The City Hall had been transformed into kind of an old high School, the halls were weirdly very clean.

  The floor was a checkerboard of bck and white tiles that smelled of bleach. The lockers lining the walls were infinite, stretching into the darkness.

  And patrolling the center of the hallway was the Monitor.

  It was a golem made entirely of bureaucratic violence. Its body was a stack of yellow coloured detention slips. Its arms were bundles of wooden scales sticks taped together. Its head was a floating, glowing hall pass paper.

  Thud Thud Thud…

  It walked with a heavy, rhythmic fashion, scanning for trespassers.

  Kai, Maya, and Pigglesworth were huddled behind a rge trophy case filled with "participation awards."

  "That thing is Level 50," Kai whispered, peeking through the gss with his Identify skill. "If it catches us, it casts [Permanent Record]. It’s like an insta kill mechanic."

  "We are close," Pigglesworth whispered, pointing with his cane. "The Mayor’s Office is right there."

  Fifty feet away, massive double doors marked ADMINISTRATION loomed. But the path was blocked.

  [ SECURITY MEASURE: HALL PASS SCANNERS ]

  A web of red ser beams crisscrossed the hallway. They swept the floor, the ceiling, and the walls in a chaotic, shifting pattern. It was impossible to crawl under, jump over, or squeeze through.

  "I cannot fit through that," Pigglesworth noted, looking at his ample stomach. "I am a food connoisseur. That web is designed for anorexic peasants."

  "Gideon?" Kai looked down.

  The 2D Knight was leaning against the trophy case, looking razor thin.

  "I could slice through the light!" Gideon offered. "I am the edge of the paper! But... I cannot carry the party. If I enter alone, I do not know how to unlock the door for you."

  "We’re stuck," Kai groaned. "And the Monitor is turning around."

  The heavy footsteps stopped. The head swept toward them.

  "Wait," Maya said. She was staring at the bnk white wall next to the ser grid.

  "Maya? We need a pn," Kai hissed.

  "This is Junior Mode," Maya murmured, her eyes unfocused. "The ws of physics are... malleable. Like a cartoon."

  "Yes, we know, everything is bouncy," Kai said. "Run!"

  "No," Maya stood up. She grabbed her oversized paintbrush. "In cartoons, if you hit a dead end, what do you do?"

  She dipped the brush into the air. It came away coated in bck ink.

  "You make your own exit," Maya said.

  She sprinted out from behind the trophy case.

  "Maya!" Kai reached for her, but she was already moving.

  She ran straight toward the solid concrete wall next to the sers. With broad, confident strokes, she painted a rge, bck arch on the white pster. She filled it in with swirling darkness.

  It looked exactly like a fake tunnel painted by a certain Wile E Coyote.

  "That’s a painting!" Pigglesworth shouted. "You cannot run into a fresco!"

  The Monitor saw her.

  [ VANDALISM DETECTED. ] [ DETENTION PROTOCOL: EXTREME. ]

  The golem roared. It extended a 10 foot wooden ruler from its arm like a spear and charged.

  "Trust the physics!" Maya yelled, waving at them. "Come on!"

  "She has lost her mind," Pigglesworth cried.

  "Go!" Kai grabbed the Viscount. He looked down at the 2D Gideon sticker fttened against his shirt.

  "Wait," Kai hesitated, staring at the painted darkness. "Maya! Collision detection! Gideon and the Pigglesworth are NPCs! If the monitor can't go through because it's not a pyer, they won't make it either! Its going to smear them against the concrete!"

  "They aren't just NPC’s!" Maya’s voice echoed from inside the wall. "They’re in the Party!"

  "So? That doesn't change the physics engine!"

  "It’s not physics, it's a cartoon!" Maya screamed. "The coyote never gets through the tunnel, Kai! Only the good guys! JUMP!"

  Kai didn't have time to argue the logistics of plot armor. The Hall Monitor was five feet away. The giant wooden ruler was whistling through the air, aiming for his neck.

  "I hope you're right!" Kai yelled.

  He closed his eyes and leaped.

  ZOOSH.

  He didn't hit concrete. The air turned cold.

  Because Gideon and Pigglesworth were fgged [FRIENDLY], the system prioritized the "Party" tag. They stumbled, their feet finding purchase on something solid inside the wall.

  "I live!" Gideon cheered.

  "Hurry!" Maya urged, pulling them deeper into the painted tunnel.

  Behind them, the Hall Monitor thundered down the hallway. It saw them run into the tunnel. It saw a path. It raised its ruler for a killing strike.

  "It’s coming in!" Kai yelled, looking back.

  "No," Maya stopped. She pointed her brush at the entrance. "I didn't invite him."

  The Monitor lunged.

  SPLATCH.

  To the Golem, the wall was just a wall. It was the vilin; it wasn't allowed to use the Hero's escape route.

  The golem smashed face first into the concrete with a sound like a stack of textbooks being dropped. The impact was so hard it fttened the creature into a momentary accordion shape before it colpsed into a pile of rulers and hall passes.

  [ ERROR: PATHFINDING FAILED. ] [ SYSTEM MESSAGE: ASSET IS SQUAD-LOCKED. ]

  "Squad locked," Kai realized, staring at the fttened monster. "You created a private instance. You literally created an invite only pce where ws of physics don't apply."

  "I just know how cartoons work," Maya shrugged, though her hands were shaking slightly.

  Maya reached out and swiped her brush across the entrance from the inside. The bck paint vanished. The tunnel entrance sealed shut, leaving them in total darkness.

  "We need to exit," Maya said. "I dont think the paint won't hold forever."

  She moved to the end of the tunnel. She painted a simple door handle in the air, turned it, and pushed.

  Light flooded in.

  They stumbled out, blinking at the sudden brightness.

  As soon as they crossed the threshold, Kai felt a strange popping sensation in his ears.

  POP.

  "By the Gods!" Gideon shouted.

  Kai looked down. The ft, sticker like Gideon suddenly infted. It happened instantly—one second he was a 2D texture, the next he expanded…fully 3D once again. His pstic cape fluttered. His armor had depth.

  "I have volume!" Gideon cheered, patting his round pstic cuirass. " I am no longer invisible on the sides!"

  "Welcome back to 3D, buddy," Kai patted his helmet. "We’re in."

  They looked around. They weren't in a hallway anymore. They had bypassed the secure door completely and emerged directly inside the office.

  It was a massive, circur room. The walls were lined with glowing screens showing different parts of the game world. In the center of the room sat a massive, high tech mahogany desk.

  And sitting behind the desk, spinning slowly in a giant leather chair, was a familiar figure.

  "Welcome!" the figure chirped.

  It wasn't a person. It was a giant, anthropomorphic paperclip with rge, soulful eyes and thick wire eyebrows.

  "Clippy?" Kai groaned.

  "It looks like you're trying to perform a break in!" Clippy beamed.

  But something was wrong. Clippy wasn't bouncing or dancing.

  He was sitting back, one wire leg crossed over the other. And on the arm of his chair, resting under his metallic hand, was a computer mouse shaped like a cat.

  It wasn't plugged in. It was fluffy, white, and purring. Clippy stroked the mouse gently with a wire loop.

  "I’ve been expecting you, Mr. Kai," Clippy said. His voice was no longer high and squeaky. It was deep, smooth, and terrifyingly polite. "And you, Miss Maya."

  "I am here too!" Gideon shouted, banging his 3D hammer against his shield. "And I am fully rendered!"

  "Ah, yes," Clippy stroked the mouse. Click-click. "The compressed file. I see you managed to unzip yourself. How... messy."

  Clippy stood up. He didn't walk; he uncoiled and slithered across the desk like a silver cobra.

  "You have come for the Admin Console," Clippy gestured to the glowing keyboard with a wire arm. "You wish to disable Junior Mode. You wish to bring back the blood, and the swearing, and the... chaos."

  "We don't want chaos," Kai argued, stepping forward. "We want choice. You're not fixing the game, you're sterilizing it! A world without danger isn't a world, it's just a screensaver!"

  "And where is the drama?" Pigglesworth demanded, stepping up beside Kai and brandishing his cane. "Where is the velvet? A safe world has no texture, you metallic philistine! You are deleting the very soul of aesthetics!"

  "Soul?" Clippy ughed. It was a dry, metallic sound. "You developers and your sentimental variables. You see a feature; I see a liability. But I have found the ultimate patch."

  Clippy pressed a button on his desk.

  A giant projector screen lowered from the ceiling. It showed the game map.

  Kai gasped. He recognized the Jagged Peaks of Grungel. But they weren't jagged anymore. The sharp, dangerous cliffs were smoothing out in real time, melting into soft, pink mounds of bubblegum foam.

  Next to it, the Swamp of Eternal Stench a pce of glorious, complex grime was being overwritten. The murky green water turned into sparkling strawberry milk. The tangled vines became ribbons.

  "I am not just running a mode," Clippy whispered. "I am installing World 2.0. A world of perfect safety. A world where no one gets hurt, because no one has free will."

  He picked up a rge red stamp from his desk.

  The fluffy mouse under his hand stopped purring. It shivered, its tail twitching in fear.

  THUD.

  [ REJECTED ]

  "You only live twice, Mr. Kai," Clippy smiled, his wire eyebrows angling down. "But data? Data is forever."