FSE

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The city streets felt even worse than the zoo. The change of scenery from a verdant man-made paradise ruined by blood and smoke, to the broken streets filled with bodies and debris, was depressing to say the least. The undead did occasionally appear on the back-alley streets, which the four traversed in order to avoid any mass hordes or great debris that would obstruct their way through on the main streets. But Roy and James handled them with ease despite more narrow quarters to fight in, using straight thrusts and blasts of fire or ice to push them back. The two raptors, unlike their fellow human travellers, had seen worse things than zombies to consider them terrifying on their own. Eventually, they found themselves somewhere at the back of the tram station. An old stone building, with one of several red shiny platform trams still operable for use. But the fact that they were all unused brought up a few questions. "Why they not being used?" asked MG. "Coulda got out this city real fast." "Lots of reasons," replied James. "Me and Michael passed by some places that still had survivors in them, hiding, holed up, probably too scared to leave and just hoping that it'll all go away. Some might be infected, some might be trying to still save everyone, you know, the usual stuff." "Usual? This ain't usual." "Oh, I'm sorry, did we not cover basic zombie movie rules 101, which is get the hell out of here as soon as possible?" "Yeah, an' how many of thuh dead did we meet that tried to do that? You gotta sneak through this place, get aroun' shit-" "Hey." "Righ', sorry, ah mean, we gotta get aroun' places to avoid bigger crowds. Zombies may be stupid an' we all seen how they work, but a big-ass horde of 'em comin' down thuh highway, is still pretty damn dangerous." "Obviously, duhhh, why else have we been going through the backstreets like rats hiding away...hey, what's Matthieu up to?" Matthieu was not so eager to join in on this conversation as he was more eager to hop aboard on one tram, the station free of debris much to his relief as he began to tweak with the electric circuits. Muttering to himself, he was soon able to wire it up to life, the tram chugging on without a key as his eyes lit up with glee before crowing triumphantly in French: "HAH! I knew it, Joe you magnificent bastard!" "Who's Joe?" asked Roy. "One of my college friends, he taught me how to hotwire things. I never thought that pothead could ever save my life but I must thank him when I see him." With the tram now working after some rather impromptu electrical work, the cook turned towards the group and said: "Thank you again, both of you for helping me." "No problem," replied Roy en francais, "but will you be alright on your own? You don't have a weapon on you." "I will find a gun or something, don't worry, long as I can shoot something I won't have problems." "Really? Are you good with a gun?" "My father taught me how to hunt back when I was younger, before I went to school. Any gun I can use, except maybe shotguns." "...here, take this." He had almost forgotten about the gun he had taken before fighting FG, pulling it out of his satchel to offer up towards Matthieu, as well as the several handgun clips he had taken along with it. The cook smiled with shock and relief. James watched on with silent outrage, hands unseen thrown up in the air as Matthieu replied: "You...oh god, are you serious?!" "I'm more able to handle myself with my blade, rather than a gun. You say you know how to use one, then use it wisely. That's all I ask." "I...I cannot thank you enough Roy. Thank you, please, if we ever meet again, I will return the favour to you in any possible way." "Don't worry about it, just go find your friends. Goodbye Matthieu." "Goodbye...thank you, everyone."

With his last words to them in English, Matthieu soon closed the tram gates and readily started it up before heading down the line towards the southeast. As it soon disappeared off into the darkening streets, Roy turned back towards Michael to ask: "Which way wuz it to your house again?" "Uhhh that way!" replied Michael pointing northwest. "Come on we're almost there!" The boy struggled not to run right out in front, remembering the dangers all too soon as James and MG walked close behind. James however could not resist murmuring to the other raptor: "...you had a gun." "Hmm?" "You had a fucking gun and you didn't even use it?!" "Ah didn' need it, whut's yer problem?" "Oh never mind the fact that this is the perfect scenario to use one, you just had one on you for a REASON and you just decided 'nah thanks, I'll just swing at them close-range with my huge-ass dick that I call a sword' like some dumb shit." "Ah wanted to save mah ammo fer anythin' bigger an' more dangerous, like a horde." "OH, so the zombie lions weren't a big THING?" "We survived, didn't we? Ah can handle a bunch of pussies, can you? Oh righ', ah forget, yer gay so you can't stand a pussy." "Ha ha, I'm actually bi and I bet I had more than you ever had." "Pfft, sure you do, prison bitch." He stopped Roy in mid-walk to turn him around fully facing him. "...don't fuck with me Roy. I was in prison once, what about you?" "Never been...cuz ahm not a murderer unlike you." "Fuck you." "Whut are you guys mumblin' about?!" asked Michael. "We're just uh...talking about our plans after we drop you off at your parents." "Really? Whut you gonna do?" "I'm leaving this place, that's for sure." "Same here," said Roy, "this place is bad enough and ah don' wanna stay here any longer than ah have to." "Oh...okay..." Michael turned back with a slight sadness in his step. It was a childish thing to think, but it's not every day you become friends with two talking dinosaurs who fought to protect you from monsters. He only wished that they had come in better circumstances, when he wasn't running for his life at every turn. Now and again a corner would have a zombie just waiting to lunge out, but James always kept closer, ready to strike out and kill with one slice of the head to cut off fully.

Sometimes Michael felt sick from seeing so much blood, and every few zombies that they would kill, he would either beg them to stop walking so he could rest, or try his best not to look. He hadn't thrown up yet, but he always felt like he was just about to, the thickening glut in his throat threatening to make him hurl his stomach contents on the ground from the nausea. The stench of rotting flesh and bloody entrails was bad enough without the sight of evisceration. Soon they headed down Raccoon Street itself after evading back out of the tram station, the main thoroughfare of Raccoon City being a much more chaotic place than anywhere else they had been to so far. Dozens of bodies left in the streets, the odd zombie or three feasting on the remains of the dead which James and Roy soon had them join fully with swift brutal decapitations. The zombies were slow, and their flesh was weak and putrid enough to carve through with ease that they rarely ever had a problem, unless they faced more than three. Roy also noted that without using any guns, and melee weapons only, they were able to not alert any other zombies nearby to their sounds of battle. This did not make James feel any better about his forced ally holding out on him, but he reluctantly agreed with such rationalisation as they soon traversed up towards Gough Street. The main Raccoon Street was a near-labyrinthine structure of twisted metal and burning fires, oil spills and petrol leakage carving a path of flames all over the street itself. Soon however, the end was in sight. After climbing through hunks of charred automobiles as well as their inhabitants, Michael cried out with joy at the sight of a single home along a terraced way. "THERE IT IS! THAT'S MY HOUSE!" He rushed ahead without thinking, both raptors following after him swiftly to make sure no trouble was ahead, as they soon reached the doorstep. It was a pleasant house, five windows at the front, well-secured door with a fine motif of white lines and red walls. The house also appeared to be in a rather well-kept conditon, even amidst the chaos of the undead. There weren't even any bodies lying along the street, which should have made them feel easy. If anything, it only made them ask even more questions as Michael went up to the door. "Place looks intact," said FG. "That means they're okay!" said Michael happily. "I'm gonna find 'em okay, could you guys wait before you have to leave?!" "Sure, no problem." "Okay!"

He opened the door with a key he had in his backpack, almost too excited to unlock it correctly with a shaky hand before heading inside with a squeal of "MOM! DAD!" before closing the door. James smiled to himself with relief, happy that the boy had found his way home as he sat on the front steps. "Phew...thank...god." "Yeah," said MG. "You finally did it." "Yep. ...wait, shit, that means we gotta do our business huh?" "Mmhmm. Whut, just cuz you let a kid get back home you think you were off thuh hook?" "No...just...happy that I could help him. So your mum was French?" "French Creole, yeah." "Right...I picked up most of that from the translator in me." "You got a translator?" "Yeah, it like autodetects languages and shit, the guy said you had an unusual accent though." "Creole's rather different from European French, mah mom learnt hers as a rather weird blend between both, that's how it is down where she came from." "Huh...was it always like that, I didn't even know there were different dialects." "English got all kinds of different dialects so why not other languages too? Ah mean, Spanish got like Mexican an' Argentinian an' shit, French got like Quebecois an' Creole an' such." "Right. Just...never occurred to me that's all. So how you wanna do this?" "Huh?" "Us getting back home. Come on, let's do this." "Wait, really?" "Yeah. I wanna get home too and make amends, let's do this." James stood up with a stretch, the black raptor looking rather taken aback by this. "You...admittin' it?" "No. I never went anywhere near your house, or even your city. I've done a lot of bad things, but I never killed your parents." "Bullshit, it had to be you." "How? How could it possibly have been me?" "Cuz of these." Roy pointed straight at FG's purple markings, right between his blinking green eyes. "...my...birthmarks?" "Yeah. When you came to mah house, ah just arrived back home after school, typical day like any other. Ah saw mah dad on thuh floor, thought he like passed out or sumthin'...then ah saw thuh blood. Right in his damn neck. Ah heard mah mom scream from thuh kitchen so ah tried to run to her...and then ah saw you." "But...that's not...I never went to-" "You stabbed her in thuh fuckin' eye an' threw her down on thuh floor...then you tried to grab at your face cuz you were wearin' this big black hoodie to try an' cover yerself, cuz she threw sum kinda acid on you, ah dunno whut, sum kinda bleach or sum shit. But ah saw you. Ah saw yer damn face. Brown snout...with thuh same two purple marks. You tried to attack me, but ah tackled you hard an' cuz of mah mom fightin' you off, you were all thrown off an' tried to stab me...but all you did wuz knock me out on thuh floor an' curbstomp me. By thuh time ah woke up...you were gone. But ah never forgot yer face." "Please, look, lemme just-" "Ah sat between mah mom an' dad fer an hour until thuh police came, weeping. Begging 'em to wake up. Beggin' fer me to wake up, hoping it wuz all a nightmare or sumthin', like a really vivid one...but when thuh police came to check everythin' out, an' took me away from thuh scene...ah still feel like ah haven't woke up. You ruined mah life, James Campbell."

A slow surge of anger came from Roy's body, the greatest of restraint burning deep into his hands, twitching with desperate urges. James turned nervous at hearing his name in such a tone. He didn't even think that Roy had known his full name before. "Ah have every right to kill you. Ah had no home, no family, couldn't go back to school cuz ah wuz almost graduatin'...they gave me mah grades two weeks later. But around that time, sum guys in suits showed up sayin' they were from Chicago. That's where ah heard your name, an' everythin' that happened. The A.R.M.E apologised, deeply even, said they never realised what kinda punk you really were, said sumthin' about thuh experiment makin' you reveal yer true self, like increasing personality constraints or sum shit. Turns out yer a goddamn sociopath." "That is such bullshit," said FG defensively, "you make it sound like I took cocaine or something and went all crazy with a knife." "And yet here you are, walkin' around a city covered in blood, bite wounds, burn marks an' bullet holes." "Wait, bullet holes?" "In yer back...burn marks too on yer chest. Those even ah can tell came from today now that ah look at you up close. An' thuh stories ah heard about you from all over don't exactly make you out to be thuh greatest person alive." "But...I wasn't...alright, never mind, lemme ask you something. What will the Armee do once you get back with me? Like, what happens next?" "The A.R.M.E are willin' to give me a scholarship to go to any college or university ah wanted, after ahm done with you. As a way of payin' me back fer all mah troubles. Won't bring back mah parents, but it'll give me back sumthin' of mah life. Once you back with them, alive or dead, ah can try to scrape up thuh pieces of whut ah got left, live in a dorm, get mah grades, be a cop wi' mah own place. ...they said if ah couldn't bring you back alive, then ah at least had to take back yer head." "...wow. Barbaric. And that's saying something coming from me." "Ah don't like it either, but they just want thuh technology that's inside of you." "Pfft, fine. You wanna take me back now then? Come on, do it." James walked up to Roy and took his hands in his, despite the utahraptor's sneer of disgust at being touched by him. "Let's go home. Right now." "...fine. You made thuh right choice James." Roy began to think of back home, back to their own world where things could finally come out right. James turned nervous at such a proposition, but in the end this was what he wanted to. If he was able to go back and clear his name, things would turn out better. He would finally meet Sarah again, cut off all ties he had left from his world and find out the truth behind everything. He looked into Roy's face, marred with sorrow that he knew he had never caused. He wanted to help him. Even if he wasn't responsible, he somehow felt he had to.

The black raptor began to feel his hands emanate a darkened blue, the same colour as James' own nanos now surging forth. Roy tried his best to envelop them both within his blue light, the dark familiar howling void of the netherworld between dimensions coming all too clearly to both of them. Both raptors held on tightly, closely to each other, more than Roy ever wanted to be. They could feel the cold blackness surging forth to consume them, wanting to take them in back to their home world, back to what Roy knew was home. Yet it would never come. The darkness began to recede, shorting out as if malfunctioning from an error caused within space. The nanos faded away, sparking in a way that both of them fully knew. Only one thing could cause that sort of failing light, as Roy began murmuring in disbelief. James tried not to smile, even if he did not know beforehand if it would succeed or not. A small part of him was saddened by it not working. "...it won't work." "Nope." "It...it won't work." "Guess it doesn't allow more than one person to go through right?" "B-but...but...why? W-wait, that don' make any sense, ah can take mah satchel, mah fucking huge-ass blade, why can't it take you!?" "I dunno, maybe we exceeded the limit or something by just the two of us. Maybe it-...hold on, you know how we always black out whenever we end up in a new world?" "...yeah?" "Well...that must cost a shit ton of power from our body alone, so maybe the nanos have like some kind of failsafe on them because if it tried to take TOO much with it, like two living people, then it might do something even worse to your body. Like, too much strain on it." "...failsafe...f-failsafe...yeah...he said that.......god...god fucking FUCKING DAMMIT!" Roy slammed FG back against the wall, roaring with fury unbound as he screamed into the brown raptor's face. "WHY CAN'T IT EVER BE EASY!? ALL AH WANTED WUZ A GODDAMN LIFE! Ah wanted to be a good guy, ah wanted to graduate an' be a cop, make mah family proud an' protect the city ah wuz born an' raised in, ah had everything planned out! But YOU! YOU FUCKIN' CAME IN, AN' TOOK EVERYTHIN' FROM ME, AND NOW THIS STUPID FUCKING NANO PIECE OF SHIT CAN'T EVEN GET ITS OWN TECHNOLOGY RIGHT! "I NEVER DID ANYTHING GODDAMNIT!" "BULLSHIT! AH REMEMBER YOU, AH KNOW YOU KILLED MAH MOM AN' DAD FG! AH ALMOST DIED TRYIN' TO FIND YOU, AH NEARLY DIED TOO MANY FUCKIN' TIMES!" "So what," snarled FG, "I fucking near-died plenty of times too trying to get back home, you're not even the first!" "Yeah!? You ever found yerself dyin' in a desert when you were just outta high school? You ever nearly died hangin' off a cliff when an entire fuckin' army wanted to hang and gut you alive like a fuckin' trophy, fer speakin' out against 'em?!" "No, I had my own problems you fucking prick!" "WHUT DID YOU SEE BACK IN SILENT HILL HUH!? Whut kinda monsters did you fight?! Things you never knew could even exist inside o' you, tryin' to rip you up an' drive you insane with all kinds of f-fucked up shit!?!" "Of course I did, you think you were the only one who suffered?!" "Ah had nightmares come alive tryin' to rip mah eyes out! Ah had monsters an' demons hunt me down across fuckin' fields at night wantin' to eat me alive! AH DIDN' WANT ANY OF THIS, AH NEVER WANTED ANY OF THIS!" "NEITHER DID I, BUT AT LEAST I MADE SOMETHING OUT OF IT! I picked myself up, carried my fucking burden and admitted my own damn problems, and you know what, I had a life with Koopin! I was happy, I was getting somewhere with a normal life until YOU fucking dragged me out of it! Now I can't even get back to my own home anyway, because YOU trusted a bunch of fucking soldier wannabes who were too stupid to be in the real army!" "Says thuh guy who fuckin' ran up to 'em to be a guinea pig fer some money! Whut you do, pay off that bar girl cuz she thuh only one who'd even fuck you?!" "WHY DON'T YOU FUCK OFF BACK TO BROOKLYN AND DIE IN A BOX LIKE EVERYONE ELSE THERE?!" "FUCK YOU! IF AH CAN'T TAKE YOU BACK ALIVE, I'LL FUCKIN' KILL YOU INSTEAD!"

Roy immediately tossed James to the ground before throwing himself down onto him, forcing James to punch back with his arms pinned down by Roy. With a furious sneer he summoned fire from his claws, and sent them up along the underside of Roy's arms, making him yell in pain and back off. James took the opportunity to kick him down in the gut, swiftly get onto his own feet and take his scissors out fast, planting the tips on both sides of the black raptor's neck. "Now you fucking listen to me." Roy started to choke on the ground as the scissortips dangerously held him in a chokehold, ready to decapitate at a moment's notice. Not enough to bleed, but just enough to feel threatened for his life, staring along the dull blades straight towards his enemy, a snarl of restraint coming to his lips. "I know you're scared, and I know you're a lot younger than me and all of this is getting to you. How old are you?" "Gh-hhhk! Hhhnnk-khhh-" "HOW OLD?!" "T-twenny...f-five." "Right, okay, you're younger than me. So you better fucking believe me when I tell you three things. One, you might know a lot more things than I do, you're smart, you went through high school, you can even cook and bullshit about biology. But I am FAR more experienced than you. I've been doing this shit a lot longer than you, so you have no choice but to trust me. Two, calm the fuck down because take it from me, you don't wanna get angry in a place like this and end up dead." "H-hrk! Ghrk!" "Three. I never killed your parents, and I NEVER went to New York in my whole goddamn life. No matter how many times you keep lying to yourself-" "BullSHIT!" Roy's interruption earned him a choking small cut to his neck, enough for the blood to seep gently but harmlessly. "-no matter how many times you don't believe me, I will always tell you the same fucking thing. And I swear, on my OWN parents' graves...I. NEVER. Killed. Your parents. You got that?" "Nnnngh..." "I SAID, you got that?" "Yeah...f-fuckin' whutevah." "Good." He slowly slid the scissors away from the younger taller raptor and sheathed them, allowing Roy to stand up once his head cooled down. "Now...let's plan our next move, shall we? Michael's not come back yet so I'm gonna check things out." "Fine...I'll wait." The raptor in brown headed up towards Michael's house, knocking at the door politely as he called out to the inside. "Michael? ...Michael, you there?" No response came from inside. James became nervous and knocked harder, pounding with his fist. "Michael! MICHAEL! What's wrong, you okay in there?! MICHAEL!" Eventually he heard a click from within the door, as it slowly opened up. Michael stood before them, his cheeks red with tears along with his bloodshot eyes, hiccuping from the throat. James feared the worst of news until Michael spoke softly. "...they're gone." "What?" "They're not here...they're gone. ...they left me. Th-they left me all alone here."

Softly stepping into the house, James and Roy found it to be completely abandoned. At first they expected it to look like a break-in, but the place seemed perfectly fine and untouched other than one or two hastily-piled pieces of clothing or amenities that had been left behind. From the door there was a small hallway, with a stairway to the right leading up as the kitchen expanded out as the first thing to see, a half-square-shaped mica counter of wooden cupboards to their left opposite the front window. The living room laid beyond the kitchen, a straight path from the front door where a TV and two couches sat around an oval coffee table. It almost looked like something picked perfectly out of a catalogue, with little to be disturbed. Some of the food was even still available in various cupboards. Michael was tired from crying, wandering his own home like a lost spirit. He flitted from room to room, desperately hoping his parents were somehow here in a room he had not yet seen. James and Roy in turn also felt lost. Not only did they have one way of returning home together out the window, but they also now had no objective left within Raccoon City. Every room had been checked, from bedrooms to bathroom, but not a trace of his family could be found. Michael soon sat down at the kitchen table and placed his head upon the cold wood, soothing his warm head slightly. Roy and James sat with him, trying to think on what else they could do. They said nothing for the time being, not wanting to disturb the rare gift of silence within such a disaster, a brief moment of respite to calm their shaky nerves. Roy noted that several notes had been left on the fridge, neither of them having looked at it out of politeness to young Michael in not wanting to look like thieves trying to raid his family's food. Some of the notes however intrigued him, heading over to look at them. One of them was a report on the life of frogs that Michael got an A for, proudly displayed up on front as well as various post-it notes of important meetings or details and such. A new one however was labelled very blatantly in red as "DO NOT USE WATER", alongside a note that had been pinned underneath it very neatly. Roy could make out a name that marked his interest, pulling it off the fridge. "Hey kid." "Mmm?" "...ah think ah know where yer parents are." "...huh?" He didn't register the words at first, but it was not until Roy showed him the large note of white paper that the boy understood, his eyes widening with surprise the more he started reading it.

_Dear Michael

We tried to stay as long as we could until you could get back from school But the city has gotten worse from a terrible emergency. Some of our friends at the company we work for are helping us escape If you are reading this, then we hope you are safe.

You must go to Griffin Road, at the far east side of the city Both us and our friends are there, ready to leave this place to safety We will be waiting until September 24th at 8pm before we have to leave.

I know it will be frightening, but we love you Michael You're a brave boy and we know that you will find us. If you do come find us, you must remember two things 1. do not drink or use ANY water in the city. It makes people sick. 2. do not go to the police. They are very angry at us. Please come soon Michael. Please be safe with us._

"...they're okay. Th-they're okay, they're waiting for me!" "Wait really?" asked FG. "YEAH, this note, this is totally my mom's writing, she was waitin' fer me! She's okay FG, THEY'RE OKAY!" "Aw man that's awesome! We need to go find them as soon as we can." "Yeah, totally, let's go!" "Woah woah woah," said Roy, "we gotta check our bearings first. There's sum food left here, we better restock a bit, make sure we're all good cuz...didn't that note say Griffin Road was on thuh other side of thuh city?" "Um...y-yeah. But...but we have to find 'em, w-we gotta go before they leave, WHAT IF THEY LEAVE WITHOUT ME!?" "They won't. We'll get to them in time...we just need to not burn ourselves out, or else we'll find ourselves in thuh middle of thuh city with nowhere to go surrounded by zombies. Better safe than sorry." "Okay...I...but what if we're too late?" "We won't be." James stood up with a new determination, thankful to have a new objective. "We'll find them. I promised you that we would and I'm not gonna break that Michael. Okay?" "Okay...I...hhhh..." The boy suddenly yawned, exhaustion overcoming him as James bent down towards him. "I think all of us need a good sleep first. When did you last sleep?" "Um...a-about...I think it was..." He looked down at his watch, seeing that it was now 10:41pm as he tried to remember. "Two hours ago? I slept in the back of a truck." "You need a good rest. Why don't you go sleep in your bed?" "But...what if we don't get to them in time?" "The sooner you go to sleep, the sooner we can get up and go, we'll try to leave as early as possible, like dawn or something." "Okay...will you...be here too? Like...near me?" "Of course...we'll make sure you're safe, we got you back here without a scratch right?" "R-right. Thank you. Yer the best dinosaurs ever." "Hah, thanks." "No problem," said Roy with a kind smile. "Go on, get sum rest. Me an' FG'll sleep off here too after we lock up thuh place. You better lock thuh door before that though." "Oh, yeah, good idea." Michael did as he was asked, locking the door safely as Roy and FG began to check over the place, making sure that there were no places for anyone to invade from. The windows were the most obvious target, which they boarded up with furniture stuffed against the windowsills. Thankfully none of the windows were large, allowing their job to become much easier. Piles of junk and chairs were soon well-secured by using every single roll of packing tape in the house, as well as some inventive use of restraints made from cloth bedsheets that both raptors devised together.

By the time they had secured every other exit, it was 11:30, and the perfect time for them to go to sleep. Roy took the parents' bedroom with Michael's consent, whilst James took some sheets to sleep on the ground floor. Michael however, after changing into his pyjamas by force of habit as well as to rid himself of his school clothes, felt uncertain about this, asking: "But, aren't you gonna be cold?" "I'll be fine," said FG. "Be good to have a guard downstairs." "...I have a sleeping bag." "Huh?" "I got a sleeping bag...maybe...you wanna sleep in my room?" He could tell that the boy was scared to be on his own, his eyes shaking softly with a silent plea. He couldn't resist such an offer as James asked: "...is it a big sleeping bag?" "Oh yeah, lotsa room, I bet you could fit in it!" "Well...hmmmmm alright then, I'd kinda feel a lot better in the same room with you so I...know you're alright." "Hehee...be like a sleepover won't it?" "Heh, yeah." "You ever had a sleepover FG?" "Nope." "Me either..." "Heh...guess this'll be first time for both of us huh?" Michael giggled weakly, the need to sleep soon overcoming him as James was given his rather roomy sleeping bag, a hefty blue bedding rolled up like a caterpillar as he laid out to sleep on the floor of Michael's room. A typical child's room, wardrobe full of clothes, various posters of familiar-looking cartoons and a small TV with VCR underneath it. It was the only thing James did not recognise in the room but that did not concern him. Michael however, like all children at a certain age, was finding it hard to sleep. He roused slightly from his bed five minutes later to look down on James' form, the raptor staring up at the ceiling. "...FG?" "Mmm?" "Whut's your home like?" "...a lot like yours." "Yeah?" "We got houses, roads, cars, CDs and...well we don't have those cassette things that I saw over there, we got CDs for those too." "Wow really?" "Yep, and the real fancy stuff is all on micro-storage." "So...issit like my home world but...with animals all like people?" "Yep, almost the same. Probably because we had to scrape together what was left of the apocalypse and rebuild our cities and such. The anthros like me, the ones that aren't really human, we kinda came around after the apocalypse and tried mixing with humans." "You guys had an...a-apocsicle too?" "Hahaha, apocalypse yeah. Like a big nuclear bomb went off all over the world and just wiped the whole planet." "Was it...like my city is now?" asked Michael softly. "...I dunno. That happened like a thousand years before I was born." "Wow...a thousand?! ...dad told me that a thousand years ago, nobody had big ships or planes or cities as big as ours." "Yeah?" "A-and everything wuz made outta stone an' wood! No computers or TVs or anything!" "Fascinating." "And way way WAY before that, there were all these dinosaurs, like you!" "Yeah I remember that, my ancestors are like millions of years ago." "Whut's it like bein' a dinosaur?" "...not that different really. I mean...we don't need to wash our hair, we got shampoo for like, scales and such. Tails are a bit of a problem if you're going through a door, you gotta rush through it or else it just clamps down and MAN it hurts." "Hehehehee!" "And you can't find ANY good shoes, I mean seriously, nobody makes any shoes for us!" "Really?!" "No! It's these damn claws that get in the way so we all gotta go barefoot all over the place. I mean I think I remember they had sandals for us but no way am I wearing sandals, can you imagine a dinosaur, with SANDALS Michael!?" "Pfffhahahaha, you'd look real stupid!" "I mean what, put me in a dumb bright T-shirt and a big huge straw hat too?! Like, what, that's just stupid, I'm not gonna wear sandals, and I don't even want your shoes, I say to them 'screw this, I'm leaving guys' and they all just shrug like 'what's that raptor's deal, he don't like shoes or something whut', like they don't even know." Michael couldn't help himself from laughing at James' mock tirade, the raptor keeping him laughing with absurd little stories he made up about the daily problems of a dinosaur in a modern world. Michael was fascinated, the strange visitor he had protecting him also being suddenly one of the funniest people he had ever met. Eventually however, the boy ended up falling asleep, and finally dropped his head onto the pillow. All three of the house's inhabitants slept through the night, the fires burning outside now fading away from their minds like a dark memory. Yet in the midst of both James and Michael's minds, both of them began to dream of the same creature unbeknownst to the other. Darkness began to resonate from an unseen memory of the FinalGamer.