"No, dude, look," Alex leaned over the Carcassonne game and pointed at the tile Brody was trying to place. "I told you, they have to make sense. So the river can't just end up in the grass here."

Two hours was the current tally of Brody not fading away to the unspace. After searching for Mary and the gang and realizing they weren't home, he'd showered and summoned his [Illusory Copy]. Since then, they'd split the soggy but still delicious funnel cake and were now on their third game of Carcassonne in Alex's room. He even threw some Blue Wednesday onto a crappy radio with [Audio Player]. Thankfully, Brody approved of the game and music, and thank the System for that. There was no way they could be friends if he didn't enjoy Blue Wednesday.

The damn clone, however, couldn't grasp all the rules of the meeples or the tiles. Or maybe he didn't care. He was damn good at Farmers though. Had even beaten Alex on his second ever game of Carc.

Brody growled and thought for a moment. Then he placed the tile to screw up Alex's best unclosed castle.

"You're a dick, you know that?" He jabbed a finger into his smug face. "It's unwritten rules that you can't screw up my stuff. You've broken the sacred Carcassonne code and now there's no holding back."

Brody only shrugged, smiling, and sucked down the last bit of the confectionary.

"Mmmmm," Brody moaned at the cake. Even sitting in wet cardboard, it had been damn delicious. Alex was just happy to see his better-looking clone kicking back and enjoying himself.

Now, if he would stop putting his shoes on the bed…

He'd tried to explain his experience within the unspace. About the infinite tidal wave of informational packets from other…realities? Universes? Turned out, Brody's inability to talk made him a pretty good listener. Not particularly useful in the brainstorming department, but even perfect carbon copies had their limitations.

Someone slammed the front door open hard enough to send Terry, his green dragon cultivation bong, tumbling and spilling into a pile of clothes. Heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs.

Brody raised an eyebrow as Alex stopped placing his tile. Problem was, it only sounded like one person. And only one person stomped like that around the house.

The door flew open and cracked against the wall. Dried, previously water damaged paint chipped into the air.

Mary stood in the frame with wild hair, breathing like she'd sprinted all the way home. Her fists were clenched at her sides as she stared at the two sprawled on the bed with game pieces.

"Where is she?" She demanded. "Where is Aria?"

"I thought she was with you?" He answered. "Came home and none of you were home." he saw the panicked look at his answer as she turned her face down the hall. Then she sprinted off.

Past the bookshelf that no longer rustled with Harold's haunting, Mary threw herself up to the third floor. Brody caught Alex's eye with the same raised eyebrow and a head tilt towards the door.

"Yeah," He got up. "Let's go help."

When they got upstairs, they saw Mary tearing apart her room and calling for Aria to come out. Throw blankets and faulty retro electronics sailed in every direction as she searched for the drone.

"Aria," she said nervously, but with a tinge of fury. "If this is a game, it's over. You can come out now. No more hiding. Aria?"

Alex couldn't see the doll. Or Beepy and Zippy. Her room was empty except for all the random crap and actual garbage Mary surrounded herself with.

Brody nudged Alex, which spurred him into action. "She uh…missing? Where's the last place you saw her?"

Mary spun to face them. "I told them to take her home! I said, Beepy and Zippy, make sure you bring Aria home safe and sound. No side quests," She looked around her room once more and groaned.

"These fucking drones!" She yelled before blaming herself. "I just wanted some time alone with Jemin. How hard is it to bring a child home for drones that can fly?! Doesn't anyone have any damn respect for their elders anymore? Fuck!"

"Can you like, ping them or something?" Alex asked, trying to calm her down. "I remember when Zippy was young you could?"

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"Yeah," she sucked her teeth. "I can. But they can also block the ping if they want to."

"And they're--,"

"Alex, stop asking stupid questions and help me find them!"

After several more minutes of abject panic on Mary's part, which only stopped when Brody picked her up by her shoulders to shake her, the trio left home to search for three rambunctious drones. The question was, how on earth were they supposed to find them?

"These leaves look like dead birds." Aria stopped her skip to pick up another fallen leaf.

Holding it up with both hands, she inspected it closely. Then she crumpled it in her tiny hands and laughed maniacally.

"See?" She looked up at her brothers who she followed deeper into the underpass. "Now it's a hundred leaves!"

She skipped to catch up with them.

Under some bridge in Toronto was their destination. Traffic thundered ahead constantly, but it was quiet underneath. No one came down there. Not people, anyways. A few Monsters did call it home, though.

An amalgamation of fused water bottles perched near a leaking pipe and wrote itself poems. It liked to hide when someone happened upon the place in the dense brush. Nearby, a family of mice made their home in a giant plastic box and ran a smithy out of an enchanted toaster. They hammered out tiny armour and knives to sell in the many mice markets of Toronto.

But Beepy and Zippy hadn't risked Mary's wrath just to take Aria sightseeing through the city's many undersides. They meant to share something with their sister and bring her into the fold. Maybe experiment too, depending on how she reacted. Zippy had shared his thoughts on the matter previously and Beepy had agreed. They wouldn't ask for her help. Aria must present a mindset of duty first before her involvement.

Zippy hefted a metal pipe in the middle of a giant prickly plant out of the way and allowed her to scurry underneath. She giggled and caught up with Beepy.

At the back, buried deep under the bridge, was a miniature shipping crate with a heavy chain wrapped around it. Holding up the chain was a giant lock the size of Aria.

"YOU HAVE TURNED OFF THE PING?" Beepy asked as the cars roared overhead. "IT IS IMPORTANT THAT MARY DOES NOT FIND THIS PLACE. THAT NO ONE DOES."

Aria smiled at her brothers. She was excited to be brought along. But they didn't play along with her charms, and if anything, were staring at her intensely.

"Yeah, turned it off," She answered and leaned over to point at the sealed crate. "What's that? That where we're going?"

Zippy turned to Beepy and let out a quick burst of beeps and boops. Aria couldn't make out any of it. Not the words anyway. No one could understand Zippy besides Beepy. But she didn't need to.

Aria was excellent at reading people, or robots, or whatever her brothers technically were. The way Zippy intoned and moved his mechanical hands around told her that he was expressing concern at their decision. Behind his electronic speech, Aria could see the impatient twitching and the tilt in his head that told of shame. Zippy hated not being able to speak directly. Hated having to let Beepy translate.

Beepy listened to Zippy, nodded once, and started walking towards her. She could already hear it coming. The long, dramatic speech that he was about to deliver with poses and quotes pulled from some article her brother undoubtedly read. Now that she thought about it, she should really ask them how to get onto the internet. Mary wouldn't let her. Stupid Mary. Always stopping her from doing what she wanted.

As the first word of a rousing dialogue toned out, she picked up on Zippy's energy. The flying bot with that dangerous knife wished he could deliver speeches like his brother.

"You know," she said, leaning out of Beepy's shadow, "you don't need to talk, Zippy."

Beepy's pointed finger and lifting chin paused at her interruption. Zippy tilted his head as he looked at her.

"You already say things all the tiiiiime. Talking's mostly noise people make when they don't know how to show who they are. You do show who you are. Help me, help Mary, and you're always willing to listen. That's what people mean when they talk about being good, right? Not just saying it. Doing it. Duh."

Beepy clanked his hand against his metal chest at Aria's delivery. The yellow tinted drone looked down to the ground dramatically, before nodding to himself and turning to his brother. Zippy was still staring at Aria.

"IT IS TRUE, ZIPPY," Beepy said while placing a hand on his shoulder. "I LEARN OUR PATH OF DUTY FROM YOUR ACTIONS AND YOUR WAYS. AND IF I MUST BE YOUR VOICE, THEN IT IS MY HONOUR TO BE LEARN FROM YOUR MEANING."

Zippy turned his head to stare at Beepy, and both brothers stared into each other's cameras. They were connected by their Cores, closer than just brothers, and knew everything about one another.

"You guys are weird," Aria giggled and skipped past them towards the sealed crate. She kicked it with a little foot. "Now open it up. Show me, show me, show me!" She kicked the crate each time.

The two brothers communicated through their connection. Aria's manner was presenting exactly how they had hoped.

Opening his front hatch, Beepy held up an ancient skeleton key that was covered in runes. Zippy had a copy stashed away in a hidden compartment on his leg. The Relic had cost a fortune of Credits, but the brothers had been hard at work and had simply traded some of their captured treasures at a local magical locksmith. Two thousand Credits was a lot, but the safety of their hide out was one of their top priorities.

Beepy inserted the key into the slot. The metal clicked as the teeth aligned, clicking into place two dozen times. Hidden gears whirred inside the lock, and the entire front face twisted. Segments slid and rotated and flip-flopped places. The runes glowed blue and rearranged themselves into new patterns, metal scraping against metal while the traffic covered the sound, until there was a single clean click.

The chain dropped to the ground, and Zippy stepped forward to open the nine square foot crate. It too had cost a fortune, but Beepy and Zippy wanted to make sure the mice blacksmith family were paid their due. Monsters had to scrape by enough as it was.

Zippy pulled the door open and exposed the interior of the crate and revealed the interior.

"ARIA, WELCOME TO OUR SECRET CLAN HIDEOUT. WE ARE THE PALADRONES," Beepy said while nodding towards Zippy. "HE CAME UP WITH THE NAME."

Registering a new Clan had not cost a fortune. The one hundred Credit fee at the Clan Hall in the Eaton Center was well worth it.

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