Remi was certain Archie had made that last sound strictly for comic effect, as a disembodied voice was crazy enough; it did not need an onomatopoeic exit sound. More out-of-place noises followed this: the sound of an old film projector whirring to life, the return of the munching sound, and his right arm burned. It was death by a thousand paper cuts here. The overlay had dimmed slightly, blending a bit more with the world than simply floating above it.

  Okay, yup, this was most certainly a full-on psychotic hallucination. But never had Remi had a dream that seemed to look back at him. This felt more real that a dream. His blood was real. He had heard some people say that if you died in a dream; you died for real. He’d always thought that was bullshit. Then the folder chopped again. His gut flipped. The door was thirty feet away and across the room. He needed to get out of here, if he could just get there. His eyes widened trying to focus. The door was gone. He could have sworn it was right there.

  Instinctively, he had frozen, and apparently there was no flight. Which left him with only one other option.

  He spied it. His stapler. It was farcical, fool’s gold-plated, like it had once belonged to Midas. Remi had first spied it in the staff room, swapping it with his standard-issue one, stealing it like a magpie who spotted a shiny bauble. He shoock it head. He knew he should be focus on what was happening, but his brain, his personal Brutus, had its own ideas.

  The day he stole the stapler had been almost prophetically bad. Remi had taken it to enhance a bit of overacted standup that he had performed in classes for years. During the reading of Macbeth’s porter scene, he always grabbed his stapler. As he read the lines “it sets him on,” he would flip it open into a straight line. And then, as he read “and takes him off,” he would release the tension, letting the top half fall forward on the hinge. “Stand to,” snap to attention, “and not stand to,” flopping limpness. It always got a roar of laughter.

  So it was with this in mind that Remi had grabbed the stapler, as the sparkling exterior could only enhance his performance. It was in the middle of the last snap to attention that Principal Eastly had walked in. He had let it droop to a close, not in counterpoint to the line, but because of the displeasure on Frank’s face. The kids might have been laughing, but Eastly was most certainly not. Upon reflection, the joke had aged out of its punchline, like children do their shoes. Remi retired the joke but not the stapler. He did not blame the stapler, it wasn’t to blame; he still kept it on the corner of his desk.

  So it was with the skill of a man, practiced in the art of wielding a stapler as a weapon, that Remi yanked his arms free from the folders and grabbed his Exstaplar. He flipped it open, “stand to,” and then he slammed it downwards, staple fangs plummeting towards the first folder. He made contact. THWAP! THWAP! THWAP! Remi pounded the staples through the folder with his free hand, pinning it to the desk. He raised his weapon again and then brought it down again. “And not stand to!” THWAP! THWAP! THWAP! Bulletin boarding the second file to his desk. They twitched, but were obviously down for the count.

  That thought was a bit too zealous, because it was then that the rest of the stack moved. He was not sure if it shifted because of the vibrations of the staple slams, or if, through some internal force, but with almost sports replay slowness, they slid towards the edge of the desk. They did not scatter, but poured over the side, streaming towards the centre of the room. It was panic that made him do it. A reflexive grasp to maintain order, to catch the stacks before they spilled away entirely. The opposite happened. As he grasped, he pushed something, not physically, but mentally somehow. The blinking icon at the bottom of his view seemed to register his gesture and stopped blinking.

  What happened next was entirely unexpected.

  A shockwave burst outward. The loose pages flew, scattering like a flock of ducks launching from the surface of a lake when surprised by a rifle blast. And like ducks travelling south for the winter, the papers drew into formation. Spinning faster and faster, in tightening concentric circles towards the centre of the room, morphing into a terrible shape.

  From the mass of spinning stationary, a bug-like creature emerged, as one piece laid itself on top of others. Folders splayed open, forming back joints, legs twisting and unfolding from paper. It would have been beautiful, like aerial origami, except there was no graceful hummingbird at the end of this transformation of coiling and folding. Instead, back arching, razor teeth of paperclips gleaming, a paper forged centipede reared in the centre of Remi’s classroom.

  Before anything could move, everything froze.

  [System Message]

  Narrative Conflux Class C Detected

  LOCATION: Homeroom

  ROOM STATUS: LOCKED ENVIRONMENT

  NARRATIVE PRESSURE: Escalating

  RECOMMENDATIONS: SURVIVE!

  Current XP: 0/100

  [HP: 24/30 | MP: 11/15]

  The holographic text was then replaced with the AI’s voice, but it had a strange performative tone to it. A bit too fast, too oily, to be genuine.

  Now, this here is a Papyropede: an amalgamation of essays, rubrics, corrections and broken dreams. At 9.3 feet of pure paper power, this chaotic blend of looseleaf, cardboard, rusted staples, and pieces of scissors stolen from your desk is revved up and ready to cut. One bite and you're not just reconsidering your last sentence; you’re in for 6 hours in a walk-in clinic waiting for a tetanus shot. How does it move? With articulating joints, slithering with a grace that wants to bring you into the fold. And can it corner? Absol-toodle-ootly! It’s just you who’s getting cornered. And the best part—surround sound.

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  As if on cue, a screech erupted, like a thousand generations of chalk scraping blackboards. SCREEEAAATTTTCCCCCCCHHHHHH! Remi would have covered his throbbing ears, but his arms remained frozen.

  This genuine bureaucratic construct is certified CHX (Crucible Human eXterminator), fully equipped to shred you like a stack of marked tests. We could have given you a dopey doppelg?nger, a flea-bitten wolf, or even some goblin that is dimmer than a burnt-out lightbulb. But this is so much more fun. For your first fight, you can tussle with the only mid-tier narrative monster that measures, marks, and maims.

  So what do you say, champ? Ready to see if you make the grade? Thought so. There’s no choice when you ride this syllabus. Welcome to the story, Remi.

  With that, the world unfroze, and Remi was face to face with the first literal fight for his life. His vision tunnelled as his pulse drummed behind his eyes.

  His classroom was fairly open, with student desks in two regimented columns and rows, arranged in a double-horseshoe pattern with a gap in the middle. This created an open space, which Remi had created to facilitate open discussions, but in this moment, it was where the Papyroped had formed.

  These desks, as well as two additional empty desks that Remi had positioned to face the class, formed what was essentially a box, with a few gaps. A whiteboard and data board ran along the back wall, their surfaces permanently etched with dry erase markers that never seemed to fully erase. A narrow tray ran the length, littered with pens, a meter stick and a few comical rubber chickens. The exit was in the farthest corner of the room from where he was currently located.

  That Remi’s classroom was essentially a gladiatorial pit ringed with desks was not his biggest problem. His largest and most immediate concern was he currently was trapped behind his desk, which he had nestled in the corner. Walled in on two sides, and with the desk in front of him, he had only one narrow alley of escape, which made attacking Remi easy, but escaping problematic.

  The Papyropede skittered towards him, using the open space and his confinement to its advantage. It slid under the student desks and reared, putting its hideous, toothy face eye level with him. It snapped forward before he could even think to move. Luckily, it could not reach him, blocked by the desk. The desk blocked its lunge, so it gnashed its teeth helplessly inches from Remi’s nose. His only weapons were the pen in his hand and his golden stapler, both of which he threw at the monster’s face. And both of which proved ineffective as projectiles. He needed to get out of here!

  He reacted without thought and proper planning. Remi used his feet planted on the ground to spin his chair left, posting his back to his avenue of escape. He brought his feet to the wall and pushed off, shooting himself backwards on the chair’s wheels. The momentum of the roll not only freed him from his confinement but also allowed him to move to the centre of the room, pressed against the whiteboards. The lean of the chair made him feel like he was falling, and Remi was shocked that he didn’t end up ass over teakettle.

  He was not sure how other people would react in this situation. His reaction went like this. “Shit and Fuck!” But he sadly did not have time to deal with the existential recoil of this moment. Instead, he had to focus. He needed something to help keep the monster at bay. Not Mana Pulse again, as that might just split it in two. He had no actual information about this creature. So as he leapt to his feet, he grabbed the only weapon-like object near him—his trusty meter stick that was sitting on the marker ledge immediately to his left. With any luck, he could dance around it and escape through the door.

  The Papyropede was not one to wait around; it dropped to the ground, moving quickly towards Remi in a serpentine wave along the floor and cutting off his avenue of escape. Was he going to hit it? He hesitated. Maybe if he stayed still this nightmare would collapse. He even closed his eyes for a moment. Please wake up!

  Could he do this? When he woke up this morning and considered attacking his marking pile, this was not what he imagined would be happening. But the clicking of feet on tile remained. This was happening, and it was time to get shit done, so he opened his eyes before the paperwork beast could raise itself again. Remi released all the pent-up heebie-geebies of countless spider encounters. His muscles contracted as if on their own, and he swung the meter stick downwards. Wood whistled through the air, and drove into the corrugated pulp, smacking into the creature like it was wet newsprint, releasing a puff of dry-ink dust as the room rang with a crisp THWACK! The Papyropede scuttled sideways, its shadow flickering across the peeling laminate.

  It was only then that he noticed a slight health bar had appeared over the monster’s head. Similar to his own, it was red, and where Remi’s was full, this one was already showing a small reduction. Likely from the stapler and metrical injuries. The critter’s HP was at approximately 80%, and it hissed in indignation.

  [CODEX ENTRY UNLOCKED - First Combat Trigger]

  BASIC ATTACK: Unsure

  PROCESSING…

  Well, no one could have figured out this would happen. You were not designed for violence. But this world rarely asks permission.

  PROCESSING COMPLETE.

  Combat triggers within the Crucible are rarely symbolic—they are literal. First contact with danger catalyzes class functions, unlocks foundational spells, and begins narrative stat recording. A character's reaction determines the first shape of their survival.

  WARNING: Failed to perform the expected class behaviour. Adaptive protocol queued.

  [NEW SPELL: Strike]

  TYPE: Melee Attack (Basic)

  ACQUISITION TRIGGER: Huh?

  COST: 0 MP

  SCALING: Primary - Strength (STR), Secondary - Intelligence (INT).

  DESCRIPTION: A direct physical attack using the caster’s equipped weapon or bare hands.

  Strike channels basic kinetic force through the body into a targeted blow, delivering straightforward damage without elemental or narrative augmentation. Reliable, immediate, and essential for survival in close-quarters engagements.