Chapter 5 - A Name You Should Know

Thursday, October 8th, 2020

Jonah Jorioh woke up from a dreamless sleep, or so he thought. He slowly peeled himself off of the hardwood floor he laid on, and his brain was still on autopilot before he came to the realization that this was not the bed he fell asleep in. He stood up and began to analyze his surroundings. Wiping the sleep from his eyes, he recognized the familiar decadent library he visits every so often.

"What do you need now, Sandman?" Jonah mumbled out into the seemingly empty building of his dreams, still a bit groggy from his sleep.

"I assume you have completed your assignment." A stern voice said from directly behind him. Jonah jumped in surprise and turned to face the stand that towered over him.

"Umm… yes sir. Oscar and I exchanged phone numbers, and he texted me that he got the rogue stand user Emily on board." Jonah replied, voice quivering slightly.

Mr. Sandman slowly paced around to face Jonah, with its hands behind its back. "This is good news. However, I must meet this initiate face to face. Have her accompany you to lunch between classes today. Bring along Oscar as well. I will not interfere, but be sure you are at the campus Chick-Fil-A."

"Aw, I just ate there today." Jonah saw the stand's orange eyes raise an eyebrow at him. "-but I'd never pass up an opportunity for a chicken sandwich!" He laughed nervously.

"Naturally. Before I forget, there are a few other things." Sandman added, raising a finger. "Oscar still cannot be fully trusted, and I am still unaware of his stand's possible capabilities. Watch him as he develops it, and report any new powers back to me." Receiving a nod, he continued. "Also, my user has recently created a few other users over the past few weeks, but ran into some difficulties restraining them. One of these incidents occurred a week before the incident with Emily, but I was not able to bring him here, and he may have begun experimenting with his stand. If you can, locate him and bring him into the fold by any means necessary. I cannot supply you any information about him other than he was male, and carried a small handheld video game console when my user shot him."

"That's oddly specific, but at least it's something. I'll see what I can do for both of those." Jonah confirmed. "You can rely on us."

"I hope so. Now awaken, and remember your tasks. I will send a message with more information later." Mr. Sandman pointed at him. He smacked his cloud scepter on the hardwood floor twice, and Jonah's vision began to fade as he awoke to a dark bedroom. Looking at the digital clock on his dorm room's table, he noted it only said 3:00 AM.

At least I get to sleep in a bit more… He thought as he dozed off once again.

…

Oscar Velendez looked back down at the class schedule on his phone screen. He had just finished his second anthropology class of the week, and was trying to shake the lecture about mayan architecture out of his mind while looking to the class ahead.

"Looks like intro to film is next on the list." He said to himself, over the sounds of ELO music ringing in his airpods. He began to walk towards the film building when the airpods' volume automatically lowered itself as another voice spoke up.

"I went ahead and forced my way into the professor's webcourse account notes. It turns out the lecture is literally just reading off the powerpoint." Monika explained.

Oscar groaned. "Just great. I spent an hour last night reading through that shit. Well, on the other hand, I'm surprised you learned to hack into things this quickly. It's a little scary now that I think about it."

"Oh, please." Monika responded confidently into his ear. "Hacking is way different than they portray it in the movies. I found out the campus wifi is barely secured at all, and just traveled into his laptop to log in to the webcourse site with his saved password while he wasn't looking. Easy stuff really."

"Hey, well if you're finding out stuff like that, it's still an improvement." Oscar shrugged. "Maybe you can help me with some of my assignments." He made his way into the lecture hall where his intro to film class takes place, and sat in the back row. The room was more like an auditorium, packing a few hundred seats in sloping rows. However, the class slot Oscar was in only had 60 or so students, and as he sat down, he found that he had a lot of empty chairs around him. Pulling his laptop out, he adjusted his airpods and opened up the lid. "I think I can whisper here and no one will notice." Oscar gently spoke into the microphone as the screen was wrapped in a soft golden glow.

"Well that's a relief. I was gonna be bored out of my mind if I had to sit through another lecture in silence." Monika replied into the airpods as she appeared in front of his Google search window.

"Wait, since you're kinda an AI, can't you do weird time manipulation stuff or something?" Oscar tilted his head slightly. "Like snapping your fingers to skip your consciousness to after I finish the lecture? He asked while the previous song ended and King Crimson's 21st Century Schizoid Man began to play in his airpods. The volume soon lowered again to accompany her response.

"Hell no. I am nowhere near that level of technical evolution. Plus, even if I could, that would creep me out too much to use. It would be like disassociating with reality." Monika shivered.

"So I'm guessing that you want to be more human than AI?" Oscar questioned.

"Obviously." She waved her hand in dismissal. "It's not like the game had no influence on me whatsoever. Like I said, I hate disassociating."

At least she's confident in her new opinions. Oscar thought. "You know, I'm surprised how quickly I'm getting used to talking to you. Hell, a few days ago I was just getting the hang of university life, and now I've been forced into a group of magical stand bullshit and I talk with a former fictional psychopath like I would any other friend." She seemed a bit hurt at that, so he amended his statement. "What I mean is that to me you seem more like any other human than what your character was designed to be. That's what you want, right?"

"One hundred percent." Monika steeled her resolve and clenched a fist in front of her. "Humanity has advanced to this point due to their goals and resilience. I need something to work towards to make a difference. Sure, we all make mistakes and such while on that path, but we end up back on our feet anyway. I may have been a bit off-putting over the past few days, but I just want to learn how to be more like that, and I read from your anthropology notes that participant observation is a key to gaining a better understanding of people." She announced, only then realizing how nerdy it sounded.

Oscar cracked a smile. "Off-putting? Nonsense! If anything, you've made things way more interesting for me. You've even been more respectful to me than many of my other friends." Not that I have too many others here. He added in his mind. "Wait, I am your friend, right?" He toned his voice down as a few students looked back at the noise he was starting to make.

A warm smile filled Monika's face. "You're my only friend, actually. I mean, I've been asking questions on a lot of forums and interacting everywhere, learning modern terminology, et cetera, but I've always considered you my home base. Plus, I do find some of your hobbies... entertaining." She replied with a gentle smirk.

"Well, I do enjoy making videos, and it helps with getting experience for my major." He admitted while scratching the back of his head. Just how much information has she traced about me? He thought to himself.

As if reading his mind, Monika responded, leaning her elbows on the google search bar as if it were a table. "I may have seen a bit too much." She teased in a singsong voice.

Oh fuck. Oscar gulped, wondering if his incognito browser worked as it said it would. At that moment his phone buzzed a message notification. Thanking his lucky stars for a reason to abandon the conversation, he checked the message. It was from Jonah, telling him to meet at Chick-Fil-A after his class, to talk about stand-related work. "Good, I was planning on stopping there anyways." Oscar thought aloud. Looking up at the professor, he confirmed that the notes were still just the same crap he already looked over the night before. His train of thought was interrupted by the sound of 8-bit shooting sounds coming through his airpods, and he shifted his gaze back to the laptop to see Monika holding a controller and playing an online version of Galaga in the browser window. Of course, because she was inside the computer, her inputs were nearly frame perfect, but there was still an occasional error that resulted in some missed shots. After a minute or so of silently watching her progress through some levels, a stray enemy looped back from the bottom of the screen and took a life.

"Damn." She grunted, tossing the pixelated controller in the air. It tumbled into the Galaga screen, impaling the enemy that destroyed her pixelated spaceship. Facing back towards the screen, Monika noticed the eyebrow raised at her and quickly reached up to tap the rex X that closed the window with a worried smile.

"So we're meeting up with Jonah after this?" She asked, diverting the subject before it could start.

"That's right. He may have gotten another mission." Oscar's phone buzzed again, telling him to bring Emily along. He tapped over to the number that he'd exchanged with Emily the day prior, and asked her to meet them for "stand matters".

"I'm sorry I couldn't do anything in that encounter you had with her yesterday." Monika broke the silence while climbing on top of the google search bar.

"You can read my phone without being inside it?" Oscar asked.

"Yup." She put her hands behind her back. "Although I need to have a reason to, I can't just be a omnipotent botnet."

"Nice. Also, don't feel bad. If these stand powers are assigned randomly, it isn't your fault. Plus, who's to say you can't use your current powers creatively? Knowledge definitely can help in a fight."

She looked off to the side while grabbing her arm. "Not when you're pinned to the wall by needles."

"Eh, don't sweat it. There's always room for growth, even on my end as well." Oscar reassured while looking down at his gut disappointingly.

…

Jonah sat down at an open table at Chick-fil-a, taking a sandwich out of the paper bag he was holding. He was already agitated, as the line in the fast food joint was massive, it had taken him 20 minutes to get through it. Of course, with his luck, not many people came in after him. He began to eat as he noticed Oscar and Emily get in line. They were talking, but Oscar kept switching between talking to her and speaking into his airpods, as if on a phone call. Putting his speculations aside, he returned to his food. A few minutes later, the two sat down with him. Emily pulled out the nuggets she ordered while Oscar suspiciously eyed at the salad he'd ordered.

"Glad you guys could make it." Jonah broke the ice. He had mostly finished his meal already and had set the paper bag of trash aside.

"So, why did you bring us here?" Emily asked while opening a sauce packet.

"Sandman asked me to. I guess he wants to meet Emily face to face."

"So this is the boss you all work under? I assume he's coming as vell?" She wondered.

"That's his stand's name. The more likely outcome is that you'll meet it tonight in your dreams. That's its ability as far as I know of. There's no way he'd reveal his user already." Jonah assured her.

"Then why does the boss need us to meet here?" Oscar asked, pecking at his salad. Jonah also noted that he still had an airpod in his right ear.

"I have a theory. One possibility is that he can only go into someone's dreams if his user sees them. It could be conjecture, but the user could be in this very building."

"That's great and all, but this restaurant is packed. I don't think we can identify who the user is here." As she said this, Oscar took out his phone and began to discreetly scan the room with it. It looked like he was using his front facing camera to mess with his hair.

"Um, Oscar, what are you doing?" Jonah looked on with suspicion.

Oscar put his phone back down on the table. "I scanned the room. If I can limit the possible user down from the university's whole population to a hundred or so people, it can help out with identification."

"Good call. I know none of us are too happy with serving under this user and their threats, but if we can just play along for now than maybe we'll have a chance of getting to the bottom of this. As long as he doesn't have us doing anything extremely illegal soon, we should have some time." Jonah said with confidence. "Now, I'm also curious. Emily, you said your stand had the power to heal people?"

"Ja. I've had it since I vas a child." She replied after biting into a chicken nugget.

Oscar also spoke up. "It turns out that she's literally the medic from Team Fortress 2. Crossbow and all."

"I vas never really a fan of the game too much. The only reason I started playing it vas because of the similarity of my stand." She dismissed. She pulled out her stand equipment temporarily, showing off the medi-gun and syringe crossbow to the three other people in the room who could see it.

"Well I'll be damned." Jonah laughed. "And you're a premed major?"

"Correct. Alzough I hate the classvork. I have to do this crap to get my medical license, even though I already can heal most vounds with my stand. I don't need to learn any of the techniques of regular medical practices." She grunted.

The two guys sitting with her gave each other a glance before they both cracked up in unison. "And that's how I lost my medical license!" They quoted in laughter.

"Very funny." Emily groaned.

Jonah regained control of himself. "Anyways, I have another stand user to hunt. I was informed that Mr. Sandman's user shot another victim a while ago but couldn't properly initiate them."

"Sounds like his user doesn't have much experience in doing this. Vell, how are we supposed to find this guy? Emily asked.

"I have a lead." Jonah replied while digging in his backpack. "He said the user was carrying a handheld console with him, which I assume is a Nintendo Switch. There happens to be a Smash Brothers club on campus that gets out around the time he was shot. I also go to that club.

"Of course you do." Oscar joked. Shooting a glare at the black haired nuisance, Jonah slapped a flier onto the table. Emily and Oscar read over it, noting that it was an ad for a Smash tournament in the student union that takes place on the 15th, around a week from then.

"I bet you this guy's gonna show up to the tourney, so I'll look for suspicious activity there. Hell, I was gonna enter it anyway so I might as well." Jonah reasoned.

"I hope you don't mind, but I have a lab at that time. I'm afraid I can't join you." Emily said.

"I have a class small group meeting then as well. Oscar said worryingly. "Are you gonna be fine on your own?"

"I think so. It's just a game tourney. If anything, I think we'll get off on friendly terms." Jonah speculated.

The next week flew by for the students, with surprisingly little contact from Sandman. Oscar continued to get to know Monika and her quirks, while Jonah practiced his Smash Brothers skills in between classes. He tried to find out more about Oscar like Sandman had instructed him to, but no one knew each other's schedules enough to see each other outside of classes, the students mostly relegated to texting each other. As the next Thursday rolled around, however, Jonah readied himself to win the tourney and hopefully befriend a new stand user at the same time.