Season 1. Chapter 90: Ice cream

Chapter Three: Welcome to the Mundane

The city unfolded like a tired sigh.

The truck creaked down the cracked urban road, passing dull-gray buildings stacked close like worn-out books. Vents spat steam from alley walls, and digital billboards flickered with half-working ads—"Drink VitaPure. Stay Normal."—casting fractured light across the uneven pavement.

Humans and monsters walked side-by-side, heads bowed to glowing phones and interface lenses, their steps automated, their voices silent. Laughter was rare. Music played only from broken speakers. Conversations, if any, were typed—never spoken.

The smell was a cocktail of metal dust, processed oils, cheap spice, and fading life.

No one looked up.

No one noticed the ice cream truck.

Until the children did.

At a grimy street corner, where the road met a fenced-off playground with chipped paint and one broken swing, several kids looked up from their cracked tablets.

Their eyes widened. The pink faded decal of a smiling bear holding a cone—still barely visible—seemed to glow against the drab background.

"It's an ice cream truck…" one whispered.

"No way… those don't exist anymore."

Another child stood up. "Hey! Stop! Over here!"

Aurelia Dawnmere, behind the wheel, stiffened as the crowd of about six kids ran forward, waving excitedly. "Uhh... Riven?" she asked, glancing at the passenger seat.

Riven smirked, leaned out the window, and gave her a casual salute. "Showtime."

Aurelia blinked. "I don't… do children."

"Tough." He threw a white apron at her and another toward the back. "Fake it 'til you make it."

A moment later—

Garrick Ironhart, grumbling under his breath, was shoved into a white apron, arms folded, beard stained with grease.

"Why do I gotta serve ice cream?" he muttered.

"You're big and gruff," Aurelia said, tying her own apron and lifting a rusted hatch at the side. "That makes you trustworthy, apparently."

Nico, now in a matching apron (slightly torn and covered in fox hair), peeked his head out the side window. "Ooooh, I call the topping station!"

"Don't let him near the syrups!" Garrick snapped. "Last time he weaponized the caramel!"

The hatch squeaked open with a whine. Aurelia stood tall, one hand on her hip, and lifted a massive swirl of triple-mixed villain—strawberry, chocolate, and ghost vanilla—into the air like it was a sacred artifact.

The kids cheered.

"Pick one!" Aurelia called, her expression strained but serviceable.

"I want the pink one!"

"Chocolate!"

"I want whatever that fox guy's making!"

The truck suddenly was an ice cream truck.

---

A few feet away, as the chaos unfolded, the side doors of the truck creaked open.

Oliver Woods stepped out first. Silent. Observing.

Fern followed, quiet as mist, falling into step just behind him. Her senses stretched outward like roots tasting the soil—reading the Vita of the city.

It was... wrong.

Alive, but tired. Disconnected. Like the land had been smothered under steel and boredom.

Oliver kept walking.

He moved like a man with direction, even if he didn't know where it would lead. His masked face turned slightly as Fern caught up.

"Observation route?" she asked calmly.

He nodded.

She didn't question it.

Together, they walked past the edge of the truck's spectacle, into the gray stream of the city. People passed them, unseeing, unaware. Phone screens glowed in every hand. Earbuds, eye-rings, voice filters. Information. Filters. Control.

But for the first time… something was different.

A pink truck. Laughter.

A girl in armor joy.

A fox-boy spinning sugar into whipped tornadoes.

A dwarf grumbling over sprinkles.

And two shadows—Oliver and Fern—slipping through the cracks, sowing the first seeds of change.

The city had been asleep.

Now, without realizing it,

it had started to wake up.