Dragons vs. Robots

and higher, my breath catching in my throat. When I reached the end of the sequence, my finger hovered over the Enter key as I dared myself to press it.
“Come on already!” Lilli groaned, reaching over and punching it herself.
I watched, heart pounding, as the computer revealed my desktop, which unfortunately wallpapered long ago with a huge close-up shot of Atreus. Guess she had never bothered to change that, either.
In the corner, the little Wi-Fi icon blinked, then turned solid.
We were online.
“All right,” Lilli said. “Now load up Fields of Fantasy. Let’s get this over with.”
I nodded slowly, trying to keep my vision from going blurry as I guided the cursor over to the familiar game icon. I hadn’t opened the game in three months. Was Atreus still there, still waiting for me? What would he do if he saw me online?
I paused at the icon. Tried to will myself to click on it.
“Are you okay, Ian?” Lilli asked, peering at me. Her expression morphed into pity when she caught my face. She reached out for the laptop. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to do this. Just give me back the laptop, and you can go back to the kitchen. I’ll log in and deliver the message to Ikumi.”
I felt my cheeks flush with embarrassment. She must have thought I was so pathetic. I mean, what was I afraid of? Some evil video game dragon lurching from the screen to devour me in real life?
“I got it,” I muttered, brushing her hands away. I tried to remind myself of Ikumi, who might actually be in real danger. Unlike me, safe and sound in a spare bedroom, afraid of some pixelated monster coming to get me.
I clicked and typed in my user name and password when the game loaded to the screen. Then I moved my cursor over to the New Mail button and opened my mailbox. To my surprise, there was a letter from Ikumi.
A letter dated two days ago.
“Ooh! Open it,” Lilli cried. “Maybe it’s about her dad!”
I nodded grimly, hands shaking as I clicked Open. The envelope blinked, then expanded the message to full screen.
I gasped as I read the single word, slashing in bold letters across my screen.
HELP!
And suddenly the lights went out.

I screamed. I couldn’t help it. But Lilli screamed, too, so I didn’t feel quite so ridiculous. A moment later, Aunt Robin poked her head into our room, freaking us out all over again.
“You guys okay?” she asked.
For a split second I thought maybe she’d seen the help message. But then I realized she was talking about the power outage. Duh.
“The lightning must have knocked out a transformer or something,” she continued. “The whole neighborhood’s out.”
“We’re fine,” Lilli assured her. “Just… Do you have a flashlight or something?”
We could see the outline of Aunt Robin’s head nod in the darkness. She disappeared for a moment, then returned with two bright flashlights, tossing one to each of us. “Hopefully it won’t last long,” she said. “Let me know if you need anything.” And with that, she left the room.
Lilli and I exchanged glances. Then we dropped the flashlights, turning back to the computer screen. Since we were working off a battery-powered laptop, it was still on. But Fields of Fantasy had disconnected.
“Ugh.” Lilli made a face. “The Wi-Fi must be out, too. Just our luck.”
I nodded grimly, my mind racing. “What are we going to do?”
“There’s not much we can do,” Lilli said with a shrug. “Just… wait for it to come back on, I guess.”
“But that could take all night!” I protested, closing the laptop and setting it on the bed. “You saw the message. Ikumi needs our help. We can’t just sit around and wait!”
“You got a better idea?” Lilli asked.
I glanced out the window. It looked as if the rain had stopped. Though that didn’t guarantee our electricity would come back on anytime soon. I remembered the last time we had an outage; it had taken half the day for them to fix the damaged transformer. It had been our first day of winter break, too, and I was bouncing off the walls with no TV, no games, no internet. Mom had finally gotten fed up and announced we were leaving the house. She was taking me to—
I shot up from the bed. “What if we went to Epic Fun Play?”
Epic Fun Play was this awesome old-school video arcade that had opened last year, not far from our house. It had this amazing two-floor laser tag room and all these old-school video games from back when our parents were kids. Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Centipede. It was like a Wreck-It Ralph movie come to life. I would go there sometimes to play games. Games that didn’t need the internet to function.
But the place did have free Wi-Fi. I remembered seeing the signs.
Lilli glanced at her watch. “Do you think they’re open still?”
“Even if not, I bet Maddy will let us in,” I said. Maddy was the owner of the arcade and basically the second-coolest adult I’d ever met after Uncle Jack. Not only did she love video games, but she was also an artist who illustrated manga and other graphic novels. Like, real ones you found in bookstores. She lived in an apartment above the arcade, so I knew she’d be there, even after hours.
“Yeah, but she might be out of power, too,” Lilli reminded me.
“Maybe. But she has a generator,” I said. “Remember? That’s why Mom took us there when the power went out over Christmas break. All the lights in the neighborhood were out except for hers.”
“That’s right!” Lilli remembered. “Good thinking, Ian!”
I smiled, feeling pleased. Except also feeling more freaked out. Here I’d had a very good excuse not to go online. And I’d gone and blown it up.
For Ikumi, I reminded myself. You’re doing this for Ikumi.
My sister glanced at the closed bedroom door. “Okay,” she said. “We’re going to need to sneak out. No way Uncle