For those of you who haven't guessed the namesakes (which I'm pretty sure is almost everybody), Cathy is named after the newspaper comic character Cathy from the comic...'Cathy', by...Cathy Guisewite. It pokes fun at culture from the 80s to the 2000s, and the author likes lists. LOVES lists.
Hercule, on the other hand, is named after Hercule Poirot, the famed Belgian detective from a majority of Agatha Christie's books. By the way, did you guys know that they made an ANIME from Agatha Christie's books? I know! They made Poirot look like Mario!
Window to the Past
Chapter 4: Corrections and Corruptions
"Chaos, we need to talk," I looked up from the computer screen I was using to make this story. "Look. I know you love being co-author and all that. But the way the last chapter ended...I dunno, it seems a little...inescapable for me."
My co-author looked at me in confusion. "What do you mean? Adrian could totally escape that!"
I folded my arms. "Really? Because right now he's facing a loaded gun. How does he escape that?"
"Well, uh..." Chaos rubbed the back of his head. "He could...maybe...kick it."
"Kick what?"
"The gun."
"He could kick the gun. That's your solution."
"Y-yeah. He could kick the gun. He's not incapacitated or anything."
Rubbing my temples, I sighed. "Alright, Chaos. You're good at combat. Really, you are. But...I'm going to need you to approach these things with a little more subtlety."
"Yeah, I guess you're right," Chaos nodded. "Well, I'll just go and undo that, then-"
"Wait, no! You can't undo it!" I yelled.
Chaos folded his arms. "Why not?"
"People wouldn't go back and read it again unless we told them to," I explained.
"So we tell them to read it again-"
"And what about the people who read it after it's changed? We waste their time by telling them to reread something they've already read. Besides, I just...I don't like changing things."
"Fine," Chaos shrugged. "But then it's on you for a solution, Multikirby. After all, you're the MAIN author."
"No, I'm not," I said, dismissing his thought. "We're equals!"
Chaos raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything more.
Satisfied, I turned back to the computer and began writing again. Then I stopped. "Are we still doing this?"
Chaos smiled. "You think I'm going to stop because I messed up once? If we quit after one mistake, you'd be out of here twenty times over already!"
I waved his statement off and began to write again.
Oh, yeah, I should probably mention this. I'm the author. Multikirby. Chaos is my co-author. And...wait, didn't I run over this stuff in the prologue? Eh, whatever. Anyways...
The gun raised, and Adrian was once again staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. His eyes wide with fear, his body frozen in shock and terror, he scrunched his eyes shut, waiting for the inevitable
click
Adrian's eyes opened slowly. There was a click. What does the click mean? There's...no more bullets... Adrian stood up. "There's no more bullets! Ha! You lose, you son of a-"
THWACK
"She's going to be fine. Alice, I think her name was."
Daphne cringed; the voice was loud, and her head hurt. What did he say? Alice? He thought she was Alice?
"Who attacked her?"
"I don't know. She had signs of blunt force trauma on her body, but nobody was nearby when I found her."
What the heck happened? she asked herself. Blunt force trauma? Was I attacked? Daphne forced her eyes open, and slowly looked around her current location.
She was in a small room with a bed, which she was currently resting on. She was surrounded by a curtain, and she saw two silhouettes on the other side. They seemed to be talking about what happened to Alice.
Where's the book? she thought. There were two small counters on either side of her, but they were both bare; her journal was nowhere in sight. Daphne furrowed her eyes in frustration. She was effectively cut off from her alters, and therefore what happened to make her end up in this bed.
What should I do now? Daphne stared up at the ceiling. I don't have the journal, and I'm in a hospital bed while two people talk about me being attacked behind a curtain. Hmm...Maybe they know what happened.
"Um, excuse me?" she asked, watching the two shadows turn to the curtain. She watched a hand materialize in front of the curtain, and pull it away. Standing there were two men she didn't recognize.
"Oh, Alice! You're awake!" the man in the white vest exclaimed.
Daphne, with some quick thinking, decided that she would pretend she was Alice. These two didn't need to know about the others. She nodded. "Yes, I am. But..." she gestured to her surroundings. "Why am I here?"
The other man stepped forward. "You were attacked by the Mafia last night. It's quite extraordinary, actually - you made it out without any fatal wounds!"
"...Fatal wounds? So I did get hurt?" Daphne asked slowly.
The man in the white vest nodded. "Yes, er...on your side. A bullet must have grazed you."
Daphne shifted her view to her right and saw some bandages wrapped around her side. She cringed, her mind imagining what the others probably did to get this. "I see. And...sorry, you said Mafia? Who is this Mafia? Why did they attack me?"
The man in the white vest blinked. "I told you yesterday, Alice. At the trial. The Mafia do not need a reason to kill. Do you not remember?"
Here's my chance...she thought. "Remember? Remember what? And...who are you again?"
"She must have amnesia..." the other man whispered.
The white vested man nodded. He turned back to Daphne. "My name is Hercule. Do not say this to anyone else, but...I am this town's doctor. The other doctor, Cecil, was, unfortunately, executed yesterday. How much do you remember?"
"Well, I remember coming into this town during the night. I was looking for a place to stay, and..." Daphne trailed off. This was the end of her first-hand knowledge. Pretending to have no memory could give her a better idea of what happened. After all, the alters have...strange ways of perceiving things, and Daphne wasn't about to count on their accounts alone.
Hercule nodded. "So you don't remember past the first night...Alright. I'll remind you what happened since then."
He continued to tell Daphne about the events of the first night, and the trial. "This town is very strange, you have to understand. We all want to leave, desperately, but unfortunately cannot until each member of the Mafia is apprehended and executed. We do not know which of us is guilty, which is why we hold the trials every day. Many innocent lives have been lost..." Hercule stopped speaking and heaved a sigh.
Daphne nodded, beginning to understand. "That's why you don't want me to tell anyone that you're a doctor. You become a target, right? But...if you don't know who the Mafia is, how can you tell me you're a doctor, when he's right there? Couldn't he be a member as well?"
The other man shook his head. "I'm Steven. I was attacked one night, too. Cecil saved me. And since Mafia can't attack themselves, the town now knows I'm innocent."
Daphne, once again, nodded. "But...what happened last night?"
"We found you lying on the street alone, with a very nasty bruise on your head. Luckily, you hadn't expired yet," Hercule explained.
"You wouldn't happen to have my...journal, would you?" Daphne asked.
Hercule pulled the book out of his pocket and showed it to her. "I apologize for suspecting you; you have to understand, any sort of lead seems incriminating. Here, I'll return this to you."
"Thanks," Daphne said, taking the journal. "And, uh...my head kind of hurts. Do you think you can leave me be for now?"
Steven looked at Hercule, then back at her. "Sure, but remember, you have to be at the meeting when the Mayor calls for it."
Hercule and Steven left the room, leaving Daphne alone with the journal.
"Okay, I'm not angry, but I'm curious. What happened last night?" Daphne wrote. "Did any of you get attacked?"
"That would be me," Adrian answered. "I was just trying to sleep, though, when this motherhubbard just comes up and tries to shoot me for no reason!"
"Hey, we're in a hospital," Toby wrote. "Does anyone mind filling me in, if that's okay?"
"Yes, I agree," Alice wrote. "We should have some sort of way to let everyone catch up. What if we write something like diary entries?"
"If you think I'm going to write 'Dear Diary' every time I find a penny on the ground, you're sorely mistaken. I am NOT writing diary entries," Adrian wrote firmly.
"Don't think of them as diary entries, then," Daphne said. "Think of them as newspaper stories. Remember, this is for all of our benefit."
"Okay, fine. Why don't you start if you've got such a good grasp on the situation? Why are we in a sick ward?"
"Hercule brought me here after finding me unconscious on the street. Apparently I'd been whacked on the head with something. He says it was a Mafia attack."
"Mafia? What the heck is Mafia?"
"I think you and I are the only ones that know about it, Daph," Alice guessed. "Do you want me to explain it?"
"Yes, please. I would appreciate that very much, Alice. Thank you," Daphne wrote.
"I'm not going through that again," I stated adamantly.
Chaos peered past me at the screen. "You're breaking the flow. This is being written, you know. What we're saying?"
"Wait, what? Really?" Turning around, I looked at the words. Sure enough, there it was. What we're saying.
Weird.
"So...I guess that means we're characters?" I guessed.
Chaos nodded.
"Cool."
"Yeah, but something's bothering me," Chaos said slowly, his eyes still glued to the computer screen.
"What would that be?" I asked.
"Our actions are in past-tense."
"Okay, Adrian, your turn. What happened last night?" Alice asked after finishing.
"I was trying to sleep against the side of a building, and I hear footsteps. I look up, and see this dude in the street, and he's holding a gun. Although I probably shouldn't say 'he', because...I guess it could've been that gun chick too. Anyways, she suddenly starts shooting at me. And I'm in the street, trying to dodge these bullets flying at me, and then I get shot in the side. You guys have probably noticed that by now. And then I jump up and kick her in the head...somehow, and I walk over to see if I knocked her out or something. She raises the shotgun to my head and fires. It's out of bullets, and so...I guess she just hit me with it instead."
"Oh...well, did you get a good look at who it was?" Daphne asked.
"Nah, it was too dark. I didn't even know whether it was a dude or a chick. I wanna say it's the paranoid lady, because she's the only one that I know has a gun. But it could've been anybody," Adrian admitted.
"What do we do now, then?" Toby asked.
"Hercule said to listen for an announcement from the Mayor," Daphne wrote.
"Yeah, that's how I came to the first trial. There was this announcement to meet at the bell tower. But it's not a bell tower, it's a gallows. Y'know, where they HANG PEOPLE," Alice added.
"We know what a gallows is, Alice!" Adrian retorted.
"So...do we just wait for
"ATTENTION ALICE. COME TO THE BELL TOWER PLAZA IMMEDIATELY."
Toby looked up from the journal. By Alice, he knew they meant him.
"Guys," he wrote in the journal. "The announcement just came on. What should I do?"
Toby sat back, and waited for the journal to fill itself out. But it didn't happen. He sat there, staring at the journal for five minutes, waiting for someone else to write something.
Nothing happened.
Finally, Toby picked up the pen again and began to write. "Guys, I really don't want to do this...he seemed really mad, and I know the least about what's going on. Please don't make me do this!"
"ATTENTION ALICE. COME TO THE BELL TOWER PLAZA IMMEDIATELY. THIS IS YOUR LAST CALL."
Toby suddenly felt sick to his stomach. "Please," he murmured. "Don't make me do this..."
No response. He slowly got out of bed, and let his feet lead him out of the small hospital, to the bell tower plaza on the other side of the street. When he got there, he looked up solemnly. There was a man in a double-breasted suit standing in the middle of the plaza. A large hat blocked his eyes from Toby's view.
"...Are you the Mayor?" he asked timidly.
"Yes. And you are Alice."
It was more a statement than a question. Somehow he knew. The Mayor's voice was calm and monotonous, devoid of any emotion at all. Toby decided it'd be easier if he just went along with being called Alice.
"Y-yessir."
"You don't know why I brought you here."
"No, sir," Toby agreed. Another statement. This guy seemed to know everything.
"Last night, you were targeted to die by the Mafia. You were also targeted to be saved by the doctor. So by all accounts, you should be alive. But there is a problem," the Mayor trailed off. Toby got the feeling he wasn't even looking at him. "You are a Miller. You are not a Strongman. Therefore, when the Mafia attacks you, you are not allowed to fight back. You were to be shot, and saved by the doctor. But you were not shot and fatally wounded. You attacked the Mafia. Which is against the rules."
"I...I didn't know there were rules," Toby apologized, trying to hide his shock about not being allowed to defend yourself. "I'm sorry."
"Nonetheless, you are a rulebreaker. And all rulebreakers shall be executed by the moderator. No exceptions. Come with me."
Toby's heart sank. He was going to die.
"Please...don't let me do this alone..." he whispered, tears lining his eyes as he followed the Mayor up onto the gallows.
Did you know? There are actually two types of amnesia: retrograde and anterograde. Retrograde, the one we're more familiar with, is the inability to remember things from your past. This can vary from being unable to recall yesterday, to being unable to recall whole decades. Only in very rare cases do you actually forget as much as your identity and species. So Coran and this kid won the Lottery of Suck with their cases of amnesia.
The other kind, anterograde amnesia, is actually much more common than the other type; this disorder makes it hard for your brain to transfer memories from short-term to long-term. It is possible to have both types at the same time. Both amnesia types are, usually, temporary and are NOT cured by being bonked on the head a second time. Again, cases that don't wear off after a day or so are extremely rare, so kudos to all those protagonists who have somehow gotten the worst type of amnesia possible. Retrograde (rare) amnesia (also rare) that does not wear off easily or at all (extremely rare). All this? SO FLIPPIN' RARE.
This has been Random Facts with Multikirby.