Vell hopped out of bed first thing in the morning, waking far earlier in the morning than he had the previous loop. He was surprised to find he didn’t even have a headache from his head-first brush with death. Intent on getting a head-start to the day to better avoid the aforementioned head-first end, Vell powered through a shower and breakfast, then pulled out his phone. Harley had apparently beaten him to the group chat.

HARL33:

me n vell were in the lunchroom when the gravity turned off

no sign of gravity turner-offer

u guys see anything

Lee:

I was in class. Nothing there.

Please search fast, our deadline is 1:28 PM. Fairly early, all things considered.

vharlan03:

are there any antigrav dev on campus? ill check them

Galgamesh:

There’s only one on campus.

Under the Ballball field.

We should check there first.

vharlan03:

i assume thats leanne?

HARL33:

ya shes way more talkative over text lol

Galgamesh:

Just come to the field ASAP.

The field wasn’t far from Vell’s dorm, so he left his books behind, intending to swing back before he had to be in class. Since he now knew how to get to all his classes, Vell had plenty of spare time to deal with the daily apocalypse. Vell gave himself a pat on the back for his preparedness and headed for the scene of the disaster.

The athletic facilities at the Einstein-Odinson college were underfunded, as one might expect in a college full of tech nerds and mages, so the stadium had very little seating. The field itself was the usual regulation size: one levitating sphere with a one-hundred yard diameter. The astroturfed orb hovered in the air, rotating slightly in the breeze as Vell approached. A sign on the outside of the stadium proudly proclaimed: “This stadium is the home, and birthplace, of the most exciting sport of the twenty-first century: Ballball, the only sport played with a ball, and on a ball!”

Vell wasn’t sure how Ballball had ever caught on, but it had. He shook his head and walked to the stadium’s sub-level, where the anti-gravity generator would be found.

Leanne was already there waiting for him. This time she looked like her usual self -dressed in tight athletic garb, with her hair neatly groomed and tied into an orderly ponytail. The donuts were also noticeably absent. On the second loop, she acted the part of the ideal athlete that her physique showed her to be. Leanne gave Vell a nod in greeting and nothing else. He kicked his heels and checked his phone a few times before trying to spark a conversation.

“So, uh, you play Ballball, I’m guessing?”

Leanne nodded, and said nothing. Vell took the hint, and waited silently for the arrival of Harley and Lee. Soon enough, the door slammed open as Harley made her usual exuberant entrance, followed shortly, and quietly, thereafter by Lee.

“Alright ladies plus Vell, let’s cancel today’s apocalypse,” Harley said. She strapped on a pair of goggles, and Vell looked between her and the gravity device worriedly.

“Is this thing dangerous? Should we be wearing goggles?”

“Oh, no, it’s perfectly safe,” Harley said. “I just think goggles look good on me. Anyway! Let me look at the thingy.”

Leanne took a few steps to the left and pointed to a part of the anti-grav device. It was a massive construct, easily twice as tall as Leanne, with two dozen towering metal pillars surrounding the central cylinder mechanism. As far as she knew, this was the only anti-grav device on campus. Harley gave the towering machine a leery eye as she examined it from top to bottom.

“This one ain’t it,” Harley said. “These Tyngdekraften models are rock solid, except for the occasional shoddy central rotor, and this one got a replacement recently. Our culprit is somewhere else.”

“Where should we start?”

“Fuck if I know,” Harley said. “I’ll hook up some scanners on Botley and have him do laps around campus. The rest of you walk around and use your human eyeballs or something.”

Harley walked off, muttering about optic scanners. Leanne followed two steps behind, eager to be on her way.

“So, where would I start if I was looking for an anti-gravity device?” Vell asked. Lee shrugged her shoulders.

“I’ll ask some of my contacts in the faculty if any experiments are planned,” Lee said. “But it could just as easily be a student’s independent project. We’ll have to put in some legwork, dear.”

With that, Lee spun on her heel, tripped and fell flat on her face as she spun. Vell watched her as she laid on the ground for a second.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” Lee mumbled. She started to pick herself up off the ground. “Please don’t tell Harley about that.”

Vell and Lee shared a conspiratorial nod before Lee walked off. She managed to stay on her feet this time. Vell, in the absence of any actual directions, decided to get ready for class, keeping an eye out for faulty anti-gravity devices as he went.

The walk from the Ballball field to his dorm failed to produce any shoddy anti-grav mechanisms, so Vell focused on his classes, and on solving one problem he knew he could solve. Vell grabbed his bookbag and headed out the door. He stopped to tap Renard on the shoulder while he was talking to Joan, who Vell technically hadn’t met yet.

“Hey Renard, there was someone’s bag still on the counter in there,” he said. “Did you forget your bag?”

“I’ve got it right here, dude,” Renard said, patting the bag that was quite clearly hanging at his side. In turn, Joan put a hand to her own bare side.

“Oh shit, but I think I forgot mine,” Joan said. She turned to run. “Thanks for the reminder! I owe you one!”

Vell waved goodbye as Joan ran off. Now she’d be able to buy herself lunch, since Vell wouldn’t be around to buy it for her. He’d probably still be spending his lunch break looking for the source of the gravity mishap. With that good deed done, Vell headed to his first class of the day. Leanne was sitting exactly where she’d been on the first loop. She gave him another nod as he approached and sat down.

“Any luck finding our culprit?”

Leanne shook her head and waited for class to start. Right about now Vell wished he’d spent more time on alert on the first day instead of going to classes. There were some advantages to having attended class on the first loop, though. Vell and Leanne waited patiently for the professor to arrive and, after sharing a look, they covered their ears just in time for Professor Montgomery to sound the air horn.

With the morning oddity out of the way, Vell’s classroom routine settled into normalcy -with occasional breaks to scan for a malfunctioning anti-gravity generator. Since he already knew how to get around campus and he’d reviewed all the lesson plans and syllabi already, he had plenty of time between classes to scout for any sign of a technological breakdown. Time, however, did not equate to success, and Vell was getting decidedly more worried the closer he got to lunchtime.

With only about half an hour left to go, Vell passed by the dining hall, just in time to see Joan headed the other way. She perked up at the sight of him, locking on to him with her red eyes.

“Hey there,” she said. “Thanks again for the reminder this morning. You really saved my bacon.”

“No problem,” Vell said. “Just a lucky break for you, I guess.”

“Well, I still owe you one,” Joan said. “My name’s Joan Marsh. I live three rooms down from you and Renard, so you come knocking if you ever need anything.”

“I’m Vell. Nice to meet you,” Vell said, mentally adding “again”. He wanted to rush through re-introducing himself. He’d already had a perfectly pleasant conversation with Joan, all about rune tech and disappearing stairs.

And a neighbor who apparently had a workaround for disappearing stairs.

“Oh hey, just as a heads up, I also heard they just remove the stairs around here from time to time,” Vell said. He had a sneaking suspicion he knew the solution to his anti-gravity dilemma, but it seemed almost too good to be true.

“Oh yeah, I heard the same thing,” Joan said.

“Oh really, who’d you hear it from?”

“Yeah, it was my neighbor actually, on the far side from you and Renard’s room,” Joan said. “Fred, I think his name was.”

“Huh, super interesting,” Vell said. “Why’d that get brought up? Did he have some kind of solution for disappearing stairs?”

“Uh...yeah, I guess,” Joan said. “I think he had some kind of levitation doohicky he was working on.”

“Oh wow that sounds super cool, think I’m going to go check it out,” Vell said. “Thanks Joan! See you around!”

Vell dashed off, waving goodbye to Joan over his shoulder. She gave him an odd look as he ran away.

“See...you?” Joan said. Vell’s sudden and awkward energy was strange, yet somehow endearing.

Vell raced back to his dorm, stopping long enough to send a message to the group chat explaining what he had found out. If his suspicions were correct, then Joan’s neighbor might be responsible for the anti-gravity malfunction that was going to kill them all in about twenty minutes. Lacking any better leads, the group decided to follow up on Vell’s hypothesis.

After making a mad dash for the dorm rooms, Vell stopped to compose himself before he knocked on the door. His improv skills weren’t stellar to begin with, and showing up out of breath wouldn’t help. Vell leaned on the door frame and tried very hard to act casual as he raised his hand and knocked on the dorm’s door.

The room’s sole resident sheepishly opened the door moments later. He was short and scrawny, and about ten percent of his overall mass consisted of a tuft of frizzy red hair. He adjusted a pair of thick round glasses and looked up at Vell.

“Can I help you?”

“Hi, I’m Vell Harlan,” Vell said. “And you are?”

“Frederick Froilan Frizzle,” the fuzzy fellow said.

“Nice to meet you, Fred, I was -wait, Frizzle? As in-”

“Yes. She’s my aunt.”

“Wow. Well, I was wondering, I was talking to Joan, you met her, nice girl, red eyes, and she mentioned that you were working on a levitation doohicky, and I was wondering if I could check it out.”

“Uh, wow, well, now’s really not a good time for that,” Fred said.

“Got some slight technical difficulties?” Vell said.

“You could say that.”

“Well I just so happen to have some friends who can help with that,” Vell said. He pulled his phone out and pretended to text for a second. “My buddy Harley knows all about anti-gravity devices.”

“Does she know anything about central rotor issues on Tyngdekraften models?”

“As a matter of fact, she does,” Vell said.

At Freddy’s invitation, Vell stepped inside and took a look at Fred’s project. It resembled the anti-grav generator he’d seen earlier, though built out of spare parts and kitbashed components. Also unlike the earlier, professionally made anti-grav device, the central spinning mechanism was lopsided. Vell only had a few seconds to consider it’s damaged appearance before Harley busted through the door. She paused for a second to gawk at Fred’s mass of fuzzy hair, and then turned her attention to the faulty anti-grav device.

“Hoo boy, your rotor’s fucked, fuzzball” Harley said. “Do you mind if I call you that? It’s just I cannot get over how fluffy you are.”

“It’s fine,” Fred said. His face was about as red as his hair, and Vell got the feeling Freddy would let Harley call him whatever she wanted.

“Okay, let’s see what we got,” Harley said. She put her goggles on and poked through Fred’s kitbashed anti-grav device. “Hmm, yep, you’ve got some stress warping on the interior rotor. Looks like you based this off a Tyngdekraften Model F, am I right?”

“Absolutely right, yes,” Fred said.

“Well then it’s going to take some serious pressure to get this thing back in alignment. Usually it would require some heavy machinery, but I know a good replacement. She should be getting here shortly.”

Harley paused for a moment and looked at the door. Leanne failed to appear.

“Okay, might be a second,” Harley said. “Meanwhile, how about I get your name, fuzzball?”

“Frederick Froilan Frizzle,” he stammered. Harley’s head cocked to the side.

“Like the Frizzle?”

“Yes. My aunt.”

“Neat! Nice to meet you, Frizz,” Harley said. “So were you working on this thing before you got here or did you throw this together in two days?”

“It’s a long-term project, but I did assemble it here,” Freddy said. Vell didn’t know how difficult it was to put together an anti-gravity generator, but judging from how impressed Harley looked, he could assume it was very difficult.

Leanne chose that moment to appear, with Lee in tow. Harley gestured triumphantly to their new arrival. Vell and Harley got the other two members of the team up to speed while Fred occupied himself straightening up his room. He did not seem accustomed to having guests, especially not female guests. Harley wrapped up her explanation of the malfunction and moved on to the solution.

“So I’m thinking Leanne just needs to juice up and push the rotor back into alignment before this thing fires up,” Harley said. Leanne sighed.

“Couldn’t we just...not fire it up?” Lee suggested. “Frederick seems reasonable enough.”

“Yeah, which is why I’m thinking he probably didn’t flip the switch yesterday,” Harley said. “Anybody smart enough to build an anti-gravity generator out of spare parts wouldn’t turn it on with a shoddy rotor.”

She’d had plenty of time to think about it while waiting for Leanne to show up, and Freddy just didn’t strike her as the reckless type. Considering the way he stammered while talking to her, he lacked the confidence to even talk to girls, much less activate an untested and clearly flawed anti-gravity generator. A small detail from the first loop’s events created a possible explanation, however. Harley expounded on her theory.

“I’m guessing the lights flickering just before things started floating was a power surge that accidentally sparked up Fuzzball’s generator.”

“A reasonable assessment on all counts,” Lee said. “Leanne, would you mind?”

With a sigh, Leanne started digging through her purse. Lee patted her on the shoulder.

“Thank you, dear,” Lee said. “I’ll go fetch a bucket.”

“What’s the bucket do?” Vell asked.

“It’s a bucket, Vell, it holds liquids,” Lee said, just before leaving. Vell turned to Harley instead.

“I mean like, specifically in this case,” he continued. Harley held up a finger to shush him.

“Shh. Yo Freddy Fuzzball, what angle did you solder this at? I need to know where my friend should be pushing.”

Freddy explained his methods to Harley. Vell, still absent an explanation on the bucket, turned to Leanne. She raised an eyebrow in his direction, and Vell decided to not even bother asking.

Leanne withdrew a small vial from her bag and followed Harley’s lead as she instructed where to push and how hard. After popping the lid off the vial and downing the contents in a single gulp, Leanne braced her shoulder against the makeshift machine and pushed. Her sizable muscles bulged, and then turned black.

Threads of metallic black spread through Leanne’s exposed arms, webbing along her veins and slowly diffusing across her muscles. With a grunt of exertion, Leanne pushed against the broken machine, and it slowly bent back into place. The creak of metal against metal grated the air, and Vell and Fred covered their ears. Harley, meanwhile, examined the scene -specifically Leanne’s bulging muscles- with a broad smile.

“Nanomachines, son,” Harley said. “I told you Leanne was the team muscle, those muscles are just augmented.”

With a final herculean push, the rotor creaked into place. Fred and Harley looked it over, and determined that Leanne had straightened out everything that needed straightening out. The two techies did some final touches to make sure everything would stay where Leanne had pushed it. While they soldered and straightened, Lee returned with the bucket. Leanne grabbed it before Lee even had time to announce her return.

Finally answering all of Vell’s bucket-related questions, Leanne leaned over the bucket and vomited. The black rapidly faded out of her veins and muscles as it poured out of her mouth and into the bucket. Vell recoiled in disgust, bumping into Harley, who bumped him right back.

“Haha, yeah, this happens every time,” Harley said. “Got to get the nanomachines out somehow, and every other alternative is even worse. I think this is part of why she doesn’t like our group much.”

Leanne stopped vomiting long enough to glare at Harley, and then leaned over the bucket once again.

With all bucket-related activities wrapped up, Lee checked her phone’s clock. The time was currently 1:27pm and counting. In less than a minute, they’d have caught up to the previous loop’s apocalypse. It was time to see if they’d solved the problem. The clock hit 1:28.

The lights above flickered, and then an electric crackle sounded from the walls. With a small spray of sparks, Freddy’s anti-gravity device sputtered to life. The rotors started to spin, slowly at first, then faster and faster as the machine picked up speed. Freddy, who was keeping a close eye on his machine, pounded away at a few buttons. Vell got an unpleasant sense of deja vu as his feet drifted off the ground. Thankfully, Freddy Frizzle slammed his fist down on a big red button and the drifting stopped, leaving them all hovering in place.

“Oh geez, good thing you guys came,” Fred said. “If this thing had kicked on with the rotors still out of alignment, I’d never be able to control it. Geez, I don’t even know what would have happened.”

“Probably would’ve killed the entire campus,” Harley said. Now that the threat of death was no longer involved, she rather enjoyed the feeling of weightlessness. She spun in mid-air and kicked off one of the dorm room walls, launching across the room towards Vell.

“Why don’t you leave this thing on for a bit, fuzzball? This is cool.”

“I concur,” Lee said. She had kicked her feet up and was lounging weightlessly in the air. “This is rather relaxing.”

Vell put a hand to his chin as he watched some of Fred’s tools drift past his face. As fun as it was, this device was making everything in the room float, not just the people.

“Did anybody put a lid on that bucket?” Vell asked.

In answer, Leanne screamed.

About twenty minutes later, a very upset and very thoroughly scrubbed Leanne stepped out of the bathroom in Vell’s dorm. Her hair was still wet from the shower, and Vell handed her a hairdryer he’d borrowed from Joan’s dorm. She had kindly let him borrow it with no explanations needed, which was great, because Vell didn’t know how to explain that his friend was washing nanomachine vomit out of her hair. Leanne nodded, returned to the bathroom, and Vell went back to sitting in his dorm in silence.

Silently emerging once again several minutes later, Leanne left the dorm without a word, handing the hairdryer off to Vell before she left. After a few minutes of awkward silence, his phone buzzed. He opened up the chat client and saw a private message from Leanne.

Galgamesh:

Alright I figure I should tell you.

The silent treatment isn’t personal.

I just try not to engage with this whole time loop thing too much.

It kind of drives you a little crazy.

Vell looked away from his phone for a moment, and thought of Harley.

vharlan03:

i guess i see what you mean

but you and lee seem pretty normal

Galgamesh:

LOL

Get to know us better.

Lee might be crazier than Harley.

Just try and stay grounded.

vharlan03:

ill try

can i ask you a question?

Galgamesh:

Depends on the question.

vharlan03:

just wanted to know about ur username actually

galgamesh???

Galgamesh:

LOL long story.

Short version:

Nickname from some old members of the crew.

I fought Gilgamesh

vharlan03:

did you win

Galgamesh:

Yeah but I cheated.

Nanomachines, son.

See you tomorrow V.

vharlan03:

ill bring earplugs for prof montys class

Galgamesh:

Good thinking.

I’ll save you a donut.

Vell put his phone away, and looked out the open doorway. His lunch break was almost over, and he had to get to class. He grabbed the hairdryer on the way out and headed for Joan’s room. She was talking to Freddy in the hallway, and they both perked up at the sight of him.

“Hey, Vell,” Joan said. “Freddy was just telling me about what happened. You got a real knack for being in the right place at the right time, you know that?”

“Just, uh, lucky, I guess,” Vell said. He handed over the hairdryer and tried to change the subject.

“Well, thanks for that, but I have to head to class,” Vell said. “Adios.”

“I should head out too,” Joan said. “See you around, Freddy. Goodbye, Vell.”

“Yep, see you soon,” Vell said. He and Joan then set off walking in exactly the same direction. They exchanged an awkward smile and nod and kept heading along their own paths -side by side. They made it around three corners before realizing they weren’t going to be parting ways any time soon, and that they’d said goodbye for nothing.

“Are you headed to Runes and Biology 101?” Joan asked.

“With Professor Parson? Yeah,” Vell said.

“Huh. Guess we’re classmates,” Joan said. “Always nice to know someone in your classes. You can just sleep through the lecture and then borrow their notes.”

“Oh, yeah, that sounds cool,” Vell said. “You plan on napping today?”

Vell was being entirely serious, but Joan laughed anyway. She stayed right by Vell’s side as they walked to class together.