It's a body, Joshua realized.

  Jophiel mentioned feeling… something, in her Magical Pony Radar earlier, deeper in the ravine, but he figured it was a bug or something.

  If it was a zombie or skeleton, honestly he wouldn't care. He'll leave them alone, especially since a certain Pink Horse in his party is one cut away from turning anything in her general area into goo piles.

  So no thanks.

  But as Jophiel swept her light over the area, he noticed what the MPR (patent pending) was picking up.

  A body. Which is… odd, considering her psychic sense can't really pick up “dead” material, even zombies and skeletons have some sort of cognitive ability.

  So why was…

  “...give me a light, girl”

  Standing at a distance, he watches Jophiel’s horn ignite as her ball of light moves to hover above the corpse.

  Yeah, it's a corpse. Muted gray flesh rotten like an old carpet, bits of its skull poking out through its dry hair.

  Joshua squints his eyes at it.

  “This… doesn't seem real” He mutters to himself.

  “I* *ill be ok**...”

  The soft reassurances from his companion confuses him, turning to the mare he raises an eyebrow.

  “No, I mean literally. It's certainly a corpse but it looks… I don't know… staged? It's like how a corpse is shown on those CSI shows”

  Jophiel raises an eyebrow back, this time she is confused, but instead of asking, she closes her eyes and her horn brightens slightly. Joshua feels a psychic prod in his mind, a light query for entrance.

  Gabriel, contrasting with Jophiel's rather serene calmness, is bouncing in pce. Joshua wonders if this is just Horse Magic (patent also pending), or that she's just really light considering she's technically not a solid object.

  “Oooooo I know this! It's those shows with the meanie bad guys, right? I saw one about a guy who made clocks and the cool guy is like ‘looks like… he's all out of time’ and takes off his sungsses and its like ‘YYEEEEAAAAAHHHHH!!!’” She mimics the sound of intense guitar strums, poorly.

  Joshua is too busy doing the psychic equivalent of stumbling to his front door after he hears someone knocking.

  He's only done it once before, but it takes a moment to allow Jophiel into his mind.

  Jophiel then, surprisingly, does the psychic equivalent of tripping over the door gap and facepnts into the psychic equivalent of the floor.

  “You good, love?”

  “For*he**...”

  Jophiel chuffs in light shame, must be embarrassing for a psychic type to fumble at their craft.

  Looking around for a moment, be crouches down and presses foreheads with the mare, avoiding her horn.

  He can feel her attention at the memories he “directs” her too, of those shitty Halloween props and other shows that tend to pretty up corpses.

  The connection closes after she sees enough, and it looks like she's understanding his confusion, as she looks back at the corpse with a wary gaze.

  Joshua tries waving a hand to have his system direct its gaze towards it.

  But instead of a name like [CORPSE] popping up, a UI appears.

  A smaller set of grid squares he would see when he opens a chest or his inventory. It's only four squares, and it has… loot.

  Three rotten flesh, two bones (he'll actually take these, bonemeal is nice), and the st two leaves him speechless for a bit.

  Holy.

  Fucking.

  Shit.

  Joshua’s hands shake as he channels the instincts of whatever Romanian ancestors he most likely doesn't have and snatches that shit as fast as he can.

  He almost cries.

  You know what? He does.

  For every single drop of American blood in his body is screaming out in joy, he can fucking feel the spirits of the forefathers smiling down at him.

  Finally, finally.

  He feels it.

  It makes him giddy, as the feeling of the greatest middle finger to this nightmare world begins to grow in his mind.

  “Oh yes”

  He feels Jophiel shiver at the sheer visceral of his voice.

  [GUNPOWDER]

  …

  “I've got to remember about the signal”

  Joshua's smile doesn't leave his face, even if he (embarrassingly) forgot about the signal that Gabriel's suit managed to track down from the radio broadcast.

  Who cares?

  Guns.

  He's finally going to get a gun.

  Would Jophiel like a gun?

  The creature born from unspeakable violence, the White Horse herself, snaps her head towards him as she catches the stray thought.

  “YES”

  That is the clearest he's ever heard her.

  Is her excitement for extreme violence making her better at telepathy?

  That's… very on brand.

  Time to focus.

  What's the priority?

  Getting out of this nightmare world, obviously.

  So… smaller scale.

  Build a base to protect himself and, more importantly, his horsethings.

  Build a navigation device (or if you're not a nerd: a GPS) to head to Ace’s coordinates.

  Check out the broadcast, he actually knows where that one is thanks to Gabriel's suit.

  There's also that… third thing he found on the corpse.

  He was not wrong with it being “fake”. It was definitely a rotting body, but it was more of a generated “prop” by the world. For some reason, Jophiel was able to pick it up psychically until he checked the loot.

  He's… not sure how to feel about that.

  Knowing that this world can just put actual human corpses as props, it makes him wary.

  “What if Ace is just another generation? A prop?”

  Confusion.

  He shakes his head to clear his thoughts, looking down at the mare. They're making their way back up from the mines. Stone steps echoing through the torch lit tunnels.

  “Don't mind me, love. Just paranoid”

  Expin.

  That was a bit of a harder feeling to transte, he's kinda surprised he managed to understand it at all.

  “It's really nothing, Joey. This pce is just getting to me I guess”

  She looks ahead for a moment. Joshua's confusion grows as he sees her think to herself. Her eyes narrow, and a feeling of agitation comes through the psychic link.

  Jophiel looks up at him, with a determined weight in her gaze.

  Frustration.

  Expin.

  “Jophiel, it's really nothing”

  Denial.

  Disappointment.

  Disappointment..?

  He stops.

  “Okay, what's going on?”

  The link widens a tad, the same broken monotone voice coming through like an old radio.

  “Yo* ar* ups*t”

  “I've been upset, Jophiel”

  “Wh* won* yo* t*** abo** *t?”

  “Because it won't do anything, I can't just air every… doubt? Fear? I have! No one wants to hear that”

  “...”

  “I do…”

  The grounding feeling of conviction that comes from the link sobers him for a moment. He feels guilt at feeling mildly annoyed at her prying.

  “You… don't deserve that, love. You aren't my therapist, that would just be… fucked up”

  “Yo* ar* *y partn** *or life”

  “*y belo***”

  Joshua can't deny he felt a really warm feeling in his chest at that.

  “You don't need to hear my bullshit though…”

  He sees her nod.

  Agreement.

  Then, she stares straight at him. Dark eyes ced in blue meets his golden.

  “Bu* I wa** to”

  They don't move for a few moments, Joshua stunned in pce at the raw feelings he's being showered in through the link following such a decration.

  It seems… he's been underestimating the bond Jophiel is setting to establish.

  She doesn't want a good trainer.

  She wants Joshua.

  Including the annoying, paranoid bits.

  Joshua chuckles slightly.

  He crouches down and cups the side of her cheek, which she leans into.

  “Sorry about that, love”

  An eye roll is all he gets.

  “It's odd… for someone like me. I go from having almost no bonds to having a life-long one”

  “Yo** moth**?”

  “She's my mom, she doesn't count”

  Jophiel chuffs slightly.

  “So…”

  Joshua gets up, patting Gabriel's head (gss dome) because she's been quietly pouting at the ck of attention this whole time.

  “Hope you're ready to hear me compin about useless shit”

  “Ca** wai*”

  They step out of the mines, just as Joshua is about to send his thoughts through the link, he stiffens at the sight of something beyond the fence.

  Tall.

  Green.

  With an angry ass face.

  Oh.

  That's a fucking Creeper.

  John Noter: Can't believe it took the goddamn year changing for me to post a new chapter. Lack of ideas is a bitch.