry too much about sending the letter, she folds it, creasing the edges of the paper so tightly that for a moment she worries about tearing it. If Richarlyson reads it in time, then so be it. If not, well…she can cross that bridge if she comes to it.

Luckily, Tallulah doesn’t have to be worried. She receives a response only a day or so later.

The letter doesn’t ease her fears. At all, in fact. Mostly, it just makes her sad. Had Quackity really gone missing, and been replaced with someone else? And did no one even seem to care? Didn’t he have friends? Weren’t there people that cared about him?

N E X T

The quests are in a nice, tidy list, ready to be checked off for the day! Abuelito takes Chayanne and Tallulah out, prepared to solve them all. They head out to spawn, the whooshing of the warpstone swirling around them as they land in the Favela.

They need to pick flowers, and so that's exactly what they're going to do.

Chayanne pulls out his sword, practicing some fighting moves as they walk along, headed for the nearest flower field. Philza just chuckles and shakes his head at him, keeping a closer eye on Tallulah, who stays a few steps behind. She's been looking for some specific flowers to fill out her garden, and if that can count for the task, then even better!

As she scans across the land, a larger movement catches her eye—almost more like a person than something blowing in the gentle breeze. Tallulah squints, and she can just make out the figure of Richarlyson from across the main square. With a grin, she pauses to wave, swinging both arms over her head in a wide arc to try and catch his attention. But he doesn’t seem to notice, fully focused on whatever it is that he’s intently staring at.

She stops waving, confused. What’s he staring at?

There’s a flicker of red in the corner of her vision, and Tallulah just barely manages to catch a glimpse of a butterfly, its wings fluttering as it flies behind a bush. She blinks, confused, but the butterfly is gone—and Richarlyson has vanished with it.

“ Tallulah! ”

Before she can decide whether or not to follow him, there’s a yell from up ahead. She glances over to see Abuelito motioning to her, Chayanne’s eyes glued to her every move. She isn’t sure how they got so far ahead…but she can make an educated guess. One of her “lag spikes” would certainly explain the weirdness she had seen with Richarlyson. Because there’s no reason for him to be out and about without one of his parents—he certainly seemed to have enough of them.

Biting her tongue, Tallulah nods to her family, quickly sprinting to catch up with them. Maybe she had just missed the other person during her lapse. Besides, it's a beautiful day outside, so if they happen to see any of Richar's parents, she can let them know and everything will be fine!

It’s not until they get to their last location for the day—a picture needed to be painted at the school—that the family comes across Tío Forever. The other man seems…frazzled, to say the least. His braid is coming undone, blond strands falling all around his face as he glances from side to side.

Abuelito greets him; the two exchange pleasantries. Tallulah puts down a sign.

Oi Tío Forever!! :D

Forever smiles, bending down to greet Tallulah and Chayanne before he stands back up to talk to Philza.

"You haven't seen Richas around, have you?" he asks. He looks worried. "He wandered off earlier and I haven't been able to find him since."

Philza blinks, shaking his head. "No, I haven't seen him today. He wasn't with you? Or Cellbit?"

While Tío Forever is responding, Tallulah hastily pulls out another sign, scribbling down her answer on it and then shaking one of her maracas to get his attention.

I saw him, Tío! He was heading south of the main square. But that was a few hours ago, now.

Tío Forever glances down, reading her words with a look of confusion on his face. "Ah…okay. Thank you, Tallulah!" He shrugs back up at Abuelito, nodding to him. "I'd better go check, then—talk to you later."

Philza nods, waving as the other man runs off, but Tallulah just watches, concerned. She had really believed that Richarlyson had been with a parent earlier, but now that it seems he had been out alone, her worries were growing.

Maybe when she gets back to the house, she can send him a letter. It wouldn't hurt anything, certainly—after all, the two of them haven't talked in a bit, and it would be nice to catch up with Richar. Then again, perhaps she's overthinking it, Tío Forever's concerns rubbing off on her. Or maybe Richar was trying to get some alone time, in which case pointing it out might be a bit…uncomfortable.

But then Chayanne is at her side, nudging her shoulder as he raises an eyebrow at her, silently asking if she's okay. She nods, glancing back towards the schoolhouse. The letter is a problem for when they get back to the house. Right now, she has a picture to paint.

Leave this to the adults

See if there's anything she could do to help.

Convince Phil To Help.

She didn't think it was that important. If Richarlyson had been trying to do something secret, then she certainly didn't want to spoil the surprise. Besides, it's not like he was attached at the hip to his parents—he could do things by himself as well!

Besides, it's getting late, and as she follows her Abuelito and Chayanne inside the house, her worries fall away, brushed aside at the thought of dinner and a story.

It's not until Phil has them both tucked in bed and the lights turned off that her concerns flood back full force. They hadn't heard back from Forever—though she supposes she shouldn't be surprised; he was always running around doing a million things. Maybe he had just gotten distracted.

Or maybe…maybe something had happened. Maybe the butterflies were bad, and Richar was trapped somewhere, needing help. There were a lot of dangerous things on the island—what if he had gotten into one?

Did Tallulah make the right decision, or did she just make the easy one? The cowardly one? Is Richarlyson out there right now wondering why she didn't come help?

Why didn't she come?

BAD ENDING UNLOCKED: ALONE

Tallulah looks at the letter and then nods. Her papá trusts Quackity enough that they’re friends, so she should do the same! Besides, it sounds like he’s really worried about her health and safety. It’s very nice of him to worry about her, so she should do her best to make him not feel so stressed. And maybe this way she can hang out with him in person again!

He’s probably super fun to do quests with. She hadn’t spoken to him as much as some of the other adults, but he seemed like a pretty funny guy when he was with his friends.

She heads over to her desk, still holding the letter he’d sent her. He had a lot of questions! It would be best if she references the letter to give as many answers as possible. And maybe she could find him a black-eyed Susan to put in the letter as well, so he could tell she was really thinking about him. She hummed for a second, and then looked outside. Maybe the flower field she went to with Abuelito would have some. She wasn’t entirely sure what they looked like, but there was probably someone around who would know.

Maybe she should go flower picking before she wrote her letter?

No, it would be better for her to write first, and then she could send another letter later with the flower she picked. She nods happily, then sits down and pulls out her paper and pen, writing quickly.

Tallulah folds the letter up and puts it in her mailbox before putting on her armor and getting her sword ready. Usually she wouldn’t gear up for a normal walk outside, but if Tío Quackity was worried about her safety, she could do her best to make sure that she was extra safe. She wanders her way over to the flower field and spends some time poking around, trying to figure out which ones are Black-Eyed Susans. There are some that she thinks might be the aforementioned flowers, so she picks them and gathers a variety. She figures that she’ll bring the different ones to someone else and ask if they knew which ones were the ones she wanted.

She considers who to bring the flowers to for a minute as she walks, when she bumps into someone. She makes a little “oof” noise as she drops a few of the flowers in her arms. She looks up to see Richarlyson, who is already busy picking up some of the flowers she had dropped. He hands them over to her and then places a sign down quickly.

Hey, Talluh! Picking flowers again?

Tallulah nods quickly, and places her own sign down. I’m trying to figure out which one of these is a Black-Eyed Susan. It’s for Tío Quackity.

Richar reads it quickly and places down another sign. Oh, I can help with that! Are you delivering these to him in person?

Tallulah shook her head. Abuelito says not to. I’m going to mail it to him! He told me it was his favorite.

Weird, the next sign says. I thought he liked sunflowers. Maybe he changed his mind? Tallulah frowns after reading it. That is strange. At her confused look, Richarlyson puts down another sign. Well, I can show you which one you’re looking for! Tía Jaiden knows a lot about flowers, so she’s taught me a little. I think it’s that big one right there.

He points to the flower, and Tallulah holds it up for confirmation. He nods, and she smiles. Thanks, Richar! Are you doing anything else today?

He shrugs. I might go bother one of my dads. One of them has to be around somewhere, right?

Well, you’ve got lots to choose from, that’s for sure! Good luck, Richar!

You too, Talluh!

They wave to each other before parting ways. Tallulah holds tightly onto the flower Richarlyson had pointed out, making sure that she doesn’t drop it. She makes it back to her house and carefully arranges it before pressing it down with some of the heavy items in her house. It makes a tilted tower, but Tallulah is pretty sure it’ll press nicely by tomorrow, when she can send another letter to Quackity.

The day passes by, and she’s about to head to bed when she hears voices outside her house. Curious, she peeks through the window and sees her Abuelito and Tío Quackity arguing. Abuelito is holding onto his sword tightly, and Tío Quackity is speaking quickly in Spanish.

“Quackity, what are you doing, hanging around Tallulah’s house?” Her Abuelito asks.

“I’m just getting the letter she sent me, old man. No need to be so defensive, it makes you seem…suspicious.”

“Oh, piss off, mate. You’re being weird as shit lately, it’s no wonder I’m a little suspicious of you. Just…get out of here.” Tallulah can barely see him sigh and relax his shoulders, gesturing for Quackity to leave. He does, slowly, and Tallulah can see the vague impression of her letter in his hands. A few seconds later, her Abuelito knocks on the door, and she lets him in.

“Hey, Tallulah. Sorry about the noise,” he says a little sheepishly. “You doing alright?”

She quickly pulls out a sign and writes on it, placing it before him. I’m fine. What was that about?

Abuelito shakes his head. “I saw him sneaking around outside, that’s all. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. Now, are you ready for bed?”

She nods and lets him lead her to bed. He tucks her in and she drifts off to the sound of his voice as he plays her one of papá’s songs.

The next morning, Tallulah wakes up quickly and darts over to her pile of things. She carefully pulls them off and picks up the Black-Eyed Susan. It’s nicely pressed, and she does a little happy dance as she picks it up. Perfect! Tío Quackity will love this. Well, she hopes he will. She holds onto it as she gets ready for the day, deciding to don the flower crown that her Abuelito had made for her. She also puts on some of her armor before peeking out into her mailbox. She sees a letter, but pauses. The envelope is made from thick, creamy paper with fancy lettering on the front. This wasn’t the handwriting of anyone she knew, that was for sure.

She carefully pulls it out and examines it, only to see that it’s labeled to her, written in professional script. The return address is the address of the court, but there’s no sender. Her heart pounding, she carefully opens it up and sits to read, the flower still in her hand.

Tallulah froze, her heart dropping into her stomach. What? A court case? For custody of her? This made no sense. Why would Quackity want custody over her? They’d barely interacted! She was just trying to get to know him better so they could be better friends, not to try and get him to adopt her!

She starts sprinting towards her Abuelito’s house, dropping the flower that she had meant to give to her Tío Quackity. It fell to the floor, landing softly next to one of the sunflowers she’d put in some water the day before. She didn’t notice, too busy running, but the differences between the two flowers were slight, but stark. A warning she hadn’t realized until now, when it was too late.

Tallulah arrived at her Abuelito’s door only minutes later, knocking furiously. He opened it, holding his own letter in hand. “Tallulah!” He said, sounding relieved. “There you are. Did you get a letter too?”

She nodded, and held it out to him. Abuelito picked it up and read through it for a minute, before letting out a sigh. “Mine is basically the same thing, except it’s accusing me of being a bad parent, saying that I abused you. And since it’s from the federation…” he trailed off, looking distressed. Tallulah fidgeted nervously. This was all her fault. She never should have written to Quackity. Her Abuelito paused, then looked at her.

“Tallulah, if you want to stay with Quackity, then that’s okay. I know I sometimes take you to dangerous places, so it’s okay if you would rather be with him. But I want to apologize if I ever made you feel unsafe. I love you a lot, and the last thing I wanted to do was to scare you. If I wasn’t a good caretaker, I’m so sorry.”

Tallulah pulled out a sign and wrote on it as fast as she could No! Abuelito, I love you so much. You make me feel safer than anyone else has, even my papá. I don’t want to stay with Quackity.

“This letter has some stuff that seems worrying,” he said, and Tallulah shook her head furiously.

He must be lying in the letter, or not putting the whole thing I wrote. I told him how safe I was with you.

Her Abuelito nodded, then ran a hand through his hair, obviously thinking. “I wouldn’t put it past him. He was being super weird last night, anyway, so it makes sense. Shit, I should have expected this.” He stared past her for a moment. “Now we have to figure out how to convince the judges that you need to stay with me.”

I want to stay with you, Abuelito! Surely that has to count for something. Tallulah placed her sign in front of him and watched as he read over it. He sighed again, running a hand over his face.

“I hope that counts for something, because he’s got a lot of evidence that is entirely taken out of context here. But if I know the federation…they’ll side with him.” He hands over the letter, and Tallulah skims through it. Mentions of their adventures together and Tallulah’s words taken from her letters and altered, are scattered throughout the letter. There are also several pictures of her covered in armor from the previous day, with a note that she was only going to pick flowers, so why did she seem like she felt unsafe? There were also several mentions of her papá trusting Quackity, even the one she had written down in her letter.

Tallulah felt like crying. How could he do this? She had trusted him with information about her, and he’d used it to tear her away from her Abuelito, the only family she had left. She couldn’t talk to her papá before the trial, and Abuelito looked worried. She had a bad feeling that this wouldn’t end well for her.

“Don’t worry, Tallulah,” Abuelito said, squatting down to her level. “We’ll figure this out. I won’t let you stay with him. You’re family, my granddaughter. I’m not gonna lose you that easily.” He seemed determined, but he quickly left to talk with the others on the island, explaining that he would need all the help he could get.

Tallulah sat down, and Chayanne sat next to her, nudging against her side comfortingly, not saying anything but just offering quiet companionship. They sat there together until others rushed in, talking loudly and making promises that Tallulah was worried they wouldn’t be able to keep. They swore she’d still be with her Abuelito the next day, but as she clung to Chayanne and Richar it seemed like more and more of a lost cause.

N E X T

“Order in the Court!”

The judge shouts from their dais, banging their gavel. Tallulah sits next to her Abuelito on one side of the court, her hands fidgeting in her lap as the voices around her die down. Her family and friends surround them; he’s happy to see them beside her, supporting her, with only a few of the other members of the island sitting further away. While she’s sat next to her Abuelito, Chayanne and Richar are on her other side, so very close. Chayanne is holding his sword, like he’ll attack anyone who tries to take her away.

It’s comforting, even if she knows that he probably won’t be able to do much against the Federation.

Because that’s who Quackity has called to his side. The Federation is running this case, rather than any of the other islanders, like cases in the past. Tallulah wishes it was like past cases, with everyone laughing and having fun even though it was serious.

This time, the courtroom is silent. Even Slime is quiet, which just feels wrong.

Tallulah is glad he’s sitting on her side of the court, though.

“We are gathered here today to discuss the custody case of Miss Tallulah Soot. The prosecution calls Mister Quackity forward to present his case against Mister Philza Minecraft. Mister Quackity, please step forward.”

Tallulah watches as Quackity takes the stand. He doesn’t have a lawyer in front of him, but he does have one or two people sitting beside him.

Quackity pulls open a folder of information, and she catches sight of her letters. He takes one out, and hands it to the judge. Tallulah knows that he’s edited her letters to make it seem like Abuelito wasn’t taking care of her, but seeing the differences between the two as it's projected up on a large screen for everyone to see is very strange. She knows she praised her Abuelito for protecting her, but this makes it seem like she’s been hurt a lot—like Abuelito doesn’t care about her at all, which is so stupid because she knows he does. Everyone who knows them knows he does. They know she would never say this mean stuff about him.

She fidgets with her hands as people read through the edited letter.

“Can the defendant provide us with a handwriting sample to prove that this letter is, in fact, written in Miss Soot’s hand?” The judge looks over to Abuelito and the others.

Tía Jaiden, her lawyer, nods.

“I have a letter that Tallulah wrote to me only a few days ago, Your Honor,” she answers, and produces the letter. Tallulah watches her hand it over, and the judge projects it up onscreen. It was easy to see that she’d written both of them; the jury starts muttering to one another about what it could mean. “However,” Jaiden continues, “if you’ll note in my letter, Tallulah clearly states that she is safe and enjoys spending time with her grandfather.”

Quackity clears his throat. “Your Honor, that information may be relevant later, however it is still my turn to present what I have seen.”

The judge nods to Quackity. “Sustained. Continue.”

Quackity pulls up the letter Tallulah had sent to him a few days ago. “Tallulah spoke to me about going flower-picking, even describing the field that she was taken to by Philza. This is what initially had me worried for her health. I know that several of the flower fields around here are near very dangerous individuals who have previously lost their eggs and proved that they would be willing to do anything to make everyone else feel the same pain as they did. Tallulah sent me flowers from the field and gave me the vague location of where it would be. This led me to see that it is the field nearest to the home of the notorious Egg Hunter, Slimecicle.”

An angry rumble erupts from Tallulah’s side. Slime jolts to his feet, ready to say something, but one of the others pulls him back down. “I’d never hurt Tallulah!” he shouts, and others started speaking as well, talking and shouting over one another.

The judge bangs their gavel.

“Order in the court!” they bark out. The courtroom quiets down, reluctantly. “Mister Quackity, what evidence do you have for this man being a dangerous criminal?”

“This man killed my child, my egg, Tilín,” Quackity sneers, and the court erupts into sound again.

Tallulah frowns. She didn’t know much about Tilín, because the other egg had passed before she’d been able to meet her, but she does know that Quackity and Slime had previously made up for what happened. Why would Quackity bring that back up? And why is he using his dead kid like a weapon?

“This is confirmed?” The judge asks, and Quackity nods. “Then he is a dangerous individual and should be removed from the court. Security, escort this man out.”

Slime is yanked from his seat by two Federation guards, shouting and struggling. Tallulah watched them easily pull him away without much trouble, even though Slime was kicking and yanking as hard as he could.

The doors slammed shut behind him with a ringing thud.

Tallulah sits nervously as the judge gives the time back to Quackity, who proceeds to slowly and systematically have all of the others surrounding her kicked out.

First it’s anyone who had lost an egg, which was unfair because many of them had lost their eggs by accident. The judge even requires Tía Jaiden to leave, which leaves her Abuelito without a lawyer entirely. Quackity had argued that they would have some sort of grudge against Tallulah and her Abuelito because he got to take care of two eggs, while they had none.

“They clearly do not have the best in mind for Tallulah, and as I promise to be a responsible parent, I can’t have them in the same space as her,” Quackity argues, and the judge sustains it.

Tallulah had known that this trial was going to be unfair from the beginning, but the clearly overt favoritism is still shocking. She holds tightly to Chayanne’s hand, hoping he would bring her strength. Richarlyson had picked up Chayanne’s sword and holds it tightly, like he would stab any guard who tries to approach them.

Quackity looks over at them and smiles. A chill runs down Tallulah’s spine.

That…isn’t normal.

“Honestly, I can’t believe that Philza would allow Tallulah to be around so many dangerous individuals. Only more proof that he’s unfit to parent or watch over her.”

Her Abuelito grits his teeth, and she feels him tense up from where she is sitting next to him. She pats his leg, hoping it will calm him down a little. He looks down at her, and he seems stressed, but still gives her a small smile.

Quackity continues to kick people out of the courtroom for any reason he could possibly come up with. The judge allows it every time, and eventually, only Phil, Tallulah, Chayanne, and Richar are left. Richar had refused to leave Tallulah, even when all of his many parents had been forced out of the courtroom.

“I would now like to petition the court to dismiss all children, save Tallulah. This is far too intense for any child to remain here, and to allow others in here would be just cruel.”

Quackity looks calm, but Tallulah can see the faintest hint of a smile on his face.

“Sustained,” the judge says, and the Federation guards approach the other eggs. Tallulah panics, grasping onto the other two with all her might.

No! She couldn’t lose them; they were the only thing keeping her together. She feels safer when she is with her family, and since everyone else has been kicked out, she needs them with her. And the guards look dangerous, not like they would take good care of the eggs.

(The irony is lost on her in the horror and terror of the moment—how the very government put in charge of deciding her fate has no sense of care for her and her siblings’ wellbeing.)

The guards approach anyway, even though her Abuelito is up on his feet and yelling, trying to get them to leave Chayanne and Richarlyson alone. Richar hands Chayanne his sword and pulls out his own. The two form a sort of guard around Tallulah, who can feel her hands shaking.

This isn’t what she wants! She wants her family to be safe , not threatened by Quackity or anyone else. But here they are, planning to face off against Federation guards.

“Chayanne,” Abuelito orders, “Put the sword down.”

He sounds…defeated.

Chayanne wavers for a second before pulling it up with more determination.

“Chayanne, Richarlyson. You have to go. Don’t hurt the guards. It’s easier for us to get Tallulah to stay with us if you don’t fight them.”

The other eggs exchange glances, before reluctantly lowering their swords. The guards take that as a sign, and they pull the eggs out. Tallulah watches them go, her heart weeping red tears of agony as they vanish from sight.

She has no one to hold her hand, and she feels like this might be the last time she sees them for a while.

Quackity waits until the door has been slammed shut, and then he looks towards the judge. “Now, I have a few more pieces of information. First is the case of her father, one Mister Wilbur Soot. He and I were supposed to be married, which Tallulah even notes in one letter. He has been absent for a while due to extenuating circumstances, but he trusted me. Tallulah wrote this down as well, and I have several different pieces of writing that confirm this information. Mister Soot trusted me, even with his child, Tallulah.”

That wasn’t true! Tallulah knew that much. She was there when her papa needed to say goodbye, and she knew that he had told her to stay with her Abuelito. He said nothing about Quackity! she wants to yell—but she can’t. Even if she tried to put down signs, she knows that won’t work; no one would read them, except maybe her Abuelito.

And all the other people who cared about her are gone .

“That is blatantly untrue,” her Abuelito says. “I have lots of communication between myself and Wilbur, my son , to prove that he entrusted me with Tallulah’s care— not Quackity.”

“Sit down, it’s not your turn to speak,” the judge admonishes.

But her Abuelito refuses.

“No. You’ve been obviously favoring Quackity this entire time. This is the least fair trial I’ve ever been to, and I’m allowed to express my thoughts and opinions!” He straightens up, and Tallulah watches as he turns from her fun-loving Abuelito into a force of nature. “Tallulah is meant to stay with me. Quackity has been lying this entire trial, presenting doctored letters and out-of-context information that he dragged out of a child . He manipulated Tallulah into saying those things, and doesn’t really care about her well-being.”

“I care more about her than you do, Philza! Who let her go adventuring into dangerous areas?”

“I put her in armor! I protected her! All you’ve done is sneak around her house and use her to get back at Wilbur for loving Tallulah after Tilín died!”

“You’re just slandering me now,” Quackity snaps. “Leave my kid out of this!”

“Then why did you bring her up?” Abuelito shouts.

Tallulah winces back, trying her best to block out the noise. She just wants to go home , to run around with Chayanne, to play her flute with Pomme. She wants to be anywhere other than here.

“You can’t use your child into an argument and then refuse to allow me to speak of her!”

“Order in the Court!” The judge shouts and bangs their gavel again. “If you do not calm down, Mister Minecraft, you will be found in contempt of court and lose your case. It is not your turn to speak!”

Abuelito clearly has a hard time biting back his tongue—but he does, somehow. Quackity nods to the judge with a smirk she hates . “Thank you, Your Honor. Now, I believe the evidence I’ve presented should be enough to convince the jury that I am the one who should rightfully be parenting Tallulah. I yield the floor to Philza.”

“Your Honor,” her Abuelito says, “I have never once hurt Tallulah. I have given her armor to protect her, I make sure that her daily quests get done, and I provide her with all the love and affection needed for her to grow.”

“Do you have any character references? Anyone to support these statements?”

This makes him pause. His eyebrows furrow. “Yes, they’re all outside the courtroom where you removed them.”

“Unfortunately, those people are no longer allowed in this court. If you cannot provide a character reference witness, then I cannot confirm your statement.”

Tallulah has rarely, if ever, wanted to be violent—not like Chayanne, or Ramon, or even Bobby. But she wants to pound her little weak fists into the judge’s face more than she can express, right now.

Of course the Federation would do this. And Quackity was the one who masterminded the entire operation, kicking out all of the people who would support her Abuelito.

She looked back to Quackity again. He was smiling broadly, clearly proud of what he’d managed to do.

Tallulah stands up on the bench and waves her hands. The judge looks at her. “Miss Soot, do you have something to say?”

She quickly started writing and placing down signs. I love my Abuelito. He has never hurt me, and he makes sure I’m kept safe. I trust him more than anyone else in this world. I don’t want to go with Quackity. He’s lied and he doesn’t really care about me that much. I want to stay with my Abuelito, Phil. Please let me stay with him.

The courtroom is quiet as everyone reads what she’s written. And then Quackity points at her. “I can’t believe this! Philza has obviously trained her to say this, so that he can keep her. This is clearly abuse! I demand that Tallulah stays with me!”

The shouting starts again, a dull roar in Tallulah’s ears even through her hearing aids. She ignores them and looks pleadingly at the judge, but he doesn’t meet her eyes.

“The jury will now adjourn to make their decision,” they say. “We will return once they have decided.”

“ I haven’t finished yet!” Her Abuelito shouts, but the entire jury leaves anyway, the judge following behind.

Abuelito, Tallulah writes, what are we going to do?

He drops heavily onto the bench, giving up on standing. He runs a hand through his hair again, his hat off and sitting in a crumpled heap beside him. “I don’t know, Tallulah. I just don’t know.”

And Tallulah knows what that means. She feels the first tear fall down her face as she gives her Abuelito a big hug.

They stay like that until the jury files back in, the judge behind them. She clings to his clothes as the judge announces that Quackity unanimously won the court case, and when the Federation guards come to pull him away from her, she cries out and holds onto him tighter, refusing to let go.

She can’t express her words, but in her head she’s screaming about not wanting to let go of him, not wanting to leave her family. How could they do this to her? All she wants is her family! That is it! Her papa, her Abuelito, her brother, all of them— any of them!

“Tallulah!” her Abuelito shouts as she’s pried off of him and handed over to Quackity. She’s full-on sobbing, kicking back at the man who now holds onto her. “We’ll get you back, I promise! Stay strong, I love you!”

He’s pulled out of the doors and Quackity turns her around to look at her face. “Don’t worry, Tallulah, everything will be just fine. We’re going to have a great time together.”

I hate you! I hate you so much, Quackity! She writes on a sign and furiously waves it in his face.

(Why had she once called him Mister Smiley ? Why had she ever trusted him?)

“Quackity? Oh, Tallulah, my name isn’t Quackity. Though I’m glad everyone else believed my little lie, it made it much easier to get a hold of you. Now, come on. I’ve got a new, entirely safe house for you, that you won’t be getting in or out of. And neither will anyone else.”

He smiles, and she freezes.

No.

No, no, no ! She doesn’t want to be locked away again, she can’t be stuck in the attic! She needs to see people, she needs the air and the community, she can’t get stuck in a musty old place alone !

Tallualh tries to kick away from this—this person , but isn’t strong enough to fight him off. He carts her away in arms of iron strength, the tears still streaming down her face.

Later, her Abuelito will attack Quackity’s home, only to not find Tallulah.

Later, ElQuackity will announce his plans to help the Federation take over, and he will threaten Tallulah to get the others to fall into line.

Later, Tallulah will write half-finished, unsent letters to her papa, her Abuelito, anyone . She hopes for any response, anything other than her thoughts. She wants someone, anyone else.

But no one comes.

But for now, she is crying.

And behind her, ElQuackity smiles.

BAD ENDING UNLOCKED: THE SMILE IN THE WATER

Tallulah woke up to perfect weather and pretty skies. Phil helped her get ready, packing things she would need in her backpack. Today, she was going flower picking with Pomme and Richar. She and her siblings have gotten closer since she’s started to open her heart more to the rest of the island. She’s fulfilling her mission to give her abundance of love to everyone in the island, and this no longer was exclusive to just one individual who she thought the world revolved around.

Abuelito was slightly concerned for her safety, but Tallulah reassured him and promised to make sure he knew exactly where they were going to be today. She reassured him of the fact that they would make sure to communicate somehow if anything goes odd.

Tío Cellbit arrived at their house with Richar, backpack in his hand, Baghera showing up with Pomme a little bit later. All three parents were clearly worried for the safety of the trio, even though all of the eggs had ended up okay after the attack, with no one hurt and the missing egg found safely. Tallulah could understand though, it had been pretty scary, but they’d taken care of the codes and were now safe and sound together. It didn’t stop the parents from hesitating to let the eggs go off on their own, though.

They all reassured the adults, promising that they were just going to go exploring in a flower valley that they had heard about and have a picnic. After many promises to stay safe they all began their adventure to the flower field. Tallulah skipped down the path, slightly ahead of both Pomme and Richar in case her lag required them to stop and assist her.

She barely lagged and was too excited to have a picnic with her friends to be too bothered by it. Tallulah liked the vibes of the server now, everyone was happy. She wasn’t lonely anymore. She had friends!! So many cool people to talk to and write letters to!!

All in all, Tallulah was having fun. She missed her papa but his absence wasn’t as crushingly lonely as it used to be. She hadn’t heard from him in ages but it was okay now! She had more people to write to like Pomme, Abuelito and many many other people.

It was fun. Tallulah was happy.

Abuelito Phil took her and Chayanne on tons of adventures, teaching them how to fight and how to have fun exploring. Sometimes they’d go with other people and other eggs, sometimes they’d go alone.

Tallulah cherished every memory she made on these trips. She sometimes would write letters to no one in particular, detailing her day. Those unaddressed letters stayed in a little special box on her dressing table. Like a diary in letter form.

She had sleepovers with Pomme and had play fights with Chayanne. Tallulah learned more songs on her flute, sitting underneath the trees in Abuelito’s garden playing her music. Sometimes Chayanne would join her, sometimes Abuelito. Sometimes she’d be alone.

Not lonely though. A comfortable sort of loneliness. Unlike the kind she used to feel. Just her, her music and nature.

Tallulah would wake up to letters from multiple people on her bedside drawer. It became a ritual for her to sit cross legged on the mattress, flipping through the letters to see who had sent what.

On one such day, with bright skies and chirping birds, Tallulah woke up to about five letters on her table. Phil greeted her good morning as she stretched, turning to pick up the letters.

She flipped through them, a letter from Pomme, Chayanne’s reply. She was only expecting four letters so the fifth was rather intriguing. The envelope was different from the others as well. She flipped it over to see a very familiar handwriting. Very familiar.

With shaking hands she opened the envelope, taking the letter out. Phil seemed to notice Tallulah’s shock, sitting at the foot of her bed with a mug of tea in his hands.

“Lulah?” he asked, concern clear in his voice, “what’s wrong?”

“It’s—” Tallulah let out a laugh of joy, rocking back and forth, “it’s from Papa! He’s finally written back! He’s sent me a letter!”

EMERGENCY ENDING UNLOCKED: ALL ROUND GOOD

(NOTE: we're going to be honest, we didn't think that we'd finish the things we got planned so we wrote this like 3 days before the deadline-- we ended up finishing the rest of the fic anyways... this ending is included now as an alternative ending)

NINHO ARC

It’s been a few weeks since Tallulah had decided to change the course of her days. She’d grown close to her extended family—her abuelito Philza and her “uncle” or her biological sibling, Chayanne. Not to mention, since she’d begun experimenting with this change, Tallulah had decided to be more…open to the idea that it’s not just one parent who could take care of her. 

Everyone on the island is so nice, and all of them are so caring. Tallulah thinks that it’s because having children makes everyone relate to one another, and she even believes that having the eggs be friends with each other eases the relationship between the inhabitants of the island. 

Which is why it’s so nice. It’s so wonderful. 

She feels…at ease, with everyone being so friendly and so welcoming to her. Her siblings actually feel like siblings. Tallulah, who has so much love to give, had decided to open her heart to her friends and family. And in return, they seem to be just as willing to open their hearts to her. 

The best word to describe it is…unity. It feels like the server is one, loving and caring for these eggs.

One example is the opening of NINHO, standing for NUNCA IREMOS NUNCA HUMILHAR OVOS. It’s a hotel for eggs, one that is impenetrable and protected. It’s designed by Forever and his son, Richarlyson, and supported by the rest of the community in order to give the eggs a unified safe haven in case they’re attacked.

Today is the day NINHO opens to the community, and Tallulah is lined up with the other eggs to enter the rooms assigned to each one of them. Tallulah is assigned to the room beside Chayanne, of course. 

She looks up at the tall building. It’s easily five stories tall, and it looks strong and steadfast. Tallulah, however, thinks that the prospect of a hotel is…terrifying. She already has two homes—one in the tower her papa left for her, and another in the bunker her father left her in the care of.

The idea of a third home is…nerve wracking. An irrational fear in her chest. 

NINHO has four floors. The first floor is the lobby, where the eggs are welcomed. There is a lock in the front door, and only selected individuals that Forever had set up himself could enter. The door module is similar to Phil’s bunker, where it can only be opened by people that the owner had input himself.

Her rampaging thoughts come to a halt when a hand curls around hers. Tallulah tears her gaze away from the hotel to look at her side, where she finds Chayanne watching her with a concerned expression. Tallulah softens at the sight. 

Chayanne has done this ever since he found out about her ‘lag spikes’, as they call it. Whenever Tallulah visibly freezes, Chayanne would take her hand and attempt to bring her back. If that fails, he makes sure he never leaves her. 

Tallulah smiles. She puts down a sign:

I’m okay, Chayanne.  

Chayanne reads it, and he turns at her to nod. 

Phil had taken his place at her other side, and he rests a comforting hand on her shoulder. Tallulah looks up to find he’s giving her a similar look. Tallulah rolls her eyes fondly, and she takes the hand that he put on her shoulder and holds it. 

This building—this building was made for her and her siblings. Tallulah remembers when Forever had come to her abuelito with the idea of it, talking to him in a voice full of mourning and determination. It had been after he’d witnessed how Tallulah had greeted death for the first time, when she’d lost the first life that had been allotted to her by the Federation. 

Tallulah remembers the lingering fear in Forever’s eyes when he’d come to her after she’d respawned. She remembers how that fear had never really disappeared, even now when he’s opening this safe haven—the ‘Nest’, as he’d called it.

She turns her head to look at him, talking to Badboyhalo in hushed tones. He looks…worried. Weary. 

All of the parents of the eggs are. She understands.

When it’s time to enter, Tallulah raises her hand to the waypoint. Before she gets teleported to her room, however, she glances at Phil first. 

She knew that he’d follow after she and Chayanne entered their respective rooms. Phil is like that, always behind them, watching their backs. Her heart warms at it. 

She trusts Phil.

When she gets in the hotel room, she sees… She sees the attic again . She takes a step back, looking at the vast but empty space. In the corner of the room is some sort of contraption, something that is always whirring and bubbling, and admittedly the contraption is the only thing reminding her that she’s not in the attic anymore.

Because there were no sounds in that attic. There were no contraptions, in that place, save for a glass trap door and a room without windows and a room without doors and there are no doors in this place. Tallulah steps back, and there’s the wall behind her. Tallulah whimpers at feeling it, reminded of when she’d huddled in the corner of her incubator for the slightest feeling of anything holding her—

She is snapped out of her panic when there’s the sound of the air swirling in her ears. Tallulah snaps her head towards the Waystone, and she finds a surprised Philza appearing before her. 

The sight of him, his presence in this empty room grounds her. Tallulah’s lip wobbles, and she reaches out so she could be held. 

It doesn’t take but a moment to be granted that.

And it takes even shorter for her to hear someone else appearing through the waystone and rushing to wrap his arms around her, too. Her big brother, Chayanne.

She sinks into her sibling’s and Abuelito’s embrace.

Thus begins the next arc of her life.

N E X T

The quests today are done, and Tallulah had assumed that she and Chayanne would be tucked into bed soon, considering Phil didn’t like it when they were outside for too long. Being outside meant that there was still a very real and very high chance that a Code would attack, and with both the children under his care having one life left, Phil knew better than to risk it. 

Today, however, they don’t head straight home. Instead, Tallulah and Chayanne follow Philza into the hotel.

“Alright, so we’ve had a few runs where we had to use this space, and to be fucking honest it looks really fucking depressing in here.” Phil says, and Chayanne, who had accompanied Tallulah into her room, snorts at Phil’s words. 

Depressing isn’t the word for this place. It’s traumatizing. It’s like the attic, but worse in a way.

(Both Phil and Chayanne know why. They know from Wilbur’s account the state he found her in.)

“We’re going to be decorating this place.” Phil tells them. Both Chayanne and Tallulah are excited at the prospect of it. Chayanne already has plans to line his space with pumpkins, and Tallulah wants to make it reminiscent of her bunker with Phil.

Because to be honest, while she feels at home in her house that Wilbur made, there is nowhere else she feels safer than in Philza’s bunker. 

Tallulah, left to her own devices, can decorate her room to her tastes. She places moss on the ground, and glowberries drape from the ceiling. There are flowers in pots and planted in small boxes scattered everywhere, nearly hiding the stasis machine except for their artful and careful arrangement to avoid interfering with such a precious device. 

In the process of decorating her room, Phil would come by every now and then to teach her how to reinforce it. The layers of building are reinforced by the owner of the egg’s room themself, and the permissions for breaking it rests solely in their hands as well. This makes sense, having the layers be protected by different individuals. 

It’s a good system, she thinks. 

Tallulah looks outside through the window, and she sees that Pomme is surrounded by her parents. It looks like maybe she hasn’t put in her enderpearl for the day. They appear to be having a good time.

“TELEPORT THE KIDS!” 

Tío Foolish’s yell is muffled by the glass between herself and the outside. Tallulah looks down and sees Baghera and Foolish looking up at the sky.

She yelps when the sky flickers, from morning to sunset, and she steps back from the window at the sight of it. Tallulah looks down again, finding that Pomme is still there, and the parents have surrounded NINHO. She steps back, and she watches the attack from afar. 

Tallulah moves into her corner, deeper into her hotel room, when she sees the Code Monster hovering and taking pictures of her room. She frowns, wondering what it plans to do.

Her room is secure, and the only person that could possibly break it is her. She is far away from the Code, and it can’t possibly hurt her from here. 

And a thought occurs to her when Pomme’s gaze keeps getting lured away. Tallulah could see it better if she’d inch closer, but she doesn’t have to really.

The eggs are the only ones who could break through the rooms.

What if they get lured away?

Tallulah looks down, and she sees that Pomme is gone now. She’s likely inside the building…but… 

There’s something that’s bothering her. Something about the hotel. Tallulah knows that this is impenetrable. After all, so many of her friends on the island had collaborated to make it, with Tío Forever spearheading the NINHO project. She trusts them with her life.

But Tallulah has this certain unfounded worry about this. So many what-ifs. It’s not like she’s in a hurry to tell anyone about it.

Who does she confide her worries to?

m e t a g a m e

Write to Phil about her worries

Confide worries in Wilbur

Address these issues through Forever

Tallulah couldn’t sleep. Everytime she closed her eyes, she could see the Code monster moments before it—before it killed her. 

She was afraid to sleep. She didn’t want to relive the experience again and again. So Tallulah let her mind wander elsewhere thinking about the other stuff happening that Abuelito had told her about. 

She remembered Tío Forever mentioning the additional security systems added in the NINHO. Tallulah recalled how Tío Forever was also there when the monster attacked her. She sat up in bed, the light beside her bed flickering as she pulled out a sheet of paper and a pen.

If Tallulah couldn’t sleep, then she’d write.

This seemed alright, so Tallulah folds the paper up with a satisfied hum, placing it in an envelope. She sets it on her bedside table, sleep suddenly pulling at her eyes. Stifling a yawn, Tallulah lies back down in bed. She hopes Tío Forever will reach out to her soon. Maybe his reassurance will settle her nerves.

—

Tallulah did not have to wait too long for a reply. The next evening she found a letter on her table from Tío Forever.

The letter doesn’t ease her worries much; certainly not as much as she hoped it would. What should she do next?

Write to Forever again

Write to BadBoyHalo about the concerns

    It had been a while since Tallulah heard from Tio Forever. She hoped he was doing all he could to fix the mistakes in NINHO. so that everyone would be secure and safe. Maybe she should write him another letter, just to make sure.

  She takes out a new sheet of paper, and starts to write.

  Tallulah sent the letter, hoping Tio Forever wasn’t too busy to take a look at her letter. She had to wait a couple or so days to receive a reply, an envelope from Tio Forever on her bedside table.

Well, Tio Forever seems to have it handled. Tallulah’s concerns were eased just a smidge by his reply. They all would be completely safe in the NINHO. No one would be lured out or anything. 

They all were completely safe. Tallulah felt slightly better about the whole thing now, with Tio Forever’s reassurance. All she could do now was ignore her paranoia and trust the adults.

Reveal Ending

Before she can worry too much more about it, she sets her pen to the side, folding up the piece of paper and heading outside. She tries to imagine locking her worries inside the note and sending them off to Bad. It doesn’t really work, but it at least calms her racing mind enough to let her go do the daily tasks without the added stress of worrying about the hotel. 

By the time she gets back to the house after a long day of fun, there’s already a letter waiting on top of her covers. She supposes she shouldn’t be that startled, considering Bad’s affinity for the kids on the island, but the quick response is a nice surprise. Tallulah grabs the note, carefully unfolding it to read the handwriting within.

The response makes her feel better, even if it's only a tiny bit. At least now she can rest easy as she folds the piece of paper back up, tucking it onto the nightstand alongside all her other letters and crawling under the covers. 

N E X T

Tallulah wakes up and looks at the letter from Bad again. She feels relief course through her body as she realizes that Tío Bad really had listened to her. She was so worried about NINHO, but now that he promised to take care of it—and with Dapper, nonetheless, she wasn’t quite as concerned. So she breathes for a minute, just basking in the relaxation she feels. She thinks it’s pretty nice not to feel so tense, and hopes that maybe she can keep feeling like this for a while.

Of course there’s an attack pretty soon after that because she can’t have a peaceful life. But Tallulah is with her Abuelito, and he sends her and Chayanne away to their safe rooms in NINHO. She sits there alone and watches as the code slinks around the building, peering into every window. When it gets to hers, she shrinks away, not wanting it to see her. It’s big, and it snaps pictures of her safe space. Her stomach twists, and she yanks on the blinds, covering her window from the code and blocking her view of the battle going on outside. 

It’s dark in the room now, but she had thought something like this might happen, so she runs to the pile of letters that she had stashed away in here. Most of them are from her papa, but there are letters from her Abuelito…and a few from her Tía and Tíos. She flips through them carefully, pulling out her favorites. There are some good ones from her papa that she likes to re-read. As she pulls them out, she spots the letter that Tío Bad had sent her, reassuring her of the safety of the hotel. She runs her hand over it lightly and smiles, before flipping past it to choose another one that her papa had sent. 

Later, her Abuelito comes in and gives her a picture book, telling her that it’s not quite safe outside yet. He makes a few adjustments to the room, reinforcing some of the areas he thought might be weaker. Then, he tells her he’ll be right back before leaving. Tallulah flips through the book, eyes widening in interest as she sees pictures of her papa. There are other pictures, ones of Tallulah and her friends, and those are also nice to look at. She hums a song as she flips through, but quiets when there’s a knock on the wall next to her.

That’s Chayanne’s room—could it be him knocking? Curiously, she turns and knocks as well. There’s another knock back. She knocks twice, and he repeats the pattern. She taps three times, then two. The knocker follows in her lead, and soon they have a fun rhythm going. When she thinks it’s been long enough, she gives one final knock before cautiously sticking her head out the door and scanning up and down the hallway for anything wrong. Nothing screams at her, and there are no more attacking noises, so she figures it’s safe to head into Chayanne’s room. A few steps later and she’s knocking on his door, two solid and three soft raps on the dark wood.

Chayanne lets her in, and the first thing she notices is the smell of food. Apparently, he’d been keeping himself busy and had made baked potatoes. Tallulah gladly takes one and bites into it. It’s surprisingly good for something he made in the safe house, but she should have expected that from him. He made some of the best food she’d ever tasted (she honestly preferred it to her Abuelito’s cooking sometimes…okay, most of the time. She loved the man but he wasn’t the best cook). 

You weren’t scared? Tallulah writes for Chayanne. The other egg reads it and shrugs.

Not really. I was more worried about how hungry I was. So I made these!

Tallulah shakes her head at him. Okay, Chay. I think you’re crazy.

And you’re still eating my potatoes, so I think I win this round. She hits him softly for that one.

When Abuelito appears in the doorway, he raises an eyebrow at the two eggs. Tallulah is full after downing two whole potatoes, but Chayanne is still cooking, looking like he’s ready to feed everyone on the island. “I see you two have been productive today,” he says with a roll of his eyes. Tallulah gives him a thumbs-up before clambering up from where she’s sitting. 

“Come on, it’s safe to be outside again.” Abuelito helps Chayanne pick up his many baked potatoes, before guiding them out to the open air. Tallulah is glad. The sunlight feels nice against her skin, and she thinks she can see a butterfly flitting away from the building. She does a little twirl and sees Tío Bad approach her, a smile on his face, Dapper by his side.

“Tallulah!” He said with a smile, and she gives him a little hop. “I just wanted to say thank you.”

Tallulah cocks her head curiously and pulls out a sign to write on it. What for?

“For asking us about the weaknesses here,” He said with a sheepish smile. “It really helped us figure out what we needed to fix in order to make NINHO stronger.” Bad turns his head pointedly towards Forever, an innocent expression on his face. “Isn’t that right, Forever?”

Her other Tío is standing behind Bad, looking sheepish. Tallulah wonders if he’s thinking about her letter to him. She’s glad she followed up through Bad. “Yeah. You really saved us and the other eggs. If we hadn’t looked into some of the stuff you suggested…” he gets a faraway look in his eye as he trails off. He shakes it off and continues to speak. “Well, let’s just say that things wouldn’t have ended as well as it did today. Instead the Code just got some information, rather than actually hurting any of you eggs.”

He drops down to her level, and he smiles apologetically at her. “I’m sorry for doubting you, Tallulah. You’re a real hero, Little Princess.” He extends a hand out to her, offering a shake.

Tallulah glances at it shortly before looking at him amusedly. Instead of taking the hand, she lunges forward and squeezes him tightly in a big hug that makes him laugh. He stands up and twirls her around before bringing her back in for another hug. 

“Group hug!” She hears Tío Bad say before Tío Forever lets out an ‘oof’ when two other bodies collide with his. She feels Tío Bad and hears her Abuelito, and when she looks down Dapper, Chayanne, and Richar are all around Forever’s feet, hugging him tightly. She lets out a laugh, and everyone else joins in as they separate. Tío Forever sets her down, and once she’s on the ground she sees Chayanne wave his sign rapidly in the air to get everyone’s attention. When everyone’s eyes are on him, he quickly places it down.

That’s enough feelings, come eat potatoes! We can have a party! The sign reads, and the other eggs jump up and down with excitement once they read it.

“A giant celebration for making it through the code attack, huh?” Tío Bad says, and he sounds like he’s entertaining the idea. “I like that. Come on, let’s go gather everyone else up so we can have a good time!”

The group starts walking together, the adults laughing and chatting while the eggs run around each other, trying to trip each other up. Tallulah watches Chayanne challenge Richarlyson to a race, and the two take off as fast as they can, with both Abuelito and Tío Forever shouting at them to be careful. Tallulah sticks next to Abuelito, and Dapper stays next to his dad. Abuelito smooths a hand over her hair and she looks up at him curiously.

“Sounds like you’re the hero today,” he says with a smile. “Can’t believe I’ve got such an impressive grandkid.” Tallulah gives him a big grin and pulls out a sign.

Learned it from you, Abuelito!

“Dork,” he says fondly, and then picks her up and places her on his shoulders. “Come on, if you’re up here I think we can beat both Chay and Richarlyson in a race.” He takes off, chasing after the other two eggs, and Tallulah can’t hide the laughter and smile that cross her face. Yes, maybe earlier had been scary, but now she was here, surrounded by her family. 

And there was nothing better than that.

GOOD ENDING UNLOCKED: PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE

Tallulah feels concerned. She doesn’t know what to do, and it feels like she has very little time between her time awake and her time in hibernation. She thought about writing to many people—her grandpa Phil is really wise, he’d know what to do but he’s got other priorities and she doesn’t want to bother him with the things she’s only suspecting .

She thought about the other adults—but they should be more concerned with the other children. Tallulah’s got her three days of quests cleared. They don’t. She’d understand if they wouldn’t investigate her concerns immediately.

Tallulah looks at her piece of paper, under the light of her lamp. She writes her letter.

 Tallulah frowns. Who is she kidding? She knows who she’s really writing to.

She grins at the piece of paper, folding it into a paper airplane. She turns in her chair, turning to face her brother who is about to fall asleep after their very tiring day. Tallulah throws her paper airplane, and she watches as it flies in the air, then glides all the way down smack at Chayanne’s head.

Chayanne, her big brother, flinches at the sudden sensation of something hitting him. He blinks his eyes open, and looks up at her, confused. Phil had just left them to their own devices, and he’s either asleep, grinding for materials, or hanging out with the other adults outside. The point is, she is alone with Chayanne and he, the strongest wielder of the ‘Dragon Magic’ as Abuelito likes to call it, is her big brother.

A big brother who is currently confused at what is happening. 

Tallulah points at his head where the paper airplane is stuck. 

The boy takes the piece of paper and unfolds it. He takes a moment to read through it, before he looks up at Tallulah with an unimpressed, deadpan expression. 

She looks at Chayanne, challenging him with her arms crossed. 

They continue this bout of staring for a considerably long time, before Chayanne folds. Of course he would. He’s used to being the oldest brother as well as the face of the Federation—being a subject of fear doesn’t give much opportunity to be a subject of challenge from his little sister. Which is why he is currently slumping at his defeat, glancing up at her to check if she’s folded even slightly. 

Chayanne sits up straight, and he snaps his fingers. Already she could feel a lightness in the air around them. Something that had been hanging on her shoulders had been torn off—reluctantly, but torn off. That's what's important.

He folds the paper again, and throws it at her for her to catch. Tallulah snatches it between her fingers.

She watches, satisfied, as Chayanne motions both palms at her as if placating her mockingly, and tucks himself back into bed for a good night’s rest.

And if things had gone according to her wishes, Tallulah would be safe from whatever threat NINHO had in store. 

She’s learned a few things from her grandfather, after all. Apparently ‘metagaming’ is a good piece of Philza’s influence.

SECRET END: Metagamer Family

When the attack ends, Tallulah and Chayanne and the rest of the eggs are sent back home accompanied by their parents. She and Chayanne had been tucked into bed for the night. Except, as always, Tallulah won’t sleep just yet. She has to do—rather, say something. 

She writes a letter addressed to Phil.

Tallulah finishes the letter. It took a bit to write—a bit of courage, too, because she keeps second guessing herself that maybe this is just the paranoia talking. Tallulah doesn’t know. 

Since she’d lost her first life, her thoughts had always been racing with what-ifs , although nothing ever happened. This could be one of those times. Her friends and family could be so easily tired of her as well. She doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want to scare them away. 

But Phil—she trusts Phil. She would never not trust him. He’s her Abuelito, after all. And he’s even more paranoid than her.

So Tallulah goes to sleep. 

When she wakes up, Phil is by her bedside reading her letter. She feels a sadness, a guilt, when she sees how his eyes are ringed dark and baggy, and he looks older than he should. Should she not have told him…?

She feels apprehensive. 

Phil, however, shatters that fear completely when he looks up and realizes that she’s awake. Tallulah can tell that Phil looks to be genuinely happy to see her. “Good morning Tallulah,” he greets in a soft voice, one that doesn’t ring her ears like it does when he wakes Chayanne up. “I read your letter, I think your worries aren’t unfounded so I think I could talk about it with Forever and the rest of the parents.”

“And for the letters, I’m sorry I don’t think I can write you one for this right now.” Phil tells her. “I’ll make sure to get back to you about it though, okay?”

Tallulah feels relief wash over her in waves. She smiles at him, and nods. He smiles back. “We wake up your brother then we do some quests, hm?”

She nods, and she slides off of her bed so she could prepare. She makes sure to turn her hearing aids down when he begins to shout for Chayanne to wake up, and she giggles at the sound of the chaos in the room. 

Still, she could see it. He’s tired, and he’s weary. It’s not the age, despite how much her papa likes to ridicule Phil for being older. It’s something else. 

So, while waiting for Chayanne to get ready, she writes on her sign and shows it to him. 

Are you alright?

“Yeah,” Phil replies after reading. “Why’d you ask?”

You look tired.

Phil blinks, and he laughs tiredly. “Yeah, sorry.” He tells her. “I am really tired. Was a bit sleepless, actually.”

She tilts her head, prompting him to elaborate. 

“Well, I had helped Forever and Etoiles out with their egg quests when you two wouldn’t wake up. The Code Entities attacked, and it wouldn’t leave us alone so we had to skip the quests for the day.” Phil then looks at Chayanne, who climbs up from the basement and looks curiously at the two of them. “Which is why we’re going to be doing the quests with the other parents and make sure it ends swiftly before anything bad happens.”

Tallulah nods, excited at the idea of doing quests alongside her siblings and her extended relatives. It’s always so fun when there are many people around. 

Still, there’s a reason for concern. 

What if something does happen?

Tallulah shakes her head. The hotel will be fine. It’s proven to be fine, especially since it’s been infallible for all the occasions that required the eggs to be evacuated. It gets them out of a situation quickly and swiftly, and already that’s a good thing.

And besides, there’s all the time in the world. Phil will do what needs to be done, and she trusts him that much. He’s never failed her before.

Tallulah and Chayanne then enter the hotel to place their ender pearls in the stasis chambers. Phil had double checked to make sure it was working. Tallulah, though, had some trouble placing the pearl into the chamber. It took a bit of effort, but she got it eventually.

The quests were easy that day; they were done eventually with no incidents. However, by the time Tallulah was nearly tucked into bed she hears the sound of the comms pinging everyone. 

She blinks, and she’s soaked in water. Tallulah grumbles, climbing out of the chamber to dry herself. 

Tallulah looks around, and she realizes that she’s in the hotel. 

The attacks have been getting more and more frequent as the days go by. She isn’t sure what it’s trying to do—well, she does know its goal, which is to wipe the island clean of herself and her siblings. At least, that’s what it seems. 

But what can she do?

She can’t do anything, and that in itself is scary. Phil is already on the case with some of her worries, so she doesn’t want to bother him anymore.

She could…always send a letter to Wilbur. Ask him for help, or at least a sliver of comfort while Phil and the rest of the parents who were present fight back the Codes. 

Or she could wait, and she could trust Phil on this matter.

Confide her worries in Wilbur

Wait for Philza

Tallulah trusts Phil with her life. She knows that he would do everything in his power to make sure that she’s well protected. And Tallulah knows that Phil is very powerful when he puts his mind to it. 

With that said, however, Tallulah still cannot help but worry. It’s an unstoppable force of her mind and a piece of her imagination that is exceedingly loud. It is nagging and bothersome. Phil, despite his ability to be prepared for anything and everything, is one comfort—but not the one Tallulah seeks right now. 

So she write to someone who would be able to comfort her in her time of need-- regardless of whether or not he would answer

Should she be honest? Honest in the fact that she couldn’t send him letters knowing that she would never know if they were read at all? 

She folds the letter, addressing it to Wilbur before she goes to bed that day. 

When she wakes up to Phil gently shaking her awake, and the letter is gone and likely having already been sent, she doesn’t find a letter addressed to her—just like all the times before. It’s not like she was expecting a letter back. She really wasn’t.

Still, it hurt, somewhat. She just wants to have her dad back in these moments where she feels so scared and frightened.

N E X T

Tallulah decides to write to Wilbur. She has all the time in the world for her worries, after all, so her mind is admittedly gnawing on them obsessively. She doesn’t know what to do, but it feels like she’d be screaming into the void for help.

The idea that she is sending these letters to her papa is helpful for her, though. Soothing, almost, now that there’s this chance that he might respond this time after a while had passed since she’s last sent him a letter. 

Should she be honest? Honest in the fact that she couldn’t send him letters knowing that she would never know if they were read at all? Tallulah is nervous, because while it’s true that her hopes aren’t high, she still does have that small sliver of hope at least.

She folds the letter, and she addresses it to Wilbur before she goes to bed that day. 

Tallulah doesn't bother with fully erasing her mistake. While there's a part of her that feels cruel and malicious for writing that and for leaving it there, she wants to be selfish. She thinks, ascetically, that if he should ever read this, he could at least know the extent of her desperation.

She just wants to be happy again.

She just wants to feel that same safety again as she had when he first found her.

When she wakes up to Phil gently shaking her awake, the letter gone (likely having already been sent), she doesn’t find another letter addressed to her– just like all the times before. It’s not like she was expecting a letter back. She really wasn’t.

Still, it stings , somewhat. She just wants to have her dad back in these moments where she feels so scared and frightened.

Tallulah just wants her papa during these times. Wants to hear him, hear of him at the very least.

Is that too greedy of her?

N E X T

It had been an ordinary day. Tallulah and Chayanne had been taking their time to do the quests. It was coming near to an end, actually, which was a fortunate thing because that day something was going to happen. 

The quests were rather simple, thankfully: Feed the child a food made of flowers (Chayanne had made a splendidly edible flower salad. She and Phil were very honest about the fact that they love him and his cooking); then press flowers into an album and submit it to the school (she and Chayanne had made a collage of their favorite flowers. She thinks that she’ll pass with flying colors); then have a little ocean adventure (Tallulah had some trouble looking for her turtle helmet, but Phil had given her an extra. He’s always so prepared); and finally, have the eggs tell bedtime stories to one another. 

Tallulah, following Chayanne and Philza, was having a good day with these easy quests. She could see a bit of the stress on her grandfather’s features lighten and brighten up—as slight as it is. The little girl is just happy that her Abuelito isn’t as stressed as he had been. 

Tallulah had known, after all, that Philza had been stressing a lot over the recent Code monster attacks. She’s happy that today’s quests were all so simple, so she’s not an extra burden to him.

She’s currently working on writing a story to tell Chayanne. She thinks she could write it inspired by a lost dream. Maybe it could be a story about flowers and butterflies and a turtle. Tallulah has a lot of stories running through her head. 

Not that she gets the opportunity to actually write them. 

When she looks up and finds that the sky has blinked from day to night, a looming figure in green and numbers rapidly approaching her, she tucks her book into her inventory and sits up straight.

Phil and Chayanne are faster to react. Chayanne pulls her to her feet and pushes her behind him, while Phil shields the both of them under his clipped wings and spams Ts on his communicator. 

Not a moment later, Tallulah is in a different place. She is soaked from the chamber, having just been teleported into the hotel. Tallulah climbs out of the water and gets to her things so she could start drying herself off. She’ll replace the enderpearl in a moment; her soaked clothes are more important at present.

Or not, because: 

She spots movement in the corner of her eyes. 

When she looks over to the window, a growing and dawning horror curls in her chest at the sight.

It’s difficult to make out details in the new-moon night, but one thing is clear: there is more than one Code hovering outside NINHO. Their shimmering poison-and-ink silhouettes gleam like the stars overhead that are blocked out by blurred movements and surprised shouts from the parents below. Tallulah’s eyes frantically search for her loved ones—Tío Forever desperately coordinating efforts, Tío Etoiles throwing himself wildly into the thickest fighting, Tío Bad howling at the creatures like a banshee let loose. Abuelito of course is nowhere in sight, not yet, left behind when his children were teleported to safety.

Despite the fear gripping her heart, Tallulah finds herself plastered to the window, hanging on to every movement. She has to know what’s going on; she can’t just sit in the corner like the attic and wait for this to be over like every other attack before. This is different— there’s more of them, unlike anything they’ve seen before, and all her worries she’d written off as paranoia are crowding her voiceless throat in an attempt to suffocate her with I was right and I told you so .

The eggs are all in their rooms, she tries to tell herself. Everything will be fine, she reassures herself. But it’s more difficult than ever to believe as she watches Tío Foolish take a harsh blow to his bare golden hide, as she’s reminded that she could break this wall and try to help if she wanted.

She doesn’t. Well, she does —because that’s her family down there, every tío and tía she’s spent days and weeks together with, slowly opening up her heart to in the absence of her papi (and by the Universe does she wish he were here, now, even if he couldn’t help in the fight because he’s too clumsy and warm to properly enact cold violence). But she knows she can’t help, not in any way that would truly make a difference to the fight itself; she can’t help any more than to stay safe and away from the things that wish for her and her siblings’ deaths.

(And while Phil might love Death, and Death has haunted their family’s steps since that very first nightmare, this is not natural , this is not what She wants for them, and Abuelito will do everything he can to carry out Her will.)

There is one way Tallulah can help, though.

She just catches sight of a butterfly fluttering past as she turns from the window, as she turns from Tío Roier reeling back with two Codes tag-teaming him, as she rushes to the waystone.

She can go to her siblings.

She can ensure no one does something stupid and makes all their parents’ efforts for nothing.

The air pops and fizzes as Tallulah selects Chayanne’s room. In the next second green and pink and purple give way to orange and yellow and the smell of dried herbs and fresh spices.

As predicted, he’s pressed up to the glass just like she was, sword in hand. He bangs his fist against the window in frustration as she hurries across the small room to him, then startles and turns to her when she grabs his sword-arm.

Tallulah can tell Chay doesn’t want to step away—rather, the opposite—but for her sake he lets her drag him back toward the sheltered corner with the stasis chamber. (He’s already replaced his pearl, she notes; she’s so proud of him, for his sharp mind and growing skills and big protective heart.

(But this is not something he’s strong enough for—not yet.)

She pulls out her notebook again; it’s faster than working with clumsy signs, with their limited size, especially in this small space. When she’s done scribbling her message, she shoves it into Chay’s hands.

We can’t go out there.

He gets this look on his face she can’t quite name, and he writes back:

But there’s so many of them. They need help.

If we do they’ll all just turn on us.

Chay wrinkles his nose in that way he does when he hates the logic but can’t deny it. The triumph she feels is stale and brittle, because Chay is only one of her siblings, and while he takes his protective role as the eldest the most seriously he also knows first-hand what happens if he jeopardizes that role.

We have to make sure the others don’t break their windows, she continues. We’re the only ones who can but that means if anyone figures it out they can leave and might get hurt :c

For a moment, Chay only stares at the page. Outside, the roar of the fight waxes and wanes, too many sounds to pick out individual struggles knocking at the double-thick glass.

Then, his face hardens. He nods, and Tallulah releases a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

That’s that taken care of, for now. They split up, Chayanne covering most of the older siblings and Tallulah visiting Pomme, Richar, and Leo. By the time they reconvene in Tallulah’s room, at least an hour has passed, and the fight is still raging outside.

Her siblings have agreed not to leave, but…they can’t keep an eye on everyone at all times. And the fact the fight is still wearing on—into a battle rather than a simple fight , now—well… 

Tallulah worries her lip between her teeth.

N E X T

It had been an ordinary day. Tallulah and Chayanne had been taking their time to do the quests. It was coming near to an end, actually, which was a fortunate thing because that day something was going to happen. 

The quests were rather simple, thankfully: Feed the child a food made of flowers (Chayanne had made a splendidly edible flower salad. She and Phil were very honest about the fact that they love him and his cooking); then press flowers into an album and submit it to the school (she and Chayanne had made a collage of their favorite flowers. She thinks that she’ll pass with flying colors); then have a little ocean adventure (Tallulah had some trouble looking for her turtle helmet, but Phil had given her an extra. He’s always so prepared); and finally, have the eggs tell bedtime stories to one another. 

Tallulah, following Chayanne and Philza, was having a good day with these easy quests. She could see a bit of the stress on her grandfather’s features lighten and brighten up—as slight as it is. The little girl is just happy that her Abuelito isn’t as stressed as he had been. 

Tallulah had known, after all, that Philza had been stressing a lot over the recent Code monster attacks. She’s happy that today’s quests were all so simple, so she’s not an extra burden to him.

She’s currently working on writing a story to tell Chayanne. She thinks she could write it inspired by a lost dream. Maybe it could be a story about flowers and butterflies and a turtle. Tallulah has a lot of stories running through her head. 

Not that she gets the opportunity to actually write them. 

When she looks up and finds that the sky has blinked from day to night, a looming figure in green and numbers rapidly approaching her, she tucks her book into her inventory and sits up straight.

Phil and Chayanne are faster to react. Chayanne pulls her to her feet and pushes her behind him, while Phil shields the both of them under his clipped wings and spams Ts on his communicator. 

Not a moment later, Tallulah is in a different place. She is soaked from the chamber, having just been teleported into the hotel. Tallulah climbs out of the water and gets to her things so she could start drying herself off. She’ll replace the enderpearl in a moment; her soaked clothes are more important at present.

Or not, because: 

She spots movement in the corner of her eyes. 

When she looks over to the window, a growing and dawning horror curls in her chest at the sight.

It’s difficult to make out details in the new-moon night, but one thing is clear: there is more than one Code hovering outside NINHO. Their shimmering poison-and-ink silhouettes gleam like the stars overhead that are blocked out by blurred movements and surprised shouts from the parents below. Tallulah’s eyes frantically search for her loved ones—Tío Forever desperately coordinating efforts, Tío Etoiles throwing himself wildly into the thickest fighting, Tío Bad howling at the creatures like a banshee let loose. Abuelito of course is nowhere in sight, not yet, left behind when his children were teleported to safety.

Despite the fear gripping her heart, Tallulah finds herself plastered to the window, hanging on to every movement. She has to know what’s going on; she can’t just sit in the corner like the attic and wait for this to be over like every other attack before. This is different— there’s more of them, unlike anything they’ve seen before, and all her worries she’d written off as paranoia are crowding her voiceless throat in an attempt to suffocate her with I was right and I told you so .

The eggs are all in their rooms, she tries to tell herself. Everything will be fine, she reassures herself. But it’s more difficult than ever to believe as she watches Tío Foolish take a harsh blow to his bare golden hide, as she’s reminded that she could break this wall and try to help if she wanted.

She doesn’t. Well, she does —because that’s her family down there, every tío and tía she’s spent days and weeks together with, slowly opening up her heart to in the absence of her papi (and by the Universe does she wish he were here, now, even if he couldn’t help in the fight because he’s too clumsy and warm to properly enact cold violence). But she knows she can’t help, not in any way that would truly make a difference to the fight itself; she can’t help any more than to stay safe and away from the things that wish for her and her siblings’ deaths.

(And while Phil might love Death, and Death has haunted their family’s steps since that very first nightmare, this is not natural , this is not what She wants for them, and Abuelito will do everything he can to carry out Her will.)

There is one way Tallulah can help, though.

She just catches sight of a butterfly fluttering past as she turns from the window, as she turns from Tío Roier reeling back with two Codes tag-teaming him, as she rushes to the waystone.

She can go to her siblings.

She can ensure no one does something stupid and makes all their parents’ efforts for nothing.

The air pops and fizzes as Tallulah selects Chayanne’s room. In the next second green and pink and purple give way to orange and yellow and the smell of dried herbs and fresh spices.

As predicted, he’s pressed up to the glass just like she was, sword in hand. He bangs his fist against the window in frustration as she hurries across the small room to him, then startles and turns to her when she grabs his sword-arm.

Tallulah can tell Chay doesn’t want to step away—rather, the opposite—but for her sake he lets her drag him back toward the sheltered corner with the stasis chamber. (He’s already replaced his pearl, she notes; she’s so proud of him, for his sharp mind and growing skills and big protective heart.

(But this is not something he’s strong enough for—not yet.)

She pulls out her notebook again; it’s faster than working with clumsy signs, with their limited size, especially in this small space. When she’s done scribbling her message, she shoves it into Chay’s hands.

We can’t go out there.

He gets this look on his face she can’t quite name, and he writes back:

But there’s so many of them. They need help.

If we do they’ll all just turn on us.

Chay wrinkles his nose in that way he does when he hates the logic but can’t deny it. The triumph she feels is stale and brittle, because Chay is only one of her siblings, and while he takes his protective role as the eldest the most seriously he also knows first-hand what happens if he jeopardizes that role.

We have to make sure the others don’t break their windows, she continues. We’re the only ones who can but that means if anyone figures it out they can leave and might get hurt :c

For a moment, Chay only stares at the page. Outside, the roar of the fight waxes and wanes, too many sounds to pick out individual struggles knocking at the double-thick glass.

Then, his face hardens. He nods, and Tallulah releases a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

That’s that taken care of, for now. They split up, Chayanne covering most of the older siblings and Tallulah visiting Pomme, Richar, and Leo. By the time they reconvene in Tallulah’s room, at least an hour has passed, and the fight is still raging outside.

Her siblings have agreed not to leave, but…they can’t keep an eye on everyone at all times. And the fact the fight is still wearing on—into a battle rather than a simple fight , now—well… 

Tallulah worries her lip between her teeth.

What does she do?

You need his comfort: write to Wilbur Again

You need his security: write to Philza

It had been an ordinary day. Tallulah and Chayanne had been taking their time to do the quests. It was coming near to an end, actually, which was a fortunate thing because that day something was going to happen. 

The quests were rather simple, thankfully: Feed the child a food made of flowers (Chayanne had made a splendidly edible flower salad. She and Phil were very honest about the fact that they love him and his cooking); then press flowers into an album and submit it to the school (she and Chayanne had made a collage of their favorite flowers. She thinks that she’ll pass with flying colors); then have a little ocean adventure (Tallulah had some trouble looking for her turtle helmet, but Phil had given her an extra. He’s always so prepared); and finally, have the eggs tell bedtime stories to one another. 

Tallulah, following Chayanne and Philza, was having a good day with these easy quests. She could see a bit of the stress on her grandfather’s features lighten and brighten up—as slight as it is. The little girl is just happy that her Abuelito isn’t as stressed as he had been. 

Tallulah had known, after all, that Philza had been stressing a lot over the recent Code monster attacks. She’s happy that today’s quests were all so simple, so she’s not an extra burden to him.

She’s currently working on writing a story to tell Chayanne. She thinks she could write it inspired by a lost dream. Maybe it could be a story about flowers and butterflies and a turtle. Tallulah has a lot of stories running through her head. 

Not that she gets the opportunity to actually write them. 

When she looks up and finds that the sky has blinked from day to night, a looming figure in green and numbers rapidly approaching her, she tucks her book into her inventory and sits up straight.

Phil and Chayanne are faster to react. Chayanne pulls her to her feet and pushes her behind him, while Phil shields the both of them under his clipped wings and spams Ts on his communicator. 

Not a moment later, Tallulah is in a different place. She is soaked from the chamber, having just been teleported into the hotel. Tallulah climbs out of the water and gets to her things so she could start drying herself off. She’ll replace the enderpearl in a moment; her soaked clothes are more important at present.

Or not, because: 

She spots movement in the corner of her eyes. 

When she looks over to the window, a growing and dawning horror curls in her chest at the sight.

It’s difficult to make out details in the new-moon night, but one thing is clear: there is more than one Code hovering outside NINHO. Their shimmering poison-and-ink silhouettes gleam like the stars overhead that are blocked out by blurred movements and surprised shouts from the parents below. Tallulah’s eyes frantically search for her loved ones—Tío Forever desperately coordinating efforts, Tío Etoiles throwing himself wildly into the thickest fighting, Tío Bad howling at the creatures like a banshee let loose. Abuelito of course is nowhere in sight, not yet, left behind when his children were teleported to safety.

Despite the fear gripping her heart, Tallulah finds herself plastered to the window, hanging on to every movement. She has to know what’s going on; she can’t just sit in the corner like the attic and wait for this to be over like every other attack before. This is different— there’s more of them, unlike anything they’ve seen before, and all her worries she’d written off as paranoia are crowding her voiceless throat in an attempt to suffocate her with I was right and I told you so .

The eggs are all in their rooms, she tries to tell herself. Everything will be fine, she reassures herself. But it’s more difficult than ever to believe as she watches Tío Foolish take a harsh blow to his bare golden hide, as she’s reminded that she could break this wall and try to help if she wanted.

She doesn’t. Well, she does —because that’s her family down there, every tío and tía she’s spent days and weeks together with, slowly opening up her heart to in the absence of her papi (and by the Universe does she wish he were here, now, even if he couldn’t help in the fight because he’s too clumsy and warm to properly enact cold violence). But she knows she can’t help, not in any way that would truly make a difference to the fight itself; she can’t help any more than to stay safe and away from the things that wish for her and her siblings’ deaths.

(And while Phil might love Death, and Death has haunted their family’s steps since that very first nightmare, this is not natural , this is not what She wants for them, and Abuelito will do everything he can to carry out Her will.)

There is one way Tallulah can help, though.

She just catches sight of a butterfly fluttering past as she turns from the window, as she turns from Tío Roier reeling back with two Codes tag-teaming him, as she rushes to the waystone.

She can go to her siblings.

She can ensure no one does something stupid and makes all their parents’ efforts for nothing.

The air pops and fizzes as Tallulah selects Chayanne’s room. In the next second green and pink and purple give way to orange and yellow and the smell of dried herbs and fresh spices.

As predicted, he’s pressed up to the glass just like she was, sword in hand. He bangs his fist against the window in frustration as she hurries across the small room to him, then startles and turns to her when she grabs his sword-arm.

Tallulah can tell Chay doesn’t want to step away—rather, the opposite—but for her sake he lets her drag him back toward the sheltered corner with the stasis chamber. (He’s already replaced his pearl, she notes; she’s so proud of him, for his sharp mind and growing skills and big protective heart.

(But this is not something he’s strong enough for—not yet.)

She pulls out her notebook again; it’s faster than working with clumsy signs, with their limited size, especially in this small space. When she’s done scribbling her message, she shoves it into Chay’s hands.

We can’t go out there.

He gets this look on his face she can’t quite name, and he writes back:

But there’s so many of them. They need help.

If we do they’ll all just turn on us.

Chay wrinkles his nose in that way he does when he hates the logic but can’t deny it. The triumph she feels is stale and brittle, because Chay is only one of her siblings, and while he takes his protective role as the eldest the most seriously he also knows first-hand what happens if he jeopardizes that role.

We have to make sure the others don’t break their windows, she continues. We’re the only ones who can but that means if anyone figures it out they can leave and might get hurt :c

For a moment, Chay only stares at the page. Outside, the roar of the fight waxes and wanes, too many sounds to pick out individual struggles knocking at the double-thick glass.

Then, his face hardens. He nods, and Tallulah releases a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

That’s that taken care of, for now. They split up, Chayanne covering most of the older siblings and Tallulah visiting Pomme, Richar, and Leo. By the time they reconvene in Tallulah’s room, at least an hour has passed, and the fight is still raging outside.

Her siblings have agreed not to leave, but…they can’t keep an eye on everyone at all times. And the fact the fight is still wearing on—into a battle rather than a simple fight , now—well… 

Tallulah worries her lip between her teeth.

What should she do?

You need his security: write to Philza

You need his comfort: write to Wilbur

It had been an ordinary day. Tallulah and Chayanne had been taking their time to do the quests. It was coming near to an end, actually, which was a fortunate thing because that day something was going to happen. 

The quests were rather simple, thankfully: Feed the child a food made of flowers (Chayanne had made a splendidly edible flower salad. She and Phil were very honest about the fact that they love him and his cooking); then press flowers into an album and submit it to the school (she and Chayanne had made a collage of their favorite flowers. She thinks that she’ll pass with flying colors); then have a little ocean adventure (Tallulah had some trouble looking for her turtle helmet, but Phil had given her an extra. He’s always so prepared); and finally, have the eggs tell bedtime stories to one another. 

Tallulah, following Chayanne and Philza, was having a good day with these easy quests. She could see a bit of the stress on her grandfather’s features lighten and brighten up—as slight as it is. The little girl is just happy that her Abuelito isn’t as stressed as he had been. 

Tallulah had known, after all, that Philza had been stressing a lot over the recent Code monster attacks. She’s happy that today’s quests were all so simple, so she’s not an extra burden to him.

She’s currently working on writing a story to tell Chayanne. She thinks she could write it inspired by a lost dream. Maybe it could be a story about flowers and butterflies and a turtle. Tallulah has a lot of stories running through her head. 

Not that she gets the opportunity to actually write them. 

When she looks up and finds that the sky has blinked from day to night, a looming figure in green and numbers rapidly approaching her, she tucks her book into her inventory and sits up straight.

Phil and Chayanne are faster to react. Chayanne pulls her to her feet and pushes her behind him, while Phil shields the both of them under his clipped wings and spams Ts on his communicator. 

Not a moment later, Tallulah is in a different place. She is soaked from the chamber, having just been teleported into the hotel. Tallulah climbs out of the water and gets to her things so she could start drying herself off. She’ll replace the enderpearl in a moment; her soaked clothes are more important at present.

Or not, because: 

She spots movement in the corner of her eyes. 

When she looks over to the window, a growing and dawning horror curls in her chest at the sight.

It’s difficult to make out details in the new-moon night, but one thing is clear: there is more than one Code hovering outside NINHO. Their shimmering poison-and-ink silhouettes gleam like the stars overhead that are blocked out by blurred movements and surprised shouts from the parents below. Tallulah’s eyes frantically search for her loved ones—Tío Forever desperately coordinating efforts, Tío Etoiles throwing himself wildly into the thickest fighting, Tío Bad howling at the creatures like a banshee let loose. Abuelito of course is nowhere in sight, not yet, left behind when his children were teleported to safety.

Despite the fear gripping her heart, Tallulah finds herself plastered to the window, hanging on to every movement. She has to know what’s going on; she can’t just sit in the corner like the attic and wait for this to be over like every other attack before. This is different— there’s more of them, unlike anything they’ve seen before, and all her worries she’d written off as paranoia are crowding her voiceless throat in an attempt to suffocate her with I was right and I told you so .

The eggs are all in their rooms, she tries to tell herself. Everything will be fine, she reassures herself. But it’s more difficult than ever to believe as she watches Tío Foolish take a harsh blow to his bare golden hide, as she’s reminded that she could break this wall and try to help if she wanted.

She doesn’t. Well, she does —because that’s her family down there, every tío and tía she’s spent days and weeks together with, slowly opening up her heart to in the absence of her papi (and by the Universe does she wish he were here, now, even if he couldn’t help in the fight because he’s too clumsy and warm to properly enact cold violence). But she knows she can’t help, not in any way that would truly make a difference to the fight itself; she can’t help any more than to stay safe and away from the things that wish for her and her siblings’ deaths.

(And while Phil might love Death, and Death has haunted their family’s steps since that very first nightmare, this is not natural , this is not what She wants for them, and Abuelito will do everything he can to carry out Her will.)

There is one way Tallulah can help, though.

She just catches sight of a butterfly fluttering past as she turns from the window, as she turns from Tío Roier reeling back with two Codes tag-teaming him, as she rushes to the waystone.

She can go to her siblings.

She can ensure no one does something stupid and makes all their parents’ efforts for nothing.

The air pops and fizzes as Tallulah selects Chayanne’s room. In the next second green and pink and purple give way to orange and yellow and the smell of dried herbs and fresh spices.

As predicted, he’s pressed up to the glass just like she was, sword in hand. He bangs his fist against the window in frustration as she hurries across the small room to him, then startles and turns to her when she grabs his sword-arm.

Tallulah can tell Chay doesn’t want to step away—rather, the opposite—but for her sake he lets her drag him back toward the sheltered corner with the stasis chamber. (He’s already replaced his pearl, she notes; she’s so proud of him, for his sharp mind and growing skills and big protective heart.

(But this is not something he’s strong enough for—not yet.)

She pulls out her notebook again; it’s faster than working with clumsy signs, with their limited size, especially in this small space. When she’s done scribbling her message, she shoves it into Chay’s hands.

We can’t go out there.

He gets this look on his face she can’t quite name, and he writes back:

But there’s so many of them. They need help.

If we do they’ll all just turn on us.

Chay wrinkles his nose in that way he does when he hates the logic but can’t deny it. The triumph she feels is stale and brittle, because Chay is only one of her siblings, and while he takes his protective role as the eldest the most seriously he also knows first-hand what happens if he jeopardizes that role.

We have to make sure the others don’t break their windows, she continues. We’re the only ones who can but that means if anyone figures it out they can leave and might get hurt :c

For a moment, Chay only stares at the page. Outside, the roar of the fight waxes and wanes, too many sounds to pick out individual struggles knocking at the double-thick glass.

Then, his face hardens. He nods, and Tallulah releases a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

That’s that taken care of, for now. They split up, Chayanne covering most of the older siblings and Tallulah visiting Pomme, Richar, and Leo. By the time they reconvene in Tallulah’s room, at least an hour has passed, and the fight is still raging outside.

Her siblings have agreed not to leave, but…they can’t keep an eye on everyone at all times. And the fact the fight is still wearing on—into a battle rather than a simple fight , now—well… 

Tallulah worries her lip between her teeth.

She hopes that Tio Forever does something about this, like she'd told him.

At the very least she hopes he remembers her words.

N E X T

She’s at the corner of her designated room, waiting for it to finally be over soon. When Tallulah takes yet another glance out the window, to see if it’s nearly over, she notes something in the distance. There’s a silhouette on the far side of the fight, not partaking but not approaching. They must be further away than she thinks, because they still look so tall even from here. There’s…there’s something slung over the person’s shoulder. It almost…

It almost looks like a guitar case.

Could it be? Surely it could be. It would make sense. He has always been there in her time of need. Tallulah always knew to trust him. She could always trust him.

Her dad. 

Papa .

Tallulah doesn’t think. She doesn’t have to, not when it comes to him. Wilbur Soot, her dad, is finally home, and he’s out there and she has to get to him and she has to make sure to greet him, to remind him that she’s still here! Papa! 

Between being in her room for a reason she barely remembers, and running out to meet him, Tallulah doesn’t quite think. What runs through in her head the entire time instead is that she wants to get to him. She misses him, so dearly. 

She could sing songs with him, and she could tell him about all her dreams while he was gone, about her beloved siblings and the way that she wrote letters to him! Tallulah could hug him again, and she could be happy again!

She doesn’t at all think of why she’s running. All she knows, in her haze, in the desperate fog that runs through her mind, that she needs to get to him . By any means.

When she finally holds his hand, it doesn’t occur to her how the world isn’t meant to look so blurry at the corners of her vision. It doesn’t occur to her that maybe the screaming and yelling of her name in the distance could have been something for her sake. Why would it be? Right here, holding her hand right now and looking at her with the kindest, most heartwarming smile that she has ever seen, is the subject of her happiness.

She is happy.

She is so happy.

So happy that it does not occur to her that maybe the smile was too big, or that the hand she was holding was not at all warm. That Wilbur Soot couldn’t possibly be this cold. 

So happy that she fails to notice the Code, the monster that took her first life, had appeared behind her and echoes that same presence as the thing taking the shape of her father.

So, very, incandescently happy that she fails to even feel the blade run through her.

She was so happy.

Reveal Ending

Tallulah paces around her room. She’s frightened. So frightened. She doesn’t know what to do. Still, she knows that she’s not supposed to do anything else. If she does, then she risks herself and she would risk the other eggs. 

She and the rest of her siblings have already been vigilant in making sure that no one gets lured out.

She walks closer to the window, making sure that she’s not too close to the windowsill. It’s chaos out there, and she doesn’t want any part of it. 

Tallulah returns to the corner of her room. She could do something, maybe. Do something helpful, but right now she knows that the most helpful thing she could be doing is nothing. That way she wouldn’t be distracting the adults in protecting the NINHO. 

So she waits, and she waits patiently.

N E X T

At some point, when Tallulah takes yet another glance out the window to see if it’s close to over yet, she notes something in the distance. There’s a silhouette on the far side of the fight, not partaking but not approaching. They must be further away than she thinks, because he looks a bit small in her vision. 

When Tallulah focuses slightly, seeing her sight zone in on that silhouette, she realizes that it’s a familiar figure. She could see a robe, and pitch black wings that are tapered down to his frame. She could even see the way that the feathers ruffle in the wind.

Tallulah feels…drawn. She looks at the sight before her and she recognizes him.

It’s Phil! Of course it’s Phil. She wrote him a letter! She’d never failed to write him letters.

Tallulah is practically stuck to the window with how close she tries to look at the figure. She could see him… waving her over?

Then if it’s Phil, surely she has to go. He’s always trying to protect her. It would make sense that he would want her by his side. There is nowhere in the world she feels safer than in Phil’s presence, after all. It would make sense. He has always been there in her time of need. Tallulah always knew to trust him. She could always trust him.

Tallulah doesn’t think. She doesn’t have to, not when it comes to him. Philza is always paranoid, and he’s always thinking for her and Chayanne’s sake. He must know something about the fight and the hotel she doesn’t—he said he would look into it, after all.

Between being in her room for a reason she barely remembers, and running out to meet him, Tallulah doesn’t quite think. What occurs in her head for the entire time is that she wants to get to him—she needs to get to him, if it means she wants to be safe. Because she trusts him more than anything in the world. 

Then, when she would reach his side, she would talk to him. When they’re talking, Tallulah could always know that she’s being listened to. He would always make sure to read her letters, and he tries his best to reply to them.

It makes sense that he’d asked her to come out. She wrote him a letter after all…

A…a letter.

It was a letter about the Hotel. 

She…wrote letters to Philza. She wrote letters to Philza, her grandfather, about keeping an eye on her to make sure that she never leaves the hotel unless it’s safe. She wrote about her concerns to him.

Tallulah pauses.

It’s too soon to be safe.

There’s a clear in the desperate haze that seemed to have taken control of her consciousness. The fog, one that wanted to leave her room and follow Philza, has cleared like a cold gust of wind blew it away.

She looks up, and realization sinks in. She’s not in her room, not in NINHO. She is, right now, beyond where she could be considered safe, and the other parents haven’t noticed—too busy fighting their own vicious battle for the safety of their children. 

Tallulah peers out into the distance, and she sees him again—her Abuelito. (Or was he really hers ?) In the back of her head she can hear a voice, her own, screaming to go to him—an irrational part of her that cannot wait. A part of her that doesn’t belong to her. 

Tallulah takes a step back.

The young girl watches Philza tilt his head, curiously. 

And she knows what’s wrong now. Her abuelito—who has done everything in his power to protect herself and her brother—does not look at her the way the person before her does. This is not the image of a parent; her parent is kind, blue eyes and a grin that splits his face and spreads to hers. The image of a parent is gentle words, and infectious cackle, and adoration in every line of his body when he looks at her.

This… thing looks nothing like what she’d imagine a parent should be.

This looks inhuman . 

This, right here before her, is danger .

Philza’s never looked at her like that.

As if realizing that she was no longer headed towards him, the stranger’s relaxed position stiffens. Tallulah steps back a pace, watching in horror as the figure’s skin cracks and sheds like a snake’s, revealing the deeper internal binary code that lines its skin. 

It bursts at the seams, and spills into the Code’s natural form.

Tallulah’s gut sinks, realizing that she doesn’t have a pearl prepared in the hotel.

She realizes that they’ve reinforced all the windows…but hers .

Tallulah is frozen in both fear and disconnection. She doesn’t dare look away from the Code, however, afraid that something irreparable would happen if she does.

Reveal Ending

She can’t move. She can’t move even an inch. 

Tallulah watches with widened eyes and a frozen stance as the Code inches closer to her, hovering and towering over her in a menacing manner. She looks up, and she feels chills at the surface of her arms at the sight.

It’s a familiar sight.

After all, this thing had been the one to take her first life. She fears a very realistic fear, where it would also be the one to take her second. 

It inches closer, and closer, and she’s stood stockstill as she tries to break out of her lag. 

Tallulah’s heart races in her chest as she keeps it in her sights. Her mind nudges her to reach for her sword and shield to defend herself like Phil and Chayanne had taught her. She doesn’t want to die.

She doesn’t want to die now .

Right when the sword materializes in the Code’s unseen hand, Tallulah hears the sound of something glass breaking right in front of her. 

There’s a plume of violent, violet particles that flood her vision for a split second– and everything freezes in her sights. That’s when she knows that the lag had fully taken her autonomy. 

There’s something holding her by the waist, and by the next time she blinks Tallulah’s field of view is completely different. The Code is no longer in her sights, and instead she’s facing the Hotel that’s all the way in the distance. 

She quickly turns her head to face whatever is holding her, and she feels the cold douse of relief flood over her and her senses. 

Tallulah is being cradled by Philza with one hand– she had always known she was small, but she realizes how small she is when she’s able to be held by Philza with one hand and defending her with the other. 

She takes a second to assess her surroundings. There is a gash on Philza’s cheek, and it’s bleeding. He looks haggard, and there is a lack of that playfulness in his expression that she would always see whenever he’s with Chayanne and herself. 

In its place, instead, is a murderous and serious expression. Tallulah would have feared it if she hadn’t known that it would never be targeted towards her. Never towards her.

Phil steps back, shifting his grip on the sword. Tallulah tilts her head so she could see more– there are two of the Codes, now, and she could see how one of them had been downed and the other had been trying to get the other up. 

Tallulah gasps when the Code gets up, and when it swallows a golden apple whole in the gaps of the binary. 

“Tallulah,” Philza whispers, and he sounds so relieved at the sight of Tallulah finally conscious. “Love, I need you to run when I put you down– can you do that?”

She feels fear grip at her heart when she hears his words. She reflects that fear by gripping tighter onto Phil, and hugging him. She doesn’t want to go. She doesn’t want to go far. 

It’s going to kill her if she does.

Phil steps backwards, backing away from the pair of Codes that are both inching closer towards the both of them. “Bad will meet you halfway, Tallulah. You have to run while I hold them back.”

Tallulah shakes her head, digging her head into the crook of his neck and . 

“Tallulah, do you trust me?”

She pushes away slightly– not so much that there’d be a separable distance between the both of them. She looks at him, and she sees his gaze remain shifty between herself and the Codes that are pointing their scythes at Phil. He grits his teeth– she could hear his frustration in the sound of his molars grinding against one another. There is a focus in his eyes, one that’s steady, each time he looks at the Code.

Only disturbed by her presence.

Tallulah swallows, and she nods her head. She does.

There is no one she trusts more than Phil. 

It’s why she was so quick to leave her room when she saw the illusion of him beckon her outside. She trusts Philza with her life and everything surrounding it.

“Then Tallulah, I need you to run, and I need you to trust me to keep you safe while you do. Can you do that?”

This time, she doesn’t let the fear envelop her rationality and her true stance. She nods her head. She can. She can always trust Phil.

“When I drop you, you start running and you don’t look back .”

She nods again, letting him know that she hears him. 

“Be ready.” Phil whispers.

He jogs backwards, his wings flapping to aid his balance while he flutters back to add speed to his walk. His grip loosens around Tallulah, and she makes sure to hold her breath to avoid the lag coming again. She prepares herself to run faster than she did before, when she’d lost her first life and when she’d had just as close encounters with death. 

In the next instant, Phil swings around, his wings flapping to hinder the sight of the Codes from seeing her, and he gives her a slight push forward towards the Hotel and towards Bad who is slinging himself forward to reach her quick. 

Tallulah runs.

Philza continues in a circle, and he takes the momentum to switch from a sword to his scythe as he swings his scythe to slash at the two Codes. He lets the sweeping edge bug take effect at the other Code as he targets the first, and immediately downs the other.

He lets his bloodlust for these fuckers take full control of him, confident in the fact that he could hold off both of them from the girl he sees as his daughter as she runs to safety. Phil swears to his goddess that he would be offering their binary entities on a silver platter for Her, and he feels her rage course through him while he fights to protect Tallulah.

They’ve already taken one life of hers.

He will never let them even touch her ever again.

N E X T

It’s been weeks since the event. The lapse in the architectural and engineering decisions made in NINHO has since been fixed by a collaboration of reinforcement of both the eggs and the parents. Since then, there has been no issues with the Hotel’s function and the number of Code attacks had since dwindled in frequency. 

Things are better now, than they were before. 

There’s only one more thing that has bothered Tallulah since yet another close encounter with death. One that this time, Phil had been able to prevent.

One night, a night that had been right after one of her days in her quests, Tallulah writes. She writes in a book and not on sheets of individual parchment– solely because this one might be too long for her to compile into one envelope. As she writes, Chayanne, her brother, is sleeping soundly and unaware of the fact that Tallulah is up despite not having to be awake. After all, both of them are already done with their quests.

It seems that with Phil, Tallulah is able to do more than just the quests.

She continues to the next page

She moves on to the next page.

Tallulah moves on to the next page of the paper.

She takes another page, and in the center she writes one line.

Tallulah thinks that she’s going to continue the rest of this conversation when she wakes up and Phil has already read this. 

Tallulah sleeps that night with hopes of an answer.

An answer that she will get, right when Phil reads her final letter as his granddaughter.

ENDING UNLOCKED: ANGEL'S DAUGHTER

Tallulah paces around in her room. She’s frightened. So frightened. She doesn’t know what to do. Still, she knows that she’s not supposed to do anything. If she does, then she risks herself and she would risk the other eggs. 

She and the rest of her siblings have already been vigilant in making sure that no one gets lured out.

She walks closer to the window, making sure that she’s not too close to the windowsill. It’s chaos out there, and she doesn’t want any part of it. 

Tallulah returns to her corner of her room. She could do something, maybe. Do something helpful, but right now she knows that the most helpful thing she could be doing is nothing. That way she wouldn’t be distracting the adults in protecting the NINHO. 

Doing nothing does, as one would expect, nothing for her nerves. So in her fear, and in her nervousness, she sits at the corner of her room and she pulls out her stationery from her inventory. 

Tallulah nervously tries her best to ignore the way the sounds of the fight outside ring through the foundation of the impenetrable hotel. She ignores how there’s shouting, and how in the distance she could hear Philza cursing at the Code. She tries to find relief in it, but there’s nothing but fear and anxiety.

She, with shaky hands, prepares to do the one thing that had comforted her in the absence of her most important person. 

Tallulah writes to Wilbur.

Should she be honest? Honest in the fact that she couldn’t send him letters knowing that she would never know if they were read at all? Is she being fair, now that she’s writing him a letter only when she needs him?

Tallulah scolds herself for her cruel thinking. It’s unfair. It’s unfair for her, and unfair to her father. Tallulah knows, inside, that her father cares for her. That he loves her, and he loves her as unconditionally as she loves him. 

She shouldn’t write like a prodigal daughter. She should be writing like a daughter who has waited patiently for her father to return, writing to a father who has yet to even give her a whisper of his return. She is right, and justified in her disdain for the fact that he hasn’t sent her a word after weeks without a reply to her last letter. She is also just as right and justified to miss him, and to want him here where she needs him all the same. 

So she writes her true emotions, and she spells out the turmoil in her heart in purple letters.

Tallulah moves to the second page.

She realizes belatedly that there are drops of water that have sunken into the parchment she’s writing on. Tallulah blows on the paper, trying to get the water to dry unnoticeably, but it stains in the ink and it makes it seep through.

The sight of it distresses her, and it causes more of that same water to spill from her eyes. She leans back, and Tallulah can’t stop it no matter how much she wipes it down. 

Tallulah folds the pieces of paper, and she puts it into an envelope. 

She sends it to Wilbur.

At the very least, she trusts, prays, that the letter would get to him.

N E X T

She’s at the corner of her designated room, waiting for it to finally be over soon. When Tallulah takes yet another glance out the window, to see if it’s close to over yet, she notes something in the distance. There’s a silhouette on the far side of the fight, not partaking but not approaching. They must be further away than she thinks, because they still look so tall even from here. There’s…there’s something slung over the person’s shoulder. It almost…

It almost looks like a guitar case.

Could it be? Surely it could be. It would make sense. He has always been there in her time of need. Tallulah always knew to trust him. She could always trust him.

Her dad. Papa.

Tallulah doesn’t think. She doesn’t have to, not when it comes to him. Wilbur Soot, her dad, is finally home, and he’s out there and she has to get to him and she has to make sure to greet him, to remind him that she’s still here! 

Papa! 

Between being in her room for a reason she barely remembers, and running out to meet him, Tallulah doesn’t quite think. All that’s in her head is a litany of get to him, go to him, greet him, hug him . She misses him, so so dearly. 

She could sing songs with him. She could tell him about all her dreams while he was gone, and about her beloved siblings and the way that she wrote letters to—

She wrote a letter to him. One. 

One that pleaded that he’d come back.

Suddenly, the desperation that once flooded in her chest and overwhelmed her in waves has been tainted with something else. Anger. Frustration. 

Now. 

Only now , she realizes—now that she’d poured her heart into one letter after having missed sixteen of them, has he returned?

Something bitter, something salty and angry wells in her chest, overflowing into the rest of her being and seeping into her mind.

And that bitterness and anger and frustration douses her with a cold realization.

What she’s seeing before her: This isn’t Wilbur. 

This isn’t her father. 

It’s too inhuman, despite wearing skin, and it’s too cold despite having warm brown eyes. 

There’s a clear in the desperate haze that seemed to have taken control of her consciousness. The fog, one that wanted to leave her room and reunite with her Papa, had cleared like a cold gust of wind had blown it away.

She looks up, and realization sinks in. She’s not in her room, not in NINHO. She is, right now, beyond where she could be considered safe, and the other parents haven’t noticed—too busy fighting their own vicious battle for the safety of their children.

Tallulah peers out into the distance, and she sees him again—her Papa. (Or was he really hers ?) In the back of her head she can hear a voice, her own, screaming to go to him—an irrational part of her that cannot wait. A part of her that doesn’t belong to her.

Tallulah takes a step back.

The young girl watches Wilbur tilt his head, curiously. 

It’s different. Something is different about this.

There’s something… inhuman , about the way he’s looking at her.

Tallulah realizes, with that same frustration, anger, saltiness and bitterness, that the creature before her is not her father.

This, right here before her, is danger .

As if realizing that she was no longer headed towards him, the stranger’s relaxed position stiffens. Tallulah steps back a pace, watching in horror as the figure’s skin cracks and sheds like a snake’s, revealing the deeper internal binary code that lines its skin. 

It bursts at the seams, and spills into the Code’s natural form.

Tallulah’s gut sinks, realizing that she doesn’t have a pearl prepared in the hotel.

She realizes that they’ve reinforced all the windows…but hers .

The young girl is frozen in fear. She’s gone too far away from the hotel and she’s certain that there is no one this far away from the hotel to save her—much less hear her. Not even her siblings would be able to hear the frequency of her screams.

So she takes a step back, and she prepares herself to fight.

Reveal Ending

Tallulah’s heart is racing in her chest. She is going to have to fight them off for long enough for her to go away. She’s wearing the toughest armor that anyone could afford, and enchanted to the point that she is practically glowing with the magic braided into the material of her armor.

She summons her scythe, and her shield. Both just as blessed with magic as her armor, and she replaces the headpiece on her hair with the strongest helmet she has in her inventory. She backs away, and she growls at the Code that is inching towards her. 

It manifests its own weapon in its invisible hands, and Tallulah feels both fear and anger welling in her small chest as she makes sure to keep an eye on every inch it moves. Tallulah bares her teeth at it.

She is brave. She is brave, and she is not ready to die, and she will fight for the life that she has because she wants to see her father and these monsters will not take that away from her.

Tallulah grips her scythe, and she could hear the sound of a ruckus from behind her but she doesn’t dare tear her gaze away from the Code that has been terrorizing her and her siblings’ existence on this island.

It lunges, and Tallulah dodges its attack in a crouch as she uses the momentum of her drop to swing her scythe at the Code.

Tallulah hits it across the middle of its body, but she could tell that it’s tough. She could feel the way her scythe fought against the surface of its body. The fight won’t be over in one hit on the Code’s end– she knows that, but she knows she could fight.

Tallulah is brave. 

Her papi had told her so.

So she holds up her scythe and fights.

The Code approaches her like a predator stalking its prey. Tallulah hoists up her shield and swings her scythe, victory filling her heart as the weapon makes its mark. 

  She knew how powerful the Code was, ducking and dodging from the weapon, and praying she would be able to get away from this. 

  Tallulah blocked a hit with her shield, the force of the hit sending her stumbling back. From behind the shield, she looked at the Code, its 01101110 numbers hovering threateningly. 

 It was going to kill her.

 Tallulah refuses to be killed.

So she charged, rage filling her body, rage at the fact that this entity has killed and terrorized her and her siblings. She attacked the Code with relentless anger, scythe making its mark on the entity again and again and again. 

After what felt like minutes– hours really– she swung at the Code with one last frustrated yell, the Code collapsing to the ground, unmoving. And Tallulah breathes, triumph filling her bones. 

Tallulah’s gut sinks as she processes the sight of another Binary Entity flying towards her. She’d downed one Code. She knows that the first thing it’d do is to try to revive it. 

She could run. Tallulah could run in this time– there’s a brief moment between the second Code reaching its ally and actually reviving it. Tallulah could run in that time.

But she doesn’t. Not when she could take one down forever.

She is tired, she is slow, and she could not fight another one.

So instead, she chooses to take it down with her. She will not allow herself to die so easily, and in vain.

She turns towards the Code on the ground, and she raises her scythe.

Tallulah swings down, and she hears the crackle of lightning as she’s taken the life of the Code. This is one less Code hovering around her family, her siblings. This is one less Code that will terrorize the lives of those she loves.

It’d be worth it, she thought, as she turns to face the second Code whose attention had shifted fully to killing her. 

She bares her teeth at it, snarling at it as she watches it approach her. Tallulah grips her scythe tight– the palms of her hands are slightly damp with sweat, and she makes sure not to let the handle slip from her hands. 

She is brave.

Wilbur Soot, her father, had told her so.

Yet in the moment of her focus she finds herself startled by the foreign sound of something like glass slamming down the surface in front of her and shattering. Tallulah steps back in alarm, as her vision of the Code ahead of her is obstructed by the sudden and violent plume of violet that floods her vision. 

In the blink of an eye, Tallulah looks up and she sees something yellow ahead of her, blocking the Code from getting to her fully. She sees the quick swing of something large slam against the Code and she hears the resulting sound of something shattering . Tallulah watches as the green binary surface of the Code splinters.

She holds her breath in disbelief, and she feels her grip on the handles of her scythe loosen as she witnesses the sight before her.

“Get the fuck away from my daughter.” Tallulah hears in a low and dangerous voice, a deathly whisper like a bard of Death has been angered. She could feel the anger of a god in the air as she takes a step back.

But she knows that this anger would never be directed towards her.

She trusts that it would never even inch close to her existence.

Because before her, wielding a guitar as a weapon against a creature that had killed her once, is the man who would never hurt her. Who had been everything good in her life.

Wilbur Soot stands between herself and a creature that promises Death and Ruin, and he stands strong against it.

 The Code freezes for a moment, taking in the newcomer with barely concealed surprise. Tallulah gapes at the man she was convinced she was never going to see again raise his guitar, his prized instrument, just to defend her.

A guitar wasn’t a very suitable weapon, or so Tallulah thought. She backed away slowly as Wilbur charged, fury blazing in his eyes, guitar slamming into the Code. 

The Code seemed to be surprised as well, its attacks slower than normal. She looked on in utter awe and shock as Wilbur bashed his guitar into the Code again and again until lightning crackled.

Wilbur stood above the fallen Code, ruined guitar in his hands breathing heavily as it slowly disappeared.

Tallulah feels herself flinch when she sees him turn abruptly towards her, that wide and frantic look in his eyes still present when he searches for her. It softens when he sees her, and it turns into concern when he notices how stiff and how frightened she looks at the sight of him. “Are you alright?” He asks.

She has to ask.

She has to ask, even if it could be a lie. 

Are you real? She writes quickly and shakily on her signboard, and Tallulah witnesses something flash in Wilbur’s eyes– it was gone too quick for her to realize what that look is.

Wilbur sinks to his knee, and he keeps his distance. Instead of reaching out to her, he is sorely and evidently relieved by the sight of his daughter alive and unharmed. 

“Tallulah,” the sound of her name had never sounded so wonderful on the tongue of anyone before now. She allows herself  to indulge in the sight of those warm, brown eyes. Allows herself to look at him– it’s him, it’s really him. “ Mi nina , you’re safe, darling. You’re safe, mi amapola .” Wilbur says, and she knows that it couldn’t be anyone but her father.

Tallulah’s eyes well with tears, and she lunges towards him in a hug. She takes him in an embrace, and she hugs him tight. “Sweetheart, my baby.” He says, voice muffled when he sinks his head in the brown curls of her hair. “You’re safe, my love. You’re safe, and you’re alive. And I will never leave you again.” Wilbur tells her.

She hugs him, grips to him tight and sinks into the comfort of his embrace. 

The young girl, the daughter of a man who loves her very dearly, had wailed in his embrace.

Yet despite the tears spilling into her cheeks and down her chin, she has never felt happier than now.

Finally. Finally .

She feels at home.

TRUE ENDING UNLOCKED: WELCOME HOME

When it’s all over, Wilbur and Philza have a talk. There are now two chairs at the feet of the children’s beds. 

The both of them watch over their kids, and they let themselves indulge in the sight of the person they love the most in the world. 

In this room are five people. All of them are family.

“I see that you’ve been praying.” Phil speaks up when he’s confident that both the kids are fast and sound asleep on their respective beds. “I could feel your Mother’s blessing all over you when you came back. It felt like She Herself was in this place.”

Wilbur leans back, still hugging himself on the blue chair that Phil had given to him for him to sit on while he watches his daughter. “There’s no better conduit for a Goddess than Her son– you may be Her husband but you don’t quite have Her blood.”

Phil grins, and he flutters his wings. “Well, I have Her love.”

“We both do.” Wilbur retorts amusedly. “And as for the prayer– Mom was the only one with me when I came here as soon as I could.” He tells Phil. “I prayed to Her for strength to protect Tallulah. Prayed for Her to bless Her granddaughter while I try to get back.”

Phil’s grin drops, and in its place is something serious. “I didn’t know that her letters reached you.” He tells Wilbur. “I didn’t think that you’d come back this time.” 

There’s something angry in his voice. 

Tallulah was, after all, Wilbur’s second child.

“It almost hadn’t.” The young man, the son of the Angel, laments. “I couldn’t get her letters, where I went. I didn’t know if my letters were even reaching her. The crows were disrupted– the ones I sent never came back.” He told Phil. “It was when I found the last crow, dead on my window with an opened envelope, when I thought that maybe, my daughter wasn’t sick of me– that there’s something else hindering her letters.”

He finally tears his gaze away from his daughter, and he looks at Phil with a miserable expression. “I had a feeling for months . I ignored it.” Wilbur says, emotion thick in his voice. “I should have come back sooner.” Wilbur mourns.

Phil is sympathetic, but he knows how Tallulah had felt. He was there to witness her wipe away her dried tears from her face when she’d wake up from her nightmares. Phil knows about her nightmares. She rarely has a good night’s sleep. 

Phil looks back towards his other son, his youngest. “You should have.” He agrees instead.

Tallulah paces around her room. She’s frightened. So frightened. She doesn’t know what to do. Still, she knows that she’s not supposed to do anything. If she does, then she risks herself and she would risk the other eggs. 

She and the rest of her siblings have already been vigilant in making sure that no one gets lured out.

She walks closer to the window, making sure that she’s not too close to the windowsill. It’s chaos out there, and she doesn’t want any part of it. 

Tallulah returns to her corner of her room. She could do something, maybe. Do something helpful, but right now she knows that the most helpful thing she could be doing is nothing. That way she wouldn’t be distracting the adults in protecting the NINHO. 

Doing nothing does, as one would expect, nothing for her nerves. So in her fear, and in her nervousness, she sits at the corner of her room and she pulls out her stationery from her inventory. 

Tallulah nervously tries her best to ignore the way the sounds of the fight outside ring through the foundation of the impenetrable hotel. She ignores how there’s shouting, and how in the distance she could hear Philza cursing at the Code. She tries to find relief in it, but there’s nothing but fear and anxiety.

She, with shaky hands, prepares to do the one thing that had comforted her in the absence of her most important person. 

Tallulah writes to Philza.

Tallulah frowns. She knows that she’s stalling. She just wants to lighten the mood.

Not that there’s a lot that this joke can do. Tallulah sighs, and she goes straight to the point.

She folds the letter, and she addresses it to Phil. She’s certain that it would reach him, and that despite him being unable to write a letter back to her, that he would read it.

He is a paranoid man, and she knows that she could trust in that fact at least.

N E X T

She’s at the corner of her designated room, waiting for it to finally be over soon. When Tallulah takes yet another glance out the window, to see if it’s close to over yet, she notes something in the distance. There’s a silhouette on the far side of the fight, not partaking but not approaching. They must be further away than she thinks, because they still look so tall even from here. There’s…there’s something slung over the person’s shoulder. It almost…

It almost looks like a guitar case.

Could it be? Surely it could be. It would make sense. He has always been there in her time of need. Tallulah always knew to trust him. She could always trust him.

Her dad. Papa.

Tallulah doesn’t think. She doesn’t have to, not when it comes to him. Wilbur Soot, her dad, is finally home, and he’s out there and she has to get to him and she has to make sure to greet him, to remind him that she’s still here! 

Papa! 

Between being in her room for a reason she barely remembers, and running out to meet him, Tallulah doesn’t quite think. What runs through her head instead is that she wants to get to him. She has to. 

She misses him, so dearly. 

She could sing songs with him, and tell him about all her dreams while he was gone, about her beloved siblings and the way that she wrote letters to—

She…wrote letters to Philza. 

She wrote letters to Philza, her grandfather, because she knew that Wilbur wouldn’t answer. Not anymore. 

Tallulah pauses. 

She hasn’t written to Wilbur in months .

There’s a clear in the desperate haze that seemed to have taken control of her consciousness. The fog, one that wanted her to leave her room and reunite with her Papa, had cleared like a cold gust of wind blew it away.

She looks up, and realization sinks in. She’s not in her room, not in NINHO. She is, right now, beyond where she could be considered safe, and the other parents haven’t noticed—too busy fighting their own vicious battle for the safety of their children.

Tallulah peers out into the distance, and she sees him again—her Papa. (Or was he really hers ?) In the back of her head she can hear a voice, her own, screaming to go to him—an irrational part of her that cannot wait. A part of her that doesn’t belong to her.

Tallulah takes a step back.

The young girl watches as Wilbur tilts his head, curiously. 

It’s different. Something is different about this.

There’s something… inhuman , about the way he’s looking at her.

And the thing is, she doesn’t know what. She doesn’t know her papa as well as she’d hope. She doesn’t know him as much as she knows Phil, her Abuelito, who has done everything in his power to protect herself and her brother. He doesn’t look at her the way the person before her does, staring like a doll on strings, like danger, like a predator . 

This looks nothing like what she’d imagine a parent should be.

This is not the image of a parent; her parent is kind, blue eyes and a grin that splits his face and spreads to hers. The image of a parent is gentle words, and infectious cackle, and adoration in every line of his body when he looks at her.

This… thing looks nothing like what she’d imagine a parent should be.

As if realizing that she was no longer headed towards him, the stranger’s relaxed position stiffens. Tallulah steps back a pace, watching in horror as the figure’s skin cracks and sheds like a snake’s, revealing the deeper internal binary code that lines its skin. 

It bursts at the seams, and spills into the Code’s natural form.

Tallulah’s gut sinks, realizing that she doesn’t have a pearl prepared in the hotel.

She realizes that they’ve reinforced all the windows…but hers .

She steps back, and the world before her pauses. She realizes that this was a lag– she is lagging right now, at the very moment when it’s more crucial than ever to run . 

Tallulah is frozen in both fear and disconnection. She doesn’t dare look away from the Code, however, afraid that something irreparable would happen if she does.

N E X T

She can’t move. She can’t move even an inch. 

Tallulah watches with widened eyes and a frozen stance as the Code inches closer to her, hovering and towering over her in a menacing manner. She looks up, and she feels chills at the surface of her arms at the sight.

It’s a familiar sight.

After all, this thing had been the one to take her first life. She fears a very realistic fear, where it would also be the one to take her second. 

It inches closer, and closer, and she’s stood stockstill as she tries to break out of her lag. 

Tallulah’s heart races in her chest as she keeps it in her sights. Her mind nudges her to reach for her sword and shield to defend herself like Phil and Chayanne had taught her. She doesn’t want to die.

She doesn’t want to die now .

Tallulah wants to see her dad again. She wants to talk to him again, hear his voice again, the very least.

She doesn’t want to leave.

Right when the sword materializes in the Code’s unseen hand, Tallulah hears the sound of something glass breaking right in front of her. 

There’s a plume of violent, violet particles that flood her vision for a split second– and everything freezes in her sights. That’s when she knows that the lag had fully taken her autonomy. 

When she comes to, there’s something holding her by the waist, and by the next time she blinks Tallulah’s field of view is completely different. The Code is no longer in her sights, and instead she’s facing the Hotel that’s all the way in the distance. 

She quickly turns her head to face whatever is holding her, and she feels the cold douse of relief flood over her and her senses. 

Tallulah is being cradled by Philza with one hand– she had always known she was small, but she realizes how small she is when she’s able to be held by Philza with one hand and defending her with the other. 

She takes a second to assess her surroundings. There is a gash on Philza’s cheek, and it’s bleeding. He looks haggard, and there is a lack of that playfulness in his expression that she would always see whenever he’s with Chayanne and herself. 

In its place, instead, is a murderous and serious expression. Tallulah would have feared it if she hadn’t known that it would never be targeted towards her. Never towards her.

Phil steps back, shifting his grip on the sword. Tallulah tilts her head so she could see more– there are two of the Codes, now, and she could see how one of them had been downed and the other had been trying to get the other up. 

Tallulah gasps when the Code gets up, and when it swallows a golden apple whole in the gaps of the binary. 

“Tallulah,” Philza whispers, and he sounds so relieved at the sight of Tallulah finally conscious. “Love, I need you to run when I put you down– can you do that?”

She feels fear grip at her heart when she hears his words. She reflects that fear by gripping tighter onto Phil, and hugging him. She doesn’t want to go. She doesn’t want to go far. 

It’s going to kill her if she does.

Phil steps backwards, backing away from the pair of Codes that are both inching closer towards the both of them. “Bad will meet you halfway, Tallulah. You have to run while I hold them back.”

Tallulah shakes her head, digging her head into the crook of his neck and . 

“Tallulah, do you trust me?”

She pushes away slightly– not so much that there’d be a separable distance between the both of them. She looks at him, and she sees his gaze remain shifty between herself and the Codes that are pointing their scythes at Phil. He grits his teeth– she could hear his frustration in the sound of his molars grinding against one another. There is a focus in his eyes, one that’s steady, each time he looks at the Code.

Only disturbed by her presence.

Tallulah swallows. She doesn’t answer.

“Tallulah–”

Despite her clinging, Tallulah ends up falling from Phil’s grasp anyways. She’s on the ground, having fallen from Philza’s hold, and she watches as Phil groans and clutches at the gash on his shoulder. The arm that held her is limp, and in his other hand is the sword.

She then figures that maybe she doesn’t have a choice but to run.

Phil looks up, and he looks at her with a frantic look in his eyes. “TALLULAH, RUN.” He yells at the top of his lungs, and she scrambles to get up from the ground. Tallulah breaks into a sprint, and she exerts all her efforts to getting away. 

Something snags at her leg, and she trips and falls to the ground. Tallulah screams at a frequency that only her siblings could possibly hear. She claws at the ground, and she could feel her fingers digging into the soil as she tries to fight against the pull of what must have been a lasso around her foot. 

Tallulah has tears welling in her eyes. She fights, and she tries to kick it away but it only succeeds in pulling her closer. 

She turns around, and she brings out her shield and her weapon from her inventory. There’s no escaping the pull on her leg.

Looming over her, menacingly, is the Code. It’s floating above the ground, and there’s a scythe in its grasp as it towers over Tallulah who is incapacitated on the ground. 

Tallulah snarls at the entity, and she shifts her eyes between it and where Philza should be. 

He is fighting the other one, and he is struggling with the injury in his arm. 

Her gut sinks at the sight, giving her a spare moment to let herself wallow in her regret. She should have listened. She should have trusted Phil. She should have done so many things . 

Right now, Tallulah prepares to fight for her life.

On the ground, with her weapon in her hand, she prepares to survive.

She bares her teeth at it, snarling at it as she watches it approach her. Tallulah grips her scythe tight– the palms of her hands are slightly damp with sweat, and she makes sure not to let the handle slip from her hands. 

She is brave.

Wilbur Soot, her father, had told her so.

She swings desperately at the Code, but it evades effortlessly, only moving slightly to avoid her sluggish attempt of an attack. The sword in its hand swings down, and it clangs against the shield in her hand when she blocks it. 

Tallulah reels against the impact, clanging and reverberating through the bones of her arm. She whimpers at its strength.

She’s scared.

She’s so scared.

Tallulah, still unprepared for its next swing, raises her shield again in a measly attempt to protect herself. She knows that it would hit her though.

So as it swings down its sword, Tallulah shuts her eyes.

Maybe it would ease the heftiness of death.

Yet in the moment of her fear, she finds herself startled by the foreign sound of something like glass slamming down the surface in front of her and shattering. She opens her eyes in alarm, and her vision of the Code ahead of her is obstructed by the sudden and violent plume of violet that floods her vision. 

In the blink of an eye, Tallulah looks up and she sees something yellow ahead of her, blocking the Code from getting to her fully. She sees the quick swing of something large slam against the Code and she hears the resulting sound of something shattering . Tallulah watches as the green binary surface of the Code splinters.

She holds her breath in disbelief, and she feels her shield loosen as she witnesses the sight before her.

Tallulah takes the chance of the loosened grip on the lasso and she pulls herself away a good distance from the fight. She pushes herself to a stand, but winces when she feels the strain of her foot ache at her bones where the rope tool had tugged her.

She whimpers at the pain, but she doesn’t ignore the scene before her.

At the achingly familiar silhouette of a man, with his back faced towards her.

As if to confirm her assumption, she hears him speak.

“Get the fuck away from my daughter.” Tallulah hears in a low and dangerous voice, a deathly whisper like a bard of Death has been angered. She could feel the anger of a god in the air as she takes a step back.

But she knows that this anger would never be directed towards her.

She trusts that it would never even inch close to her existence.

Because before her, wielding a guitar as a weapon against a creature that had killed her once, is the man who would never hurt her. Who had been everything good in her life.

Wilbur Soot stands between herself and a creature that promises Death and Ruin, and he stands strong against it.

 The Code freezes for a moment, taking in the newcomer. Tallulah gapes at the man she was convinced she was never going to see again raise his guitar, his prized instrument, just to defend her.

A guitar wasn’t a very suitable weapon, or so Tallulah thought. She backed away slowly as Wilbur charged, fury blazing in his eyes, guitar slamming into the Code. 

The Code seemed to be surprised as well, its attacks slower than normal. She looked on in utter awe and shock as Wilbur bashed his guitar into the Code again and again with so much rage . She never thought she’d ever see Wilbur so - angry. 

Lightning crackled and Tallulah saw Phil finish off the entity he was dealing with, and without any sort of regard to his injury, move to help Wilbur with the entity currently being beaten up with a guitar.

They struggled against it as Tallulah watches with bated breath. Lightning crackles once again as the Code lets out a screech, falling to the ground.

Wilbur stood above the fallen Code, ruined guitar in his hands breathing heavily as it slowly disappeared. Phil staggered back, clutching his injury. 

Tallulah feels herself flinch when she sees Wilbur turn abruptly towards her, that wide and frantic look in his eyes still present when he searches for her. It softens when he sees her, and it turns into concern when he notices how stiff and how frightened she looks at the sight of him. “Are you alright?” He asks.

And there’s something desperate in her heart that roars at the sight of his warm concern and panicked expression. The back of her mind doesn’t fail to doubt the integrity of his existence– she knows that this could be another illusion, but she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care, because that is her dad in front of her . She clings to that desperation, and she grips at it in tight fingers as she feels her eyes well with tears.

She shakes her head, and she breaks into a sob. 

Wilbur sinks to his knees, and he takes Tallulah into his embrace. She sinks into it, unafraid of the fact that maybe this isn’t real. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care one single bit. 

“Tallulah,” the sound of her name had never sounded so wonderful on the tongue of anyone before now. She allows herself  to indulge in the sight of those warm, brown eyes. Allows herself to look at him– it’s him, it’s really him. “ Mi nina , you’re safe, darling. You’re safe, mi amapola .” Wilbur says, and she knows that it couldn’t be anyone but her father.

Tallulah’s eyes well with tears, and she sinks deeper into the hug, and she clings to his existence just as she’d been clinging into the hope that he’d come back. She takes him in an embrace, and she hugs him tight. “Sweetheart, my baby.” He says, voice muffled when he sinks his head in the brown curls of her hair. “You’re safe, my love. You’re safe, and you’re alive. And I will never leave you again.” Wilbur tells her.

She hugs him, grips to him tight and sinks into the comfort of his embrace. 

The young girl, the daughter of a man who loves her very dearly, had wailed in his embrace.

Yet despite the tears spilling into her cheeks and down her chin, she has never felt happier than now.

Finally,

She’s happy.

GOOD ENDING UNLOCKED: HAPPILY EVER AFTER

Tallulah paces around in her room. She’s frightened. So frightened. She doesn’t know what to do. Still, she knows that she’s not supposed to do anything. If she does, then she risks herself and she would risk the other eggs. 

She and the rest of her siblings have already been vigilant in making sure that no one gets lured out.

She walks closer to the window, making sure that she’s not too close to the windowsill. It’s chaos out there, and she doesn’t want any part of it. 

Tallulah returns to her corner of her room. She could do something, maybe. Do something helpful, but right now she knows that the most helpful thing she could be doing is nothing. That way she wouldn’t be distracting the adults in protecting the NINHO. 

Doing nothing does, as you would expect, nothing for her nerves. So in her fear, and in her nervousness, she sits at the corner of her room and she pulls out her stationery from her inventory. 

Tallulah nervously tries her best to ignore the way the sounds of the fight outside rings through the foundation of the impenetrable hotel. She ignores how there’s shouting, and how in the distance she could hear Philza cursing at the Code. She tries to find relief in it, but there’s nothing but fear and anxiety.

She, with shaky hands, prepares to do the one thing that had comforted her in the absence of her most important person. 

Tallulah writes to Wilbur.

Should she be honest? Honest in the fact that she couldn’t send him letters knowing that she would never know if they were read at all? Is she being fair, now that she’s writing him a letter only when she’d needed him?

Tallulah scolds herself for her cruel thinking. It’s unfair. It’s unfair for her, and unfair for her father. Tallulah knows, inside, that her father cares for her. That he loves her, and he loves her as unconditionally as she loves him. 

She shouldn’t write like a prodigal daughter. She should be writing like a daughter who has waited patiently for her father to return, writing towards a father who has yet to even give her a whisper of his return. She is right, and justified in her disdain for the fact that he hasn’t sent her a word after weeks without a reply to her last letter. She is also just as right and justified to miss him, and to want him here where she needs him all the same. 

So she writes her true emotions, and she spells out the turmoil in her heart in purple letters.

Tallulah moves to the second page.

She realizes belatedly that there are drops of water that have sunken into the parchment she’s writing on. Tallulah blows on the paper, trying to get the water to dry unnoticeably, but it stains in the ink and it makes it seep through.

The sight of it distresses her, and it causes more of that same water to spill from her eyes. She leans back, and Tallulah can’t stop it no matter how much she wipes it down. 

Tallulah folds the pieces of paper, and she puts it into an envelope. 

She sends it to Wilbur—she trusts that at the very least, the letter would get to him.

At some point.

Eventually.

Her words, and her feelings—while she might one day perish, the words will be immortalized on her paper and in her handwriting, and the same tears that have leaked into the parchment will stay there forever like a stain. Her letters—it will be a stain on history, and a stain in his memories.

At least, she will get to tell him that she loves him.

N E X T

She’s at the corner of her designated room, waiting for it to finally be over. When Tallulah takes yet another glance out the window, to see if it’s close to finished yet, she notes something in the distance. There’s a silhouette on the far side of the fight, not partaking but not approaching. They must be further away than she thinks, because they still look so tall even from here. There’s…there’s something slung over the person’s shoulder. It almost…

It almost looks like a guitar case.

Could it be? Surely it could be. It would make sense. He has always been there in her time of need. Tallulah always knew to trust him. She could always trust him.

Her dad. 

Papa .

Tallulah doesn’t think. She doesn’t have to, not when it comes to him. Wilbur Soot, her dad, is finally home, and he’s out there and she has to get to him and she has to make sure to greet him, to remind him that she’s still here! 

Papa! 

Between being in her room for a reason she barely remembers, and running out to meet him, Tallulah doesn’t quite think. What runs on loop in her head the entire time she runs is that she wants to get to him. She misses him, so dearly. 

She could sing songs with him, and she could tell him about all her dreams while he was gone, and she could tell him about her beloved siblings and the way that she wrote letters to him! Tallulah could hug him again, and she could be happy again!

She doesn’t at all think of why she’s running. All she knows, in her haze, in the desperate fog that runs through her mind, is that she needs to get to him . By any means.

When she finally holds his hand, it doesn’t occur to her how the world isn’t meant to look so blurry at the corners of her vision. It doesn’t occur to her that maybe the screaming and yelling of her name in the distance could have been something for her sake. Why would it be? Right here, holding her hand right now and looking at her with the kindest, most heartwarming smile that she has ever seen, is the subject of her happiness.

She is happy.

She is so happy.

So happy that it does not occur to her that maybe the smile was too big, or that the hand she was holding was not at all warm. That Wilbur Soot couldn’t possibly be this cold. 

So happy that she fails to notice the Code, the monster that took her first life, had appeared behind her and echoes that same presence as the thing taking the shape of her father.

So, very, incandescently happy that she fails to even feel the blade run through her.

She was so happy.

N E X T

There's a thin layer of dust coating the shelf, and Wilbur slowly runs a finger through it. There’s something bittersweet, looking at the shelves that had once been well-taken care of. It’s abandoned, now, trading books and knicknacks for dust. The windows are sealed shut and there’s a small scattering of grime across the outside of the lower pane. Clearly, his daughter hadn't been in the room for a while, a few weeks at least. And yet, the flowers nearby still hadn't wilted.

He reaches out for the books.

These ones, he notices, aren’t as dusty. It wouldn’t have been. Wilbur had been reading through them repetitively and incessantly, bringing them down to the floor underneath this room and reading in what was supposed to be his room—with that yellow bed and chessboard that only appeared to have been played with on one occasion, judging by the thick layer of dust collected on its surface as similar as the shelf.

Yet, when he goes to take one from its rightful place, he pauses. He retracts his hand, and he lets it lie limp at his side. 

Wilbur steps back, until that familiar bed, the one that reaches below his knees, touches his calf. He sits, and he slowly lowers himself until the unused bed creaks.

It’s still fixed, the way it was left since the last time someone fixed it. It wasn’t him—he was sure. It was the owner of this bed that had made it, after all. It’s colored purple. Her favorite color. 

He looks at the room around him.

It’s abandoned.

He wonders, bitterly, if she felt the same.

Unable to bear being in this room for any longer than he had been in the previous days, Wilbur stands from the bed he’s sat on—makes sure to fix any creases before leaving it—and he exits the room. 

This time, he’s faced with a different sort of memory. It isn’t of the house—he barely has any memories of being in it. He’d left too soon for it to have much of any bearing on his life at all. Instead, it’s somewhere outside. This, he remembers, was much more of a home for Tallulah than the house.

He remembers her letters.

He’d read every single one of them.

He remembers her talking about the tree. The one that he’d cut down. It was a gift from Bobby for Tallulah. Wilbur remembers her lamenting about having to cut it down—thought that maybe if she hadn’t, she’d have one remnant of her brother at least.

Wilbur sees nothing but grass and poppy flowers in its place.

Further, along the river, is a bank full of sand that he’d placed there. There are cacti on it—he remembers that. Tallulah had been updating him about those cacti. Said she loved them, but she didn’t quite like how it would prick her at any opportunity.

And even further, in the best part of her garden where Tallulah spent most of her time when he was last here, is the patch of flowers. The flora have bloomed, and it never seems to stop blooming. The petals are so colorful, vibrant in all the colors that Tallulah loved. Wilbur remembers when she and Chayanne had made that patch of flowers. 

He thinks that it’s the most beautiful piece of the home they built for themselves.

In the center of it all, right across from the entrance of the house he made for Tallulah—the house she didn’t often get to live in because she would have been the only inhabitant of that building—is the wall where he’d left signs for the both of them. Their to do list.

Wilbur is at least glad he managed to do most of them before he left.

Though when he looks at it, he feels nothing but regret.

There is a beacon that pierces through the ground and into the sky—it is right underneath the patch where the signs are placed. He could see that the ground surrounding it is littered with poppy flowers and purple things. There are stuffed toys with purple accents placed on top of it.

Wilbur Soot, like every other day since he’d returned home to this place, walks across the garden and towards that pile of gifts and signs. He sinks to his knees in a prayer, just like every day since, and he stares at the tomb.

It was by her request that she would be buried in her home.

Wilbur couldn’t be the one to fulfill that request. 

He wasn’t here when she died.

BAD ENDING UNLOCKED: TOO LITTLE TOO LATE

It’s been a few weeks since Tallulah had decided to change the course of her days. She’d grown close to her extended family—her abuelito Philza and her “uncle” or her biological sibling, Chayanne. Not to mention, since she’d begun experimenting in this change, Tallulah had decided to be more…open to the idea that it’s not just one parent who could take care of her. 

Everyone on the island is so nice, and all of them are so caring. Tallulah thinks that it’s because having children makes everyone relate to one another, and she even believes that having the eggs be friends with each other eases the relationship between the inhabitants of the island. 

Which is why it’s so nice. It’s so wonderful. 

She feels…at ease, with everyone being so friendly and so welcoming with her. Her siblings actually feel like siblings. Tallulah, who has so much love to give, had decided to open her heart to her friends and family. And in return, they seem to be just as willing to open their hearts to her. 

The best word to describe it is…unity. It feels like the server is one, with loving and caring for these eggs.

One example of this is the opening of NINHO, standing for NUNCA IREMOS NUNCA HUMILHAR OVOS. It’s a hotel for eggs, one that is impenetrable and protected. It’s designed by Forever and his son, Richarlyson, and supported by the rest of the community in order to give the eggs a unified safe haven in case they’re attacked.

She believes it could be helpful. That it would protect her more. 

However, she…doesn’t think the attacks are the problem. 

Her siblings. She loves them, and in loving them she would know them. And she’s worried. Her siblings—they seem shaken after the attack. She’s glad she got to help, but the struggle against those Codes isn’t finished.

So begins the next arc of her life. 

Write to Pomme about the experience

Write to Baghera about Pomme's behavior

It’s been a few weeks since Tallulah had decided to change the course of her days. She’d grown close to her extended family—her abuelito Philza and her “uncle” or her biological sibling, Chayanne. Not to mention, since she’d begun experimenting in this change, Tallulah had decided to be more…open to the idea that it’s not just one parent who could take care of her. 

Everyone on the island is so nice, and all of them are so caring. Tallulah thinks that it’s because having children makes everyone relate to one another, and she even believes that having the eggs be friends with each other eases the relationship between the inhabitants of the island. 

Which is why it’s so nice. It’s so wonderful. 

She feels…at ease, with everyone being so friendly and so welcoming with her. Her siblings actually feel like siblings. Tallulah, who has so much love to give, had decided to open her heart to her friends and family. And in return, they seem to be just as willing to open their hearts to her. 

The best word to describe it is…unity. It feels like the server is one, with loving and caring for these eggs.

One example of this is the opening of NINHO, standing for NUNCA IREMOS NUNCA HUMILHAR OVOS. It’s a hotel for eggs, one that is impenetrable and protected. It’s designed by Forever and his son, Richarlyson, and supported by the rest of the community in order to give the eggs a unified safe haven in case they’re attacked.

She believes it could be helpful. That it would protect her more. 

However, she…doesn’t think the attacks are the problem. 

Her siblings. She loves them, and in loving them she would know them. And she’s worried. Her siblings—they seem shaken after the attack. She’s glad she got to help, but the struggle against those Codes isn’t finished.

This begins the beginning of the next arc of her life. 

Write to Richas about the experience

Write to Forever about Richas' behavior

No matter how hard she tries, Tallulah can’t seem to manage to get the events of the previous week out of her head. She remembers walking along in the forest, stopping to play her flute…and seeing that butterfly. Its bright red wings fluttered in the breeze as it swept around the clearing, and then there was a glimpse of red and blue and then—nothing. A gap. Pomme vanished, and so did the butterfly.

Not to mention, her friend hasn’t answered her previous message about the sleepover, not even a confirmation or rejection. It isn’t like her.

Worry spreading like ink through her thoughts, Tallulah finds herself reaching for her paper, pulling out a piece and starting to put down words before she can even realize it.

Maybe she’s overthinking it. But she can’t help remembering those butterflies in the forest. The way it had vanished right in front of her eyes, and the way Pomme had disappeared with it. 

Hopefully her friend will answer her soon.

Write to Baghera about Pomme's absence

Try writing to Pomme again

Tallulah sighs, glancing at the letter. She really hopes that her worries are unfounded, but with the rumors she’s been hearing around the island, it felt like a better idea to write right away than to wait. 

The letter receives a response the very next day.

Tallulah understands Baghera’s message, but there’s still something twisting at the bottom of her gut—still a nagging feeling that something is wrong. She’s still worried about Pomme.

What should she do now?

write to Pomme

write to Etoiles

It hasn’t been that long since her previous letter, and Tallulah knows that. But Pomme still hasn’t answered, and she’s starting to get really worried. It’s not like her to ignore Tallulah’s letters like this.

It’s short. Depressingly short, really. But she doesn’t know what else to say. How else do you write to a friend who won’t answer you? 

Swallowing hard, Tallulah sets down her pen and folds the letter in one smooth motion. There’s nothing else she can do but wait for a response.

And she gets one. Surprisingly quickly, actually—it’s on her nightstand before the end of the day. It looks…different, though. For one thing, it’s typed—printed, almost. Pomme’s never written like that before. Second, there seem to be…splots of ink scattered throughout the note, as if someone left the pen over the letters for too long. It doesn’t seem right.

Tallulah stares at the letter for a few minutes, eyebrows furrowed as she tries to make sense of it. If she wasn’t sure something was wrong before, something definitely seems odd, now.

What should she do?

Write to Etoiles about Pomme’s odd letter

Respond to Pomme and lend a helping hand.

Tallulah bites her lip, reading the letter back. She’s starting to sound paranoid, isn’t she? But she’s right—Pomme is like a sibling to her ( is a sibling, technically; but the feeling extends beyond blood, to a bond only the fondest of friendships could encompass), and if anything happens to her…well. Tallulah isn’t sure what she would do. She also knows she’s probably overthinking it, but…better safe than sorry, right?

Before she can think otherwise, Tallulah folds up the letter, quickly moving outside to send it away. There’s no point in freaking out anyone else. If Etoiles noticed something, he would tell her! Right?

She receives a return letter the next day.

That eases Tallulah’s worries somewhat, though she still can’t quite shake the feeling of worry that pulls at her nerves. But there’s nothing else she can think of doing, so she tries to push it out of her mind and go about her day.

N E X T

It’s a few weeks later when something finally happens to turn Tallulah’s nightmares into a reality. 

Tallulah and Chayanne had been taking their time to do the quests. It was coming near to an end, actually, which was a fortunate thing because that day something was going to happen. 

The quests were rather simple, thankfully: Feed the child a food made of flowers (Chayanne had made a splendidly edible flower salad. She and Phil were very honest about the fact that they love him and his cooking); then press flowers into an album and submit it to the school (she and Chayanne had made a collage of their favorite flowers. She thinks that she’ll pass with flying colors); then have a little ocean adventure (Tallulah had some trouble looking for her turtle helmet, but Phil had given her an extra. He’s always so prepared); and finally, have the eggs tell bedtime stories to one another. 

Tallulah, following Chayanne and Philza, was having a good day with these easy quests. She could see a bit of the stress on her grandfather’s features lighten and brighten up—as slight as it is. The little girl is just happy that her Abuelito isn’t as stressed as he had been. 

Tallulah had known, after all, that Philza had been stressing a lot over the recent Code monster attacks. She’s happy that today’s quests were all so simple, so she’s not an extra burden to him.

She’s currently working on writing a story to tell Chayanne. She thinks she could write it inspired by a lost dream. Maybe it could be a story about flowers and butterflies and a turtle. Tallulah has a lot of stories running through her head. 

Not that she gets the opportunity to actually write them. 

When she looks up and finds that the sky has blinked from day to night, a looming figure in green and numbers rapidly approaching her, she tucks her book into her inventory and sits up straight.

Phil and Chayanne are faster to react. Chayanne pulls her to her feet and pushes her behind him, while Phil shields the both of them under his clipped wings and spams Ts on his communicator. 

Not a moment later, Tallulah is in a different place. She is soaked from the chamber, having just been teleported into the hotel. Tallulah climbs out of the water and gets to her things so she could start drying herself off. She’ll replace the enderpearl in a moment; her soaked clothes are more important at present.

Or not, because: 

She spots movement in the corner of her eyes. 

When she looks over to the window, a growing and dawning horror curls in her chest at the sight.

It’s difficult to make out details in the new-moon night, but one thing is clear: there is more than one Code hovering outside NINHO. Their shimmering poison-and-ink silhouettes gleam like the stars overhead that are blocked out by blurred movements and surprised shouts from the parents below. Tallulah’s eyes frantically search for her loved ones—Tío Forever desperately coordinating efforts, Tío Etoiles throwing himself wildly into the thickest fighting, Tío Bad howling at the creatures like a banshee let loose. Abuelito of course is nowhere in sight, not yet, left behind when his children were teleported to safety.

Despite the fear gripping her heart, the urge to run to the window and watch every movement to know what’s happening—to not be locked away, left in the dark like the attic despite the windows and flowers all around her—Tallulah’s immediate thoughts go to her siblings.

Did they all make it into the hotel okay? Are they hurt and as alone as her right now?

She thinks of Pomme, who has been acting so strange lately. 

She catches a glimpse of a Code flying past the window, and recoils.

Everything will be fine, she tries to reassures herself. But it’s more difficult than ever to believe as she watches the monster fly away and hears the cries of her family out there . Every tío and tía she’s spent days and weeks together with are fighting for them . But no matter how much she may wish to, she knows she can’t help—not in any way that would truly make a difference to the fight itself. 

She can’t help them beyond staying safe and away from the things that wish for her and her siblings’ deaths.

(And while Phil might love Death, and Death has haunted their family’s steps since that very first nightmare, this is not natural , this is not what She wants for them, and Abuelito will do everything he can to carry out Her will.)

There is one way Tallulah can help, though.

She just catches sight of a butterfly fluttering past as she turns from the window and rushes to the waystone.

She can go to her siblings.

Usually, especially for sizable attacks like this, they like to gather in the largest hotel room. After checking to make sure everyone all the eggs are safe in the hotel or their homes, they have an impromptu hang-out. They pile up all the cushions into a fort while Chayanne or someone else cooks snacks and their favorite beverages. Sometimes she, Pomme, and Leo will play their instruments; sometimes Richar will join in. Tallulah can’t count the number of times she’s halfway napped while leaning against [Pomme/Richar’s] side, nearly as warm and protected as she is in Abuelito’s bunker.

So she can go there, to ensure no one does something stupid and makes all their parents’ efforts for nothing.

But first, she has to talk to her brother.

The air pops and fizzes as Tallulah selects Chayanne’s room. In the next second green and pink and purple give way to orange and yellow and the smell of dried herbs and fresh spices.

As she thought might be the case, he’s pressed up to the glass, sword in hand. He bangs his fist against the window in frustration as she hurries across the small room to him, then startles and turns to her when she grabs his sword-arm.

Tallulah can tell Chay doesn’t want to step away—rather, the opposite—but for her sake he lets her drag him back toward the sheltered corner with the stasis chamber. (He’s already replaced his pearl, she notes; she’s so proud of him, for his sharp mind and growing skills and big protective heart.

(But this is not something he’s strong enough for—not yet.)

She pulls out her notebook again; it’s faster than working with clumsy signs, with their limited size, especially in this small space. When she’s done scribbling her message, she shoves it into Chay’s hands.

We can’t go out there.

He gets this look on his face she can’t quite name, and he writes back:

But there’s so many of them. They need help

If we do they’ll all just attack us :c

Chay wrinkles his nose in that way he does when he hates the logic, but can’t deny it. The triumph she feels is stale and brittle, because Chay is only one of her siblings, and while he takes his protective role as the eldest the most seriously he also knows first-hand what happens if he jeopardizes that role.

We should check on the others, she continues, so no one feels scared and alone </3

For a moment, Chay only stares at the page. Outside, the roar of the fight waxes and wanes, too many sounds to pick out individual struggles knocking at the double-thick glass.

Then, his face hardens. He nods, and Tallulah releases a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

Before they select their first destination, though, Tallulah pauses with a hand on Chay’s shoulder, and he turns to look at her curiously.

Should she…

With a little nod to herself, her resolve steadies.

Quickly, she writes another message.

Pomme has been acting off lately. Remember the day Baghera came looking for her? She hasn’t been answering my letters since then :c I thought maybe she was just feeling bad and Abuelito’s paranoia is rubbing off on me, but…

Immediately, Chayanne takes her hand. She barely has a moment to tuck her book and pencil under her arm before he’s slapping a hand to the waystone. Tallulah quickly follows suit before he can totally leave her behind.

Another twist in her stomach and whoosh of noise in her ears, and they pop out in a very familiar room. 

They pop out into very unfamiliar chaos.

Or, truthfully, it is familiar—as familiar as nightmares on shorelines, steel on steel, the roar of mobs and the desperate cries of their parents.

Because at the very moment they come to awareness again in Leo’s room, Pomme’s eyes glow bright green.

Sometimes, the way Chayanne totes around his unsheathed sword reminds Tallulah a little bit of a child carrying around a favorite blanket. It’s endearing, sometimes annoying, and uniquely quirky to Chay, even among their more rough-and-tumble siblings.

Today, she’s glad of it.

Because while she’s still caught staring in horror and fear at what should have been her friend , Chayanne is already moving .

While she’s caught staring as the thing ’s skin cracks and sheds like a snake’s, Chayanne is shoving eggs aside left and right to get to it. It bursts at the seams to reveal the deeper internal binary code beneath—

And Chay slams his sword point-first into the bursting, rippling cracks of the Code’s natural form.

The thing screeches , twice as loud as all the eggs gasping and scrambling back from it, and tosses Chayanne off with its writhing. A number of the others draw weapons and shove the smaller, younger eggs behind them. (The fact that the one they thought was their youngest was, in fact, a Code monster doesn’t occur to them in the moment, but it will later.)

With a fierce cry, Chayanne leaps forward again. This time, Ramon and Dapper join him. The Code doesn’t have a chance to block with its sword before the trio cut a number of deep slices into its shell.

It twists and bucks with another howl of agony, and this time all three of her brothers are flung across the room with the force. It gathers itself, swinging its sword to bare down on the instigator of its pain—

Tallulah is there, faster than she can blink. Her own sword leaps to her hand, intercepting the Code’s.

It doesn’t stop it cleanly—not like Abuelito’s would, nor even Chayanne’s. She’s not strong enough for that. The metal shrieks, piercing her ears like arrows where she hasn’t had a chance to turn down her hearing aids in preparation for a fight for their lives, as the Code’s blade deflects to one side.

But it’s deflected.

Chayanne scrambles to his feet behind her. The Code hisses like a creeper and raises the sword to try again; Tallulah doesn’t think she’ll be able to do that a second time, not with a more direct strike. She braces herself for the blow anyway, just as determined as all her siblings to be strong .

She doesn’t have to.

A furious draconic cry echoes through the hotel room. 

Leo leaps at the Code, perching on its shoulders like she does with Tio Foolish while he’s building. But instead of laughing and chewing rainbow bubblegum, she wears a vicious snarl befitting a shark and buries a knife in the Code’s neck.

Not a step behind her comes Richarlyson, dragging his weapon across what would be its back. Then Dapper and Ramon and Chayanne are fully on their feet and lunging back into the fight.

Tallulah, emboldened by their courage, joins them.

As one, all her friends, her siblings, her family , in blood and heart, bring the Code to its knees. It lays in a crumpled heap beneath their feet, twitching and sparking with magic as the last of its un-life fades into the ether.

Silently, Chayanne hands her the sword it dropped, hilt first. She offers him a quizzical glance, which he answers with a meaningful nod.

Tallulah’s fingers wrap warm and hesitant around the cold grip. Her thoughts pause for but a moment, contemplating the choice Chayanne has given her.

…This thing and its kind have terrorized her family for long enough. It dared to take Pomme’s shape, to defile their most vulnerable spaces.

It tried to kill her siblings .

Talluah’s grip tightens.

She raises the sword, rage filling her form.

Green light fills the room as she plunges it into the Code’s body.

~~

Pomme was found, in the end. The Code had hidden her back inside the Wall, stuffed into the cramped space they’d found her in initially. Tallulah gives her the tightest hug when they find her, burying her face into her sibling’s shoulder for a precious few moments. Etoiles is right behind her, helping to pull Pomme out of the crevice, but he waits until Tallulah steps back to sweep Pomme up in his tight grip. Baghera is right behind him, hands on both of their shoulders and her face the picture of concern.

Philza is directly behind Tallulah, and bends down as she watches the family in front of her embrace. “Chayanne told me what you did,” he murmurs, nodding back towards the group of eggs gathered nearby. Chayanne stands near Dapper, just happening to glance up as Tallulah looks over. He gives her a grin and a slight wave, before Ramon is tugging at his arm and he has to turn away.

“I’m proud of you.”

Tallulah glances behind her at Abuelito, smiling. The eggs were safe, Pomme was back, and the Code was dead.

Everything on the island was safe for another day.

GOOD ENDING UNLOCKED: PEACE AT LAST

It hasn’t been that long since her previous letter, and Tallulah knows that. But Pomme still hasn’t answered, and she’s starting to get really worried. It’s not like her to ignore Tallulah’s letters like this.

It’s short. Depressingly short, really. But she doesn’t know what else to say. How else do you write to a friend who won’t answer you? 

Swallowing hard, Tallulah sets down her pen and folds the letter in one smooth motion. There’s nothing else she can do but wait for a response.

And she gets one. Surprisingly quickly, actually—it’s on her nightstand before the end of the day. It looks…different, though. For one thing, it’s typed—printed, almost. Pomme’s never written like that before. Second, there seem to be…splots of ink scattered throughout the note, as if someone left the pen over the letters for too long. It doesn’t seem right.

Tallulah stares at the letter for a few minutes, eyebrows furrowed as she tries to make sense of it. If she wasn’t sure something was wrong before, something definitely seems odd, now.

She needs to do something.

N E X T

The next morning, Tallulah is awake before the sun. Turns out having a Flutter for a pet makes for a great alarm clock, without risking waking Abuelito, who’s asleep upstairs.

Her stomach kind of feels a little like one right now, though, with how it twists like butterflies are dancing in it as she quietly eases herself out of bed. She focuses on making the covers nice and neat to try to settle them—although it doesn’t do much—before putting on her armor, grabbing her backpack, and slipping out the door.

Pomme hadn’t given a specific spot to meet her, and Tallulah said she would find her, so she starts by making her way down the elevator from the Potato Plank to reach the ground; it’s not nearly as loud as the noisy waystone. For a moment, she stares across the river to her right—to the dark and lonely spruce-wood tower that was meant to be her home. The bright leaves and vibrant flowers all around make it feel a little like a graveyard.

She shivers at the thought and turns to continue her journey.

Passing Spawn, Tallulah winds her way towards La France. This early in the morning, Pomme might be hanging out there.

Before she gets too far, a butterfly catches her eye. It doesn’t seem like just any butterfly, though; its wings sparkle and glitter in the dawn light like a thousand tiny stars. She means to continue—really, she does. Pomme is waiting, and it’s very important she speak with her as soon as possible.

But…

The butterfly flutters directly into her path, now. Tallulah giggles as it flits around her, holding a palm out for it to walk on. Its tiny feelers and delicate feet tickle her skin, but she’s too awed by its lustrous color—a lustrous, candy-apple red—for it to bother her.

And then it’s lifting off her hand, dancing a circle in the air in front of her face, before moving a few paces along her path and then back again.

It’s…beckoning her to follow.

…Didn’t she have somewhere to be?

Right, Pomme.

Well…if it wants her to follow, and Pomme likes the butterflies, then…maybe this one’s come to lead her to Pomme!

Drawn like a moth to a flame, Tallulah follows after the butterfly. A gently lilting melody slowly picks up, so soft at first she thinks she must be hearing things, and then crescendoing until she can hum a little matching harmony perfectly under her breath. She walks, and walks, and walks , and by the time the sun is solidly above the horizon the butterfly dips through the trees into a little forest meadow.

The source of the music, it seems, is here. Under the canopy’s shade, she finds a dozen, three dozen, a hundred and more blooms of various flowers. Tallulah isn’t sure she’s even seen all of these different kinds before, there’s so many of them.

The butterfly floats away as her eyes clear of the single-minded purpose that had taken over her subconscious. The lazy haze that had urged her to follow the butterfly fades, like a cold gust of wind blew it away. Tallulah blinks, and her eyes fall to the center of the grove.

There stands her friend.

…Tallulah squints. She thought she knew from the letters, already, that something was off, but…

Now that she’s standing almost face-to-face with Pomme, she knows . She knows what’s wrong, now. Her friend, her sister —as she puts the flute down, there’s a flash of something inhuman in Pomme’s eyes.

This is not Pomme.

Tallulah takes a step back.

“TALLULAH!”

Abuelito!

It’s too late, though. Pomme smiles at her with too-sharp, too-pointy teeth, a wicked smile Tallulah had never seen before and she watches in horror as the thing ’s skin cracks and sheds like a snake’s, revealing the deeper internal binary code beneath. It bursts at the seams—

And spills into the Code’s natural form.

Tallulah’s gut sinks, realizing that she doesn’t have a pearl prepared in the hotel.

She can hear Abeulito’s voice yelling from somewhere nearby, but she can’t seem to focus long enough to figure out where it’s coming from. Her eyes are glued to Pomme’s—no, the Code’s hovering form, moving forward menacingly with every passing second. She knows she should turn, run, fight, do something . But it’s as if she’s frozen with fear, stuck watching the trails of binary come directly towards her.

She’s going to die. She’s in the middle of a flower field with no one around, and she is going to die.

There’s a sudden roar from behind of her and she jumps, jolting backwards just in time to narrowly avoid being run through by Phil’s sword as he launches himself forward. The Code rises sharply, soaring high into the air to avoid his aggressive strikes. It doesn’t seem to be coming down any time soon either, and after a few small circles of the clearing, it flies off into the distance before blinking out of sight. 

Phil stands in the middle of the clearing, sword held at his side as he stares up at the place the Code vanished.

“ Abuelito !” Tallulah cries out, rushing forward, careful to avoid the point of the blade. She needn’t have worried, however—Phil drops it the minute she moves, and the sword skitters to the side as he bundles her into a hug. Tallulah’s heart is still racing as she buries her fists in his top, trying to resist the urge to break into tears.

“You’re alright, Tallulah.”  She can feel his hand running through her hair as he speaks, though his head moves awkwardly to try and keep an eye on their surroundings. “You’re alright.”

And she is. She’s alive.

But she’s not alright.

Pomme is still missing; somewhere out there, on her own, lost. And the Code has to be killed, one way or another. The two might even be connected. 

There’s still work to be done.

ENDING UNLOCKED: SURVIVAL

Tallulah bites her lip, reading the letter back. She’s starting to sound paranoid, isn’t she? But she’s right—Pomme is like a sibling to her ( is a sibling, technically; but the feeling was not only by blood, but by friendship as well), and if anything happens to her…well. Tallulah isn’t sure what she would do. She also knows she’s probably overthinking it, but…better safe than sorry, right?

Before she can think otherwise, Tallulah folds up the letter, quickly moving outside to send it away. There’s no point in freaking out anyone else. If Etoiles noticed something, he would tell her! Right?

N E X T

It’s a few weeks later when something finally happens to turn Tallulah’s nightmares into a reality. 

Tallulah and Chayanne had been taking their time to do the quests. It was coming near to an end, actually, which was a fortunate thing because that day something was going to happen. 

The quests were rather simple, thankfully: Feed the child a food made of flowers (Chayanne had made a splendidly edible flower salad. She and Phil were very honest about the fact that they love him and his cooking); then press flowers into an album and submit it to the school (she and Chayanne had made a collage of their favorite flowers. She thinks that she’ll pass with flying colors); then have a little ocean adventure (Tallulah had some trouble looking for her turtle helmet, but Phil had given her an extra. He’s always so prepared); and finally, have the eggs tell bedtime stories to one another. 

Tallulah, following Chayanne and Philza, was having a good day with these easy quests. She could see a bit of the stress on her grandfather’s features lighten and brighten up—as slight as it is. The little girl is just happy that her Abuelito isn’t as stressed as he had been. 

Tallulah had known, after all, that Philza had been stressing a lot over the recent Code monster attacks. She’s happy that today’s quests were all so simple, so she’s not an extra burden to him.

She’s currently working on writing a story to tell Chayanne. She thinks she could write it inspired by a lost dream. Maybe it could be a story about flowers and butterflies and a turtle. Tallulah has a lot of stories running through her head. 

Not that she gets the opportunity to actually write them. 

When she looks up and finds that the sky has blinked from day to night, a looming figure in green and numbers rapidly approaching her, she tucks her book into her inventory and sits up straight.

Phil and Chayanne are faster to react. Chayanne pulls her to her feet and pushes her behind him, while Phil shields the both of them under his clipped wings and spams Ts on his communicator. 

Not a moment later, Tallulah is in a different place. She is soaked from the chamber, having just been teleported into the hotel. Tallulah climbs out of the water and gets to her things so she could start drying herself off. She’ll replace the ender pearl in a moment; her soaked clothes are more important at present.

Or not, because: 

She spots movement in the corner of her eyes. 

When she looks over to the window, a growing and dawning horror curls in her chest at the sight.

It’s difficult to make out details in the new-moon night, but one thing is clear: there is more than one Code hovering outside NINHO. Their shimmering poison-and-ink silhouettes gleam like the stars overhead that are blocked out by blurred movements and surprised shouts from the parents below. Tallulah’s eyes frantically search for her loved ones—Tío Forever desperately coordinating efforts, Tío Etoiles throwing himself wildly into the thickest fighting, Tío Bad howling at the creatures like a banshee let loose. Abuelito of course is nowhere in sight, not yet, left behind when his children were teleported to safety.

Despite the fear gripping her heart, the urge to run to the window and watch every movement to know what’s happening—to not be locked away, left in the dark like the attic despite the windows and flowers all around her—Tallulah’s immediate thoughts go to her siblings.

Did they all make it into the hotel okay? Are they hurt and as alone as her right now?

She thinks of Pomme, who has been acting so strange lately. 

She catches a glimpse of a Code flying past the window, and recoils.

Everything will be fine, she tries to reassures herself. But it’s more difficult than ever to believe as she watches the monster fly away and hears the cries of her family out there . Every tío and tía she’s spent days and weeks together with are fighting for them . But no matter how much she may wish to, she knows she can’t help—not in any way that would truly make a difference to the fight itself. 

She can’t help them beyond staying safe and away from the things that wish for her and her siblings’ deaths.

(And while Phil might love Death, and Death has haunted their family’s steps since that very first nightmare, this is not natural , this is not what She wants for them, and Abuelito will do everything he can to carry out Her will.)

There is one way Tallulah can help, though.

She just catches sight of a butterfly fluttering past as she turns from the window and rushes to the waystone.

She can go to her siblings.

Usually, especially for sizable attacks like this, they like to gather in the largest hotel room. After checking to make sure everyone all the eggs are safe in the hotel or their homes, they have an impromptu hang-out. They pile up all the cushions into a fort while Chayanne or someone else cooks snacks and their favorite beverages. Sometimes she, Pomme, and Leo will play their instruments; sometimes Richar will join in. Tallulah can’t count the number of times she’s halfway napped while leaning against Pomme or Richar’s side, nearly as warm and protected as she is in Abuelito’s bunker.

So she can go there, to ensure no one does something stupid and makes all their parents’ efforts for nothing.

But first, she has to talk to her brother.

The air pops and fizzes as Tallulah selects Chayanne’s room. In the next second green and pink and purple give way to orange and yellow and the smell of dried herbs and fresh spices.

As she thought might be the case, he’s pressed up to the glass, sword in hand. He bangs his fist against the window in frustration as she hurries across the small room to him, then startles and turns to her when she grabs his sword-arm.

Tallulah can tell Chay doesn’t want to step away—rather, the opposite—but for her sake he lets her drag him back toward the sheltered corner with the stasis chamber. (He’s already replaced his pearl, she notes; she’s so proud of him, for his sharp mind and growing skills and big protective heart.

(But this is not something he’s strong enough for—not yet.)

She pulls out her notebook again; it’s faster than working with clumsy signs, with their limited size, especially in this small space. When she’s done scribbling her message, she shoves it into Chay’s hands.

We can’t go out there.

He gets this look on his face she can’t quite name, and he writes back:

But there’s so many of them. They need help

If we do they’ll all just attack us :c

Chay wrinkles his nose in that way he does when he hates the logic, but can’t deny it. The triumph she feels is stale and brittle, because Chay is only one of her siblings, and while he takes his protective role as the eldest the most seriously he also knows first-hand what happens if he jeopardizes that role.

We should check on the others, she continues, so no one feels scared and alone </3

For a moment, Chay only stares at the page. Outside, the roar of the fight waxes and wanes, too many sounds to pick out individual struggles knocking at the double-thick glass.

Then, his face hardens. He nods, and Tallulah releases a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

Before they select their first destination, though, Tallulah pauses with a hand on Chay’s shoulder, and he turns to look at her curiously.

Should she…

With a little nod to herself, her resolve steadies.

Quickly, she writes another message.

Pomme has been acting off lately. Remember the day Baghera came looking for her? She hasn’t been answering my letters since then :c I thought maybe she was just feeling bad and Abuelito’s paranoia is rubbing off on me, but…

Immediately, Chayanne takes her hand. She barely has a moment to tuck her book and pencil under her arm before he’s slapping a hand to the waystone. Tallulah quickly follows suit before he can totally leave her behind.

Another twist in her stomach and whoosh of noise in her ears, and they pop out in a very familiar room. 

They pop out into very unfamiliar chaos.

Or, truthfully, it is familiar—as familiar as nightmares on shorelines, steel on steel, the roar of mobs and the desperate cries of their parents.

Because at the very moment they come to awareness again in Leo’s room, Pomme’s eyes glow bright green.

Sometimes, the way Chayanne totes around his unsheathed sword reminds Tallulah a little bit of a child carrying around a favorite blanket. It’s endearing, sometimes annoying, and uniquely quirky to Chay, even among their more rough-and-tumble siblings.

Today, she’s glad of it.

Because while she’s still caught staring in horror and fear at what should have been her friend , Chayanne is already moving .

While she’s caught staring as the thing ’s skin cracks and sheds like a snake’s, Chayanne is shoving eggs aside left and right to get to it. It bursts at the seams to reveal the deeper internal binary code beneath—

And Chay slams his sword point-first into the bursting, rippling cracks of the Code’s natural form.

The thing screeches , twice as loud as all the eggs gasping and scrambling back from it, and tosses Chayanne off with its writhing. A number of the others draw weapons and shove the smaller, younger eggs behind them. (The fact that the one they thought was their youngest was, in fact, a Code monster doesn’t occur to them in the moment, but it will later.)

With a fierce cry, Chayanne leaps forward again. This time, Ramon and Dapper join him. The Code doesn’t have a chance to block with its sword before the trio cut a number of deep slices into its shell.

It twists and bucks with another howl of agony, and this time all three of her brothers are flung across the room with the force. It gathers itself, swinging its sword to bare down on the instigator of its pain—

Tallulah is there, faster than she can blink. Her own sword leaps to her hand, intercepting the Code’s.

It doesn’t stop it cleanly—not like Abuelito’s would, nor even Chayanne’s. She’s not strong enough for that. The metal shrieks, piercing her ears like arrows where she hasn’t had a chance to turn down her hearing aids in preparation for a fight for their lives, as the Code’s blade deflects to one side.

But it’s deflected.

Chayanne scrambles to his feet behind her. The Code hisses like a creeper and raises the sword to try again; Tallulah doesn’t think she’ll be able to do that a second time, not with a more direct strike. She braces herself for the blow anyway, just as determined as all her siblings to be strong .

She doesn’t have to.

A furious draconic cry echoes through the hotel room. 

Leo leaps at the Code, perching on its shoulders like she does with Tio Foolish while he’s building. But instead of laughing and chewing rainbow bubblegum, she wears a vicious snarl befitting a shark and buries a knife in the Code’s neck.

They can’t last forever like this, and Tallulah knows it. They have to figure out a way to destroy the Code, once and for all. As she thinks, the Code lets out a scream, rearing vigorously. Leo flies off of its back, slamming against the wall at the back of the room. Immediately, Chayanne is in motion, launching himself towards the Code with his sword outstretched. It swipes him out of the air with a single move of its arm, almost like he was nothing.

Tallulah’s eyes darted around the room—to Ramon and Dapper, huddled against the wall. To Leo, still crumpled in a heap on the other side of the room. To Chayanne, struggling back to his knees nearby. To the rest of her siblings, pressed as far into the corner as they can to avoid the reach of the monster’s arm. She glances back at the Code again, sword gripped tightly in her sweaty palms.

There’s only one way out of this.

The Code doesn’t seem to have noticed Tallulah, instead turning menacingly towards her sibling—Leo blinks up from where she lays, scrambling to try and reach her knife. It’s been thrown too far away, however, blade skittering further across the floor as she kicks it with her foot in an attempt to pull it closer. 

Tallulah adjusts the grip of her hilt and makes a split second decision.

Her steps quicken as she runs forward, swinging clumsily upwards. The slice is wavering, unsteady, certainly not her best—but it hits , and that’s all that matters. The monster doesn’t see it coming, screaming in pain as the force of her swing rends its side in two. As the body of the Code slumps to the ground, the strands of binary tremble, slowly knitting back into a recognizable figure.

Pomme lays on the ground before her, unmoving, motionless.

She knew what was going to happen. She knew the Code was entwined too deeply to be removed. But at the same time, the what-if’s are flying through her head. What if it could have been fixed? What if her sister could have been saved? What if there was another way? There had to have been another way.

She killed her sister. Tallulah saved them all, but she killed her sister. 

Tallulah falls to her knees, vision blurring as the sword drops from her hand. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers, fingers starting to shake. She can feel Chayanne laying an arm around her shoulders, she can see Leo scrambling to her feet in front of her, she can hear the murmurs and worries of her siblings in the distance, but none of it is processing.

She collapses into Chayanne’s embrace—

And she voids.

BAD ENDING UNLOCKED: COMEDY OF ERRORS

She’s made up her mind. She’s going to figure out what’s going on. Tomorrow, she will pack her backpack and journey out before Abeulito wakes up. She’ll find Pomme and save her. 

A small voice in the back of her head keeps telling her that she should be telling other people about this. She shouldn’t try to do this alone. But what if it’s nothing? Then she will have wasted everyone’s time, and embarrassed Pomme in the process. 

No. She’ll do this on her own. Once and for all.

N E X T

The next morning, Tallulah is awake before the sun. Turns out having a Flutter for a pet makes for a great alarm clock, without risking waking Abuelito, who’s asleep upstairs.

Her stomach kind of feels a little like one right now, though, with how it twists like butterflies are dancing in it as she quietly eases herself out of bed. She focuses on making the covers nice and neat to try to settle them—although it doesn’t do much—before putting on her armor, grabbing her backpack, and slipping out the door.

Pomme hadn’t given a specific spot to meet her, and Tallulah said she would find her, so she starts by making her way down the elevator from the Potato Plank to reach the ground; it’s not nearly as loud as the noisy waystone. For a moment, she stares across the river to her right—to the dark and lonely spruce-wood tower that was meant to be her home. The bright leaves and vibrant flowers all around make it feel a little like a graveyard.

She shivers at the thought and turns to continue her journey.

Passing Spawn, Tallulah winds her way towards La France. This early in the morning, Pomme might be hanging out there.

Before she gets too far, a butterfly catches her eye. It doesn’t seem like just any butterfly, though; its wings sparkle and glitter in the dawn light like a thousand tiny stars. She means to continue—really, she does. Pomme is waiting, and it’s very important she speak with her as soon as possible.

But…

The butterfly flutters directly into her path, now. Tallulah giggles as it flits around her, holding a palm out for it to walk on. Its tiny feelers and delicate feet tickle her skin, but she’s too awed by its enchanting color—a lustrous, candy-apple red—for it to bother her.

And then it’s lifting off her hand, dancing a circle in the air in front of her face, before moving a few paces along her path and then back again.

It’s…beckoning her to follow.

…Didn’t she have somewhere to be?

Right, Pomme.

Well…if it wants her to follow, and Pomme likes the butterflies, then…maybe this one’s come to lead her to Pomme!

Drawn like a moth to a flame, Tallulah follows after the butterfly. A gently lilting melody slowly picks up, so soft at first she thinks she must be hearing things, and then crescendoing until she can hum a little matching harmony perfectly under her breath. She walks, and walks, and walks , and by the time the sun is solidly above the horizon the butterfly dips through the trees into a little forest meadow.

The source of the music, it seems, is here. Under the canopy’s shade, she finds a dozen, three dozen, a hundred and more blooms of various flowers. Tallulah isn’t sure she’s even seen all of these different kinds before, there’s so many of them.

The butterfly floats away as her eyes clear of the single-minded purpose that had taken over her subconscious. The lazy haze that had urged her to follow the butterfly fades, like a cold gust of wind blew it away. Tallulah blinks, and her eyes fall to the center of the grove.

There stands her friend.

…Tallulah squints. She thought she knew from the letters, already, that something was off, but…

Now that she’s standing almost face-to-face with Pomme, she knows . She knows what’s wrong, now. Her friend, her sister —as she puts the flute down, there’s a flash of something inhuman in Pomme’s eyes.

This is not Pomme.

Tallulah takes a shaky step back.

“TALLULAH!”

Abuelito!

It’s too late, though. Pomme smiles at her with too-sharp teeth, an evil smile that was so unlike her sister, and she watches in horror as the thing ’s skin cracks and sheds like a snake’s, revealing the deeper internal binary code beneath. It bursts at the seams—

And spills into the Code’s natural form.

Tallulah’s gut sinks, realizing that she doesn’t have a pearl prepared in the hotel.

The Code lunges —and everything goes dark.

BAD ENDING UNLOCKED: A SACRIFICE IS NEEDED

No matter how hard she tries, Tallulah can’t seem to manage to get the events of the previous week out of her head. She remembers walking across the Favela, spotting Richarlyson from across the way, and then seeing that butterfly. Its wings were sparkling in the light— red , that she remembers—and then…nothing. A gap. Richarlyson vanished, and so did the butterfly.

She remembers Forever meeting up with them later in the day, the way he had seemed so…frazzled. Anxious. She knew he had a lot going on right now, so maybe it was best to write directly to her friend, instead.

Worry spreading like ink through her thoughts, Tallulah finds herself reaching for her paper, pulling out a piece and starting to put down words before she can even realize it.

Maybe she’s overthinking it. But she can’t help remembering those butterflies in the forest. The way it had vanished right in front of her eyes, and the way Richar had disappeared with it. 

Hopefully her friend will answer her soon.

Try writing to Richarlyson again.

Write to Forever about Richas' absence

Tallulah sighs, glancing at the letter. She really hopes that her worries are unfounded, but with the rumors she’s been hearing around the island, it felt like a better idea to write right away than to wait. 

The letter receives a response the next day.

Tallulah understands Forever’s message, but there’s still something twisting at the bottom of her gut—still a nagging feeling that something is wrong. She’s still worried about Richarlyson.

What should she do now?

Write to Richas Again

Write to Cellbit about Richarlyson's unsual behavior

It hasn’t been that long since her previous letter, and Tallulah knows that. But Richarlyson still hasn’t answered, and she’s starting to get really worried. It’s not like him to ignore Tallulah’s letters like this. He’s usually so willing to chat.

It’s short. Depressingly short, really. But she doesn’t know what else to say. How else do you write to a friend who won’t answer you? 

Swallowing hard, Tallulah sets down her pen and folds the letter in one smooth motion. There’s nothing else she can do but wait for a response.

And she gets one. Surprisingly quickly, actually—it’s on her nightstand before the end of the day. It looks…different, though. For one thing, it’s typed—printed, almost. Richarlyson has never written to her like that before. Second, there seem to be…splots of ink scattered throughout the note, as if someone left the pen over the letters for too long. It doesn’t seem right.

Tallulah stares at the letter for a few minutes, eyebrows furrowed as she tries to make sense of it. If she wasn’t sure something was wrong before, something definitely seems odd, now.

What should she do?

Respond to Richar and lend a helping hand

Write to Cellbit about Richarlyson's weird letter

Tallulah frowns, glancing at the letter. There really isn’t any other way to make herself sound not paranoid, is there?

The letter comes back very quickly—thank goodness she managed to catch him while he was still awake!

That eases Tallulah’s worries somewhat, though she still can’t quite shake the feeling of worry that pulls at her nerves. But there’s nothing else she can think of doing, so she tries to push it out of her mind and go about her day.

N E X T

It’s a few weeks later when something finally happens to turn Tallulah’s nightmares into a reality. 

Tallulah and Chayanne had been taking their time to do the quests. It was coming near to an end, actually, which was a fortunate thing because that day something was going to happen. 

The quests were rather simple, thankfully: Feed the child a food made of flowers (Chayanne had made a splendidly edible flower salad. She and Phil were very honest about the fact that they love him and his cooking); then press flowers into an album and submit it to the school (she and Chayanne had made a collage of their favorite flowers. She thinks that she’ll pass with flying colors); then have a little ocean adventure (Tallulah had some trouble looking for her turtle helmet, but Phil had given her an extra. He’s always so prepared); and finally, have the eggs tell bedtime stories to one another. 

Tallulah, following Chayanne and Philza, was having a good day with these easy quests. She could see a bit of the stress on her grandfather’s features lighten and brighten up—as slight as it is. The little girl is just happy that her Abuelito isn’t as stressed as he had been. 

Tallulah had known, after all, that Philza had been stressing a lot over the recent Code monster attacks. She’s happy that today’s quests were all so simple, so she’s not an extra burden to him.

She’s currently working on writing a story to tell Chayanne. She thinks she could write it inspired by a lost dream. Maybe it could be a story about flowers and butterflies and a turtle. Tallulah has a lot of stories running through her head. 

Not that she gets the opportunity to actually write them. 

When she looks up and finds that the sky has blinked from day to night, a looming figure in green and numbers rapidly approaching her, she tucks her book into her inventory and sits up straight.

Phil and Chayanne are faster to react. Chayanne pulls her to her feet and pushes her behind him, while Phil shields the both of them under his clipped wings and spams Ts on his communicator. 

Not a moment later, Tallulah is in a different place. She is soaked from the chamber, having just been teleported into the hotel. Tallulah climbs out of the water and gets to her things so she could start drying herself off. She’ll replace the enderpearl in a moment; her soaked clothes are more important at present.

Or not, because: 

She spots movement in the corner of her eyes. 

When she looks over to the window, a growing and dawning horror curls in her chest at the sight.

It’s difficult to make out details in the new-moon night, but one thing is clear: there is more than one Code hovering outside NINHO. Their shimmering poison-and-ink silhouettes gleam like the stars overhead that are blocked out by blurred movements and surprised shouts from the parents below. Tallulah’s eyes frantically search for her loved ones—Tío Forever desperately coordinating efforts, Tío Etoiles throwing himself wildly into the thickest fighting, Tío Bad howling at the creatures like a banshee let loose. Abuelito of course is nowhere in sight, not yet, left behind when his children were teleported to safety.

Despite the fear gripping her heart, the urge to run to the window and watch every movement to know what’s happening—to not be locked away, left in the dark like the attic despite the windows and flowers all around her—Tallulah’s immediate thoughts go to her siblings.

Did they all make it into the hotel okay? Are they hurt and as alone as her right now?

She thinks of Richar, who has been acting so strange lately. 

She catches a glimpse of a Code flying past the window, and recoils.

Everything will be fine, she tries to reassures herself. But it’s more difficult than ever to believe as she watches the monster fly away and hears the cries of her family out there . Every tío and tía she’s spent days and weeks together with are fighting for them . But no matter how much she may wish to, she knows she can’t help—not in any way that would truly make a difference to the fight itself. 

She can’t help them beyond staying safe and away from the things that wish for her and her siblings’ deaths.

(And while Phil might love Death, and Death has haunted their family’s steps since that very first nightmare, this is not natural , this is not what She wants for them, and Abuelito will do everything he can to carry out Her will.)

There is one way Tallulah can help, though.

She just catches sight of a butterfly fluttering past as she turns from the window and rushes to the waystone.

She can go to her siblings.

Usually, especially for sizable attacks like this, they like to gather in the largest hotel room. After checking to make sure everyone all the eggs are safe in the hotel or their homes, they have an impromptu hang-out. They pile up all the cushions into a fort while Chayanne or someone else cooks snacks and their favorite beverages. Sometimes she, Pomme, and Leo will play their instruments; sometimes Richar will join in. Tallulah can’t count the number of times she’s halfway napped while leaning against Richar’s side, nearly as warm and protected as she is in Abuelito’s bunker.

So she can go there, to ensure no one does something stupid and makes all their parents’ efforts for nothing.

But first, she has to talk to her brother.

The air pops and fizzes as Tallulah selects Chayanne’s room. In the next second green and pink and purple give way to orange and yellow and the smell of dried herbs and fresh spices.

As she thought might be the case, he’s pressed up to the glass, sword in hand. He bangs his fist against the window in frustration as she hurries across the small room to him, then startles and turns to her when she grabs his sword-arm.

Tallulah can tell Chay doesn’t want to step away—rather, the opposite—but for her sake he lets her drag him back toward the sheltered corner with the stasis chamber. (He’s already replaced his pearl, she notes; she’s so proud of him, for his sharp mind and growing skills and big protective heart.

(But this is not something he’s strong enough for—not yet.)

She pulls out her notebook again; it’s faster than working with clumsy signs, with their limited size, especially in this small space. When she’s done scribbling her message, she shoves it into Chay’s hands.

We can’t go out there.

He gets this look on his face she can’t quite name, and he writes back:

But there’s so many of them. They need help

If we do they’ll all just attack us :c

Chay wrinkles his nose in that way he does when he hates the logic, but can’t deny it. The triumph she feels is stale and brittle, because Chay is only one of her siblings, and while he takes his protective role as the eldest the most seriously he also knows first-hand what happens if he jeopardizes that role.

We should check on the others, she continues, so no one feels scared and alone </3

For a moment, Chay only stares at the page. Outside, the roar of the fight waxes and wanes, too many sounds to pick out individual struggles knocking at the double-thick glass.

Then, his face hardens. He nods, and Tallulah releases a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

Before they select their first destination, though, Tallulah pauses with a hand on Chay’s shoulder, and he turns to look at her curiously.

Should she…

With a little nod to herself, her resolve steadies.

Quickly, she writes another message.

Richar has been acting off lately. Remember the day Forever came looking for him? He hasn’t been answering my letters since then :c I thought maybe he was just feeling bad and Abuelito’s paranoia is rubbing off on me, but…

Immediately, Chayanne takes her hand. She barely has a moment to tuck her book and pencil under her arm before he’s slapping a hand to the waystone. Tallulah quickly follows suit before he can totally leave her behind.

Another twist in her stomach and whoosh of noise in her ears, and they pop out in a very familiar room. 

They pop out into very unfamiliar chaos.

Or, truthfully, it is familiar—as familiar as nightmares on shorelines, steel on steel, the roar of mobs and the desperate cries of their parents.

Because at the very moment they come to awareness again in Leo’s room, Richarlyson’s eyes glow bright green.

Sometimes, the way Chayanne totes around his unsheathed sword reminds Tallulah a little bit of a child carrying around a favorite blanket. It’s endearing, sometimes annoying, and uniquely quirky to Chay, even among their more rough-and-tumble siblings.

Today, she’s glad of it.

Because while she’s still caught staring in horror and fear at what should have been her friend , Chayanne is already moving .

While she’s caught staring as the thing ’s skin cracks and sheds like a snake’s, Chayanne is shoving eggs aside left and right to get to it. It bursts at the seams to reveal the deeper internal binary code beneath—

And Chay slams his sword point-first into the bursting, rippling cracks of the Code’s natural form.

The thing screeches , twice as loud as all the eggs gasping and scrambling back from it, and tosses Chayanne off with its writhing. A number of the others draw weapons and shove the smaller, younger eggs behind them. (The fact that the one they thought was their second-youngest was, in fact, a Code monster doesn’t occur to them in the moment, but it will later.)

With a fierce cry, Chayanne leaps forward again. This time, Ramon and Dapper join him. The Code doesn’t have a chance to block with its sword before the trio cut a number of deep slices into its shell.

It twists and bucks with another howl of agony, and this time all three of her brothers are flung across the room with the force. It gathers itself, swinging its sword to bare down on the instigator of its pain—

Tallulah is there, faster than she can blink. Her own sword leaps to her hand, intercepting the Code’s.

It doesn’t stop it cleanly—not like Abuelito’s would, nor even Chayanne’s. She’s not strong enough for that. The metal shrieks, piercing her ears like arrows where she hasn’t had a chance to turn down her hearing aids in preparation for a fight for their lives, as the Code’s blade deflects to one side.

But it’s deflected.

Chayanne scrambles to his feet behind her. The Code hisses like a creeper and raises the sword to try again; Tallulah doesn’t think she’ll be able to do that a second time, not with a more direct strike. She braces herself for the blow anyway, just as determined as all her siblings to be strong .

She doesn’t have to.

A furious draconic cry echoes through the hotel room. 

Leo leaps at the Code, perching on its shoulders like she does with Tio Foolish while he’s building. But instead of laughing and chewing rainbow bubblegum, she wears a vicious snarl befitting a shark and buries a knife in the Code’s neck.

Not a step behind her comes Pomme, dragging her weapon across what would be its back. Then Dapper and Ramon and Chayanne are fully on their feet and lunging back into the fight.

Tallulah, emboldened by their courage, joins them.

As one, all her friends, her siblings, her family , in blood and heart, bring the Code to its knees. It lays in a crumpled heap beneath their feet, twitching and sparking with magic as the last of its un-life fades into the ether.

Silently, Chayanne hands her the sword it dropped, hilt first. She offers him a quizzical glance, which he answers with a meaningful nod.

Tallulah’s fingers wrap warm and hesitant around the cold grip. Her thoughts pause for but a moment, contemplating the choice Chayanne has given her.

…This thing and its kind have terrorized her family for long enough. It dared to take Richar’s shape, to defile their most vulnerable spaces.

It tried to kill her siblings .

Talluah’s grip tightens, her heart full of anger.

She raises the sword.

Green light fills the room as she plunges it into the Code’s body.

~~

Richarlyson was found, in the end. The Code had hidden him back inside the adoption center, stuffed into the cramped attic they’d found Tallulah in initially. Tallulah gives him the tightest hug when they find him, burying her face into her sibling’s shoulder for a precious few moments. Cellbit is right behind her, helping to get Richarlyson out of the attic, but he waits until Tallulah steps back to sweep Richar up in his tight grip. Forever is right behind him, hands on both of their shoulders and face the picture of concern.

Philza is directly behind Tallulah, and bends down as she watches the family in front of her embrace. “Chayanne told me what you did,” he murmurs, nodding back towards the group of eggs gathered nearby. Chayanne stands near Dapper, just happening to glance up as Tallulah looks over. He gives her a grin and a slight wave, before Ramon is tugging at his arm and he has to turn away.

“I’m proud of you.”

Tallulah glances behind her at Abuelito, smiling. The eggs were safe, Richarlyson was back, and the Code was dead.

Everything on the island was safe for another day.

GOOD ENDING UNLOCKED: PEACE AT LAST

It hasn’t been that long since her previous letter, and Tallulah knows that. But Richarlyson still hasn’t answered, and she’s starting to get really worried. It’s not like him to ignore Tallulah’s letters like this. He’s usually so willing to chat.

It’s short. Depressingly short, really. But she doesn’t know what else to say. How else do you write to a friend who won’t answer you? 

Swallowing hard, Tallulah sets down her pen and folds the letter in one smooth motion. There’s nothing else she can do but wait for a response.

And she gets one. Surprisingly quickly, actually—it’s on her nightstand before the end of the day. It looks…different, though. For one thing, it’s typed—printed, almost. Richarlyson has never written to her like that before. Second, there seem to be…splots of ink scattered throughout the note, as if someone left the pen over the letters for too long. It doesn’t seem right.

Tallulah stares at the letter for a few minutes, eyebrows furrowed as she tries to make sense of it. If she wasn’t sure something was wrong before, something definitely seems odd, now.

She needs to do something.

N E X T

The next morning, Tallulah is awake before the sun. Turns out having a Flutter for a pet makes for a great alarm clock, without risking waking Abuelito, who’s asleep upstairs.

Her stomach kind of feels a little like one right now, though, with how it twists like butterflies are dancing in it as she quietly eases herself out of bed. She focuses on making the covers nice and neat to try to settle them—although it doesn’t do much—before putting on her armor, grabbing her backpack, and slipping out the door.

Richar hadn’t given a specific spot to meet her, and Tallulah said she would find him, so she starts by making her way down the elevator from the Potato Plank to reach the ground; it’s not nearly as loud as the noisy waystone. For a moment, she stares across the river to her right—to the dark and lonely spruce-wood tower that was meant to be her home. The bright leaves and vibrant flowers all around make it feel a little like a graveyard.

She shivers at the thought and turns to continue her journey.

Passing Spawn, Tallulah winds her way towards the Favela. This early in the morning, Richar might be hanging out there.

Before she gets too far, a butterfly catches her eye. It doesn’t seem like just any butterfly, though; its wings sparkle and glitter in the dawn light like a thousand tiny stars. She means to continue—really, she does. Richar is waiting, and it’s very important she speak with him as soon as possible.

But…

The butterfly flutters directly into her path, now. Tallulah giggles as it flits around her, holding a palm out for it to walk on. Its tiny feelers and delicate feet tickle her skin, but she’s too awed by its lustrous color—a lustrous, candy-apple red—for it to bother her.

And then it’s lifting off her hand, dancing a circle in the air in front of her face, before moving a few paces along her path and then back again.

It’s…beckoning her to follow.

…Didn’t she have somewhere to be?

Right, Richarlyson.

Well…if it wants her to follow, and Richar likes the butterflies, then…maybe this one’s come to lead her to Richar!

Drawn like a moth to a flame, Tallulah follows after the butterfly. A gently lilting melody slowly picks up, so soft at first she thinks she must be hearing things, and then crescendoing until she can hum a little matching harmony perfectly under her breath. She walks, and walks, and walks , and by the time the sun is solidly above the horizon the butterfly dips through the trees into a little forest meadow.

The source of the music, it seems, is here. Under the canopy’s shade, she finds a dozen, three dozen, a hundred and more blooms of various flowers. Tallulah isn’t sure she’s even seen all of these different kinds before, there’s so many of them.

The butterfly floats away as her eyes clear of the single-minded purpose that had taken over her subconscious. The lazy haze that had urged her to follow the butterfly fades, like a cold gust of wind blew it away. Tallulah blinks, and her eyes fall to the center of the grove.

There stands her friend.

…Tallulah squints. She thought she knew from the letters, already, that something was off, but…

Now that she’s standing almost face-to-face with Richas, she knows . She knows what’s wrong, now. Her friend, her brother —as he puts the flute down, there’s a flash of something inhuman in Richar’s eyes.

This is not Richarlyson.

Tallulah takes a step back.

“TALLULAH!”

Abuelito!

It’s too late, though. Richarlyson smiles at her with too-sharp teeth, an awfully wicked smile and she watches in horror as the thing ’s skin cracks and sheds like a snake’s, revealing the deeper internal binary code beneath. It bursts at the seams—

And spills into the Code’s natural form.

Tallulah’s gut sinks, realizing that she doesn’t have a pearl prepared in the hotel.

She can hear Abeulito’s voice yelling from somewhere nearby, but she can’t seem to focus long enough to figure out where it’s coming from. Her eyes are glued to Richarlyson’s—no, the Code’s hovering form, moving forward menacingly with every passing second. She knows she should turn, run, fight, do something . But it’s as if she’s frozen with fear, stuck watching the trails of binary come directly towards her.

She’s going to die. She’s in the middle of a flower field with no one around, and she is going to die.

There’s a sudden roar from behind of her and she jumps, jolting backwards just in time to narrowly avoid being run through by Phil’s sword as he launches himself forward. The Code rises sharply, soaring high into the air to avoid his aggressive strikes. It doesn’t seem to be coming down any time soon either, and after a few small circles of the clearing, it flies off into the distance before blinking out of sight. 

Phil stands in the middle of the clearing, sword held at his side as he stares up at the place the Code vanished.

“ Abuelito !” Tallulah cries out, rushing forward, careful to avoid the point of the blade. She needn’t have worried, however—Phil drops it the minute she moves, and the sword skitters to the side as he bundles her into a hug. Tallulah’s heart is still racing as she buries her fists in his top, trying to resist the urge to break into tears.

“You’re alright, Tallulah.” She can feel his hand running through her hair as he speaks, though his head moves awkwardly to try and keep an eye on their surroundings. “You’re alright.”

And she is. She’s alive.

But she’s not alright.

Richarlyson is still missing; somewhere out there, on his own, lost. And the Code has to be killed, one way or another. The two might even be connected. 

There’s still work to be done.

ENDING UNLOCKED: SURVIVAL

Tallulah frowns, glancing at the letter. There really isn’t any way to make herself sound less paranoid, is there?

The letter comes back very quickly—thank goodness she managed to catch him while he was still awake!

N E X T

It’s a few weeks later when something finally happens to turn Tallulah’s nightmares into a reality. 

Tallulah and Chayanne had been taking their time to do the quests. It was coming near to an end, actually, which was a fortunate thing because that day something was going to happen. 

The quests were rather simple, thankfully: Feed the child a food made of flowers (Chayanne had made a splendidly edible flower salad. She and Phil were very honest about the fact that they love him and his cooking); then press flowers into an album and submit it to the school (she and Chayanne had made a collage of their favorite flowers. She thinks that she’ll pass with flying colors); then have a little ocean adventure (Tallulah had some trouble looking for her turtle helmet, but Phil had given her an extra. He’s always so prepared); and finally, have the eggs tell bedtime stories to one another. 

Tallulah, following Chayanne and Philza, was having a good day with these easy quests. She could see a bit of the stress on her grandfather’s features lighten and brighten up—as slight as it is. The little girl is just happy that her Abuelito isn’t as stressed as he had been. 

Tallulah had known, after all, that Philza had been stressing a lot over the recent Code monster attacks. She’s happy that today’s quests were all so simple, so she’s not an extra burden to him.

She’s currently working on writing a story to tell Chayanne. She thinks she could write it inspired by a lost dream. Maybe it could be a story about flowers and butterflies and a turtle. Tallulah has a lot of stories running through her head. 

Not that she gets the opportunity to actually write them. 

When she looks up and finds that the sky has blinked from day to night, a looming figure in green and numbers rapidly approaching her, she tucks her book into her inventory and sits up straight.

Phil and Chayanne are faster to react. Chayanne pulls her to her feet and pushes her behind him, while Phil shields the both of them under his clipped wings and spams Ts on his communicator. 

Not a moment later, Tallulah is in a different place. She is soaked from the chamber, having just been teleported into the hotel. Tallulah climbs out of the water and gets to her things so she could start drying herself off. She’ll replace the enderpearl in a moment; her soaked clothes are more important at present.

Or not, because: 

She spots movement in the corner of her eyes. 

When she looks over to the window, a growing and dawning horror curls in her chest at the sight.

It’s difficult to make out details in the new-moon night, but one thing is clear: there is more than one Code hovering outside NINHO. Their shimmering poison-and-ink silhouettes gleam like the stars overhead that are blocked out by blurred movements and surprised shouts from the parents below. Tallulah’s eyes frantically search for her loved ones—Tío Forever desperately coordinating efforts, Tío Etoiles throwing himself wildly into the thickest fighting, Tío Bad howling at the creatures like a banshee let loose. Abuelito of course is nowhere in sight, not yet, left behind when his children were teleported to safety.

Despite the fear gripping her heart, the urge to run to the window and watch every movement to know what’s happening—to not be locked away, left in the dark like the attic despite the windows and flowers all around her—Tallulah’s immediate thoughts go to her siblings.

Did they all make it into the hotel okay? Are they hurt and as alone as her right now?

She thinks of Richar, who has been acting so strange lately. 

She catches a glimpse of a Code flying past the window, and recoils.

Everything will be fine, she tries to reassures herself. But it’s more difficult than ever to believe as she watches the monster fly away and hears the cries of her family out there . Every tío and tía she’s spent days and weeks together with are fighting for them . But no matter how much she may wish to, she knows she can’t help—not in any way that would truly make a difference to the fight itself. 

She can’t help them beyond staying safe and away from the things that wish for her and her siblings’ deaths.

(And while Phil might love Death, and Death has haunted their family’s steps since that very first nightmare, this is not natural , this is not what She wants for them, and Abuelito will do everything he can to carry out Her will.)

There is one way Tallulah can help, though.

She just catches sight of a butterfly fluttering past as she turns from the window and rushes to the waystone.

She can go to her siblings.

Usually, especially for sizable attacks like this, they like to gather in the largest hotel room. After checking to make sure everyone all the eggs are safe in the hotel or their homes, they have an impromptu hang-out. They pile up all the cushions into a fort while Chayanne or someone else cooks snacks and their favorite beverages. Sometimes she, Pomme, and Leo will play their instruments; sometimes Richar will join in. Tallulah can’t count the number of times she’s halfway napped while leaning against Richar’s side, nearly as warm and protected as she is in Abuelito’s bunker.

So she can go there, to ensure no one does something stupid and makes all their parents’ efforts for nothing.

But first, she has to talk to her brother.

The air pops and fizzes as Tallulah selects Chayanne’s room. In the next second green and pink and purple give way to orange and yellow and the smell of dried herbs and fresh spices.

As she thought might be the case, he’s pressed up to the glass, sword in hand. He bangs his fist against the window in frustration as she hurries across the small room to him, then startles and turns to her when she grabs his sword-arm.

Tallulah can tell Chay doesn’t want to step away—rather, the opposite—but for her sake he lets her drag him back toward the sheltered corner with the stasis chamber. (He’s already replaced his pearl, she notes; she’s so proud of him, for his sharp mind and growing skills and big protective heart.

(But this is not something he’s strong enough for—not yet.)

She pulls out her notebook again; it’s faster than working with clumsy signs, with their limited size, especially in this small space. When she’s done scribbling her message, she shoves it into Chay’s hands.

We can’t go out there.

He gets this look on his face she can’t quite name, and he writes back:

But there’s so many of them. They need help

If we do they’ll all just attack us :c

Chay wrinkles his nose in that way he does when he hates the logic, but can’t deny it. The triumph she feels is stale and brittle, because Chay is only one of her siblings, and while he takes his protective role as the eldest the most seriously he also knows first-hand what happens if he jeopardizes that role.

We should check on the others, she continues, so no one feels scared and alone </3

For a moment, Chay only stares at the page. Outside, the roar of the fight waxes and wanes, too many sounds to pick out individual struggles knocking at the double-thick glass.

Then, his face hardens. He nods, and Tallulah releases a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

Before they select their first destination, though, Tallulah pauses with a hand on Chay’s shoulder, and he turns to look at her curiously.

Should she…

With a little nod to herself, her resolve steadies.

Quickly, she writes another message.

Richar has been acting off lately. Remember the day Forever came looking for him? He hasn’t been answering my letters since then :c I thought maybe he was just feeling bad and Abuelito’s paranoia is rubbing off on me, but…

Immediately, Chayanne takes her hand. She barely has a moment to tuck her book and pencil under her arm before he’s slapping a hand to the waystone. Tallulah quickly follows suit before he can totally leave her behind.

Another twist in her stomach and whoosh of noise in her ears, and they pop out in a very familiar room. 

They pop out into very unfamiliar chaos.

Or, truthfully, it is familiar—as familiar as nightmares on shorelines, steel on steel, the roar of mobs and the desperate cries of their parents.

Because at the very moment they come to awareness again in Leo’s room, Richarlyson’s eyes glow bright green.

Sometimes, the way Chayanne totes around his unsheathed sword reminds Tallulah a little bit of a child carrying around a favorite blanket. It’s endearing, sometimes annoying, and uniquely quirky to Chay, even among their more rough-and-tumble siblings.

Today, she’s glad of it.

Because while she’s still caught staring in horror and fear at what should have been her friend , Chayanne is already moving .

While she’s caught staring as the thing ’s skin cracks and sheds like a snake’s, Chayanne is shoving eggs aside left and right to get to it. It bursts at the seams to reveal the deeper internal binary code beneath—

And Chay slams his sword point-first into the bursting, rippling cracks of the Code’s natural form.

The thing screeches , twice as loud as all the eggs gasping and scrambling back from it, and tosses Chayanne off with its writhing. A number of the others draw weapons and push the smaller, younger eggs behind them. (The fact that the one they thought was their second-youngest was, in fact, a Code monster doesn’t occur to them in the moment, but it will later.)

With a fierce cry, Chayanne leaps forward again. This time, Ramon and Dapper join him. The Code doesn’t have a chance to block with its sword before the trio cut a number of deep slices into its shell.

It twists and bucks with another howl of agony, and this time all three of her brothers are flung across the room with the force. It gathers itself, swinging its sword to bare down on the instigator of its pain—

Tallulah is there, faster than she can blink. Her own sword leaps to her hand, intercepting the Code’s.

It doesn’t stop it cleanly—not like Abuelito’s would, nor even Chayanne’s. She’s not strong enough for that. The metal shrieks, piercing her ears like arrows where she hasn’t had a chance to turn down her hearing aids in preparation for a fight for their lives, as the Code’s blade deflects to one side.

But it’s deflected.

Chayanne scrambles to his feet behind her. The Code hisses like a creeper and raises the sword to try again; Tallulah doesn’t think she’ll be able to do that a second time, not with a more direct strike. She braces herself for the blow anyway, just as determined as all her siblings to be strong .

She doesn’t have to.

A furious draconic cry echoes through the hotel room. 

Leo leaps at the Code, perching on its shoulders like she does with Tio Foolish while he’s building. But instead of laughing and chewing rainbow bubblegum, she wears a vicious snarl befitting a shark and buries a knife in the Code’s neck.

They can’t last forever like this, and Tallulah knows it. They have to figure out a way to destroy the Code, once and for all. As she thinks, the Code lets out a scream, rearing vigorously. Leo flies off of its back, slamming against the wall at the back of the room. Immediately, Chayanne is in motion, launching himself towards the Code with his sword outstretched. It swipes him out of the air with a single move of its arm, almost like he was nothing.

Tallulah’s eyes dart around the room—to Ramon and Dapper, huddled against the wall. To Leo, still crumpled in a heap on the other side of the room. To Chayanne, struggling back to his knees nearby. To the rest of her siblings, pressed as far into the corner as they can to avoid the reach of the monster’s arm. She glances back at the Code again, sword gripped tightly in her sweaty palms.

There’s only one way out of this.

The Code doesn’t seem to have noticed Tallulah, instead turning menacingly towards her sibling—Leo blinks up from where she lays, scrambling to try and reach her knife. It’s been thrown too far away, however, blade skittering further across the floor as she kicks it with her foot in an attempt to pull it closer. 

Tallulah adjusts the grip of her hilt and makes a decision.

Her steps quicken as she runs forward, swinging clumsily upwards. The slice is wavering, unsteady, certainly not her best—but it hits , and that’s all that matters. The monster doesn’t see it coming, screaming in pain as the force of her swing rends its side in two. As the body of the Code slumps to the ground, the strands of binary tremble, slowly knitting back into a recognizable figure.

Richarlyson lays unconscious on the ground before her, unmoving.

She knew what was going to happen. She knew the Code was entwined too deeply to be removed. But at the same time, the what-if’s are flying through her head. What if it could have been fixed? What if her brother could have been saved? There had to have been another way to save everyone. 

She killed him, Tallulah realizes with a horrifying realization. She killed her brother. 

Tallulah falls to her knees, vision blurring as the sword drops from her hand. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers, fingers starting to shake. She can feel Chayanne laying an arm around her shoulders, she can see Leo scrambling to her feet in front of her, she can hear the murmurs and worries of her siblings in the distance, but none of it is processing.

She collapses, sobbing into Chayanne’s embrace–

And she voids.

BAD ENDING UNLOCKED: COMEDY OF ERRORS

She’s made up her mind. She’s going to figure out what’s going on. Tomorrow, she will pack her backpack and journey out before Abeulito wakes up. She’ll find Richarlyson and save him. 

A small voice in the back of her head keeps telling her that she should be telling other people about this. She shouldn’t try to do this alone. But what if it’s nothing? Then she will have wasted everyone’s time, and embarrassed Richarlyson in the process. 

No. She’ll do this on her own. Once and for all.

N E X T

The next morning, Tallulah is awake before the sun. Turns out having a Flutter for a pet makes for a great alarm clock, without risking waking Abuelito, who’s asleep upstairs.

Her stomach kind of feels a little like one right now, though, with how it twists like butterflies are dancing in it as she quietly eases herself out of bed. She focuses on making the covers nice and neat to try to settle them—although it doesn’t do much—before putting on her armor, grabbing her backpack, and slipping out the door.

Richar hadn’t given a specific spot to meet her, and Tallulah said she would find him, so she starts by making her way down the elevator from the Potato Plank to reach the ground; it’s not nearly as loud as the noisy waystone. For a moment, she stares across the river to her right—to the dark and lonely spruce-wood tower that was meant to be her home. The bright leaves and vibrant flowers all around make it feel a little like a graveyard.

She shivers at the thought and turns to continue her journey.

Passing Spawn, Tallulah winds her way towards the Favela. This early in the morning, Richar might be hanging out there.

Before she gets too far, a butterfly catches her eye. It doesn’t seem like just any butterfly, though; its wings sparkle and glitter in the dawn light like a thousand tiny stars. She means to continue—really, she does. Richar is waiting, and it’s very important she speak with him as soon as possible.

But…

The butterfly flutters directly into her path, now. Tallulah giggles as it flits around her, holding a palm out for it to walk on. Its tiny feelers and delicate feet tickle her skin, but she’s too awed by its lustrous color—a lustrous, candy-apple red—for it to bother her.

And then it’s lifting off her hand, dancing a circle in the air in front of her face, before moving a few paces along her path and then back again.

It’s…beckoning her to follow.

…Didn’t she have somewhere to be?

Right, Richarlyson.

Well…if it wants her to follow, and Richar likes the butterflies, then…maybe this one’s come to lead her to Richar!

Drawn like a moth to a flame, Tallulah follows after the butterfly. A gently lilting melody slowly picks up, so soft at first she thinks she must be hearing things, and then crescendoing until she can hum a little matching harmony perfectly under her breath. She walks, and walks, and walks , and by the time the sun is solidly above the horizon the butterfly dips through the trees into a little forest meadow.

The source of the music, it seems, is here. Under the canopy’s shade, she finds a dozen, three dozen, a hundred and more blooms of various flowers. Tallulah isn’t sure she’s even seen all of these different kinds before, there’s so many of them.

The butterfly floats away as her eyes clear of the single-minded purpose that had taken over her subconscious. The lazy haze that had urged her to follow the butterfly fades, like a cold gust of wind blew it away. Tallulah blinks, and her eyes fall to the center of the grove.

There stands her friend.

…Tallulah squints. She thought she knew from the letters, already, that something was off, but…

Now that she’s standing almost face-to-face with Richas, she knows . She knows what’s wrong, now. Her friend, her brother —as he puts the flute down, there’s a flash of something inhuman in Richar’s eyes.

This is not Richarlyson.

Tallulah takes a step back.

“TALLULAH!”

Abuelito!

It’s too late, though. Richarlyson smiles at her with too-sharp teeth, a smile too evil to be coming for her brother, and she watches in horror as the thing ’s skin cracks and sheds like a snake’s, revealing the deeper internal binary code beneath. It bursts at the seams—

And spills into the Code’s natural form.

Tallulah’s gut sinks, realizing that she doesn’t have a pearl prepared in the hotel.

The Code lunges —and everything goes dark.

BAD ENDING UNLOCKED: A SACRIFICE IS NEEDED