Suddenly, one of the doors in the hall burst open and a guy in green and blue spandex that looked similar to my costume stumbled out of the room.
He looked like he was in a hurry; in fact, he was in such a hurry that he almost ran into me, but I stepped out of the way just in time to avoid having him run into me.
"Whoa!" said the guy, coming to a stop before he slammed into the wall.
"That was close."
"Gates, what are you doing?" said Natalie in annoyance.
"You almost ran into KING."
"Huh?" said Gates, turning to face us.
He brushed aside some of his dreads to look at me closer.
"Hey, it is KING. I thought you were still unconscious from the, uh, accideaccident."
I shook my head. "Nah. My memory is still fried, but I'm still decent. My memory'll come back soon enough."
"Good to hear, my man," said Gates. "After all, you're the strongest among us, so we really need you to get your shit together if we're going to win, you feel me?"
"Uh, yeah," I said, before chuckling. "Not gonna lie, but I can't really remember you. 'Cause of my amnesia, you know."
"KING, this is Gates," said Natalie, gesturing at him. "His real name is Ja'Von Jenkins.
He can open portals that allow him to travel from one point of the planet to another."
"Yeah," said Gates. "I'm not going to use it here, though, because then I'd kill us all and you really wouldn't like that. Well... you'd survive. But the rest of us? Not so much."
"You're right I wouldn't," I said. "So how long have we known each other again?"
"Years, man!" said Gates, throwing his arms into the air.
"Don't you remember back in the fourth grade? We met when we were ten."
I was about to say that no, I didn't remember him at all, until I suddenly had a flashback to when I was ten.
It was my first day of elementary school and, like my flashback to when I first met Nat, I was the new kid and didn't have any friends.
I was in the cafeteria, looking for some place to sit, but all of the other kids had formed little cliques and they all glared at me whenever I asked to sit with them.
I ended up sitting at a table with Gates, plus another girl who I didn't recognize, because apparently Gates didn't have any friends and neither did the girl (whose face was blurry to me for some reason).
"Yeah," I said, rubbing the back of my head, which started hurting again as I remembered the memory.
"Yeah, I remember now. Sorry. Just my amnesia acting up again."
Gates—who had been frowning in worry just seconds ago—smiled at me in relief.
"Good to hear, bro. I thought you might not remember. But of course, you'd never forget your best friend, right?"
I blinked. "We're best friends?"
"Yeah, since we met in elementary school on the playground," said Gates. "Remember?"
"That's weird," I said, scratching the back of my head again. "I remember
we met in the—"
Abruptly, I found myself watching a new memory.
This one showed me, Gates, and the girl (who I now knew was named Belle) playing tag on the playground at our school.
Apparently, I had just joined in and didn't even know their names until the game ended, at which point I introduced myself to them and they to me and we swore to be best friends forever from that day forward, a promise we'd apparently kept.
"KING?" said Gates. "You look out of it."
I put a hand on my head, which was starting to ache.
"It's … it's nothing.
You're right. We met on the playground."
Even though I said those words, I didn't believe them.
I had just remembered that we had met in the cafeteria … didn't I?
Maybe it was the amnesia, playing with my memories and making me remember things the wrong way.
That explanation felt hollow to me, though, but I didn't know how else to explain it.
"Well, you'll be better soon enough," said Nat, grabbing my hand and causing me to look at her.
"Let's keep going. The others are probably wondering where we are and Uncle doesn't like it when we're late."
She suddenly pulled me down the hall, causing me to stumble before I regained my balance and followed her.
Gates followed behind me, but when I glanced over my shoulder at him, I noticed that he had a very brief but serious look of worry on his face.
And not because of me; it looked like he was worried about something going wrong, though maybe he was just worried that Demiurge was going to be upset at us for being late.
Soon, we arrived at the dining room, where the meeting was going to take place.
It was a huge and opulent room, much like the rest of the mansion, with a crystal chandelier hanging above the long oak table.
The table was set with a beautiful white tablecloth that looked more expensive than the table itself.
The room smelled vaguely of bacon, eggs, and coffee, most likely because they'd just had breakfast, and it looked like the table had been cleared of dishes fairly recently based on the tiny impressions I saw in the tablecloth's surface.
Seated at the table were four other people.
There was an athletic-looking girl with a combat-oriented mechanical right arm whose name I couldn't remember, with another, fat girl with short pink hair sitting next to her who wore weird thick framed glasses resembling Kusuo Saiki's.
Sitting opposite them was a tall, angry-looking man with skin so dark he looked black, his skin covered in what appeared to be tattoos, though none of the designs made any sense to me.
And sitting at the end of the table was a man in magician robes, who I instantly recognized as Demiurge.
He had his fingers steepled together, his gray beard flowing down his chest.
He looked like your stereotypical wizard, but I could tell he was not just dressing up as Gandalf.
He was the real deal, and when he saw me, he smiled.