We spent the next five days moving steadily through the 10,000 Acre Wood, drawing inevitably closer to Steamboat Studios, which lay somewhere at the heart of the vast, malignant forest.

  Unerring Arrow guided our steps, but Pooh was the real MVP of the show, and probably the only reason we weren’t dead three times over. Although the 10,000 Acre Wood wasn’t as viscerally unnerving as Eternal Suburbia, it was arguably far more dangerous.

  And Pooh seemed to instinctively know those dangers, the same way a drunk instinctively knows every pothole on his walk home from the bar. The bear knew where to go, but he also knew where not to go, which was even more important.

  Sure, Unerring Arrow always charted the best possible route to any given destination, but even as good as it was, the skill wasn’t infallible. It worked in tandem with Spelunker’s Sixth Sense to help me detect and avoid traps, but whatever abilities Pooh had were even better.

  And thank God for that, because the place was a certified death trap.

  We saw punji pits lined with moldering bodies, long since dead and rotted away. Oversized, rusty bear traps that could slice a man clean in half. Razor-wire snare loops, hidden beneath innocent piles of leaves, and swinging log rams, large enough to crush a mid-sized SUV. That or turn a man into pink mist and lumpy meat. The worst were the Bouncing Bettys—like claymore mines, but more efficient and far more grisly.

  Most were tied to long-range runic pressure plates, making them almost impossible to detect until it was too late. Step too close, and the things would pop up from the ground like a vengeful jack-in-the-box, rising to about waist height before detonating in a horizontal spray of shrapnel and prestored spells. Sometimes they unleashed fireballs, other times blasts of acid that could chew flesh and bones in seconds. They were the ultimate AoE trap, capable of mercilessly slaughtering anyone inside the kill radius.

  The wildlife wasn’t much friendlier.

  Pooh kept us clear of most Dwellers, but avoiding them entirely was impossible.

  The deeper we went, the more the forest shifted, warping from towering old growth into something closer to a suffocating jungle—dense with broad-leafed plants dripping condensation, vines hanging in curtains thick enough to strangle a moose, and air so wet and heavy it felt like I was breathing through a damp towel.

  That… That was Tigger country.

  Feral, bloodthirsty packs prowled those stretches, and according to Pooh, they were the one type of Dweller we absolutely didn’t want to stumble across. Ambush predators, they were all but invisible and moved like wraiths until it was too late. Worse than the mimics in their own way, and mimics were also abundant—disguised as rocks and trees, hanging vines and giant flowers.

  We had the misfortune of running across a lone Tigger as twilight fell on that first day. It descended on us from overhead, nearly decapitating Harper with a violent swipe of its claws before anyone even knew what in the hell was happening.

  Unlike the loveable, hyperactive cartoon, this thing was a predator wrapped in mangy, striped fur stretched over whipcord muscle. Lean but powerful, every move a spring-loaded kill shot.

  It bounded around on a tail as thick as my thigh, launching itself across platforms of hardened air just like the Grippledips from floor 49. When it landed, it did so on claws shaped like miniature scythe blades, each one long enough to open a man from collarbone to belly in a single swipe. Its mouth bristled with serrated teeth, and it never stopped moving—bouncing, circling, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce. To eviscerate its prey.

  Jakob drew its attention with Broken Car Alarm, while Temp and I hemmed it in on two sides and Croc tended to Harper’s wounds. Temp’s Puritanical Chains pinned the creature in place, and she moved into striking range with her sword. I took to the air and cut it down using a combination of Hydro Fracking Blast and a legion of whirling tools. The Dweller was level 59, but despite that its Health Pool was surprisingly shallow and its regen rate was laughable.

  The true danger lay in its speed and raw offensive capabilities.

  Once we metaphorically cut its legs out from beneath it, the fight ended quick enough. We put the beast down and got Harper patched up before she bled out on the forest floor. Still, it had been a close call. Far closer than I liked to admit. I wasn’t really sure where Harper and I stood—were we friends or maybe something more?—but the thought of losing her hit like a spike to the guts.

  We were just lucky that the Tigger was alone.

  I couldn’t even imagine how fucked we would’ve been against a pack of those things, all moving in coordinated precision. Especially not in the tight confines of the more densely packed jungle.

  On the plus side, the experience was decent—2,500 points for each of us—and the Relics were powerful, though all of them were physical, Stamina-based abilities. Springtail Trampoline let the user bounce around like a meth-addled kangaroo, but the downside was that they would also grow a permanent tiger tail. Definitely not for me, but I imagined a Relic like that might actually go for a hefty premium among the Howlers.

  The first skill paired perfectly with Ricochet Predator, another Stamina-based Relic that amplified speed, momentum, and impact—multiplying the power of the next strike with each successful bounce. Carnivore’s Grip was a savage unarmed technique that conjured spectral claws that ignored armor and made it nearly impossible for prey to escape once the claws sunk home. Paired with a powerful camouflage skill called Tall Grass, Tigger really was the perfect ambush predator.

  Ungodly fast, the next best thing to invisible, and capable of inflicting a massive amount of raw damage with each strike.

  Needless to say, we avoided the jungles and kept mostly to the old growth portions of the forest—though we occasionally found ourselves veering through fetid bogs, the trees rotting where they stood, bark sloughing off in strips to reveal slick, blackened wood beneath.

  The air in those sections reeked of stagnant water and slow decay. Patches of moss and algae floated like scum on the pools that swallowed the sound. Towering, bioluminescent mushrooms glowed faintly between the trunks, their pale light reflecting off the water’s surface and casting the shadows of bloated insects skimming just above the muck.

  The bogs were home to forlorn Eeyores, who wandered the swamps like lost souls, their mournful cries carrying in the dank, heavy air. We only saw one—a huge shaggy creature with a thick mane that lumbered about on all fours, vacant black holes where eyes should’ve been. These things weren’t aggressive or bloodthirsty like the Tiggers. Instead, they radiated an overwhelming aura of grief and despair so strong many wayward Delvers just sort of… gave up on life.

  According to Pooh, those who mistakenly wound up in the bogs would literally lie down and just wait for death as the swamp slowly swallowed them.

  But between Echoed Aura, paired in Group Love Mode with Existential Dread, and some Grit-fortifying elixirs Jakob had whipped up, we were more or less invulnerable to the intense psychic aura.

  The bogs held plenty of other hazards though.

  The bioluminescent mushrooms secreted a powerful neurotoxin capable of paralyzing anyone who got too close, and the watery swamps themselves contained giant leeches, nearly identical to Remy—Croc’s disgusting Flesh Maw. They would eat and burrow, growing larger with every bite until erupting in a burst of gore. The bogs, brimming with methane, also had a penchant for exploding unpredictably, like Tannerite dipped in gasoline at the slightest whiff of flame.

  Then there were the enormous beehives, each the size of a bathtub, which dangled precariously overhead, just waiting for an unlucky traveler to pass by.

  When the hives inevitably toppled to the ground, they burst like nightmare pi?atas, unleashing clouds of carnivorous hornets with inch-long stingers, tearing mandibles, and a tendency for laying eggs inside their victims. Killing them offered limited experience, and they weren’t proper Dwellers either. So not only were they a colossal pain in the ass to deal with, but they didn’t even have the good grace to drop loot.

  The floor itself also had a nasty habit of shifting, whole quadrants moving into place with a sound like grinding concrete, new sections of terrain grafting onto old as the ground shivered beneath our boots. It wasn’t as bad or frequent as Concourse Null, but worse than most floors I’d seen so far.

  Pooh rode high on Croc’s broad back, the dog padding steadily along through the shifting forest. The bear sat like some grim little general, unbothered by the ground shuddering beneath us.

  “They look random, these shifts,” Pooh said, resting one stubby paw on Croc’s back, “but they aren’t. Oh no, not at all. The floor moves with purpose, even if you can’t see it. Only one thing never changes.” His head swiveled, marble eyes fixing on me with unsettling certainty. “Steamboat Studios. It’s always at the very center of the forest.”

  “Why?” I asked, curious about why the floors shifted at all, and why some areas seemed completely unaffected.

  “Why does the sun rise?” Pooh replied. “Why is honey so delicious? Because it is the way it has always been.”

  I wasn’t happy with the answer, but if Pooh knew more, he didn’t say. The shifts just seemed to be one of those immutable facts of life about the Backrooms, weird and unexplainable.

  Through it all were the Aspirants of the Skinless Court, who infested the woods like termites. Some were solitary hunters. Others roamed in ragged bands.

  All of them wanted us dead.

  Our days were spent carefully navigating the woods, avoiding the untold dangers, all while simultaneously battling our way through every band of Aspirants we could find.

  And we found a lot.

  Sometimes the battle came to us, other times we set the bait.

  On the second day, we stumbled into an Aspirant patrol—ten of them, all heavily armed and hungry for blood. Most were in the mid-forties, though there were a few with levels in the low fifties.

  Thankfully, we spotted them in time to set an ambush of our own. Harper broke into a jog, just panicked enough to sell the act, while the rest of us crouched in hiding beside a nearby bog. Naturally, the Aspirants gave chase, hurling spells and firing volleys of arrows; Harper dodged and weaved, her Hippocratic Aegis reducing all incoming damage as she led them right into the trap we’d set.

  Even though the bogs were naturally explosive, I didn’t want to leave anything up to chance. I planted twenty Balloon Menagerie spell cards in a wide ring, then engraved a few additional runic traps onto the various moss-slick rocks protruding from the sludgy water using my new Runic Glyph Array.

  And, because I didn’t have a shred of sympathy for the Aspirants, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to cook up something truly nasty.

  I had a Common-grade Relic called Solitary Confinement, which looked like a broken pocket watch. The spell had a one-minute duration, and when activated, it caused the user to perceive time at an excruciatingly slow pace, transforming seconds into hours, minutes into days, and hours into years. Problem was, your body didn’t move any quicker. I’d previously written it off as a shit-tier Relic because it seemed more curse than blessing, but it worked phenomenally well as a trap effect for hostile enemies.

  It was even better when paired with another Rare-grade, time-based spell I’d picked up down in Eternal Suburbia called Atomic Age Timeburst, which allowed the user to create a time pocket, capable of either slowing down time or speeding it up. After sacrificing enough Relics to bump Timeburst up to level five, the spell radius doubled, increasing from twelve inches to two feet, and the effect duration likewise jumped from a single second to five.

  Not much in the grand scheme of things.

  But with Glyph Array, the spells could be layered. I added two overlapping Timebursts, which doubled the initial spell radius and duration. The real kicker, however, came by combining the effect with Solitary Confinement, which increased the total area of effect to ten feet in diameter. When the trap activated, the poor sucker trapped within would be frozen in time for a total of ten seconds—though it would feel like hours.

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  And since I had four different Trap Arrays set up at strategic, overlapping locations within the bog, all chained to go off simultaneously, the effects were amplified fourfold.

  Harper sprinted through the bog using Tactical Zoomies, and the Aspirants blundered headfirst into the noose.

  The second Harper was clear, my Glyph Arrays activated, trapping the Skinless shitheads in place, and I verbally triggered my spell cards. The whole bog went up in a column of roaring flame, swallowing half of them in the blink of an eye, while we watched the carnage unfold behind the golden dome of protection summoned by my Super Slammer of Shielding.

  When the initial blast finally died down, I dismissed the golden dome and took to the air, cutting the surviving Aspirants down with precision blasts of pressurized water. They couldn’t even fight back. Instead, they just stood there, frozen in pain, covered in burns and charred flesh as we mopped ’em up with ruthless efficiency.

  Jakob attempted to drag one of the Aspirants from the flames, glaring at me like I’d just tried to drown a bagful of puppies.

  “Killing is one thing,” he growled, “but I didn’t agree to torture.”

  I just ignored his comment, because I didn’t have any answer. He was right. What we were doing was fucked up, but it was also necessary. I just hoped our friendship was strong enough to endure what was to come, because I knew this wasn’t the end.

  It was just the beginning.

  Other times, the kills weren’t quite so clean or so easy.

  On the third day we found ourselves on the other end of an ambush as half a dozen Aspirants sprang from a camouflaged pit directly along our path. They’d dug themselves in like ticks, waiting for the first warm bodies to pass. They hit us hard and fast, closing in on three sides, effectively cutting off any chance at escape. Not that I wanted to escape. It was really one of those “I’m not trapped in here with you, you’re trapped in here with me” sort of situations.

  They tried picking off Temp—since she was the smallest and weakest looking member of the team—though that was a mistake they wouldn’t live to regret. Her sword flashed, cutting the legs out beneath one man, before she spun and sliced a trip line connected to a deadfall log above. A sharpened log as broad as a battering ram came down like the fist of an angry God, splattering another Aspirant where she stood.

  The others scrambled to recover, only to find Croc’s tentacles already coiling around them, crushing bones with wet pops. Harper zipped around the path, planting boundary flags to amplify buffs and damage, while Jakob dutifully played his role as tank, drawing them in with Broken Car Alarm, then hunkering down behind twin shields as they hammered away. I used the opening to call forth my taxidermied army, letting the Horrors do the bulk of the heavy lifting while I cast rounds of StainSlayer Maelstrom, Frostfang Spire, and Hydro Fracking Blast.

  The team suffered a variety of minor injuries, but nothing we couldn’t shrug off with a little of Harper’s magic.

  When we weren’t actively patrolling or hunting, we spent our off hours crafting and training.

  Jakob slaved away in the alchemy lab, replenishing our dwindling supplies, while Temp taught Harper the finer arts of melee combat. They sparred, sometimes for minutes, sometimes for hours, staff against wooden practice sword.

  Harper worked on her stances, learning to flow from defense into counterattack, the staff slowly becoming an extension of her own body. Temp drilled her on positioning—how to hold the center, how to step off-line, how to read the angle of a strike before it landed.

  “Don’t plant your heels,” Temp reminded her, circling lightly. “Stay on the balls of your feet. Movement wins fights, not roots.”

  “Agree to disagree,” Jakob muttered.

  “Fine,” Temperance conceded. “Movement wins fights for anyone other than a tank. You,” she said, looking pointedly at Harper, “are not a tank. If you get pinned, with your Health Pool, you’re as good as dead.”

  Sometimes it was a slow, deliberate practice, Temp demonstrating a technique and Harper repeating it until the movement stuck. Other times it was fast and brutal, Temp pressing with sharp flurries until Harper had no choice but to adapt or get knocked flat on her ass.

  “Good block,” Temp said as Harper deflected a thrust, only to twist immediately into another strike. “But don’t just stop me. Make me pay for missing.”

  The rhythm of their training became just another part of our time in the 10,000 Acre Woods—the steady crack of wood on wood, the shuffle of boots in dirt, Harper’s occasional grunt of frustration followed by Temp’s cool, clipped corrections. But little by little, Harper’s movements grew sharper, her blocks cleaner, her counters more confident.

  We returned to the store to rest, though Pooh never came with us. Not that we didn’t try to convince him. But for all his fluff, Pooh was a stubborn little bear.

  “Christopher Robin might come back,” he insisted, voice quiet. “And if he does, I want to be here waiting.”

  I tried to argue with him, while Croc attempted to bribe him with treats, but the bear wouldn’t budge.

  “I’ll just stay here, if it’s all the same,” he said.

  There was no convincing him. The 10,000 Acre Woods was his world—his prison and his sanctuary both. Potentially leaving Christopher Robin behind wasn’t something he was willing to risk, not even for a moment. So, we left him there, standing among the trees, eating a never-ending supply of honey while he guarded the doorway.

  Between fleeting moments of sleep and battle, I toiled away at the Soul Forge, tinkering with new spell card configurations and upgrading my Relics.

  With the influx of new shoppers from Kringlegard, there were more Relics than ever pouring in. I scooped up the worst of the junk by the bagful and sold off most of what we got from the Aspirants. I finally managed to push both Hydrokinesis and Hydro Fracking Blast up to max level, unlocking a new capstone ability for each.

  At level 15, Hydrokinesis gained a glorious new secondary effect called Blood is Thicker, which allowed me to manipulate the water content inside a target’s bloodstream. I could literally rip the blood from someone’s veins or override their cardiovascular system—speeding up their pulse until their heart exploded inside their chest. Or I could use micro-telekinetic manipulation to control their muscle contractions via blood vessels, effectively turning my targets into living puppets.

  The catch was that the effect was touch only, so I had to be in direct physical contact, and even then, the target had a chance to resist the effects if their Toughness was higher than mine.

  Once the blood was out of the body, however, I could effortlessly forge it into weapons, armor, or frozen blood barriers. And those weapons would be substantially stronger than anything crafted from pure water or ice, since the iron content in the blood could be hardened, effectively turning them into actual weapons.

  As for Hydro Fracking Blast, its new capstone ability wasn’t quite as flashy or versatile, but just as effective. Stone Splitter dramatically increased the penetrating power of my water beam, giving me added damage bonuses against all heavily armored targets. Using the effect doubled the Mana cost, but it would let me punch through damned near anything—stone, metal, reinforced armor.

  Nothing was safe.

  I also spent more time than I cared to admit upgrading my Horrors, outfitting them with the tech I’d pilfered from the VRD lab and the security golems.

  Drumbo got a set of fancy new shoulder plates with a pair of mini guns mounted on top, granting him additional ranged firepower. Synthia and the Snow Maw Hag also got a pair of mini guns, along with some upgraded armor to increase their overall durability. I replaced Timmy’s limbs with robotic arms, capped with plasma cutters and articulating claws, while Uncle Sam ended up with the oversized Plasma Cannon.

  I added a few new Kevins and Kathys to the lineup, so I finally had enough raw forces to officially bring Krampus online as a newly appointed Necromarshal. I axed his cloven hooves, replacing the entirety of his lower body with the metallic, arachnoid legs of the VRD Security Golem, transforming him into something out of a fever dream. I replaced one of his hands with a newly remodeled version of the saw-blade gun I’d taken off Nikoli, outfitted with a metric assload of custom runic saw blades with a wide range of spell effects.

  Nothing too elaborate—since I didn’t trust the Horrors with anything that required finesse—but hard-hitting spells nonetheless: Venomous Payload Bolt, Charbroiled Inferno, Circuitbreaker Surge.

  Someone from Kringlegard had sold an Uncommon, double-headed battle-axe with an ability called Echo Cleave. On contact, the effect could be activated, conjuring a spectral afterimage of the axe to strike the target in the same spot again for one-third the original damage.

  It seemed like a perfect fit for the Horror. And, between the runic saw-blade gun and the axe, he was an offensive powerhouse both at range and close up.

  It was a grueling regimen, but despite Jakob’s muted protests, it was paying off.

  By the end of the fifth day, we’d slaughtered more Aspirants than I could count. So many that my Cold-Blooded Murderer title had evolved into Serial Killer In-Training, which didn’t give me a whole lot of warm fuzzies. But it did come with an upgrade—though not one I felt comfortable using. On top of double experience for Delver deaths, I could now also take “trophies” from my victims: an eye, an ear, a patch of skin.

  So long as I openly wore those trophies, I’d gain 2% of the victim’s highest stat.

  No matter how good the bonuses were, however, I just couldn’t bring myself to wear a necklace of human ears.

  Still, we were stacking bodies, racking up levels, and looting Relics like they were on discount. Between the Dwellers and the Aspirants, I’d finally hit level 61 without even realizing it. The others were solidly in the mid-fifties, though Temperance was catching up to me at an alarming rate. Thanks to her murderous bloodlust and an old-timey version of the Cold-Blooded Murderer title—appropriately called Child of Cain—she’d quickly outpaced Jakob and was now at 58.

  The Cendral had earned the fewest levels, but even with his self-imposed moral handicap, he’d crept up to 55, though he firmly declined to take any of the loot. He insisted it was “coated in blood” and that he wouldn’t have any of it on his hands.

  Harper was still the lowest level at 51—though power wasn’t all about raw strength and she was punching above her weight class.

  Not only had she been training nonstop with Temp, but we’d upgraded several of her Relics. She still had Arcane Jumper Cables, now at level 10, but she’d replaced Background Extra with Tall Grass, and Hippocratic Aegis had been reforged into the Fabled-grade Rod of Asclepius.

  The core spell mechanic stayed the same—it reduced damage and increased regen by 50% so long as she hadn’t dealt damage to an enemy in the past five minutes—but now the crippling downside was gone. Even better, healing an ally instantly reset the timer on the passive aura. With a little juggling, she could effectively cycle between offense and healing, leaving herself exposed for only brief windows at a time.

  We also looted a Rare-grade Relic off a dead Aspirant, called Warranty Void if Broken, that turned out to be surprisingly handy and perfect for a healer like Harper.

  When activated, it conjured an arcane dome not so different from the shield provided by my Super Slammer of Shielding, which blocked both melee attacks and spell damage. The catch was, if anyone inside the dome attempted to deal physical damage or cast offensive spells through the safety of the dome, it automatically nullified the dome of protection and sent the ability into an automatic ten-minute cooldown cycle. But Harper could still cast heals or team buffs without penalty.

  Temp also got a few necessary upgrades.

  She swapped Fuck You, Newton for a replicated version of Prancer’s Blitz and Talk to the Hand—a silencing spell—for the Bounty Hunter Relic we’d taken off Skylar’s corpse. I also upgraded her Puritanical Chains by combining it with Naughty List, Chains of Christmas Past, and a Relic we’d looted from the Drekhnaar Drones, called Corrupted Vines. The result was a powerful crowd control ability capable of targeting multiple enemies, which also came with a nice little Affliction as icing on the cake.

  Sinner’s Chains.

  Fabled Relic – Level 3

  Range: 10-Meter Radius

  Cost: 50 Mana

  Cooldown: 90 Seconds

  Cast Time: 2 Seconds

  Sinner’s Chains is the “shut the fuck up and sit your ass down” of battlefield management. It doesn’t just lock enemies in place—it drags their secrets kicking and screaming into the light and forces them to choke on the weight of their own repressed shame. It’s like if Catholic guilt were personified as a spell.

  When cast, spiked chains erupt from the ground in a 10-meter radius, binding every enemy caught in the area of effect. Bound targets cannot move, cannot dodge, and cannot charge for the next ten seconds, they live with the terrible knowledge that their fate is irrevocably tied to the rest of the dirty sinners shackled beside them.

  While imprisoned, all targets suffer the Affliction Shared Burden. Every strike, every bullet, every gout of flame that lands on one of them ripples outward, its damage evenly distributed across the entire pack. The result is a writhing mob of penitent souls squirming against unbreakable restraints as strong as guilt itself. You don’t just punish one—you punish them all for their past transgressions.

  And sometimes, that punishment cuts deeper than flesh. Ensnared Sinners are known to scream confessions mid-combat, spitting out secrets better left unsaid. Some are petty. Some are vile. All are disturbing. But as the old book says, confession is good for the soul—even if it’s the last thing they ever say.

  This Relic enables Mana usage.

  The spell cost was high, but other than that, the Relic seemed custom tailored for someone like Temperance. Less emotionally repulsive than Chains of Christmas Past, but more effective than Puritanical Chains, which could only bind a single target at a time.

  As for Croc, at level 45, the mimic still lagged substantially behind everyone else, though I suspected that would change the further down we ventured. As the ambient Mana concentration increased, so would the rate of Croc’s advancement. But despite the somewhat sluggish gains, the mimic had managed to hit another major evolutionary milestone.

  Dweller 0.3745A – Mature True-Transmorphic Mimic (Outcast) [Level 45]

  Would you look at that? Your adolescent, shapeshifting coffee table has finally grown up into a full-on murder dinette, complete with padded chairs and place mats! The Mature True-Transmorphic Mimic is the fully realized nightmare you always suspected furniture was capable of becoming.

  Although not as powerful as the Ancient Mimics nor as specialized as the Brood Matriarch, this thing is a fully realized apex predator with the emotional complexity of a seasoned serial killer… who also happens to be a Swiss Army knife of biological torture implements.

  It has mastered the art of becoming whatever material it desires, slipping between steel, stone, and organic textures without a hint of imperfection. Its transformations are seamless enough to fool trained eyes, experienced hunters, and even most Relics. Enhanced Athleticism allows it to sprint, leap, and climb with an almost unnatural fluidity. Its already formidable Toughness has hardened into near-impenetrable armor, while increased Preservation makes it particularly resistant to poison, disease, and Blight.

  The Mature True-Transmorphic Mimic can now summon one Flesh Maw for every ten levels of advancement. But its most dangerous new ability is the fully developed Elemental Variable Projectile System?—a powerful internal pressure cannon capable of spitting liquid death in whatever flavor of misery the situation calls for.

  With the Elemental Variable Projectile System, it can now mimic the effect of other Uncommon-grade Projectile Relics, unleashing jets of scalding water with bone-snapping force, streams of melt-your-face-off acid, or gouts of fire that reduce prey to smoldering ash.

  Be careful and question everything. There is no safety in the familiar.

  By early afternoon on the sixth day, the forest began to thin, the oppressive canopy breaking open into groves of stylized evergreens that looked suspiciously like movie set pieces. Behind the neatly manicured forest were the towering walls of Steamboat Studios—the beating heart of the 99th Floor and the home of the Franchisor.