I had found refuge in a cave deep underground. It was quite a nice cave, actually. Just the right number of bats and good acoustic properties. Honestly it was a shame it didn’t have an ominous entrance somewhere on the surface.

  I had to admit though, Phoebe was right. I had troubled both her and Lucina for no good reason. Also, maybe not a good idea to piss off an A-rank ghosthunter.

  Things were so much simpler back at the old haunted house. Guest comes in, scare them away, chat with your undead coworkers, repeat. He still remembered Greg the skeleton, who bored everyone else to death with his stories of being a former D-rank adventurer. Those times were dull then, but now he couldn’t help but feel nostalgic.

  “Found yoooouuuuu…”. I froze as I heard that chilling voice echo through the cave. Just where was she? How did she even get here?!

  I stopped as I felt two eyes staring at me from the ceiling. Ah, so this was the end. I was grateful I had already done the whole ‘reflecting on my past life’ bit, because Lucina meant business. There would be no time to think.

  She jumped down from the ceiling, landing in front of me. And then, she pulled a slime out of her bag. “AHHHH!!”, I screamed, cowering away instinctively. What a perfectly timed jumpscare! Are we sure she isn’t just a ghost herself?!

  “It seems you really are afraid of slimes”, she gave a smile devoid of anything human. “Phoebe explained everything to me. Why don’t you join us for dinner?”.

  It was the most awkward situation I’d ever been in. And I once made the mistake of dropping by my own funeral, so that was really saying something.

  I stirred my soup around aimlessly. “Um, just so you know… ghosts don’t really need to eat”.

  “Is that so? More for me, then”. Lucina poured my bowl straight into hers, like that was the plan all along. Her eyes never left me for a second.

  “So, um…”. “Yes?”. “…May I ask why Phoebe is covered in slimes?”.

  I watched as she battled the slimes for her soup, mostly unsuccessfully. One of them had already swallowed her spoon. Phoebe was valiantly fighting back with her unused fork, but the slime’s guerrilla warfare proved quite effective. Another one had brazenly plopped into her bowl, changing colors as it absorbed the food.

  “Just a deterrent. I can’t have monsters attacking my precious little sister, after all”, Lucina said.

  That was rich, considering her ongoing battle against monsters far more fiendish than me. In the end she had sacrificed her spoon and was now just attempting to drink her soup straight out of the bowl. Several slimes had already piled on top of her face in a race for Lucina’s cooking.

  “Thishh ishh all yhur fuult”, I could barely make out. The bowl fell off her face, revealing happy slimes underneath. Of course, weakening your enemies while strengthening yourself was just basic strategy. But to deny even food to an adventurer was quite coldblooded. Slimes, they were as merciless as always.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “So!”, I said, grasping for something, anything to talk about. “We actually came here to talk about Hex with you. How did your fight with him go?”.

  “It was just a surprise attack”, she replied. “Snuck up to him while his back was turned and Jeffrey split him in two. Would’ve lost in a fair fight”.

  She slurped down the rest of her soup. “That was a long time ago, though. I’ve been training hard ever since, just in case I had to fight a ghost like that again”.

  Lucina dished out seconds for her sister, causing a new wave of excitement to ripple through the slimes.

  She turned back to me with a hard stare. “Especially when I see one with the same tricks”.

  “I keep telling you, he’s not like that”, Phoebe defended me even as she fought her own war. “Count Boogula may seem scary, but he’s a good guy”.

  “In any case, you can rest easy under my roof”, Lucina said.

  Phoebe did not, in fact, rest easy.

  An hour or so after we finished dinner, I had sirens ringing out across all of Mechadream. People quickly holed up indoors, but there was no urgency, as if this happened all the time.

  “What’s going on?”, I asked Lucina. “Oh, this must be your first night here, huh?”, she flashed another evil smile. “You’ll see”.

  BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

  BOOM. BOOM.

  The footsteps of many huge beings shook the earth, sending dust falling from the ceiling.

  Phoebe stumbled out of her room, rubbing her eyes. “How do you sleep with all this racket?”, she asked her sister.

  Lucina smiled sympathetically. “I’ve got some magic sleeping pills, if you want some. The noise only gets worse from here”.

  “Worse?! How could…”.

  Lucina tackled her sister to the ground as a giant laser beam sliced clean through the house. The roof seemed like it would slide right off, but the molten brass stuck together somehow.

  “Shhh. Don’t move”, Lucina urged. For a few seconds, they finally had silence. Then more earthquakes as the robot walked away.

  “Who makes these robots?”, I hissed. “Don’t tell me this is ‘working as intended’!”.

  “Keep your voice down”, Lucina reminded me. “Nobody knows. Nobody wants to risk their life fighting them, either. They’re the reason Mechadream exams are so tough”.

  “This is bull. I’m not cowering inside here”, I turned to leave. “Wait, wait!”, Lucina called after me. I ignored her and went to give those robots a piece of my mind.

  A few robots were walking around the city. I looked up… and up… and up. Huh. No wonder that other one was called the Model Small.

  “Hey, tin can!”, I hovered in front of a robot’s face. It completely ignored me, like I was some kind of mosquito. Illusions, phasing into it, nothing worked. ‘Battle robot’ would be a misnomer, it was moreso just an instrument of pure terror.

  I came back to the house defeated. “This doesn’t make any sense. This whole city- it feels like the world’s been turned upside down here. I just don’t understand why”.

  Lucina looked at me in a slightly different light.