Merry Christmas, guys. Happy Hanukkah. Merry...Kwanzaa? Is it 'Merry' or 'Happy' or something else for Kwanzaa? I dunno, I'm Canadian. Sorry. Yes, I know I said I wouldn't post anything for Christmas, but there's a little thing called 'lying'. Try it sometime!
This is your present from me. It's a biggie. Just sayin'. Total biggie here. You can tell from the chapter title, can't you?...Can't you?...It's 'Sacked', by the way. The chapter's title is 'Sacked'. But you could probably just tell by looking down...right?
Also, my word processor says that 'Didn'tcha' isn't a word, but 'didntcha' is. So...yeah. But then again, it says that it's spelled favor, not favour, so the red squiggly lines are American. Go figure.
Window to the Past
Chapter 22: Sacked
No, that can't be right. Fey can't get her hearing back yet. And why did the chapter post on its own...? Wait...Oh, shoot! I'm still narrating! Sorry, guys. I'll try to be impartial. Here, just let me get back on track.
Toby doubted that such a procedure could be researched and done in such a short amount of time. He didn't say so, of course, but he didn't want to get Fey's hopes up, so he
"That's great!" Toby exclaimed. "Can you really do that, Liz?"
Um...Okay. They shouldn't be able to talk when I'm narrating. And I should be able to write what they're saying...here, um...just let me...
"Chaos, I've got a bit of a problem," I said uncertainly.
Chaos looked up from his desk at me by my laptop. "Yeah? What would that be?"
"The story's going on without me."
Getting up, he walked over to the laptop over by my shoulder. "What does that mean?"
"Look at this," I said, pointing at the section above the rather distracting text cursor. "Toby interrupted the narration. That shouldn't happen, right?"
Chaos visibly paled.
I began to get unnerved. "This isn't serious, is it, Chaos?"
"Is there anything else?" he asked calmly, though the trembling that wracked his body told a different story.
"Um...yeah," I said, stumbling over my words as his fear got to me. "The last chapter...it said by itself that Fey would get her hearing back and then posted itself...and it's way too early in the story for Fey to get her hearing back."
"And the story's writing itself? And you can't delete any of it?" Chaos finished.
I nodded. "What should I do?"
Chaos took a deep, shaky breath. "Go with it. Let it run its course. Maybe you'll be...maybe you'll be able to edit it afterward."
"Okay. Okay, I'll do that."
"I should be able to, yes," Liz said with a nod. "And by the looks of how far I've come, I should be able to do it sooner rather than later."
"I'm so excited!" Fey cheered, before halting. She stopped, and her smile fell. "Wait." She turned to Liz with a sour expression. "It's going to be painful, isn't it?"
Liz gave a small grin. "Needlessly."
"Oy vey," Fey sighed.
Toby decided that he wasn't really part of this conversation, so he excused himself and went into his room to refresh himself on what had happened yesterday. Sinking his stub into his sac, Toby pulled out the diary and cracked it open, flipping to the last page.
"We had a phone call from dad," Toby read under his breath. "He's sick."
Toby took the pen from the spine of the diary and after drawing a few circles to spur the ink, began to write.
"On a bit of a happier note," Toby wrote after giving another glance to David's depressing report. "Liz is able to get Fey's hearing back."
"Why do we care?" Tristan asked. "It doesn't concern us. The phone call sounds interesting, though."
"What does that say?" Mia asked. "I can barely read it. Something about...sticks?"
"no, Dads SICK," David stressed. "The writing's bad becose i didn't want to forget anything."
"How can you remember anything if you can't even read it?" Adrian pointed out.
"I just thought it'd be nice for you guys to know..." Toby wrote apologetically. "Sorry."
"Don't apologize, Tristan's being a jerk," Alice replied.
"Jerk or not, Fey getting her hearing back means nothing to me," Tristan retorted. "It doesn't keep us alive and it doesn't bring us any closer to what we want to get done."
"That's a good point, I guess," Mia admitted. "But still, it's nice to know what's going on, right? He was trying to give an update. Maybe we're talking to Fey once she gets her hearing back? That means we can look away from her and still talk. And that sort of changes something, right?"
Mia was interrupted by a tapping at the window. She turned to look out the window, but didn't see anything there. Turning back to the diary, she began to write again.
THWACK
Mia jumped with a yelp. She was not hearing things. There was something at her window. She got to her feet and jumped up onto the bed. Through the glass, she saw a red puffball with a red western hat and a whip gesturing for her to come out the front door. She presumed this to be Ash. Mia jumped down from the bed and opened the door to the main part of the clinic. Liz and Fey were still talking about the operation, and Fey's expression didn't look quite as happy as it had a while before.
Aw, poor thing, Mia thought. She's scared stiff.
As she turned to walk out the front door, Mia felt an unsettling prickling on her back, as if someone were watching her leave. She quietly opened the door and stepped through. Ash was out on the front porch.
"Hey. Thanks fer comin' out," Ash said as Mia closed the door from behind him.
"I don't think you've met me yet," Mia replied as she held her stub out for Ash to take. "I'm Mia. Nice to meet you."
Ash shook, then stepped back. "So I'd assume yer another girl, along with Alice, then?"
Mia nodded. "There's ei...I, uh...I mean seven of us. Alice, Toby, Adrian...David, Tristan, me, and...um...Daphne." Mia wasn't sure why she would rather talk about someone who wasn't there than mention Mabel. She had originally switched from eight to seven because of Daphne's absence, but...something about saying Mabel's name out loud seemed wrong somehow. "Anyways, what did you need? You kind of...whipped the window."
"Ah, yeah." Ash took a small breath before continuing. "This goes against every single inch of common sense in my body, but...I have a favour t' ask o' you."
"Alright," Mia said carefully. "Shoot."
"I need you to go north and look at a riverbank."
"...Come again?" Mia shot Ash a confused look. "A riverbank?"
"When you were walking over to my house, you saw about enough empty houses to house a small army, didntcha?" he asked as he looked in his house's general direction.
Mia recalled those moments with a sudden pain in her backside. She winced. "Yep. I remember them pretty darn well...There sure were a lot of 'em."
"Wyvern was never so lonely," Ash said sadly. "'Bout a year ago, these streets would've been filled t' the brim with puffballs walkin' to and fro, goin' about their business. But e'er since...well, last year, folks've started goin' missing."
"Missing?" Mia stated, surprised. "Like...poof? Gone? Vanished? And you think it has something to do with the riverbank?"
"...Yeah," Ash said reluctantly. "There's some weird stuff goin' on up there...and whenever I go for reconnaissance, whatever's up there always gets wise and bolts without a trace."
Mia frowned. "So why me, then?"
"You and Fey took Tac down. T' do that, you need stealth and you need strength. I figger you've got both. So that's why I'm askin' you, even though you're an outsider."
"What kind of stuff is going on there?" Mia asked. "Sketchy stuff? Is that why a whole bunch of puffballs are going missing?...Should I be concerned about going missing?"
"I've been up there a few times m'self, and I'm still here t' tell you th' tale," Ash argued. "Anyways, can you think about it? Tell me after noon?"
"After noon?!" Mia protested.
"Yeah," Ash confirmed. "I'm gettin' concerned, and frankly, I don't want any of us goin' missing anytime soon. I figger the sooner the better."
Mia sighed. He did have a point, though something was nagging at her. "Fine. I'll think about it. No. Promises," she stressed, pointing a stub at him and giving him a careful look.
"Fine by me."
Mia turned around, shaking her head as she reentered the clinic. As she clicked the door open, she was suddenly assaulted with Fey and Liz talking at length.
"So that's it, then? Today?" Fey asked loudly. Mia pushed the door open a bit more, revealing their faces.
Liz nodded. "Yep. I should have preparations finished a bit after twelve. Come by twelve-thirty or so."
"Alright. Hey, Cece," Fey said as she passed Mia by. "See you, Cece. Hear you later!"
Mia nodded dumbly. Something about that seemed off. Liz, too, abruptly excused herself from the waiting room, electing to go to the door past her office.
"Hello, Paula, how are we today?" she said, her voice muted by the door behind her and the distance between herself and Mia. She chose to ignore it, and instead went to her room to discuss it with herself.
Opening the door, she went to the bedside table, only to find the journal already open, with something scrawled on it.
DON'T GO TO THE RIVER!
Oh, boy...
"Before any of you ask, no, that wasn't me," Mia wrote. "I don't know who it is. But whoever wrote that, they really don't want us to go to the river. It's bold, underlined, and italicized. And it's in caps. But anyways. I was writing in the journal, and I heard Ash whipping at my window. With his whip. I went outside, and he told me to go check out a river near Corfort. Apparently puffballs are going missing, and we're stealthy and strong enough to do it since we took down Tac. I dunno. I wanted to talk to you guys before I made any sort of decision. I'm gonna be 100% honest: I don't want to do it. I mean, Ash is nice enough, but the way he talked about the river scared me."
"We would not benefit from this," Tristan wrote. "I say nay."
"Aw, come on, guys, it's called a favour!" Alice protested.
"You're not allowed an opinion," Adrian retorted. "You want to suck his face. Did he say exactly what sketchy stuff is going on up there?"
"I think we should do it, but that's just me," Toby wrote. "We're friends with him, and he thinks we can do it. Maybe it has something to do with us losing our memory. It has to do with puffballs going missing, right? What if we went a while ago, and we went missing?"
"We'd be back at square one," Tristan answered.
"We should go it's a nice thing to do," David said. "Are we going to beat people up?"
"No, he just wants us to check it out," wrote Mia. "Reconnaissance and stuff. It just seems dangerous, is all."
"And he thinks we can do it because we were stealthy enough to beat Tac?" Adrian argued. "News flash! We got caught, remember?"
"Yes," Tristan agreed.
"How about this. We go and see what's there, and if it gets too dangerous, we bail," Alice suggested.
"I dunno, I'm really not liking the look of that big bold underlined italicized all-caps warning we have up there," Mia wrote. "It seems serious. What if someone here knows something we don't?"
"We're split down the middle," Toby observed. "Alice, David, and I want to go; Adrian, Mia, and Tristan want to stay. Maybe Mabel can break the vote."
"What makes you think she's going to do that?" Adrian asked. "She said herself she's just going to sit back and watch. Why the heck would she pitch in now?"
"Because we need her?" Mia hinted. "Mabel? Anytime."
"This is stupid," Tristan wrote.
"Okay, fine. Then what do we do? Rock Paper Scissors?" Alice asked.
"We can't do Rock paper scissors. It wouldn't work," David said.
"She might've used sarcasm," Toby guessed. "Was that sarcasm? I don't want to assume in case I'm wrong."
"I say we do it."
"Who was that?" Tristan asked. "They didn't sign. It was one of you, wasn't it?"
"No, the handwriting's different. It isn't any of ours. Aw, man, is there another personality in this body?! How many do we have?! I THINK EIGHT IS ENOUGH, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!"
"That means we go to the river!" David pointed out. "Its 4-3!"
"...Fine. But just to be clear, if we die, I'm going to kill all of you," Adrian wrote gruffly as he closed the journal.
Adrian and Ash were standing at the north boundary to Wyvern. Beyond them was a frost-laden expanse that stretched as far as Adrian could see.
"You just go straight from here," Ash explained. "Be careful when you get close. I've never actually gone myself, so-"
"Wait, wait, wait. Hold up." Adrian turned to Ash. "You're sending a complete stranger someplace where people have been known to go missing, and you haven't even gone yourself!?"
Ash quickly realized his mistake. "Well, I have, but I was never able t' get close enough to them to see what-"
"Them?!" Adrian practically screamed. "Who's 'them'!?"
Looking around, though nobody was in their vicinity, Ash tried to calm Adrian down. "They're what I want you t' find out about. Just don't get too close and you should be fine."
"I really don't like this," Adrian seethed, but without another word, he scooped up his sack and started walking off to the north.
As he went, small snowflakes began to fall from the sky. Adrian tried to ignore the unpleasant sensation of small chunks of ice melting into his skin, but it began to get to him. He was already angry with Ash, and the anonymous idiot who gave the fourth vote. But yelling at the snow would make him look stupid. To himself, anyways. So he ranted quietly instead.
"They're all stupid," Adrian mumbled. "Why am I even doing this? What part of 'missing puffballs' do they not understand? Don't they know this is dangerous? Don't they know we could die? Yeah. They do. And yet we're running a lethal errand for the wannabe sheriff. What's he going to do? Say 'thank ya kindly' and just walk away. Maybe we'll get some gratitude. But what good is shmeckin' gratitude when you're-"
Suddenly Adrian halted. He heard noises...like a river. Remembering what Ash had said about being stealthy, he looked around for some sort of cover.
Too bad there was none.
I stepped away from the laptop. "Chaos, I can't bear to watch this. I'm going to go work on a different story, okay?"
"Y-yeah. Alright," Chaos said shakily.
"Let's try...No Pokeballs Allowed, then."
Adrian crouched down as close to the ground as he could, which admittedly wasn't a lot. But he figured it was better than nothing. Adjusting himself, Adrian tried to get a better view of the river. He heard it fine, but no matter how he moved, Adrian couldn't get close enough.
It frustrated him to no end.
Adrian tried to hone his senses, to listen for any sort of sound other than the babbling of the water. He squinted his eyes shut, hoping that would give him more ability to hear something, but he gave up that notion pretty quickly.
Carefully, he got up from the ground and began to sneak forward, inching towards the river. He wanted to have it in view, he wanted to know what the heck was going on so he could get the heck out of here. The ground below him began to incline, and Adrian quickly recognized that he was climbing a hill. Looking up to make sure the summit was devoid of anything that he didn't want to confront, he continued to walk upwards. As he went, he scanned the sides of the river he could see for any sort of 'sketchy' activity. Adrian grinded to a halt as the hill abruptly ended at
Daphne stared down at the black surging waters below her. She could almost see a shattered reflection of herself, her despondent eyes gazing emptily into the river. It seemed to call her. The water was cold and seemed so far below her. How long would it take her to hit the surface if she just jumped? Certainly not long enough for anyone to notice. She looked up. There was nobody here. Nobody would know.
Nobody except the six people who sentenced her to death.
"C-Chaos...?" I asked, my voice taking on a slight shaking. "No Pokeballs Allowed is doing the same thing."
He refused to look up from his desk. "...What same thing?" he asked.
"It's writing itself. It's different from Window to the Past, but..." I trailed off, trying to gather my thoughts. "I'm getting really really worried, Chaos. What does this mean? I'm just sitting by, watching my stories get written by themselves-"
I stopped. Isn't that what was happening a while ago...?
"Chaos..." I said lowly. "You wouldn't have anything to do with this, would you? If this is a prank, I don't think it's funny, and I want you to stop now."
"I didn't do anything, Mult - Cameron," Chaos said quietly. "I don't know...what to do either."
He was fidgeting under the table. This must be getting to him, too. I sighed in resignation.
"Fine. I'll try Canon Fodder. Maybe it won't happen twice in one story."
Should she do it? She was not killing her friends. Daphne did not have friends. Daphne did not want to solve problems anymore. The only problem she cared about now was hers.
Should she do it?
The cold winter wind whistled around Daphne. The memories she had retained seemed to grow distant as if they weren't hers. They deserved to die. But did she?
Yes. She did. Daphne took a step back.
And Mabel took control. Not wasting a second, she began running away from the hillside, running away from the river. The cold ground chilled her feet as she sprinted as fast as she could, but Mabel didn't notice. Mabel didn't care. At some point, the streets of Wyvern once again surrounded her. Mabel didn't notice. Mabel didn't care. She made a beeline for the clinic, running only from memory. Mabel had never done that much while in control. It felt wrong. But Mabel didn't notice. Mabel didn't care.
Mabel had never been so scared in her life.
"Daphne is suicidal," Mabel wrote hurriedly, not taking the time to calm down or appear together. "I repeat. Daphne is suicidal. Do everything in your power to keep her from gaining control. We cannot let Daphne take control."
"...SHE'S WHAT?!" Toby wrote without thinking. "OH MY GOD WE ARE GOING TO DIE DAPHNE'S GOING TO KILL AS AND WE ARE DEAD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD"
"We're going to DIE?!" David exclaimed. "I don't want to die!"
"Calm down, nobody's going to die," wrote Mia. "...Right? I mean they have a point. It's really scary having a potential killer inside you. That's...really...freaky...Oh my GOD, WE'RE GOING TO DIE."
"What do we do?" Alice asked. "I don't know how to suppress someone!"
"I'm scared..." Tristan added. "My own fractured brain is trying to kill me. It's like a morally driven aneurysm out for revenge."
"I'm an aneurysm now, am I?" Daphne retorted.
"Oh. My. God." Mia fought the urge to faint.
"I think I'm going to be sick..."
Toby slammed the journal shut, his cheeks bulging. He rushed out the door and was greeted by an especially cheery Fey.
"Cece! Cece, I got my - are you feeling okay?" Fey's ecstatic expression melted into one of concern. "You look like you're going to be sick."
Toby could only nod in desperation. He placed a stub over his mouth as the stress-induced nausea wracked him with another wave.
"The, uh...the bathroom's over there," Fey said uneasily, pointing to the end of the hall.
He didn't stick around to say thanks. The next thing he knew, the door was shut and Toby was screaming and wailing into a sterilized toilet bowl. He coughed and hacked as he tried to dislodge the unpleasant tickling feeling in the back of his throat, but nothing was there. Something in his body was trying to kill him. Something in his body was trying to kill him. The thought was overwhelming.
Seven minutes later, Toby decided staring despondently into the toilet bowl wasn't going to fix anything, so he rose to his feet with a small cough. Turning on the faucet, Toby took a disposable cup and downed a few glasses of water. He heard a knock on the door.
"Toby? Are you okay?" Fey asked. "I just wanted to tell you that while you were gone, Liz got the operation done, and I got my hearing back. It hurts like nothing I've ever experienced before, but...I can hear my voice! I can hear myself! I can hear you! I can hear everything! It's great!"
Stumbling to the door, Toby hastily opened it. "Fey, I-"
Fey stared at him with an expression of complete astonishement. Her eyes were round and wide, her mouth agape in a shocked 'o'. "...Say that again. Say my name again," she whispered.
"...Fey...?" Toby shot her a confused look. What didn't help matters was when she bolted off to the waiting room with no word or explanation. Toby ran after her, spouting random apologies, trying to figure out what he had done, or where he went wrong. He grinded to a halt when he saw Fey, shaking like a leaf, holding her precious tape recorder.
She finished rewinding the tape, and clicked 'Play'.
"Mmm...muhh...Fey!"
Fey looked back at Toby with a very unnerving expression. "...No...it can't be..." she mumbled. "You can't...be here...and..."
"Wh-what are you talking about?"
"How d-did you get here? Why are you here? You're...you're talking, and...you're my...my..."
Toby didn't say anything. He started backing up; she was starting to scare him.
"...M-Matthew...MATTHEW!" she cried, charging forward and tackling Toby in a teary hug.
Fey had found her brother.
"No...no, no, no!" I cried, despondent. "Chaos, PLEASE! Everything's falling apart and I don't know what to do! I can't edit anything, all three stories are being derailed, and I don't know what to do!"
I heard the scraping of a chair behind me.
"Chaos, please! Help me!"
click
I freeze, and turn around.
Gun.
"...Chaos?"
BANG
Cameron teetered on his chair, before falling to the floor with a heavy thud. The gunshot echoed, rebuking my decision. I did it. I killed him.
"I'm...so...sorry...Cameron..."
This isn't worth it, Multikirby.
Don't worry, Chaos. We're almost there...just a little longer and we'll be finished. Just hold on for a few more chapters; I'll try to end this quickly.