“I am hopelessly lost,” Jay said five minutes later, standing in the jungle.
He’d been walking the path around the resort’s swimming pool, where kids frolicked and a man played steel drums. The next thing Jay knew, the pool was nowhere to be seen and the jungle had surrounded him.
It was Jay’s own fault; the walk hadn’t cleared his mind at all. He couldn’t stop thinking about how similar it felt to not have his powers and to not know the reasons his mother, from whom he’d inherited those powers, gave him up. I guess they’re both about loss, he thought. I’ll never get either one back.
Jay paused and strained his ears, trying to hear some sound that could lead him back to the hotel. But there was nothing—no children splashing in the pool, no tropical music from the steel drum player. There was no way he could contact Nya or the hotel.
Jay turned in a circle. “All these plants look alike,” he moaned. Then he gulped. “I wonder if venomous frogs are hiding under them, just waiting to pounce on me and make me part of their all-they-can-eat buffet…. How embarrassing would that be? Surviving the Crystal King only to be taken out by a toad with a rumbly tummy…”
He took a deep breath. “It’s okay, Jay,” he told himself. “Your imagination is just running away with you. You can’t be that far from the hotel, and you haven’t been walking that long…It only seems like forever. You’ll just look up, see where the sun is, and you’ll know what time it is and what direction you’re heading in.” Jay looked up through the canopy of leaves overhead, but the leaves were all he could see. He groaned, then realized something. “You know you’re on an island. If you walk in a straight line, sooner or later you’ll come to a coastline, and you’ll just follow it around the island until you reach the hotel. And you won’t think about hungry, ninja-eating frogs.” Jay nodded confidently to himself and started walking. Nothing bad was going to happen.
“This is bad,” Jay said five minutes later, finding himself trapped in a thicket of thornbushes.
And the four minutes before that hadn’t been great, either: Jay had stepped on a pile of fallen leaves and found they covered a deep hole with slick, muddy sides that proved tricky to crawl out of; he’d walked through a cloud of gnats, who stung him approximately four million times; and he’d surprised two wild boars with very sharp tusks, who had then chased him…into the thornbushes.
“Okay,” he mused, “at least the boars are gone. Now the key is to stay calm.”
Jay stayed calm for about three seconds, then thrashed like mad, only to become more and more entangled. Finally, he stopped, breathing hard.
“I think I’ll take a nice walk,” he sneered, exaggerating his own voice. “Maybe it’ll help me clear my head. That’s the last time I listen to myself….”
But then he heard something approaching.
“Are those footsteps?” he wondered aloud, then frowned. “I hope they’re not boar-hoof-steps.”
Then he heard the sound again. Definitely footsteps!
“Help!” he cried out. “Over here!”
Jay heard the footsteps speed up, coming closer.
“That’s it! This way!” Jay urged. A moment later, he heard something hacking through thick vines, and thanks to his imagination running wild once more, he suddenly worried that he’d stumbled into the territory of a fiendish fugitive who’d been hiding on this remote island with nothing but a large machete for company. But finally, the last branches between Jay and his rescuer were removed, and Jay found himself staring into the face of…not a bloodthirsty criminal, but—
“Unagami?”
The formerly threatening artificial intelligence from the Prime Empire video game, now in the form of a young boy, folded up the walking stick he’d been using to clear brush and put it in his kids’ backpack, which was decorated with star fighters and big-headed aliens.
“Hi, Jay!” Unagami said, waving at Jay cheerfully. “Wow! How crazy is it that we’re both here on the same island, in the same jungle, face to face?”
“I promise to try to figure that out after you help me get out of these thorns,” Jay grunted.
As Unagami removed snagged branches from Jay’s sleeves, Jay looked at the boy with confusion. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Well,” Unagami began, “since the last you saw me—”
“When you looked totally different and were the vengeful ruler of Prime Empire, trying to destroy me and my friends,” Jay reminded him.
“That’s true,” Unagami agreed sheepishly. “But I’ve grown up a lot since then.”
Jay raised an eyebrow. Either Unagami ignored him or didn’t notice.
“Anyway, I’ve been spending a lot of time with my father, the man who created me, Milton Dyer. We’ve been getting to know each other and becoming a family. I’ve never felt so happy, so…complete!”
“Good for you,” Jay growled, remembering his own situation.
“But I’ve also been developing a new game that happens in a hidden city in a jungle on a remote island,” said Unagami, smiling proudly. “I’m here doing research! There are rumors of a city like that right here on this island! Do you want to help me look for it?”
“I guess it’s better than getting lost again trying to find my way back to the hotel,” Jay grumbled.
“What did you say?” Unagami asked.
“Nothing,” Jay answered quickly. He knew Nya would be starting to wonder where he was. But finding a lost city sounded like a lot of fun…certainly more than thinking about his inner emptiness.
“I’d love to help you look,” he told Unagami. “Thanks.”
“Awesome!” Unagami exclaimed. “Before we get going, I just want to call my dad and tell him I ran into you! He’ll be so surprised!”
Jay watched as Unagami took a tablet device from his backpack and turned it on. An icon of the boy’s face appeared, blinking, as it booted up. “I call this the Unaga-Meeting Pad! It makes calls from anywhere to anywhere else and it’s powered by our planet’s magnetic field! I invented it yesterday! Pretty awesome, right?”
“Gee,” Jay replied sarcastically. “Getting to know your dad, creating a new game, revolutionizing communications…What are you doing in all your spare time, Unagami? Figuring out why the chicken crossed the road?”
“No,” Unagami replied, dialing. “I started to, but then I realized it wasn’t any of my business.”
Jay thought about that, then had to nod. It was a good answer.
A moment later, the holographic face of Milton Dyer appeared. “Hi, Dad! It’s so good to see you! You’ll never guess who I’m with right now!”
So much for not thinking about my inner emptiness, Jay thought gloomily.