"Rainbow Friends: Pixelated Peril"

It started as pixelated fun.

Rainbow Friends Chapter 2—everyone at school was buzzing about it. Jack, my best friend, talked me into joining his online playthrough. We roped in Ash, who always knew the secret hiding spots, and Kaia, whose shrieks on Discord made the whole thing even spookier.

The four of us huddled around my computer that Friday night, flecks of popcorn dusting my keyboard, the late June humidity clinging to our skin. The loading screen flickered. “Easy mode or hard?” Kaia giggled, grabbing another handful of chips.

“Hard,” Jack insisted. “Don’t be babies.”

Then…the lights in my basement surged and flickered. Ash swore. I felt my skin tingle, the whorls of my fingerprints buzzing.

A rainbow spiral burst from the screen. My friends blurred before my eyes, prismatic and unreal—crackling neon shapes breaking apart, pulled into the void. I opened my mouth to yell, but the taste of ozone forced it closed.

Everything pixelated. Everything went blue.

#

I woke up on cold tile.

It was not my basement.

Instead, I saw a jumbled mess of colored lockers and vines crawling up concrete. I pressed my palm to my head, but my hand wasn’t my own—long, flat, paddled with webbing between spindly fingers. My skin was smooth, scaled, and an electric cyan—glowing faintly in the murky light.

“Oh no,” I muttered, only for my voice to emerge as a reverberating croak.

Someone whimpered behind me. I turned and saw a lumpy blue beast blinking big round eyes—Jack, unmistakably, but now the original Blue from the game. Kaia, fur green and patchy, her mouth a jagged grin. And Ash, an orange creature, hunched and trembling.

“This is some nightmare, right?” Kaia’s voice warbled, tears trickling down her fuzzy cheek. “Say it’s a joke.”

I reached for her. “Kaia…it’s me. Evan.” My words came out warped, but she seemed to recognize the cadence. She latched on, claws digging into my thin shoulder.

Jack’s new mouth split into a childish frown. “We’re the Rainbow Friends characters. Why are we the monsters?”

That’s when I heard it: heavy, echoing footsteps in a corridor painted garishly with rainbows. A deep, guttural laugh. A beady red eye, peering around the corner.

Some twisted game master had not only yanked us into Rainbow Friends. Now, we were prey.

#

We learned our new bodies fast. I—the Cyan—could slip through vents, wall-crawl above threats. Jack was slower, but stronger. Kaia could blend into foliage, almost vanishing, though her teeth still glinted. Ash moved low and quick, like a frightened iguana.

Where before we’d panicked at squeaking doors and flickering lights in a digital maze, here we felt them as real danger—palpable and terrifying. The animatronics from the game hunted us, boxy voices droning messages of intent: Hide and Seek? Or just RUN.

My heart, or whatever engine beat in my strange chest, pulsed with cold dread—and adrenaline. “We have to make it to the power room,” I told the others. “The game always ends when the power comes on, right? Maybe we’ll wake up.”

Jack nodded, jaw jutting, determined. “We stick together. Follow Evan—he’s our only hope.”

One by one, we crept down corridors, ducked under makeshift barricades, and evaded the lumbering steps of monsters. I led the way through narrow vents, guiding my friends—feeling the oddest mix of fear and, somehow, purpose.

In this world, as the Cyan, I wasn’t helpless or awkward. I was quick, clever, and necessary.

#

When we finally found the glowing central fuse panel, all four of us—monsters, friends, survivors—worked together. Jack’s bulk shielded us as Kaia slipped into tight places to grab wires. Ash, still trembling, connected the last coil with dextrous claws.

With a crackle, the rainbow lights flared. The ground shuddered beneath us.

The animatronic monsters roared—angry, denied their prey.

We held hands, claws, webbed fingers. Huddled in a glowing circle.

And as reality blinked, shimmied, and stretched, I felt the scene unravel—bit by bit—leaving the thrill, fear, and warmth of friendship behind.

#

When I woke up, I was in my basement again. My friends sprawled nearby, blinking at each other.

Kaia grinned, her normal, beautiful grin, teeth not sharp at all. Jack flexed his fingers, marvelling at their human shape. Ash gave a shaky laugh.

We locked eyes.

None of us could speak—not at first. Then Jack snorted.

“That was…epic,” he breathed. “Never playing on Hard again.”

Later, as the others left, Kaia paused by the door. “You were amazing in there, Evan,” she whispered. “Braver than you ever are in real life.”

I touched my arm, half-expecting scales. But all that remained was the memory of friendship—and the secret knowledge that, just once, I’d been a Rainbow Friend…and I’d saved them all.

This story was generated by user kade with assistance by one of OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model; prompts used to help generate the story are shown below.

Images were generated with OpenAI's AI system, DALL·E 2, or uploaded by the user.

AI Prompts