FSE

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Prologue

The world is filled with wonder. There are the lights in the sky, the birds in the air, and the fish in the water; there are the marvels of planes, the rumbling wonders of great lumbering vehicles that carry more weight than any natural creature. Flight, radio, television; love, kindness, compassion; wonders all, and all available in abundance throughout the planet.

But in the face of this, it is easy to forget that the word 'wonder' does not always mean 'good'. It has always, in the purest form of the word, described the feeling of finding something unexpected, unfamiliar, inexplicable. Often, it has been applied to beauty, but just as often, to the creatures in the dark.

Wonders have filled and wandered the world for centuries. Some have been built; others have made themselves.

This is the story of three such wonders.

The first is a man who made himself such a thing. A man that built himself up, and changed not just the world, but the people around him to such a degree that he became something more.

The second is a product of a wonder. A place, a thing, that has influenced so many people, so many lives, that it has transcended itself and become something else.

And the third. The third is a man, no more, and no less, but with the potential to become so much more.

Today, all of them meet.

Today, everything will change.

Chapter One: A Good Day Goes Bad

The Park of Mirari.

David had never heard of the place, but it was the biggest theme park that he'd ever seen. Even from the burger place across town where he worked, he'd seen the various attractions being put up, and that was more than a few miles away, with tall trees between him and the rising theme park. Even during the busiest part of his work day yesterday, he'd been able to see it, always rising higher and higher, and spreading out further and further.

It had fascinated him, to the point where he would have asked for the day off today if it hadn't been his one day off for the week.

Now that he was up close to the park, waiting in line to get in, David was past amazed; he was awestruck.

Huge did not describe this place. Huge was not a word that was worthy of this place. Massive, immense, awesome; those were more appropriate words for a theme park of this size. Huge metal walls surrounded it - though when they had been erected or how they had done it so fast, David didn't know - and were topped with flickering lights, almost like they were trying to make it look like an electric chain surrounded the top of the wall. It was almost silly, but cool at the same time.

More people than him had been attracted to the Park as it went up; the line for the place stretched more than a hundred people forward, and at least five times that behind him. They shuffled, shambled; they talked and shouted; so much noise and movement, so much sound and chaos that it was hard to keep one's head.

But that was part of the fun.

The line moved ahead of him, and David grinned, once more sliding his hand into his pocket. Carefully pulling his wallet out, he flipped through his funds again, making sure that he had enough money to actually afford to get in.

Not that it was much of a worry; the Park of Mirari had the cheapest entry fees that he had ever seen. The posters that he had been sure were lies turned out to be the truth. $6 to enter the park? That was the deal of the century, particularly if the rest of the claims on the various posters were true as well.

Step, stop. Another few people had been left in. Wouldn't be much longer now, David thought to himself as he put his wallet away again. He'd probably have it out and counting again later, just because he was so excited, but he didn't want to hold it in his hand. It seemed to be begging to have it taken or something, even out in public like this.

Another step stop, and the gates came into view.

David gasped at the sight of them. They were towering pieces of work, three pairs of wrought iron doors. "How could they keep taking this around?" he muttered under his breath as his eyes followed them from the base to the tip, almost thirty feet up, a few feet taller than the walls around them. "Those have to weigh a ton."

"And a half, actually, but who cares about the math?"

He turned his head towards the person who'd spoken up, surprised to see someone in a red and yellow vest standing beside the line. The official chuckled. "Sorry to surprise you. But yeah, the doors weigh about a ton and a half each. They're damn good at keeping people out if they haven't paid, though."

"I bet!" David said. He looked at them again, seeing how each set of doors had a different word printed on them. From left to right, it said, 'Park of Mirari', one word on each door. "Hey, can you tell me something?"

"Sure."

"What's 'Mirari' mean?" David asked. "I mean, I looked for a website about this park last night, but I couldn't find anything. Heck, I would have checked some translator for the word, but I didn't know the language it was in."

The employee chuckled a bit. "Heh, well, it's some old language the guy in charge picked for the name. I think it was latin or something," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "Anyway, it means 'wonder'. So -"

"Park of Wonder?" David nodded his head. "That makes sense."

"Yeah, and it sounds better than just saying it straight out." The walkie-talkie at the employee's belt crackled, and he shook his head. "Ai yi yi...back to work for me. Hey, kid, have a good time at the park, huh? Ride the Looper for me if you can."

"The what?" David asked.

No answer was to be heard, as the employee was already walking down the line and talking into his walkie-talkie. David shook his head a little bit. Ah well, he'd find out what the Looper was when he got into the park, he was sure.

And that wouldn't take much longer, from what he was seeing. The line was moving faster and faster, and the doors were getting wider and wider. Probably the employees needed to let people in faster to deal with the large lines, he thought to himself. If that was the case, they needed to have the doors wide open, instead of just open a slit the way that they were.

Finally, the line led him to the middle gate. It loomed over him as he approached it, half open in a way that had the doors pointed towards him like a pair of pinchers. They seemed a great deal bigger, thicker - more intimidating, some part of him thought - up close.

He was greeted by another employee in a red and yellow vest. She was seated behind desk rather than behind a wall, and she looked up from her register as he approached. Offering him a little smile, the woman said, "Hello sir, welcome to the Park of Mirari." She leaned forward somewhat, enough to make him back up to keep a little more space between them. "Are you here for the basic package, or are you wanting one of the upgraded entry packages?"

Upgrades? David hadn't heard of those yet, but he had to admit that he was curious. "What kind of things are these upgrades?"

"Oh, just different things you can do for free inside of the park." She pointed to the front of her register, where a little sticker presented the different prices for the packages. "Our basic package lets you into the park, and will allow you to play any of the games in the Game Gallery for free, as well as allow you access to all of the Agricultural exhibits, and let you into the smaller rides. For another three dollars, the next package up will let you ride on the roller coasters for free. Another three dollars after that, and you get free rides on the Looper all day. And for another four after that, absolutely everything is free, even a trip inside of the Golden Tower."

All of that sounded absolutely awesome to him, particularly the idea of getting all the rides for free. All of the other carnivals he'd been to had charged cheaply at the gate but then made him pay through the nose for the rides, while the other theme parks he'd seen had charged him an arm and a leg to get in, though had been cheap once he was inside. The fact that this one was so different, that it would let him in with so little extra costs...

"Um...before I pay something, could you just explain two things for me first?" David asked.

"Of course, sir," the lady said. She leaned forward again, this time so far forward that he was amazed that she didn't just topple over the front of the register. "It's part of my job to help everyone. What can I explain for you?" she asked, her face pulling up in a smile that was more creepy than it was reassuring.

Doing his best to ignore it and suppress his annoyance with this lady, David said, "I heard about the Looper in line from one of the people keeping the lines in order, and you said something about the Golden Tower. What are they?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, dear, I thought you'd know what those were." She reached beneath her little desk, and pulled out a rolled up piece of paper. Spreading it out on top of the desk, she revealed it to be a map.

She tapped a spot near a large square in the center, some sort of track. "This is the Looper. It's a giant roller coaster that goes all over the park."

"What, like a big ride?"

"Heh, well kind of," she said. Her finger drifted to different locations across the map that the tracks touched on, taking a moment to make sure that he saw the red circles along the track. "See these? These are different 'stations' that the Looper stops at. It's like a much more fun train to get from place to place in the park, instead of having to walk around the whole way."

"Okay." David nodded his head as a grin spread across his face. That was freaking awesome! "And the Golden Tower?"

"Oh, that's where the park owner lives." She pointed to a large golden circle in the precise middle of the park. "Once you get inside, this is probably going to be the first thing you see. It's the biggest thing in the entire park, except for the Looper, and it's definitely the tallest. The final membership is a trip inside of the place, to see the machinery inside and all the different gadgets that keep the park running. It's sort of like a behind the scenes tour."

"Hmmm....I don't know." Though it was always interesting to see how things happened in the background, David also liked having the magic of the experience to himself. Seeing how it worked...well, it kind of spoiled it. Knowing how people made it work was interesting, but it robbed the ride or the fun house or...everything, really, of the fun behind the experience.

"Well, it's up to you." She rolled the map up, putting it back under the table. "Do you want me to put you in for the second highest upgrade, then? The one with the Looper?"

"Oh. Oh yes, please," David said.

She pushed a few buttons on the register. "Alright, then. That'll be $12."

"Here you are." He passed over the money.

Before he could walk into the park, though, the employee grabbed him by the wrist. In a motion that was little less than a blur, she grabbed a stamp from beside her register, got it wet with ink, and brought it down on the back of his hand. The impact was just sharp enough for him to yelp, pulling his hand back and rubbing it. "Ow, what was that for?"

"Nobody gets into the park without a little handstamp to show that they paid, you know," she said. Smiling in that weird, stretched way again, she nodded towards the gate. "Have a nice day, sir."

"Uh, yeah...okay." David rubbed his hand lightly as he walked away from her, keeping an eye on her until he passed through the gate. Then he turned around-

-and felt like he should be picking his jaw off of the ground. He stared, slack-jawed, open-mouthed, at the amazing sight before him.

A fully paved street - something that should have been impossible for a traveling park - stretched out in front of him, leading past fully built stores of all streets. Wrought iron lamp posts that wouldn't have been out of place on Victorian streets stuck out of the sidewalk on the sides of the streets every dozen or so feet, looking as though they had been there for years, rather than just a day or so.

He walked over to one of them slowly, poking it. He half expected it to fall over, but it was sturdy. Even when he pushed it as hard as he could, it didn't budge in the slightest. It was solidly rooted in place, sunk into the pavement below.

The stores were exactly the same. He thought at first that they were just some sort of cut-out that had been put up to make the street look a little more occupied, but when he laid his hand against the front of one of them, he felt cool stone under his hand, only slightly warmed by the sun above. The walls were real; the windows were solid glass; and the door was sound wood, painted and polished.

He stepped back, shaking his head a few times. "This..." David knelt down, pressing his hand against the sidewalk. It was as solid under his hand as it was underfoot. "This doesn't seem possible...how can they pick this up and move all the time?"

"Hey, maybe they just take the rides around, ever think of that?"

"Because -....Wait, I know that voice." Despite his sudden misgivings about the Park, David smiled as he stood up, turning to face the voice.

A wall of muscle met his face as he stood up, and he grunted as he stood with his chest half buried among the cloth of a sweaty muscle shirt and solid pectoral muscles. He just stood there for a second, then turned his head back and up. "Heh, never change, do you Bailey?"

"Never, little guy, never."

David shook his head as he looked up at his friend. Bailey was truly a massive guy, looming over him at six feet and some inches, quite a bit bigger than his five and a half feet. Covered with muscles from heat to toe, Bailey was the kind of guy that tended to wear tight clothing just for the opportunity to rip it off with a few well timed muscle flexes, then claim that it was just an accident. There were times that David thought Bailey would try and find a way to split his hair with flexing if the big guy didn't already keep it trimmed down to near baldness with near religiously regular trips to the barber shop.

From the looks of things, he'd just run down here after his post-job work-out, considering how sweaty he was and that he hadn't changed into some cleaner clothes, not to mention tighter ones. The sweat pants were definitely a new touch for the big guy, David thought to himself; usually Bailey found some sort of tight jeans to wear.

Looking up at the almost out of place bookworm glasses perched on the big guy's nose, David said, "When'd you decide to come down here?"

"Oh, after I saw the posters. I thought I'd find some interesting stuff in the shops here. Some of the posters claimed that there was tons of stuff from all over the world here," Bailey said. He pointed down the street. "Considering all the signs out here, I can believe it."

He had to admit, David could believe it as well. There were some pretty crazy store signs to be seen. "Super Heroes of America!", "Congo Coolios", and "Intriguing Indian Invigorators", to name just a few.

And all of them were unfamiliar.

"Bailey, you really think that the stores here were already here?" he asked.

"What else could they be?" Bailey said in his booming, chuckling voice.

"Then why don't they look familiar, if they've been here all this time?" David asked. "Hell, what was here before the park came here? Do you remember?"

"It was..." Bailey paused in mid-sentence, his eyes slowly going wide behind the thick lenses of his glasses.

David nodded. "Yeah...still think that these things were here before the park came here, big guy?"

"No...no, I don't."

"Neither do I. There's no way that they built this many stores on top of an empty field in one night." More to the point, David was amazed that even Bailey hadn't thought of something like that. What was going on with the park that it made someone that was local like Bailey forget about something that basic, even for a little bit?

"Well, we already paid for a day here, let's have some fun," Bailey said. "I mean, come on. We already paid for our tickets, and I want to see the Looper and everything else before we have to leave."

He had to admit, it wasn't the brightest idea that he had ever heard, but David couldn't say that he wasn't tempted by this place. It was just so massive, and the place seemed to pull at him, almost begging him to keep walking down the street to see more of it. He could even hear the screams of fun from elsewhere in the park, like it was calling him to try it out himself.

Shaking his head and trying to get rid of his bad feeling, David chuckled. "Alright, alright. But we hit the stores on the way out, okay? Rides first, stores later, if there's any money left."

"But there's supposed to be some ancient muscle recipes in some of these stores!" Bailey protested. "And some of the posters mentioned some big sex -"

"Hey, whoa!" David held up his hands, laughing and blushing. "The less you tell me about sex stuff, the better."

"You wuss." Laughing, Bailey gave him a shove, shaking his head. "Fine, we'll do it your way. But I better get my chance to find some of this stuff; I ain't gonna have the chance every day, you know."

"You will, you will," he assured the big guy. Already his worries were fading; Bailey just had a way of making him feel better. Something about Mr. Muscles made him feel comfortable, safe; kind of like a big bumpy security blanket, he supposed, though a good bit harder than one might expect.

The two of them set down on the street. Main Street, he found out it was called after they passed by a few stores. It was kind of hard to miss; the name was strewn over the street in a huge steel and neon display that spelled out the words 'Main Street' multiple times, as though it was afraid people walking by would miss the first one. David chuckled at the sight, shaking his head a little bit.

Despite his own reasons for going to the park - the rides, the coasters, and the things that would make him scream in joyful fear as his blood raced with adrenaline - David had to admit that some of the stores were interesting. Downright amazing in some cases, particularly some of the costume shops and potion shops. Someone had gone out of their way to make them as close to what someone would imagine a potion shop would be, in the case of the latter, and the costumes in the windows of the former looked almost too real to be believed.

Even the stranger shops that would have normally turned him away were still interesting to him. "Congo Coolios", one of the shops that he had seen in the distance, was almost too dark to see into, but what he could see as they passed by gave every indication that it was some sort of voodoo shop. Imitation voodoo, he was quick to tell himself - there was no such thing, after all, and they were probably just trying to make some money off of tourists - but it was still ridiculously real looking. Skulls, strange plants, extremely dim candles, darting shadows in the background; someone had gone extremely in-depth to find a way to make an unforgettable store.

Of course, for every interesting one, there were ones that made him want to walk a little faster. The prime example of that was the sex store that Bailey had started to mention, the sign of which was just barely visible down one of the alleys off of Main Street. A man dressed in leather and barechested for the most part looked back at them. Bailey started to pause, but David tugged him along insistently. "No no no...on the way out, Bailey, on the way out."

"But -"

"You agreed. No buts...or butts, either," David said, the latter half of that muttered under his breath as he tugged the muscle man away from the alley. The last thing he needed was for Bailey to carry a bag from there around all day.

Thankfully, despite his friend's grumbles, they didn't find any other stores that really stuck out like that. Some interesting ones, certainly, but nothing that really stood out like a sore thumb.

They rounded a bend, and suddenly they were no longer surrounded by stores. Instead, on each side of Main Street were booths, game booths. Looking up, David noticed a new sign. "Welcome to the Game Gallery," he said as he read it out loud.

"Well, looks like they brought a little carnival to this park after all, huh?" Bailey said, giving him an elbow in the ribs.

Grunting from the impact, David was helpless for a second as he recovered the breath knocked out of his lungs. By the time that he recovered, Bailey had already run ahead, heading towards one of the gaming booths. The big man had already challenged the guy on the other end of the arm-wrestling booth to a competition, and David sighed. "I'm going to need blinders for him at this rate," he muttered under his breath as he jogged over to the two big men.

The two of them had already grabbed arms with each other, and David shook his head as he looked over to Bailey's opponent.

Normally, he would give long odds towards his big friend actually losing to someone, but this was a different case. The man in charge of the booth was pretty big himself. Not only was he at least as tall as Bailey, but he was almost as well muscled, if not exactly at the same size. He even moved like he was afraid he was going to break something if he wasn't careful, something that Bailey hadn't learned yet, David's ribs told him as they still stung just a bit.

Well, it was too late to do anything but wait at this point. Shaking his head again, he turned to look at the other booths.

He'd barely looked over two of them before he saw someone else that looked familiar. Standing at a game booth that had one of those old "Throw the Ball, Break the Pile" games was a short, dark-skinned woman that he was pretty sure that he recognized. The crazy, intentionally wrinkled, curvy shape of her blouse, the way that her skirt had a strange sort of jagged spiral going up the sides of it, like a lightning bolt that was lazily making its way up from the bottom...not to mention that red hair that was just orange enough in places to mean that it was treated carefully with chemicals...

"Ashley?" David said as he started walking over there. "Hey, Ashley, is that you?" he called out a little louder.

She turned as he called out, and he paused at the look of mussed up make-up under her eyes. Little lines of water ran down her face, and they weren't from a game, either; she'd obviously been crying.

Wiping her eyes as he looked at her, Ashley said, "Oh...hi David...haven't seen you for a while."

"Um...not since last semester at college, actually," he said. Used to be that he and Bailey and Ashley were pretty close, but she'd dropped off the radar since then. "Are you okay?"

"I will be." She shook her head, turning back to the game. Picking up one of the balls in front of her, she leaned back, her arm stretched out over her head. "I'll be a lot better once I knock one of those bottle triangles to kingdom come!"

The ball left her hand like a shot, and with surprising accuracy considering how hard she'd been crying, clipped the middle of the bottle pile. It shot past them, hitting the back, and then falling to the floor, followed by the bottles a second later.

As the keeper of the stand went to get her prize, Ashley shook her head, turning around. "Sorry about that..." She put on a small smile, her round face slowly perking up. "It's nice to see you after so long, David; how've you been?"

"Okay..." He hesitated, looking down at her. "Um, you look...skinnier than I last saw you. Have things been going well?"

One of her eyebrows went up, and David's hands went up a second later, waving them defensively. "Sorry, sorry, not the face!"

She rolled her eyes. "You know I never punch people in the face."

"No, but you might as well with how well you cut them down with your mouth," he pointed out. "Sorry. Did I say something wrong?"

"You know how sensitive I am about my weight."

"But a compliment -"

"Still reminds me of it." She cracked a slight smile. "Don't forget that when you finally go chasing a girl, David; weight is a topic where you're dead no matter what you say."

"Yeah...okay..." he said, nodding slightly. He really should have remembered that; Ashley was not only short at only five feet and two inches, but she was also overweight, weighing almost 150 pounds the last time that she had admitted her weight. Admittedly, she looked better now, but it was clear that she was still really sensitive about her size. "Um...not sure if I'm digging myself in deeper here...but what happened to make you cry?"

The slight smile disappeared, and she sighed. "A jerk brought me here. I let myself believe it was a date. Turned out it was just some cheap way to make his old girlfriend feel like crap." The smile twitched back for a second. "Least I got to get a little laugh; when he saw his girlfriend, he just about flipped."

"Why? Because she was with another guy?"

"Because she was with a girl more beautiful than she was."

David blinked, then bent over as he bellowed in laughter at that thought. Ashley joined him after a second, the two of them leaning on each other as they laughed at what karma could deliver to jerks. They almost fell over several times, and eventually the two of them had to lean on the counter of the booth.

Almost a full minute later, David was able wipe his eyes clear of laughter tears. "I'm sorry, Ashley...that guy really got what he deserved."

"Not really, but I didn't have the time to really cut him down the way I wanted." She shook her head. "Anyway, you seen Bailey lately?"

"Actually -"

THUNK!

"WE HAVE A WINNER!"

Chuckling, David nodded over his shoulder. "I think that'd be him."

"Typical," she muttered, smiling as she walked around him.

Back at the arm wrestling booth, the worker was wringing his hand as Bailey stood with his hands thrust up in the air, taking in the cheers of some of the people that had been watching. David just rolled his eyes at the sight, but didn't interrupt. It wouldn't hurt to let his friend bask for a bit. After all, Bailey deserved some recognition for all the work that he put into his body.

As he turned in place, Bailey eventually noticed them. Breaking out of his victory pose as he noticed the two of them, he ran at them. Literally bowling several members of the audience over, he bent down and grabbed Ashley in a hug, lifting her off of the ground with a grin on his face. "Ashley! I haven't seen you in ages!" he bellowed, squeezing her tight enough for her eyes to bug out, something that David couldn't help but chuckle at as he watched from behind his big friend.

She had just enough time to flash him a little glare for his amusement before Bailey put her down again, actually bending over with his hands on his knees to look at her more evenly. "So how are you, Ashley? Missed you up at college after you disappeared; nobody else really keeps those cheerleaders in line anymore."

"Oh, I'm alright," she said. She brushed off her blouse, shaking her head at a light mark of sweat on the front. "Been working up at that fashion outlet up at the mall. You remember, the one with all that burning perfume in the air all the time?"

"Gah, that place? I'd die if you put me in there," Bailey said, grimacing.

"Well, you don't have to be there -"

"Hey, if you work there, I'm gonna have to be. Who else is gonna come in there and give you a reminder of how much you mean to us?"

"Yeah, and I'll have to get my butt in gear to come see you too," David pointed out, stepping out from behind the mountain that was Bailey. "You remember that we're friends, right? There's a reason that we hung out all the time. Just because it's been a while doesn't mean that we forgot about you or anything."

She looked from him to Bailey and back again, and David looked away as she started to tear up, a little glistened of light off of the water in her eyes. If she was going to cry...

But she didn't. Clearing her throat, she blinked a few times, and grinned. "Heh, well, if that's the way of it, that's the way of it," Ashley said. She took them by the arms, pulling herself between them. "Now why don't we beat feet to another spot? I think I hear a few roller coasters calling my name."

David smiled to himself, patting her hand on his arm. "My thoughts exactly."

"Now don't you get mushy on me now, David; I don't need you breaking hearts again!" She smirked, cocking her head to the side. "Unless you've swapped teams?"

"You wish, Ashley, you wish," David said with a chuckle. Looking up to see Bailey starting to turn his head towards the shops behind them, he laughed. "Come on, let's run before he gets the idea to head back the way we came."

"Good idea; we'll never get out of there if he gets started."

The two of them took off, and between David's long hours of swim team back at college, and Ashley's own natural bulk, they were able to shock Bailey off of his feet. He yelped as he was dragged along behind them, his head jerked to face forward, and he stumbled along for a few steps before he caught his balance again. Thankfully, he didn't make any further protest about the shops, just shaking his head in annoyance before he caught up with them.

They passed innumerable game booths, or close enough for it to be utterly ridiculous. Dunking games, squirt gun games, even some weird kind of puzzle games were in the Game Gallery. The booths themselves were rammed up right next to each other, wood and metal shoved so close to each other that the slightest jostling of the frame sent a quiet screech through the air. Only those close to the booths could hear it as it was otherwise drowned out by the various customers that wandered through the wide street, but it was still disconcerting, a harsh, shredding sound as wood cracked and metal creaked, the various booths standing up by their mutual strength and the sheer sturdiness of their massed numbers.

David shook his head as he passed through the line of them, ignoring every one of them in hopes that they could just get to the rides. Games were all well and good, but he was here for the rides; rides, and the other stuff that he couldn't get any other day, like the fun houses and the barns.

A glance to his left told him that Ashley was having similar thoughts. Her plump face was lit up with a grin that completely erased the tears that had covered them before, and it made his smile all the bigger. She looked like she was forgetting the jerk that had hurt her, so that could only be for the better.

Main Street ended surprisingly abruptly, and they all stuttered to a stop as they realized that they had stepped off of the paved street and onto a cobblestone square. Glaring multicolored lights blazed down on them, giving the square the appearance of a disco floor, in a way, with so many different colors rolling around the stones, almost like the lights were leading people forward towards the grand wooden stage in the center of the square. It was like an old style performance stage, complete with the red curtains in the background, sealing the backstage off from casual viewers.

Over the whole thing towered two things, both at the far side of the square. The first was the great white track for the Looper, and seeing it in person took David's breath away. It was huge, massive, and he could just see the cars of the roller coaster heading off. They must have had some sort of mag-track or something, because it was off like a shot from a standstill. The screams of the riders were carried out of earshot in seconds, and a part of him couldn't wait until he could get on it and try it out for himself.

The other thing could only have been the Golden Tower. It was truly the tallest thing in the entire park, stretching up and up and up, forcing David to actually lean his head back even at this distance. A pulsing red light blinked on and off on the dome, and it was so high up that he couldn't help but think that it was a warning for low flying aircraft. It was just...just...impossible.

David was struck by the sheer scale of the whole park again, and thought back to what this place had been before the Park got here. It was...weird, though; he could only barely recall that this place had been empty, that it had been nothing but an empty field before the Park had arrived. No paved ground, no cobblestone square, not even a power source for all of the houses and games and everything else.

First everyone else had passed off that oddity, and now he could only just barely remember the field that had been here before? What was going on here?

Ashley's smile faltered, and she turned to him. "Hey, David...wasn't this -"

"-a field? Yeah...I mean, I think it was...I remember something like that."

"Yeah..." The moving mound of muscle shook his head, his glasses sliding down his nose for a second before he pushed them back up. "Yeah, I remember that too...kind of..."

"Something's wrong. Something's very, very wrong here." David looked back the way that they'd come. Nobody else back there was looking at all worried, or even disappointed, unless they had just lost a game or something. But that wasn't the same thing at all, and he ignored them.

He turned his attention to the square itself. There were so many happy faces, so many people that were enjoying themselves. Some of them he even recognized, by face if not by name. His next door neighbors, the Pattersons; the crazy coke can collectors down the street; hell, even his boss was present, walking out from one of the fun houses at the edge of the square with the widest grin on his face that anyone could have imagined.

His boss in particular shocked him. Not just because of his smile, though that was odd enough, but because he should have been back at the burger joint. The boss didn't have the day off; he was even more needed today because of the pipe that burst in the kitchen yesterday, and had specifically said that he'd be there to make sure that the repairs were done.

"Okay, guys, I'm really starting to freak out a little bit here," David admitted.

"You're not the only one," Ashley admitted. The three of them were starting to break out in a sweat, and it had nothing to do with the climbing sun above them. She let go of their arms, slowly taking a step back before turning around. "I think we better - "

The dull echo of metal clanging on metal filled the air, followed by a deep rumbling vibration that spread like a tingle through the ground. Even through his shoes, David could feel the tickling vibration that passed through the earth, a weak, continuous shockwave that made him want to dance in place to keep his feet off of the ground. It passed after a second or two, but the feeling had left him worried, almost scared about what was going on.

The almost went out of that description when he saw that most people were still wearing those carefree smiles. They grinned, smirked, nodded to each other as they walked along, completely oblivious to anything that might have just happened.

"Ashley? David? Please tell me that I wasn't the only one to feel that creepy rumble?" Bailey asked.

Shaking their heads, both David and Ashley looked around, slowly turning in a circle. There were only a few other people in the square that were less than happy, and of those few, most were just annoyed about waiting in line.

In fact, there were only three others that looked at all nervous the way that they were. A goth girl that looked vaguely familiar, who stood near the front of the wooden stage; an almost thuggish looking guy, a little younger than David, who was walking towards the stage as well; and a former schoolmate that David was more familiar with than he cared to be, named Jeremiah. Strangely, all three of them were gathering near the stage, rather than running off, despite the looks of growing fear on their faces.

"Um...I think that we might want to go over there, guys," David said, pointing towards the stage.

"Why?" Bailey asked. "Shouldn't we be trying to get out?"

"I'm not sure if we can..."

Ashley's eyes went wide as she slapped her palm against her face. "The gates...those things shutting would have been loud enough to hear from here, wouldn't they?"

"But why would they close the gates? That keeps anyone else from getting in," Bailey said.

"Or anyone else from getting out. Think about it, Mountain Man; why would they make it so hard to think of the field here, if they didn't have something going on," she pointed out.

They walked slowly, their eyes peeled and their ears sharp as they moved towards the stage. Nobody else seemed nervous at all, and it was tempting to think that they were just imagining things. David didn't know what Bailey and Ashley were telling themselves, but he was forcing himself to remember the field. The empty, grassy field that had been here just yesterday. That didn't disappear, and this didn't just appear, in one night. Not naturally, and not without a reason.

The other three people at the stage looked at them for a second as they approached. The goth and the thug just turned back, but Jeremiah kept looking. "David, you see it too huh? See it too?" he said, his voice almost as twitchy as his eyes. "You remember, right? Remember?"

"Yeah...I remember," he said.

"Not right...this is not right." Jeremiah shook his head rapidly. "Doesn't add up, doesn't add up. Problems. Memory not working right. Something wrong. Something very wrong."

He could say that again, David thought, and knowing Jeremiah, he probably would. Jeremiah was his elder by a few years, having been an upperclassman in high school when he was just entering, and he'd left college after David's first year. The guy wore wide lensed glasses, slightly smeared from the amount of times he shoved them back up with his fingers, and wore, of all things, a full suit, complete with a jacket and a tie. He even had a pocketwatch in his shirt pocket and a regular watch on his wrist.

As Jeremiah took his pocketwatch out and compared it to the timepiece he wore on his arm, David looked at the other two.

He thought he recognized the goth girl, and he did, sort of. She hadn't been in more than one of his classes, but she was so different that he could remember her easily. Cari, he remembered her as; a girl that spoke as quietly as she moved, and almost as slow. Her skin was as pale as snow, and her eyes - when she turned to look at him - were an astonishing shade of red. Black hair lay like feathers over her back, and she shook softly, almost like she was shivering despite the growing heat of the day.

In direct contrast, the man standing beside her was black as pitch, his eyes a startling blue. Bald, he was as quiet as Cari. He was the only one that David didn't know the name of, but...

Offering his hand, David looked him in the eyes. "I'm David," he said.

"Adam," the stranger said, giving his hand a quick shake. He reached into one of his pants pockets, pulling out a small pad. At first David thought it was a smart phone, but when Adam turned it slightly, he saw it was something different. There was an antennae sticking out of the top of it, and it was beeping softly. "This place...is very odd."

"Established, already established," Jeremiah muttered over David's shoulder, and was ignored as David looked at the device. It was a smart phone, or at least had been; someone - possibly even Adam - had done a lot of work on it. He didn't think he could even start figuring out all the things that had been done to it.

But he could tell what it was that it was doing.

It was a radar of some sort, a scanner. And whatever it was picking up, the park was letting out a LOT of it.

David opened his mouth, about to ask what it was that Adam was scanning for, but there was no chance. The moment that he opened his mouth, everything went from wonderful to terrible in one fell swoop.

A great creaking filled the air, and the ground shook beneath their feet. What nerves they had soared to terror as they fought to keep their feet as the world around them erupted in a massive earthquake.

David was the first to lose his footing, landing on his ass as he was knocked down. He tried to struggle to his feet, but what he saw on the horizon froze him in shock. This should not have been possible...but how had that stopped everything that had happened so far?

At the edge of the park rose great metal sheets, pointed in teeth like forms. They climbed from the earth, rising further and further over the park. David watched them as the others fell around him, his eyes glued to the tips of the metal plates. Bit by bit, creaking with a dull metallic thunder that covered the entire park, it pushed itself into the sky.

And then...it curved.

Perhaps it was always curved, but it was suddenly much more obvious that it was going over the park as much as it was going above it. It spread closer and closer to the tallest point of the park, towards the Golden Tower. They blotted out the sun, the light, casting darker and darker shadows over the park.

Finally, the many different sheets met together above the Golden Tower, and for a moment, the world went dark. Nothing could be seen, and despite his best efforts, waving his hand in front of his face, David could see nothing. Nothing at all. Not even a silhouette.

But as a minute passed, then another, sight slowly returned. The only remaining source of light was the blinking red light on top of the Golden Tower, and though it was dim compared to the sun, it was still strong enough to light up the entire park, or at least the square.

With some sight back, David pulled himself to his feet. "Everyone okay?" he asked.

"Yeah...yeah, I'm fine," Ashley muttered, her answer coming between a few deep breaths.

"Bailey?" he asked.

"Need more than an earthquake to knock me down," the familiar, loud voice answered from behind him.

"Adam?"

"Might have busted a few gadgets, but alright."

"Jeremiah? Cari?"

Those two just nodded, one shaking too much to speak, the other looking on the verge of fainting. But they were both on their feet, and that was enough for now.

As she joined him in looking at the new dome that covered the park, Ashley took a deep breath. "I think I speak for everyone here when I ask, 'What in the flipping fuck just happened?'"

"I have - wait. Wait." David held up a hand. "Quiet, quiet."

Everyone else went silent, and soon they started to perk up. They must be hearing the same sound he was hearing, a quiet humming sound. An unsung song, just hummed as a person walked about. The six of them whipped around, trying to find where it was coming from.

It was Cari, the quiet one, that figured out where it was coming from. "The stage...the stage," she whispered in a reed-thin voice, pointing a shaky hand towards it.

Just as she pointed at it, one of the spotlights on the stage turned on, shining down on the center of the stage with a blinding light. The sound of a panel sliding back was thunderous in the suddenly quiet park, and David was suddenly aware of just how quiet it was; no people shouting, no running machinery. Not even the sound of people walking about. All the day to day sounds were gone, when they should have been at their loudest.

He heard the gears creaking as something lifted up a platform beneath the stage, and could only watch as that something appeared on stage.

The creaking continued, the grinding of gears matching the grinding of their teeth. Even Bailey shook as they waited for the platform to reach the stage, and when they finally saw something, the tip of a white hat, they nearly jumped away. They only managed to hold still, hold their position, when they saw the white top hat stop.

They waited, wanting to see who was wearing it, but there was nothing. No movement, and no more rising platform.

Bailey stood on tiptoes, and shook his head. "There's nothing there, just a hat," he said.

"Just a hat?" They all jumped at the voice that echoed over the square, looking around, but seeing nothing. It continued, echoing, almost jolly. "Oh, silly me, here I was coming into the show upside down. Let me fix that."

At first, there was nothing. Then, a whistling, like something falling, falling very fast. Almost like a bomb. David jerked his head up, and his eyes almost burst out of his sockets at the sight coming from the sky.

A man in a white and red suit was falling from the sky. He had a grin on his face, but that was all that David could see. There was no parachute, nothing to stop him from hitting the square, or the stage, and at the speed he was falling, he would kill himself. He turned his head away, not needing to see this, to add to his nightmares.

The whistling stopped abruptly, but there was no sound of squishing, no crack of bones. The only sound, in fact, was the sound of a group gasp from everybody else. Almost against his will, David turned back to the stage.

Perched right on top of the hat was the same man that had fallen from the sky, and he wasn't standing on it. Instead, he was perfectly balanced on the white top hat, standing on his head with the hat the only cushion he had from the wooden stage below. A broad grin covered his face, forcing a mustache up, and showing off ridiculously smooth and scarily white teeth. The suit seemed to ignore gravity, not falling out of place or even ruffled by the fall. White gloved fingers clutched a cane, and the jeweled top of the cane itself pulsed with the same red light as the Golden Tower.

A quick swing of the cane hit the side of the hat, but rather than knocking the strange man off balance, or sending the hat scurrying away, it spun the hat up and around in the air in an arc, and the cane's owner followed it along. They spun in a quick circle, the man landing on his feet right where the hat had been, and the hat landing on his head a split second later.

David and the rest of the group gaped at him, eyes wide and jaws dropped as the cane-wielding man took a bow, still humming. They watched as he walked across the stage, tapping the bottom of the cane against different parts of the stage, muttering to himself. "Fooooooooor I am a magic kiiiing, and it is, it is a glorious thing to be a magic king," he sung under his breath.

"Excuse me?" Everyone in the group turned to Ashley, amazed by the short lady's audacity to speak up. "Hate to interrupt your rendition of Pirates of Penzance, but you mind telling me what the hell is going on?"

He suddenly stopped on stage, turning to look at them as though seeing them for the first time. "Oh my my, that's unexpected, so very strange. Strange but boring? Nah, I think strange and fun, strange and interesting." He laughed, pressing his hand to his face like a bemused showman, peering through his fingers. "Oh my my, Mirari, you failed with these ones. But don't worry, little one, I'll take care of it. I'll take care of it."

Spinning his cane as he walked forward, he moved all the way to the edge of the stage before stopping, almost stabbing his cane into the wood. He leaned forward, looming over them and chuckling. "Heh, heheheh. Oh that explains it, that explains it very well." He leaned back again, pointing the jeweled end of the cane towards them. "None of YOU bought Mirari's little illusions, did you?"

Mirari? The name of the...the park?

He suddenly leaped off of the stage, standing amongst them. He seemed to shimmer as he walked, and each step he took made him a little bit taller, a little bit bigger. In two steps, he was taller than Bailey by a head; in four, he was double that size.

"Mirari, Mirari, how many times have we talked about this? You need to remember the locals remember better than the tourists, particularly the younger ones." He sighed, turning after a dozen steps, looming over them as a literal giant. Just the distance from his shoes to mid-calf was taller than all of Bailey's height, and he had to bend forward slightly to keep from bonking his head on parts of the lower dome. "Ah well, we'll just have to show them what their fate is."

Fate? The thought must have been universal as they all looked at each other for a second, as the giant brought his cane up, then slammed it down.

As the echoes of the cane coming down died down, the screaming started.

The giant faded, and as he did, the people that had been in the park seemed to 'reappear'. They'd never fully disappeared, just been overwhelmed by the presence of the strange arrival.

But they were back now, and even in the darkness, David could see that something was wrong.

The swarms of people in the Game Gallery fell to their knees, screaming as they flailed at each other. Clothing ripped and flesh tore as they scrabbled at things unseen. Their mouths were open as shouts and shrieks were ripped from their mouths and thrown in the air, echoing in the enclosed dome as others joined them all over the park, filling the air with fear, pain, and desperation.

Before his eyes, he saw people...change. He saw them become other things. People shifted, their arms melting into their sides, or falling to the ground and becoming legs, or taking on muscle, or losing it altogether; they grew in height, and they shrunk to near nothing; they growled in need, and they hissed in anger, and they howled in fear. Everything and anything seemed possible, everything changing almost at random.

A sudden 'WHAM' went through the ground, and the Gallery was suddenly sealed off, a metal plate ramming itself up through the ground. Main Street disappeared from view, as did everyone on the other side of the thing.

Everyone in the group had a different reaction to the brief thing that they had seen. Ashley screamed once before covering her mouth; Bailey shuddered, wavering from side to side before he caught himself; Jeremiah fell to his knees, clutching his head and muttering about things being impossible.

For his part, David fell back against the stage, his breath coming in shuddering, ragged gasps as he tried to rationalize what he had just seen. That...this whole thing was...

"Impossible, wouldn't you say?"

He jerked back from the stage, falling to his rear as he tried to turn around. Adam, Cari; the two of them were the only ones still on their feet, still relatively calm, and even they shook when they looked at the man in the white suit. His mustache now hung from his forehead, and it grew before their eyes, spreading around his face until it surrounded him from the eyebrows to the mouth. Two points of it grew up, piercing the brim of the top hat like horns as he looked down at them with a playful expression, his cane spinning behind his back.

They were all silent, unable to look away.

"Now, I think we have a few things to catch up with here, don't you think? I know Mirari is soooo desperate to turn you all, but you hadn't had the chance to do much yet." The man laughed, bringing his cane around. He jumped in the air, clicking his heels like some manically gleeful stranger, somehow floating in the air afterwards.

He ran forward, running on air, up invisible steps, until he was floating a good twenty feet above them, looking down at them. "But there needs to be SOMETHING, or this would be too boring, too human. No humans, no humans, not for long in MY park.

"YOU!" The cane pointed at Bailey. "Big muscle boy thinks he's so strong? Heh, beat my strongman in the Gallery, didn't ya?" Bailey nodded slowly. "Ho ho, don't be shy. No shyness in front of me. No shyness in front of your friend on the opposite side of the fence!"

The cane lit up, and suddenly fired something that David could only describe as a laser, only slower. It burst out of the tip of the cane, and Bailey only just managed to dodge it.

That did not make the suited man happy. His smile disappeared, and he backflipped off of his perch. He landed right on top of Bailey's shoulders, his arms crossed on top of his cane, the tip balanced right on top of the big man's head. "Now, why did you have to go and do that? You really want to make me mad? Mirari can tell you how stupid an idea that is, can't you, Mirari?"

As he asked, the entire ground trembled. Almost like the quaking before, but less angry, more...warningly. Anxious. The man chuckled, hanging down Bailey's back, as Bailey stood there, absolutely stunned. "That's a good girl, Mirari, good girl," the suited guy said, patting the cobblestone with the cane a few times.

Just as Bailey tried to grab him, though, he flipped off of the big man's back, and kicked him right in the base of the spine. "Hey! No touchies!" he shouted, sending the strongman stumbling from the blow.

David knew what was going to happen, and tried to step forward to do something, anything to stop it, to save his friend.

But he was too slow. The cane pointed at Bailey again, and this time the beam of light connected. The red surrounded Bailey, and his eyes went wide as he fell to his knees, overcome with the energy that hit him. He grunted, clutching his arms to his chest as he began to change.

Even Adam and Cari's faces went slack with shock as they watched what happened to Bailey. His arms pulled in against his chest, fingers, hands, and elbows melting against his torso. Skin attached to it, and the mass slowly seemed to melt into him. His muscles, the pecs, the shoulders, got bigger, thicker, but his arms slowly disappeared, drawn into his body, pulled in deeper and deeper until they were gone.

The light faded, but the arms didn't return. There were no stumps, no jagged ends; Bailey's arms were simply gone, the shoulders rounded smoothly into his chest.

David hurried forward, helping him to his feet. Without the leverage provided by an arm or shoulder or anything, it was much harder to get the big guy to his feet, but he managed it, somehow. But strangely, he felt something else as well, a strange thing that shouldn't have been there.

Under Bailey's shirt, where there had been smooth skin, was fur. Thick, smooth fur. Fur that belonged to an animal.

David shuddered, trying to ignore the feeling as he helped Bailey to his feet again. Everyone looked at him, at what he had become. No one looked anything less than shocked, and both Ashley and Cari looked devastated at what had been forced on him. David himself was more than a little pissed, and he turned to the man with the cane with an enraged look on his face.

It wasn't returned. Sitting on another invisible platform above them, the cane and its owner looked down at them. "Now, do I have your attention?"

They all nodded, one by one. There was no denying that.

"Good." He stood up in place, and reached into his hat. A yellowed piece of parchment was pulled out, about the size of his hand. "Now, here are the rules...."