Chapter 160: Book 3 Chapter 12: Headbangers

“So you’ve had a few weeks to settle in now,” Lee said. “How are you acclimating to the school?”

“I think I’m getting the hang of the whole dying thing,” Samson said. “And the fighting. And problem solving. The waiting is still kind of killing me, though.”

Today’s daily apocalypse was particularly late, and Samson’s stress level increased with every passing second. He snacked to his hearts content, ignored all his classes, and even accepted Harley’s invitation for a roll in the hay, but he still couldn’t relax. It was getting to the point where he found himself looking over his shoulder every minute.

“Well, it’s good to hear you’re coping well,” Lee said. “I meant more on the note of your schoolwork.”

“Oh.”

Sometimes Samson forgot he actually had classes here. They felt like an afterthought, with all of the world-saving he did.

“Yeah, I’m doing fine. Ibrahim always makes sure to pester me into a study session whenever we’ve got spare time,” Samson said. “He always asks a lot of questions. Keeps me on my toes.”

Ibrahim had been pestering him about that today, in fact. Even on the first loop, Samson felt bad about ignoring him. He stared down at his phone to check for new messages while Lee kept talking.

“Glad to hear you’re keeping up,” Lee said. “If you ever need any help, just let me know. I could always-”

The wet popping noise that followed would have been familiar to some other loopers, but Samson had yet to be acquainted with the sound of an exploding head. The splatter on his face was an unpleasant surprise that only got more unpleasant when he turned to the side and saw what was left of Lee.

“Oh fucking hell. God damn. Ugh,” Samson mumbled to himself. He restrained the urge to vomit and managed to waddle away from the corpse. He had slightly exaggerated just how comfortable he was with the blood and guts aspect of the daily loops. He got some distance and cleaned his face off before grabbing his phone and starting up the group chat.

OnweNo1:

So

Lees head just exploded

HARL33:

aww :(

OnweNo1:

Now what?

Whos in charge when shes dead

HARL33:

vell

vharlan03:

Harley

what

HARL33:

we went over this last year dude!!!!!!

i m just a hype man

ur the responsible one

ur in charge when lee gets iced

vharlan03:

ugh

just meet up in the lair, guys

The responsibilities of leadership had been deflected, but only briefly. Soon all the surviving loopers had gathered in the lair, and Vell had to look them in the eyes as he tried to abdicate responsibility.

“Look, we’re a well-oiled machine at this point, do we even need a leader?”

“Alright, Vell, if you’re going to be like this, we’ll take it to committee,” Harley said. “What do we do first?”

“Well, usually we fan out and search the school for clues,” Vell said.

“Seriously, Vell?”

“I do better once the pressure’s off,” Vell said.

“Sure,” Kim grunted. “As long as we’re getting something done. I’ll take the dorms.”

“I’ll work on the dining hall and common areas,” Hawke said.

“I’ll start with the marine biology lab and work our way through the list of usual suspects,” Vell said.

“How are the fish guys supposed to be blowing up heads?”

“You’d be surprised,” Harley said. They’d all been turned into toddlers by the Marine Biology department last year. “They can do a lot of things. And Vell wants to see his fishfucker girlfriend.”

“It’s an added benefit,” Vell mumbled.

“Sure,” Harley said. “Because if it was really about the usual suspects, you could just-”

Vell and Hawke instinctively closed their eyes when they heard the popping sound, but Samson was caught off guard for the second time today. He wiped a few pieces of Harley off his face and let out a low moan of disgust.

“Okay, new plan,” Vell said. “Let’s not go anywhere until we figure out why people’s heads are exploding.”

“Can we at least leave the room?”

“Yeah, okay,” Vell said, as a bit of Harley dripped off his chin.

The group exited the lair and cleaned themselves up before reconvening for discussion.

“Okay, Samson, you were the only person around when both heads exploded,” Kim said. “Notice anything in common?”

“Uh...they were both talking,” Samson said. “That’s about all I know.”

“Well we’re talking now,” Kim said. “And we haven’t exploded.”

“Yet.”

Hawke was now expecting to blow up with every given word he spoke, so he kept it short. He also did not move, breath, or think if he could help it.

“Okay, so there’s got to be some more specific trigger,” Vell said. “Like a specific word, or something. If it’s related to talking at all. Samson, what did Lee say before she popped?”

“You know, I wasn’t taking notes,” Samson said. “I don’t really go into daily interactions expecting people’s head to explode.”

“You’ll get there,” Kim said. “So what did Harley say? Let’s go word by word.”

“And blow ourselves up?”

“Only maybe! Besides, we’ve got three people to spare. We’ve done dumber things.”

“Not by choice!”

“Well, I’ll volunteer,” Kim said. “I might be immune to it anyway, I could probably-”

This time everyone was caught off guard, as a short fizzing sound preceded Kim’s chest violently bursting into a shower of sparks and shrapnel. Samson at least covered his head in time to avoid taking any shrapnel to the face, but he still felt many sharp cuts across his forearms and torso.

“Well fuck.”

“That’s not what we were hoping for,” Vell said. “But I think it might be useful.”

“How is Kim exploding useful?”

“Well, look,” Vell said, pointing at the gaping hole in Kim’s torso. “Her chest exploded instead of her head. Kim moved more of her neural processors into her torso after the Undedison incident. Whatever’s going on is concentrated in the mind.”

Samson plucked a shard of Kim’s face out of his arm and threw it with the rest of the Kim debris. Once he was no longer mildly impaled, Samson set to thinking, trying to remember the exact sequences of words Lee, Harley, and Kim had said before their untimely explosions. He had hazy details of Lee’s explosion, but Kim and Harley were much more recent, so he managed to put pieces together in time.

“Wait, I think I’ve got it,” he said excitedly. “It’s ‘could’ -fuck!”

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“On the bright side, you proved your hypothesis.”

“By example,” Samson grumbled. He liked being right, but he didn’t enjoy his head exploding.

After every other looper had exploded on the first loop, Hawke and Vell had done enough legwork to confirm three things; that the world ‘could’ was definitely responsible for making people’s heads explode, that the neurology department was not involved, and that the incidents had not begun until roughly seven o’clock in the evening. That gave them plenty of time to work with on loop two, but everyone was still scared to say ‘could’.

“Good work on what you’ve done so far, boys, but there’s much more to be done,” Lee said. “We have to track down the source as soon as possible to stand the best chance of disrupting this.”

“So where do we go, boss lady?” Harley asked. “The dudes already ruled out our most likely suspects for brain-exploding.”

“Well, as we usually do, we can fan out and look for clues,” Lee said. “Focusing on other likely suspects such as the Marine Biologists first.”

Harley gave a pointed and very smug stare at Vell, who adamantly ignored her. It was entirely coincidental that his leadership instincts were the same as Lee’s.

“I’ll go to the Dean and see if there were any pre-approved experiments that raise an eyebrow,” Lee said. “Kim, Hawke, you split the dorms. Vell, you start with the Marine Biologists and go from there. Harley, you scan the senior labs and Samson, do a wide sweep of the campus and see if you can find anything suspicious.”

“See. Leadership,” Vell said. Harley gave him a dirty look.

“Did I miss something while I was headless?”

“Nothing important, Lee,” Harley said. “Let’s get moving.”

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

“Oh. It’s you.”

“Yep, it’s me,” Vell said. “You probably know why I’m here.”

“It’s either sabotage or subterfuge,” the random marine biologist said.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Genuinely just here to talk to my girlfriend,” Vell said, as he squeezed his way past the angrily-glaring students. Talk to her about possible sabotage, but still talk to her.

“Hey Skye.”

He took a seat by her workstation and waited as she finished up the notes she was taking. As soon as she was done, Skye leaned sideways to give him a kiss on the cheek and gave Vell her full attention.

“What’s up?”

“Oh, just on a scouting mission,” Vell said. “Seeing what chaos you guys are up to today.”

“Hm, and here I thought I could relax for a day,” Skye said. “Michaela and Dr. Professor Michael are otherwise occupied.”

“Oh yeah? They go to a lecture or something?”

“No, they got their heads stuck in fishbowls,” Skye said. She paused briefly and pointed to a nearby side room. Vell listened closely and could hear sounds of muffled grunting and cursing.

“Both of them?”

“Well, Michaela got stuck first, and then Dr. Professor Michael got himself stuck trying to prove how easy it should be for her to get herself unstuck,” Skye explained.

“Sounds like them,” Vell said. It also sounded like the Marine Biology department wouldn’t be causing any problems today. With their leadership out of commission, the students were all sitting around discussing their labs, catching up on coursework, or just plain old slacking off. Nothing looked particularly head-explodey to Vell.

“Does that resolve your scouting mission, Agent Harlan?”

“Not entirely,” Vell said. “I also require critical information regarding your availability on saturday.”

“Nonexistent,” Skye said. “But I’m free sunday night.”

“Noted. Text you later.”

Skye winked at him and returned to her work as Vell headed off to scout his next target. With the Marine Biologist’s safely eliminated, Vell headed for the Theoretical Science department, and the familiar face of Freddy Frizzle. Vell tried to avoid touching anything in the lab as he passed through it. The devices were all strange and unfamiliar and, historically speaking, had the chance to cause an apocalyptic event if they were so much as lightly brushed against. They had all been stabilized now, supposedly, but Vell took no chances around machines that could disassemble him into his components atoms.

“Hey Freddy, how’re things rolling along today?”

“Pretty well,” Freddy said. “Goldie’s putting on a presentation for some of our department’s major funders soon, so we’re all going to take a break soon and help with that. And it’s just a powerpoint thing and some videos, no practical demonstrations.”

“Neat! Just, uh, make sure you shut down all your experiments and stuff first.”

“Already taken care of,” Freddy said. He patted the hull of a nearby particle accelerator, causing Vell to flinch reflexively, but nothing happened. “We’re trying to be a little more mindful ever since you and the guys narrowly prevented that plutonium incident.”

“Right. Good on you,” Vell said. He didn’t want to have his bones melted again if he could avoid it. “So...really nothing weird going on here today?”

“Well, not that I know of,” Freddy said. “You’re usually the guy who knows what’s weird.”

“I sure hope that’s true,” Vell said. “Keep it safe, I guess.”

Though he trusted Freddy, Vell still did a quick scan of the lab to see if anything was vibrating, leaking, or glowing in a way it should not be. Everything passed muster, so Vell shrugged and moved on. He left the lab and pulled out his phone to contact the rest of the loopers.

vharlan03:

anybody got a lead

our usual suspects are all being very well behaved

OnweNo1:

Nothing and nothing.

Lee:

I’m going to start shifting my focus.

I might be able to defend the campus from exploding heads, even without identifying the source.

You all should keep scouting though.

HARL33:

on it boss.

well turn up something.

Somebody always bumps into something random that helps solve the mystery

As the group chat continued to discuss the day’s circumstances, Vell walked past the magic creatures’ dedicated dorm. Two minotaurs were sitting around a picnic table, chatting away. One spoke perfect english, and the other responded in the guttural, grunting language of the minotaur’s. Vell’s ears perked up.

“Hey, hold on a second,” Vell said. “Isn’t that supposed to be translated?”

“Hmm? Ah yes, I suppose it should be,” the minotaur said. “Worry not, it is a minor error, soon to be corrected.”

“Well, uh, just call me curious, I guess,” Vell said. He held out his hand to the minotaur. “Vell Harlan. Nice to meet you.”

“Dimitris,” the minotaur said. He took Vell’s hand and shook it in a massive, furry grip. “My temporarily incomprehensible friend here is Grigoris.”

“Yeah, I heard. I actually speak a little minotaur, you know, I was in the rodeo circuit for a while back home and well, being a cowboy involves some interaction with cow men,” Vell said. Though there wasn’t a horse alive that could carry the titanic frame of a minotaur, some of them still found ways to entertain the crowds at rodeos. “I was really just wondering why it isn’t getting translated by the school. I have the Dean’s number, if there’s been a problem.”

“Oh no, not to worry, Dean Lichman has been most accommodating,” Dimitris said. “He has put in every effort, however, the nature of our language requires a bit more effort than most, simply put.”

“Oh yeah. Pretty complicated language.”

“Indeed.”

Grigoris grunted something Vell could barely understand, though he did pick out one word.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” Dimitris said.

“He said something about ‘labyrinthine’,” Vell said. Dimitris sighed.

“Well, yes, he did say that the complexities of our mother tongue are ‘labyrinthine’ to navigate,” Dimitris said. “I was simply trying to avoid such a base comparison. Our people cannot be reduced down to an obsession with labyrinths.”

Grigoris grunted again.

“Yes, I like labyrinths and you like labyrinths, but there’s so much more to us than that! We are rich and complex individuals with a bevy of different interests. I am studying to be an architect.”

Grunt.

“Not just to build better labyrinths!”

“I’m, uh, sure about that, but can I ask you something about your language?”

Vell was starting to form an idea in his head, and he needed a few more pieces to make it fit.

“So long as it doesn’t have anything to do with labyrinths,” Dimitris said. Grigoris was giggling behind him.

“I just wanted to know about the word, uh, ‘could’,” Vell said, flinching slightly as he dared to say it. “Is that word particularly complex, in minotaur?”

“Oh yes, particularly so,” Dimitris said. “The myriad complexities of intonation and syllabic enunciation when pronouncing the word can cause it to have thousands of different meanings depending on the speaker’s intent. Flaring one’s nostrils the right way can completely change the meaning of an entire sentence.”

“I see. And, uh, continuing my trend of weirdly specific questions, when you mentioned that Dean Lichman was putting in the effort, is he doing something to help get your language translated today?”

“Why yes, in fact,” Dimitris said. “We should be getting our entire language woven into the school’s translation spell later this very day.”

“Oh neat.”

Vell pretended to pull out his phone and press a few buttons on the screen.

“Okay nice meeting you guys but I have to go do a thing, bye.”

Vell hurried off and returned his attention to his phone. It occurred to him that he could have actually texted Lee while he’d been pretending to use his phone earlier, but it was too late for that now. He got to feel like an idiot twice over as he sent his messages to the group chat and requested Lee’s help with the school’s translation spell.

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“Well that’s far more intense than I was expecting,” Vell said.

“You were expecting a glowing sphere, maybe?”

“Yes.”

The translation spell that allowed students of all languages to communicate and be understood without issue was engraved into massive stone slabs, all covered in arcane symbols that glowed with bright octarine light. The magically imbued rosetta stones had samples from every language known to man or myth, and rotated in slow circles around a central pillar of arcane light.

If Vell’s hunch was correct, the addition of the minotaur’s incredibly complex word for “could” was going to overload the translation spell, making anyone who said the wrong word have their brain supercharged with volatile magical energy. Lee agreed, which was good, since Vell didn’t actually know as much about how magic worked and had just thrown together whatever weird details sounded right. Now it was just a matter of preventing the malfunction and keeping everyone’s heads from exploding.

“So...what do we do?”

“I’m still thinking,” Lee said. Given that the other loopers had about seven IQ points worth of magical expertise between the four of them, only Vell and Lee were on dealing with the spell, while the others went to Dean Lichman to delay the spell modification. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re the expert,” Vell said. Lee glanced at him sideways for a moment, and though she tried to keep her attention on the spell, and how to fix the problem that was about to make heads go pop, Lee could not focus.

“You know, Vell, Harley and I did talk about how things went down while my head was missing,” Lee said.

“Okay.”

“And perhaps I should have made this formal sooner, but I do consider you my deputy, as it is. Second in command, backup, whatever phrase you prefer,” Lee said.

“The phrasing isn’t really the issue,” Vell said.

“I know, I think I was just ranting to fill space,” Lee said. “This isn’t exactly a comfortable conversation for either of us, Vell dear. I’m not really…”

The magic light bathing the room washed over Lee for a moment as she fell silent.

“I am graduating at the end of this year,” Lee said. She didn’t enjoy lingering on the idea, but it was inescapable. “And that means that next year, you will be in charge.”

“I sort of figured we’d just shift to a democratic approach,” Vell mumbled.

“Democracy works well when deciding lunch, dear, not so much for deciding what to do when Bastet and Apep are fighting in the Rocketry Lab,” Lee said. “Somebody needs to make decisions in the heat of the moment.”

“Something I am historically bad at,” Vell said.

“I don’t agree. You’re the whole reason we’re here, after all.”

“It was a complete coincidence,” Vell said. The fact he’d happened to walk by two minotaurs at the right time was the only reason they’d gotten this far. “Anyone could have been in the right place at the right time.”

“And would anyone else have bothered to notice the translation errors, or connected the dots between that and today’s incident?”

Lee reached over and gave Vell a firm pat on the back, to straighten out the slouch he always took on when he was doubting himself. Once he was back to his full towering height, Lee continued.

“Being in the right place at the right time means nothing if you aren’t the right person,” Lee said. “And you are the right person. In so many ways.”

Vell nervously rubbed the back of his neck and said nothing.

“It can be hard to feel confident in yourself in situations like this, I know,” Lee said. “But eventually you learn to deal...with...uncertainty.”

The magic glow washed over Lee’s face as she raised a finger to point at the pillar-shaped translation spell.

“That’s our solution,” Lee said. “Deal with uncertainty. We have to build some kind of failsafe into the spell. Teach it what to do when it’s overwhelmed.”

“Okay, sounds good, how do you do that?”

“I can’t, magic doesn’t work like that,” Lee said. “One spell does one thing. But…”

“But runes can use magic to form more complex systems,” Vell said. “Should’ve figured this would come back to me. Alright, let me think…”

After digging through his bookbag for a moment, and bringing out his phone to see what his current inventory of usable runes was like, Vell sat down on the floor and started drawing out potential diagrams in his notebook.

“Alright. ‘Excess’, ‘Failure’, then ‘Redirect’...the energy has to go somewhere, where should it go?”

Lee stayed quiet and let Vell scrawl down a few more notes.

Moments later, he put the notebook down and took a picture of it with his phone.

“Let me just get a second opinion here…”

A few of Vell’s classmates, and Joan, helped provide some much-needed feedback on his cobbled-together rune sequence. They also provided a few awkward questions about what the fuck he was trying to do that Vell very deliberately ignored. After making a few minor adjustments to the sequence he’d designed, Vell summoned the runes he’d need, while Lee fetched some additional materials from her purse.

“Okay, survey says this’ll work, but there’s no way to know for sure until, well, you know,” Vell said.

“It’ll work,” Lee assured him.

After slotting the runes into the correct sequence and charging them with magic, Lee did the work of connecting the translation spell to Vell’s failsafe mechanism. While making the minor modifications to the spell, Lee also threw in a secure pass-phrase that would hopefully trigger the same overflow reaction as the ‘could’ problem.

“So, how do we test it?”

“Like this,” Lee said.

“Wait, don’t-”

“Excel Excite Castor Slash Pollux Burrows,” Lee said. Vell flinched as the runes in his sequence surged to life, flared with energy, and then faded back into silence. Lee held up a hand to pat her very much intact head. “Well, I’d say that’s a success.”

“Please don’t do things like that,” Vell said. Lee shrugged. “And also, what the hell was that?”

“My full name, technically,” Lee said. “My mother once got high on peyote and ‘foresaw’ that her first pregnancy would be twins she decided to name Excel Castor and Excite Pollux. When I was born they just jammed the two names together and shortened them into XL-X8 C/P.”

“That’s horrifyingly on-brand,” Vell said.

“Agreed. Shall we be on our way?”

Lee gestured to the door, and let Vell take the lead as they left the magic chamber behind.

“So...when it comes to ‘dealing with uncertainty’,” Vell began. “What’s your secret?”

“Well, I have two very specific secret weapons that help me deal with any moment of uncertainty or doubt,” Lee said.

“And those are?”

“The first one I like to call Harley, and the other goes by Vell.”

Vell blushed profusely and headed out of the room with no more questions.