"How are you here?" Teresa asked, her voice shaking. It was all beginning to fit together on her own, but there were still questions. All the tracking she had sensed had been him, though it didn't explain how he was in the Contaminated Zone. He was wearing mage robes and was wielding a musket, so it was unlikely that he was a healer of some sort. Additionally, Teresa didn't see a party nearby, though that didn't necessarily mean he was alone.

He didn't answer immediately, going straight for a hug that would have probably crushed a normal person to death.

"Are you okay? Who was that?" Her dad asked, patting her down to check if she was hurt anywhere.

"What? Yeah, I'm okay." Teresa replied, her mind suddenly scattered.

"We need to get out of here, I know there's a city south of here. If we head there-"

"You've been to Arconette?"

"Once, a while ago. I was trying to find you, but I wound up doing a lap around this Contaminated Zone. We really need to go, we aren't safe here." Her dad said, looking south. "If we're quick we can make it."

"Actually we need to go north." Sarah said, wincing as she interrupted their reunion.

"What? No! That'll lead you deeper in, and it sounds like there are Avatars of Cher coming, not to mention whatever war is going on with those people I passed."

"She's right, can we run and talk? What's your Agility?" Teresa asked.

"51, so not bad." He answered. Unfortunately, that meant the only person with a worse Agility was Jake, who had been putting his Unallocated Points into Wisdom lately.

"I'll just carry you. Let's go." Teresa said, lifting her dad up much to his surprise. Everyone else was already prepared to go. "How's your Fortitude?"

"19, why do you ask?"

"I'll accelerate slowly then. I've got one more thing to buy them some time, though I'm not sure how much."

She took out a monster lure from her <Inventory>, something that could attract monsters within a wide radius, and began to charge it with Mana. She tossed the device over the crest of the hill towards the Avatars, hoping a swarm of monsters would slow them down. If the Avatars were already hostile with monsters, and considering they had destroyed a few Radioactive Portals before the army could get there Teresa expected the same applied to monsters in the Contaminated Zone.

They took off, running north as the Avatars awkwardly changed paths around a long line of destroyed machines. Teresa had never actually seen Chernobyl herself, but from what she knew they were close. It wasn't a long trip from Chernobyl to Arconette, not by her standards. Traveling with just her party plus her dad would be much faster, they could probably get there in a few hours if they hurried.

The army was going to have to survive until then, which Teresa had faith in. If they continued to retreat according to Nikolas' plan, they might live. The issue was that they would never get the chance to recover and push forward again, but Teresa was hoping her party would be able to provide that chance.

Ezio had warned her against doing too much once, but just today she had made several massive moves. Hopefully she wasn't falling into that category of doing too much, but she couldn't think of a way this could negatively impact the operation. They were far enough from the army that the lure wouldn't affect them, otherwise she would have used it earlier against the Completionists.

Then again, it was a given that she would have a hard time thinking about military strategy while giving her dad a piggyback ride through a radioactive wasteland full of evil robots and monsters.

"Why can't I see your level?" Randall asked, holding on for dear life.

"I beat the Tutorial, as far as I know only other Completionists can <Identify> a Completionist." Teresa explained.

"You WHAT?"

"How are you here? Where is your party?" Teresa asked. He was a mage, unless he got some healing skills somehow then he shouldn't have been able to make it around the entire Contaminated Zone.

"My party and I didn't stick together, but I got a skill called <Familial Duty>. It lets me track you, Sam, and Jenn. I was trying to raise my Fortitude and Vitality so I could deal with the radiation here, but my class doesn't give me any points there. I got some 'Supreme Iodine Tablets,' from a Radioactive Portal that helps deal with the radiation, and since then I've been trying to find you." He explained.

"Have you found them?" Teresa asked. "Are they alive?"

"At the moment they're alive, but there's nothing we can do for them right now. Care to fill me in on what's going on?"

"Long story short Chernobyl is in the middle of the Contaminated Zone and it's mass producing Avatars somehow. It's getting stronger at a rate people can't hope to match, and if nothing is done the Contaminated Zone will keep spreading, killing hundreds of thousands and possibly spreading across the entire planet." Teresa explained.

"Who told you that? The quest I got just says to destroy Radioactive Portals."

"The people in charge of Arconette, the quest changes when you see Chernobyl."

"Then why are only you guys dealing with this? Arconette was a big place last time I was there."

"Everyone else is busy fighting what's essentially a civil war, or a coup. It's all very complicated and I promise I'll explain more, but you need to know about where we're going. It will be extremely dangerous, if you want we can drop you off. I don't want to bring you into the most life threatening place I know of immediately upon finding each other."

"I just found you, I'm not leaving." Randall said. "If what you're saying is true, then running isn't really an option anyways. I'm not going to let you go by yourself, even if you have some people with you. Is this your party?"

"Yeah, let me introduce you all to each other. That's Sarah, Preston and Jake. Preston is the one carrying Jake on his back." Teresa said.

"Nice to meet you all. I'm Randall, Teresa's dad." He said, waving a hand.

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"What kind of gun is that?" Sarah asked.

"It's a magic musket, I got it during the Tutorial." He answered.

"Lucky, I got a boomerang." Teresa muttered. She had wanted a gun and had never gotten one back then, and she took out quite a few Monster Strongholds.

"Do you know how to throw a boomerang?"

"I figured it out. It also lets me charge it with Mana from spells, and it can disperse that Mana in a massive blast when I tell it to. It's a really fancy boomerang."

"I can do something similar. My musket creates bullets out of Mana, and I have a skill that lets me imbue them with Mana from spells as well. It makes the bullet physically weaker but it makes up for it with the effects I can get out of it sometimes." Randall explained.

"That's so unfair, what class do you have?"

"Arcane Gunslinger. Right after you called, Joel asked if I wanted to go shooting the next day. I checked to see if I had any ammo or if I needed to get some, and next thing I knew I was in the Tutorial with my 365. Didn't have much ammo for it, but a handgun sure came in a lot of use. I think it directly affected my class choices and loot later on."

"Do you still have that gun with you?"

"No, it got stepped on by a Trojan Elephant and swarmed with ants."

"Sounds about right, I had a kitchen knife that got blown up by a missile." Teresa said. Out of curiosity, she used <Identify> on her father and found that he was level 48, making him the second highest level present. "How are you level 48? That's really impressive."

"I've spent the last few weeks on the move. I have <Identify> and a few stealth skills, so I always went after targets I knew I could take. I don't have <Inventory> so I had to hunt a lot for food, and I figured leveling up would only be beneficial." He explained.

"You two are definitely related." Sarah said, smiling.

"But you said Sam and Mom are alive? That's great! If we manage to get this taken care of, we can go find them after. I managed to get a good number of connections so we can probably teleport somewhere closer." Teresa exclaimed.

"I don't know about that honey." He said, his voice taking a melancholic tone.

"What? Why not?" Teresa asked. "Are they on the other side of the planet or something? That'd be a pain, especially since the planet is the size of the sun, but we can manage something. We know where they are, that's the hardest part dealt with. If they're that far away, we can try finding everyone else's families along the way. It might take a few months, but it's possible."

"The planet is the size of the sun? How does that work? Gravity should be crushing us all."

"I know right? But Sam and Mom, where are they? How far?" Teresa asked.

"Too far for me to know exactly. I just know the direction, and that tells me everything I need to know. I'm sorry Teresa, but I don't think we can get to them."

"Quit beating around the bush, where are they?" Teresa continued. Her dad sighed and raised his arm, pointing.

"That way." He said, his voice defeated. Teresa turned her head a bit to see why he was so down about it, and was immediately confused.

He was pointing at the sun.

"What? Does your skill not work at all if they're too far away?" Teresa asked.

"No, it definitely works. I can get a sense of general direction and whether they're currently in danger. No matter what time of day it is or where I am, they're always towards the sun."

"That makes no sense, are they living on the sun or something?" Teresa asked, when the answer suddenly clicked in her head. "Oh. Fuck."

"What?" Jake asked. He was invested as well, everyone was. This was something that could affect any of them.

"They're on a different planet." Teresa said, understanding why her dad sounded so defeated about them. They already had problems when they found out how large the planet really was, wasn't that bad enough? What the hell were they going to do if Sam and Mom were on a different planet?

Everyone went silent as they continued to run, thinking about their situation. It wasn't just Teresa who was affected by this news. If her family was split across two planets, the same could go for anyone. Were there only two planets? What if there were more? Were both planets fully capable of sustaining life long term?

"They're alive." Randall said, his voice breaking the silence. "I know it's not exactly what you were hoping for, but they're still kicking. Maybe one day we'll get the internet back and we can call them. It won't be for a long time, but we should be glad they're alive. These days, that's a lot to ask for."

"Yeah, you're right, but still." Teresa said, her heart feeling like it had shattered. She took a deep breath and forced herself back to the task at hand. Even if there was another planet with people on it, that didn't change the fact they had to destroy Chernobyl. She had her dad back now when she hadn't expected it, that was what she needed to take away from it all right now. If she thought too much about Sam and her mom, all it would do is send her spiraling mentally. "We're in the Contaminated Zone and need to focus on that. We can deal with the rest later. Preston, you're not sounding good over there man, you alright?"

Preston was sweating and breathing heavily as he carried Jake and ran. He was the fastest person in the party by a long shot. She wasn't sure what his Agility currently was after getting a few levels, but she knew it was over 150.

"I'm low on Stamina and I won't recover it while we run." He explained. "It's slowly trickling down but I don't think it will run out for another few hours, but I'm just locked in the feeling of almost being out of breath."

"I'll carry Jake, my skills mostly use Mana." Sarah offered, running closer to Preston. Jake switched from Preston to Sarah, giving Preston a lighter load.

"Is this how you guys have been travelling?" Randall asked, poorly hiding the amusement in his voice.

"When not everyone specializes in Agility, it makes things faster." Teresa answered. "We always tried to be quick, minimize our traveling time. We met a guy, Thomas, he's got <Familial Duty> as well. We helped him find his son, and in exchange he's working on leveling his skill so he could help us find our own families."

"Does the skill work on other people like that?"

"It can. We weren't sure at first, but we confirmed it with a dog."

"What?"

"It's complicated. We're going to be running for a bit, I'll try to catch you up."

They continued to run, avoiding Portals whenever they spotted one. They were all much higher level now, being in the 70s and 80s. Teresa explained a lot of what had happened since the Tutorial, leaving out a lot of personal details. No one in her family really knew about her mental struggles, and for the time being she would prefer to keep it that way.

Her family consisted of good people, but they never really discussed those sorts of things. Maybe one day they'd talk about that, but now was definitely not the time to mention her suicide attempt, panic attacks, or any of it really. She was just glad to have her dad back, even if the first thing they were doing together was trying not to die.

Weirdly enough the thing her dad had a lot of problems with was how much water she drank. At one point she mentioned bringing water into the desert that was in the Tutorial, and he had immediately laughed and told her there was no way she brought enough water to survive for more than a few days. She knew that now, but to be fair at the time she didn't exactly know how to properly ration.

He had known she had an extremely perilous Tutorial, because <Familial Duty> had told him so. The entire time he was in the Tutorial, he had been motivated to try and improve as much as he could because his skill was telling him that both Teresa and Sam had been in danger throughout the entire Tutorial. He had come to expect that both of them had progressed through a decent chunk of the Tutorial, but hadn't expected her to beat it entirely.

Their conversation was cut short while she was talking about how they convinced Mathew that full bars always served eggs, as the sound of machinery hit their ears. A bland concrete building with no signs or labels peeked over the top of a hill, it certainly wasn't Chernobyl itself but a new quest screen appeared regardless.

They had arrived.

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