Awkwardly tall houses were placed on some of the hills. We navigated around them, and Rose quickly located a hose, bush and some sort of yellow sign. When I asked for an explanation, she said, "Back at the BOT headquarters, we're trying to find a way back home- which is extra hard when we don't know what home is. The closest we have is faint memories from different wanderers. The distorted versions of reality or memories that these levels resemble, or pieces from home stuck in these levels. I was in the Lobby locating five items when I ran into you."
Apparently, I was far luckier than Rose had been. When Rose found herself in the Backrooms, there were no decorations. There were no arrows pointing towards the exit. And when she had finally found the exit, she was dismayed to discover that it required a code to open the door. Rose had barely stayed afloat in those first days. She had struggled, alone, through four of the levels before people started showing up. She finally joined BOT, who founded their base in the level known as the Room of Doors.
And then she'd returned to the beginning. She'd found three objects in the Lobby- a camera by the place she had found the door code at, a party hat, and finally a computer mouse. All three were scanned into the BOT system, when she'd found me.
"That sounds really hard," I told Rose as she scanned the hose into the BOT system.
"It was, " she said. Rose walked up to the door of one of the houses and pulled a key from her pocket. She began to open the door.
I don't know exactly what I was expecting to see inside. Faint memories of water, shoes, and the smell of something cooking filled my mind, just out of reach. But whatever it was I expected, it certainly wasn't this. A glowing light shone from within the door, and Rose was quickly pulled into it. I took a step forward before being pulled in as well.
My eyes were hit with a flash of bright light before I fell directly into the water. I let out a gasp of surprise, and Rose let out a laugh.
"Having fun splashing around?" she asked. "Seriously though, don't drink too much of that. It's bad for you."
I quickly got up from the water and waded towards her. There was a helpful arrow on the wall again. We began to wander around this new level.
"The Poolrooms," Rose told me. It made sense.
Rose found a pair of goggles and a fish, while I had found a skeleton in a lounge chair and a big pink inflatable something. I couldn't quite place what it was supposed to represent. I'd seen a large bunch of the something's before somewhere at home... it didn't matter.
We met up around the spot where Rose had found the goggles. "This next level is a lot tougher than these two," she said. "If you see a clown, shoot it with this gun."
Rose casually tossed me some sort of purple gun with an orange fruit attached to it. The fruit had a creepy face carved into it, and I quickly loaded the gun. Did I know how to load a gun back home? I wondered.
"Wait," I said. "This is yours, I can't take it!"
"It's fineeee," Rose said. "I just had to get through a witch hut, sewer, and pumpkin patch fight! Easy peasy. This crossbow was way harder- the witch hut, a corn maze, some twisted version of Level Fun, and a big pumpkin man."
We'd arrived at a staircase. "This it it," Rose said. "The entrance to Playplace."
"Playplace? Level Fun?" I asked. "This place sounds like a blast!"
"It's not," Rose warned. "The names are lying to you. Don't let down your guard."
"I won't," I promised her. Little did I know how wrong I was.