Games? I Love Games!

"Welcome. You're now dead."

The figure stared blankly at them with no follow up.

The two kids look left and right.

'Are there cameras? Is this a prank show?', they both think at the same time.

The dark, and creepy voice lets out another intense vibration in the air, communicating, "No. This is not a prank show, neither are there cameras. You're both dead." The figure shows the most textbook example of a blank expression.

The figure stays seated, where his bottom half has what seems to be legs, except they have what seems to be spikes protruding out of where the calves should be, along with scales over where the thighs should be. Its upper half including the head is just completely see-through with a static force field forming the human-like expressions it has shown.

Accepting it rather quickly, Mohammed starts thinking, 'So I'm dead?'

The figure responds with the same blank look, "You're dead."

Mohammed repeats, 'I'm dead?'

The figure repeats, "You're dead."

Mohammed ponders over something and asks a question in his mind with no will for the figure's response. The figure remains seated. Then he asks a question with a great will for the figure's response, the figure responds.

But in Jake's view, the figure is just repeating the words 'You're dead' repeatedly and he starts getting confused, then thinking about the question he thought of when he first came here and the answer, he turns to see Mohammed to his left just eyeing the figure like he found a toy.

He asks, "Mo, what the hell are you doing?"

Mohammed, clearly excited, responds, "Look, look, he answers questions you want a response for inside ya head."

Jake looks at the transparent figure with confusion, then looks at its force field. Thinking of certain possibilities, he holds a thinking posture for a second.

He then asks while pointing at the figure, 'What's that?'

Suddenly the dark field started shaking. Up out of nothingness came an abysmal amount of letters and characters. They swirl above the figure at a speed where they're barely visible by the human eye before disappearing.

The figure shows a great mix of human-like emotions before slowly forming a complete blank look. Viibrating the air around him once again, he communicates, "The games will begin in a moment," he paused before adding, "Players, please prepare."

Jake starts getting confused. He was expecting a response, but he didn't get any and he got what seemed to be similar to an error.

'So I can't ask certain questions, huh? Then what's the limit? Can I not ask questions that break my limit of possible understanding, or is it just that I can't ask some questions yet. Like I have to learn the answers myself and the rest would be revealed to me. Well one thing we know is that they only answer the question you truly want an answer to. Then doesn't that mean they can read minds? Hmm'

Mohammed points out, "Wait, game? There's a game? I love games!"

With no response the figure announces, "15, 14" before stopping a bit, then continuing,"11, 10, 9…."

Then at 'one', Jake and Mohammed start feeling a simulation of descent or falling. They feel as if they're falling from the clouds as they continue falling for an entire 10 seconds.

While still yelling, they suddenly have the scenery before them flash into a residential building entrance with the reception desk's chair being empty. The building's entrance had both the ceilings and floors covered in a sharp and clear frost white. The entrance they were in was very wide and open with the ends' walls being covered in a clear red with unknown characters written on them in pitch black. The only things they can see is the reception's desk and chair and a green staircase to the left.

Mohammed starts looking at the design of the building with complicated expressions. He starts touching random things, looking for maybe some hidden mechanisms. He checks the walls, the floor, and any physical object he can find, including the chair.

"So we're dead, right? So... d-do you think these are our souls? Are we ghosts?" Jake asks in confusion. He notices that his body isn't see through, which doesn't really verify his theory to him.

Mohammed stands up from his crouching position he was in. Then after listening to his question, he thinks then says, "I dunno. We might be. Here lemme check something out."

Mohammed steps up towards Jake. He throws out a fist to Jake's chest. It leads to land on him squarely on the chest. Jake's body jerks back on reflex noticing the swing of the punch, but fails to dodge the punch. As a result, Jake's body absorbs the blow, but the pain that came as a result seemed to be much greater than expected.

The pain didn't make the punch feel life threatening, but it felt more like 3 punches landed consecutively on him rather than one. Jake grips his chest and falls to one knee feeling the pain. A bit later he feels the pain slowly receding a slight amount at a time.

Jake widens his eyes in surprise. He slowly lets out a sort of gasp. "Th.. That shit hurt! What the hell!?"

Mohammed shrugs. "I guess we know we're sort of souls then."

With Jake's eyes piercing his back, Mohammed turns to further investigate the place he's in. 'Well I see the walls, ceiling, and floor are cool and shit…, but what the hell are we supposed to do here?!'

Mohammed then starts turning his head fairly rapidly towards his left right up and down. Looking dejected he turns back to the recovered Jake saying, "Damn, we can't will the answers here like before."

Jake raises an eyebrow. "Did you think we got superpowers after talking to…that thing?"

"Bro, it's a game. 'Why don't we have superpowers?' is the real question. Anyways we know now that we don't have super strength and that question thing." Mohammed replies, internally questioning Jake's intelligence.

Jake nods, somewhat getting the logic behind that before he realizes something. "Wait! You punched ME to test out the super strength?"

"I don't know man. Let's check out the stairs, aight? It's just a game, anyway." Mohammed replies in an attempt to amend.