Ikumi. It was hard to believe that it was really Ikumi. Or Mirai, technically. Offline, she preferred to use her real name. Which totally made sense.
I turned my attention back to the goal, now definitely within kicking reach. This was it. There was no turning back now. Should I shoot it straight or try to cross it? My heart thudded in my chest.
I shot straight, deciding to go for it. Josh taught me to be quick, decisive—don’t give them a chance to read your face and guess your next move. I drew back my foot just as the defenders reached me. They dove to block my shot. But I was ready for them. I kicked the ball. Hard. Straight at the goal.
It arced through the air. I fell to the ground, trampled by defenders. Holding my breath, I watched as the goalie launched to the side, misjudging my aim. He fell to the ground to the left. As my ball shot into the goal to the right.
SCORE!
I stared for a moment, hardly able to believe it. I’d scored! I’d actually scored.
“Yes!” Josh cried, rushing toward me, followed soon after by the rest of my teammates. They grabbed me and lifted me high above them, carrying me off the field, chanting my name.
Wow.
They set me down on the sidelines, still whooping and cheering. Lilli and Mirai and Uncle Jack and Mom and Dad all ran over to me, taking turns hugging and congratulating me. I felt my entire body blushing hard. It felt as if I was someone else. Playing someone in a game.
But it was me. Real-life me.
It’d been nearly two months since our adventures in Mech Ops, and school was about ready to start again. The summer had flown by with a crazy mix of fun activities—both online and off. Even better? Mom had gotten permission from the Dragon Ops people to let Lilli and me talk to a counselor once a week about what had happened to us in the game. And Lilli and I talked to each other, too. If one of us was having a bad day, we admitted it, and we always managed to make each other feel better. And my nightmares? Well, they’d almost gone away. If I did dream of Atreus, he was usually on my side now.
Also, I was back to gaming. Back to my beloved Fields of Fantasy. I’d even formed a new online guild with Lilli and Starr and Maddy, and we met up to play once a week at Maddy’s arcade. It was super fun, and together we made quite the team.
“That was so awesome,” Lilli cried, hugging me hard. “I knew you could do it.”
“Just needed some practice,” Josh teased, poking me in the arm. “We’ll make a jock out of you yet.”
“Yeah, right. Ian will be a jock when you become a gamer,” Lilli joked back, poking him even harder. He grinned, slinging an arm around her shoulder. The two of them had been pretty much inseparable since coming out of the game, but I didn’t mind. Turned out, Josh wasn’t such a bad guy after all. And if Lilli liked him, that was good enough for me.
“Stranger things have happened, Speedy,” Josh teased with a wink.
Mirai came up to me next, beaming from ear to ear. It was still so strange to look at her in real life. She looked different, of course, than her game avatar had. No more glitter in her pupils. But she had made up for it with glitter makeup, making her eyes sparkle all the same. She took my hand in hers and squeezed it lightly.
“That was really great,” she said. “You were really great.”
“Eh,” I said, embarrassed. “A lot of it was luck.”
“Yeah, right.” She laughed. “Just take the praise, silly.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “For you, I’ll take the praise.”
She twirled around, looking up at the sky. It was a perfect day. Not a cloud to be seen. “I love being out here,” she said softly. “I never thought I would be. Even when I was really alive.”
“You are really alive,” I scolded her. “And I’m glad you’re here.”
“All right, crew,” Mom called out. “Who wants ice cream?”
Everyone cheered, and we rushed toward Mom’s minivan. Me, Lilli, Josh, Mirai. The Dragon Slayerz together again in real life. It was almost too good to be true, and for a moment, I stopped, my heart full as I watched my friends laugh and pile into the van. I felt no fear. No worries. Just happiness. This was how it was supposed to be all along.
As I walked toward the van, a voice whispered in my head.
Do you want to play again?
Do you want to play again?
DO YOU WANT TO PLAY AGAIN?
“Maybe later, dude,” I said with a smile. “But right now? I’m a little busy with real life.”
While writing can be a solo venture, it takes a village to publish a book. I consider myself extremely fortunate for the Dragon Ops series to have found such a great home with the Little, Brown Books for Young Readers group. Thank you to my amazing editor, Liz Kossnar, who not only puts up with but actually encourages my geekiness—a valuable quality in an editor—and didn’t bat an eye when I said I wanted book 2 to be called Dragons vs. Robots. (Because, I mean, how more perfect can a title get?) And thank you Hannah Milton for keeping everything on track and running smoothly.
Thank you to Alvina Ling, editor in chief, for being so welcoming when I came to the LBYR family—you really made me feel at home immediately. And thank you to all the marketing and publicity folks who worked tirelessly to get these books into readers’ hands, including Emilie Polster, Marisa Russell,
