Collide Gamer

Introducing Lu Zhi to Devos was an ultimately normal occasion. Nothing about the people involved was normal, certainly, but the empress and the alien bug man still just spoke English towards each other. After about thirty minutes, the imperial tomboy decided that getting her throat stuffed would be more interesting.

Qingmei joined the rest of them in the tedious process of sifting through location data and portal reports. The number of new sightings had slowed, but not stopped. The search party was still moving while the Homefront did the research.

Since Metra had been moved to aid Maximillian in protecting his palace, John reinforced that party with Nahoa and Moira. The paladin had agreed to this after a bit of pushing. Sometimes, it seemed that Moira resisted only to be nudged into doing what she actually wanted to do from the start. She was not as bad as Ehtra or Momo though.

After six full days of looking through data, they finally found it.

“That’s the place,” Devos said and pointed at the screen.

It was a Google Street View picture of a house in the outskirts of a New England city of 50’000. It was just one of a multitude of such cities in the 6-state area. An unassuming place in an unassuming city in an unassuming state. The only picture of it that existed was this street view angle. No wonder it had taken them forever.

Really, it was a showcase of the convenience and deeply-burrowed terror of the modern world that the picture existed at all.

‘I’ll go on a diatribe of the duality of progress and loss another time,’ John thought. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. I remember the arrangement of trees and that pattern in the paint.” He pointed at a couple of markers.

It was convenient for them that the Mite King had such a perfect memory. Sadly, his sketch of the screaming man had not been as useful. Not that it had been a poorly drawn image, quite the contrary, but even Scarlett’s scanning tools weren’t so advanced that she could take a picture and search for a match throughout the entirety of the US population. That had so many logistical and practical issues that they hadn’t even tried.

Now that they had a limited location though…

“Yoshua Graham-Sotwoth,” Scarlett had a name for them within thirty seconds of the location having been found. Once one had an address, finding a name was laughably easy. Once one had a name and an address, everything else fell into place. “Born 1996… inherited his house at 18 years old after he and his parents got into a car accident…” The technomancer paused for a moment, circuits dancing in her eyes as she dug deeper into the servers of the city. “Ah, there’s our explanation for everything. He has a history of anxiety attacks.”

“…Oh, that’s just perfect,” John muttered. “So, we have a mentally unstable man who got shocked into awakening his powers by seeing a massive bug man screaming at him – no offense.”

“None taken,” Devos assured. “That is… an unfortunate set of events.”

Unfortunate was putting it lightly. Abyssal physiology had its downsides. They could stay awake for way longer, could sustain adrenaline rushes for incredible stretches of time, even, at their level, live without a heartbeat for potentially hours. Magic made all of that possible. It would also assure the brain had enough chemicals swirling around to sustain a multi-day panic attack.

The medical data that Scarlett pulled up spelled out the worst case scenario. Not only was Yoshua prone to anxiety attacks, he had been diagnosed with this at the age of 7. This wasn’t just someone more nervous than average, this was someone with deep psychological, likely even biological issues. No close relatives lived in his area. No friends that a scan across social media would speak of. This was a lonely wreck of a mentally damaged man.

And that person now had the ability to open reality rifts.

John could not reiterate enough how much of a disaster this had the potential of being.

“We need to find him ASAP,” he said the obvious. “Which should be easier now that we have his home. Let’s see if Lorelei can get a vision out of this.”

______________________________________________________________________________

The two cars of the field party pulled up in front of the house.

It was even less interesting in person. A white picket-fence surrounded the property, a remnant of the American Dream that was quite well maintained. Not expertly, John clearly saw the uneven thickness of paint applied by an inexperienced hand, but well. Where weather and time had gnawed on wood and metal, it had all been repaired. The garden behind the fence was a charming mess. Raised beds and a compost pile suggested an order that worked for the user, even if it wasn’t the best looking. A lone elm tree stood above poorly trimmed hedges in the far corner of the lawn.

John got the immediate feeling that this was someone’s retreat from the world. Knowing that Yoshua had a history of anxiety, the entire property spoke to him doing the best despite his poor mental health. It was admirable and sad in equal measure.

The house told the same and yet a different story. Most of it was well kept, but on select spots the roller that had been used to apply fresh paint had not been used. Old, bleached red stuck out between the otherwise black paint of the outer walls like scarred wounds. At the centre of each of these unpainted spots was some kind of minor damage to the wood.

John: Do we know if Yoshua’s parents abused him?

Scarlett: Nothing like that on file.

Scarlett: Why?

John: Let me send you some pictures.

John squatted down next to one of the unpainted spots. It was only a basketball across. The dent in its middle could have been easily missed, had it not been highlighted like this. “Lorelei, can you come here for a moment?”

The seer currently stood with a hand on the elm. It was a large tree. One of its branches was marked by a rope that had been in place for years and recently removed. John’s mind went to the grim idea of a noose. A tire swing was a lot more likely.

“I see a confusing childhood.” Lorelei took her hand off the tree and strutted across the lawn with purpose. Delicately, she touched the indent. “I see a mother loving, finding demons in a bottle.” Delicate fingers glided up to another marking. “Regret, shame, wine, stress, liquor, long shifts and burdens poorly carried. I see a blind father.” She stepped away, her tone changing from prophecy to interpretation. “He was beaten when his father was away by his drunk mother. A homelife both loving and deeply painful. No security. No certainty.”

“No wonder he’s an anxious mess,” John muttered.

“Uh, before we go in… there’s something off.” Lee scrounged her face, straining her supernatural senses. “There’s an Illusion Barrier here but… it’s faint and tiny and weird… I know, I’m being very helpful.”

“You unironically are,” John assured her. “So, do we enter?”

“We are not on top of it… it’s just around here… I’ll shout when I understand more. For now… I don’t know what I am feeling.”

John nodded and stepped up to the front door. The name of the owner, peculiarly, was spelled out on the floor in black letters sitting at the centre of white, opalescent tiles. They were crookedly set, having likely been put down by the man himself.

Yoshua Graham-Sotwoth.

‘Really odd name,’ John thought.

On the off chance that it worked, he pressed the buzzer. The doorbell was a series of resonant chimes, each slightly louder than the last. A measure to make the arrival of someone a little less harsh on the nerves, John reckoned.

No one answered, as was expected. Breaking the door was one option, lockpicking another. The easiest, in theory, was already being executed. John turned around to make the request of Nia, only to find her missing. “Come inside,” the pariah invited him, making him turn back to the door. The blonde had teleported in and simply pushed down the doorhandle.

The inside of the house stank of stagnant trash. It wasn’t because the house was poorly kept – it was just small and the sudden evacuation of it had left two half-full bins to simmer. It was warm inside. Clearly the automatic payment of the bills was still going, the radiators still warm.

It wasn’t a special home in any way. There were some oddities in the choice of décor, sure, but they were expected oddities, nothing overly eccentric. The small home had been clearly too large for a young, single man. The single floor of the building told a clear story of a daily path trodden from the bed, to the bathroom, to the PC, and the occasional side-journey to the kitchen. A practically unused living room held two baskets full of clean laundry and a tower of empty delivery boxes. Nothing was unhygienic. Everything was just… expected.

Until he opened the door to the cellar.

It was just a standard door to a standard staircase. Yet, there was something profoundly… wrong just standing there. Something was subtly rubbing up against his senses, like the distant, muffled clicking of a Geiger counter against his soul.

“WHAT THE FUCK?!” Lee screamed.

The warning meant nothing. John’s vision was filled with prismatic light. The wall of an Illusion Barrier suddenly and impossibly manifested in real space only to wash over him. When he instinctively inhaled, his lungs were filled with the scent of potential. He knew it, he had experienced it before when he had fought Tiamat with Romulus. For a brief moment, he was falling through the space between Illusion Barriers, then the house was reconstructed around him as the Illusion Barrier expanded further.

John dismissed the window instantly. It was a distraction from the thing that stormed up the staircase from the basement, moving with birdlike jerks as it climbed on a multitude of limbs. One moment John heard the thundering of hooves, then he was thrown back by the impact of something sharp against his ribcage.

He slammed against the wall of the expanding Illusion Barrier. He almost dropped backwards when it kept pulling away from him. Inkaryl manifested in his hand, the heft of the weapon blocking an overhead strike from his enemy.

It was a lean, hunched figure, shaped like a thin man yet not shaped like a man at all. The long torso was as if carved from black stone, the surface cracking and re-fusing as the creature exerted powers. The healing created a whisper that John could not quite parse. A multitude of limbs asymmetrically along its length, each ending in a hoof that kicked the air in futility. It had a pair of arms and a pair of goatlike legs, each ending in golden claws. In its hands, it held a spike, a weapon that was nothing more than an oversized needle, grey, simple, horrific.

The creature was taller than John, its head hovering above him. It was a white, narrow surface, covered in jagged lines. There were no slits for the eyes. A gap slightly below the centre gave rise to a thin, tongue-like thing of silver light. It repeatedly flicked across John’s frame, moving with the speed of strobing lights.

The advancing of the Illusion Barrier pulled Nathalia inside next. The dragoness growled and was just about to launch herself at this enemy when John used Observe.

With a sound like paper getting crumpled into a ball, the monster before him ceased to be.

The counterforce he had exerted made him stumble two steps forwards. He turned around and witnessed the void of potential that he had gotten so used to. It laid behind his I.D. Gates and the Intermediary Barriers. It was right there, beyond the edge of the Illusion Barrier that had stopped expanding. He and Nathalia were in a fragment of a house, hanging inside a black world.

The rest of the group entered the area moments thereafter. Lee was the last of the bunch, having guided everyone else into the space.

“What just happened?” he asked her.

“I don’t know. I don’t FUCKING know!” Lee’s eyes kept darting around. She was studying the edge of the copied house, pressed her hand against the edge of the Illusion Barrier, and just kept walking around. “This makes no sense; Illusion Barriers only expand like this when something seriously powerful is involved.”

“What I fought was seriously powerful,” John responded and switched to Combat Mode. This Puppet’s chest was a singular sheet of stone. It had prevented the attack from penetrating, but the spiderweb of cracks spread from his heart all the way to the shoulders.

“What did you fight?” Nia asked.

“I don’t know.” John hated those words. He always hated them. He hated not knowing things. The unknown was impossible to plan against. The only thing he was more afraid of was losing one of his loves. “I couldn’t Observe it. It disappeared when I tried. It looked like some… Lovecraftian mixture of goat and skeleton. It had a white mask and kept… probing me with a tongue of light.”

Under better circumstances that would have coaxed some innuendo out of them. “There is no clinging magic,” Nia assured.

“Lady guide me, Lady shield me, Lady give me your light,” Moira prayed under her breath, shield and hammer at the ready.

“What do we do next?” Nahoa asked.

“We descend,” Lorelei responded, pointing at the open door.

The Shield Warden was already stepping towards the door, but John stopped her. “This body is disposable,” he reminded her. “I go first.”

“…Even if it’s just a spare body, I don’t want to see you hurt…” she muttered.

That was so adorable it flooded his limbs with new energy. Without thinking, he switched back to the Socialite Form and put a deep kiss on pink lips. She was frozen for a moment, reciprocated the next, and then they separated. John did it because he was aware he shouldn’t linger. She did it because her cheeks were burning.

“Th-this is not the place!” she complained, happily.

“Sadly, it really isn’t,” John agreed and stepped back into the doorframe. The weird feeling he had was gone. “The creature either projected an aura from inside an Illusion Barrier or controlled the Illusion Barrier’s expansion while outside of it,” he remarked. “Which one is more terrifying, Lee?”

“Oh yeah, just make me choose between the black hole and the heat death of the universe.”

“One of those two is objectively worse for life. At least a black hole is localized.”

“Shut up and get down there!” Lee snapped back.

John chuckled, then led the way. Certain as he was that this body was safe to be discarded, there was that nagging paranoia in the back of this head. In the world of magic, there was no such thing as an absolute certainty.

All the same, he arrived at the bottom of the stairs. “…Just what the hell is going on here?” he asked the world. “Come down. There’s no threat. Just… concerns.”

The group of seven cramped into a cellar struggling to contain three people. All the same, they stood there, between washing machine and boiler, and stared past a foundational wall at letters painted in glowing, prismatic light.

“Realmbreaker Runs.”