"I'm very tired of this game of cat and mouse. I tried to make you happy, I really did. All you had to do for me was submit and aid me in raising an army. With the help of your crew, we could have raised the army at a faster rate, and would have driven the demons back. But since you kept refusing, your friend died."

  A shadow was cast over Caesar's eyes as he stared at the ground below, his fists shaking and mouth quivering. Precious had been stuffed inside a bag, and then...she just disappeared without a trace. No touching farewells, no words of encouragement; she simply vanished. But the captain was not overcome with despair, nor was he afraid of the moth woman. Instead, anger boiled his blood, and his best friend's demise brought inconsolable tears from his eyes.

  "I raised that cat for years until I died. And you killed her..." The captain raised his pepperbox pistol. "I haven't seen her in years. She wasn't some hallucination you and I made. I could feel it in her voice; it was her. It was really her. And you took her from me..."

  Without warning, Caesar opened fire. One shot would not be enough, oh no. He pulled the trigger over and over again until the cylinder kept spinning without a boom behind each pull. Each shot was aimed at Luno, right where the human heart would be, and Caesar did not miss a single shot.

  "You're going to pay for this!"

  The captain was confident. In the anime he was used to watching, the hero would always power up after some traumatic event. It was naive to believe something in fiction would work in real life, but it didn't hurt to try, much less believe.

  Unfortunately, this wasn't one of those stories.

  "Your cat friend was right about one thing. You don't have the means to hurt me." The moth woman was unharmed. The bullets clinked on the hard ground below. "I, on the other hand, have ways to make you squeal."

  With a snap of Luno's fingers, Caesar soon felt a force pushing him backwards. Water splashed when he stepped forward, feeling cold water seep in through his boots with each splash. A shallow river had begun to form, threatening to take him deeper into the darkness.

  "How ironic. A pirate afraid of a little water," Luno taunted. "That is your biggest fear? For all your talk about adventure, I have to say your fears are a little underwhelming."

  "What did you do?!"

  "I have the power to turn your dream into a nightmare. And what do we have here? The spell I cast dug deep into your memories and fished this out. What does this river mean to you, my sweet lantern?"

  In a blink of an eye, the terrain changed back to that of an urban area somewhere in the USA. It was the middle of the night; the lampposts had turned on and the lack of traffic made the bridge they stood on into a lonely place. The only noise the two heard was the rush of the river down below.

  "I don't know the context of what's going on, but the fact this is a nightmare for you is good enough for me. I'm going to give you one last chance, my lantern; are you going to help me raise an army to battle the demons, or am I going to have to trap you here until you agree? Maybe I should just leave you here anyway, and force this Lenoria girl to help me, instead."

  "Don't you dare," Caesar warned. He recognized the bridge and the river; Luno's magic had taken him to the night he died. He knew what would happen next if he let things play out naturally.

  "Face it, there's nothing you can do. If you had done as I asked, you would have experienced nothing but a great time. But you forced my hand, little lantern. And what's this?"

  The sound of screeching tires came from around the corner into the next street. A green, square-shaped vehicle had arrived, its lights indicating that the driver did not intend to stay long. To Caesar's horror, two masked men in black emerged from the vehicle and forced a squirming creature into a black plastic bag. Caesar caught only a glimpse of the tiny creature stuffed inside: A Russian blue cat.

  "Hey, bro, don't you think this is a little extreme," asked one of the masked men.

  "I don't care. Thanks to this thing, I'm down a thousand bucks," the other callously said.

  "Precious..." Caesar could only whisper her name. The nightmare had begun.

  "I thought I got rid of your cat friend. Or is this a distant memory?" Knowing very little, Luno could only speculate. "That's it, isn't it? You did say you raised it. Did something happen to your little Precious? I guess harming innocent little animals is human nature; such cruelty is universal, it seems."

  Luno may not have cared as much as he did, but Caesar knew she had a point; one of the things that remained consistent between both worlds was that humanity would always find creative ways to hurt the innocent. He watched as the leading masked man tossed the bag into the river, submerging it for a moment before coming to surface. The force of the river pushed the bag towards the bridge, eventually going under and past Caesar. Precious's nervous wailing only added to his anxiety.

  He wanted to jump in, but his fear of the river stopped him.

  "She must have felt confused the entire time. No cat is going to survive that. It's a shame you're going to relive this moment for the rest of your life." Luno's wings fluttered. "It took me forever to find you because the Realm of Dreams is like a giant maze. You never know whose dreams you're going to bump into. I can't just wake up, but I can find my way back to my body. While I'm gone, you're going to think about what you did."

  This was the end, Caesar thought. He had no way to harm Luno, and with a single spell, she managed to trap him in a nightmare of his own. He had no weapons, no plans, and no means of escape. But if he gave up now, Lenoria would be in danger.

  And then he had an idea, perhaps even an answer to the last question Precious asked him.

  "Lenoria said she applied the scientific method when she fought the dad giant," he said to himself.

  "Huh?"

  "Observation, experimentation, and analysis...I already collected enough data." Caesar's tired eyes faced the river once again. The bag Precious was in was going farther and farther away. He couldn't do anything for her in his current state, but perhaps he didn't need to. "All that's left to do is conduct an experiment."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "You spent all this time trying scare me into submitting to you. You could have just left without saying anything. Even now, you're taking forever to leave, and you stopped the moment I said something." There was newfound confidence in Caesar's eyes, along with quiet anger. "You wanted me to crack, didn't you? Because this is something you've done before. Every Bob, Dick, and Jane would be scared to see a monster like you in the flesh, and would happily meet your demands if it meant that they lived. You scare people into giving you what you want from them, and you thought you could do the same to me. It must be driving you insane that I'm not doing the same thing they did."

  Luno had no idea how to counter such an accurate statement. She wanted to deny it, but Caesar's confidence convinced her not to.

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  "You said I have a destiny to fulfill, but I think it's a little too convenient that this 'destiny' benefits you and no one else. I'm going to carve my own way, not yours. But I also refuse to stay trapped here. Lenoria needs me; she's counting on me to keep the kids safe and return to her with them. It's the least I can do after she showed me how to beat you!"

  "Beat me? I know you didn't get in touch with anyone from the outside world the whole time you were dreaming, so stop talking nonsense!"

  "And that's another thing I can't stand; you asked for my help, but you didn't have enough faith in us to do it our way. You think so little of humans that you believe you can dictate how we live our lives, yet all you've done is hide in the shadows like the bully you are. But you're wrong; I can show you here and now that destiny can be defied. I can show you that humans are masters of their own future. If you really think I'm going to stay here because you didn't get your way," Caesar said as he skillfully and quickly jumped on the railing of the bridge, "you have another thing coming."

  "Preposterous! You think you can defy me?"

  "Just you watch me!" A leap of faith; the act of believing and/or accepting something not on the basis of reason. Alternatively, it can mean a risky action taken in hopes of a favorable outcome.

  For Caesar, it meant something both with a figurative meaning and a literal one. He could hear the flapping of moth wings getting closer right after jumping off the bridge. A furry claw reached down to him just as his body splashed on the turbulent rapid currents of the river, barely missing him. The river was deeper than he remembered, and he had to swim upwards even as the currents carried him in the direction Precious had gone to. Several rocky obstacles blocked his way, but the river was determined to push him through them with brute force.

  "All you have to do is remember the one way people wake up from their dreams, guaranteed."

  Caesar had recalled Precious's words of wisdom to him. It took him a little while, but he figured it out. Witnessing something scary is enough to wake most people up, but some can endure the frightening images and push onward despite the apparent danger. But there was something else that guaranteed the dreamer to wake up.

  The rush of adrenaline from a near-death experience. Alas, Caesar did not go gently.

  ***

  December 9th, 12:25am, 2004

  Melvin Caesar was never a hero.

  He would stay inside his home on weekends to watch anime. He never went outside, which worried his parents very much. His mother always made him help with the weekly deep cleaning, and his father ensured the boy didn't grow lazy and always made him do chores around the house. Eventually, little Melvin knew it was best to get the chores and cleaning out of the way before moving on to enjoy his weekends. There were times he would talk back to his parents, but he learned quickly that it was never a good idea to do so.

  To the surprise of his family, Melvin had a talent for basketball. He would sometimes play hoops with his dad and brothers after school, but would always shy away from conversation whenever they tried to convince him to try out for the school team. He dreamed about being signed up for the big leagues when he grew up, but him being unable to stand in crowds, much less speak to them, made him feel like his dream could never be achieved.

  Yet even he was surprised when he jumped into the local river to save the life of his best friend. A couple of cruel men had snatched Precious from the alley and tossed her into the river inside a bag. All little Melvin could hear was the complaint from one that Precious had cost him a thousand dollars. He followed the bag down the flowing river, but his best friend would go farther and farther away thanks to the speed of the currents. Seeing no choice, the boy jumped into the river, hoping the currents would allow him to catch her.

  By some string of luck, he did it.

  Melvin was able to swim back to land with the bag in tow. He opened it immediately, coughing in the process, finding Precious inside. The poor cat was wet, but far from injured. She would be able to dry herself in time.

  Melvin, however, was not so lucky. It was the beginning of December, and winter was just a couple of weeks away. His clothes were wet, and cold winds blew against him as he rested on the shore. He was not the athletic type, so all he could do was gasp for breath and cry from the pain of his burning muscles. He shivered profusely and his speech slurred. His eyes were harder and harder to keep open.

  Hypothermia was settling in, and there was no one around to help him. Death would come soon.

  "You s-silly cat...I told you to s-stay away from other humans..."

  Melvin did not have the full picture on how cruel the world actually was, but he had an idea. His parents would always tell him to go straight home after school. Gang violence was thankfully at an all-time low, but the neighborhood would still have the occasional shooting.

  On top of that, the police's efforts to crack down on gangs was unfortunately led with corruption; Melvin would hear news reports about black men and women who were detained, beaten, and sometimes even killed, because they simply were at the wrong place at the wrong time. It didn't matter if they were innocent; most people were content that arrests were made in the first place, and if arrests were made, then that meant, for some, the system was working . The public was divided on the issue.

  It made sense for him, then, to hurry to the 24/7 store late at night after his father and Devin caught the flu. His mother would have gone, but she was in the middle of cooking a home remedy and could not leave Rufus after he suffered coughing fits throughout the day. She was against letting Melvin leave the house after 11:30 at night, but relented after Melvin reminded her the 24/7 store was just two blocks away. All he had to get was chicken noodle soup and more cough syrup.

  The return trip proved to be more eventful.

  A police roadblock was set up in his neighborhood. Not the first time it happened, but it was still annoying for Melvin. This meant that he had to take the next block by the river and go around, cut through some yards, and even jump a fence, before reaching the cul-de-sac. But Melvin only made it around the block when he spotted Precious in trouble.

  And this is where we are now. Melvin worried his parents would assume he disobeyed them to goof off somewhere, and now he lied dying alone by the river. More importantly, he worried they would think he abandoned them when they needed him the most. Would they be angry he jumped off the river to save his best friend?

  "You have t-t-to leave, P-Precious. Go back to the butcher and live your life..."

  But Precious would not leave him. She was already meowing as loud as she could. Melvin always believed she was smarter than the average cat, but could she possibly be calling out for help right now?

  "T-the bad men are going to find you if y-you don't leave now..."

  But Melvin was just lying to himself. He didn't want her to leave; he just worried about her safety. He was overwhelmed with fear and anxiety; he didn't know what awaited him on the other side, and right now he just wanted to be home with his family. He wished he could take Precious with him, too, but that wasn't happening.

  He reached out to her and pulled her closer. The bad men didn't hurt her, but just now he spotted a white circle painted on her back. "Why did they do this to you? W-why...?"

  His remaining time was a blur to him. All he could remember was Precious lying next to him, purring. He may have died a disobedient son and something far from a basketball star, but to this little creature, he was her hero.

  ***

  "Caesar!"

  The first thing Caesar saw when he woke up back in the cave was Lenoria staring down at him. Alistair and Aquamarine were tending to the kids while a rock giant of a woman was checking on his pirate crew.

  "Is this another dream," the captain wondered.

  "I hope not. It's bad enough you're napping on the job," Lenoria teased.

  "Right." Caesar's body was sore. When Lenoria noticed he struggled to sit up straight, she pulled his arms to help him up. "Thanks. I was going to make my way back to you, but...things happened."

  "Don't worry about it. I'm just glad you're okay. And," she said looking back at the crew, "you've kept everyone safe, too."

  Familiar voices stirred the captain even more. His crew casually conversed with one another, alerting him that something could be off. Luno had made sure they stayed asleep, if she was to be believed.

  "Captain," Vanessa was the first to greet him, "I had the craziest dream. Wulf and I were getting married, and you were there."

  "You had that dream, too?" Wulf knelt beside his captain. "Man, I honestly don't think we could have picked a better person to be the best man."

  "I dreamt I was having a feast with the first Khan," said the grim Temuulen. "The captain arranged it so that we'd have a glorious battle afterward."

  "And I had a dream we had an official pardon from the King of Helix, himself," Charlie interjected. "The captain saved his life, after all."

  "Looks like everyone had some nice dre- whoa!" Lenoria was shoved aside by an insolent red-haired girl.

  "Captain!" The captain's chief mate tackled-hugged him. "I thought...I thought..."

  "I'm okay, Cecilia. I'm not going anywhere."

  "Promise me that!" Cecilia clung to him as she pressed herself against him. "I was the only one awake until just a minute ago! You're back...everyone's back..."

  "C-calm down. I promise I won't go anywhere. And that goes for the rest of you, as well. But you all look a little worried."

  "Of course we were," Wulf said. "You're the one who brought us together."

  "You're our captain," Cecilia said. "You're the only family we have in this world."

  The other pirates voiced their agreement. Caesar may have lost his old family, but in the process he had gained a new one. The pirates went in for a group hug, and the children had already surrounded him and looked on with curiosity. Lenoria, Al, and Aquamarine looked on with smiles on their faces, showing Caesar they were happy to see him around.

  With new friends and family, the joy in Caesar's heart was enough to make a grown man cry.