OSA Reimeiki

It was dark.

“What the—“

A pair of eyes blinked open.

It was still dark.

“Ok, where the hell are we?” An angry voice growled, switching on the built-in flashlight in her eye.

“Hmm, it appears that the residual energy from Rosita’s spell blasted us again because of the instability of the space-time continuum at the moment.”

“That doesn’t answer the question, Jessica.”

Jessica shrugged. “Sorry, but even I don’t have all the answers.”

“You… You don’t?” Diya, Emily, and Mitchell were shocked.

“For now, we need to assess Rosita’s condition before moving on.”

“Right.” Diya nodded and activated her wrist-scanner. “I’ll just scan for traces of magical energy and see if there were any lasting effects.”

Emily’s eyes widened. “Whoa, your wrist-scanner thing can do that? Wait, how the heck is that even possible?”

Not taking her eyes of the screen that had folded out from her arm, Diya answered, “Yeah, in this world, technology and magic can do anything that suits the authors’ fancy. Deus ex machinas, if you will.”

“Uhh, okay then.” Mitchell looked unconvinced.

BEEP DOOP. “Scan complete. Uh oh, bad news, guys. It seems that the time-travel spell took too much out of Rosita. She’s down to about half of her power. Her magic probably won’t return to her for a few months at least…” Diya frowned. “We shouldn’t have gone with this plan.”

“Well how were we supposed to know that it would drain our mage, split up our group, and cause a bunch of other yet to be revealed consequences?”

SCHLOOP. A random green-black portal opened from the middle of nowhere.
Three cloaked figures stepped out. “My god! We’re finally out of that stupid space-time gap!” The one who had spoken turned to our heroes. “Were you the ones who freed us? Thank you, thank you so much! Well, we don’t know how long we have, so we’ll make it snappy. We’re here to recruit for our cause, anyone interested? Ah, you there, the big one, come with us!” Without another word, the three of them grabbed Mitchell and threw him into the portal before he could protest.

“Whoa, wait! Where are you guys taking him?!” Emily exclaimed.

“Off your hands. Don’t worry, he won’t be back. Toodle-oo!” The last cloaked person gave a cheery wave before vanishing into the portal. “Ah! Almost forgot! To thank you for your services, we’ll send you back.”

“Back where?”

Before disappearing into the giant portal that had opened under their feet, Emily managed to ask, “What happened to plot pacing—AHHHHHHH!”
With a thud, they found themselves back in Mr. Ho’s room.

-----------------------------

Nicole blinked slowly. Twice. “Anna? You were A.C.?”

Anna grinned. “I guess so. I don’t want to go into the complexities of my past lives and alternate identities, it’s too complicated.” She glanced at her time machine. “Ah well, looks like it only lasted one time. Lucky we made it though! Too bad Jimmy didn’t. Oh well.” The time machine crumbled into dust.

Nicole stepped over the sobbing fetal-position John and leaned in really close to Maria’s face. “And you… I’m so confused. What are you? Who are you? Are you dead?”

Maria sighed. “Ok, how to explain this simply… Hmmm. Alright, first off, let’s assume I’m fictional, okay? Basically, as a fictional character, I would have existed in two separate dimensions during four different time periods."

"You mean you made Horcruxes?!" Nicole gawked openly.

"No! Just listen okay?" Maria threw up her hands, flustered. "At that point, there is still one of me. Because of my intense training that started when I was still inside the womb, I developed my magical powers quickly. One day, I accidentally opened a portal and fell into a dimension where there were no humans. Instead, there were—“

“Daakshi.” Anna supplied.

“Right. During the time I crossed the continuum, my genetic makeup altered and I found myself able to take on the physical traits of the Daakshi. Which was useful when I met Rachel. She helped me survive in their foreign land, and I have never been able to repay my debt to her. After spending a lot of time in that dimension and learning the truth behind the Daakshi and all about Wenrin, I realized that I was ill equipped to deal with his evil scheme and therefore had to take on pupils who would take him on in my place. Thus, I travelled through time and space again and became Sensei.”

“Ohhh okay. So then you met Rosita and Kyna and such…”

“Yep, sounds about right. After I trained them, I prepared for one last time-travel, where I would meet all of you as a regular high school student and guide you into discovering the portal in this very room. However, the journey this time was not as smooth… I lost all of my magical power from overuse and suffered from depression. I thought my plan had gone all wrong and turned to drugs and alcohol to cope. Sorry about that, you guys. But anyway, that’s where my story ends, and this one begins. Just take a second or two to absorb that.”

Nicole scratched her head. “But… you’re not fictional, you’re real.”

“Trust me, my hypothetical fictional-self explanation is a lot simpler. You don’t want to get into the details of what really happened.”

"Wait, soooo, why couldn't you have just told us this from the start?"

"Drugs can confuse people like that. Right, Anna?"

"Huh, wha?"

"Never mind."

A silence followed, broken by the harsh cacophony of John’s hiccouphs. “Jessica is gonnnnnne...” He wailed.

“And so is everyone else!” exclaimed Wenhao.

“Hah! Good riddance!” Catherine sneered.

SCHLOOP. A green-black portal opened and three cloaked figures stepped out. “Speaking of good riddances,” Mr. Cloaked Guy 1 said.

“Stoooooop!” Anna held up her hand. “Where did you guys just come from?”

The cloaked figures ignored her question, instead opting to bend forwards and crouch down.

“And what are you doing?”

“You told us to stoop.”

“NO! I said to ‘stop’!”

“Oh. Well, whatever. Anyway, we’re here to gather members for our esteemed organization, anyone interested? Ah, you two right there, look chipper! You have been selected to join us! Come along!” Without waiting for another word, the cloaked men dragged Catherine and Wenhao into the portal and they disappeared. Forever. Never to be seen again.

“What did you do to Jessica!!” John leapt to his feet and pointed his finger accusingly.

The three cloaked figures consulted each other.

“Jessica?”

“Probably from the other group that our three comrades went to scout out.”

“Ah, the group that’ll be sent to this location in a few minutes?”

“Yep, those are the ones.”

They turned back around. “You’ll be seeing her soon enough.”

“Oh thank goodness, I was dying of loneliness here,” John breathed a sigh of relief.

“Wait.” Maria narrowed her eyes. “Who are you? Clearly, you are endowed with some sort of magical power to be able to open portals so easily.”

“We don’t actually have magical powers. We’re just figments of some author’s imagination. But unfortunately, we are one time use only, and will dissolve into stardust after this chapter is over.”

“What are you talking about? Who is this demented ‘author’ person? And aren’t we all made of dissolved stardust in the first place?”

“Look lady, we don’t have much time to stick around. But before we go, we have to caution you about travelling through the space-time continuum. You guys have been moving around rather recklessly, creating a ton of Parapsychological Lucrative Obfuscating Tale holes.”

“That’s an awfully long name for a hole.” Nicole scratched her head again.

“Call it by its acronym then. But our point is, you’ve got to stop, or else the very fabric of our galaxy will fall apart. And disintegrate into stardust.”

“Got it.” Anna nodded.

Nicole shrieked, “Wait a minute! What about Wenhao and Catherine!”

“Don’t worry about those two, they’re coming to a better place with us! And best of all, this won’t affect their descendants one bit! Because they’ll still exist, just somewhere far, far away where nobody can hear them. Rest assured, you’ll never see them again. However, you will soon be reunited with the other half of your troupe. Now that we’re all sorted out, we’re off! Ta ta!” With a cheery, parting wave, the three mysterious, never-to-be-seen again figures disappeared into the portal, which schlooped shut behind them.

Before anyone could react, another portal opened above them, and four bodies were dumped out. They landed with a thud. Rosita’s unconscious body landed on John, cushioning her fall, but effectively rendering him unconscious.

“Ok. What just happened?” Several people asked simultaneously.

“Hmm. It appears that these mysterious beings have permanently kidnapped several of our friends and sewn up several serious Parapsychological Lucrative Obfuscating Tale holes.”

“Pah, and you said you didn’t have all the answers.”

“I try my best.”

“So what now, gang?”

“Well, I am absolutely sure that teenage Wenrin has not disappeared, and his working on finding his way back after he stole Anna’s technology.”

“Hey, back up a moment. If Anna was A.C., then who is Aaron?”

“I bet the guys in the cloaks got him too.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“So we’re back to our original mission. Find the star key box and defeat Wenrin.”