Detective Lashbrook showed up to work right on time that morning. When some other officers asked him where he had gone, he’d simply blurted that he’d had a family emergency and walked past them, making a beeline for his office. He sank into the worn leather office chair and took a deep breath, rubbing his aching temples with his crooked index and middle fingers. Time to get to the bottom of this.
He booted up his high-end Gateway computer tower and opened up a new window in Netscape. He’d always had more luck with Yahoo than with Netscape Search, so he quickly navigated to Yahoo and searched “gachacorp.” Nothing--they must not have an official site. Next, he tried “gacha glove.” Surely this had happened in other places: there had to be something .
Surprisingly, there was only one result: a Geocities site that said “GACHA GLOVE” at the top in WordArt, with a badly drawn image of a Matt in the style of those Japanese cartoons beneath. “Gacha are super cool!” was written under the image in Comic Sans. A low-quality MIDI version of one of those songs the kids like blared automatically as soon as the page fully loaded, and Lashbrook quickly grabbed the dial on his speakers and turned them all the way down. He scrolled to the bottom and found a “Last Updated” date: November 3rd, 1999. Definitely one of the kids in town, then… maybe this really was the first time this happened anywhere?
“Well, that’s not very useful,” Lashbrook mumbled to himself, clicking the back button. This time he tried just “gacha” and got a few results back. Most were unrelated pages in other languages that seemed to use that word for some other reason--“gacha” was definitely something unrelated in Spanish, for instance. One site he pulled up was a fan site for a member of a Japanese boy band: this particular page on the site was a translated transcript of a radio interview with one of their members, named “Nagase Tomoya,” and the interview was from 1997. Lashbrook scrolled down and speed-read furiously through the transcript, his eyes widening when he finally found mention of “gacha” in its current context.
Unfortunately, it appeared that the invaders in town might as well have been called “capsule toy people,” because apparently “gacha” was just the Japanese word for the 25 cent capsule machines and the toys inside. One of the people on the show described how they had one set up in the studio with capsules full of questions to ask interviewees instead of toys, and then reminisced with Mr. Tomoya about the “eraser toys” that normally come in them. They were describing the same kind of thing kids got from those machines here in Woodruck before the Gacha Glove machines took over everything. Dead end.
Desperate, Lashbrook also searched “gacha glove” on Google, AltaVista, AskJeeves, and even Netscape Search again… but they all either returned zero results, or only showed him the same useless, bare-bones, homemade fan page he’d stumbled across before. Plugging “gachacorp” into these other search engines brought up nothing. Lashbrook slammed his desk with his fist, then lit a cigarette to help suppress his rage.
“Careful, now, I can’t afford to replace two desks in two days,” a suave, chocolatey voice quipped. How the hell did Chief Omni always enter so silently?! “We’ve been worried about you after last night, champ. It’s not like you to just jump ship… and I know it wasn’t really a family emergency.”
“Look, John, you were here when all this gacha crap started. You were already in the water when it started heating up. If you drop a frog right into boiling water, it’s gonna’ hop out.” He took a drag off his cigarette and offered Omni one, who politely refused. “I thought I was having a mental breakdown, or that someone had spiked my soda. I know enough about the world to know that, in most cases, if there’s suddenly a giant dragon with a bacon neck and a head made out of waffles in front of you, it’s cause you’re tripping acid, and not because the laws of reality suddenly no longer apply and children are getting sentient organic monsters from vending machines.”
The Chief walked up behind him and glanced at his computer screen, then shook his head sadly. “I think you’re pushing yourself too hard, Lash. You’re going to give yourself a stroke. You’re worrying too much about all this ‘gacha’ stuff. I called the FBI as soon as I came in this morning on behalf of the Department; I told them all about the struggles we’ve been having and how we’re unequipped to handle them. They told me they’re aware of the situation and are looking into it, and to keep an ear on my phone as they’ll call me with updates. It’s like having a grenade in your room--you don’t want it there, but all you can do is call a grenade removal team and be careful until then. The worst possible thing you can do is walk up and kick it. Do you see what I’m saying?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Lashbrook scoffed. It made sense, but it still felt like the wrong answer when arcane monsters and superhumans were roaming the streets at the whim of schoolchildren.
“Take a break from worrying about it… focus on the cases we can actually have a hand in resolving, and that I actually pay you to investigate… and that’s an order.” He had a glistening, disarming smile when he said this, but the underlying threat was clear.
“And what do we do when the feds don’t show? They’re aware of it, you say, but they didn’t do anything when that kid got hospitalized, and that dad got eaten alive by a Waffle House dragon and so on--you’re actually telling me we’re just supposed to just sit by and do nothing?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Omni snapped, his smile fading, “and it would do you well to remember who makes all the payments on your apartment before you decide to play rogue Detective with me.”
“To remember what, now?” Lashbrook replied, raising an eyebrow. Omni had told him where to get a good deal on a nice place, but the payments were coming out of his own salary. “John, what the hell are you on about?”
“Well, I…” for the first time, John seemed actually flustered, tripping over his words. “I mean, in that I pay your salary, of course.”
“So, you’re telling me to not investigate a bunch of supernatural invaders in our town by threatening me with homelessness,” Lashbrook reiterated, glaring.
“Nothing of the sort, Lash,” Omni chuckled, his action-figure smile spreading across his broad face again, “I just still have Ms. Tinkerpot breathing down my neck about finding her Taurus, and Mr. Grimm about finding his runaway teenager, and so, obviously, I want those solved before you move on to personal investigations.”
Lashbrook didn’t recall hearing about these particular cases before, but whatever--it wasn’t worth risking his job over. “Of course, Chief,” he mumbled, mustering a sad thumbs up. Omni grinned wide, gave him a very enthusiastic thumbs up in response, and left the office.
The whole world was turning upside down. Nothing felt right. Not just the gacha stuff--all of this felt “off.” Lashbrook endeavored to do some deeper and wider searching, taking much more care to watch out for the Chief’s stealthy entrances.
Seeing that the coast was clear, Lashbrook pulled a small flask from a locked cabinet in his desk and took a large swig of liquid courage. He’d refrained for two months this time before cracking, and he shut the flask and locked it back immediately, but he had a feeling he was going to need that one chug to make it through the coming madness. He searched his own name and found nothing--no surprise, since, despite being a perfectly capable detective, he wasn’t exactly famous and hadn’t cracked open any serial killer cases or the like. He did a search for John Omni and also found nothing. This did surprise him a bit, since “Chief of Police” was a much more important title.
Omni had been chief as far back as Lashbrook could remember… so, logically, he couldn’t be a gacha replacing him or anything. The public was also very familiar with him, and he was always reminiscing about crazy memories he shared with various citizens, who would laugh profusely and say something to the effect of “Oh my god, you’re right! That was a hell of a night!” Lashbrook couldn’t remember who was chief before him--it had never really been relevant, they’d worked together his entire tenure--but there was a plaque on his door reading “CHIEF JOHN OMNI: KEEPING THE PEACE IN WOODRUCK SINCE 1982,” so it had been a long time since anyone else had kept the seat warm; too long for him to be related to these gacha shenanigans happening now.
Lashbrook searched for the Woodruck Police Department on Yahoo and found a link to their official website, but clicking it only brought up a 404 error. To make sure it wasn’t a fluke, he went back and tried again, repeating this several times with no luck. It must have been taken offline, but... why? Maybe the server had simply come unplugged--he knew it was hosted locally--but there was no way to check. The server room, and archives, were connected to Chief Omni’s office. There was no other way to get to them. It had been designed this way for security reasons, but on this particular day, it felt ominous.
On his lunch break, Lashbrook decided to do something he hadn’t done since the incident five years ago: hop in his cruiser and return to the neighborhood of Keystone Landing.
Lashbrook’s heart raced just passing the old wooden “Keystone Landing” sign. He barely suppressed the urge to reach for the flask under his seat, instead lighting another cigarette and taking in as much poison in one breath as possible.
Lashbrook turned right on Cattail Avenue and fought back the tears as he neared the fateful turn. He hadn’t looked at the wreckage since the night it happened, and he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to go through with it… but he had to know. The world was falling apart, nothing felt real anymore, and had to make sure this still was. Though Lashbrook knew it was impossible, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he might still see the charred, dismembered hand of his teenage daughter reaching out towards nothing from that pile of ashes, even now. He choked back tears just thinking about it, squinting as he turned the corner and braced for the worst--
Instead, he came face to face with his old yellow home, exactly as it had looked when he’d moved in with his wife and daughter in 1992. The numbers on the front were right: 919 Waterfront Lane. Every detail was perfect, and it was clearly thirty years old, with all the wear and tear one would expect. It was like it had never exploded, like there’d never been a gas leak, like he hadn’t lost his entire family here in one traumatic night and come home from work to find the rescue workers picking up their burnt-up bits like pieces of a Lego spaceship that had been dropped on a ceramic floor.
Lashbrook’s vision blurred. Bile rose in the back of his throat. Heavy breathing became hyperventilation. He quickly put the cigarette out, unable to safely hold it in his spasming hands. There was no way. This was impossible. M-Maybe someone rebuilt it at some point, from the original blueprints. Maybe it had been the original builder, who surely still had the blueprints…?
That had to be it. Lashbrook had sold the land after the tragedy had happened, unable to even look at it… so the original builder bought the land back and rebuilt the home back to its 1969 glory. Why did it look so old still, then? Well, the owner had to be pretty old if he had also been the original builder back in 1969, so he probably wasn’t very adept at maintaining the house. If it had been rebuilt a few months after the incident, then it could have sat for nearly five years with zero maintenance externally. Surely five years of neglect could be equivalent to thirty of rigorous upkeep. That was why it looked as if it was so aged now. Of course!
...but he had to make sure.
Lashbrook calmed his nerves and shifted into the headspace he had developed for the difficult parts of the job. Whenever he had to ring the doorbell and tell a woman that her son had died, then watch her weep uncontrollably as he handed her the paperwork, he’d shift into this mindset. It wasn’t sustainable, but it was a protected, dissociative emotional state that got the trick done. It delayed the panic attacks for long enough to get back to the cruiser, so it was perfect for this situation. Lashbrook shifted into this state, taking a deep, meditative breath. His hands stopped shaking, he wiped the tears from the creases under his eyes, and he went up to the door and knocked.
A lovely middle-aged mother with brunette curls answered the door. She looked like she hadn’t slept in a month from the bags under her eyes, but she was pleasant enough. “Good afternoon, ma’am, I’m Detective Lashbrook with the Woodruck Police Department.” Sensing her discomfort, he quickly added, “D-don’t worry, nothing is wrong, but we’re investigating someone who lived at this address before you and we would appreciate it if you could tell us how long you’ve lived at this location, so… we can try to narrow down our data.”
“Of course, Officer,” she replied, visibly relieved. “Um… I think it was December of 1981?”
Lashbrook’s heart sank. “You are certain about this, ma’am? Nobody else lived here during that period?”
“Why, certainly not,” she replied, as a young child giggled in the background. “My husband and I had just gotten married and fixed this place up, it was a wreck. We painted it yellow shortly after our son was born, so that must’ve been in late January of 97. That dreary plain brick was just not cutting it for a home with a small child, you know?”
“I see,” Lashbrook replied, his voice trembling in spite of himself. “Thank you for your time, ma’am. You’ve been a huge help. Here’s my card, give me a call if I can ever help you with anything.” She smiled and thanked him, waving goodbye to him as he returned to the cruiser.
He said nothing on his drive back to the station. He was silent as he stopped by Walmart on the way and purchased a power drill kit suitable for drilling through locks. He was silent as he hid the drill under his desk, plugging it in to charge.
Like an automaton, he looked up the cases Omni had told him to solve and mechanically breezed through them, methodically finding the missing car and runaway teenager both before the end of his shift. When evening came, he told Omni he was going to stay late to finish up those cases, also apologizing for worrying too much about the silly gacha stuff. The Chief, blissfully unaware he was being lied to, commended the Detective for his work ethic and enthusiastically accepted his apology before leaving and locking the place up behind him. Since they’d ended up working overtime on Halloween due to the whole growing gacha issue, Omni had declared this evening a night off. At 7pm, the light above Lashbrook’s desk was the only one on in the entire station. He was alone at last.
Lashbrook removed the power drill from its charger and slid the set of lock-drilling bits into the pocket of his trenchcoat. He ensured his pistol was loaded and secure in its holster on his hip. He turned the corner and faced down the locked door in front of him. It was affixed with three plaques:
“CHIEF JOHN OMNI, KEEPING THE PEACE IN WOODRUCK SINCE 1982”
“SERVER ROOM”
“ARCHIVES”
“All right, John Omni,” he spat, lining up the drill with the lock, “let’s see what’s going on behind that plastic smile of yours.” It took all three bits, but in minutes, there was a hole in the door where the lock was. Lashbrook glanced behind him, halfway expecting Omni to appear behind him, but all was quiet. The Detective took a deep breath and opened the door, stepped through, and closed it behind him. He turned the light on, and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the server and archive rooms themselves did not have locks to drill. He set his lock drilling kit on the desk, just in case, and got ready to tackle his first suspicion, plopping down in Omni’s plush office chair.
The Chief had a fancy landline in his office with caller ID and call log history… and Lashbrook knew for a fact that he didn’t have a cell phone. Lashbrook figured out how to pull up the call history and scrolled back through all the calls his boss had made in the last 24 hours. The only calls incoming were from Ashley Tinkerpot and Toby Grimm, and the only outgoing ones were to Pizza Hut and local multi-billionaire business mogul William Blackmore.
“Called the FBI this morning, my ass,” Lashbrook mumbled under his breath, swallowing hard.