"What's with you?" Saris asked me once we settled into the living room.

The memories of barging in, then being threatened at gunpoint, only to later be arrested was still too fresh of a memory for me to feel welcome here. "Nothing to worry about," I said.

"Xander, if something's bothering you, we should know about it," Demi urged.

I knew they weren't going to let it go and I resolved to tell them the truth, but I was so embarrassed about the terrible start to the cycle that my throat kept closing every time I started to say anything. Still, I had to get past it and talking to my friends would help, "I...started my cycle here. It wasn't great."

"What happened?" Demi put a hand on my knee.

"Well...ahh. I sort of broke into the house and there were people here. They weren't part of the game, but they weren't shades yet. I sort of...got arrested at gunpoint and spent the first night in jail. Anne found me the next morning and got me out."

Demi's hand left me, covering her mouth and I heard her try and fail to contain a laugh. Saris was smiling, not trying to contain it at all, then said, "Why didn't you just leave?"

"Gunpoint, remember?"

Saris nodded and his smile faded slightly, "Yeah. I never told you, but the shades can't kill you."

"They weren't shades yet."

"Doesn't matter," Saris explained. "Well, I suppose they could push a boulder on top of you or something, but for the most part, you can't be hurt by them. The bullet would've just gone through you, no harm done."

"What? That doesn't make any sense."

"It's something weird with the game. I think I told you before, but I think we're in a sort of in-between realm. The shades start with their normal forms because the cycle looks for new people and takes them from their world; at least, that's what I think."

"Whatever. Can we get on with the plan?" My face was hot and I clenched my teeth to keep myself from complaining more. I knew it wasn't Saris' fault for not telling me that people would turn into shades a day or so after showing up at a new location, or that they wouldn't be able to hurt me if they tried. He wanted me to survive the cycle, so he focused on what would kill me, not what couldn't. But I also knew that it wasn't my fault for not knowing all of this. Saris and Demi seemed to think what happened to me was humorous and maybe in the future I would too, but for right now, it was too fresh for me to find funny.

"Right." Saris straightened slightly and looked between us, "How'd it go?"

"We found a decent amount of people and after some coaxing for a few of them, they were all willing to help," Demi said, "but I'm sure we didn't get anywhere near the amount of help we were hoping for."

"Same. People seem to be scarce right now."

"Maybe everyone else is already with Fire King," I said, bringing the mood down.

"I've been thinking the same thing."

"Me too," Demi added.

"Well, there's no use in worrying about that," Saris said, standing up and heading into the kitchen. He returned a few moments later, carrying three glasses of water and handed us each a cup. "We're going to make a stand whether we have an army just as large as his, or if we do it alone. Well, I will anyway. Are you two in?"

Demi and I both nodded. We were committed to this task, same as Saris. Hopefully, we'd have enough allies to contend with Fire King's army but if not, it might not be a long fight. "We need a plan," I said. "If we don't have enough people to put up a decent fight then we need to come up with something to stack the odds as best we can."

"I agree. But I have no plan." I was stunned and hopelessness settled in the room. Saris was always several moves ahead. It worried me that he didn't have a plan and I realized then that I relied on him a lot more than I thought I did.

"What if we attacked at night? We could attack silently, taking out groups and retreat before they can raise an alarm. Then, rinse and repeat," Demi suggested.

"It's a good idea, but there are some problems with that. While it might work the first time, any repeats will have significantly more risks. Also, night attacks sometimes lead to killings on the same teams. It's harder to differentiate friend from foe, especially when the victim of the attack becomes aware of what's going on. It becomes chaotic and we might not be able to pull out. But also...Hold on," Saris got up and found a sheet of paper and a pen. He made a circle near the center of the paper. "This is about where we are, and this," he made another circle, a bit to the left of the original, "is where the enemy is." He drew a line from the top to the bottom on the far left of the makeshift map, "this is the beach. Our army will meet at the top, where the cliffs are." Saris sighed, "Timing is our biggest problem. By the end of the day when we meet with everyone, Fire King's army should be at the top center of the map; assuming they stick with the pattern they've been taking. Attacking that night will be risky since most of our team will likely be tired from planning and preparing our attack. But if we attack the next night, the enemy will be around here," he pointed near the center of the map. "There's a lot of buildings blocking the path to the beach from here and we risk their army flanking us from multiple directions. But if we lure them in the morning after the first night, we'd have a straight shot to the beach and it's less likely they'd come from multiple angles. I think the beach will give us some natural defense against the fire user and we need all the tactical advantages we can get. I don't know if it's enough though. We need more than a lure and a location.

"What about an ambush?" I asked.

"That was my first thought, but I don't see a very good position to do it. The beach is pretty open aside from the cliffs, but they're too tall if you're trying to melee with someone and they're too steep to jump off of safely."

I tried to think of what they did in movies when a larger force lost against a smaller army, but all I could think about was the Lord of the Rings, and most of their battles took place behind a fortress of some kind. We didn't really have anything to use as a solid defense. The best thing we had was the cliff. Still, I was about to suggest the idea when Demi mentioned it instead.

"I'm not sure how likely it'll work, but maybe we could use the cliff for a defense."

"Hmm," Saris thought. "It'll be a bit small for what we need but it could be a good battle tactic for some of our more ranged fighters. We'll just need to try and keep the enemy from climbing up, otherwise we lose the advantage."

We talked for a long while, trying to come up with a plan that would ensure our victory, everything from a head-on attack to coming out of the water like merpeople (I'll admit it, that one was my idea), but nothing seemed foolproof and I started to feel disheartened about it all. How were we supposed to win this thing when we were outnumbered and possibly overpowered?

Over an hour later, we decided to take a break and eat. The kitchen in the next room was loaded with food and Demi said that she would make something and that we could relax for a while. Neither of us argued. I didn't feel much like cooking and would have opted to just find something to heat up in the microwave, but Demi insisted on making the meal. I turned to Saris as we sank deeper into our seats to relax, the shades had moved, no longer in the room with us.

"How are we going to do this?" I asked Saris.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, none of these plans are sure things. It doesn't seem like anything will be."

"That's because there's no such thing as a perfect plan," Saris explained, crossing his arms. "We're not looking for a plan that has no chance of failure, we'd never find it. What we are looking for are options, good and bad plans. Any idea we can think through is another option for us to consider. Every plan we make will have its downsides and things can go wrong in an instant and ruin whatever plan we come up with. Right now, we just want to look at all of the possibilities. Later, we'll decide on which one, or ones, we can use that make the most sense."

That made me feel a lot better about some of my suggestions. "Maybe I'm too obsessed with finding a win and not a plan."

"Relax. This is the easy part. Later, we'll take our best plans and figure out if any of them are compatible so we can do them together and if not, we'll figure out which plan has the most potential. We might want a flexible plan that can react to the unexpected, or we might want a plan with a strong attack. We'll see what we come up with. For now, it's best not to think about it too much. The longer you think about it, the more attached to a plan you get and it's better to have an open mind about these things. So, we'll eat and not worry about tactics for now. We'll get back to it later when we're refreshed."

That's what we did. Saris and I talked about movies; well, I talked about movies and he listened. I told him that the first thing we would watch when we got back home was The Lion King. Then we'd move to The Lord of the Rings, followed by the Harry Potter series. Then we might try the Marvel universe, but that might be a bit much. He agreed to all of it, not dampening my spirits by saying that I was overconfident about getting out of the game and it made me feel optimistic about getting back home. Before I knew it, Demi had appeared with plates in hand and handed us each a plate full of food. She had made a cheesy chicken and rice with vegetables. It was delicious and we both thanked her for the meal. While we ate, I brought Demi in on our conversation about what movies to get Saris hooked on when we got back.

"Hmm," she thought, "I bet you'd like some of those kung fu flicks. Something Bruce Lee maybe."

"What? No way," I argued. "Those are way too cheesy."

"They're not cheesy! Well....maybe a little. Maybe he'd like some chick flicks, like Dirty Dancing."

The thought of Saris watching Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey dancing to the song, 'I Had The Time Of My Life', didn't fit in my head. Trying not to laugh, I stumbled, "Yeah. T-That sounds perfect."

"What's so funny?" Saris asked seriously. "Dancing isn't so bad and it's dirty, so... wait. Is that gritty, dirty? Or dirty, dirty? I don't want to get into anything raunchy."

Both Demi and I burst out laughing. Demi nearly choked on a piece of chicken and hunched over in her seat. I had just taken a drink and water came out of my nose. That only made us laugh harder. It took us a while to calm down and when we did, we assured Saris that the movie wasn't promiscuous.

After the meal and the fun conversation, we got back to work. Eventually, we had exhausted all of our ideas and we were starting to repeat some of the same strategies that we had suggested earlier. That's when Demi decided to write down our plans and we took time relaying them so she could focus on what she was doing. When we were done, we had more than twenty plans, although a lot of them weren't very good.

"It's late," Saris said, stretching in his seat. "Let's get some sleep and we'll figure out which plan to use tomorrow morning."

Demi and I agreed, but I didn't feel tired yet. I was nervous about choosing the wrong plan and wanted to ensure that whatever we chose, we'd end up with the best outcome. When my two friends left the room and headed to find a bed or couch to sleep on, I grabbed the paper full of ideas and opened my phone. I told my friends and my sister about what was going on and asked for their help, typing in the whole list; it took a while. Then I waited for their response for what plan fit our situation best.

Tommy wrote back first:

Did you think of the one where everyone comes out of the water? Super weird, man. You know they'd all have to hold their breath for like...ever, right?

A minute or so later, he wrote again:

I'm not an expert at this or anything, but I think attacking from the top of this cliff might be good. Your allies would at least have some cover and it'd take the other guys a while to climb up, so you'd limit how many people you're fighting at once.

Sidra texted next:

See, this is what makes me worried about you. I'm sorry Xander, but I don't really know what one is best. The one where everyone comes out of the water is stupid though, don't use that one. Maybe attack at night? I read a book once where one side did that and it worked pretty well, but I think it only worked the one time. When they went to do it again, they lost pretty badly. Maybe you could make a bunch of traps like in Swiss Family Robinson. Sorry, I wish I was better help.

I had suggested that we could make traps earlier, thinking the same thing as Sidra had. But Saris had mentioned that with the limited time we had, making traps would prove difficult and Demi pointed out that whoever we send to lure the army to the beach would have to get past the traps too. It might backfire on us, so we chose not to add it to the list.

Michael was the last one to text:

I agree with Tommy. The water one is weird. But I like the last option best. It's risky but only for one of you, so you'll be able to revert to a different plan if it doesn't work. You just need to decide who's going to do it. They'll have to be fast though.

After thanking everyone for their help, I turned my phone off. They hadn't been as much help as I had hoped, but I guess they weren't really tactically minded. I yawned. I hadn't realized how tired I really was until I had been waiting for their replies. There were several times where I nearly fell asleep while reading their messages. I didn't bother looking for a bed to sleep in, I just laid on the couch and closed my eyes, falling into a dreamless sleep.