The new day came like a thief in the night. Sunlight peeking through curtains had never looked so ominous. A sick, sinking feeling hung heavy in everyone’s chests from the moment their alarms went off.
It was November 5th.
Detective Lashbrook leapt right out of bed and put his shoes on, not even bothering to enter the bathroom to do so much as wash his face. Kevin had slept in his casual clothes and decided to do nothing to get ready, playing Rush 2049 nervously on the Lodgenet setup until he was told to put his shoes on. The Matts put on their clothes, styled their hair, and met the others downstairs at the complimentary breakfast. A TV in the corner displayed the headline “GAY-SLAYER GETS LIFE,” which Ultimatt eagerly turned to in hopes of hearing about a resuscitated hitman who happened to be gay. Instead, the anchor was covering the story of a murdered gay teen and how the killer was being subjected to life in prison instead of the planned death penalty. The victim’s parents had insisted, saying it was the kind of mercy and tolerance their son believed in. Total mood killer, and the mood was already dead.
The TV droned on, but the crew was silent. Kevin devoured a bowl of Froot Loops. Ultimatt nervously chomped at a plate of bacon as he eyed the TV. Matthew sipped tea. Lashbrook didn’t have an appetite. Next to them, a family of four tried desperately to explain to a very distressed Breakfast Dragon why eating waffles and eggs with them was not cannibalism.
“We’re going to be horribly outnumbered,” Lashbrook finally blurted, rudely breaking the silence. The others turned to him and glared, like he’d just doomed them all by even bringing this fact up. “Oh, come on, people--I’m not trying to be nihilistic here, but we have to acknowledge what’s about to go down in, what, an hour from now!? It’s coming whether we want it to or not. Okay? And I, for one, would rather increase our chances of all making it out in one piece by figuring out an actual plan. What do we know about this Omni guy?”
“Well,” Ultimatt replied, crossing his legs and leaning back in his chair, “he had some little Greek goddess looking pain in the ass that was able to freeze me in place and slow down my perception of time…. so, uh... that’s something we need to watch out for.”
“Did this gacha stop Cecilia also, or just you?”
“Just me.”
“Then we’ll have to assume that she can only stop one person at a time, or else he would have made sure to stop her too, just in case she’d run or scream or call another gacha of hers for help. This doesn’t mean he only has one of this particular character, but it means we do know its limitations. Matthew, Cecilia’s father handpicked some powerful gacha from the stock he put in the machines around town. Do you know anything about those, in case they show up again in Omni’s arsenal?”
Matthew finished his sip of earl gray and then took a moment to think. “His favorite was Temparment, a powerful Legendary that would wildly devour enemies with its razor teeth and swallow them into a black hole. However, it was like a wild beast, devoid of thoughts aside from hunger and destruction and impossible to control without a Glove. I worry about memory-tampering with other gacha to bend them to Omni’s will, but a Temparment would just eat the asshole if he tried to use it. There’s nothing in its head to alter to begin with. So, since Omni cannot wear a Glove, being a gacha himself--I wouldn’t worry about that one showing up.
“The one Matt encountered sounds like an Existentia. William Blackmore did have one of those, and you’re right about its limitations. However, she is also capable of scanning all speech in an area to search for keywords and phrases, listening in on any conversation that matches. She’s able to communicate telepathically, also. I’d be willing to assume this is part of why Omni seems so omnipotent, and I have no doubt he’s listening in on us right now--not that we can help it.”
“I see,” Lashbrook replied. “Like AskJeeves from hell.”
“Sure,” Matthew replied, in reality quite unsure. “William’s only other gacha was an old half-elderly-crone half-centipede fortune teller named Fickle Fortune, capable of predicting the next few actions of any one target. She’s not much of a threat aside from that. In tandem, being able to predict enemy attacks, freeze them in place, and devour them was a killer strategy for William, but I have doubts Omni will follow his lead. There’s little need for predicting attacks if you can rewrite your opponent’s intentions on the fly, after all.”
“Is there anything else we know Omni himself can do? Any other crazy magical bullshit?”
“When I was frozen, he threw a knife at me,” Ultimatt replied.
“I don’t think ‘knife throwing’ is a magic attack,” Lashbrook grumbled.
“No, but while I was viewing the entire world in super slo-mo, I was able to get a close look at his process. The dude didn’t pull it out of his pocket or anything. He reached behind his back, untucked his shirt from his pants, reached under the shirt, and brought his hand back around holding a gigantic knife. There’s no way he was hiding it under his shirt--it’s like it came out of nowhere.”
“Sounds like the hammer he killed me with,” Lashbrook mused. “It was an ordinary hammer, but it seemed like he reached into nothing to get it. It also seemed like he was able to teleport around somehow. There has to be a trick to it.”
“You said he wore a huge cape under his police clothes, didn’t you?”
“Yeah? He’s one fruity son of a gun for sure. N-no offense intended, Matts--”
“Maybe that’s the trick,” Ultimatt continued, sitting straight up in his chair. “What kind of pattern did you say it had, again?”
“Like a… like a moving space scene. Galaxies, even. Looked more like a TV screen inside than fabric.”
“A pocket dimension,” Matthew chimed in. “Of course.”
“Bingo,” Ultimatt continued. “He’s putting crap in his cape. It’s another dimension he can store and retrieve stuff from, and if he envelops himself in it, he can vanish into that world and then unfurl it to reappear in this world wherever the hell he wants.”
The Matts and Kevin understood entirely, feeling foolish for not having figured it out immediately. Lashbrook was stunned by the very concept but still followed the basics. “Good to know,” Lashbrook replied. “His army isn’t too big, since his plan is to either brainwash all the controlled gacha after breaking the Glove’s spell or to summon a bunch himself using a child’s blood and then brainwash those… he seems fairly desperate to achieve one of those tasks before moving forward with his plan, which means he doesn’t have many gacha on his side already. He does have an entire army of extremist Matts from the rebel tent city who side with him without the need for brainwashing, but if we can get past them and keep him from expanding his reserves, I think we have a shot.”
“Do we have a game plan beyond that?” Kevin asked.
“Take out the Existentias first,” Matthew replied, gravely. “They were the biggest reason Gerald had to amass an army of hundreds to even touch his father, who had only one Existentia and two supplementary Legendaries. And since Omni had first pick of the lot before even William did, I’m willing to bet he has more than one Existentia, since the other two don’t do him a lot of good. There weren’t many in the entire stock from the warehouse he sold my father to begin with, but of the millions of capsules, I’m sure there were enough that he has more than one. Six Star Legendary characters come in rainbow capsules, so it’s all too easy to find the few that exist--if you’re not having to pop them out of a machine one by one, that is.”
“Then what?” Lashbrook asked.
“Then we throw everything we have at him,” Ultimatt cut in. “Lashbrook takes one of the magic-infused guns; we spam magic. We light that mother up like we’re in the Matrix. Everything we’ve got. If possible, we’ll stay close to Lashbrook, and try to let him take the brunt of any magic attacks since he’s immune and emits an anti-magic forcefield. I’ll keep rewinding anyone who gets their memories rewritten or who gets maimed. We can even cheat death here as long as I’m alive. That’s our advantage.”
“And what if you get brainwashed?” Lashbrook asked.
The table went silent, but Kevin rummaged around in his backpack and pulled out a bizarre invention. Shards of mirror with superglue holding two straps of cloth each on the sides, allowing them to be tied on like fashion accessories.
“When did you make that!?” Lashbrook demanded, terrified that he’d been playing with sharp objects.
“Last night after your old butt passed out,” Kevin said with a smirk. Ultimatt was so proud. “I broke the mirror in the bathroom, ripped the fabric from the towels, and borrowed glue and scissors from the front desk. Nobody’s going to say no to a request from someone in a Blackmore-booked room. I’m sure Gerald will be charged through the nose for the damage, but he can take it. We’re saving his sister.”
“I don’t get it,” Ultimatt mumbled.
“They’re reflectors,” Kevin explained. “I thought through the problem of you getting brainwashed and remembered how Matthew was able to rewind you by putting you in front of a mirror and having you attack it. This way, if you get your memories screwed up, we just have to goad you into rewinding us and bounce it back at you to rewind you back to before your memories were rewritten.”
“Good stuff,” Ultimatt replied, grinning. Kevin handed out the shards as everyone but Ultimatt tied them onto their forearms, ready to block rewinding magic at any moment. “Think it’ll work on Omni’s magic too?”
Lashbrook shook his head. “He rewrote the memories of everyone in the entire town on a whim. It’s not something he has to aim. He can manifest it as balls of red magic, and maybe as smiles or something, but even that isn’t a requirement, and I’m quite certain it transcends such things.”
“Bummer.”
Lashbrook returned the keys to the front desk, told them he was checking out, and thanked them for a lovely stay. The front desk girl thanked them courteously as they departed, trying to resist mentioning the broken mirrors strapped to their arms by mangled towel strips, and they were off. Lashbrook went first, cautiously checking the armored vehicle for any sign of magical traps, but it seemed they hadn’t been followed. Lashbrook took the wheel, stuck his head out of the tank’s window for visibility, made sure the teens had safely piled in the back, and they headed towards Gacha HQ: the ultimate showdown.