They arrived, responding to the commotion. Four tall, bulky looking beastly men with grotesque armor and hideous masks. They aimed their alien staffs at the five intruders in the prison cell. Standing at the head of the four alien guards was a nightmarish man with sickly green skin, ghostly white hair, and a long black cloak. He bared his teeth at the unexpected prisoners.

Vezon waved at the aliens. "Sup n-words! We were just looking around. Hope you don't mind."

The alien man looked content to remain on the other side of the cage wall from Vezon, who had at least two feet on him. At least for now, they were keeping their distance. Monika re-rethought her position on Vezon as their savior. At least they didn't have to worry so much about people trying to mess with them.

A deep growl came from the alien leader's throat. "How did you get in here without setting off the alarms?"

Vezon shrugged. "Kanohi mask of power, uncontrolled temporal vortices, unstable gravity wells, uncooperative alchemical solutions, eldritch intermingling, tsundere lolis. You know, the usual."

Natsuki sat up. "What's that last one supposed to mean?"

Shaking his head, Vezon looked away and covered his eyes with his hand, feigning drama. "It's been terrible, truly. Too much for my young heart to take."

"Enough!" The alien man stepped back, directing the tough-looking guards to close in and focus their aim on Vezon. He didn't seem to consider the girls anything of a threat.

Looking back to see all the weapons aimed at him, Vezon's eyes flashed brightly. "Ah… so then it's a fight. To the death!" Streaks of bluish energy shot out of the staffs, hitting Vezon's armored chest and disappearing. He laughed. "Tingly. It'll take more than that to stop me!"

Monika almost felt like she was going to cheer when, suddenly, Vezon reached out and tore the cage wall apart effortlessly. He was far stronger than she'd even thought. As the guards pummeled him with more blasts from their weapons, he grabbed them all one at a time, killing them with little trouble. He snapped the necks of the first two within a couple seconds. The others started backing away, continuing to fire. The leader had ducked into a passage off to the side.

A blast from one of the staffs flew past Vezon and hit Sayori in the chest. She dropped like a rock, but Natsuki managed to catch her. "Sayori! Monika, help me!"

Ignoring the sound of flesh tearing as Vezon dispatched the last guard, Monika turned Sayori over and checked to see if she was still alive. She was breathing. Monika let out a sigh of relief. "I think it just stunned her. Yuri, can you help me get her up? Yuri?"

Vezon turned away from the last guard, having torn it limb from limb. Yuri was there, watching intently. He was taken aback by this tenacious curiosity for extreme violence. It wasn't like he didn't share the interest he could see in her eyes, it was just that he wasn't so used to it from someone of her squishiness.

"Can I help you?"

Yuri's eyes moved between Vezon and the dismembered body. "What are they?"

"I dunno, but those stunners suck. My nipples are numb."

She couldn't tell if he even had nipples, but she certainly wasn't about to ask about them. Her eyes wandered away to the belt on one of the other guards. "Hey, that looks like…" Tiptoeing over to the alien corpse, she knelt down and pulled the object free. Her face brightened immensely when she saw that it was indeed a knife. "Ooh, it's pretty too."

"Creepy… wait, what am I talking about? I'm the most terrifying thing for an astronomical unit in every direction." He shook his head. It didn't matter. "So, you uh… like sharp things?"

She nodded enthusiastically. "Knifes especially."

"Yeah, I prefer swords. Axes are even better, but usually I end up using a spear. Just works best for me, I suppose."

"Swords." She huffed. "I'd never get away with a sword. And they're impossible to conceal."

Monika stepped out of the cell, carrying Sayori on her back. "So neither of you are going to help us, then? She's not as light as she looks."

Natsuki was helping keep their unconscious friend steady from behind. "How long is she gonna be out?"

Vezon grinned. "Lick your finger and stick it in her ear."

Natsuki forwned. "No! That's gross! How do you even know about doing that? You don't have any ears that I can see. Also, I bet your saliva is acidic anyways."

He looked uncomfortable suddenly, rubbing the back of his head. "Now that you mention it, I'm not even sure I have saliva."

Monika cleared her throat, catching their attention. "Regardless, we should probably be going now. Their leader got away and will no doubt be alerting others to our presence." She stopped and looked quizzically at Yuri. "What are you doing?"

Yuri looked up, caught in the act of fastening a belt she'd taken off one of the alien guards around her waist. She'd also stolen all their knives and clipped their sheaths to the belt. She took a deep breath. "Do you really expect Vezon to protect all four of us? We don't know what we're up against, or really where we even are. For all you know, we could be facing Lovecraftian horrors. I'd like to be as prepared as possible, and you need someone watching your back."

"Fine." Monika didn't look happy about it, but they started moving through the strange twists and turns of the alien tunnels all the same.

Vezon was in the front, obviously the best choice to encounter anything they might run afoul of first. Monika carried Sayori on her back, with Natsuki trying her best to alleviate as much of the burden as possible. Yuri stayed at the back, looking over her shoulder ever couple of seconds as if she thought something was following them, and it was starting to unnerve Natsuki.

Without any resistance, they soon found themselves in a peculiar room. There was some large sack hanging from the ceiling, glowing a pale greenish-yellow. The darkly colors mechanism that held it in place looked like it was just a part of the ceiling and walls, and it all looked almost like a wet rock. The other unusual thing in the room was what looked like a pedestal or a control console.

Monika knelt down. "Let's put Sayori down here." Natsuki eased Sayori down and then dropped her on the ground with a solid thud.

"Ow."

Natsuki looked down at her. "Oh, you're awake? How long have you been awake?"

Sayori didn't bother to sit up. "A few minutes. Why'd we stop?"

"Why didn't you tell us you were awake?" Natsuki grumbled and turned away. "You should have said something. We were all worried about you."

"I wasn't."

Natsuki glared at Vezon. "We were all worried." She sighed. "Well, you're okay, and that's what matters."

Yuri had gotten really close to the glowing thing in the center of the room, trying to see if she could tell what was inside it. "What is this?"

Monika stepped up to the console, looking over the foreign lettering on what she guessed was a screen. "It looks like it's some kind of experimental power generator. If I'm reading this correctly, it's giving off a significant amount of gamma radiation, but nothing dangerous."

Sayori jumped up. "Radiation that's not dangerous? I believe that without question!"

Monika was pretty sure Sayori wasn't being sarcastic, which was highly concerning. "All the same, we should probably leave it alone."

Yuri looked back at her and unsheathed one of her stolen knives. "This place and those cratures are clearly not our allies, so it would be in our best interest not to leave this intact."

"Wait, Yuri, don't!" Monika was too late.

Yuri stabbed her knife into the thing and split it open. A wave of shimmering energy pulsed out of the deep wound in the organic device, colliding with Natsuki and sending her flying backward into the wall.

Vezon watched this unfold, impartial to Natsuki's well-being. "Is she going to be okay? If she's not okay, you're carrying her."

Natsuki jumped up, clearly at least physically okay. She shouted at Yuri. "You idiot! Next time you go fucking with alien technology, make sure you're the only one it tries to kill!"

Monika coughed, looking over the console. "Well, you killed it, anyways. But… Natsuki got hit with a lot of gamma radiation."

Natsuki looked mortified. "How much?!"

"Uh…" Monika was trying to keep up with the readings on the screen, which were spouting technical details in a language she inexplicably knew how to read. "Ten thousand?"

"Ten thousand!?" Natsuki started panicking. "Ten thousand radiations!?"

"Uh, no. I think that's about ten thousand times the normal amount human beings are exposed to over the course of their lifetime?" She stepped away from the console and faked a smile. "Right, like I said. It should be mostly harmless."

"I don't believe you!" Natsuki turned back to Yuri. "I bet you did that on purpose! You just wanted to see if it would get rid of me! I knew you didn't like me, but this is a new low even for you!"

"What? No!" Yuri looked deeply offended, but then quickly turned curious. "On an unrelated note, do you feel like you're going to burst into flame or melt into a puddle on the floor?"

"Yuck. Puddle people suck." Vezon looked around cautiously. "Not that I'm racist or anything."

Monika tried to calm Natsuki down by putting a hand on her shoulder. "It was an accident, okay? Calm down."

"Calm down? Calm down?!" She grabbed Monika's arm and threw her across the room. "I'll show you calm!"

Vezon leaned down to Monika, who was piled in a heap against the wall next to him. He didn't bother to help her up, just to offer advice. "Gamma radiation is pretty dangerous. Have you watched any Marvel movies at all? I'm surprised she isn't already four meters tall and green."

Suddenly, Sayori jumped on Natsuki, wrapping her up in a hug. "Shush, shhh… no need to become a hulk monster right now. That's a good girl."

Natsuki started to calm down. Interestingly enough, she seemed to actually shrink in size just a bit. Yuri realized that, for a moment, Natsuki was actually taller than Sayori. This had been rectified, so she was content.

Natsuki turned away from them all. "This place is terrible. I want to leave before something really bad happens."

"There we have a problem." Standing up, leaning on Vezon's leg to steady herself, Monika started to explain. "I think we're on some kind of ship in outer space."

Sayori looked thoughtful. "Oh, that makes sense."

"What?" Yuri looked between Monika and Sayori. "What about that makes sense? How are we in space suddenly? How did we even get here in the first place?"

Monika looked back at Vezon. "Um… maybe you would like to explain?"

"Who me? Nah. I'm not all that great with words. Totally unqualified to explain all that timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly stuff." He gently patted her shoulder. "You can handle this. It was your decision to tear them away from their loving homes and into this unending nightmare of multiversal chaos. Besides, your their friend."

Monika felt beads of sweat starting to form on her face. He'd just said all that out loud casually, and in just about the worst way possible. There were other ways to say it that would have come across much better, she was sure. But now they had heard that interpretation, she wasn't sure they would even accept a different version of the story. He'd just put her in an incredibly difficult situation with her friends. She just had to rely on them actually considering her as their friend.

"Now… I know that sounds bad, but… if you just hear me out, I can explain."

Yuri spoke first. "What does he mean it was your decision?"

"I, uh…" She took a deep breath. "This is going to be hard to understand, but… the world we knew, it wasn't… well, it wasn't real."

Sayori asked, "What about… my best friend? Where did he go?"

Monika looked over to Vezon. She sighed and held up her hand, pointing to him. "This is him."

It took a moment. The look of realization crept across Sayori's face and she shrunk back. "What? No, that can't be right. My best friend… he doesn't look like that. I know that's not him."

Vezon narrowed his glowing gaze at her. "Not that I want to be your best friend, but why don't you tell us what he does look like? I'm sure you know exactly how he looks. Come on, tell us."

Sayori looked lost and confused. "No, I…" She looked to Yuri for help. "You remember him, right? He's our friend. He joined the club just… just today, right? You remember that, right Yuri?"

Yuri was suddenly intently focused on studying the floor, which was covered in a thick mist. She wasn't sure how to tell Sayori that she couldn't remember this friend. She could remember he was there, and she remembered Sayori introducing him, but she couldn't remember what he looked like. Only that he had started to say some very strange things just before they suddenly ended up here.

Monika kept trying to vindicate herself or apologize; whichever they would accept. "It was like a cage and a maze mixed together. Kind of like…" She shook her head. "No, I might as well tell the truth. It wasn't like one. We were in a game. Girls, we were… characters… in a dating sim. Somehow… Vezon broke in and got us out."

Yuri suddenly stood rigidly, staring straight ahead of her, processing this information that threatened to tear her entire concept of reality apart. It seemed too farfetched, but if they really were from a dating sim… "That would explain so much."

She had barely whispered it, but Monika caught it and brightened up at the possibility that someone was going to believe her. "It's true! I don't know why I'm the only one who seemed to notice, but I was trapped in there time after time, game after game, and…" She wiped a tear that was forming in her eye with the cuff of her sleeve. "It was so aggravating watching you all get your own routes when I didn't."

Sayori took a step closer. "I… I want to believe you, because I always thought you were my friend. This is… really hard to believe, but I really want to trust that you're telling us the truth. Those don't look like fake tears, and this place is just so different from home. Maybe you're right."

Yuri looked thoroughly annoyed with the things this new information was allowing her to figure out. "Loli tsunderes only exist in anime. Purple hair only exists in anime. Everything was too perfectly set up. I should have seen it sooner. Yandere's don't exist in real life, I should have realized this."

Another deep breath, and it felt like Monika could handle this. Yuri was coming to accept the truth on her own terms, though the mention of a yandere concerned her a bit, and Sayori sounded earnest about trusting her too. Now it was just Natsuki to convince.

Still unwilling to face the others, Natsuki shook her head repeatedly. "No, you're lying. It wasn't a… a fucking dating sim! That's not true! It's-"

Vezon perked up. "Impossible? You're telling me. I don't know anything about this dating sim business. I just showed up one day and little miss squish started calling me her friend. Tell me about freaky. I don't want to know what kind of messed up person loves a face like this."

"That's just the thing, though." Monika was trying her best to sway them to believing her. "We couldn't see him, right? He was there. This is Vezon, right? You know that name. That's the name Sayori introduced us to. We just can't remember his face because we couldn't see him. The world was through his eyes! He was the main character! Sayori's childhood friend, Vezon! We were going to write poetry together, Yuri was going to show him that book she was reading! Portrait of… whatever it was called."

Yuri quickly produced the book in question. "Portrait of Markov." She smiled happily.

"Uh, yeah, that one." Monika shook it off. "And Natsuki was going to show him her manga, too! We were all going to have fun together, but that whole world was a lie and a trap! It was a prison that was going to torture all of us again and again with all the horrible things in our lives! When Vezon said he could take us with him, I couldn't just abandon you all! I had to make a snap decision to get us all out of there, or you'd still be trapped in that horrible place!"

Sayori fidgeted nervously. "Even if it was just a dating sim, it didn't seem that bad, really."

"Stop it!" Monika grabbed her head, pulling on her hair and shouting at her friends. "You don't know anything about it! You only remember that one time! You don't know anything about what was going to happen! You pretend like you're okay and you're happy with anything, but I know you suffer from depression, Sayori! If we had stayed, you were less than a week from killing yourself! Yuri would have kept cutting herself and Natsuki's dad would still be beating the shit out of her! That game was hell!"

Natsuki finally turned around again, facing Monika. "Stop yelling at us! We know! We know it sucked and we know we're probably better off dying in the cold vacuum of space than we were back there! Maybe I don't believe you that it was a dating sim, or a game at all, because that's really crazy, but I know for sure I'd rather be here carrying Sayori around and having Yuri smothering me in gamma radiation than back at home with my monster of a dad!"

Silence fell across the group. Monika straightened up. "Well… even if you don't believe me… at least you're okay with it."

"Now." Natsuki looked over to Yuri. "There are evil aliens trying to kill us. We're trapped on their ship, presumably in the middle of space. You did good getting us here, so you're going to keep covering us from behind." She looked up at Vezon. "And you're going to keep clearing the road ahead of us until we find a way out of here. Hopefully, we can find some weapons for the rest of us. Let's go."

Vezon sidled up to Yuri as Natsuki started pacing around the room, trying to decide which tunnel to take. He coughed quietly. "Pretty messed up you cut yourself."

"I'll cut you."

"Point taken."

"You should be worried about taking the other points I have."

"Are you threatening to stab me, or was that an innuendo?"

Monika waved at them from the tunnel Natsuki had selected. "Come on, or we're leaving you behind!"

Vezon rolled his eyes. "Yes, Mom!"

Sayori snickered. "Momika."

Vezon stepped around Monika and Natsuki, taking the lead position. "Alright. Let's get out of here before they send bees or something after us."

At the back, Yuri unsheathed two knives, one in each hand. She closed her eyes and focused on regulating her breaths. "You are the scariest thing on the ship, Yuri. Scariest thing alive."

…

"Guys, I'm really hungry."

Monika let out a long sigh and facepalmed. "Good grief, Sayori."