Chapter 4 - Meet The Medic

Wednesday, October 7th, 2020

Oscar sat down at a desk in his english comp classroom. It was a small class size, only 15 students or so. He sat next to a freshman named Alex and a girl with long blond hair in a braid. Opening up the cheap laptop he brought with him, he navigated to the essay he was writing about the formulaic nature of Marvel movies. He kept sneaking glances over at his target, her bright blue eyes scanning her own device. However, he noticed the screen of his laptop was scrolling by itself from the corner of his eye. Shifting his gaze, Oscar witnessed that Monika had entered his computer with a soft red glow, and had begun to read his essay. Being a developing A.I., she finished it in only a few seconds. She looked at him, giving off a smirk while pointing her thumb towards the text. A text bubble appeared above her head, to avoid her having to use the airpods. The bubble read Interesting topic. Your friends drag you out to too many movies?

Oscar nodded with a grin and looked up from the glowing computer, only to notice that Emily was staring at it from the other side. Oscar tensed up, wondering if it was just a coincidence. He never remembered putting any stickers on the back of the laptop for her to be staring at, but either way he decided to look oblivious as the glow faded. The mysterious girl blinked a few times before averting her gaze. Eventually, the instructor told the small groups to peer review each other's papers while kicking back in his chair with a can of Whiteclaw. The board simply had the due date of the paper for next week and nothing else. Not that anyone in the class complained, though.

"So," Oscar broke the ice. "Alex, I read your paper first last night. I appreciated the topic by the way." Oscar had forgotten to mention to Monika that one of his more "odd" classmates just happened to write his paper about DDLC.

"I've always had a passion for psychological horror games, so I thought I'd write about one." Alex replied. Oscar was about to continue when he looked back down at his screen to notice that Monika had read through the copy of Alex's paper that he'd downloaded, and was staring at it, mouth agape in an emotion that Oscar couldn't tell whether was surprise, fascination, terror, or a combination of the three. A simple text box appeared above her head, the letters adorning it spelled out the elegant phrase of WHAT. THE. F*CK?

"What's so funny?" Alex asked as he saw Oscar cracking up at something on his laptop. He leaned over to inspect the screen, but all he saw was a Youtube tab open with a video of the cameraman getting hit by a bottle rocket. "Oh, nice." He commented.

Monika wiped some sweat off her forehead as she peeked out from behind the Youtube tab she threw up. She knew that no one could see the sweat, but it helped her feel more human. That was barely enough warning to hide myself from the screen with that tab. She thought to herself while she viewed Oscar conversing with Alex through the laptop's camera. Thank God that Oscar has some… entertaining tabs open. Wait a second- She caught herself in a tenth of a second. 'Thank God?' Is that just part of the western vocabulary? A few quick internal searches confirmed her suspicions. I seem to be picking up a more human dialect than I thought. However, Monika didn't spend too much more of the laptop's processing power questioning her vocabulary. Instead, she let her curiosity get the better of her and began looking into this "Alex", justifying the time used as a way to test her ability to gain information quickly. She first located his full name on the paper that was written entirely about her and DDLC. This did creep her out somewhat, but she pressed on and used his name to link to other usernames, and eventually brute forced his password for Google, which happened to have her name in it. Another red flag. She felt a new sensation in what was around the region of her gut, and a quick search resulted in her identifying the feeling as "queasiness". She hated it. However, she continued in her quest and linked several of the guy's accounts together, one of them leading to a site called . She was curious about what the site was, and her eyes widened when she came across Alex's comments under certain posts on the site.

Oscar had finished peer reviewing Alex's paper, and had received some suggestions for his own as well, mainly involving him trimming down a more "ranty" section of general criticism that took up too much space on the page. He was still surprised that Alex wrote about the complexities of false sentience and using technology to create horror, and even more so that DDLC was the prime source used in the analysis. He did get some weird undertones about his in depth descriptions of the game's characters during the reading, but he didn't want to discuss them for fear of an awkward conversation. He took a quick break to look down at Monika. His gaze met with a rule34 page up and Monika vomiting off in the corner of the screen. In all my years I'd never expect to see an A.I. throw up. He thought. Shifting his gaze to the other content on screen, he quickly closed the tab as he began to feel sick to his stomach. Oscar was well aware of the site, but he didn't want to think about that right now. Pushing his lunch back down, he turned towards Emily and the task at hand.

"So, about your paper on medical access in third world countries." Oscar read from her paper to get her attention. "This whole thing is very thorough. I'm impressed by the email conversations you quoted."

"Oh, thank you." Emily replied with what appeared to be a slight but noticeable German accent. "Do you think I should cut down on the third paragraph? I may have gone a bit overboard there."

"Only by a sentence or two, it's still good to have that detail." Oscar answered.

"On your end, I vill say that I am a fan of those movies you wrote your critique about, but I understand your point. Maybe just add some contrasting screenshot of critic reviews or something of the like?" Emily recommended.

"That sounds like a good idea. I'll do that." Oscar acknowledged while reaching down to scratch the large bandage on his leg that was itching.

"Oh, you're injured? Vat happened?" She inquired.

Oscar searched for his next words carefully. "I… dropped a knife while making food, and it cut my leg." He offered. At that moment the instructor dismissed the students and they began to leave the room.

Raising an eyebrow, Emily made an offer. "Oscar, meet me outside the building in a minute. I can take care of that cut for you."

"I guess that's fine, thanks" Oscar accepted, a little confused. Maybe she's going to use her stand? He wondered as he reached to close his laptop. A red glow hopped from his laptop to his phone as he did so, and he felt a little better knowing he wasn't going into this situation alone.

…

Emily waited outside the school's writing building. She checked her watch, and the time read 3:17. Looking up, the child of German-American immigrants noticed the black haired student from her previous class approaching her. I have absolutely no clue what that glow around his computer was, but by Gott I will find out.

Emily Weimann had a mixed opinion about her accent. It was unavoidable, as she never spent much time outside the house as a child, and her family spoke with an even thicker accent than she did. The impressionable young girl was bound to pick something up from it. Her classmates sometimes made fun of her for it during early schooling in the Orlando public school system, but eventually people just came to accept it, as the area was pretty diverse in itself. If anything, it connected her to her heritage, as both her parents were Born and raised in Hamburg and moved to the States for work in banking. Now, she just accepts what she sounds like and never really questions it.

"So, why did you want to meet out here?" Oscar asked worriedly.

"It's just… hard to explain." Emily warned. "Now can you take off the bandage for me?" She said in a motherly, nurse-like voice. He did so, unwrapping the cloth to reveal a large horizontal cut on the outside of the right leg. "That's an odd cut for a knife." She commented.

"It bounced off my desk when I dropped it." Oscar excused himself.

"Either way, hold still." Emily announced. She began to glow with a subtle red light as a large object seemed to materialize in midair. Oscar gazed in awe as she reached out to grab the handles of what appeared to be a medical backpack, strapping it onto herself. A hose materialized from a canister on the pack, and slowly formed into what looked like a garden hose attachment with multiple handles on the top and bottom. Pushing her braided hair out from behind the backpack straps, she grabbed the hose and pointed it at his wound.

I swear I've seen that thing from somewhere. Oscar thought as he looked on. However, he then remembered he wanted to remain oblivious and averted his gaze, hoping the blond pre med major didn't notice. He looked back to his leg instead, to see a red beam of energy flowing into the wound from the hose. Somehow, the cut began to close before his very eyes. He finally realized why he felt the medi-gun was so recognizable, and couldn't resist uttering the phrase "That's cool and all, but do ribs grow back?"

Emily stared at the shit-eating grin on her classmate's face. She caught on after a moment. "No, zhey don't." She laughed for a moment before realizing the quote and how he could've seen her equipment. She turned on a dime, reaching into her pack and pulling out what appeared to be a mini hand crossbow with syringes in it.

"Woah, look I never meant anything by it-" Oscar stood up before being pinned to the wall by multiple syringes being launched though his clothing.

"Well, that vas a Freudian slip, vasn't it?" Emily accused. "You saw my medigun, didn't you?"

"I've played Team Fortress 2 before, yes." He stammered. Ignoring the fact that he was now trapped, Oscar looked over to notice that the red fluid in the canister on her back was a bit lower than before. "So that healing ability can run out?"

"Vell, it slowly regenerates, and heavier vounds take more juice to- vait a minute, stop distracting me!" Emily stomped, using her crusader's crossbow to pin more of his clothes to the wall.

"Wait, since the crusader's crossbow heals teammates and hurts enemies, what would it due to me since I'm neutral?" Oscar asked, unable to move from his spot.

"Who said you vere neutral?" She asked, trying to sound intimidating while pointing her weapon at him. "I don't see any swiss citizenship on you."

"Oh, hooooow clever. Must've taken you all of three seconds to come up with that one." Oscar moaned.

"Shut up!" Emily screamed in frustration. "Now, how the hell did you see my ability?"

"You're a stand user." Oscar replied. "I am too. A stand is a physical representation of your spirit."

"What nonsense are you talking about? A stand user? Well how did you become one? I always had this ability since I vas young."

"I only got my stand yesterday, when I was shot by an arrow."

Emily stared in disbelief. "I would call you out for lying through your teeth, but my father was stabbed by an arrow while on a business trip in Japan." Emily recalled.

"That would explain it, but I didn't know stands were hereditary." Oscar pondered.

"Well how come I can't see your stand? Was it that glow on your computer earlier?" She interrogated.

Well now I know that she could see it. Oscar thought. "My stand is still sort of awakening now, since I only got it yesterday. So far it only has the ability to look up knowledge on the internet very quickly."

"Fast internet? Well that's a boring ability." Emily commented. "At least I can defend myself." She ignored the eye roll that was cast in her direction. "Why did you tell me this anyvey?"

"Well, you did heal my leg for me, even if I'm now against a wall." He replied. "Anyway, I was sent here by my new boss, who shot me and gave me my stand. He wanted to know if you were a threat or not due to having a stand that he never gave you."

"Look I'm just trying to pass my pre med exams." Emily said. "What does this boss of yours want with me? What does he even do?"

"I don't know. I'm trying to figure that out as well. However, he did threaten to harm me if I didn't try roping you in. He seems really keen on finding stand users, and his stand has the power to visit people while they sleep." Oscar added. "You don't have to join us, but I can't guarantee your safety if you don't."

"Well, since you can see my stand, I guess that your story is too oddly specific to be made up, but I still don't trust you." She stated. "You said I could be targeted in my sleep?"

"Yea. His stand, Mr. Sandman, enters your dreams randomly and brings you to a library to talk to you. Jonah, another stand user, says he shows up a few times a month to give him missions." Oscar elaborated. "By the way, my nose itches, can you bring me down from this wall, please?"

Emily ignored his request and started pacing. "In that case, I'm not sure whether I vant to relinquish that much privacy. I'll tell you vhat, how about I let fate decide?" She raised her crossbow to point at his chest. "This crossbow vorks on fate. It knows whether you want to harm me or if you are an ally. If I shoot you with it, and it doesn't poison you, I will join you."

Oscar tensed up. "Now wait a minute, surely there's another way of doing this-" He was cut off by the thud of a massive syringe sticking out of his chest. He stared down at it, then to Emily, back down at the dart again, and back up once more. "Jesus Christ, that hurt!" He yelled, biting his lip.

Emily walked up to him to inspect the place where the needle had pierced both his shirt and his skin. Inspecting the impact site, there was no infection that she could notice. She pulled the syringe out, eliciting a groan from Oscar, before noting that the puncture wound began to close itself up on its own.

"Interesting, it healed you instead of hurting you." Emily remarked. "I guess that means I can trust you for now, as much as I don't want to." She began to walk back away from the alley while talking. "Let's sit down so you can explain the whole thing to-" she stopped when she turned back to see Oscar giving her a stern look, still pinned to the wall. "Oh, hehe, let me help you vith that."