Lucas' Magicant Chapter 4: Sunflower Fields and Blossoms of Fire, an earthbound fanfic

Hey, everyone. :) We finally head into Lucas' Magicant today. It's about time we got around to it, huh?

I'm not sure this chapter came out the way I wanted it to, but hopefully the scenes inside Lucas' Magicant feel just as "real" as the scenes in the real world. As always, feel free to let me know what you think of the chapter. :D

I'm also tired, so I am (for once) going to cut this AN short.

Also, there's a bit of swearing this chapter. Ninten doesn't really say naughty words, but that doesn't stop him from thinking them.

Review Response: Booping the Snoot: Heh, Ana can do quite a lot of things quite well, and I'm sure she'd be happy to teach you her ways. :) If only she were real. D: And the corrupt politics are just something I feel compelled to include in every one of my stories. And it's so easy to fit in with the tone of the Mother series... anyways, thanks for leaving a review! :)

"Ah, great timing," Ana said as Ninten opened the door to Ness' dorm room. "I was just about to message you."

Ana stood up from her seat at Lucas' desk as Ninten and Ness walked into the room. Ninten handed her the extra burrito he had ordered from Chipotle. Ana's face lit up as she held the wrapped burrito in her hands.

"Awesome," she said. "Time to get some fuel in this tank. Did you two have a nice conversation while you were out?"

Ninten exchanged a glance with Ness. They had been out long enough that they couldn't really pretend that they hadn't done anything.

So as Ana ate her burrito and Ninten finished off his tacos, Ness explained that they had talked about wealth and Ninten's future as a PSI executive. Thankfully, Ness neglected to mention the part where Ninten talked about his lack of general happiness. Ana would probably worry over him like a mother if she knew how he felt, and there was nothing she could really do to help. Better not to get her involved.

"See, I told you that I would totally ship the two of you," Ana said, grinning between bites. "This could be a big start."

"Or you've been watching too much anime," Ninten said.

"Or that," Ana said. After a moment, she frowned. "I'm curious. Is there a male version of a waifu?"

"Are you asking for you or for me?" Ninten said.

"I was thinking for me, but now I'm not really sure. So, is there one?"

Ninten sighed, turning over towards Ness. "I should probably clear up now that I'm not actually gay. Ana's just doing… Ana things."

"Hey, I could be implying that you're bi," Ana said, "And you still didn't answer my question."

"I don't know, Ann. What I do know is that we should start talking about Lucas."

"Guys?" Ness said, his voice quiet.

"Yeah?" Ninten said, turning towards Ness.

Ness furrowed his brow, releasing a sigh after a moment of tense posture.

"There… may be a slight complication," Ness said.

"What happened?" Ana asked.

Ness sighed. "I just got a message. My mom said that she needs me home. Like, right now. She didn't tell me why."

"How far away is your house?" Ninten said.

"Two hour bus ride," Ness said. "Maybe a bit shorter, since I don't think there will be much traffic this late in the evening. But yeah, I can't necessarily swing by to see what's wrong and come back here."

Ana crossed her arms. "I feel like she should at least tell you why she wants you home."

"Yeah, she does this from time to time." Ness shrugged. "It's usually something pretty serious."

"That's no excuse for not telling you what happened," Ana said, frowning. "I don't think you should really be defending her right now. But I guess it's your life."

"Are you going home tonight?" Ninten said. "If your home situation isn't too desperate, you could head out tomorrow morning."

"Nah, that will just freak her out even more." Ness walked over to the oaken drawers underneath his bed. "It's hard to get her to communicate with me over the psyweb. I'll pass it on in person that she needs to let me know what's going on in these situations before calling me over."

Ness bent down and pulled open the drawers, pulling out already-unfolded clothes and stuffing them into his backpack.

"Do you need help packing?" Ninten said.

"And should we get out of your room after you're done?" Ana said.

Ness paused for a moment, and then sighed. "No on both counts, thanks. I'll be fine on my own, and Lucas might need your help. If you already hacked into his psyspace, you might as well go the whole way. The door automatically locks when you leave, so just make sure you don't leave anything in here when you head out tonight."

Ah, glorious dorm room doors. Almost every freshman went through the ritual of forgetting their keys and locking themselves out of their own room at some point. Just another reason to live off-campus, Ninten supposed.

"Thanks," Ana said. "Just let us know if you need any help, all right?"

Ness nodded and went back to packing. After a moment, Ness closed his eyes and furrowed his eyebrows, his body staying still while his eyes rolled around under his eyelids. He was probably on the psyweb looking something up, maybe ordering a ticket for the next bus to his home town.

"So," Ninten said, turning back to Ana. "Did you look around much in Lucas' psyspace?"

"Didn't get the chance." Ana frowned. "But I did pop in, and it's… weird."

"Weird how?"

"I should probably just show you."

"Uh." Ninten averted his gaze, staring at the picture of sunflowers on Lucas' wall instead. "You want me to go rifling through Lucas' sensitive information with you?"

"Short answer?" Ana said. "Yes."

Ninten sighed.

"Like I said, his psyspace is weird," Ana said, "Maybe you could help me decipher it. Besides, nobody needs to know that we went digging around in his files."

"Will you take no for an answer?"

"You're always allowed to say no." Ana looked Ninten in the eye. "But I could really use your help. I don't know if I'll be able to search his psyspace alone."

"I guess," Ninten said, hesitantly meeting Ana's gaze, "That I shouldn't abandon you now that we've come this far. I'm just afraid that we'll keep diving further into the rabbit hole just because we feel like we have to. We might not be able to find anything in Lucas' psyspace, and I don't want us doing anything even riskier if we come-up empty handed."

Ana paused. "Eh… I don't think that we're getting desperate yet. We still have his entire psyspace to search. But I promise that we'll back out if we hit a dead end. I just can't see there being nothing in all the data of his psyspace."

Good enough. Ninten released a sigh of relief. Ana smiled back and walked over next to Lucas' desk before sitting down on the concrete floor and closing her eyes.

"You can join me when you're ready," Ana said. "There's a lot I have to show you."

Ninten took a deep breath. Might as well go now before his mind latched onto more reasons to be wary. Ninten walked over and sat down in the chair in front of Lucas' desk, staring at the tropical island landscape photograph on the wall above the desk.

He hoped that Lucas would forgive them both for this.

Ninten closed his eyes and reached out, feeling the warmth of the invisible orb hovering not a foot in front of him. Ninten reached out and connected his mind to the orb, and then went down the rabbit hole into Lucas' psyspace.

No grass. Sunflowers covering the ground instead. An orange sunset that bathed the clouds above in a pink light.

Ninten looked around inside this foreign world. The sunflower-covered ground stretched as far as he could see, until the earth faded away entirely into the sunset. Data files in the form of objects floated at waist height above the ground: the notebook and pencil probably stored his school notes, and the floating baseball bat likely held memories and records of some little league team he played on.

Two floating data files in particular caught Ninten's attention. The first was a waterfall in the distance, water crashing down over the rocks and spilling silently into the sunflower fields. The second was a set of islands resting on top of a sleeping dragon, each scale of the dragon and each tree on the islands crafted individually.

Creating sprites for data files took good time and effort, so most of Ninten's files took the form of cubes and spheres. It sometimes led to him forgetting which file was which, but for the most part he could navigate his own psyspace effectively. The actively moving waterfall and the detail of the dragon and islands must have taken hours' worth of effort to create. But when Ninten thought back at the landscape pictures plastered around Lucas' dorm room, the amount of effort he dedicated towards aesthetic started to make a bit more sense.

"Hey." Ninten whirled around to see Ana speaking to him. "Pretty crazy, huh? I hope we find Lucas soon, because this kid has a future in psyspace design."

So everyone younger than Ana was a "kid" now? Ninten opened his mouth to comment, but closed it when she pointed to a wooden sign standing up alongside the sunflowers. The sign read Welcome to Lucas' Magicant engraved in messy black letters.

"Simple but elegant," Ana said. "More psyspaces need a welcome sign. I'm telling you, this kid's going places."

"Wait." Ninten frowned. "Does that name sound familiar to you?"

Ana blinked.

"Magicant," Ninten said. "I swear I've heard that word before."

"It could be a language for mages to use in the criminal underworld," Ana said with a shrug. "Like a magic cant."

"Do you honestly think that?"

"Hey, it's a possibility." Ana cocked her head, looking back at the sign. "Well, if you can think of where you heard the word 'Magicant' before, I'd like to hear it. Maybe it's some psyspace lingo that I'm not aware of. Actually…"

Ana disappeared for a few moments before rematerializing in front of Ninten.

"Nope, no results when I search for 'Magicant' on the psyweb," Ana said. "So I don't think it's a common concept."

"Okay. It probably doesn't have anything to do with where Lucas is right now, anyway." Ninten scanned the area for floating objects that represented data files. "Do you have any idea where to look?"

"See that waterfall over there?" Ana said, pointing to the same waterfall that Ninten had deemed noteworthy earlier. "It's locked with something other than a mindscan or a password. I don't know how Lucas accesses the file, but I hope it doesn't have any information about where he went. Because I'm pretty sure I'm not getting in there."

"What about the other files?"

"I'm running a general scan using a few programs I imported," Ana said with a shrug. "Looking for keywords in the code. I want to find anything that looks like a diary or says anything about PSI testing."

Ninten furrowed his brow. "How can you know that scanning the code will help you? Lucas probably didn't program all of the files himself."

"Yeah, but when we use psyspace framework to create objects and store memories inside of our psyspace, the psyspace reads our minds and fills in the code for us. By looking at the code, I can tell what's inside each one of the data files."

A chill ran down Ninten's spine. The psyspace itself was reading his mind whenever he created something new? It made sense in hindsight. Because really, how else would the psyspace know what to put inside the files he created? But the more Ninten was learning about the psyspace today, the more vulnerable it seemed.

It felt like society was building its information networks on faultlines. The psyspace kept adding more and more features, building up to the skies instead of investing in a solid foundation, and it could all come crashing down with a single push.

A single push… from someone competent with hacking and coding like Ana.

"Like… you see that dragon with the islands on top of it?" Ana said. "The code tells me that it's a V-game."

"Really."

"Yeah, I'd be able to see more, but most of the code's hidden because of copyrights. So if there were theoretically something about his whereabouts hidden in the V-game, I wouldn't be able to tell."

Ninten walked over and inspected the sleeping dragon. The sprite itself was larger than Ninten, and each of the dragon's black scales sparkled under the light of the sun. The islands on top were filled with tiny trees, miniature mountains, and even had a model city with signs of pollution and smog.

"If the V-game is as detailed as the sprite, I'm surprised I haven't heard of it before," Ninten said. "Although I'm guessing you have?"

"Nope. This is the first time I've seen it."

Ninten raised an eyebrow. Was Ana joking?

"You do know there are a lot of V-games out there, right?" Ana said. "Besides, this game doesn't even get hits on the psyweb. I don't know how Lucas got his hands on it. He never struck me as the gamer type."

"So, uh… did he pick this game up at the black market, or what?"

"That's what I was wondering," Ana said, walking next to Ninten and inspecting the dragon. "I don't know how much you remember Lucas, but I'm pretty sure he's too wholesome for illegal V-games. Although he did disappear without any signs, so I guess you never know…"

"Do you think it would give us a better idea of the kind of person Lucas is if we tried to play the game?" Ninten said. "I mean, it's a stretch to assume that a V-game will lead us to where Lucas went, but I don't have any better ideas right now."

Besides, the game itself seemed noteworthy due to its oddness alone. For Ana not to know of it was odd enough, and to get no hits at all on the psyweb… Well, for a game whose sprite had so much detail, keeping it hidden didn't make much sense. Even illegal games usually yielded results when searched. And no-name black market games probably wouldn't have as much detail about this one. Except for illegal porno games, Ninten supposed. He imagined that they were highly detailed in… specific ways that were thankfully absent from the dragon-and-islands sprite.

"I'll be monitoring my scans, so if you think this is your best chance of stumbling upon something about Lucas…" Ana gestured towards the dragon, "Go for it. Just make sure to return to the real world if it looks like a virus, all right?"

Ninten nodded and walked over to the dragon-and-islands sprite. He placed a hand on the dragon's head, which had a solitary island covered with miniature palm trees on top of it.

A strange V-game in a strange psyspace that had a strange name which Ninten swore he had heard before. He couldn't quite put a finger on it, but something about this whole mess didn't feel right. What if he was in the process of stumbling upon something he wasn't supposed to see?

Ninten released a sigh. He was overthinking this. Lucas' psyspace and this game were strange, and Lucas' unprompted disappearance still nagged Ninten's mind, but it didn't have to be tied together in some sort of plot. There were a thousand possible explanations for Lucas' oddly detailed psyspace, the name "Magicant," everything. And maybe Ninten could find some of them by entering this game.

Ninten closed his eyes and transferred his mind into the dragon-and-islands V-game.

A world of darkness. Ninten hadn't been placed inside an avatar yet, so his consciousness just sort of… floated around. After about a minute, Ninten started to worry about the loading time. What if this game was a virus?

THE YEAR IS 20XX. WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEE IS THE LAST REMNANT OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION.

Ninten would have yelped if he had a body inside the game. The words lingered, giant white letters that trembled in place. After a few moments, the letters broke off into millions of white dots and faded away into the darkness.

THE PEOPLE YOU WILL MEET DO NOT KNOW WHY THE REST OF THE WORLD WAS DESTROYED, OR EVEN HOW. THEY NEVER KNEW THAT A REAL "WORLD" EVEN EXISTED.

Uh… when was the game going to give Ninten a character to control?

THE NOWHERE ISLANDS ARE THE ONLY OASIS IN THE MIDDLE OF AN INFINITE DESERT.

AND THEY ARE ABOUT TO BE DESTROYED.

Well, that's pleasant. How did Lucas even get his hands on this game?

WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEE IS REAL. IT IS THE FUTURE.

AND IT IS THE PAST.

YOU WILL SEE THE SAME TRAGEDIES REPEAT THEMSELVES AGAIN AND AGAIN.

YOU WILL COME ACROSS PEOPLE WHO ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT THE CYCLE OF SUFFERING.

YOU ARE THEIR ONLY HOPE.

SAVE ONE PERSON, AND BREAK THE CYCLE.

THAT IS YOUR QUEST.

…

WELCOME TO THE NOWHERE ISLANDS.

Once he entered the game, Ninten smelled the smoke before he registered anything else. He coughed, reminding himself that his asthma didn't apply inside a V-game. Logically, he had nothing to fear.

But the smoke inside of his nose and down deep in his lungs felt so real. It took all of Ninten's willpower not to freak the fuck out.

Time to take a deep-

Wait. Fuck. Don't take a deep breath when there's smoke. Ninten crouched down near the dirt ground to avoid the rising smoke and tried to take in his surroundings with a calculated mind.

First of all, he was still himself. Many V-games would put the player in some sort of distinct avatar character, but this evidently wasn't one of them. He tried to pause the game in his mind so that he could get a quick breather, but nothing happened.

Great. One of those games that tried to be as real-life as possible. If Ninten wanted real life, he would just live it without a stupid game.

Keep calm, Ninten. He looked around at his environment. He was inside a forest, and the fire that was creating the smoke had spread to the crowns of the pine trees. Ninten grimaced. Many trees were actually resistant to low fires around their trunks, but fragile leaves and pine needles wouldn't stand a chance.

The fire spread from tree crown to tree crown. The forest was packed densely enough that each tree provided a point for the fire to spread to two or three other trees.

Ninten shook his head. It was looking like the whole damn forest might burn down.

So what could he do about this? Ninten closed his eyes and cycled through his list of abilities. Okay, so he was a psychic in this V-game as well. He could use Lifeup, Shield, Hypnosis, Healing… wait, how was Healing different from Lifeup? Oh, and there was also Super Healing. Not to mention that regular healing had different levels notated by Greek letters.

Well, it didn't look like there was anything in his list of abilities that would let him put out a forest fire. Not that there really should be, but Ana had told him that psychics in V-games tended to use elemental attacks. The idea of using PSI to summon water or ice to put out a fire in real life was absurd, but there was a reason why V-games weren't real life.

Over the sounds of cackling wildfire, Ninten heard a bone-chilling roar in the distance.

Seriously, why did people like games as stressful as this one? Ninten sighed and took off towards the sound of danger, just like any real gamer would do.

After just a few steps, a woman and two boys leapt out from the foliage. The woman's left arm was badly burned, but she managed to keep a grip on the boys. She looked up at Ninten, and the fire cackling in the background matched the determination in her eyes.

"I've never seen you before," the woman said. "But we all need to get out of here, right? You take my sons and head to Tazmily, and I'll distract the drago."

Drago? Ninten opened his mouth to respond when his gaze passed over Hinawa's sons, and he inadvertently studied them in detail for the first time. They were twins, he saw, both with hair curled up in a cowlick and the same blue eyes. The only way Ninten could tell them apart was by their hair color. The redhead made an attempt to stand up straight and puff up his chest, while the blonde clung to his mother's dress.

Wait. Ninten took another look at the blonde.

What the fuck.

"Lucas?" he said.

The woman's eyes narrowed. "You know my son?"

Poor Lucas looked bewildered, staring back and forth between his mother and Ninten. Of course, the Lucas inside this V-game wouldn't know Ninten. But why was Lucas inside of this game in the first place?

Act now, think later.

"Listen," Ninten said, turning back towards the woman. "I can hold off the… dragon?"

"You haven't heard of a drago before?" The woman's eyes widened. "Where are you from? No, don't answer that. There's no time. Please, you have to take my children."

The woman walked forward, holding Lucas' hand with her right and her other son's hand with her left. She pushed her sons' hands forward towards Ninten, gesturing for him to take them.

"I'm serious," Ninten said. "I can hold off this drago thing. I promise."

The woman gritted her teeth and looked back in the direction of the roar.

"We don't have the time for this," she said. "Go, before the drago kills us all."

Ninten realized that she wasn't trying to hold off the Drago because she thought she was more competent than he was. She had given up hope of outrunning the drago, and she was prepared to sacrifice herself so that the rest of them could escape.

You will come across people doomed to repeat the cycle of suffering…

The stiffness in the woman's pose, the pleading in her eyes... for her, this all so real. And for Ninten, it didn't feel like a game. He would save this woman and her children, no matter the cost. He would break the cycle of suffering right here and now.

And he was prepared to fight whatever a "Drago" was in order to keep this woman and her family safe. Her grit and the love for her children was real enough to fight for.

"No," Ninten said. "I can distract the Drago and live."

He reached out towards the woman's burned arm. She recoiled back.

"What are you doin-"

"Healing," Ninten said.

The burn disappeared from the woman's arm. She felt over her arm with her right hand and shrugged. When she looked up at Ninten again, she hesitated.

"That won't help you if the drago gores you," she said reluctantly. "But if you're really that confident you can-"

"I am. I don't even know where Tazmily is. Keep your sons safe, and we'll meet up later."

The woman grabbed Ninten's wrist and stared into his eyes with her iron gaze.

"Promise me you won't get yourself killed trying to stall a few extra seconds," she said.

"I promise."

The woman narrowed her eyes and nodded. Yet despite her hesitance to let Ninten go, she backed away and grabbed onto her son's arms. When she looked back up at Ninten again, he saw respect in her eyes, mixed with a glint of sadness. She nodded thanks and took off running away from the sound of the roar.

She still thought that Ninten was laying down his life just to keep her safe. She didn't know that Ninten, with his arsenal of PSI, had a real chance of distracting the Drago long enough so that he could get away. He vowed then that he would survive for both of them, and that he would meet up with the woman back at Tazmily. He wanted to see her smile once she knew that everyone was safe. He wanted to watch Lucas and his brother play together once the cycle of suffering had been broken.

You are their only hope.

Ninten took in one last breath, trying to ignore the smoke, before continuing in the direction towards where the roar had come from.

It didn't take Ninten long before he heard the sounds of stomping. And not long after that, the sound of a tree falling.

Ninten should really turn back, shouldn't he?

As he was starting to seriously consider running away and hoping that the Drago would chase him rather than Lucas' family, he saw what at first glance looked like a cyborg t-rex ram through a pair of trees and emerge in front of Ninten. It let out the same roar that Ninten had heard earlier.

So this was the Drago. Its legs and the lower part of its jaw had been replaced by steel features, but replaced by whom? There was so much that Ninten didn't understand about this world.

But he didn't need to understand. He only needed to save Lucas' family, which would hopefully break the cycle of suffering.

"Quick up," Ninten muttered, tensing his leg muscles.

The Drago paused, and for a brief moment the mecha-lizard and Ninten stared at each other in a standstill. Ninten waited for the Mecha-Drago to make a move, and the cyborg reptile only stared at Ninten with bloodlust in its eyes. The standoff only lasted a moment, but it felt like an eternity.

Ninten was the first one to break the impasse.

He darted forward, and then leapt to the side as the Drago took an earth-shaking step forward to match. Ninten ran between a gap in the trees and circled around to the drago's backside. He didn't need to fight this thing, and he was pretty sure that he couldn't possibly kill it even if he tried. He just needed to lead the Mecha-Drago away from Lucas's family long enough for them to make it to Tazmily safely.

As Ninten tried to dance around the Drago, the reptile swung its metal-plated tail around in an arc, slicing through trees with ease before slamming its tail into Ninten.

Ninten's vision went red with pain. He felt the vague sensation that he had landed somewhere and his face was in the dirt. Whose brilliant idea had it been to add in fully realistic pain sensations into this V-game? Still, at least he was alive. This V-game must have decked him out with some pretty sweet natural abilities, because he was almost certain that a razor sharp 100 pound tail capable of slicing through trees would kill any regular human being.

It was still completely unfair that the game was making him fight against a cyborg dinosaur, though.

"Lifeup," Ninten managed to get out.

Sensation returned to Ninten's body a moment later, and the red in his vision faded away, leaving only a few spots behind. Ninten did indeed have his face planted in the dirt, and he hopped up to hear another ear-piercing roar from the Drago.

He felt the quaking of the ground as the Drago walked closer, and the sound of the stomps grew nearer. Ninten let out a high-pitched yelp and sprinted away. He tried to remember which direction was away from Lucas' family, but at this point he was having difficulty caring about anything other than putting as much distance between him and the Drago as possible.