Chaos slowly opened her eyes to see that they were still in the room with the resonator and that someone was brushing some of her hair out of her face, it seemed that her hair tie had snapped while she had been eaten.

She groaned and she tried to use her arms to help her sit up probably, only for them to give up on her, causing her to yelp and to alert her companion that she was awake.

"Are you okay, Kid?" Jack asked her, helping her to sit up probably.

"Jack?" Chaos asked, looking for her backpack.

"Yeah, it's me." He handed over her backpack and she pulled out her glasses case. She opened it and she put her glasses back on, blinking a few times as her vision corrected itself, allowing her to see the Irishman. "How are you feeling?"

"A bit sick, dizzy but otherwise, I'm just fine, apart from some questions that I want answered."

"Fire away!"

"Well, it's mainly these that I'm worried about." Chaos pulled up her left sleeve to reveal the markings on her skin. "Are these permanent?"

"Kind of, you don't have to worry about them but to make a long story short, when you're brought into a game, you create what Mark, me and the others have taken to calling a data shell." Jack told her. "This data shell is your save file and no matter what game you go to, the file is transferred with you."

"So, we're not really trapped in this game?"

"We are actually but as beings of flesh and blood, we can't actually do anything..."

"Wait! Are you saying that these data shells are our Avatars?"

"Exactly, these markings are permanent for the Avatar version of you but they do not get transferred over to your flesh and blood body but that does not mean that you can be reckless..."

"Because the physics of video games don't apply to us right? We can still die and be injured, right?"

"Yeah, Mark, me and the rest of us had a few close calls until we figured that out but you don't ever really know if you have to worry about that, because sometimes, they can apply to us but it's best to act like every game can kill you."

"So, basically, treat everything like we're still in the real world?"

"Yeah..."

"This kinda reminds me of an anime that I watched, one that involved a system similar to what we are now for it's main characters... Wait! Hold on a minute! What happened after I got eaten?!"

"Well... while you was being Trico food, I was running from the soldiers behind the gate."

"Oh, those things... I'm not looking forward to my first encounter with them..."

"They're not that bad kid, if you know what you're doing, anyway, I think that you know what I did."

"Yeah." Chaos nodded her head. "You used the crawlspace and opened the gate with the switch but Jack, that's the limit of what I know about this games storyline. I'm blind beyond this point. All that I know about what's to come is more Tricos and more of that armour. That's it."

"Well, it's better than nothing." Jack got up. "Come on, let's go."

"Does Trico know that you're not num nums?"

" Yeah, I taught him that after he threw you up." Jack laughed.

"He threw me up?"

"Right on top of me." Jack said as Trico started to wake up.

Chaos started to panic. "Right on top of you Jack?!" She yelped. "I'm sorry!"

"There's nothing to apologise for, I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, don't worry about it, it wasn't your fault."

"Okay." Chaos got up. "So, where do we go from here?"

"Through the gate."

And with that, Jack led his party through the gate but above them, something or to be more honest, someone was watching them.

--------------------------

Anti watched them walk away, with that feathered thing following them. He sneered, they didn't know what awaited them, what he had planned to do to them.

He was looking forward to this, he knew what he need to do to break Jack's heart and he was going to enjoy every single second of it.

Jack had no idea of what, he, Anti had done and why he had brought the girl into this. This was going to be so much fun... right?

But, why did he want to stop his plan now and let them go? To set them free? To fix what he had broken?

He sneered again. He shouldn't care for anyone. He was a bad ass demon that could do whatever he wanted and nobody could and would stop him.

So, why did his heart hurt?