Pulses were sky-high as Ultimatt threw open the door. For most of the party this was about to be the answer to their existence. How were they made? Why? How did the capsules even work? It was a potential door into the workshop of a mad god! Demons? Aliens? Robots? AI in a simulation!? Who or what was behind the madness?
Ultimatt’s heart sank as he took in the “factory.” It was a vast, plain concrete room dotted with cheap white plastic folding tables and even cheaper rusted folding metal chairs. Craft supplies were strewn haphazardly about across the tables’ surfaces, the work benches of a dozen identical aging Japanese businessmen chatting about the latest sports news as they made various orb-shaped crafts. On closer examination, each of these beings looked identical to the CEO from the open house commercial. The one thing the commercial was carefully designed to hide, however: beneath their business suits, these CEOs were crabs from the waist down. Their tiny feet scuttled joyfully back and forth; eyes full of childlike wonder as they constructed rough facsimiles of gacha capsules. They hadn’t seen it, but the CEO Omni murdered had been an identical half-crab being.
“What the hell is this?” Lashbrook whispered.
“I don’t think this is a real factory,” Kevin replied.
Matthew strode up to the nearest table. “Welcome, welcome!” the CEO crab people chirped, nodding politely to him. He had the same inscrutable accent as the one in the commercial. Matthew picked up one of the capsules and examined it closer.
“This is just a ball of styrofoam adorned with glitter and marker,” Matthew blankly stated.
“Incorrect, my good friend,” one of the CEO crabs replied, a pleasant smile spreading over his wrinkled face. “It is a capsule containing a powerful Breakfast Dragon.” He picked up a poorly cut out (and even more poorly drawn) crayon scribble of a Breakfast Dragon, splashed Elmer’s glue across the back, and pressed it to the foam orb. Excess glue oozed out from behind the “Breakfast Dragon” and dripped onto the floor. “Be careful,” the CEO crab man said, handing the creation to Matthew. “If you treat him well, a Breakfast Dragon can be your best friend and protector; but if you’re too crispy with him, he can become a tough dish to swallow.”
Matthew squinted at the ball, blinking incredulously as the drawing slid off along with a blob of glue and splattered onto the concrete floor. “Jocularity.”
“We’re not fucking around here, gramps,” Ultimatt cut in. “ Where the FUCK are gacha actually made?!”
“In this factory,” another CEO crab replied, tossing Ultimatt a ball of clay with a Linguine Arf poorly drawn on its side in Sharpie. It deformed as soon as he caught it, and clearly did not actually contain a chef dog that could control pasta. Ultimatt frowned.
“We are the CEO Crab- kuns of GachaCorp,” another explained, skittering up to the rest of the party. “GachaCorp is a lovely and fun company who provides much enjoyment to all of your children everywhere. We are the humble owners, who create the toys here to spread joy and excitement everywhere on Earth.”
“Impossible,” a droning, distorted voice shrieked, echoing through the room. “This can’t be the answer!” The crew turned to see the melted, destroyed corpse of Omni crawling in via dragging the charred fingers of his skeletal right hand against the floor. He was no longer just a puddle, having recovered already back into a distorted but recognizable version of himself. Ultimatt almost attacked, but on second glance it was clear Omni was in no condition to cast any magic or cause any trouble.
“You’re right, John; it isn’t,” Lashbrook mumbled, lighting a cigarette and taking a long draw from it. “Look at these crabby little sons of bitches; they’re as gacha as they come. Tell me, Crab boy, where do you come from?”
“It’s a very simple and very lovely answer,” the closest CEO Crab- kun explained with a huge grin. “We came from the beautiful GachaLand, a world of rainbows and magic in the hearts of every child. We create the lovely gacha here in our factory, and--”
“Where do the gloves come from, then, idiot?!” Ultimatt snapped.
The crab man’s face went blank. “Uh… the Glove?”
“Yeah, I don’t see you making any in your little craft shop here.”
“The Glove simply is,” a second CEO Crab- kun blurted, quickly scampering over next to his identical comrade. “We cannot make the Glove. The Glove has always been and will always be. It is the legendary gauntlet made of pure gold, giving any child the ability to be the mighty ruler of GachaLand--”
“These guys are just regurgitating backstory,” Ultimatt sighed, tossing the clay ball down on the table.
“Indeed,” Matthew replied. “I’ve read through the manual that comes with the Glove, and this all matches the fictional backstory of gacha. It’s like how Furby supposedly came from a cloud on another planet. It’s all just… flavor text.”
“There is no fiction,” the first CEO Crab-kun scolded. “Fiction is a word used by children who do not believe in the power of imagination. There is no fiction and there is no reality. There is only Gacha Glove.”
“These guys had to come from somewhere,” Cecilia blurted, “this headquarters popped up literally overnight and they had a commercial and everything! There has to at least be some clue to the truth here.”
“I’ve seen these once before,” Omni added, pausing to cough up molten plastic. “They’re definitely gacha--I mean, look at the little freaks--but they weren’t commercially available. There wasn’t a single one of these in the entire warehouse I, ahem, came into possession of, and that warehouse was full of leftovers from the last invasion. Oh, you think this was the first time this happened?! Ha, goodness golly fucking gracious, no.”
Omni paused to laugh profusely and then coughed up another multicolored blob. “I don’t know how many times, but we’ve popped up at least once before this, and I have no idea where we came from back then. That was the invasion I came from. GachaCorp HQ popped up then, too, but I didn’t have a chance to enter it before that pesky Sin~stitute got us, the stylish bastards! I did see the CEO Crab- kuns being taken away at the same time that I was. I don’t understand where they came from this invasion, though--there were none in the warehouse, and I forced this invasion with my own well-manicured hand and the assistance of William Blackmore, so how--”
“Whatever put them here, they have no memory of it,” Ultimatt interrupted. “Whatever force caused the previous invasion or invasions has been closely monitoring your shitty fake invasion, Omni, and when the gacha spread wide enough, they brought these CEO Crab- kuns here to take over an abandoned building and reopen GachaCorp HQ again.”
“The only question, then,” Cecilia chimed in, “is… why? They aren’t even making real gacha here, right? The gacha and the Gloves had to come from some--”
Cecilia was interrupted when a loud alert tone blared from a loudspeaker on the factory’s ceiling. “Howdy do, CEOs!” the familiar, grating falsetto of Boh Tye echoed. “I have some great news! We have real visitors to the open house, actual people, and so many of them! A whole bunch of real nicely dressed clean-cut hunks in black suits and shades pulled up in a bunch of cool black cars, and they’re all coming down to visit you! I sure hope they were just older Gacha Glove fans and not someone dangerous. I told them they absolutely weren’t allowed to go down the elevator to the last floor and into the factory, so I’m sure they won’t cause you any--”
A male voice overlapped, saying “wait, that talking bow tie is one!”
A second replied, “nah, I don’t see him on the list, that’s just a normal talking bow tie.”
“Third row, second column, dumbass!”
“Oh damn! Hahaha, you’re right! My bad, dude.”
“Uh oh, they said bad words,” Boh Tye whispered. “Oh, they’re going to wear me!” He quickly added, suddenly ecstatic. “My purpose is fulfilled! Woo wee! Hahaha--oh no! Bad touch! Bad--” Then the speaker cut out.
“It’s the Sinstitute,” Omni boomed, his floating eyes bulging with terror. When nobody reacted, he groaned and added, “think the FBI that the FBI doesn’t know about, okay??--cheese it!!!”
“There’s nowhere to run,” Lashbrook replied, swallowing hard. “There’s only one way up, and they’re coming down it. What do you think they’re going to do to us, anyway?”
“I’ll tell you what they’re going to do,” Omni replied, voice trembling. Everyone turned to face him, secondhand panic seizing them before he even started speaking. “They’re going to hit you with one of their gacha-neutralizer devices, knocking you instantly unconscious with an undodgeable blast of manufactured magic. They’ll use a magic capsule on you that will shrink you down to stuff you in their pocket, then they’ll take you to their underground city of gacha, deep beneath the earth, under a town that has no name. They’re going to bind your limbs and put magic limiting devices under your skin. They’ll interrogate you once a week, torturing you in ways I’ve already blocked from my own memories to allow myself to function, convinced that you know the secret behind gacha and are just staying loyal to your supposed Masters. They’ll dissect you over and over again, running tests on different parts of your body and then sewing you back together again, over and over again, trying to reverse engineer you like a downed UFO. You’ll see the friends you make there dragged off and returned in pieces, or never returned at all.” Kevin and Cecilia clung to each other, shocked and mortified. Ultimatt tried to suppress his panic and turn it to anger. Matthew dissociated. Lashbrook nodded.
“As for me?” Chronos continued, hacking up blood and plastic, “they found out I was the most powerful, and they used me as a living magic battery. They learned how my memory magic works in a detail even I can’t fathom and drained it from me day by day through my spinal cord as fast as it could be regenerated. After seizing every trace of gacha from that city, they created devices from my drained magic they used to perfectly erase all memory of gacha from everyone in the city, replacing their memories automatically with fake ones for that entire period. The more in-tune citizens might have picked up on a subtle difference, but nothing that could be proven beyond conspiracy theories. That’s what they’re going to do here now, to everyone in this town who isn’t a gacha--”
“Not if I can help it,” Matthew blurted, racing towards the factory’s door. “Everybody, run the other way! There might be a back exit!” Ultimatt ran after him as he went through the door, but Lashbrook grabbed his arm.
“There is no need to run,” Omni shouted to Ultimatt, managing to pull himself up slightly. His face was now almost fully formed again. “The agents go by the fold-out gacha checklist that comes with the Glove, which doesn’t include Rainbow Six Star Legendaries. They’re so improbable to pull in a natural invasion that they don’t even take that possibility into account. You and Lashbrook are safe--it is only me and the CEO Crab-kuns that they are familiar with.”
“There’s one!” the first agent’s voice called out from the other side of the door.
“Are you sure?” the second agent replied.
“Yes! He’s on the fifth row, seventh column--”
“Oh hell, you’re right, you’re right.” A bright blue light flashed outside, and Matthew was instantly defeated.
Ultimatt thrashed to get out, tears streaming down his face, screaming, firing sonic blast after sonic blast at Lashbrook, but the old detective’s forcefield neutralized his every move, and his strong hand held the boy in place. “I’m sorry, kid,” Lashbrook said softly, tears sliding down his leathery wrinkles. “I don’t want you to have to lose any of your family, but I’m not about to lose another one of mine. There’s nothing you can do.”
“I have a lot of regrets,” Omni said, breaking their focus. “I did some unspeakable things in the name of freeing and saving my fellow gacha, but we were all tortured in the same lab in spite of it. I wanted so badly to believe that the end would justify my means, because good golly, the means still make my stomach turn. I broke out in hopes I could make it all right again, could--could build a new army on my own terms and save all the others in captivity, and create that paradise for us by force… and maybe… live like a real baller… too… but it seems once again I’ve fallen short.”
Lashbrook released Ultimatt, who had stopped thrashing and was now listening intently to what Omni had to say. “If I’d succeeded, in spite of my atrocities, I could’ve been a hero. Chronos Omni was supposed to be the ultimate gacha, the hero to all of GachaLand and humanity, and in the end all I did was spread even more death and suffering. I don’t expect you to forgive me. I don’t expect you to like me. I don’t even expect you to understand me. But maybe, just this once, I can be a hero.” He looked to Ultimatt, both of them weeping profusely, eyes locked in mutual fear and sorrow. “I will pay for what I’ve done. I’m going to face a fate worse than death for all eternity when they find me again. I’d give anything to be able to die first, but that’s not what I deserve, nor can it be done. But I don’t want my final act to be one of terror.” He smiled through the streaming tears, sniffled, and finished, “I wanted to save gachakind, but in the end... I could only save one Matt.” He lifted his nearly-reformed right hand and shot a powerful green blast at the door, knocking it wide open, and mustered one last painful grin towards both of the agents on the other side. They didn’t see him, but his magic had set in nonethless.
“Wait a second… I know the kid we just caught!” the first agent said. A sound like a capsule opening was heard, along with a desperate gasp.
“Ah, crap. This is Farmer Drew’s kid, isn’t it?” the second replied. “Sarcoxigrazdt Johnson, right?”
“Is it? Check for the scars on his arms.”
“...yeah. It is. Poor kid. I’d forgotten he’d moved here. Well, uh, we’ve just shot a kid with the anomaly neutralizer and stuffed him in a 4D capture capsule. Can a kid even survive that? What do we tell his dad if we run into him? What do we tell the agents upstairs?”
“Oh, shit, man, I don’t know! Oh, geez, we’ve screwed up big time--”
“Shh, shh, shh, I’m sure it’ll be fine, he’s still breathing and he’s back to full size. If he’s not alright, we can just wipe his dad’s memory anyway, and--and tell the other agents he tried to sh-shoot us or something. It’s his fault for dressing up like a Matt! ...though we should’ve been tipped off when he got the gloves all screwed up. Fuckin’ third-rate cosplayers.”
“You saved him,” Ultimatt mumbled, gazing incredulously at Omni.
“Remember me for that and not for the terrible things I did, alright, kid?” he solemnly replied. “I guess in the end I could never justify the means… but at least I could give you a better end.”
Ultimatt paused to think for a second. What would Matthew do here? What about Kevin? Could he bring himself to do it? Omni had been so terrible up until this, he deserved everything he had coming. But weren’t we past the point of people getting what they deserved? Did anyone here deserve the suffering they’d faced to get this far? He checked his reels—sure enough, they were still stuck in Fast Forward.
“Omni,” Ultimatt said, standing over him, “you were right--I don’t forgive you, I don’t like you, and I sure as hell don’t understand you… but I’m going to save you anyway. Nobody deserves a fate worse than death.”
Omni’s face brightened as soon as he realized what Ultimatt meant. His tears turned to those of happiness, a peaceful smile spreading across his relieved face as Ultimatt fast forwarded him even faster, all the way through to the point where the sun destroys the Earth entirely. The maniacal memory manipulator turned to ashes, then vanished, unable to ever regenerate again, freed from the eternal hell he would otherwise have been dragged back into.
The black-clad agents kicked down the door to the factory, stomping in. The first agent, a tall and imposing man with jet black hair and a face like a Gucci mannequin, wielded a bizarre looking gun with a glowing blue tank attached to the back. His partner, a stout fellow with brunette hair and mutton chops, held a crinkled copy of the “Gotta Get the Gacha!” paper that came packaged with the Glove, looking for the crab people on it. At the bottom he found them badly drawn on a sticky note with just them and a picture of Omni, hand-labelled “SIX STARZ.” “Get those crab people,” he mumbled. The tall one shot the CEOs with blue lasers, then tossed custom, empty, clear capsules at each of their crumpled unconscious forms. The capsules immediately expanded upon touching them, opened, closed around them, then shrank down to an even smaller size than normal gacha capsules. The agent collected the tiny balls and put them in his pocket, sighing. “Looks like that’s all on this floor,” the fat one noted.
“Excuse me a moment,” Lashbrook called, walking over to them. Ultimatt looked terrified, but he shot him a confident wink before continuing. “What the bloody hell is going on here?”
“And you are…?” the tall agent asked.
“Detective Lashbrook, Woodruck PD,” Lashbrook replied, flashing his badge, “and I’d like some answers.”
“I’m afraid this is some highly classified stuff,” the fat one smugly replied.
“Eh, we’re gonna wipe his memory anyway,” the tall agent whispered. “Why not indulge him?”
“Yeah, never mind, I was kidding, it’s--it’s not classified,” the fat one corrected himself. “It’s public domain, like big band music.”
“And like your wife!” the tall one chimed in. The fat one did not look appreciative.
“It turned out our Chief of Police had been murdered and replaced by some bad gacha guy called Omni,” Lashbrook continued. “As his second in command and the new Chief by default, I’d like some answers about that whole fiasco, now that he’s been defeated.” The agents looked at each other incredulously, shocked Omni had been defeated, but saw no reason to doubt this serious looking detective dude.
“Be sure you make this guy the Chief all along in the town’s memories later,” the fat agent whispered to the tall one, foreseeing a possible discrepancy otherwise. The tall one nodded.
“Detective,” the tall one said, “Chronos Omni was a very powerful gacha known as a Six Star Rainbow Legendary who had the ability to rewrite memories, among other things. He tried to lead a gacha uprising against humanity during a previous invasion, but he was subdued and taken away by us. He managed to disable his magic limiters and escape from us, then changed an agent’s memories to think that they were brothers and got him to spill the beans on where our unused gacha stock warehouse was. He killed him and stole all the contents of the warehouse, trying to start a fake invasion here, I assume. I’m sorry for the loss of your original Chief, but I can assure you that once we take the gacha from this area and rewrite everyone’s memories, things will remain peaceful in the sleepy oceanfront town of Woodruck.”
“You mentioned a previous invasion,” Lashbrook demanded, “how many were there? Where do they come from?”
“There were others,” the tall agent replied. “All the ones before were international incidents, so I don’t have as much intel on them. As for where they came from, we have no idea. We’d hoped if we left this town alone and let them spread, that a mothership would come or some shit... but when all that cropped up was another useless GachaCorp HQ, we realized there was no point and pulled the plug. I think they’re aliens, but my partner here is convinced they’re demons. Our chief thinks they’re experiments from the Japanese deep state, and his wife thinks we’re all in the Matrix and the programmers are screwing with us. I do know one thing: they aren’t from our world, and they’re the most dangerous beings to ever walk it.”
“I see,” Lashbrook replied. “Thank you for your time, gentlemen.” The agents nodded, shook his hand, and headed back upstairs. Kevin, Cecilia, and Lashbrook gave it long enough to make sure the agents upstairs had left too, then Ultimatt threw Matthew over his shoulder and they headed back up the elevator.
“We made it,” Kevin said, trying not to cry. Cecilia was less hesitant to cry and grabbed him tight, weeping in pure unadulterated joy.
“It’s not over yet,” Lashbrook shouted, as a loud siren rang out through the town. They looked through the smashed entrance of the HQ to see a giant Sinstitute UFO floating over the city, charging some sort of massive weapon. “Everyone, huddle around me!” Lashbrook screamed, diving behind the desk. Cynthia, Kevin, and Ultimatt (holding unconscious Matthew) all formed a clump around the old Detective as he focused all his might on feeling his anti-magic field and expanding it as far as possible, shouting with determination and pain as he pushed it to its limit. A red wave of magic drowned the town like a tidal wave of blood, erasing and replacing everyone’s memories of the past five days in a massive radius. After a solid minute of being engulfed in crimson lightning, the world looked normal again, and Lashbrook dropped his forcefield. Matthew woke up, unscathed. Ultimatt kissed him.
They walked outside to find that the GachaCorp HQ sign was gone… but they remembered where it had been. They had survived the raid--the last three gacha on the surface were free.