John decided to go with the seventh nearby Homeowner, mostly due to how close he was to it already (Being a 'basic zombie' did NOT mean being fast) and because things hadn't gotten too crazy over there yet.

Just some sunflowers and a few peashooters, so hopefully he could grab a bite or two BEFORE experiencing the local reincarnation cycle.

Still feeling slightly hesitant, he looked over his options…

Each Homeowner got five 'lanes' of yard to work with, on average. Those five lanes could be grass, a swimming pool (Normally only two lanes wide), or from what he could see? There were zombies currently attacking nearby, only higher up on the goddamned ROOF of all places!

Seriously, why do this on the roof? They had to 'plant' flower pots everywhere because you had no soil to work with! Not that the pools were much better, those needed lilly pads and… Sigh.

ANYWAY, John's option here was a basic five lane wide, nine square long yard of grass. Each one with a one use 'consumable' lawnmower (Or pool cleaner), that would basically destroy any zombie in that single lane if everything got eaten and the home nearly invaded.

Not that it mattered, at the speed he could move it was likely he'd pop WAY before he could eat his way up to the death mower, so it wasn't an issue.

Of the five lanes, he was seriously considering the one on the far right… It had just lost a lot of plants due to some aggressive conehead zombies, and the Homeowner had JUST placed down a wall-nut near the lawn entrance to block any new undead until that other batch was handled.

Lucky!

Sure, he'd probably be stalled there until the Homeowner got around to killing him… But at least he could quickly get a bite and have Grace analyze what was going on with the adorable and deadly plants. "Rawr." [[I'm going in.]]

[[Grace: Good luck, my Lord!]]

Moving swiftly, John… Uh.

…Damn, he was slow.

Shuffling SLOWLY, John EVENTUALLY made it over to the lane he was interested in… After a while… Good grief.

Thankfully, all the OTHER zombies around him were even slower, so no one had managed to get ahead of him in line for this lane.

A few steps later and… He was now facing a boulder sized wall-nut.

It had huge, adorable, anime eyes.

It looked… A little out of it really. "Braaains… Brains?" [[Excuse me, if it wouldn't be too much of a bother… Would it be alright if I consumed you?]]

…Was this plant ignoring him?

John leaned in closer… IT WAS!

It was just sitting there, as if high on drugs, and humming to itself! "Grrrarh?" [[Excuse me? Mr. Nut, sir? Hello?]]

The rockish plant shifted slightly… And ignored John some more. Huh. "Bruuuh." [[Just so you know, if you don't at least ask me not to eat you right now… I probably will. Or at least, the zombies behind me are going to nom you, I suppose.]]

What tune was this nut even humming? It was catchy, and it seemed MOST of the plants were singing along with it.

Oh well. "Gar." [[Thank you for the meal…]]

[[CRUNCH!]]

Oh! It tasted like wood!

But like, also Sun and Magic and with notes of… Chocolate?

But mostly like wood.

…Was wood SUPPOSED to be this tasty? Or was that just how zombie taste buds were set up?

Either way, this guy tasted AMAZING! "Gar…" [[Holy crap, dude! You're delicious!]]

…Still being ignored.

This wall-nutt now had a huge chunk of his head missing, and hadn't even paused humming. No sense of distress, no worries or concerns… Maybe a hint of a frown? But not an 'ow' frown, but more a 'stop distracting me' frown, if that made sense… "Brains?" [[Is it alright if I nibble just a little bit more?]]

Nothing. Ignored again.

Maybe plants can't talk to zombies here?

Well, if he's fine with it and everything…

[[CRUNCH!]]

Damn, this was some high quality lumber right here!

[[Jessica: John, please don't devour the plant any further until Grace can confirm you aren't eating a reincarnated Soul or something, alright?]]

But he was so tasty!

…Fine. "Gar." [[Alright sis. What about the samples I already ate… Uh, obtained? Grace?]]

He could feel his angel bustling. [[G: The System is analyzing it all now, but from what I can tell so far the plants don't seem to be reborn zombies or whatever. They are basically solidified spells.]]

John poked the partially consumed nut. "Braaains?" [[You aren't alive?]]

The wiggling thing just kept humming along, ignoring him entirely. Huh.

Grace sounded fascinated! [[I'm pretty sure THIS is what all the collected Sun is used for! These plants are spells being cast using Sun as an energy source and some sort of saved pattern for a reference, I'm sure of it!]]

Huh. For a spell, these things felt pretty lifelike. "Gaaaar." [[That sounds pretty cool. I wonder if I can study this stuff and get it working in less impossible places than zombie heaven… Converting magic into summoned plant constructs with basic level intelligence is pretty damned impressive.]]

He heard a hum. [[G: Already working on it, my Lord! We will need more samples too, I'm pretty sure some plants are converting small amounts of ambient Sun into projectiles and such and that should be very interesting information… I also want to see how the Magical projectiles are able to interact with the solidified Plant spells without collapsing, it's how they can shoot through other stuff in the way and still hit their targets.]]

It did seem interesting, true. John gently turned the massive boulder sized snack a little to get a better angle.

[[CRUNCH!]]

Mmmm! Very delicious!

A few bites later… And another zombie stumbled close by. "Braains…"

Huh, that didn't translate. Must be another 'young' basic zombie. Oh well, there was plenty of wall-nut to go around! "Gar!" [[Go ahead, have some! The bits over here taste like oak!]]

…Ignored again.

Sheesh! John was going to have to hang out with smarter corpses for a while after this!

Oh well, might as well enjoy the moment at least.

[[CRUNCH!]]

~~~Pocket System~~~

Jessica was fascinated by this VERY odd place. "I'm not sure if Souls exist here. Not according to the scans, at least."

Grace nodded. "The Sun is a sort of mix, containing mostly Magic but also echoes of Mind, Soul, and Concepts… There may have been individual Souls involved at some point in the past, but that would have had to have been a long LONG time ago."

Jessica huffed, leaning back in her chair. "So long ago that I'm not even sure that the Souls originally came from living humans, or if this is a Zombie afterlife for a ZOMBIE world that just happens to resemble humans somehow... Not that it matters now, this whole Realm is like a self contained bubble at this point. Anywhere it was connected to broke off long ago."

The angel hummed. "Everyone here seems surprisingly happy though… Even the most 'evil' zombies are perfectly happy to take a break every now and then to play these smaller games in their free time."

True. "I'm just happy that John seems to be relaxing here… He's been through some stressful stuff recently."

From the side, Temptation broke into the conversation. "Hey sis? Didn't you say that nothing here besides John has a Soul?"

Grace looked up from her research. "Yes? Why?"

Temptation pulled up a screen. "There's a crazy homeless guy selling stuff from the trunk of his car."

…What? "I'm sorry?"

She nodded. "Yeah, he's got a pot on his head and an awesome beard, apparently calls himself 'Crazy Dave'. He's just sort of hanging out over here, in this area. A few lawns down from John."

Jessica stared at the unshaven man. "What… HOW is there a Human here!? This whole REALM has nothing but zombies, Magic, and plants!"

Temptation shrugged. "Not sure, but he's fun to watch. Check this out…"

She pulled up a video clip of Crazy Dave selling his wares from his trunk, calling it "Crazy Dave's Twiddydinkies" as he tried to persuade a Zombie Homeowner to buy a garden rake.

What. The. Hell!?

Jessica pointed at the clip. "That's impossible right? Grace, didn't you say this whole Realm is like a bubble?"

Grace nodded. "From what we can tell? There hasn't been ANY connection to ANY other world, plane of existence, or afterlife for at least a few thousand millennia."

Jessica huffed. "That crazy guy looks 36 at best! What, did he just WANDER into this madness? How is he surviving here ANYWAY, there's only zombies around. No gas or infrastructure or…"

Temptation giggled. "He uses the Conceptual Currency the Homeowner trades to bribe some zombies to steal some plants for him to eat, and the Sun seems to just… Make sure he's healthy and stuff. He may be biologically 36, but after years of eating magical combat plants? Who knows how long this has been going on."

No. This was silly. "All the zombies here want Brains. It's like, a third of their total vocabulary. And half their written language. How come nothing has tried to eat him yet?"

Temptation pulled up another clip. "From what I can tell? None of the zombies believe he is a human. When he argues otherwise, they just chalk it up to 'Crazy Dave being Crazy'."

For pete's sake. "No WONDER zombies keep hunting brains, the ones they are using are clearly defective."

Grace on the other hand was looking frustrated. "Well I want to know why he isn't showing up on ANY of my System sensors! Every time I force the modules to LOOK at this old man, I keep getting error responses like 'Wabby Wabbo' and a rambling story about how he once lost at checkers to a sandwich!"

Temptation laughed harder! "Ha! Yeah, I only found him because I was watching one of the Homeowners just wandering out of their house while all the zombies ignored him. The dude just shambled his way over to this crazy hobo and started buying stuff like nothing was odd about it all!"

Jessica felt her head hurting. Turning to her agents, she stared at her assistant. "If we can't see him, we might be missing all SORTS of things… Set up a perimeter, don't let our King get caught off guard." """"YES MA'AM!"""" Good.

Grace glared at her! "I'm SURE I'm not missing anything my Lady! I've gone over these modules a hundred times!"

Temptation coughed. "Missed a hobo." "SISTER!" "HA!"

Jessica sighed. "It's better to be a little precautious than a lot unprepared."

Temptation shrugged. "I'm not sure it matters here, anyway. Even if we miss some threat or danger, our Master is safer here than ANYWHERE else… Hell, right now he's eating spells and risking death to save up enough energy to get a free vehicle!"

…True. "Still, before we leave this Realm I at least want to KNOW there are people and things like 'Crazy Dave' out there from our modules. It probably won't be nearly as small an issue if this sort of thing slips by our detection systems in a less peaceful Realm."

The paused to look at the video streams of endless undead armies fighting a never ending war of consumption against animated plant golems.

Err… "Relatively peaceful."

Grace sighed. "Point taken… And I suppose I can come up with some standard scan results and mark any that fail to match, like this oddball. Hopefully that would at least mark an area as risky or let us know there are unscannable targets within specific regions around us."

Temptation was relaxing in the background. "Well, you both do that and I'll keep an eye on Crazy Dave so we don't lose track of him… Hmm, maybe I should get some popcorn? Perhaps…"

Huh. "That'd actually be helpful, at least while we try to make sure we can find him again without manually scanning everywhere visually. Thanks, Temptation."

Her gratefulness was waved away. "Shh, he's telling a story about dragon-bears and I don't want to miss anything!"

Jessica suspected that said 'helpfulness' may be slightly self-serving in this situation, but whatever. "Great, you… You do that then." Sheesh!