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Jason was blown back by the WorldPhoenix’s attack, Gordon’s shield popping. He twisted in midair to slash at the horde before he landed. He got three eyes of a spider centaur and realized that he was falling straight towards an almost comically elongated, wickedly sharp horn of a black unicorn. He reached his mind out and shadow teleported to Shade’s closest body. In Jason’s place, he left part of team Collin to rain down on the unicorn and spider centaur.
Jason was now 40 meters behind where the WorldPhoenix had been, just 1.1 seconds before, when her attack had blown him back. Gordon’s shield orb protected him from damage, but also fuzzed his vision for 0.2 seconds. He’d lost track of where she was now. By instinct, he used the slow fall power of his cloak to raise the gravity instead of lower and drop faster than he should have been able to. Or at least, he tried. He hadn’t re-summoned the cloak after he used it as a shadow to teleport out of.
Jason dropped at a normal, oh-so predictable rate. Stupid, Jason! He tried to spin, but it was slow, so slow, especially to silver rankers. Still, his mind moved fast enough that he could see the WorldPhoenix’s blade slicing down to split his head in isometric halves. The blade hesitated for such a small length of time, Jason might have thought he imagined it if not for the interface feature he was practicing with (0.07 second hesitation).
An air horn blared.
All weapons stopped moving. Jason hit the ground. Jason felt three food carts appear to one side of the road and training weights to the other. All evidence of blood and gore disappeared as if everything the eye could see had just gotten doused with crystal wash.
Jason closed his eyes, stood up straight, and immediately turned off the “Stopwatch” feature in the interface. It gave good information, but it just cluttered his mind too much. Maybe he’d practice more with it later, after he started holding his own. For right now, though, there was just too much he was working on.
He opened his eyes and turned toward the food carts. His eyes widened in surprise. The Celestial Book had swapped his cheap cosplay wizard hat for a glittery paper party hat. He was holding a cake with 28 candles on it. The Seeker of Songs was next to him. Her cheap, ill-fitting clothes were replaced by too-tight black pants that were rolled up at the bottom, a garish silver belt, and a fake tiger skinned coat that went down to her ankles and opened to show off non-existent cleavage. Despite the coat having a tiger stripe pattern, it also included a fluffy mane around the neck. She was also wearing a party hat.
Legion was busy pulling off tiny sparkling hats that had somehow found their way onto each of the many points of his antlers. With each hat Legion pulled off, more glitter fell sparkling to his face and shoulders. Jason counted at least eight torn, glittering triangles that had already been stomped onto the road. Some ash was blowing away from the WorldPhoenix, and no hats were visible on any of the other great astral beings.
Behind Jason, he heard, “Come on guys!” He turned around to see the Downtown Beat Boys, but with the colorful hats on instead of their bandannas. Next to them was a xenomorph, the cheap elastic of the party hat stretched almost to breaking around it’s chin. It shrieked, and Jason could see its glitter coated tongue also wore a party hat.
A kazoo sounded, and then the only sound was singing. The Celestial Book, The Seeker of Songs, the WorldPhoenix, and the Downtown Beat Boys were all singing Happy Birthday. Whispers in Corners was tapping her foot in time to the music. Jason felt happiness start to well up inside him.
“I think this is proof,” Jason muttered to himself. He swept his gaze across the great astral beings and the horde. Most of the horde still had party hats on, either lacking the ability to remove them or not caring what they were wearing. Of the great astral beings, only the Celestial Book and Seeker of Songs kept their hats on. “I’ve definitely gone insane. Am I still in the hedge maze? Was there ever a hedge maze?”
Jason put the thought out of his head. He was going to enjoy his birthday this year. He tried not to think about the several “April fool’s” jokes where everyone pretended to forget his birthday, and especially not the one where all his presents were Amy’s instead. That birthday trick was an especially painful memory now. No, that’s also a thought that doesn’t belong in my head today. Today was a day to be happy.
He walked over to share in the cake, a huge smile on his face as he watched the xenomorph devour its first slice in small, dainty bites.