Chapter 113: Book 2 Bonus Chapter: The Dumb of All Fears

“You’ve never heard of it?”

“Never,” Luke said.

“Not even a little bit?” Freddy asked. “Scrolled past it on a website or something.”

“If I did, I don’t remember it,” Luke said. “Why is that so weird to you?”

“Gundam is one of the biggest franchises on the planet,” Freddy said. “I just sort of figured everybody had heard of it.”

“Are you sure you’re not thinking of Transformers or something?”

“No, it’s completely different,” Freddy said. “It’s- hey, wait. Himiko! Can you help me out with something?”

Himiko answered the call and wandered across the quad to Freddy and Luke’s table.

“Something weird going on?”

“No.”

“Not yet, anyway,” Luke said.

“Luke doesn’t know what Gundam is,” Freddy said.

“You don’t know Gundam?”

“Is that so weird? It’s like a Japanese thing, right, I’m from Ireland.”

“Wait, do you not know about any mecha series? Not even Getter Robo?”

“How many of these series are there?” Luke asked. He only knew of Transformers, and that was already one too many series about big robots fighting for his tastes.

“Oh man, you have a lot to catch up on,” Himiko said. “I’m thinking Mazinger Z, for starters.”

“What the fuck is a Mazinger?”

“Not important, the important thing is we know what we’re doing at our next get together,” Himiko said. “Freddy, it’ll be up to you to- what was that?”

A quick flicker of motion on the edges of her vision caught Himiko’s attention mid-sentence. Though only an accessory to the looper’s daily shenanigans, Himiko had still been caught up in enough weirdness to be vigilant. Not that she needed any extreme vigilance to be worried about a strange shadowy creature lurking on the edges of her vision. Himiko flipped open a panel on her arm and used the built-in phone to start texting Harley right away, while Freddy and Luke kept an eye on the possible disturbance.

“Hold up, Himiko, possible false alarm,” Luke said. The disturbance had stepped forward and proved to be not so disturbing. To him, at least. “It’s just a chick in a dress.”

The blonde chick in the silken gown was unfamiliar, which was a little suspicious to Luke, but he’d never been hurt by someone in a pink gown and a little tiara. Himiko, on the other hand, looked absolutely mortified, and started typing faster.

“Get her the hell away from me,” Himiko said, as she started slowly backing up. The princess was slowly coming their way now, with a blank stare and a pleasant smile on her face. Luke started to get worried again.

“Uh. Sure. I guess I’ll talk to her,” Freddy said. He stood and headed towards the woman in the pink dress, who paused to meet him halfway. “Hi, can I help you?”

The princess stared blankly at Freddy for a moment and then stepped around him. Himiko started moving backwards faster as the princess made a beeline for her.

“Freddy! Freddy, stop her!”

The genuine panic on Himiko’s face put a little pep in Freddy’s step as he jumped between Himiko and the princess yet again. He even felt bold enough to put a hand on the princess’ shoulder, to try and stop her in her tracks. That courage lasted all of two seconds, as the princess’s smile got much wider.

The jaw of the princess expanded and drew back like the mouth of a gulper eel, doubling and then tripling in size, much to every spectator’s horror. Freddy screamed at a frequency only barely audible to humans and pulled his hand back as a massive mouth full of cinderblock-like teeth chomped down on the space where his arm had just been. What little courage he possessed fled, as did Freddy himself, running hot on the heels of the fleeing Luke and Himiko. The monstrous princess kept it’s massive maw open wide as it gave chase.

“Hate this hate this hate this,” Luke chanted to himself as he sprinted. He was miserable and terrified, but still seemed to be doing better than his two compatriots. Freddy was far from the bravest soul, so that tracked, but Himiko was showing a rare moment of cowardice. She was so terrified that she actually unhooked the heavy-metal prosthetic she wore and ditched it just for the sake of fleeing faster. No one knew where they were sprinting, but they could only hope it was towards safety. They were right, at least, if only by coincidence.

“Duck!”

In spite of the sheer terror that overwhelmed them, all three still knew well enough to listen to whatever Lee said. As they sprinted round a corner and found themselves face to face with the looper’s leader, all three hit the ground. Lee snapped her fingers, and a surge of purple magic sailed over their heads, slamming into the monstrous princess with explosive force. The creature and its inhuman maw exploded in a burst of purple light.

Even though the monster was gone, Himiko still snapped to her feet and took shelter behind Lee. For her part, Lee brushed some loose strands of hair behind Himiko’s ear, brushing a finger along the side of her temple as she did so. A small purple sigil glowed on her head for a moment before fading.

“Hold still a moment,” Lee said. “That should prevent any further intrusions. Luke, Freddy, come here and let me do the same to you.”

Once again showcasing the well-earned loyalty they felt towards Lee, Luke and Freddy complied instantly, saving their questions until the process was already well underway.

“So, thanks for the save,” Luke said. “Also, what are you drawing on my brain?”

“Simple psychic defense charm,” Lee said. “Something’s been intruding on student’s thoughts all morning. This should hopefully keep it out, though I can’t guarantee anything without knowing more.”

“Does this have anything to do with why I nearly got my arm bitten off?”

“Presumably,” Lee said. “Himiko, you seem to be the latest victim, why would a psychic intruder manifest a particularly toothy princess?”

Now that the moment of terror had passed and she was presumably well-protected, some of Himiko’s pride returned. Not to the point she would refuse to help, but enough that she had to blush her way through it.

“Because...that’s what I’m afraid of,” Himiko mumbled. “Vasilopoulaphobia. I’m afraid of princesses.”

“That’s...oddly specific. And uncharacteristic, I must say.”

“Look, we all got fucked up backstory,” Himiko said. She waved the exposed stump of her arm. “The day I got this sucker amputated, the hospital was doing some kind of princess meet and greet in the children’s ward, try to cheer up all the little girls. I woke up still half-drugged, I didn’t know where I was, didn’t know what the fuck was happening, all I know is I’m missing an arm and some blonde bitch in a tiara is baring her teeth at me.”

Himiko wandered past the blackened smear that used to be the princess monster and retrieved her prosthetic, hooking it back onto her shoulder before rejoining the group.

“Thought the cunt bit my arm off,” Himiko said. “Haven’t been able to watch Cinderella since.”

“Well that sounds about as fucked up as I’ve come to expect around here,” Luke said. “So is this thing manifesting people’s fears?”

“Incoming!”

Harley’s voice presaged the arrival of Harley herself, along with the arrival of the massive needle pursuing her.

“It would seem so,” Lee said. Harley’s fear of needles was well documented now. “Evasive maneuvers, dear!”

Harley ducked and dodge, giving Lee the room she needed for another blast of dispelling magic. It took Lee more than one shot, since the needle made for a very narrow target, but her blasts landed eventually, causing the needle phantom to explode just like the princess monster before it. Harley kept running, only hitting the brakes when it came time to grab Lee in a quick hug.

“Thanks for killing the manifestation of all my worst nightmares, babe,” Harley said. She stood patiently while Lee worked some magic on her brain too. “Alright, now what?”

“Now, you and I assemble the rest of the crew while our friends here help keep the campus safe,” Lee said. “Himiko, my dorm is protected, and Luke, there’s a room in the basement of the seismology lab which is likewise shielded.”

The looper lair was usually off limits even to their friends, but Lee made an exception since it was the first loop and no one would remember being there anyway.

“Those rooms are fairly small so Freddy, if you wouldn’t mind coordinating with Cane and the neurology department to find a way to shield the campus at large from fear?”

“Can do,” Freddy said. “Though if we want to cure fear, maybe we should start at the zymurgy department.”

Freddy chuckled, and no one else did.

“Uh. Zymurgy,” he explained. “The study of fermentation. You know, booze. ‘Liquid courage’?”

“You’re only digging yourself deeper,” Harley said.

“I’ll just go,” Freddy said. He headed off, dragging his feet as he did so.

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“Okay, snakes, very reasonable fear,” Harley said, as she sidestepped a gaggle of snakes chasing an unfortunate student. It felt bad to ignore the many, many people in need of help, but they had to prioritize large-scale problem solving first. Harley making a game of people’s fear might still have been a little insensitive though. “Bats, also reasonable. But what about the books?”

Someone across the quad was being chased by a mobile book shambling across the ground, pages spread wide open to reveal it’s contents. It looked to be a dictionary of some kind, though the words were not sorted in alphabetical order.

“I might say biblophobia, but considering the words on display, it’s probably hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia.”

The student being chased let out a quick yelp as she said the monstrously long word.

“Definitely that one,” Lee said. “Sorry!”

“What the fuck did you just say?”

“The fear of long words.”

“How do you even know this shit?”

“I spend a lot of time on the internet whenever I’m with my parents,” Lee said. Doing crawls of wikipedia was preferable to actually interacting with her mother and father in any way.

“Understandable. Point out any other weird ones you see, it’s kind of neat.”

As they traveled, Lee pointed out students suffering from nosocomephobia, a fear of hospitals, xanthophobia, fear of the color yellow, and just for good measure pointed out that Harley’s fear of needles was called trypanophobia. There were also many students suffering from fears both nameless and strange.

“Is there a word for fear of alligators, because I think one just ate Rubén,” Harley noted.

“Being afraid of large predatory animals is generally referred to as common sense, dear.”

Harley snorted with laughter as they approached the rune labs. Vell had apparently been in the area when the chaos had begun, and headed to his workbench to prepare some defensive runes for himself and others. Kim and Hawke had joined him later, making it a perfect place for the entire team to rendezvous. As they didn’t know exactly where in the workshop Vell was, the two split up to search either side of the expansive space.

Stolen novel; please report.

“Vell, Vell, Vell, you have got to stake a claim somewhere,” Harley said. Harley had a workbench in the robotics lab she had staked out as hers, but Vell had laid no such claim in the rune lab. He went wherever space was available, to avoid inconveniencing any of his fellow students. While polite, it also made him hard to find. For a short time, anyway. “There you are.”

The unmistakably tall Vell sat up straight at the sound of Harley’s voice, and turned her way.

“Lee, I found Vell.”

“Hmm. That’s unfortunate.”

“Why?”

“Because I also found Vell.”

Harley ducked her head around a rack of obsidian stones and looked over at the other side of the lab. Even at a distance, she could make out the familiar faces of Lee, Kim, Hawke, and a second Vell. She did a quick double-take between the doppelgangers and sighed.

“Okay, sure, this might as well happen.”

The two groups met in the middle and compared the two Vells.

“Alright, how do we tell which one is the real Vell?”

“That’d be me,” said the Vell standing by Lee.

“But how can we prove it?”

“Easy peasy,” said the presumably real Vell. He turned to face his counterpart. “Hey bud, what’s your middle name?”

The second Vell stared blankly and shrugged.

“Cool, who makes your favorite music?”

“What’s music?”

“See what I mean?” Vell said. “He’s not really all there. Pretty superficial copy.”

“Okay, great,” Harley said. It was always great when clone scenarios resolved themselves easily. “Second Vell, to avoid confusion, you will henceforth be referred to as Wally.”

“Alright, if it’s for the best,” Wally said.

“Okay, Vell Prime, why is he here? You’re not supposed to have doppelgangers.”

“Well, the thing is, my biggest fear is that after I died, I came back, uh, ‘different’,” Vell said. “So when the whatever manifested my biggest fear, it just made a version of me that’s...more normal, I guess.”

Vell had been initially shocked to see an exact clone of himself, but the shock had easily given way to an amiable relationship once he’d realized what a milquetoast Wally was. The doppelganger gave a quick wave hello as all attention turned back to him. He didn’t look much different than regular Vell, but presumably he was different on the inside.

“Like, look at this,” Vell said. “So what do you do for a living?”

“I just help out around the ranch and do some junior league football coaching on the weekends,” Wally said. “During the summer I help kids with horseback riding lessons.”

“He even sounds more normal,” Lee said. It was an odd glimpse of what Vell might have been in another life, had he not been bisected in a train wreck.

“It’s not all like that,” Vell said. “Our mystery entity made some weird choices. Hey Wally, could you talk me through your dating life again?”

“Not much to tell. I don’t date,” Wally said. “I don’t really do the whole ‘attraction’ thing, romantic or physical.”

“See what I mean?” Vell said, gesturing to his clone. “What is this? I died aroace and came back straight, apparently. What’s the implication there? That dying made me want to fuck more?”

He had been expecting other people to think that was weird too, but instead they all glanced uncomfortably at Harley. She had placed her hand thoughtfully on her chin.

“You know...I’d only had sex like three times before I got here.”

“Well yeah, I hadn’t…”

Vell paused. His sex life had also trended notably more active since coming to school and getting caught in the deadly loops.

“Wait. Does dying make you want to fuck more?”

“A scientific mystery for another time, I think,” Lee said. “Now that we’re all together -and Wally too, I suppose- we should start coming up with a plan.”

Hawke and Kim had been protected by a rune already, and Vell put the finishing touches on a protection rune for himself, so they were all safe from further psychic intrusions. That just left finding the source of said psychic intrusions.

“So, Lee, you have any idea what kind of fear monster could be causing this?”

“Well therein lies the problem. I have several ideas,” Lee said. “There are, unsurprisingly, a great deal of fear-based entities. It’s going to be a matter of narrowing down dozens of possible culprits.”

“Well then, we need more information, and some material to cross-reference,” Harley said. She pointed on finger emphatically towards the ceiling. “To the library!”

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“Shit, you weren’t kidding,” Harley said. “There’s a lot of these bitches. Mare, Kikimora, Melino, lot of frightful fuckers out there in the world.”

“And we need to narrow down our list of candidates,” Lee said. “Let me see the list again.”

Thanks to the efforts of the school’s librarian, they had an extensive list of every book dealing with every entity capable of manipulating a person’s worst fears. It was a long list, and they were only about halfway done.

“Has anybody seen Challin’s Portfolio of the Fiendish?”

“I’m looking,” Kim said. She scanned the densely packed shelves for a single narrow tome. “Challin’s, Challin’s, Challin’s…”

After running her finger along the spines of a few books, Kim found what she was looking for—or rather, what she was looking for found her. A large, furry red hand had reached out from between the shelves and was holding the book out towards her.

“Uh. Thanks.”

“Ook.”

Kim received a gift from a great ape for the second time this year, and briefly scanned the book as the orangutan arm vanished.

“Should I be concerned about that?”

“No,” the librarian said. “He’s a colleague.”

Since she already had more than enough in her life to worry about, Kim put the thought out of her mind and returned the book to Lee. Challin’s Portfolio of the Fiendish joined several other tomes laid out in front of Lee, as she started to cross-reference and compare notes.

“Let’s see...mind-reading abilities, ability to manifest complex physical entities,” Lee said. She looked up at Wally. “Questionable narrative development skills. Give me a moment.”

The dots started to connect, and Lee tapped her fingers on the table as she contemplated all her options. The final moment of realization came when Lee considered one small detail: that the entity had chosen to target Himiko first, instead of Freddy or Luke.

“Damn it all. It’s an Alp.”

“Oh, god damn it,” Harley said. “Of course we get the one fear monster that’s also a weird pervert.”

Every monster that preyed on nightmares was a bit strange, but Alps were by far the worst. They had an entirely skeevy fixation on women and a whole other host of bad habits that made them a figurative nightmare to deal with on top of the literal nightmares.

“At least we know what it is,” Vell said. “So, next step: how do we get rid of it?”

“First, we have to locate the creature,” Lee said. “And then we have to steal its hat.”

“Hat?”

“Alps have a magic hat that gives them the bulk of their powers,” Lee explained. “Steal the hat, the Alp is rendered mostly harmless.”

“Alright, we can definitely steal shit,” Harley said.

“Theft is the easy part of the equation,” Lee said. “Our primary concern should be finding the Alp in the first place. On top of becoming invisible, they can also shapeshift. Their ability to disguise themselves must not be underestimated.”

“Yeah, but we have the power of science,” Harley said. “Specifically that bunch of robot dogs I built with Freddy a while back.”

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The beeping sensor arrays of the legion of tiny metal dogs faded into the distance as the diminutive machines fanned out across campus. Harley monitored the readouts from their various sensory arrays as they traversed the campus. She had been hoping these little drones would get the chance to show their stuff eventually.

“Getting good readouts from Amaterasu, Sif, and Chitzkoi,” Harley said.

“I’m guessing Freddy named these drones?”

“Wow, how could you tell,” Harley sighed, as she monitored the video feed from a drone named Koromaru.

“I don’t know how that dude has time to play so many video games and watch so much anime and still be the smartest guy in the room all the time,” Vell said.

“Maybe it’s connected,” Hawke theorized. “Are there physics lessons in these animes?”

“Quite the opposite,” Harley said. She had tried watching some of Freddy’s recommendations and found them to be as unscientific as anything could possibly be.

“Focus, please,” Lee cautioned. “These data feeds are incomprehensible to most of us, Harley, we need you watching to make sense of things.”

“Okey dokey. We’re mostly seeing people’s fears right now, though. Like that dude running away from a clown.”

“Poor guy,” Vell said. Eviscerated by a chainsaw made of balloons was not a good way to go.

“Guy running away from scary axe murderer dude, guy running away large swarm of bees, guy running away from one very big bee,” Harley said. “Man, there are some mundane-ass fears on this campus. I was expecting some wilder shit considering some of the stuff that happens here.”

“I already got my brain shielded, or you probably would be seeing some wild stuff,” Hawke said. “I’m terrified of things you’ve never even heard of.”

“I believe it,” Harley said. “Now hold on, getting some arcane fluctuations consistent with a magic hat.”

The scanner dogs had been calibrated for magic hats thanks to a sample scan of a magic hat Lee also owned. The only enchantment on Lee’s hat was to make it sparkle, but a magic hat was a magic hat. It had provided a very useful sample for comparison, and a very stylish accessory for Lee for the rest of the day.

As a bunch of numbers nobody but Harley understood started to fluctuate on screen, her legion of robot dogs tracked down the anomalous hat. As expected, their Alp was found in the student dorms, preying on the thoughts and fears of the students to conjure up new nightmares.

“There!”

Harley caught a glimpse of the Alp through an open doorway, just as it began to conjure up a giant spider to spook a helpless student. The moment the spider was fully formed, the Alp vanished, and its energy signature appeared in the next dorm down the line.

“Alright, we know where it is and we know where it’s going,” Harley said.

“Excellent work. What kind of weapons systems do these dogs have?”

“None. I try not to put guns on anything other than Botley,” Harley said. Historically speaking, weaponized robots tended to cause more apocalypses than they ended. “They can bark though.”

Harley pressed the button that made them bark. It was cute, at least.

“Going to have to do this the old fashioned way, champ,” Harley said. “I’ll keep the drones on them, you go and take care of the Alp.”

“You want us to kill the Alp?”

“No, Kim, not that kind of ‘take care of’,” Harley said, cursing the concept of polysemy. “Stop it. Trick it, trap it, charge in Leeroy Jenkins style and beat it into a coma, whatever.”

“Hopefully we can manage slightly more finesse than that,” Lee said. “But only time will tell. Come on then, let’s get to it.”

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As the robot dogs were mindless, and therefore fearless, the Alp paid no mind to his stalkers as they traced him from dorm to dorm, giving Lee and company ample opportunity to track his progress and plan accordingly. The loopers had planned an ambush along the Alp’s route, hoping to catch the entity off guard as he traversed the dorms.

Right now, that plan amounted to hiding out in the bathroom of a random dorm. Hawke had occupied himself reading shampoo bottles.

“This person has very expensive hair care products,” Hawke noted.

“Stop digging around in a stranger’s toiletries, Hawke, it’s unseemly.”

“I forgot my phone.”

“Play a word game or something,” Harley said. “Wally’s not doing anything.”

Vell’s doppelganger gave a quick and friendly wave hello, the same way he did every time his name was mentioned.

“Wally has no capacity for creative thought,” Hawke said. “Why’d we even bring him?”

“He’s nice,” Vell said.

“And he’s an extra body,” Kim said. “Never hurts to have one of those.”

“Be nice to Wally,” Vell cautioned. Both to reinforce that one should always be kind to others, and because Wally had his face and Vell didn’t want to watch him get obliterated. Vell had died a few hundred times now, but he’d never watched himself die, and he felt like now wasn’t the time to be adding new traumas to his list.

“Shh,” Lee said. “There’s screaming the next dorm over.”

Hawke pressed his ear to the wall and listened in to the sounds of a few people screaming—and also the soundtrack to the Nutcracker Suite. He would spend the rest of his life wondering what fear that was connected to, and would never get an answer. The alp, having done it’s work and delighted in the fear that resulted, shuffled it’s way to the next dorm. The four loopers, and Wally, stacked up by the bathroom door to watch through the crack as the alp snuck in looking for a victim. Lee had weaved a few enchantments to allow them to see the usually-invisible Alp with their own eyes, so they could track him as he crept across campus.

The dark-furred creature was roughly knee-high to Vell, but its height was nearly doubled by the massive cone of the wide-brimmed wizard’s cap it worse. Beneath the towering hat, a pair of beady black eyes scanned the room for any signs of a potential victim. As all the looper’s had their minds shielded, the alp did not realize he was being hunted until it was too late.

Lee struck first, blasting the alp with a bolt of ice that froze him in place. The prison proved temporary, as the alp used his shapeshifting ability’s to shrink and slip free from the trap. He lost a layer of fur, but it would grow back. Kim moved in next, and grabbed the alp by the tail. This too was thwarted by shapeshifting, as the alp grew a layer of bristly spines across it’s tail and stabbed Kim in the palm.

“Don’t worry about trapping it,” Lee said. “Just grab the hat!”

“On it!”

Wally dove in next, and to his credit, the brainless duplicate actually managed to grab onto the brim of the hat, if only for a second. The alp shapeshifted a giant arm and punched Wally away, before using that same arm to swat Vell aside. Having earned himself some room to breath, the alp then used that room to complain.

“Can’t a guy have some fun?”

“No fun allowed!”

Hawke caught up to the alp from behind, wrapped broad arms around him, and immediately fell forward. The prodigiously thick body of Hawke crushed the alp and his comically over sized hat against the ground, leaving the beast flattened, Looney Tunes style, against the ground.

“Did that do it?”

“One way to be sure,” Vell said. “Wally, give me a hand.”

Both of the doppelgangers approached the flattened Alp at once and reached for the hat. The hat reached back.

In a swirling maelstrom of energy and light, the alp caused himself, Vell, and Wally to all disappear for just a moment. A moment was all it took for the alp’s masterstroke to be completed, as when the chaos cleared, there were now three fully identical Vell’s standing on the far side of the dorm.

“Oh damn it, I thought we avoided the whole clone conspiracy bullshit,” Kim said. The disembodied laughter of the alp provided no clue as to which of the three Vell’s was real, but it did annoy Kim even more.

“You know you can just knock out all three of us, right?”

Lee promptly used magic to knock out the other two Vell’s, leaving the third slightly confused.

“Only the real Vell Harlan would volunteer himself for head trauma for his friend’s convenience,” Lee said.

“Okay, sure, but we still could’ve found out which one was Wally,” Vell said.

“Does he even have a brain to damage?” Kim wondered aloud. Vell shrugged.

While the alp was still stunned, Lee snapped her fingers and dispelled the shapeshifting, revealing which of the two Vell clones was the alp. She snatched the hat off its head before it had any time to recover.

“Hey. That’s my hat,” the alp complained.

“You can have it back when you stop terrorizing our island,” Lee said. “And also explain how you got here.”

With knowledge of the alp’s arrival and methods in hand, the loopers could easily stop it on the second loop. The alp, thinking it had nothing to lose, easily spilled all its secrets and gave the loopers everything they needed, and a few things they were curious about as well.

“Hey, while we’re at it, quick question,” Vell said. “Why did you not give my doppelganger a middle name, but you did make him aroace?”

“Look man, I’m improvising. I can only drag so many thoughts out of a person’s head at once. You try making a fully formed narrative out of a few random buzzwords, it’s- ow. Sorry. Went crosseyed for a second there.”

“I guess that would be kind of hard,” Vell admitted.

“At least I don’t have to write a satisfying ending to the story, though.”