Fierce Fox seemed shaky as we arrived on Mocktropica Island.
"You okay?" I asked with concern.
"Been a long time." Fierce Fox sighed. She gazed at the Poptropica Worldwide Headquarters, which is a brick building with many long, blue windows. In those windows are objects from other islands. The path is concrete and the street looks very normal, apart from the glitches hanging around. Like the pot plant in front of Headquarters that glitches and turns into a cupcake.
"So… where's your family?" I asked, raising my brow.
"Around," Fierce Fox replied. She frowned, discontent in her eyes. She didn't look too pleased about her family being around.
"Uh… alright," I said, chewing my lip. Mocktropica is a unique island. It breaks the fourth wall a lot and has a lot of programmed glitches. It seems like an unlikely place for someone like Fierce Fox to be from. Oh well. We spoke to a lady outside the HQ. She complained about the island being imcomplete, then rushed off. So Fierce Fox's island wasn't even complete, either. I bet that helped her ego.
Fierce Fox and I entered HQ. It's a blue, modern-ish building. Well, at least everywhere but the basement is. By the left side, there's a focus testing room for a guy named the Focus Tester. In there were some children. The Focus Tester was outside, standing near some cake. Fierce Fox and I approached him.
"Ah! Fierce Fox!" he exclaimed. "It's been a long time. I've been seeing you travel around with the prophesied hero. Wait until your aunt hears about this! She'll-"
"I know, I know." Fierce Fox grumbled.
"Actually, this hero business isn't that great," the Focus Tester said, folding his arms. "In a way, it ruins our plans." He shook his head at me. "Which, naturally, have, er, nothing to do with you."
"Yeah, sure." I said, raising my brow. I stared at Fierce Fox. She rolled her eyes at me. She looked so foreign on this island: adventurous with her fiery-red hair and punk clothing. The Mocktropicans were all flashy and money-obsessed. I didn't know how they could be related.
"Anyway, what are you doing back?" the Focus Tester asked. "I thought you said you'd never return."
"Um…" Fierce Fox looked around awkwardly. "I'm on an island quest."
"Yes, all the buzz," the Focus Tester sighed. He gazed at the cake. "Here, help yourself to some cake. My mom made it." I shrugged and took a piece. "I've got some work to do, like making Poptropica a better game. There will be people who will want to see you, Fierce Fox."
"Great." Fierce Fox grumbled. I raised my brow at her as we walked to an elevator. "He's a family friend. My dad's best friend."
"Who's your dad?" I asked. I gazed in the other direction. "If you don't mind me asking."
"He doesn't work here," Fierce Fox answered. She frowned. "But he's important." She didn't seem to want to answer anymore questions, so I kept my mouth shut. We got to the first floor. It belongs to this guy called the Safety Inspector, who- obviously- is safety obsessed. He's also Fierce Fox's cousin. It seemed she was related or at least knew everyone on the island. The Safety Inspector wasn't too happy about Fierce Fox running around on islands, and warned her to be safer. She ignored him.
The Obnoxious Ad Sale Lady is floor three. She looks strikingly rich with luxurious, black hair and fancy clothing. There are some expensive things like a golden coffee machine lying around.
"Well, if it isn't my favourite niece!" the Ad lady cried, grinning at Fierce Fox.
"She's your aunt?!" I whispered. Fierce Fox bit her lip.
"Hey, Aunt Obnoxious." she greeted half-heartedly.
"Just wait until you see our newest ad!" Fierce Fox's aunt cried, waving her arms.
"Uh… we're good, thanks." Fierce Fox replied. She gripped my bicep. "Let's go, Alice."
"Wait!" the Ad lady said, approaching us. "The prophesied hero! Fierce Fox, you and the hero could make us a fortune! We just need the hero to sign-"
"We're good," Fierce Fox insisted, gritting her teeth. "Let's go, Alice."
After speaking to Fierce Fox's other family friend on the fourth floor, we went into the basement. It's dark in there, full of computers, signs and age. The workers are more stressed out than students on finals week. It turns out their designer, developer and writer were gone, and we needed to retrieve them. Using one of the computers, I set the island's mood to happy, to let us enter somewhere. Then we headed out to find the workers.
The designer was at a cheese factory on a farm, so we headed there. The Focus Tester had started these things called achievements, which we received for doing various things. Fierce Fox mentioned he was always doing silly things like that. Anyway, the cheese factory is on a lush, green farm, full of glitchy cows.
"These pets won't stop eating! They're multiplying!" a kid cried, surrounded by small, orange furry creatures called Narfs. He ran off, the Narfs following. Fierce Fox and I entered the cheese factory, which is pale with an orange roof. We got an achievement for entering. Its shelves are stocked with cheese and large containments stirring fresh cheese. There was machinery making cheese curds. A guy was standing near some machinery. It was Lance Pitcher, the designer. He loved making cheese curls and didn't want to leave. Even Fierce Fox, someone he recognized, couldn't convince him.
Fierce Fox and I, taking a bag of cheese curds Lance insisted we have, headed over to Funshine Mountain. The kid with the Narfs was not liking his new pets. There's a large ravine before Funshine Mountain, which the Safety Inspector wouldn't let us pass. I chucked a cheese curd in there. Millions of Narfs jumped in after it, filling up the ravine. Then the Safety Inspector let us pass.
We scaled the rocky, grass-covered Mount Funshine. Rocks fell down it- but they're virtual, so they didn't hurt. I kept getting tricked by them, which was really annoying. However, the mountain wasn't very big, since the illustrator was on break and would finish the mountain later. A climber, agitated, dumped his climbing axe and stormed off the mountain. We picked that up and returned to the cheese factory. Well, not before being interrupted by the Focus Tester, who made us pay cash called Pop Coins to leave Main Street.
Because of this, we had to go into the basement and set the time to night. This made a shadowy character come out, who gave us counterfeit coins so we could leave Main Street.
"You've got one weird family friend." I told Fierce Fox about the Focus Tester as we set the time back to day. An evil one, too. I tried not to express my frown. Poor Fierce Fox, some of her family were the antagonists. It made me wonder how she became a hero. "Hey… I've got a question. How did you… y'know, become my Poptropican and all? I mean… did you get recruited or something?"
"It's a long story," Fierce Fox grumbled, her face darkening. "My family are all money obsessed, right? So, they were tryna drag me into the business. I never liked that. One day, I got invited to the notorious 'blue room', the place where heroes are made and protect islands and stuff. There could only be one hero. I was excited. I wanted to be that hero. But my family wanted me to stay because of their stupid money and that game, Mega Fighting Bots. I got angry and left, telling 'em I'd never return. It's been a long time since then."
"Whoa…" I said. I bit my lip. "Blue room…" You mean, where Poptropicans are made? So… I thought. I must've picked Fierce Fox through there. But what about other Poptropicans? Are there different timelines with different heroes? That's… weird, when you think of it like that.
"Uh… yeah," Fierce Fox said, raising her brow. "Anyway, we'd better get to Lance's cheese factory."
"Right," I nodded in agreement. "Our mission."
We got to the cheese factory. Using the climbing axe, I broke the cheese machine. The curds were being produced at a rapid pace; the whole factory was rumbling from the pressure. Darkness clouded my vision. When it was gone, exploded cheese covered everything except Fierce Fox, Lance and I.
"No!" Lance cried. "My cheese curds! Nooooo!"
"Maybe you should go back to your old job now," Fierce Fox commented. "Just a thought!"
"It is with sadness that I agree to return to Poptropica Worldwide HQ," Lance monologued. "There is nothing here for me now."
"He's actually a nice guy," Fierce Fox whispered to me. "They all are. They just don't like the HQ that much."
I nodded. "I get that."
Lance returning was the good news. The bad news was our inventory was gone. To retrieve it, we had to find the developer- a guy named Billy Jordan. Before we did that, we set the weather to clear- we didn't want rain pouring on us as we climbed up Mount Funshine. Then we went to such mountain. It's completely finished now and rises into the clouds. I still hate jumping, though. Mount Funshine was no exception. I was puffed out when we arrived at the top. And there's a ski lift there, too.
"You don't know where this ski lift is?" I asked, staring at Fierce Fox. "We could've used that!"
"The climb's worth it." Fierce Fox shrugged. I sighed irritably. Oh well. At least the view's pleasant: bright, blue skies contrasting against the green, flower-covered mountain-top. On the tippy top of the mountain is a dead tree. On that dead tree was a bearded hobo- Billy Jordan. He refused to leave until we played a game of mancala with him. I don't like mancala that much, so I let Fierce Fox play it with him. They were old buddies, naturally. Being the natural, she defeated him.
"How are you so good at everything?!" Billy complained. I smiled in agreement. "Whatever! I never liked that silly game anyway!"
"Sore loser, huh?" Fierce Fox asked, smirking. "Not very zen…"
"Says you!" Billy grumbled. He sighed. "I'll be back at the office."
Billy fixed our inventory. It seemed there were no more major glitches, apart from some dialogue bug. I changed the position of the buildings outside on a computer, then we exited the basement. You're probably wondering why I swapped the buildings around. We'll get back to that later. For now, Fierce Fox and I headed over to Ephiram University, which is a brick, mordern-ish building. Your typical university.
Fierce Fox and I entered such university. In there was the writer, Max McPatrick. He was trying to teach some irresponsible students a poem. All they wanted to do was play Mega Fighting Bots.
"I know I can get through to these kids," Max sighed. "I'm going to change their lives."
"What are you trying to teach them?" Fierce Fox asked. "A poem?"
"You got it," Max replied. He shook his head. "You always did, Fierce Fox. I'm trying to teach them the poem, O Captain! My Captain! I'm hoping it will foster a love of poetry. Y'know, as an educator, I really prefer the Socratic method…" He showed us a copy of the poem. There was an ad hovering around the paper. I slapped it away, causing the paper to set on fire. Max frowned. "Argh! That's the only copy I had… I'm going to need more soda pop to get through this day. That's an old writer's trick. Always give the player something to search for. Hint hint."
"We got it." Fierce Fox assured him. We left the university and returned to Main Street. The Focus Tester had a 'brilliant' new idea: collectibles. He wanted us to collect one thousand and told us where the first one was. That one was the only one we needed. Remember when I changed the order of the buildings? Well, I had to do that so we could get to the top of the HQ. On there was the collectible- a soda bottle.
After grabbing that, the Safety Inspector showed up.
"Stop!" he cried. "Jumping off of a building is dangerous without the right equipment. Take this!" He handed us two comically-large helmets that were probably bigger than me.
"This is ludicrous." Fierce Fox commented, eyeing the helmet on her head. I chuckled and led her off the building. We removed the helmets and found our next problem: a large, soda-filled crate was blocking our path.
"Just do something, anything, to get this crate open!" the Focus Tester pleaded. So we headed down to the basement and onto the computer. We smashed the crate open using computer programs. When we returned to Main Street, the crate was destroyed. Sticky, orange soda was spilled everywhere. We passed that and entered the university.
"Thanks, but that's not enough to get me back in the game." Max said, once we'd given him the soda.
"Hey, that's not how this is supposed to work, Max." Fierce Fox grumbled.
"You did bring me the soda pop…" Max sighed, looking away. "But I'm afraid that if I go back, the nightmares will return."
"You mean those nightmares about script writing?" Fierce Fox asked. She rolled her eyes. "I thought you were over those!"
"They never left," Max said, shaking his head. "Even you won't get the severity of them. But… ah, I can't resist non-stop editing whenever I see scripts."
"And you always put them in the trash, right?" Fierce Fox asked. Max nodded, winking at her. I could see he was giving us a hint. So we left the university and returned to the dirty basement once again. It was even more dirty now since the workers were sitting on each other's laps.
"Um, why are they all sitting on each other's laps?" Fierce Fox asked. She'd been doing way more talking in this island, and her confidence was higher. Of course, that was expected. It's her island, after all.
"This is my brilliant new 'two-deep' program," the lady from the fourth level explained vigorously. She was always trying to make new island plots. "Double the space, half the money wasted on chairs!" Fierce Fox shrugged at me. We headed over to a pile of bags. Behind them was a sleeping guy, who was blocking a bin we needed to search. We removed him using the Focus Tester's mom's cake. We did the infamous Poptropica act and searched through the bin, finding an island script. We gave it to Max.
"So many typos!" he cried. "Who typed this, a three-toed sloth? I need to get to my writing station!" Then his students recited the O Captain! My Captain! poem… then dumped him and talked about Mega Fighting Bots. Poor guy. We went back outside, the sky a beautiful blue. The ad floating around us wasn't so beautiful.
"Aunt Obnoxious!" Fierce Fox rebuked, crossing her arms.
"I've done it!" the Ad lady exclaimed. "I've created the most obtrusive ad of all time. Our CPM is about to go through the roof!"
"Auntie, get rid of it." Fierce Fox growled, putting her hands on her hips. Her appearance was very intimidating, especially her fizzing lighting staff. The ad was bouncing around, and almost hit my head.
"Alright…" the Ad lady sighed. She smirked like a successful business man would. "If the prophesied hero does a few things for me. Once the players see that, I'll rope in more cash than ever!"
"Fine, Alice will," Fierce Fox said, frowning. "But no more ads after this."
"I won't need them when everyone sees the hero's stamp of approval!" the Ad lady replied. She turned to me. "I just need to take a picture with you, and I need you to sign a few things. Not hard! Won't take more than a few minutes."
"Uh… sure, I guess…" I agreed. I walked over to Fierce Fox's aunt. She snapped a few pictures of me next to some advertisements.
"Smile for the camera!" she cried. I gave a toothless grin, throwing my scarf over my shoulder. Fierce Fox rolled her eyes. After the photos, I signed a few ads and posters. The Ad lady patted my shoulder. "Thank you. Now, I've got money to make! If you're interested in doing anything else, come see me." She raced off.
"Well… that was kind of weird." I commented, raising my brow.
"What's next?" Fierce Fox asked with gritted teeth. I gestured her to follow me. We returned to the HQ. The lady from the fourth floor approached us. And she'd done something very stupid.
"This is my finest hour!" she explained. "I've eliminated almost all of Poptropica's servers."
"Won't that make the game run really slow?" Fierce Fox asked, raising her brow.
"Technically yes, but I dare you to notice the difference!" the lady replied, grinning. I led Fierce Fox over to the basement. However, we were caught in the loading screen: a blue room with the floating Poptropica logo.
"It's like the blue room…" Fierce Fox admired. She shook her head. "We need to get outta here!"
"And I know how," I replied. "Put on that helmet and smash that logo." Fierce Fox obliged. She smashed the logo with her giant head, somehow receiving an achievement. Then we got to Poptropica's server, which involved solving a puzzle. After solving the puzzle, we fixed the server and were free to return to the Main Street, so we did.
"I don't believe it!" the lady- the first person who spoke to- exclaimed. "All of the problems are fixed and the island is ready to launch. Poptropica is back!"
"So that's it? We saved the day?" Fierce Fox asked. She looked unsure.
"The only thing that's missing is a Poptropica-style twist," the lady replied. "There should be an enemy who's been hiding in plain sight, but who could it be?" The quad arrived: the Focus Tester, the Safety Inspector, Fierce Fox's aunt and the fourth-floor lady.
"We are the enemies who have been hiding in plain sight!" the Focus Tester exclaimed. "Surprise: we own both Poptropica and Megafightingbots .com!"
"I know that," Fierce Fox grumbled. "I know what you've been up to." She made a fist. "Family or not, sorry… I can't let you drive away Poptropica's success."
The Focus Tester sighed and stared at Fierce Fox. "Fierce Fox… it's been a long time. I know… you dislike the family business, but… imagine if your parents saw this. Your dad's in a higher position than us. He wouldn't want you to be like this."
"He can't control me," Fierce Fox growled. She turned to me. "Alice, no offence, but this is going to be a… personal battle. So… could you…"
"I got it." I said, taking a few steps back. Fierce Fox faced her family.
"For Poptropica!" she shouted, like a real hero. Her family glanced at each other.
"Business associates, you know what we must do." the Safety Inspector declared.
"It's time for Plan B." the Ad lady agreed.
"We must summon…" the Focus Tester continued.
They all shouted, "The real life Mega Fighting Bots!" That's when the fight scene started. Mega Fighting Bots flew down from the sky, each representing an executive. They combined, becoming a ginormous Mega Fighting Bot. I glanced in the other direction as Fierce Fox chucked Pop Coins at them, damaging them. They couldn't even land a blow on her. Her dodging skills were too good. I wondered if this was hard on Fierce Fox, knowing this was her family. She seemed strong and confident, but I could've sworn I saw her eyes glimmer with tears.
Fierce Fox threw Pop Coin after Pop Coin, until she destroyed the bot. She also destroyed the achievement system. She and her family returned to the ground, the fight complete.
"You… haven't seen the last of us!" the Focus Tester cried, sounding a little sad himself. "We'll… we'll… be back!" A plane with the Mega Fighting Bots logo appeared. The executives climbed in and took off. Fierce Fox watched them for a bit, then turned to the first lady.
"Medallion, please," she insisted. The lady shrugged and handed her the medallion. Fierce Fox scowled and grabbed my arm. "Let's go. Enough of this island."
Poor thing, I thought, as we left in our own ride.