Hopping Celestial Fox

“Yo, Fox goddess!” my friend greeted me with a grin and a wave. “How’s it cooking today?”

My reply was a deadpan stare.

Even after everything, I still didn’t like thinking of myself as some kind of deity. Although being called goddess instead of god was always nice…

Uh, anyway…

“Not… that great,” I admitted. “I had another dream. You know… Like the last one I told you about.”

“Dream…?” His brows furrowed for a second before shooting up. “Ohhh… you mean like… the one with the tentacle monster?”

I gave an affirmative hum and a nod.

“Hey you two.” Casey joined us with a handwave before narrowing her eyes. “What’s this about a tentacle monster…?”

I was about to explain when Frank assumed his conspiracy theorist expression, put a hand next to his face, and whispered, “Ah, you see… Our friend here had some intense wet dreams again last night and–”

I smacked him over the head while trying to keep my mortification off my face.

“Ow! Whoa, you’ve become so violent now! What happened to my shy friend who would never hurt a fly?!”

I was about to smack him again when the words hit me.

When had I changed from the timid background character to someone willingly going on dangerous adventures into other worlds?

I shook my head.

“What Frank meant was that I had another one of… those dreams. Just like the one where we fought the octopus boss monster.”

Casey’s eyes widened.

“A precognitive dream…?” she muttered, eyes looking around for anyone eavesdropping.

“Well… Probably?” I shrugged. “I still don’t know whether they really are precognitive since the first one never happened, but… Yeah. It felt exactly the same as the first dream.”

“Oh I see… So what was it about?” Frank asked.

I couldn’t help but shudder as I recalled it.

“It was… much more intense.”

“Seriously? More intense than fighting a tentacle monster?”

I nodded with a grimace.

“I was hiding in some kind of cave, bleeding, tired, and terrified. And then there was a giant green spider snooping around, looking for me.”

“Oh shit…” Frank murmured as Casey’s eyes sharpened.

“I think we lured it into a trap of some sort because I yelled ‘Now!’ when it reached a certain spot. And then everything started to shake and… last thing I remember was a massive crash that… hopefully killed it? I don’t actually know.” I looked to the side and added in a small voice, “It could have also killed me instead…”

“Jesus,” Casey gasped. “That’s… That’s…” She gulped. “Maybe you were right. Maybe we should just forget about the portals after all…”

I shook my head.

“No way. I thought about it all evening yesterday and there’s just no way I could ignore the things anymore. I don’t really know if it’s the right thing to do, but… I’m not just gonna leave the portals alone now that we have a hint to what they really are. I want to get to the bottom of this. Figure out why the portals appeared in the first place and why I’m the only one who can see them.”

I looked up and locked eyes with Casey before moving to Frank, letting them see my resolve.

“And even if they really are precognitive dreams, a spider monster is going to corner me in a dark cave in the near future… Well, at least I know about it in advance now.”

“Damn… Well, alright, if you’re fine with it… Not like I’m gonna stop you.” Frank shook his head. “But man! Seriously, what happened to your meek attitude? How come you have all the balls in the world now that you have forsaken them?”

I frowned.

Forsaken…? Oh, he was talking about me trying out being a girl…

“Anyway. We’re definitely going back there, although I’m not sure what our plan should be.” I glanced at Casey. “Do we… uh, interfere with the story? Or do we hide from the important characters?”

Her lips thinned and eyebrows creased for a moment before she shook her head.

“No… Even if we try to avoid it, the plot is gonna change regardless, as long as we go there. It’s… you know, the Butterfly Effect. Even something seemingly innocuous can have massive consequences. So I say, we just straight up meet with Wi and help her on her journey.”

I slowly nodded.

“Right… We can do that. But… how? We can’t stay on the other side for too long because of school, and it would be strange for Wi if we only kept popping up every so often.”

Casey frowned at that.

“Um… well…”

“We can just tell her the truth,” Frank suggested.

The two of us stared at him. He just shrugged blithely.

“What? It’s the simplest solution. Just tell her that you two are goddesses who literally created her and her entire world,” the jerk suggested with a smug grin.

Both of us cringed at that.

“No way we’re doing that…”

“Why not? You told Elyssa,” he pointed out. Correctly, to my annoyance.

I was in the middle of thinking through what the consequences of telling Wi everything would be when Casey’s expression suddenly lit up.

“Wait, Elyssa! We could ask her to stay in the other world and meet up with Wi to help her.”

“Ooh! That’s right! And she doesn’t need to go to school!” Frank cheered… before his grin turned into a frown. “Wait, but didn’t you say Wi sticks around in the keep for months? Wouldn’t this still mean that we wouldn’t be able to enter once she arrives…?”

“... That’s… true. Yeah.” Casey grimaced.

“So if we let Elyssa handle it, we wouldn’t be able to enter for a while regardless,” I finished the thought. “I guess we could go exploring other portals in the meantime, but…”

“Oh, yeah! That’s right! I’ve been thinking… Since you two have your own personal interdimensional portal in your rooms… Is there a portal at my place too? You've never visited my place either, right? If there’s one, we could go explore that one in the meantime if we have to wait.”

I blinked.

“Umm… I don’t know? I would have to check.”

“Well, check! Don’t you have like… a portal sonar or something? Have you never tried it here on Earth?”

I rolled my eyes.

“It only works when I’m transformed and… Actually no, I never tried to use it here…”

Frank looked at me like I was stupid.

“I just forgot, okay? There was always so much going on… I just never thought about it.”

He shrugged nonchalantly. “Fair enough. Alright. Let’s go check then.”

“Uh… go? Right now? We still have classes.”

“What? No, I meant just go to the bathrooms or something so you can transform and use your radar in secret.”

“Right… We can do that, I guess… I do wonder just how many portals there are in the city…” I murmured with interest.

I’d only seen a couple, but who knew just how many hid out of sight like the one in Casey’s room?

At that point, the bell rang, so we agreed to enact our portal search plan during the next break, and settled in for the class.

Because of the revelation yesterday, I didn’t scoff at the physics class as much anymore. After all, different worlds were bound to have different rules. And the portals completely broke the boundaries of reality. It wasn’t exactly fair to call out the physics teacher for not knowing that. Especially since I seemed to be the only person who could see them.

When the next break came around, the three of us all immediately headed toward the toilets.

“Huh, hold up. Which one are you going in?” Frank suddenly asked.

“What?”

“I mean… you’ve always gone to the boy’s side, but when you transform, you turn into a girl, right? Wouldn’t it be weird to be on the boy’s side as a girl?”

I stared at him as I processed that thought.

I never really thought about something like changing which toilets I went to… It hadn’t really mattered to me, after all. But maybe it should…?

“You can go to the girls’ side if you want,” Casey offered, giving me a smile. “I can check if there’s anyone inside if you don’t want someone seeing you.”

I frowned.

“I…”

I thought about it for a second. Something about entering the girls’ side felt enticing. Maybe the feeling of novel experience or… No, it didn’t matter. It was just the toilets. Not like I was even here to do my business anyway.

So I shook my head.

“It’s whatever. I’ll just go to the boy’s side.”

“Alright…”

And so, me and Frank entered the boy’s side while Casey waited outside. I entered one of the empty stalls, transformed, and nudged my portal senses.

I barely held myself from gasping in shock as my eyes shot open.

There were so many portals all over the city! Way more than I’d sensed inside RLO. Heck, just inside this school, there were two more portals besides the one in the gym hall, that I hadn’t even known about! One that I guessed had to be somewhere inside the teacher’s lounge and one… right next door, at the girls’ toilets.

But even besides those, I could feel numerous portals outside of the school building.

With so many of them and with it being difficult to tell the exact distance, I couldn’t quite tell whether there was one in Frank’s room, but there were at least three portals in the general direction of where he lived.

Why were there so many? Where did they all even lead? If one led inside a video game world and a second one led to an unfinished novel… What other places could they lead to? More video games and unfinished novels? Or something else? Maybe inside a TV show? An urban legend? A bedtime story?

Once again it dawned on me just how insane these portals were.

Could any fictional world spawn a portal into it?