The curtain fell, and the actors straightened up, looking around at each other, none exactly sure what to say. Was it really over? They could hear applause on the other side of the curtain, so probably, but what would happen now-?

Just as Kipo was about to ask the question, the world winked out around her again, and in the next instance she found herself sitting down at a nice grand table with delicious food piled high on top of it. Kipo's nose twitched and her mouth watered. She couldn't stop herself from reaching out with the plate in front of her and piling it high with all the different options the table offered her. As she took the food, her friends popped in around her, at the other seats at the table. Kipo smiled at them as they appeared and immediately followed her example, taking the food. It seemed that none of them had realized just how hungry they were until now.

Soon enough, when Kipo was finally satisfied with the amount of food on her plate, all her friends had arrived, filling up all the chairs except for one, at the head of the rectangular table.

At first, Kipo didn't pay to much mind to it, too busy ebbing at the hunger in her stomach, but as she took the edge of her stomach cramps, she ended up glancing at it more and more. It seemed... ominous, and Kipo felt herself grow nervous. It almost was like they were waiting for something...

Suddenly, the room grew darker as a shadow passed over it, settling over on the back wall behind the chair. Kipo's eyes widened. It was the same shadow she had seen at the beginning of the show!

"It's you!" Kai cried, voicing Kipo's thoughts. "The announcer!"

The shadow looked abashed, tucking some non-existent hair behind its ear. "You recognize me? You're too kind! But I prefer the title of 'director' rather than announcer, myself."

The kids glanced around. Kipo couldn't feel any ill intent coming from this... shadow, but she knew she couldn't let her guard down. She set down her plate, and then leaned forward, intending to get some answers of this... 'director'.

But before she could say a thing, or even think of one question she wanted to ask first, the director continued.

"But, really, Kai, the people you SHOULD be giving recognition to is the wonderful people around you!" the director cooed, moving around them on the walls. "Seriously, so many talented people came together tonight! I couldn't have picked better people for my play if I tried!"

Kipo was confused. "You... 'picked' us?"

"Well, you kind of just fell into my lap and I shuffled you around as best I could," the director admitted, stopping at the far wall again. "But you all stepped right up to the challenge! You most of all, Luz. Ever thought about going into theater?"

Luz blushed. "Well, yes... but people thought I was 'too much' for theater."

A strange expression crossed over the shadow's face. "'Too much'? For theater?"

"Well, there was this one time I had a death scene and I guess I used too much fake blood," Luz replied. "My teacher called it 'inspiring', but, more importantly, 'traumatizing'."

The director snorted. "Fire them."

"I don't think I can," Luz said, snapping her fingers in a 'oh well' way.

"Hey, are you..." Coraline suddenly frowned, looking at Mabel and Luz as if searching for something. They both blinked and shrugged. "Aren't you, you know, that guy from the painting? The one Luz and Mabel were carrying around?"

Kipo blinked, confused. She looked over to the shadow, up against the wall. Where was this coming from? Seemed like a bit of a stretch...

"Well..." the director started, looking awkward. "First of all, I'm not a 'guy', second of all... yeah. And before you ask, long story short, my body was eviscerated by a wizard (not the one from the play, a different one), and only my soul and the shadow of my soul of left behind. Yes, I know, makes no sense, it was a long time again, now I write plays and paint to stop myself from being bored. Also, I can't leave the castle."

Mabel perked up. "You made all those paintings? You're really good!"

The shadow waved a hand. "Yeah, yeah, lots of practice... I am SO bored. Seriously. That's why I appreciate people like you coming along! You're always so interesting."

"Wait," Tulip interrupted, sounding nervous. She hesitated a minute, before finally spitting it out. "What about those graves?"

Kipo whipped her head around. Those what?

"Oh, you found those, did you?" the shadow asked, altogether not looking concerned in the slightest. "Right. They aren't people like you, don't worry. Not even the people that died here last time are there. Those are all people from before, all I could find."

Tulip winced, looking confused. Kipo frowned at the director. There that phrasing was again. "Before". What did it mean?

Kai suddenly shook his head, looking annoyed with all of them. He put his hand up, like they were in school, but didn't even wait for any of them to notice before he started talking.

"Hey!" he cried out, standing up and making his chair squeak back. "Aren't we forgetting the most important thing? What the heck was all that even about? That whole play and the... the 'actors' and the audience..."

A big smile broke out on the directors face. "Kai, why, I'm so glad you asked! You see, I know what you came here for. There's no mad king to fight, so the only thing you could possibly want to find here is answers. Though fabricated and exaggerated as they might be, that's what I gave you."

The kids looked around at one another. They all felt they had an idea of what the director was getting at, but it would take some figuring out to really find truth.

"...The second act was about the kids that came before, wasn't it?" Kipo asked. It was fairly easy to figure out, but they needed to start somewhere. "Danny and Ben were two of the kids that came here before. And they figured out what was really going on here because Danny could see ghosts, just like Norman. Right?"

Kipo looked up at the shadow, but for something so expressive before, it now had a blank expression on it's face. Just staring at the kids.

"I already gave you answers," it said, it's voice impassive. "It's up to you to figure out the rest."

Kipo frowned, and then shook her head. Alright, she wasn't going to push it, considering how kind (if you can really call it that) they're host has been so far. Instead, she turned to her friends.

"It makes sense," Tulip mused. "Star Butterfly, Danny and Ben. That's three of the sixteen people they had."

"There was also the princess," Coraline reminded her. "Vanellope."

"Right, right." Tulip nodded. "Four then, excluding the ghost. And they were on a quest?"

"Wonder why we didn't get a quest?" Luz said, tapping her cheek. Tulip shrugged.

"No idea," she said. "More importantly, it proves something that Mira had been saying for a while: this world is fabricated. That's why it doesn't make sense sometimes, because it's man-made, like an amusement part. Nobody can really write a whole world and make it seem completely natural... though this world seems to be more clumsy than other fictional worlds are."

"That also means that Arlen was right," Kipo said, quietly. Mabel made a face at that. "We really were brought here to die."

Luz shifted, looking a little uncomfortable. "Hey, what happened to those kids at the end? The story said they went home, but we know they didn't actually make it. The wizard... oh. Six is the wizard, isn't she?"

"Like I said," the director spoke up. "The story was a little exaggerated."

Kipo nodded at them, and then focused on Luz. "You really think so?"

Luz looked miserable. "Yeah. I mean, she 'betrayed' them, right? That would mean that they trusted her before. Also, she doesn't call herself a wizard, but she does teach me magic, so..."

"That'd make sense," Tulip hummed. "So, lying down what we figure out so far: Ben, Danny, Vanellope and Star Butterfly are four of the sixteen kids that were here before we were, and Danny could speak to ghosts, like Norman could. That's how he, and the rest of them, figured out the truth of this world. Anyway, they completely the quest, and almost left the world, but Six, or the Wizard, who was travelling with them, betrayed them, and they all died here, in this castle."

"Actually," Coraline spoke up, frowning. "Didn't the story say that the kids spared the king? What happened to him? Are you the king?"

This last question was directed at the shadow on the wall, who shrugged. "Wrong gender."

"That might have been... fabricated as well," Kipo mused. She felt a sorrow fill up inside of her, suddenly. "They were so close..."

"Okay, great, so we figured all that out," Kai spoke up. "But all of that was pretty obvious! What about Act one, and all that weirdness? The council members and the kings and..."

"Yeah, that was really weird," Mabel agreed. "Did that make any sense to anyone?"

"We'll just have to figure it out, like we did with act two," Tulip said calmly. She was clearly trying to hide it, but Kipo suspected that she was happy to have a puzzle in front of her to solve. Kipo blinked. Despite the horribleness of it all, Tulip wasn't despairing. Maybe it seemed a little morbid to be happy at a time of so much sorrow and regret, but perhaps that was better than just despairing.

It didn't feel right, but maybe it was better than bending and buckling under the weight of regret and grief.

"Well, the power that they're talking about is pretty obvious," Coraline said. "It's those wish flowers. It seems the more you have, the more powerful they are, but some are more powerful than others."

Kipo's head snapped up. "Oh!"

Tulip gave her a strange look. "Something wrong?"

"Something right, actually," Kipo replied, unable to keep the smile off her face. "The story gave us the answer to what we were wondering before! 'Why are some flowers more powerful than others'? It because of where we've been!"

Again, no one seemed to be following Kipo's train of thought. That seemed to be happening a lot, lately.

"Think about it," Kipo insisted. "The story said that because the narrator had been travelling, its flower was really powerful. And look at us! We're not ordinary kids, we've been places. I travelled through my homeland, Mabel went on vacation to her uncles-."

"Gunkles," Mabel corrected. Kipo blinked.

"Er, grunkle's home in Gravity Falls," Kipo rectified. "Kai was stuck in a video game, Fei Fei went to the moon, I guess, and Luz, Tulip and Coraline were stuck in another dimension. The flowers are probably based on how far we went, or something like that?"

"And since we came to this world, we're all pretty powerful," Tulip added. "By bringing children from other dimensions to this one, this world is already making powerful flowers they can collect."

"Wow," Luz said. "Very... efficient."

"And creepy," Kai muttered, shuddering.

"There's something else," Tulip spoke up. "The council members. Forty-two seems like a pretty specific number, so that probably means something, doesn't it?"

Kai perked up. "Oh, I noticed something with that! First it was forty-two, then the mad king killed ten of them, so thirty-two were left. Then the story said that all the cut-outs got roles in the new world, but only half of them came out in act two."

"Only half?" Kipo asked, feeling grim. "That's sixteen, isn't it?"

That number seemed to be cropping up a lot. With the amount of kids, it made sense, but for the council members two? A coincidence can only be a coincidence so many times...

"Hey, Kai?" Luz asked, suddenly. "Was the wizard part of that sixteen?"

Kai looked a little embarrassed. "Well, I didn't really counting," he mumbled, trying hard to think back. "But... no, I don't think so."

"Oh."

Tulip tilted her head. "Wait, you're on to something, Luz. What is it?"

Luz shifted, hesitating. But finally, whatever was holding her back broke like a dam, and Luz leaned forward.

"I mean, I might be wrong," she said quickly, looking apprehensive. "It kind of sounds stupid when I say it out loud, but... I couldn't help but think Six and Hurricane were kind of similar-."

Suddenly, the shadow seemed to jump. When the people at the table looked over, startled, they noticed the face on the shadow was one of surprise.

"Wait, Hurricane and Six, they're both out?" the director asked. "At the same time?"

Tulip looked around, confused. "'Out'?"

Luz sucked in a breath. "Oh. I am right."

The director took one hand up and rubbed at their head. "I-Yeah, I guess I can tell you you're on the right track. But then I'm shutting up."

Tulip shook her head, turning back to Luz. "Well, that's... interesting. Keep going, Luz."

"Right," Luz said, looking much more certain than she had before. "Ok, so, as I was saying, I didn't want to say anything, but Six was starting to sound a lot like Hurricane, like with how similar they both act, and their secret agendas. I think... I think Six was always tricking me, even from the start."

Kipo winced. She knew exactly what that felt like.

"Also," Luz continued. "I don't really know if they actually know each other, or anything like that, but they seem to share the same goals and motivations. We all saw when the wizard came down from the ceiling, right? I don't think that was just to look cool. I think Six and Hurricane are part of the sixteen people who were missing from the stage in act two. They're still around, but they're hidden somewhere in the world, only coming out to guide and... and kill when they need to."

"Do you know where they're hiding?" Kai asked. "Or why they're hiding?"

"I don't know the answer to the first question," Luz answered truthfully. "But for the second one... I don't think Kai's place in the story was inconsequential. We all represented different people from before, but Kai represents someone that's still around. Or someone's.

"I think that Six, Hurricane, and the rest of them are watchers, like Kai was."