When he opened his eyes, the first thing Kyle saw was green. Lots and lots of green.

His whirling mind slowly came to focus, and he realized he was hunched over, his head laying atop a familiar box. He felt a sense of warmth seeing it in his possession again, and momentarily cringed as he remembered the skit Khali had just tried on him using the maid twins. Despite all the time she’s spent judging and sentencing, she really doesn’t understand humans all that well.

He sat up, blinking the sleep from his eyes. The sun wasn’t that low, and he was still properly shaded from the tree as he sat there on the park bench. So I was only sent as far back as the park, huh? That’ll have to do. Time for loop two!

He grabbed his figurine bag with his left hand, and realized the mark he’d seen with Khali hadn’t been his imagination. Running his fingers over it, there didn’t seem to be any texture or a difference in the rest of the skin on his hand. “A skull, sitting in the middle of a cog wheel… Must be to symbolize that I’m her herald now, but how do I explain this to anyone who asks?” Looking closer, he saw numbers counting up to twenty-four sitting at the end of and in between the teeth of the cog, increasing clockwise. “Hmm, looks a bit cluttered. I wonder if I can ask her to change it to count up to twelve only? Either way, I should hide it in the meantime…”

As he put on his white silk gloves, he suddenly remembered what had been significant during his first time waking up here. Looking down, he saw his backpack was gone already.

“Damn! Didn’t wake up in time to stop them, huh?” Without missing a beat, he set off further into the park beyond where the bench sat, and opposite of the direction he’d gone the first time around. “Maybe I can find them prowling around here still? Getting my stuff back is priority one, then I can worry about that car bomb…”

He moved quickly, careful to not kick his asthma into action. Passing by a line of trees, he soon found himself not too far away from what looked like a large river. On the other side of the water was a towering white brick wall, easily reaching the height of a second-story building. There were a few drains built into the base of the wall, with small streams trickling into the river. Beyond the walls, Kyle could see several taller buildings that reminded him of Victorian-era mansions, but they were too far away to make out any details or if people were moving inside them.

He realized, looking back and forth down the river, that there was actually no sign of anyone anywhere. No wildlife in the park, nobody walking the pathways, and not a sign of anyone using the river for anything either. What’s going on here? Where is everyone?

He flipped a coin in his head, and began following the river to his right. He kept his pace just shy of a jog, taking deep breaths and being mindful to not smack his figurine box against his legs as he went. As he continued for the next ten minutes, he kept an eye out for not just any would-be thieves, but for anybody at all. There were people when I entered the park earlier. Did everyone just vacate the park for some reason?

Eventually, Kyle saw a dark red-brick structure closing in the distance in front of him. Another wall?

As it came into focus, though, he realized it was actually a man-made hill, leading up about twenty feet over a long stretch. Off to the right, there was a road just wide enough for two cars to pass that turned to lead up over the hill as well. Standing at the base, Kyle noted that the park seemed to abruptly end, a fine line of concrete separating it and the road.

Making his way up the hill, he saw that the road went across a bridge, without any room for pedestrians to walk. As he neared the bridge, he saw that the river below had come to a fork: continuing onwards, the river followed the white brick wall as it curved off to the left in the distance. Making a sharp split to the right, the river flowed under the bridge in front of him, and it continued running in a straight line off into the distance. His eyes following the trail of the river, he spotted another smaller bridge in the short distance, as well as a few bodies standing in the middle of it. They seemed to be throwing something into the river, but Kyle didn’t register that as he was relieved to finally see another person.

“Took long enough to find someone!”

Kyle made his way towards the other bridge, again trying to keep himself moving fast without triggering his asthma. As he got closer to it, he passed a middle aged man in oil-stained overalls and brown leather jacket, muttering something about hats and being late under his breath, looking over his shoulder multiple times at the people that had just finished crossing the bridge. Kyle thought about asking the man if he’d seen anyone with a black backpack around, but the mutterings and terrified look in the man’s eyes made him think twice. He elected to leave the man on his own, and kept walking. “Well, those three guys were crossing from this side; maybe they can tell me if they saw someone leave the park recently? God forbid they’re the ones who took my stuff in the first place.”

As he arrived at the bridge, he noticed that it was much narrower and clearly built for people, leaving barely enough room for two pairs of people to walk across shoulder to shoulder. There were two signs bolted to a post in the middle of the walkway:  one had “To the Industrial District” in bold written on it, while the other read “No dumping, diving, or swimming. Violators will be subject to Penal Code 457.” Kyle barely registered them as he continued on his way.

Hurrying across the bridge, Kyle only stopped when he’d gone halfway, about two hundred feet. Looking around, he took in the sight: the large river flowing under him, the park in the close distance to his right, and a series of large brown and black, boxy structures to his left, many with smokestacks pouring out black clouds. The dichotomy was striking, and making sure nobody was looking, he brought out his phone and snapped a few photos.

“Wait, these are…”

As he went to file his photos away, Kyle noticed that his phone still had the pictures of Shiroshi and Kuroshi that he’d taken while at the pawn shop. Even though that had been during his last loop, it looked like his phone’s data wasn’t lost. “Is this because it’s from my world as well? I wonder if Khali can’t touch anything from Earth at all…” He added the ponderance to his list of questions to ask Khali the next time he knew he would inevitably see her, and returned to chasing after the trio from before. 

The buildings on this side of the river all seemed to be large warehouses and factories, and the majority of vehicles passing by on his left were medium sized trucks shipping cargo to or from each facility. The streets themselves were sparsely inhabited, and Kyle eventually realized that everyone who was out and about was either already walking on the other side of the street, or were making their way to it from the sidewalk he was on. I know it’s not ‘cause of me, since they’re all crossing before I’ve even come into view. Is it those guys up ahead?

After nearly losing them several times by winding through the streets, Kyle had finally almost caught up to the trio. As he got closer, he was able to make out what each of the trio members were wearing. The ones on the right and left wore dark colored pants, with matching suspenders over their light long-sleeve shirts, while the one in the middle was wearing a coat. The guy on the left was noticeably taller than the others, and they all wore purple tophats. That’s when Kyle noticed that the one in the middle was holding something big and dark dangling from his left hand.

Wait, is that my backpack?

Just before he could react to finding his stolen bag, the trio’s voices picked up. The one on the right turned and pointed up to the one on the left, which instigated a finger pointing back. There was a shout from the one at the middle to the right, and the guy on the left let out a snorting laugh. No sooner had he opened his mouth to say something else than the one in the middle pulled his arm back and decked him in the face.

The man’s head recoiled sharply and he was sent tumbling backwards, falling on his butt in the street. His hat tumbled off, and he looked up at his walking partner with a shocked expression on his face.

“When I says shut up, Biggs, ya shut up! Ya got it, ya oversized, daft piece of–?”

The guy in the middle had turned and began shouting at the larger figure when he stopped, and turned his head towards Kyle. His look of anger changed to one of confusion, quickly followed by one of joy. “Oh, would ya look at what we gots here? Ya lucked out, Biggs. I got me a new toy to play with for the next five minutes.”