"This is the best idea we've ever had." Amanda says as she throws open the doors of the ice cream parlor, whose bells let out a joyful ring. She's gripping her cone in one hand and smiles to the rest of the group as we leave.

"We haven't had many good ideas." Garrett says, and I blush furiously (even though it's not my fault. Probably. Maybe it is).

Karen averts her gaze and stands just off to the side, watching pedestrians around our age pass us and frown like they know something we don't, "I wouldn't count this as a good idea either. It's too late in the year for ice cream."

Amanda roars, "It's never too late for ice cream. I have ice cream in December. Outside. In shorts."

"Not everyone's hard core as you are." I remind her.

"Get on it," Amanda says, biting off half a scoop of her Strawberry like a wolf taking off the leg of a freshly killed deer.

"Okay, now you're just screwing with us. You do not normally eat ice cream that way." Garrett complains.

"I'll take yours too, Mr. Ice Cream purist. You still haven't touched yours." smirks Amanda, eyeing that sweet, sweet Sea Salt Caramel. She's an opportunistic scavenger as well as a predator, I guess, and now she has her next meal.

"I have to take my Invisalign off," Garrett says. He gets out his case and fidgets with the plastic for a while, pulling it off his teeth like he's ripping a band aid off, and I try to distract myself with my Rocky Road.

Amanda smiles. "Oh, I used to have a retainer. It's like... a restraining order on your mouth. I think I died inside a bit but the dentist said it would get better. A few days later he came in, and I told him he was right- mainly because I took it off."

"Oh my God." Garrett mutters.

"And that's the story of how I got braces!" Amanda grins, revealing the metal lining across her teeth. "I almost managed to get these off, too, but then it's hard to get them back on and apparently they cost thousands of dollars? Anyways, I'm not allowed to mess with the dentistry anymore, but let's just say that me and the dentist are not on the best of terms."

Karen snorts at this, but doesn't say anything.

"We're going back to my house, right?" asks Garrett.

"Unless you want to walk four miles over to mine, then yeah." I say.

"Ew, that's not happening."

"How far away do you think we are from Ignatius's?" asks Amanda. It's been kind of a taboo topic since the disaster that was the last mission, and no one answers her, even though I've looked it up a thousand times on Google Earth so that I could try to map out the area and our attack plan.

Two miles, give or take, in the opposite direction of my house- but there's not enough room in the world to separate me from him.

Garrett's house is in the neighborhood, just far enough from the nearest commercial center to not have to deal with the onslaught of traffic and noise it would bring, and it's your typical suburban piece of paradise. His house is unpainted brick with white lining and a few green shutters and accents. There's a patio with a swinging bench, several flags including the American one and some European country (I think?) and the door opens, unlocked.

"Welcome home! You three are free to stay as long as you want." Garrett's mom cheers from the kitchen. "Do you kids need anything? Garrett keeps all his snacks downstairs, in his game den."

"We've got it, mom. Thanks." Garrett says, opening the door to the stairs, which is right around the corner. It's got two home-made calendars and a few hundred sticky notes on it, mainly addressed to Garrett. They're chores, punctuated with smiley faces, and I guess his mom wrote them to him.

"You call it a game den?" Karen says, almost laughing as we descend the stairs.

Garrett crosses his arms, not even deigning to look her in the eye. "Maybe I do, maybe I don't. What's it to you, Karen?"

'Game den' is pretty accurate. 'Mancave' might also fit, but hey, to each their own. Regardless, it's filled with nice, plush beanbags and a whole shelf stocked with books on top, movies in the middle, and a row of video game cases across the bottom row, spanning multiple console generations and three systems.

"You guys up for videogames?" Garrett asks, shooting a look at Karen. "You know, because game den."

Karen laughs, then covers her own mouth. She shrugs, "Sort of." but Garrett is already smirking at her.

"What are your opinions on shooters? I have a pretty decent library," he opens a door at the bottom of said shelf to reveal (what else) even more videogames, "if I do say so myself. I've got every mainstream first person shooter from the last two console generations for the XBox, most of the good ones for the Playstation... I mean, they really don't do shooters on the Wii, because Nintendo, but whatever." He continues on about the technicalities of several franchises in comparison to each other, and I completely tune out, thinking quietly that dang, his voice is really nasally. I feel bad, because I guarantee this is how other people feel whenever I talk about my interests, but then again, my self-esteem went on an extended vacation in third grade and hasn't come back, and without him around, it's kind of hard to talk about anything in public. Amanda smiles and nods along, Karen is sprawled across the couch, and Garrett continues, "So, basically, literal garbage, but that's not going to prevent them from making sequels, because they still make money. Talk to any major developer, they'll tell you the same thing. The gaming industry abuses their cash cows like the dairy industry abuses their actual cows." He pauses. "So, video games."

Karen shrugs. "I don't play FPS games."

"Riiiight, what do you play then, exactly?"
"Minecraft."

"Casual." coughs Garrett into his fist, inconspicuously as possible.

"Well excuse you. I have a part time job, I don't exactly have time to yell at twelve year olds for hours over the internet." When she sees our faces, which must be priceless right about now, she frowns. "None of you have ever held a job in your lives, have you."

"I do commissions online." Amanda shrugs.

"That doesn't count."

"It does too, and people like you are the reason artists don't get the respect we deserve in the workforce."

"I already live in my parent's basement. I think it's pretty clear where I'm headed, Karen." Garrett smirks, and when this elicits an incredibly slow head shake from Karen, he admits, "Okay, fine, I work at the country club in the summer. My mom is on some board, and her friends figured I could take on some responsibility there."

"You are the whitest person I've ever met. Will?"

"I've never even considered it." I say.

"Really. What do you think you want to do when you grow up?"

"I don't know!" I admit, feeling more than a little attacked.

"How could you not know? Even our elementary school teachers wanted us to have our lives planned." Amanda asks.

"Usually I just say I want to be a lawyer or something boring like that. I'm just going to do whatever they want me to do, make enough money to get by, try to settle down. Before this happened, I didn't think real life could be exciting. We just had to find something we were okay enough doing so we could get by and ride it out." I say.

Garrett stares at me. "Will, that's kind of depressing."

"I mean, before, no one cared, either. Would you believe me if I told you no one outside of my teachers or my parents has ever asked? If there's someone to do it for, I think I'd be willing to do anything. Try everything, travel the world, I don't know, maybe just live a little. It'd be worth it if I knew I wouldn't be doing it alone." I smile. "I mean, I think so. I guess that is a little weird."

"It's sweet, Will." Karen says.

"Awww... come here, buddy, you're getting a hug." Amanda wraps me in a death grip, and I've never been so happy to have my ribs crushed in my life. I think I'd let her choke me to death if she didn't back off first. "Whatever happens, I've got your back. Got it?"

"Speaking of having each other's backs. We are going to talk about Ignatius, right? I know we screwed the first mission over, but we can't ignore it forever." Karen says. "What's the plan? Will, have you talked with Shiloh?"

I fidget in my seat, and Garrett flicks the knobs on his controller, even though the TV isn't on. I ask, "Wasn't the point that we'd just hang out together, get to know each other better, I don't know, take a break?"

"We've been taking a break for half a month. We can practice all we want, but the fact still stands that it's a man in a goddamn house and we need to get in there before something awful happens. He could hurt himself, hurt us, who knows what his actual plan is?"

Sure, I think, but what if there was some way we could find out?

"If anyone notices he's acting strangely, he could get turned into the authorities, and they might be able to find the Diosite, especially if he mentions it. What are we going to do if we have to fight the government?" asks Amanda. "Seriously, I don't think the four of us can stage a full coup d'etat. I don't care what powers we have."

"We can't risk that." I say, even though I have no clue what they'd actually do with it- if it's corrupting as Shiloh claims it is, it would inevitably veer towards the negative, but would it? Do I trust Shiloh? Should I?

Karen echoes my own thoughts, "Because Shiloh said we couldn't?"

"Do you want to take Ignatius out or not, Karen?" Garrett asks.

Karen pauses, but she shakes her head. "I- I mean, I'll do it, but I'm just saying, when it's in our position, why are we just deciding that Shiloh's plan is in our best interests?"

"I trust him," I lie, "and I trust that the Diosite is dangerous." Okay, that's less of a lie. I can feel it in my pocket right now, so cold it burns the skin beneath the fabric.

Are you dangerous, then, Will? asks Shiloh, at the back of my mind.

Of course he's listening.

"Fine. So what are we going to do about it?" asks Karen.

Amanda says, "It's pretty simple. We bust down the door this time, Will uses his abilities to sense the thing out- you can do that, right, Will?"

"I... think so?" I know my ability to sense the crystal is stronger than theirs, but by what increment, I have no clue.

"People will notice the door being blown down though. If we fail again, just a hypothetical here, what do we do then?" Karen asks.

"If we need to go at it again, we'll use the back door instead. His neighborhood borders the woods, so we should be able to sneak in through there." I say, thankful my intrusive Google Earth-ing has paid off.

"This is so messed up." Garrett murmurs.

"I'm not thrilled about breaking into a man's house either, but hey, sometimes a goat ferret gives you powers and tells you you need to break into the house of a real-life anime villain in order to prevent the end of the world." Amanda reasons.

"Doesn't feel like a real adventure, does it?" Karen asks.

"I think the powers are pretty cool. Kind of like a comic book," I muse.

"Sure, but not only are we not in a comic book, we don't even get a comic book plot. We're crawling through a suburban jungle to steal an item out of a man's house. You don't think Shiloh could've set us up against some robots to fight, or some secret underground league of villains with hamfisted philosophy, or an alien invasion, or something?" Garrett asks.

"I don't think we can choose? At least this is sufficiently less likely to cause the end of life as we know it, right?" With a smile, which is probably just as faked as I think it is, I add, "And I'll talk to Shiloh about this. All of it. See if I can get some answers."

"Thanks, Will. Good to know we've got you on our side." Karen gives me a thumbs up.

"Great. Now can we play video games? You two are seriously bumming me out."

"Oh, we're bumming you out? Mister 'Wow, why can't we have an alien invasion instead?'" Karen says.

"WELL," I announce, loudly as I can, "Video games it is."

I'm surprised by how willing they are to go along with it. Worse, I can see that they're still watching me even as we exchange controllers and decide if we want to play creative or survival mode for Minecraft. They can't possibly expect me to know what to do next, can they?

But I do.

The moonstone burns cold in my pocket, and I begin to formulate a plan. 

(A/N: This week is make-ups week, so I'll be making up for previous schedule failings by posting every day. All stories will update at their planned times (Deja Vu for Mon/Fri, TSBS for Wed/Sat, and WTRB for Sun), but there will also be this update and another Where The River Bends update on Thursday. After that I go to camp, get back from camp, go to another camp, get back, go to the beach immediately afterwards. HOWEVER I'm really proud to say I actually have a queue and should be able to keep to my five updates weekly even over vacation! As always, your comments and votes mean the world to me as I continue to undertake these huge word averages (often as much as 6-10K daily) to keep up and work on personal projects. If you enjoy my stories, drop a PM, drop some comments, or tell a friend!)