Walker’s still quite confused about what this strange family is talking about.

  “What does that lousy book have to do with you four? That book must’ve been published before any of you were born! Even that old man!”

  The old man is shocked at this.

  “Old man? I’ll have you know that I’m incredibly young for a reaper!”

  Walker doesn’t know, because he never read the book, but it’s common knowledge that reapers take many forms. The name is very misleading. They don’t reap anything.

  “What’s a reaper?”

  All four of the strange people speak in unison.

  “If you’d read the book, you’d know!”

  All four of them charge at Walker, trying to pull off some combination move.

  Luckily, Walker is much faster, and just walks around them. A ball of rocks flies up from the sidewalk. It speaks in its usual squeaky voice.

  “How do you not know what a reaper is?!”

  Walker turns to face the ball of rocks, which now has a face.

  “I just did the whole flashback and everything...“

  The ground around Walker begins to melt, turning into hot lava. He turns back to the people he’s in a scuffle with.

  He jumps over the lava before it can spread to the part he’s standing on.

  From his perspective, the four reapers are moving incredibly slow. It’s quite funny.

  “Hey, if you know what these guys are, how do you stop them from attacking you?”

  The ball of rocks quickly responds.

  “I have no clue! None of the previous people I’ve backed have ever beaten a reaper. They always just die.”

  Walker quickly dodges another charge at him.

  “Don’t you know from the book?”

  “You aren’t Rocko!!”

  The Ascyll family stacks themselves on the father’s arms, and he begins to swing them around in circles, trying to swing themselves into Walker and trip him over.

  Walker jumps over them as they swing towards him.

  “Am I the only person who hasn’t read this book?”

  The Ascyll family swings into a wall, causing the building to fall down. It’s hardly a building, really, as it’s just a giant concrete brick. There’s no hollow space in it, because it isn’t a real building.

  They swing into more buildings, causing them to fall down as well. None of them are real buildings, they’re just more solid concrete blocks the size of buildings.

  “Goodness Gracious.”

  Suzanne sees the buildings falling down, and is quite confused. She’s not very interested in what’s happening there, but she figures it has to have something to do with the castle expanding, so she starts to walk towards the falling buildings.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  She notices that the city is quite empty. She didn’t notice this earlier, since she didn’t feel like paying attention. This is incredibly weird, though she has a hunch as to why it’s the case.

  Once she finally makes her way to the fallen buildings, she sees a peculiar scene. Walker’s sort of swatting away the Ascyll family as they run at him one by one. He’s trying to look fancy while doing it, though he ends up looking incredibly strange. A large amount of the surrounding area has been turned into lava.

  “What the hell are you all doing!?”

  She shouts this in a very loud voice. Everyone turns to look at her, including all four of the Ascyll family. She points a finger at the family and tells them not to move.

  “Don’t move!”

  The environment around them turns red. They’ve suddenly been shut inside of glass spheres, like those from a claw machine. They feel as though if they move, they will shatter like glass.

  Walker’s looking at them curled up into a ball and is quite confused at what’s up with them.

  The four family members look at Suzanne.

  “We’re sorry boss!”

  “We’re really sorry, Verona [1].”

  “We’ll never do it again!”

  “Please, don’t take us back to Verona [2]!”

  Suzanne crouches down and looks at them. She smiles. She doesn’t seem mad.

  “Doing that’d be a pain. I just want to know what you four reapers are doing up here!”

  The father speaks.

  “We’re just here on orders!”

  “Whose orders? Neither part of Verona’s been down there.”

  “They’re old orders, ma’am! Some sort of failsafe. We were all told to go up to Columbia if we didn’t receive orders for a while!”

  “Has it really been that long?”

  Before the old man can answer, he’s gone. The other three reapers shrink back. They don’t want to go through whatever he’s just gone through. Suzanne speaks.

  “That old lady’s such a pain.”

  She takes a step back, and all but one Ascyll family member is gone. The one who remains is the old lady.

  “You’ve still got to run the show, don’t you? It’ll be hard without the other three.”

  “Yes ma’am. It will be more difficult.”

  “Have fun!”

  Suzanne walks back to the castle. It’s shrunk to a size slightly smaller than it was originally.

  The old lady scurries away. Walker is quite confused at what just happened.

  “What just happened?”

  The ball of rocks flies up to his face.

  “Was that Suzanne Harper??”

  “I guess so, I think I saw her in an advertisement once.”

  “She’s the worst!! I hate her! I hate her! I hate her!”

  “What did she do?”

  Right before Walker can hear the story, all of the buildings around him begin to fall apart. Convenient!

  Meanwhile, Sherman Chex is sitting down and continues to read 2521 as Jenny Watcher stares at him. He’s currently part of her hoard of orange things.

  “Why’re you constantly staring at me?”

  “Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange Orange ”

  “Okay...“

  He continues to read the book. The current passage he’s reading is incredibly lousy. For some reason, the story seems to be told in the order the narrator remembers it. This part about Rocko’s history with the minister is being told many, many chapters after the part about how he killed the minister.

  [ The minister was furious. He’d seen the man who’d killed his grandfather, made his grandfather into a monster, and he’s living happily with friends? That man’s happy, while he’s forced to protect what’s left of his parents?! He would never allow that, and as such he instated legislature against people with orange hair. ]

  Sherman Chex doesn’t quite get it.

  [1] - Person

  [2] - Place