(Ok here's the next chapter! I incorporated a few references into it, one's obvious and will be a large part of the story and the other is less obvious. I'll try to make more references. If you want you can try to spot them.)
Chapter 7:
I ran over to Bella.
"What happened?!"
"I w-wanted to see what was so fun about that game and it was s-scary!" Bella said through her tears.
"Did you make a new character?" I asked, pausing Omicron.
"No, no I used your fairy character because I liked her wings." That made sense, the quest thing said that Cardinal Town had a problem with being haunted.
"You don't have to play it. I'll quit the game when you're around, just please tell me what happened."
"Well I decided that I wanted to play your game so I could talk about it with you, but it was scary!" In that moment, I remembered that Bella was just a little eight year old, and that even the dark imps could be scary for her. I saved and quit Omicron and Bella seemed to relax.
"Now please tell me how it was scary." I said, trying to draw patience from some invisible force of nature.
"I went to this town that had a pretty name, I think it was Cardinal Town, and the town was all dark and foggy and the people there were scared of the tower that they said was cursed, and I thought they were being weird so I went to prove them wrong and I had to fight these weird ghosts and these ghost wolves and ghost cats, and when they attacked I could feel them attacking me, and when I got there I saved someone from jumping off the tower and the person said that the mayor's daughter was evil and had ghosts and was normally nice, so I went to try and help her and she-" Bella started shaking violently, the memory's scariness resurfacing. "She told me that the ghosts were a lie but one appeared so she sent out ghosts and ghost wolves and then I had to fight her and she said she was a witch that was good but then they burned her and that the town was evil and had to be destroyed and I was scared and it hurt so much and then you came up." I sat there, shocked because my little sister had been through so much that would scare most 15 year olds, although not as much as she had been scared; and that she had survived for so long in the game. Those facts were shoved to the back of my mind, when I remembered that my little sister was still scared.
"Do you need anything?"
"Could you read a story to me?"
"Um... Sure!" I said. Bella pointed to an old book titled 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "Could you read that?"
"Ok" I said, realizing that I had never read that book either. I opened the book, and started reading.
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfathomable western arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun..."
I read for a half hour, and by that time, it was time for dinner and we had reached Chapter 4. It was actually a good book. However, my sister liked it so much that she pestered me to read more.
"But don't you wanna know what happens to Ford and Arthur?" In truth, I was as curious as her, but I didn't want to make Mom mad.
"After we eat we'll read, don't aliens from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse need to eat too?" I asked, making a reference to the book.
"Fine, we can eat." Bella mock pouted as we went down to dinner.
At dinner, the usual "how was your day" talk went on with me. I tried to focus on the positive, but Mom, with her so-called "Mom Intuition", could tell something was up.
"So everyone was nice?"
"Well, there were a few mean kids, but I ignored them."
Mom gave up interrogating me there and asked what Bella and I had been doing in my room. I explained that Bella got scared by my video game, and I was getting to the part where she asked me to read the story, when Bella (of all people) interrupted.
"And then she read this awesome book about the Earth getting destroyed and this guy's friend turning out to be an alien and I wanna read more so I know what happens!"
"The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Did you pick that, Alexa?"
"No."
"Have you read it?"
"No."
"Well I'm glad you decided to read it, I liked it when I was your age."
We ate in silence after that conversation, and only after dinner did I realize that I'd missed meeting with Eroth. The needs of my little sister are more important though. After we ate, I read Bella another chapter of the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which Zaphod Beetlebrox (the president of the galaxy) and his companion Trillian stole the newly completed starship Heart of Gold. Oddly enough, stealing the starship was Zaphod's idea, and yet he had no idea why he'd done it. After that, I got ready for bed and played Omicron.
"Where am I?" I muttered as I looked at my map. I was in some part of the tower, but when I tapped on my location, I got a popup that said "Bonus Quest Location". I tried to get out of the area, but found my way blocked by the person with the ghosts, I think Bella said her name was Lavender. She said something about how the cross she was burned on was a symbol of this dystopian town, and how she would destroy it. Then it hit me. I went over to the cross and hacked one of the charred ropes that held it together with my sword. Lavender screamed in agony and split in two. One had red eyes and was slightly transparent, and one had brown eyes and collapsed on the floor of the tower. It was just a guess, but I thought that the Lavender who was slightly transparent was the ghost that caused all the problems about the town being haunted. The ghost started shooting orbs of dark energy at me and I dodged them, casting spells from afar at the burned cross. The battle ended when the cross broke, and suddenly Cardinal Town had an air of purity that I'd never seen in areas with hostile creatures before. The "weird ghosts" (as Bella called them), the ghost wolves, and the ghost cats were still there, but Lavender had gotten up shakily and ran out of the tower. The ghost had gone through an incredible transformation. Before I ended the battle, the ghost had short black hair and red eyes, and now, the ghost had long wavy brown hair and sad looking blue eyes. The ghost seemed shy as she approached me.
"I-I'm sorry for haunting the town. All that anger at being burned after I tried to help this place corrupted me. To make up for it, can I go with you? If you want, you can give me a new name, I've forgotten my old one, its been so long since it was used."
I agreed to let her come with me, and renamed her Caroline after a character from a video game I liked. Caroline said she liked that name, but said that she couldn't battle with me until I was level 9, because it gave me an unfair advantage. She said that she could still be my sidekick, so she followed me to where I logged off. When I logged off, Caroline asked what "logging off" was, and I explained. When I finished, she said, "I understand now. Thank you. I'm going to think a bit while you're logged off, so if I seem a bit weird when you come back, I'm just thinking."
After Caroline said that, I logged off.