(Note-updating thurs/fri hopefully)

It was strange going straight from cool Boston weather to the oppressive heat of the jungle, Rick thought to himself. The portal closed behind them, and there they were. Collin had a big, ridiculous grin on his face, as if he were totally fine.

Rick, however, couldn't help notice that his hand kept drifting up towards that bloated part of his face. It was looking a lot better than it did, however.

"There should be a clearing with a small tree in it not too far from here, straight on," Adrian said. "That's what Jeremy told me anyway, waving a bit of a crude map on paper in front of him.

"Yeah, OK. Less' go," Hal said and began stomping forward through the forest.

Something in Rick's stomach turned as he watched Collin follow after Hal. Rick had a bit of an obsessive mind, he freely admitted, and he started thinking about death again. His thoughts moved in a general way through the grim inevitability of the final curtain but then drifted towards an encounter he'd had a week ago.

It was with this woman named Christa who he'd seen sitting on a park bench. Or, well, he'd thought it had been her. It obviously couldn't have been. Rick had known Christa from high school and was rather surprised to see her again, given that she was, as far as he knew, completely dead.

Christa was absolutely gorgeous, just like Rick remembered. Brunette bombshell with curves in all the right places, despite being pretty short. Rick had to actively remember she was short in her head, since that she was so striking it was easy to forget.

As Rick recalled, she had been an out of this world gymnastics star. He remembered some dumb people at lunch in high school saying that gymnasts had to be skinny and laughed at seeing her in the gymnast's outfit at school.

Her curvy body was apparently hiding a lot of muscle though, and Christa shut them up real quick. Won awards up and down the state and people were talking about the Olympics.

Then she died, and it was this big mystery and no one knew why.

Next Rick knew, he saw on her a park bench when he'd been walking back to the apartment.

Just about every time he'd ever seen her in the school hallways and tried talking to her she had turned bright red and literally ran away at blazing speed. He'd figured he'd done something to offend her at first, but other people had assured him she was just like that.

However, this time, instead of running away she gave him an obvious warm grin, stared mischievously at where his shirt hung open a bit, and even winked at him.

As Rick had become self-conscious and worked to close the shirt, he broke eye contact with her, and suddenly she was gone, though the tree branches over her head were swaying.

His mind went to strange places, now that he knew how bendable reality was. She didn't look the slightest bit pale, though she had been wearing some kind of amulet.

Rick figured he was just fantasizing though, and thinking about tragedy and death because of Collin.

But no, it could not have been Christa at all. She had never possessed anywhere near that level of confidence.

Also, dead. She had been super dead. If anything she looked even hotter the second time than she had in her previous state, and that's not what dead should do.

"That is not how dead works," Rick said to himself, drawing a sharp-looking from Adrian. Rick was bringing up the rear with Adrian ahead of him, and then Collin and Hal.

Still, the thought occurred to Rick at the last moment that Dead Girl had been following him.

Adrian looked at him with some confusion

"Sorry, thinking about something else," Rick said. "Not all this stuff."

"Just morbid in general, eh?" Adrian said as Rick drew close enough to him for more easy conversation.

"Yeah, I guess," Rick said. Something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye as well.

"Also, have you noticed that a monkey is following us?" He asked. "It has been almost as soon as we started moving."

Adrian blinked at this information.

"No, I advise against looking," Rick said, when Adrian started craning his neck.

"Easy for you to say," Adrian said, with a smirk.

Rick stopped for a minute to find a clump of something organic at his feet, he didn't even know what it was, but he hucked it at the monkey. The little creature didn't even blink as the clump missed him by inches.

"OK, now that is kind of weird," Adrian admitted, looking this time.

"Why are there so many entities following us today?" Rick asked out loud as they turned back to catch up with the others on the forest floor.

"I don't know," Adrian said as he wiped his brow from the humidity.

"I've noticed something else though," He said as they strode through the underbrush.

"That branch over there looks like a boom mic and that clump of leaves looks like they have microchips on them."

"What?" Rick said and actually stopped to go look at them. The monkey dashed behind a tree trunk as he went to where Adrian was pointing. It was just leaves and a branch when he got there.

"I know, right? It looks like it only until you approach it. Then it all goes normal again, Like the Matrix or something."

Rick didn't know what to say to that, so they continued on, the world's bravest monkey following along behind.

Something is about to happen, Rick's mind whispered to him, and he found himself tracing an infinity symbol on his pants as he walked, absent-mindedly.

He felt like he was standing right in the middle of huge opposing forces. That's what a storm was, after all. Cold front and hot front smashing into each other. Huge invisible expanses of moving air.

Storms never stopped, but there was always a winner, a front that slid over the top.

It was like the forest was whispering to him about what was about to happen. Telling him that every little step he took, on this twig, or on this mound was changing some tiny aspect of how this was going to unfold.

Rick just had to listen, to find the little cracks he could wedge open so they could find their way out, sneak out of the trap. For now anyway, for this time.

The feeling swelled, the air in front of him felt hot while a surprisingly cool breeze swelled up behind and in the distance, he saw a lone tree, sitting alone in a cone of light from where the canopy broke overhead.

It was obvious whatever was building was about to break. It felt like Rick could almost hear the tuning of instruments, another battle in itself between the two forces of sound and silence.

Some conductor tapped his baton, Rick tried to look everywhere at once, listen to every frog, bird, and monkey in the forest for clues about where that gap in the annihilation of two titanic combatants-

And finally, they stepped up to the tree where it was all to begin.