"Are you sure you're ready?" She asked me. She asked me in this way that insinuated that she certainly was not ready, but I didn't care. The choice wasn't hers to make.

"Are you really going to go back?" She followed up with, an increased sense of urgency in her tone.

"My bags are packed," I replied coolly. I knew what needed to be done.

It had been a while since I left this place, my retirement villa. Life had been pretty great since I left. I started making more money, I even met cute girls irl. But you know, sometimes, you hear something, and it just... triggers you, you know?

It was then when I knew.

"You'll never want to go back," he would say to me.

We used to meet at this pub after we became friends off the internet. Before that, we usually met on Neopets.

"Doing this sort of thing, it changes you. You can't feel the world around you, but you don't want to go back to the only world you knew. You're lost - dissociated from everyone, nowhere to really go."

His words always resonated with me. After doing my time and going back to the outside, I felt different. I couldn't quite explain it really, but something about seeing what others hadn't seen, and being where most others had never been. It made it hard to connect with those who hadn't been what I had been through.

"You don't have to do this if you don't want to. You have a life now," she told me. She was pleading with me. I slung my bag over my shoulder. I walked to the door and turned to her.

"I have to go back, this is the only way I know." I retorted

"It won't be the same, it's been 3 years. You've changed, we've all changed. It's not what it was when you were last there."

"... Even more reason for a guy like me to return. Listen girl, you know I've always cared, but this is something that I must do. I have to step up, I have to go back and be the Epicmafia Admin."

And with that, I walked through the door, blinded by the sunlight, and slogged back into the only way of life I knew.

thebrontosaurus was coming home.