"helping research Hellboy" turned out to mean "secretly chewing through stuff until she got caught and pretended to be a cat" or something to that effect. She seemed very proud of a huge cabinet full of repair bills and other random things.

Her badge checked out though. Fuzzy super smart rodent that was not a mascot was a bit weird even for the BPRD. Or the parts of the BPRD John was used to.

Whatever. John decided to just go with it. Everything here seemed to be strange and almost warped. The days blended horribly and people still vanished an were never spoken of again.

Currently... Life sucked.

This was Johns official stance on the subject. The FuzzyOne seemed to agree with him on this particular day because every time she would look at his papers she would go into a little furry rant of angry chittering. In short due to the current hiring freeze so everyone was getting work dumped on them that they had no right (or pay increase) to do.

The more drawn out reason was that someone had hired a few cult leaders and said cults not only were apart of opposing factions but also ended up blowing up the Maui base in their argument over their religious differences. The only interesting thing had been none of them had been concerned with Hellboy or connected to snakes. They were just your average joe cult leaders looking for some extra cash.

Long live the state of the financial bubble.

On the very small plus side, John and the fuzzyone were seemingly given a recent and not-quite limitless budget to get everything done at temp base so that they could get the much more efficient (and warmer) other base going again. John was betting the fuzzy one had hacked the system or something. She neither accepted or denied responsibility but seemed very smug when placing orders for stuff.

That stuff being computer-y... stuff.

"I don't get it. If you are building two computers why are there four of these... n...vidia things? What is a pentium and who is intel? Raid-on? Does it turn off? Don't look at me like that, you know I have no idea what any of this stuff is or what it does. What does LED mean? And why are there four of them?"

For having fuzzy paws John could hear her facepalm from across the small morgue.

After many, many painful hours the two computers were built and installing a second edition of some operating system.

"Right, so why are we doing this?"

She jumps around the boxes and digs in them until she finds yet another box. He walks over and takes the new box to read it.

"What is EverQuest?"

She makes various whooshwhoosh sounds while waving her arms in chopping motions. Along with little 'booms' and jedi mind power motions.

"Right... I'm not even going to ask how you, a little fuz ball who lives in antartica knows about some... what's this say? Massive multiplayer online game thing. Hmm... online? Is that like AOL? With the screaming box-thing?"

There was quite possibly the most painful sounding, long suffering sigh from the fuzzball that John had ever heard.

"Ok, I was joking on that last one. I remember some guys from college complaining about their girlfriends liking this game more then them. But doesn't this cost money to play?"

Cue one company credit card from one secret squirl pocket.

"...right."

Two days worth of installing and updating and patching later and they were finally ready to pay... to play.

"all that and we still have to pay each month? But why? ow. Ow! Ok ok ok! I'm making a character! See? Short pointy eared forest elf thing! Wait, were did you get that tiny ruler?"

The fuzzy one jumps from his shoulder to next to the computer screens. She then extends the ruler and starts pointing at the character setting and such. Occasionally she would whap him if he made an overly snarky comment. After a few moments John is then presented with the name select screen.

"Taken, taken, taken! God damnit! You know what? Fuck it. God damnit! Why the hell would someone name a character Hellboy?" John looks over to his left. "Laugh it up fuzzball. You are going to have to type this name to talk to me."

After an hour Johns little bitty wood elf bard has a name that wasn't 90% X's or numbers.

His character then promptly walks off the side of the city and falls to it's death.

"You have got to be kidding me."

He tries to ignore that his fuzzy little torcherer has literally laughed herself off the table. The laughing continued after her startled squeak as she fell and the squawk when she landed. So much fuzzy laughter.

"I think I need to be drinking for this. Probably drunk." Moonshine acquired and while she doesn't let him get (too)drunk he finds that his character is back and standing next to another called FuzzyCleric. Soon his character is 'twinked', in a guild and ready to do what ever she tells him to do as she plops a headset onto his lap logs him onto her voice whatever server.

Suddenly, voices filled his speakers. So many different voices calling out hi and hey and F.Z.! He was caught off gaurd. He hadn't realized how long it had been since he heard another or any freindly voices. She makes talky hand motions while pushing a button and then pointing at him. He shakes his head no with wide eyes.

She put a rock on the button.
He was not ready for her to pounce on his face. While it was definitely a yell it was probably the most ugly yell of ah! That he had ever made since, well, since ever.

So of course he had to appolaguise. Profusely.

Talking again got easier and eventually he found a rythm. Most of the guild was either in or near Brooklyn or around the BPRD base in Jersy. It made keeping up with the news amazing.

He found that the game was a good release for his slowly growing anger about Hellboy, the BPRD, Antartica and the fact that things were blurring.

It also helped him forget about the things the missing people seemed to turn into.

Time flew by.

Actually, he found he was forgetting things and people a lot more. It seemed to be a thing with this place and he didn't like it at all. He had asked around when he could and no one seemed bothered by it. Which was creepy in its own way. Now he had notes everywhere about everything and everyone.

The only thing he knew for certain is that if you were here and you were forgotten then you disappeared. Once in a while a body might be found.

There was a large file dedicated to this. It had personnel files and images from the last known security footage of the agent. There was also a few video tapes, one from just after he started, showing the agents just... leaving. They would stop ta the door out and stare at the security camera for ten or thirty minuets before walking out.

Even though they still looked human, John didn't think they still were at that point. Like the lights were off, the old tenant evicted and a new tenant had moved in. John hated watching the footage because deep in his soul it felt like the looks said "you are next".

He found himself desperate for distractions.

Like this video game or the fact that he was pretending that it hadn't been several years and some kind of fiasco had happened at the BPRD that ment he was probably stuck here forever.

He was also ignoring the fact that a body in the form of crushed stone & a twisted metal arm had been dumped in his room. He had been told he was getting a roommate and... there was still an echoing horror from the sound of the stones being poured out onto his floor.

He had found a box and tried to clean it up. The FuzzyOne had been fluffed out and clinging to his shoulders. He didn't like looking at the box. It seemed angry.

He tried to ignore it but he also didn't want to ignore them in case, well, in case what happened to humans happened to them. Because he did find out the arm was for another being.

He couldn't handle that Hellboy had let that just happen. Had let all of that just happen. No one had stopped him or even tried to talk sence into him. He was disappointed but not surprised.

One year later he was jest getting used to the box.

One year later things changed.

Quick note: three plot!bunnies that were basically AU's of each other converged and trying to untangle them is a nightmare. I think I figured out which references I am just going to ignore. And which bits I am going to pretend work like they were supposed to. Oh, Also I moved in between Ch 3 and Ch 4.