Cwej: The World Series by James Wylder

The World Series
by James Wylder
Illustrations by Leela Ross and Bex Vee

​​Deep in the trees, where the branches crowd out the light like intertwined fingers, there was a madman. He needed subjects for his experiments, subjects who wouldn’t be missed. He found them in children—abandoned and forgotten. Orphans who had been shunted off to the local asylum.

The madman was named Doctor Crow, and he had been working on a secret serum, which he injected into the children’s heads—causing them to swell up like melons.

The children turned feral—their teeth grew sharp, and they ate anything they could.

Nurses.

Each other.

And finally Doctor Crow himself.

Now they roam the forests, feasting on flesh, wandering in the darkness—”

“With their melon-heads?” Sang Mi cut in, her voice as dreary as her disposition. The black suits and ties she and Chris were wearing certainly didn’t help that.
 
Carol looked to Cwej hoping desperately he’d back her up. “It’s a real local legend!” She held up the bobblehead of the melon-headed child. “And that’s why we’re naming the baseball team after them.”

Chris looked over at Sang Mi, trying to keep his composure better than her. Unfortunately, he was well aware Sang Mi was a better liar than him, and he also knew she was doing a bad job that was better than his own bad job right now. “…It’s certainly an interesting proposition but, uh, you don’t hear people saying to name their team after say, the Jersey Devil.”

Carol crossed her arms, still holding the bobblehead. “You mean like the New Jersey Devils? The hockey team?”

“Oh shit, really?” Chris gave Sang Mi a look of pleasant surprise. She shrugged. “Well I still don’t think it’s a very catchy name.”

“With all due respect, you’re just consultants, and this is my team. Starting a minor league team isn’t easy, and I’ve invested everything I have into buying this baseball field, renovating it, and scouting out players. And we have a backer who’s going to make this place a real success… even if they keep saying we should name the team the Corvids.”

Chris raised an eyebrow. “Like that Doctor Crow?”

“I guess. I think we should stick with the simpler reference. Regardless, I appreciate that a generous donor paid for you to come here to assist us, Mr. Rodonanté and Ms. Kim, but I really think the Melonheads name is what suits our community.”

Sang Mi, aka Ms. Kim, scooted her chair back and got up. “Okay, well, I think we should go then, Mr. Rodonanté.”

Cwej nodded. “Sure. Not sure how much good we’ll be here at this point. Hopefully some of our suggestions were helpful.”

“Yes, I mean you did realize we were getting double billed by a few of our vendors, which is going to reduce our overhead tremendously, so I do thank you for coming.”

They each shook Carol’s hand, and filtered out. Chris made his way from the office to look out over the small stadium. Sang Mi scampered to follow him. “Did we really have to wear the suits? And why did we use our mothers’ maiden names?”

Chris stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “I really wanted to feel like we were undercover.”

“You didn’t change your name at the school, and we were undercover there for like, a while.”

That was a good point, and he didn’t have a good answer, so he changed the subject. “So, what do you think, about the Melonheads?”

“I think that she's going to need to rebrand as fast as she can once it sinks in that It’s a terrible name for a sports team.”
 
He twitched and looked over at her. “No, the cryptids! The legends!” He threw his hands out, trying to gesture in a way that captured the mystery of it, but instead made him look like an insecure bird trying to take off.

“Oh. Well, I mean, they’re in our book, aren’t they? They don’t sound real, but nothing has sounded real. It’s not like I expected to meet vampires, or shadow people, or giant turtles.”

“There’s a lot of strange things in the world. And this trip has been filled with coincidences. I knew a Dr. Crow a long time ago, well, nearly the same name. So, I was curious.”

“I’m guessing you’ve concluded it’s nothing?”

He nodded. Then he shrugged. Then, as if hoping it would make him look more confident, he gave a second firmer nod. “Well, whatever. Let’s hit the road. Not every town is going to have a real mystery.”

* * *

And so, they abandoned the search for the Melonheads. Sang Mi already had their hardcover copy of Roadside Oddities of America out on her lap, flipping through the pages for something interesting. Chris shifted into his seat, turning out onto a country road. “Sorry that was a waste of time.”

Sang Mi screwed her lips to the side, holding a page of the book in the air as it bounced on her lap. “Isn’t that the whole point of what we’re doing, wasting time?”

“I wouldn’t call it a waste, we’re on an important mission.” The page stayed held in stasis between her fingertips.

He glanced over, flicking the turn signal as he did so. “Are you getting homesick?” “No, no, it’s not that. I don’t want to go home. It’s just…”

Trees flicked past the window. A stray dog perked its head up from some roadkill as they zipped by. “I can’t know unless you tell me.”

“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.” “It’s really okay—”

“I said don’t worry about it!”

He held his gaze on her—probably too long for someone who was trying to pretend they were a safe driver—but as she leaned over and let her head bang at the window, he couldn’t help but go through an incredible list of improbable possibilities about what was bothering her. He started with fairly reasonable thoughts:

“Hey, Sang Mi, you’re not… in a love triangle with a dog-person and a pirate, are you?”
 
She tilted her head up from the window. “Stop kidding arou —” She saw the look in his eyes. “Oh, you’re serious. Are uh, dog-people real? And why was that example so specific?”

“Never mind, happened to a friend of mine,” he mumbled. “I’m just worried about you.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s just the storm clouds in my head. Just ignore me,” she said as she went back to flipping through the book, examining an illustration of not a cryptid, but what looked like a very large ball of twine.

He tried to think of what to say, but it wasn’t long before the first roar of thunder—and that thunder was far from metaphorical.

“I don’t remember rain in the forecast?” Sang Mi said, looking up from a page on the Flatwoods Monster. She blinked, then rubbed her eyes to check if she was seeing things right. “Hey, Chris, the sky went dark? It was blue just a second ago.”

Of course the sky had gone dark. He really should have been expecting more things like this when they were looking for monsters. It almost made him want to call it quits and just drive to the lodge early and hope they didn’t get bored in the mountains playing board games. “Yeah, that’s bad.”

She pulled her shoulders in. She was probably thinking of their car wreck by Elkhart that had put her in the hospital when the same thing had happened there. “It’s not just like, when they turn the lights off in the dome instead of dimming them?”

Chris glanced at her. “Shouldn’t that all be automated?”

She shrugged, and he realized her eyes were filled with draining hope. “No, it’s not like that. But we’re going to be okay I—”

Chris looked back to the road, and with a curse hit the brakes hard. But not fast enough—the sound of their front tires popping caused both of them to groan.

Then it started raining.

“…Was that a strip of spikes in the road?” Sang Mi asked. “Sure looked like it.”

“That’s not normal either, right?” He could feel the spiking anxiety in her voice.

Chris shook his head, and looked out his side window. The forest on that slide sloped up onto a hill, and at its peak was a large and aged brick building, either a boxy manor or a fancy sanitarium. “I’ll call for roadside assistance. But it might be a little, considering the sudden and unnatural night.”

“We should just wait this out. Take turns napping and being on watch til the lights come back?”

Cwej bit his lip, pulling it back over his teeth till it snapped back into place. “…Yeah. Yeah, let’s do—”

Something rammed into the car.
 
Not with the force of another car, it had come from the side facing the forest after all, causing the Honda Element they’d dubbed ‘Odyssey’ to rock, just like Ulysses’ boat buffeted on Neptune’s waves.

Chris and Sang Mi looked at each other, and Sang Mi gestured for Chris to look behind him. He turned in his seat, only to see a being with a bulbous head, light purple skin, yellow eyes, sharp teeth, and claws, dressed in hospital clothes—and balancing on the shoulders of another small bulbous- headed being.

“It’s a freaking Melonhead!” Sang Mi said.

“It’s kinda cute, in a weird way,” Chris said.

"Seriously?”

As they bantered, more of the Melonheads started to make their way through the treeline, poking their heads out from behind trunks at first, and shuffling their way forward curiously. Some were holding hands delicately, comforting their friends as they approached the car.

Sang Mi softened. “I guess they are kinda cute, now that you say it—”

The Melonhead by the window let out an ear-piercing shriek, its mouth wide showing all its razor teeth in full gleam, and started pushing the car again. The car rocked harder.

Sang Mi un-softened. “They're going to turn us over, we have to get out—”

The assembled Melonheads charged the car, and Chris’s eyes turned serious and cold. He reached over, and opened Sang Mi's door, unbuckling her, and shoving her out the door as he leapt after her. She stumbled out into the rain, gaining her footing, and Chris grabbed her wrist. “Run!”

As the Melonheads screeched, she complied wholeheartedly. They ran across the road, and up the muddy hill towards the old brick building on the hill, the lights in the windows a guiding light. The sound of a swarm of feet splashing through the damp earth followed them. Sang Mi’s time as a runner was clearly paying off for her as she kept her footing in the muck better than Chris had expected.

Behind them, the Melonheads scrambled and screamed. Sang Mi had gotten ahead of Chris, and he could tell she was slowing her pace to not lose him. “Just go!”

She nodded, and bolted.

Looking along the path, Chris saw a fallen log, a bit rotted, but it met what he needed. Hefting it up, the Melonheads closing in, he dropped it, and pushed it with his foot down the hill. Most of the Melonheads scrambled out of the way, but the closest pair were knocked over like bowling pins as the rotting log broke apart upon impact. The pair thrashed their limbs and rolled around crying while the others went to try and help them.

Good, they’d be fine. He hadn't wanted to hurt them at all, but he also didn’t feel like getting chomped on today.
 
He charged up the hill after Sang Mi, finding her banging on the door. “It won’t open—uh—should we break it d—?”

Before she could even finish her question, Chris took in a deep breath and bellowed: “OPEN THIS DAMN DOOR!”

Sang Mi blinked, and the door creaked open. A Melonhead wearing a miniature orderly’s outfit with a suit jacket lazily placed over it opened the door.

“Mrah?” the Melonhead asked.

“Could we come inside?” Sang Mi asked, with a surreal politeness.

“Mrah,” they replied with a nod, and gestured that they follow them in. After they slipped in the door, Chris and Sang Mi scrambled to shut the door, turn every lock, slide the deadbolts, and then shove a nearby chair under the knob. Only then did they allow themselves to catch their breath and examine their surroundings.

The building was something between an old-timey hospital and a manor house. Clean white tile, interrupted by a grand wooden staircase in the center. A purple carpet rolled down it all the way to the doorway. The walls were decorated with framed baseball jerseys and cards. Slightly obscured by a great chandelier, were a set of five pictures of various people, two in black robes, three in medical gear. And above that, a great sign:

‘DR. CROW'S ORPHANAGE, SANATARIUM, AND HOTEL’.

Sang Mi looked at the sign, looked back at Chris, and then repeated the motion three more times.

“That is not a serious sign,” she said.

“No, no, it is,” Chris said with an exhausted acceptance. “You said you knew a Dr. Crow, this is them, isn’t it?” Chris pursed his lips.

“What are they like?” He scratched his nose. She squinted.

He glanced away.

“Oh no,” Sang Mi said, realization hitting her.

“I didn’t say anything!” Chris said, way too defensively. “You and this Dr. Crow… you guys were like… an item?”
 
Chris sighed again, performatively louder. “Yeah. Guess there's no fooling you there. He and I uh… my Superiors trained me in Japan for a while.”

Sang Mi blinked. “Wait, you said your ‘superiors’ run the Universe—so why, like, Japan?”

There was a certain lack of respect in the way she said "Superiors" that he felt like he should correct, but he couldn't find the words, and now wasn't the time anyway. “It’s a long story. Dr. Crow, or the Corvid as I knew him then, was sort of a… trainer? Physical therapist? He monitored how I was doing for my Superiors. We may have uh, gotten a bit closer while he was helping me stretch my hamstrings—"

“Chris, I mean this with all the love in the world, please do not tell me more, ever.” “Sorry—anyway, he got reassigned before I finished there, due to some, uh, unauthorized experiments.”

“Please no more euphemisms.”

“No, like, he did experiments on people without their consent. Which… lines up with the Melonheads legend. I assumed he went home, but maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was just wandering the Earth for centuries.”

“Hundreds of years of medical malpractice,” Sang Mi mumbled.

“But apparently he got eaten. That’s… well, if the legend is true, he might not come back from that one.”

“…Being cannibalized would do that, yes?”

There was banging on the door, he looked over at the friendly melonhead who had let them in. “This guy seems okay. Maybe the others are trying to get him?”

That didn’t seem quite right, they were holding hands with a sweet compassion. But maybe they were in factions? Sang Mi turned this over in her head like a pancake: quickly and without the desire to flip it again. “Yeah, that tracks. If they ate their creator like you said, they might eat each other?”

The kind melonhead tugged at Chris’s sleeve with a “Mrah!’ and pointed at the doorway to the right. “Want us to go in there?”

“I’ll watch for traps!” Sang Mi volunteered as he went and opened the door.

Beyond it was a grand dining hall. A long table extended out, with a huge golden chair at the far end, and beautiful and expensive but less grand chairs lining the table on either side. On the table was a blue tablecloth, a noticeably empty spot for plates, cups and silverware, and an elaborate centerpiece depicting a star.

Two places already had glasses filled with water, and one with wine and the other with milk, to the left and right of the golden chair which had a stuffed toy of a crow sitting on it.

“Mrah!” the kind melonhead said.
 
“Are you serving us dinner? Mr…. Uh…”

The melonhead pointed to a pin on his jacket with the number ‘Five’ on it. “Five? That’s your name?”

He nodded.

“You look more like a Ji Ho.”

He shrugged, and gestured again to the table. They sat, scooting in the rather heavy wooden chairs. In just a moment, Five came back with a large cart containing several plates under covers, which he pulled off with a flourish and set down before each of them. The plates were fine china with gold-leaf filigree, and on them was food that was rather unlike anything Sang Mi was familiar with. But as Chris saw it, his face drooped. Sang Mi looked up at him, eyes bright with excitement, which dimmed just like the light in the domes was supposed to at twilight.

“Something wrong with the food?” When they were alone in the car, Chris and her talked almost exclusively in Korean. When they were around others, they usually spoke English. But Sang Mi asked this question in Korean, even with Five right there.

“Yeah,” Chris replied in turn. “It’s made from local ingredients, but this is trying to emulate food from the Base of Operations. The home-world of my Superiors.”

The food was a fried chicken cutlet, the breading thick with herbs, with several parallel cuts down it, and a dark blue seasoned sauce made primarily from berries laid into each of the trenches. To the side was a set of what looked like kebabs on wooden skewers, but made of peppers and Brussel spouts, slightly charred and smoked. Finally there were small pieces of bread, each the size of a golf-ball, soft and drizzled in butter and honey with nutmeg.

Sang Mi picked up her knife and fork, and cut into the chicken, taking a bite. The roller coaster of the light in her eyes continued, as they lit up again. “It’s good! It’s sweet and savory, and it’s got the crunchy coating, juicy meat, and the texture from the berry goop.” She immediately went to the bread. “That’s yummy too!” She rushed into a bite of the veggie kebab. “…A bit of a weirder taste, but I could get used to it?”

Reluctantly, Chris tasted it too. They probably should have been more cautious about eating it, but well, Sang Mi seemed fine. She was right—it was good.

“It’s been a long time since I had this.”

“Is it like, a delicacy?”

He shook his head. “No, honestly it’s probably the closest thing to home cooking they have up there. Food isn’t common among them.”

She perked up, strangely. “Food scarcity? Like three years ago when the hydroponics failed back home?”
 
“Er, no, nothing like that. They have enough to eat,” he clarified. “They just sort of mostly… don’t? Not proper meals, I mean. Fun ones. Mostly, they just eat these, I don’t know, nutrition pills.”

Sang Mi chewed and swallowed. “That has to be boring.”

“They love being boring. It’s one of Their biggest talents.”

“Huh. Then when did you try this before?”

“Oh, with friends…” he said vaguely. “Leaving home isn’t the only way you can rebel.”

She picked up the last of the mini-breads, turning it around in her fingers. “I can understand that. Even getting a good grade can be rebellion sometimes. My mom always said so.”

“Speaking of home… earlier, you were saying something about going back?”
​
She stopped spinning the bread in her hands, and shoved it in her mouth, looking away from him as she chewed. “Hey, Chris, why are they serving Superior food here?”

He was trying to figure out if he should call her out for dodging the question when the music kicked in, and the doors to the dining room swung out. Five stood there, in a half-bow, holding his hand out gesturing for them to return to the grand entryway.

“I don’t know this song.”

“It’s called Science Fiction Double Feature,” Chris said, suddenly looking dreary. “Well, we’d better go see the Show.”

“The Show?”

He got up, and she scampered up as he gestured for her to follow.

The lights in the entry hall dimmed, as they approached the center, where they stood together, tense.

From the great stairwell came a spotlight, then awkwardly timed in the wrong order, the lights then went off. Framed there was a woman in a long white lab coat with long raven hair, posed with her arms out, staring them down like she was trying to mimic a bird in flight.

“Chris Cwej,” a musical cue followed, and she changed her pose dramatically with the beat. “It’s been a while.”

Chris and Sang Mi were of one mind. They immediately turned around and ran for the door. However, that door shot open, and the Melonheads that had been chasing them from the car up the hill waddled in, looking unhappy, dirty, and tired, but no longer like they were going to take a bite of them. They were, however, glaring at them with malice. Naturally, the duo took a few steps towards the staircase. One of the Melonheads hissed at them, supporting one of the pair Chris had hit with the log, who was sucking their thumb.

“Oh, uh, hey Corvid… How’s it been? I see you’ve, uh…” Chris gestured at the Melonheads. “…been keeping busy?”
 
She effortlessly leapt onto the banister, landing side-saddle, and sliding down to hop off with a perfect gymnast’s landing. The Melonheads all clapped.

“Thank you, thank you.” She tossed her raven-black hair back. “I see you’ve been busy as well. Who’s this child?” She gestured at Sang Mi with feigned disinterest. “I heard you’d been travelling with some Grigori, but she doesn’t have four arms.”

“This is…” he trailed off, so she cut in.

“Jhe Sang Mi, I’m from Gongen.”

She tapped her cheek. “Gongen? Never heard of it. At least you look human.” Sang Mi furrowed her brow. “I am human!”

Dr. Crow laughed, covering her mouth with one hand and flapping her other hand in the air. “I’m sure you’d like to think so. How much genetic modification did they have to do so you could survive on this Gongen? Look at you, your DNA is a mess.”

“You can’t just see my DNA,” she said dryly.

“Actually, she can,” Chris said. “She’s a Superior. She’s messed with her own bodies so she can do that. Those aren’t the eyes of a normal person, or even a normal Superior.”

Dr. Crow grinned.

Sang Mi nodded slowly. “I’ve met people who modify themselves like that, I get—wait, what do you mean, bodies? Like, plural?”

“This little hatchling really doesn’t even know that? Tsk tsk, you never were much of an educator, were you…”

Drained, Chris looked back to Sang Mi, as if explaining this was taking a year off his life. “Her People can reform themselves after death. Take on a whole new body. She’s less a person and more a forest fire that’s been bottled in skin. She didn’t have a medical procedure to change herself from the man I knew before—he was a man then, and in this body she’s a woman. She’ll change bodies again in the future, and she could be any gender or sex in any combination. Her features could be anything. But she’ll always be a Superior. An inferno kept in check with manners and smiles. That’s who she is.”

“Very poetic,” Dr. Crow said. “You could have just said I’m like a god and be done with it.”

​“I have strong feelings on that word,” Sang Mi said.

Crow’s face hardened. “I bet you do. A little girl with insignificant superstitions.”

Chris moved protectively in front of Sang Mi, and Dr. Crow took that opportunity to stroke his face, which caused him to back up, bumping Sang Mi on the nose, who promptly yelped.
 
Dr. Crow smiled. “Did you enjoy the meal? You used to love that. I cooked it for you. I couldn’t get the turoon but I made do.”

“Substituting the chicken for a vegetable worked better than it should have.”

Her hand crept up to stroke his face again. “Why don’t you stay the night here? I promise you’ll be safe, and it’s so wet outside. Plus what a tragic accident that happened to your car—”

“The strip of nails literally right in front of your house with your minions waiting to flush us to the front door?”

She smiled wide. “Whatever could give you that impression?”

“Every single thing that happened gives us that impression,” Sang Mi said, still rubbing her nose. “We thought poor Five here was under siege, but it looks like this was all choreographed.”

“Well, what can you do?” Crow said, throwing her hands up and shifting them side to side in the air with her palms up a few times while bobbing her head. “Guess you caught me. But more accurate to say, I caught you.”

“Okay, well, I think that’s our cue to.…” At that, Sang Mi bolted again for the door, causing the surprised Melonheads in the way to scatter. She rattled the handle, and then rammed her shoulder into it.

“It won’t budge,” Crow called coolly. “But you’re welcome to leave anytime.”

Chris knew that way she was talking. That was the way the Corvid talked when he had already won. “What’s your game?” He clenched his fists and stomped towards her. “You experimented on these children—”

“They would have died anyway, I saved their lives, give me a little credit.” “I bet you didn’t ask them if they wanted to get turned into melonheads.”

She shrugged. “Well, no, but look, I already paid for that—how do you think I lost my last body?” She leaned in. “They did eat me, you know. That was hard to come back from. And look at me, I’m still caring for the little carnivores!”

“You always think things are okay if you just do things and ask forgiveness afterwards. That’s why we broke up.”

She grabbed the lapels of his suit jacket, drawing him closer. “We broke up ‘cause I got fired.”

“It was a two-for-one,” he said, trying to brush her hands off his chest, but she grabbed his instead, intertwining their fingers. He glowered at her. “You’re not as slick as you think.”

“But you haven’t let go,” she said, then pushed up on her toes. He dodged her lips.

“Sang Mi, now.”

Crow raised an eyebrow, but didn’t look away from him as Sang Mi sucker-punched her in the jaw.

“OW! What the heck!?”

It was Sang Mi's turn to grab his hand and pull him away—why was it hard to be pulled away?
 
Was there something in the food? They ran down the hall to the left of the staircase—the rooms were labeled with big numbers, one through nine, with child-sized beds in each one, the floor checkerboard tiles, the rest all white and fluorescent lights. He didn’t know where this hallway led, but at the very least it was leading somewhere away.

He let himself feel a moment of relief, before Sang Mi stopped. He didn’t quite halt his momentum, and rammed into her. But she just stayed staring, her body swaying along with her tie like a pendulum.

“We have to keep—”

“I get it now. I get it. Why we came here.”

He stared into the room. It had a larger bed than the others, but otherwise looked the same. A signed picture of some baseball player on the wall. Hospital monitoring equipment there. She stepped into the room, and took her suit jacket off, then her tie, sitting down on the bed, eyes somewhat vacant. He rushed over, shaking her by the shoulders.

“Sang Mi, we have to go. Now. NOW!”

She looked up, glassy eyed. “This is my room, though. It’s okay. I understand.” She placed a hand gently on his own, and patted it. “This is where I get left behind. I knew it would happen. The road trip ends. And you forget about me. Everyone forgets about me. This is where it ends.”

He shook her harder. “No—no, stop talking like that. I came back for you, remember? That’s why we’re here.”

She shrugged. “I wanted to keep it going. Force this to never end. I’m just a fool. Everyone should stay away from me.” She seemed to realize he was there. “Stay away from me!” She shoved him back, and ran over to the wall, she pulled her head back, ready to smash it into the plaster, but he put her into a bear-hug, and tore her back as she thrashed.

“Sang Mi, listen to me, you’re not yourself! Something—AGH!” She whacked him in the face. She’d gotten better at that, all due to him, and it was a bad way to learn she’d picked things up. “Let me go!”

“Not if you’re going to smash your head into the wall, stars above!” A voice called from the doorway. “Number Five, sedate her.”
​
Before he could let go and try to stop it, the little Melonhead slipped over and jabbed something into Sang Mi’s leg. It wasn’t an ideal spot to inject a person, but it still worked pretty effectively. He held her as she slowly grew limp, and lay her down gently on the bed. Looking over her, his heart ached at her heavy breathing, the pained look on her face, the way her closed eyes seemed to clench, and her hands ended in curled fingers that neither clenched or straightened.

He closed his own eyes, and turned to face Dr. Crow in the doorway. “What did you do to her?” “Do to her?” she scoffed. “I didn’t ‘do’ anything.”

“Bullshit.”

“This place, this building, this is a place where your desires are let loose,” she said as she posed in the doorway, in an attempt at sexiness that would have worked a lot better if she was still in her last body. Still, there was a certain appeal… She approached him again, and he didn’t step back.

“It was the food,” he spat.

“The food is a part of the experience.”

“Sang Mi has fought harder to grow to where she is now with her mental health than you’ve fought for anything in your immortal life.”

She tilted her head, and after all her smarmy cockiness she finally sounded serious. “You took a mentally unstable girl off her home-world, and brought her on a road trip? You’re not being kind by taking her on this trip; she’s going to break because she’s already broken. Chris, she’s not the kind of girl you take on an adventure. Do you think your mentor would have?”

“I’m not him,” he shot back without thinking. He would have stopped to sit down and think about it, but things kept going too fast for self-reflection.

She stroked his chest. “Oh, I know you’re not. Trust me.”

“This girl—Sang Mi—she deserves this. She deserves to… travel, and see amazing things. She deserves someone to believe in her.”

“There’s a difference between believing in someone and ignoring that their deepest desires are to be abandoned and harm themselves.” She snaked a hand under his shirt. It felt good. It… No. He pulled away. He had to pull away. He pinched his own cheek.

“She was holding herself together until she came here!”

“Oh? She never broke down and curled up in the corner? She never started having a panic attack and had to convince you to keep going?”

He stomped his foot. “That doesn’t mean she’s broken! She’s kept going. She’s kept fighting.”

“This is what she wants, Chris. You strip away all the coping, all the filigree, all the ways she’s taped herself together, she wants to be here. Wants to stop being a burden. Just like you want to be comforted right now.” What was this place?
 
She was a Superior, and this place was her forest that she could burn at her leisure. Her eyes cut into him like torches, and the world was warm and dangerous. He needed to focus. Needed to stay in control.

But she was right.

She wasn’t a good person. But he did want her. He’d wanted him back then, and he wanted her now. And he shouldn’t. And something was wrong about this place, the laws of reality were wrong here.

He should be able to control what he wanted.

But…

“You said I never asked permission Chris,” she whispered as she wrapped her arms around him. “So I’m asking.”

Oh, to Hell with it. He kissed her.

And they left the room, and shut the door behind them.

* * *

4th August, 1869, Future Site of Kobe, Japan
It wasn’t so long ago that no one could walk the shores of the city from the training center. And even now they weren’t supposed to be, but that made it all the more exciting. It didn’t smell great up here, but that was how it often went with the past. The great ships that had come into port belched smoke and steam, and the foreigners and locals mingled about the docks.

“It wasn’t too long ago we wouldn’t fit in at all here,” the Corvid said.

“We still don’t,” Chris replied, tipping his hat to a woman carrying a huge basket on her back as they passed.

“You know what I mean. This whole country was closed off. Now we can get some fresh air.” “You shouldn’t let your friends down there hear you, next they'll be whispering you’re touching plants, or some other heinous deed.”

He laughed, and nudged Cwej in the arm, then shifted to feeling his bicep. “That’s pretty nice. You’ve gotten more muscle mass.”

Chis pulled his arm away. “Don’t make it sound so clinical.”

“I’m not trying to, I was trying to sound sexy. Was I not sexy?” He leaned in and whispered. “Can I prove to you that I’m sexy?”

Raising a hand to cover the blush on his face, Chris gave a small nod. “…Later though,” he added aloud. “Hey, what’s going on over there?”
 
On a rough patch of dirt, four chalk squares forming a diamond had been drawn, with two groups of men—one made up of sailors, the other of locals—gathered together. A local, a Japanese man with a well-trimmed beard, was holding a ball in the center of the diamond. He pulled his arm back, and hurled the ball at one of the sailors, an American man with a thick moustache. The sailor was holding a wooden bat, which he struck the ball with, an action which caused all the locals on the pitch to go running for the ball to catch it. The sailors cheered as their batter started running for the next chalk square.
“What in the Architect’s schematics are they playing?” the Corvid leaned in, using the excuse to press into Chris’s side as he performatively stroked his beard in curiosity.
“Its one of those old-timey sports, I don’t really know which one…”

The Corvid noted this, and called out to a well-dressed Japanese man holding a notepad. “You sir, what game are they playing?”

He looked up. “Baseball, I take it’s not played in your outsider country?” “Not so much,” Chris answered curtly. “Its interesting though.”

“Quite! I’m covering it for the Hiogo News. I humbly ask you buy a copy if you see one,” the reporter said brazenly, giving a bow of his head to offset it.

“Sure,” The Corvid replied, fixated on the game. “Baseball. I like it. Let’s get some food, and watch it together. It can be our first date.”

“Our first…” Cwej folded. “You really are forward, you know. You can’t just decide we’re dating.”

“But I kinda just did, and you’re kind of into it, aren’t you?” Cwej looked away.

“You’re blushing.”

“I am not.”

“If you turned around your face would be as red as a cardinal.”

Cwej knew he was right on every count. But if he turned around he’d have to admit that. The Corvid put an arm around his shoulder, like a sheltering wing.

“Come on then, let’s watch some baseball. If the sport survives, we can go on another date and be all wistful. What do you say?”

Cwej just nodded.

He probably should have paid more attention to the game they were supposed to be watching, but his attention wasn’t focused on the pitch, the ships, or the great bustle of history all around him. Instead, he looked at a face, and let his cheeks get red again.

* * *

The Present, 2025
One Week Since Cwej and Sang Mi arrived at the Mansion

Sang Mi stretched as she woke up to the sunlight stroking her face through the window. She slipped her feet into the bunny slippers she’d been provided, threw on her robe, and stumbled her way down the hall.

“Morning, Eight,” she said.

“Mrah!” Eight replied, carrying a basket of laundry to the chute.

She made her way down the staircase, and over to the dining hall where Chris and Crow were already eating together. She went over to the buffet and grabbed a plate of more food than she was going to eat—waffles, bacon, scrambled eggs, copious syrup and hot sauce, a banana, and three beverages (orange juice, milk, and coffee). Balancing it all precariously, she slipped back out before they could notice her. They’d probably be sucking face before she made it back to her room.

She set her tray down on the bed, and turned the TV on, then the Super Nintendo. They didn’t let her have many games, and right now the only one was Super Baseball Simulator 1.000. She pulled the controller over to the bed—it wasn’t wireless, which was, frankly, silly, and the wire hung awkwardly between the TV stand and the bed. She shoveled some eggs into her mouth, and got started. The game was kind of weird—she was an RPG and open world girlie, not a sports game gal—and it had taken her a bit to figure out the mechanics. At first she’d just button-mashed and hoped she could hit the ball or throw it, struggling to pass the ball around to the right places as the game shifted what player she was every time she did. But she was getting the hang of it now. She wasn’t good at it, hell no, but getting better.

“Mrah?” Five said, poking his head in the door.

“Yeah, sure, take a seat. You can take controller two on the next round.” “Mrah!” Five said, sitting down in excitement, rocking back and forth.

She tapped the button right, and her batter whacked the ball far into the outfield! She ran her little guys around the bases, and pumped her fist. “Yes! I am the queen of Baseball. Or at least of Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 on the SNES.”

“Mrah,” Five agreed.

She was glad Chris didn’t have to worry about her.

She knew her mom, dad, and brothers had to be relieved to be done with her now. They’d feign sadness, but she knew they’d be happier without her.

She was content here. Hidden away.

Something about that was wrong. But she couldn’t hold onto it, and went up to bat again.

 
* * *

Chris shot up in bed, just like he had every night. The Corvid rolled over and moaned. “Oh, stop having nightmares,” she mumbled.

Not like he could help it.

He slid out of bed, and washed his face off. The dreams weren’t the same. They were more like a collage of bad memories. A blade in his hand red with blood, and the sky cracking open in response. A fierce hunger in the desert, and only his own flesh to sate it as he grew more ravenous. His friend Kwol becoming more erratic, threatening his life, and only violence could stop it. His friend Roz charging off across a battlefield into death. Sang Mi, doing the same back on Gongen, suited up in yellow armor, charging across a field of invading soldiers. No, no, that last one hadn’t happened. Wouldn’t happen.

She’d be okay, wouldn’t she? Or…

He looked into the mirror, and hated who he saw. He couldn’t be like Charles Zoltan, and solve a problem with peace and dignity. He couldn’t even save his friends. He couldn’t even make the right choices. Sang Mi looked at him like he was someone, like he was a hero. Like she wanted to grow up to be him. He couldn’t think of a worse prospect than that.

When he was with Corvid, he didn’t have to think about that. Did he like her, or did he like that she made him forget, just for a little, what he saw in the mirror? There was something wrong with all of this--

Whenever he tried to think past that though, he came back to the mirror, to the dreams, and to that boiling pit of self-hatred that he’d kept capped off.

He put on a robe, and went out to the living room of the suite, turning on a radio. Chris Cwej froze in place.

Always Something There to Remind Me.

He knew that song.

That song was… part of something.

It came back to him; he’d been there with Sang Mi. They’d gone back for the deer statue.

Sang Mi, a scared little girl, looking down from her lonely hospital bed, seeing him standing by the deer statue in the Cheonsa West General Hospital courtyard. Waving at him. And he waved back.

Seeing him again, and bravely coming down to help him with the strange cat. He’d bought her a baseball bat in Louisville.

She called him her deer, guiding her through the dark forest.
 
And it was dark.

And The Corvid had lit the trees on fire.

Always Something There to Remind Me.

The Deer. The Forest. The Song. The Bat.

The Crow.

She was here. Sang Mi was still here. It didn’t matter how much he hated himself, and right now that was quite a bit, but he couldn’t keep drowning himself in bed with his ex and keep forgetting this.

Her family had smiled, and left her at the hospital. They were good people, really. She loved them. But they hadn’t visited her. He knew they’d have refused to let her go on this adventure. They treated her like a fragile cup that could shatter at any time. But she was a living person, damn it, she was his friend. He was the only person who could tell her she wasn’t crazy and mean it.

He looked down from the mirror, into the sink. This place amplified your desires till you couldn’t control them. Good ones and bad ones, it made no difference.
But he’d woken up now. And one desire rose in his heart above all others: he was going to save his friend.

He didn’t wait, he didn’t plan. He ran.

Chris flew out the door, down the stairs, past Melonheads Six and Three, and skidded a turn on his bare feet towards the ward where the Melonheads and Sang Mi’s rooms were. He charged in, flung open her door, and she blinked and looked over from where she was playing video games with Melonhead Five.

“Hi?” she said.

Chris knew what he had to do, and it wouldn’t be dignified, but dignity be damned. He took a deep breath, and started belting out Always Something There To Remind Me. He even did his best vocal approximation of the solo synth riffs.

She and the Melonhead stared at him.

“Chris, I gotta be real with you, you should not join a band.”

“That’s too bad, cause I was thinking of playing bass, now come on,” he held a hand out. “We’ve been trapped here like Lotus Eaters, but I’m the deer that leads you out of the darkness, remember?”

Her eyes focused. “You… wait a second, why have I spent the last week playing Super Baseball Simulator 1.000? I don’t even like sports games?!”

He tilted his head a little. “Not the weirdest thing, but I’ll take it—let’s go!” She began to get up. She froze. “No… No, I…”

He held his hand out. “Sang Mi. I want you to take my hand. So—please.”

She took his hand, and as the Melonhead scrambled up behind them, they rushed out back to the lobby.

“How are we going to escape? Won’t we just… go back into whatever loop we were in?”

“This place amplifies our desires. And I’m betting that includes hers too.”

They skidded to a halt together in front of the grand staircase as Dr. Crow marched down it, stopping in the center of the staircase, for what seemed to be no reason other than to dramatically frame herself in her kimono and nightie.

“I didn’t think listening to The Naked Eyes would have such a strong effect. Oh well. You still can’t escape.”

Chris pointed at her. “If you want us to stay, then let’s make it permanent one way or the other.

Stop this cat and mouse game. I challenge you to a contest of skill.” Sang Mi raised an eyebrow. “Not a duel?”

“It has to be something she’d actually accept,” he mumbled.

The Corvid tapped her cheek. “…Perhaps. Perhaps. It… you’d really stay here, if I won?” “If you win. And if we win, you let us go.”

Sang Mi jumped between them. “She could just, you know, not do what she’s saying! Lying is real, Chris!”

He shook his head. “No, for all her faults, she’ll hold to this.”

“But I’ll hold you to it too. No running away. If you try to escape, you’ll be here forever.”

“Fine,” he said, lightly stomping his foot.

“And what contest did you have in mind?”

Chris had not thought that far. He stood awkwardly, finger in the air, his brain feeling like mush, until he looked at Sang Mi, hoping she had an idea.

“Of course we have our challenge,” she said. “Doctor Crow, we challenge you to a game of Super Baseball—”

“I ACCEPT!”

“…Simulator 1.000.”

“No, I accepted baseball.”

“You accepted Super Baseball, which isn’t a thing.”

“Baseball is super, just because I am playing it.”

Chris scoffed. “Baseball. I guess it’s full circle. Works for me.”

“Very well, we will play against each other tomorrow. Assemble your team, and meet me at the Melonhead baseball diamond I helped fund. Thankfully, there are eight Melonheads and myself. Good luck finding your own team. It would be a pity if you had to forfeit.”

Chris and Sang Mi looked at each other, nodded, and gave her each a different rude hand gesture before turning for the door, which opened without a hitch.

“And don’t you dare think of running. I’ll be watching you.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

They shut the door. It was a warm morning, and the forest was alive with noises and life. “You’re still wearing just a bathrobe,” Sang Mi noted.

“So I am,” Chris replied, stretching his arms up. “That’s the least of our problems, but I think I know the first person to recruit for our team.”

She put her hands on her hips. “You don’t mean the French lady, right?”

“She’s a short drive away, and she’s still studying Oscar!”

Sang Mi sighed. “I don’t think she knows anything about baseball.”

Chris put his hands on his hips to mirror hers. “And you do?”

“Uh, baseball is one of the most popular sports on Gongen, I’ll have you know.” “Have you ever played it?”

She looked down at her slippers. “…In gym class? And I played Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 for like, a full week.”

His arms moved from his hips to crossing his chest, and she knew she’d lost this round. “Find, we call Odette Caron. Who next?”

He grinned. “Some friendly faces.”

* * *

When Sang Mi and her twin brother Sang Eun were six years old, their father took them to a baseball game for the first time. It was the Takumi Tengu versus the Hongtu Cannonballs, and both of them were more interested in the scripted antics of the two animatronic mascots for the teams that were doing live-action cartoon comedy on the sidelines.

They got a big thing of ttekbokki, and of popcorn, and shoveled their faces while the match progressed. Moreso than the game, the twins enjoyed the chants and cheers, the songs and pageantry. All these years later, Sang Mi couldn’t remember who won that game. She knew she’d be able to look it up easily, but she didn’t want to. What had been important was her father reaching over and tousling her hair, and her brother stealing “her" popcorn (that had been expressly bought to share) and them squabbling over it til their dad got them both ice cream to shut them up.

He held their hands on the way back to the train station, one on each side of him, mouths ringed a little in strawberry ice cream he’d only mostly been able to wipe off.
They went again years later, and she’d regretted it because she and Sang Eun had been messaging their friends their whole time and didn’t pay attention to the game. At the time she hadn't cared, but now she looked back on her father’s blank face and knew it was masking a hurt as he wanted to share that precious time he had off from the factories with them.

What a selfish thing I am, she thought.

But she would still look back at that memory when she was six with a deep fondness.

Now, she stood in a parking lot doing practice swings of the baseball her friend Chris had bought her. She’d had her nickname, Kalingkata, engraved on it along with a little reference. She pulled the bat back, and swung at the air.

“You’re pretty good.”

It was Chris, walking up with most of their team. A few of them were familiar faces. Back during the big storm on Gongen, when she and Chris filmed that TV show together, Lady Aesculapius and her girlfriend Blanche had helped solve that whole affair with them. Aesc had curly black hair and brown skin, and looked incredibly confident in her baseball uniform, but also gave off the vibe she didn’t know why she was here. Blanche, on the other hand, had tied her white hair back in a tight bun, and looked prepared but like she’d rather be anywhere else.

“Blanche, look, it’s Sang Mi!” Aesc exclaimed while pointing at her, a few feet away.

“Yeah, I see her. Hi.”

Sang Mi waved. “Good to see you both and—COLOTH!”

She dropped the bat and ran over to Coloth. The two high fived, which turned into a spin and then a handshake. Coloth had also been a part of that whole debacle, only he’d been in the cast of the TV show with her, so they’d spent a lot of time backstage hanging out.

“Oh, okay, didn’t expect such a warm welcome!” he said, a little bashfully.

“Hey so, before I thought you were a guy in prosthetics, but you’re actually an alien who looks like a cactus-person right?”
 
“More like you’re an alien who looks like a shaved monkey, and my species aren’t supposed to look like cacti, but uh, yes, something like that.”

She squealed a little. “Chris, Coloth is an alien!”

“So is Lady Aesc, honestly,” Chris deadpanned.

She looked over at her. “Well, she isn’t green.”

Aesc sulked. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, everyone with good taste likes Coloth. I get it.”

She picked her bat up. “Baseball teams have nine people, right? So that puts us at five.”

A car pulled into the parking lot, and Chris nudged her. “A little more than that.” Odette Caron of C.R.U.X exited the car, followed by another familiar face--

“Is… is that Bill Murray?”

“Yeah.”

“Like, the actor?”

“In the flesh.”

“Does he know how to play baseball?”

Chris considered this. “Well it’s cool that he’s here, right?”

Sang Mi stared him down til he looked away.

“Okay, but I do have a surprise you might actually like. Maybe not better than Coloth but,” he gestured with both hands, waggling his fingers in a way which was trying to be both magician- and cheerleader-like, and was hitting neither. From Odette’s car, the back doors opened, and out stepped the pair of Megan Grabowski and Martha Sandalwood.

Well, she’d give this one to Chris—she bolted for her friends from Hughes High. She’d spent weeks there with Chris under cover, and Megan had been her closest friend there. Martha was Megan’s friend, and Sang Mi and Chris had saved her from being kidnapped and trapped inside a movie projector, and it’s hard not to be friends after that.

“SARAH!” they yelled, which was her undercover name, but whatever. “MEGAN! MARTHA!” she yelled back.

The three girls promptly hugged, and then jumped up and down together while cheering.

“Thank you so much for coming!”

“Of course, like we’d leave you in the lurch!” Megan said. “When Mr. Cwej called, we got packed right away! What are you doing anyway, is like, part the secret agent stuff you guys were doing when you saved us? Are there more people trapped in movie projectors?”

Sang Mi blinked. “Well uh, right now we’re playing baseball against monsters from urban legends and an immortal mad scientist, so… kinda?”

Megan and Martha were very excited by this turn of events. After they’d caught up, Chris clapped and got everyone to order. “Alright everyone, today is the first ever game of our team, the Starmen, against the Corvids. It’ll also be our only game.”

Aesc’s hand shot up. Reluctantly, Chris called on her. “Hello, yes, what game are we playing again?”

He stared at her, the mirth gone from his face. “Baseball.”

“Right, right,” she noted this down on a clay tablet she had with her for some reason.

Bill Murray’s hand went up, so Chris called on him too. “Sorry, uh, so is this for a documentary? Or a movie? Is there a script or am I just improv-ing? My agent said this would pay off that bad trip to Monaco, and so I’m all in, just uh. Why is he a cactus?”

“Why were you in Garfield?” Coloth shot back.

“You know what, that’s fair,” he replied.

“Don’t worry about anything. Just do your best, and have fun. No script, just… make sure to treat the Melonheads with respect and kindness, they’re just little guys.”

“Melonheads?” Martha asked.

Odette chimed in. “You’ll know them when you see them. The name explains it.”

“What about—”

The questions continued, and as they did Sang Mi watched as Chris fielded them expertly. Megan and Martha were right on things. Coloth was cool as always. Aesc and Blanche were fun. Odette Caron was clever and analytical. Bill Murray was, well, Bill Murray.

She wondered if she walked away now if anyone would even notice. Eventually, she did.

* * *

When the team meeting was over, Chris realized that Sang Mi was gone. There had been a lot of questions, and he may have gotten a little too long winded and passionate answering a few of them, but he still felt awkward he’d missed when she slipped out. Had she just gone to the bathroom? He poked around, only to find her right outside the locker room entrance from the parking lot, whacking a set of cardboard boxes by the trashbin with her bat. It was a halfhearted effort though. Like she wanted to look angrier than she was.

“Hey, I was looking for you,” he waved. She looked up at him, and then kicked one of the boxes.

Finally catching up, he tried to be cheerful. “Ready for the big game?”

“You’ve got everyone else, you don’t need me.”

“Where’s that coming from? Most of these people are here because I thought it would be fun for them to be here with you. Megan and Martha especially.”

She nodded, then Sang Mi turned to face the wall, putting a hand against the concrete bricks and digging her nails in with a clawed scraping sound. “Hey Chris… You know that… you know you can stop this whenever you want, right? I want this to go on forever but… you don’t have to force yourself. Really.”

He didn’t know where she was going with this. And he quickly decided he didn’t want to. “…Well, I don’t want to stop this,” he said, “so let’s just forget about whatever is bothering you and get to the game. Everyone is waiting for us.”

She pressed her forehead into the wall, and for a moment a spark of fear ran through him, and he felt bad about that as her shoulders pulsed and she let out a pained laugh. “You were worried, right? That I was going to smash my head into the wall? I did that when I was a kid, you know.”

“You’re still a kid,” he countered.

“A little kid. I rammed my head into the wall. Split my head right open. When we got there the E.R. was full—I don’t know why, maybe there was a big accident or something—and they had to put a curtain around me and my mom while they waited for a bed to open up for me. I think they just thought it was one of those wacky little childhood accidents, you know, you think you can fly if you flap your wings so you jump off the table and break your arm.”

“I did that,” Chris said.

“I bet you did. But that’s the thing, Chris…” She moved her hands from digging into the wall. “I wanted to hurt myself. I knew I deserved it. But I didn’t tell anyone, maybe I just didn’t realize everyone didn’t feel like that. Maybe I didn’t want to worry my mom. I don’t know… There was something wrong with me then, and there is something wrong with me now.” He could hear the tears between her words. He hesitated, not sure what the right move was.

Sweep her up in a hug?

Give her a speech about how she was special? Nothing felt right. And so he just stood there.

“I know what the Corvid said. I heard her. The Defector, that superior who took you across the stars on all those adventures… They wouldn’t have taken me. They wouldn’t have. Because I’m broken. I’m broken and everyone can see it.”

“You’re not broken,” he said, maybe too simply.
 
She spun around, the tears she’s kept imprisoned flying out in a splatter as she did so. “Of course I am! I’ve… I’ve had how many breakdowns while we’ve been travelling together? I broke down when you came to pick me up for the World’s Fair. I broke down the night you took me to Violethill. I broke down on the Point of Know Return trying to help you. I broke down at Dr. Crow’s… and… and I guess I’m breaking down now! Why not!”

“You’re just feeling things. That doesn’t mean you’re breaking down.”

“Does it? Does it, Chris!? I was so moody in Louisville we barely got what we needed done.” She covered her face again. “I did it. I got out of the hospital. I learned to control all these feelings inside me, all these urges to hurt myself, to hate myself. And I have medicine that lets me do it. But they don’t go away. They won’t go away. I tried to get better but I can’t. I keep trying but I can’t make these feelings disappear. I can’t win.”

Chris untensed, and strode up to her. He put his hands gently on her forearms, and tugged a little. She relented, and showed her puffy face. In return, he gave her a warm and gentle smile.

“Getting better isn’t one victory. That’s not why it’s good. Getting better is having another day. Cause no matter how bad that day is, it’s yours. And it can always be yours. Right now, right here, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about you. It matters that I want you here, I chose you to come with me.”

“But Dr. Crow, she said your old friend—"

“I’m not him.” The words came out fast, and when he said them, he had to stop, because he knew he meant them. The honesty of that confession churned his stomach, he could feel a muscle in the side of his neck tensing and pulling at his collar. But Sang Mi's face softened too.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re not.”

“And I’m sorry, I wish I could be—"

“I don’t want him. I don’t give a shit about him, you believed in me, you came back for me, don’t you get it!” She shoved him lightly. “Don’t you?”

They stood together, Sang Mi catching her breath.

“Yeah, I think I do.” He didn’t, but it was the right thing to say. And even though it wasn’t quite true, he meant it with all his heart. He’d work through that contradiction later. He slowly and gently wrapped her in a hug, watching for any sign she was uncomfortable with it—but part way through she rushed him and buried her face in his chest, sobbing.

He held her there, for however long it took her to cry it out. He didn’t keep track. Just waited.

When she finished, she pulled back, wiping her face on her sleeve. “…I really am a mess, you know. I’m not stable. I’m not… pretty, or—or as clever as I think I am.”

“You’re exactly who I want you to be.” And that, he meant all the way. He could see himself in that moment. Not at her age, he was a lot less world-weary than she was then. No, at his failures. At the points where everyone had turned their backs on him. He could hear their voices, churlish and harsh: he was a little kid in a man’s body, he always tried to do the right thing but failed at it, he was one card short of a deck.

He’d come back for her. And the way she tried to mimic him terrified him.

He’d tried to bring people along on his adventures before. Larles and Kwol, two friends he’d tried to reform from their misdeeds, and one of them had spat in his face by working for the very people who hurt him.

A girl turned away from him in 1970s London and never looked back, and he couldn’t blame her.

And despite everything, Sang Mi’d come back for him. She’d packed a bag and ran after him, begging and bargaining to join him.

She stood in front of him, 17 and a little kid, hands balled up at her sides. She still believed in heroes.

She believed they could be as screwed up as she was.

“You’re the kind of girl who goes on an adventure with me. Everyone else, all the other space swashbucklers and time-travelers, they can go to Hell.” He held a hand out to her. “Now let’s go play some baseball, defeat my ex, and save the day. And it will be your day. No, our day.”

She put her hand out, it shook, hovering over his. “…And you’re sure? You can’t go backsies on this. You can’t… tell me you accept me and turn around later. You just can’t.”

“That’s never been on the table to begin with.”

She took his hand. Slowly, the edge of her lip turned up a little. “Hey Chris, I have a confession.”

“Yeah? You’ve already had some doozies.”

“I can bat really well, but I can’t throw a ball to save my life.”

He pulled his head back as he took that in, and when it finally sunk in, he laughed hard. “You'll do just what we need you to. Let’s go, your cola is getting warm, and somewhere down the road there's creatures made of starlight, and doors that lead to dreams. Come on, Sang Mi, we’ve got a game to play.”

She smiled, and gave him a big nod. It was time to play ball.

* * *

“Hello and welcome to the opening exhibition game here at Melonhead Field—and it’s opening early, which has been a real surprise, isn’t that right, Greg?”

“Yeah.”

“Fans are filling up the seats, and it looks like those commemorative Melonhead bobbleheads sure are popular. I got one myself, how about you, Greg?”

“Yep.”

“Oh! And it looks like our home team is taking the pitch. It’s the Corvids! Now I’ve never seen anything like this team before, these little guys are purply—why I think they're costumed as the fictitious Melonheads themselves! What a treat. I wonder how they did that.”

“Eh.”

“And their team captain—wow she’s a looker, and for some reason is wearing a labcoat with her number on it on the back! She’s waving to the crowd and—it looks like our visiting team is here! The Starmen, that’s a musical reference if I’m not wrong?”

“Bowie.”

“Oh you’re so right, Greg, referencing the classic album by David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. What a hoot. This team has a lot more variety to it— including a boy in cactus makeup! And… wait, is that Bill Murray?”

* * *

Chris was first up to bat. He stared down Melonhead number Six who was winding her pitch up. The two team mascots—he was very surprised they had been pulled together in 24 hours—a crow boy and a star man, were pulling hijinks on each other on the sidelines. He and Six stared each other down.

Come on Melonhead. Give me your best shot. He was ready for this.

Six’s arm moved forward. The ball was loosed from her hand. And dropped to the grass two feet away.

“Ball? I think?” the Umpire called. The crowd, which was much larger than Chris had expected, laughed.

Dr. Crow stomped her feet and flapped her arms. “SIX, WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING!?! THROW THE BALL!!!”

Six started bawling, rubbing her eyes with her fists.

“There’s no crying in super baseball!”

Cwej picked up the ball, and carried it to the mound, putting a hand on Six’s shoulder. “Hey kid, cheer up. It’s just your first throw. You can try again. Don’t listen to those idiots laughing up there. Here, watch me.” He straightened up, and mimed throwing the ball. “See how I moved. Try doing that. And let the ball go when your arm is--here.” He demonstrated as much. “Don’t worry if you don’t get it at first. So are you willing to try again?”

Six sniffled. “Mrah.”

“That’s a brave girl.”

“CHRIS CWEJ, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SAYING TO MY MELONHEADS!?”

He put the ball gently into her hand, and walked back to the batter’s box.

Six tossed the ball in the air, catching it, and took a calming breath through her fangs. She pulled her body back into position, trying to mirror Cwej, and threw!

It dropped three quarters of the way to the batter. The crowd laughed again.

Chris was about to start saying some choice words to the audience, when he heard Sang Mi call out from the dugout. “Come on Six, you can do it!” He looked over to see her nudging each of her teammates.

“Yeah, you can do it, Six!” Megan yelled. Martha joined her.

Coloth joined in too, and then the whole team did. Bill Murray looked somewhat confused, and made sure he was in view of the stadium cameras the whole time.

Six threw it again. It was low and slow, but it worked. Chris swung, and the ball went awkwardly to the left. The Melonheads struggled to scramble for it, as he ran for first base. Two of the melonheads were struggling over the ball, and a third decided to mediate the situation by eating it.

“Mrah!” he said, proud of himself for solving the dispute.

Chris probably could have gone further than first base, but this was good enough. The umpire got another ball.

Lady Aesc was up next. She picked the bat up, went up to bat, and… “Aesc, that’s not how you hold the bat!” Blanche yelled from the sidelines.

“No no, I’ve played this before!”

“Cricket! You’re holding it like it’s a cricket bat!” Aesc was, as a matter of fact, holding the bat upside down.

“I got this!” she waved.

Six hurled the ball. Aesc swung. “STRIKE!” called the umpire.

She swung twice more, and was quickly out. Blanche held her head in her hands.

Odette went up, and did hold the bat correctly. She got one strike and then a hit, and made it to first—Chris, to second.

Next up was Megan who bunted and very sloppily got to first, pushing everyone one base ahead.

Bases were loaded, which meant everyone was very excited when Coloth got to bat, waved to the crowd, and missed every single swing.

“Good try, Coloth!” Sang Mi yelled, as he went back to the dugout embarrassed.

Chris gritted his teeth. They had two outs, one more and they would rotate so that the other team would have the chance to go to bat at score runs.

Sang Mi was up to bat.

* * *

When Chris Cwej asked her what she wanted engraved on her baseball bat, Jhe Sang Mi wasn’t sure. She paced around in the lobby for a while, and pulled up all sorts of quotes and sayings on her phone. She nearly settled on a few of them. Ironic or funny quotes—gag sayings like having the bat say ‘Sorry’ on it, like it was saying that before whacking someone in the face. But in the end, she’d chosen something personal.

Kalingkata
The Wandering Star

Kalingkata was her screen name, and her nickname. It was what most of her close friends called her. Her brother had been nicknamed Talinata, after the video game console, and she’d made up her own name to fit in. It was a nonsense word meant to sound like it naturally paired with her brother's nickname. So they’d always be together. Even then, a part of her knew she was forcing it.

And that led to part two. The wandering star. It was a bible reference to the book of Jude. Wandering stars had the gloom of darkness reserved for them forever, or so it was said. And so she felt. Life was the shadow of a cloud over her head. A terrifying journey where loneliness was always at the other end. The goatman at Pope’s Lick had been lonely. Rodney too. How long had Simone waited for the closure they’d given her? To stave off that loneliness, she and Chris had played pretend in a warehouse together. This journey would end too. And she’d watch more people leave.

But as she walked up to bat, Chris giving her a thumbs up from third base, the sun warming her shoulders, Sang Mi felt something she hadn't allowed herself to feel in some time.

She allowed herself to feel wanted.

She raised the bat—blue-barreled and black-handled—stretching it up like a salute, or a flag. She’d survived today, and it was their day. Everyone who had come here for them. For Chris. For herself.

She’d been told she was good at kendo.

Six wound her pitch up, staring her down. She threw the ball. And Sang Mi swung.

With a crack, it struck the ball. She put her hand up to block the sun and watch its course. She should have started running, but she was just amazed she’d hit the damn thing.

It flew up into the air, and somewhere into the back of the stands where a little kid scrambled to pick it up.

She grinned, and she ran.

Chris, Odette, and Megan all scored runs, and then so did she, crossing home plate as the crowd clapped and cheered.

Everyone clapped her on the back as she got into the dugout. Chris was smug. “I knew you’d do great.”

She smiled back. “Guess I can’t argue with excellence.”

“Psh, keep your head on, we’re not done yet. But great work.”

“Yeah, she did good,” Bill Murray said. “Guess it’s my go.” He wandered up to bat as Megan and Martha hugged her.

“Does uh, Bill Murray know how to play this game?” she asked Chris. “Oh,” Chris laughed. “Yeah so, he actually owns some minor league teams.”

They weren’t watching when he hit the ball, but they all cheered as he ran the bases. A pretty good start.

* * *

When the teams swapped places, Dr. Crow went up to bat first. Blanche volunteered to pitch, which turned out to be a great choice because, unlike everyone else (except perhaps Bill Murray), it turned out she was good at it. Even so, her first pitch didn’t give that impression because Dr. Crow immediately hit the ball out of the stadium, and off into the horizon.

“Ha! See that Chris, I’ve been practicing!” she called out to him as she started circling the bases.

Sang Mi looked over at Chris from second base. “Shouldn’t she have batted later, so that like, other people could score too?”

“Yep. But she couldn’t resist showing off…”

Five went next, and got to first. Two was next, and Blanche pitched three strikes, putting her out.

One got a bad hit, and it should have been an out, but Sang Mi failed to catch it, and then failed to throw it. Martha picked up the slack (and the ball) and stopped Five and One from making it to home base and scoring.

Things progressed from there.

Bill Murray and Sang Mi proved to be killer at bat, and so did Five and Seven.

Blanche and Six both improved their pitching inning after inning.

In the 7th inning stretch, everyone rose for a rousing chorus of ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’, a song which was seemingly only known by Megan, Martha, and Dr. Crow between both teams. But everyone did their best.

​It was unclear if the Melonheads knew it or not, though they definitely sang along with their most passionate “Mrah!”s.

All in all, the game bounced back and forth, the Starmen took an early lead, but lost it in the 5th inning, before catching up, and in the final 9th inning, both teams were tied up.
Chris gathered the team together for one last pep talk. “Alright, so we all remember why we’re here today right?”

Aesc’s hand shot up; Chris pointed at her. “Because if we lose the game you and Sang Mi will be trapped inside Dr. Crow’s mansion for all eternity!”

There was a long pause.

“What!?” Martha, Megan, Odette, and Bill Murray all said in near unison, with Bill Murray being the most off.

“Oh, you didn’t know?” Blanche said blandly. “What a surprise, Chris Cwej left important details out,” she deadpanned.

“…If you didn’t know, why did you come?” Coloth asked.

“Cause she’s our friend!” Megan and Martha said in actual and impressive unison.

“Sang Mi is a friend to animals, and science,” Odette said

“I thought this was like, a direct to streaming movie set or something?” Bill Murray said. “What exactly are we doing? And am I getting paid?”

“You’re getting paid,” Chris answered partially.

“Good enough for me,” Murray concluded.

Sang Mi tapped her bat against a metal support pole. “Hey hey, back to the important thing! We actually have to win this game.”

Chris cut in. “And on that note, I do have a plan. I just need everyone's help here. Just trust me on this.”

He explained his plan.

Blanche sighed. “I don’t really know what I expected. But sure.”

* * *

The Corvids went to bat first. Dr. Crow chewed on a shiny coin she kept in her pocket just for these scenarios when she was nervous. She was so close. The game was tied. She just needed to get ahead and shut Cwej's team out. Her melonheads could do it.

“Alright, all of you! We’re winning this. No crying—” she snatched a juicebox from Four's hands. “And no snacks! Not until we win.”

“…Mrah,” Four opined.

“And no complaining. I know Cwej has to have something up his sleeve, but your goal is to score as many runs as you can! For every run you get, I’ll get you a new video game. And… a cupcake?”

“Mrah!” The Melonheads cheered.

“But if we lose, you’ll all suffer in ways you haven’t even imagined!”

“Mrah…” the Melonheads moaned.

“Now get out there, and WIN.”

First up to bat was Five. Reliable hitter, and reliable he was. He got to second base. Nice.

Next up was Eight. She wasn’t quite as reliable, but she hit the ball, and started scampering for first base.

She got halfway there before she lost balance with her big head, and fell face first into the pitch. “Eight, get your ass up! Eight you better not get out or I swear—”

“You can do it, Eight!”

Dr. Crow blinked, she looked around to see who had said it. It was one of that Sang Mi girl’s friends? She couldn’t tell the difference between them. It didn’t matter, because the other one chimed in too.

“Yeah, it’s okay Eight, don’t give up!” Sang Mi yelled. Eight slowly pushed herself up, teary eyed.

“You’re okay, Eight,” Chris called.

“Uh, yeah, small… melon-headed child who is purple,” Bill Murray added. “You can absolutely do whatever you set your mind to. As long as it only involves saying the word ‘Mrah’, I guess.”

“You can make it to first!” Aesc, Blanche, and Coloth said in a sing-song voice together. Eight dusted herself off, and started jogging to first base.

The whole Starmen team clapped and cheered as she reached it. “What,” Dr. Crow said, “the Hell is going on?”

This same pattern was repeated, over and over. Batter after batter. The melonheads got lots of runs, and lots of cheers, and when it finally turned over, they had a sizable lead.
This would have brought Dr. Crow joy, except that as soon as the Starmen went to bat, they were blazing through just as fast, if not faster.

Five let Coloth get to second, and Dr. Crow was stomping and cawing at him, but while five cringed, he didn’t relent.

Soon enough, with a great set of runs propelled by Sang Mi and Bill Murray, they had caught up.

As Chris Cwej himself went up to bat, she put the coin back in her mouth. Everything was falling apart.

Chris looked her in the eyes, and winked.

And as Six threw a pitch at him, he didn’t swing. “Strike!” the umpire called.

And again. “Strike two!”

And… Six wound up, and threw her pitch. Chris readied his bat.

Of course. He was just being dramatic. Showing off. She should have known. And then he lowered the bat, and stuck his tongue out at her.

“STRIKE THREE, you’re out!”

With that, Sang Mi tossed him a megaphone from the dugout. Well, mostly, he had to move to actually catch it from her poor throw, but he did get it, and lifting it to his mouth, spoke to the field. “Wow, who would have guessed the game would end in a tie!”

“We go into extra-innings—” Dr. Crow tried to yell over him.

“And since it’s a tie… I guess that can only mean I have to take all you Melonheads out for ICE CREAM!”

The Melonheads leapt up into the air, cheering—“Mrah! Mraaah!!!”—and rushed over to Chris excitedly, where he started congratulating each of them on a good game.

Dr. Crow stood stunned. She didn’t really understand.

She knew she had just lost control, but she wasn’t sure how it happened. There were rules to this game. It had had two set outcomes. But now a third thing had happened.
Chris directed the Melonheads over to the rest of the team, who took over the congratulation duties, and he started his way across the field to her.

She straightened her shoulders, and raised her chin. So be it.

“You win, Chris Cwej.”

He shrugged. “This never needed to be a competition.”

She kicked up the dirt. “You could have stayed with me! We would have been happy. I put all this together for you, you know. Like our first date!”

He thought back. “Oh yeah, in Kobe. You know, I barely remember the game cause I was watching you the whole time. You were handsome, clever, confident. I didn’t know that you were vain, conceited and controlling.”

“Oh haha, laugh it up. I bet you’re enjoying this, humiliating me.”

Chris puffed his cheeks out like a chipmunk, and blew the air out. “No—no. That’s not what I’m feeling. Corvid, I’m sad. Cause the truth is, if you’d just welcomed us in, and given us normal food you hadn’t drugged, and hadn't driven my friend to a breakdown, I might have stayed. I can’t say what I would have done for sure. Maybe I’d have invited you along. But… you’re just mean. Controlling.”

“You didn’t mind when we were screwing each other's brains out.”

He sighed. “Yeah. I didn’t. And I can’t say I didn’t want that. I did. I wanted that a lot. And that’s the thing Corvid, I would have been with you even without all your plotting. If you had just treated me with respect, we’d have made love and not screwed.”

“There’s not really a difference.”

“I’ve not found it to be so.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. We’re through. You had your second chance. And you tried to force me and Sang Mi into a situation outside our control. We’re going to find a new home for your Melonheads. And I’m… going to let you walk away.”

She blinked. “Sorry? You’re not going to kill me?”

He shook his head. “You really don’t get it, do you? I’m going to tell you something Sang Mi told someone recently. Go get some therapy, and get a damn cat.”

She clicked her teeth. “Don’t condescend—”

“I’m not. I really mean it, cat and all. I’m giving you a third chance. You don’t deserve it… but I know what you went through. How lonely you were back on the Base of Operations. Those secret dinner parties you'd throw, hoping you could make friends, even though it risked exile. Remember how they'd teased and mock you, just because you were interested in the biology of life? Because you liked dissecting flowers and fruits. You used to be… soft. And the world broke you.”

She felt something churning in her chest. It was too many feelings. Anger. Love. Fear.
Acceptance. Being seen. She felt her head spin. “I don’t need your pity.”

“And you’re not getting it. Sang Mi is an insignificant human from a universe without any beings like you Superiors. Far as we know, the hands of the clock move themselves, back there.”

“Sounds barbaric.”

“Kind of is. And yet. She’s been abandoned. She’s been cracked, she’s taken hit after hit. And you hurt her, and I don’t forgive you for that. But I want you to know—she didn’t let the cruelty of the world break her. She still tries to do good.”

“So you’re shaming me now?”

“I’m saying if you really are as powerful as you think, then do better than she is! I’m saying that you failed today, but… healing isn’t one big victory. It’s… winning one day at a time. And today isn’t your day. But maybe tomorrow can be. You don’t deserve a third chance. I probably should kill you. My Superiors and your kin wouldn’t even blink if I did. But I can see how conflicted you are. You’re a force of nature inside.”

“I know, I’m a wildfire. I burn the forest down.”

“No, I was wrong. You’re a wildfire today. But tomorrow, maybe you could plant a tree.”

She was struck dumb, and as what he said sunk in, she felt something she had never felt before in her centuries of life: she was fairly certain it was called ‘shame’.

Chris gave her a smile, and started to turn around. “Wait!”

He stopped.

She ran over to the dugout, pulled something out of a bag, and ran back, holding it out to him.

It was a great purple amethyst. Huge, the size of a baseball. “Take it.”

He didn’t touch it. “What… is it?”

“It’s a gem, a powerful one. It has certain powers. I used it to create the Melonheads. You can use it to create serums, liquids, medicines…”

Chris picked it up, and turned it over in his hands. It resembled the ruby they’d found in 1893 Chicago that had allowed the Yssgaroth to break into reality. “You’re sure you’re okay giving this up?”

She nodded. “Think of it as… a sign of goodwill, that I… will think about what you said.”

She didn’t say another word. She took two steps back, activated a device on her wrist, and vanished.

Superiors. Always doing that.

He tossed the gem in the air, walking back over to the team and the Melonheads.

“Good news!” Sang Mi said running over. “Bill Murray is going to help fund a new home for the Melonheads. He’s not entirely sure what’s going on, but whatever!”
 
He smiled. “That is good news. Here, take a look at this.”

She took the amethyst from him, and raised an eyebrow. “Like the ruby…?”

“Yep.” “Did it…”

“Help make the Melonheads? Absolutely.”

“…Huh. That’s… concerning?”

He nodded. “We’ll just keep a lookout going forward.”

“What happened with Dr. Crow?”

“I let her go. With a stern warning. I told her to get therapy and a cat.”

She gave a small ‘hah’. After a while, she added, a touch more seriously: “Think that'll work?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t forgive her. But… I want to be the kind of person who gives people a chance.”

Sang Mi nodded. “Yeah, I think I want to be that too.” “You’re just saying that cause I said it.”

“Maybe I am!”

He laughed, and put an arm around her. “Come on kid, we’ve got an ice cream parlor to devour.”

She looked over at the Melonheads, at their friends and guest. “Maybe today, I’m not the worst.”

“I think that about you every day. Cause I want to be not the worst too. Now what do you want, chocolate or vanilla?”

“Strawberry.”

He laughed. She laughed. Today was their day.□

---

Next stop:
Little Green Men
by Plum Pudding

---

Copyright © 2025 Arcbeatle Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental or has been done firmly within the bounds of parody and fair use. Edited by James Wylder, James Hornby & Aristide Twain Formatting and design by James Wylder & Aristide Twain Cover by Leela Ross Logo design by Lucas Kovacs Concepts Used with Permission: Academy 27 © Arcbeatle Press Coloth © Simon Bucher-Jones WARSONG, WARS TCG, Gongen, Takumi, and associated concepts © Decipher, Inc. SIGNET and Charles Zoltan © James Hornby Chris Cwej and associated concepts © Andy Lane Yssgaroth © Neil Penswick C.R.U.X © Aristide Twain Lady Aesculapius, Blanche Combine, Jhe Sang Mi © James Wylder ​