Chapter Five: Tour

“Wait dragon?” Ethan said trying to hide the astonishment in his voice.

“Yes” Picario said casually as he placed the posters down on the table. “I’ve had her for several years now, she cost me an arm and a leg but she’s just the most loveable pet there is. She’s also my best friend.”

“So wait is it like a real dragon? I know I’ve seen some amazing stuff in the short time I’ve been here but a dragon?”

Picario smirked and said, “You know when I heard about dragons being real here too I was the same way. I thought it was a con but when I saw one for real I knew it wasn’t. So I saved up my points immediately after buying a room on the ninetieth floor and bought a dragon egg as soon as I had enough.

Anyways how about at the end of our tour I take you to my room and you can meet her; how is that sound?”

“That sounds amazing. Where do we begin?”

Ethan and Picario were staggering up the last steps to floor 52. When they got up to the lounge they just sat down and leaned against the nearest wall. “Okay you can make a mansion with probably infinite space, and portals into other realms, but you couldn’t make a damn elevator?” Ethan said.

“Well we have these amber teleportation crystals.” Picario said as he pulled out the crystal he used when he disappeared on Ethan. He handed the crystal over to Ethan so he could examine it and then continued; “But the crystal only teleports one person at a time to the floor they desire.”

Ethan handed the crystal back to Picario and said, “Ugh!”

Picario laughed a little then asked, “5 minute break?”

“Yup”

After their break Ethan stood up and said, “Alright, where to now?”

Picario got to his feet as well and said, “Since we are on floor fifty-two we can go to room two-twenty-one for Chelsea’s Plushy Doll shop. I used to think the place was just for girls but after going there and seeing these cool monsters that she made I had a change of heart.”

As Picario and Ethan walked further down the rooms of the 52 nd floor they could hear the noises of multiple groups of people talking. When they got to the corridor with rooms 200-299 they saw a couple of girls walking their way each carrying a doll the size of their torso under in their arms. The girls kept talking to each other as they passed by and held no interest in Ethan or Picario.

When they got to the room the door was wide open and Ethan could see a large shop filled with 4 shelved round glass doll holders placed throughout the room at least ten feet apart. Shelves that were about 8 feet in height lined the walls and had a sliding ladder attached to them and above those were wall shelves. Every one of these shelves had different dolls placed on them ranging from sizes as big as a hand to as big as Picario.

The dolls designs looked like they were crafted from a master artist who had been making these stuffed dolls for centuries; then again maybe they had. The dolls also had small white tags attached to them with the writings of: C-1 through C-4. Ethan also noticed that the shop was filled with boy and girl phantoms of all ages; kids, teens, adults, even older people.

Picario just looked at Ethan with a large smirk as he took everything in. “Like I said, at first I was judgmental but when I saw all this I had the same look on your face as you do now.” Picario said. “Chelsea makes any kind of doll here, humans, animals, Phoenixes with orange and red felt trails coming from them their tails; you name it.”

“This is really cool, and its just one girl who does all this?” Ethan said.

“Yeah, I hear she spends almost all her time making dolls. But who am I to judge a hobbyist especially since were dead we have all the time we could ask for, don’t need to eat; and only sleep when it suits us.”

“Even so this is really impressive for just one girl.”

Ethan and Picario walked around the doll shop looking at all of the cool dolls and Ethan would occasionally mingle with another customer in the shop. During one of Ethan’s talk with someone else he lost sight of Picario and started wandering the shop looking for him. Eventually Picario came out with a spider doll the size of head sitting on top of his head and asked, “Hey Ethan is there something on my head?”

Ethan cracked a smile as Picario did his best to look puzzled. Picario turned to the left then right ever so slowly and said, “I just can’t shake this feeling that there’s some kind of creepy crawly on top of me but I’m just too nervous to check.”

Ethan’s smile grew larger and he let out a light laugh.

Picario’s expression went from puzzled to mischievous when he saw a couple girls about 17 years old walk by. He pulled the spider doll off his head then quietly whispered to Ethan, “Watch this.” Then he held the doll in both his hands and started concentrating on it for a long moment. Picario then let out a small breath and turned his palms down so they faced the ground as the spider doll just floated in the air below his palms.

Picario then started moving his fingers around, bending them and flexing them slightly as the doll began to move in rhythm to his fingers. He was controlling the doll like it was a puppet attached to strings. Slowly Picario made the spider dance a little testing it out until he was satisfied and he made it hover over to the girls who he was looking at.

The spider doll danced behind the girls backs as they were stopped and playing with a large Mickey Mouse doll on a counter. Ethan had to cover his mouth to stop from bursting into laughter. Then Picario made the spider doll start crawling up the back of one of the girls and she shrieked in surprise.

While the other girl jumped back from her friend Picario made the spider doll climb quickly to the top of the girl’s head and then made it leap onto the second girl’s face. She screamed and fell back as the spider doll covered her entire face and Ethan and Picario were hunched over laughing really hard.

When Ethan saw the two girls storming over to him and Picario he managed to stop laughing long enough to straighten out and grab Picario’s hand and lead him out of the shop. As the two ran they kept laughing and half of the 52 nd floor could hear them.

They didn’t stop running until they made it up to the 53 rd floor and when they were in the lounge they sat down getting all the laughs out of their system.

“Man did you see the look on them dames?” Picario said.

Ethan smirked and said, “Who says Dames anymore?”

Picario looked away from Ethan for a moment then took in a deep breath and let it out. “Alright” He said more calmly. “We got to go to floor 80 for my personal favorite shop: Peters Playful Toyshop.”

Ethan looked up at the staircase that now spiraled upwards, so far most of the staircases would be a straight shot up but sometimes they encountered ones that went in a square shape leading up; this wasn’t the first spiral staircase he encountered either.

“Fantastic” Ethan said sarcastically.

Picario glanced at Ethan then summoned up a screen and looked over it for a minute and appeared to be calculating something in his head. Then he made the screen vanish and said, “Alright wait here I will return shortly.” And before Ethan could say anything Picario was jogging down the hall to the Ghost Points Shops.

A couple minutes after Picario left, he teleported back to the center of the lounge in the swirling orbs of light. As Ethan approached him Picario tossed an amber crystal to him. Ethan caught it and asked, “What’s this?”

“A teleportation crystal, all for you” Picario replied with a smile.

Ethan caught the crystal examined it briefly and said, “Picario this is great and all but I can’t accept this, it must have cost a fortune for this thing.”

“They cost 100,000 Ghost points each, and before you say ‘no’ I can afford it and I’m also tired of walking up all these stairs I mean its taking us hours just to go to the doll shop. Besides if you’re that worried about then after a few months when you accumulated more points you can buy me something of the same price to clear your conscious.”

Ethan held up the crystal and said, “One day soon, so how do you work this thing anyways?”

“Simply concentrate on the floor number that you want to be on and the crystal will take you to it. I will be waiting for you at the center of the lobby.” Then Picario disappeared in the familiar swirling orbs of light.

Ethan examined the amber crystal once more then began focusing on “floor 80”. He repeated it again and again in his head when the entire room went white for the blink of an eye and back to normal except now he was in an entirely different lobby. The ground was made up of a very nice marble type material that had patterns of blue trailing along as if the wind picked up a blue paint brush and lightly swept over the marble.

The walls were even more impressive; they were marble as well but the paintings on them looked like a beautiful sky from the perspective of being in the clouds. They looked so real Ethan wondered if he walked over to the wall and tried to touch it would his hand go through instead.

In the center of the lobby ten feet from where Ethan stood was an enormous circular in-ground pool where literally over 400 people were swimming in and playing with an inflated ball or floating on an inflated dolphin. And just past the massive pool were a couple in-ground hot tubs that looked like they could each hold about 50 people but only had 7 and 12 people in each at the moment.

Behind Ethan closer to the stairs going down were sets of relaxing chairs the kind you put your feet on and sit back; they were made of what looked like puffy white clouds.

Ethan was so busy taking everything in that he failed to notice Picario standing right behind him and when he spoke up Ethan jumped. “Pretty great isn’t it.”

Ethan took a moment to catch his breath and said, “This is, unfathomable.”

“I’ll take it unfathomable is something like, amazing?”

“Yeah something like that. Will this place ever cease to amaze me?”

“Hopefully not, besides this is nothing compared to floor 90. The lounge there is the size of a beach and its pool is large river with a waterfall dropping down into it. The stairs leading to floor 91 will spiral up behind the waterfall and detour up to the top of it, and from up there I swear you would think that you’re standing on top of a cliff.

Most of the phantoms here spend their free time swimming around and playing with others, and the water is warm anytime of the year day and night. Would you like to go swimming? Peters Toy shop is open Monday through Saturday all day and night until sunrise of Sunday so we have plenty of time.”

Ethan thought about it for a few moments in silence to himself then said, “Another day for sure. For now I want to see this toy shop.”

Picario led Ethan down the hall to the rooms and they turned down the corridor to rooms 100-199. The third door down had big blocky letters painted on the top of the door in an arc that read, “PETERS PLAYFUL TOYSHOP”. The rest of the door had numerous small paintings of a train, an airplane, a robot, and some animals. The door was vibrant with colors and display of certain playfulness.

“This looks amusing.” Ethan said heart-fully starting to reminisce of his own childhood.

“‘Whether your 5 years old or 500 you can always enjoy some fun toys.’ It’s Peters catchphrase, he says it to every new customer so be prepared.” Then Picario opened the door.

Inside was a medium sized room with small stars, moons, and planets floating around it randomly and six doors at the end. The first door on the left had a train in some tracks painted in an optical illusion so that it looked like the train was going away from you at all times and at the top of the door was written “Trains”. Next to that door was one with airplanes fighting it out in sky scenery; the text on top was “Airplanes”.

To the right of the airplanes door was a simple dark wood colored door that read “clay animals”. The door next to that showed two humanoid robots with laser eyes fighting in a burning and demolished city and had the words “Robots” written in red on the top. The door next to that had an array of bright colors playfully splashed onto the door in splatters and its text had a different primary color each letter saying “Miscellaneous Fun Toys.”

The last door stood out the most, it was neon purple with a black glowing neon handle; the entire door looked to be made up of neon glass and written on the middle in red and blue neon colors were “Laser Tag”.

After Ethan studied the doors he said, “Laser tag, seriously?”

“Yes, it’s great. You have 20 people on two teams of red or blue in those bright colors shooting these guns that-”

Ethan held his hand up to stop Picario then said, “I know what laser tag is I’ve played several times before when I was your age but, I never thought this place would have it.”

“Yeah it’s the newest addition to the store here. When it first came out it was always packed full of people because unlike you most of us here didn’t have this sort of thing back where we lived so it was a new wonder of the mansion. There are 4 rooms available for laser tag, the first 3 are for 20vs20 red and blue teams where you can sign up for at anytime and you will be placed in the nearest available red or blue team.

And the fourth door is for the special free for all arena mode on Tuesdays which can hold up to five-hundred people at a time. Or on Saturday afternoon hours before the grand tournament is Peter’s battle royal tournament, that one holds the prizes for top three players and is very competitive. Peter also holds several other tournaments but you can check those out later if you want for now how about choosing a door?”

Ethan rubbed his chin nonchalantly for a couple minutes then pointed to the second door on the left and said, “That one.”

Picario smirked then walked forward and opened the door. The room beyond the door was enormous; about as big as the lounge that they came from, with paintings of the sky and clouds on the walls and ceiling. There were dozens of phantoms all around starring up at several toy planes flying around the room. These planes seemed to be coordinating at random; most of them looked like highly advanced military grade planes with a sleek design.

Ethan watched the planes fly around casually, not overly impressed by them but still amused. Then one of the planes swooped up through the air and tiny missiles shot out of it. The missiles bolted through the air and in display of fire and a loud popping noise exploded another plane several yards from it. The flaming debris of the plane fell to the ground scattered and quickly burned itself down to nothing, not even ashes.

One of the phantoms was annoyed by this but didn’t throw a fit he instead walked up to another of the phantoms who was carefully watching the plane that just blew another one to kingdom come, and slugged him on the arm. The two then started engaging in some conversation which Ethan couldn’t hear at all when Picario said, “Oh man that reminds me I have to feed Nessie.”

Ethan turned and eyed Picario, “A plane being blown to smithereens reminds you to feed your dragon?”

“Uhm, if you want to continue the tour I can return here in about an hour?”

“You know what lets put the rest of this tour on hold, now I’m dying to see your dragon if that’s alright with you?”

Picario’s face lit up with joy and he said, “Yeah that’s great, I always wanted to show off my cool room to someone else. But we have to shake a leg otherwise she’ll get grouchy when we get there.”

Ethan pulled out his amber crystal and said, “Picario my friend we have got to update your catchphrase list.”