Location: Downtown Velstand (Park)

Time: 15:57 4/1/08

Alli was trying to push herself up off the ground and Emi Emi was nowhere to be seen. I wanted to think that Father never actually brought Emi Emi there. I wanted to think that. That didn’t make it true. Signs that Emi Emi had been there were scattered throughout the park.

Thinking logically though, the fact that she was missing was more promising than seeing her body on the ground. A dead person couldn’t have run away.

Basically, the scene before me was the result anyone would have expected. Despite what Alli had been saying, there was no way she would have been able to stand up against a professional killer. Even she probably knew that from the start, she was just trying to convince me to leave.

And I did. I believed her lie because it was convenient for me.

Unfortunately for Alli, there was one reason I picked this particular park as a battle ground that she hadn’t predicted. Thanks to it being within walking distance of the conference building, it was supposed to be evacuated after the fake terrorist attack was called in.

She might have been thinking she never had to win, only to hold on long enough for outside help to show up, but that wasn’t ever going to happen. I purposely picked a location that wouldn’t get any interference. I didn’t want the potential assailant to waste any time waiting for the right moment to strike.

I’d have to make it up to her by cleaning up the mess I created.

There was a man standing not too far from Alli. He was wearing a fancy suit with a matching top hat. I’d never seen him before, but he was without a doubt the one that came to kill them.

I looked over the clearing that had previously been their battle ground. Numerous objects were floating motionlessly in the air. Rocks, boulders, benches, tables, tree stumps, and even a water fountain. Pretty much any heavy object you’d be able to find in a park.

I’d known Alli for long enough to figure out what happened. She’d almost certainly been using those objects as impromptu weapons, but somehow that augmented in the top hat was keeping them locked in place.

Was it some kind of velocity control augmentation, or just general physic abilities? No, it couldn’t have been either.

That fluorescent orange energy that Emi Emi created couldn’t interact with the physical world. Inversely, that meant that anything involving the physical world couldn’t interact with it either. Despite that, I could notice multiple spears of Emi Emi’s energy frozen in the air, scattered amongst the other motionless debris.

Troublesome, but I didn’t have the time to think things over. Even though I hadn’t been involved in any real combat I had been fully connected to the information dimension for too long. My internal organs were getting dangerously close to failing. An instant, all out attack was my best bet.

The sudden rainstorm from earlier had cleared up, but there still weren’t any shadow’s connecting my current position to Mr. Top Hat. I’d just have to reach him the old-fashioned way.

As he checked his pocket watch I gathered lightning around my feet and blasted off the small wall I’d been using as cover. While flying through the air, I sent a bolt of lightning flying toward him.

The arcing black energy launched ahead of me before stopping suddenly. I only had a moment to observe my motionless lightning before flying past it myself.

In the next instant I felt a familiar sensation strike me in the back. It was my own power. After I had passed it, my motionless lighting started moving again.

Considering I covered myself in it on a regular basis, it didn’t hurt, but the impact altered my course. And because I was flying through the air with so much momentum, there wasn’t anything I could do to easily change my direction back to what it was.

Instead of smashing into Mr. Top Hat, I ended up careening toward a floating bench. The second before I made contact the bench started to move in my direction. There was no sudden start, no acceleration, it was instantly moving at top speed.

The force of the impact shattered the wooden bench and sent me tumbling to the ground. I rolled a few times before blasting the ground beneath me with a small burst of energy, sending me flying backwards.

The space I had been previously occupying was unceremoniously crushed by a large boulder. It’s not like I could sense that attack coming, I just assumed he would try to finish me off after catching me off guard the first time.

After landing, I looked back toward Mr. Top Hat and noticed him reorienting some of the floating objects.

So that’s what it was.

“You can stop time?”

Obviously he couldn’t do something as grand as stopping all of time. That kind of power would involve overturning the entire universe. But he could stop the time of individual objects. Then when the time was right he would unpause them, and they would continue on as if nothing happened. It seemed like he was capable of moving his frozen objects as well.

Although the fact that his time locked items continued to stay relative to the earth, which is moving around at thousands of kilometers per hour, meant that there’s more to it than I could figure out. Still, I got the jist of it.

“Time is always stopped, never backwards, never forwards. You just have a way of interpreting it.”

I didn’t understand what he was trying to say. It didn’t matter, not to me.

His augmentation was interesting, but once you figured it out there wasn’t much he could do. Forget being able to freeze other augmenteds, it didn’t even seem like his connection to the information dimension was strong enough to even alter the time of an object that another augmented was touching. If he could, he would have frozen my clothes earlier, making it impossible for me to avoid his attack.

I swiftly, but calmly, started moving toward him. Nothing dramatic, nothing risky. Numerous projectiles came launching at me, including some of Emi Emi’s power. I dodged them all without much trouble. At the end of the day, all he was capable of was sending Alli and Emi Emi’s attacks back at me. There was a limited number of them, and besides, it’s not like either of them would be able to get a hit on me anyway.

Sure, maybe twenty minutes or so of attacks were coming at me all at once, but that still wasn’t enough to even the odds between us.

After working my way through his assault I stood within meters of him. I pointed my knife at him while holding back a cough.

“Is your organization planning to make continued attacks on Oakley Oldridge?”

He looked puzzled with my question.

“Are we? Or did we already do that? It’s hard to say. Impossible even. My stigma makes it fun trying to figure out the difference between the past and the future. Did I already follow my orders?”

He wasn’t going to be cooperative. I decided to just kill him and be done with it. As I took a step forward he took a step back.

“Wait, or continue, one of those two. You don’t want to try it. I’m not supposed to die here.”

He took his hat off and reached inside of it, pulling out a cylindrical glass container. The insides of it were glowing a violent orangish red.

“I paused this, or will pause this. An explosion. A nuclear reaction. I’ll have to make sure to carry it with me always. Or rather, from your perspective, I made sure. Once I’m dead, my ability will die with me.”

And the so-called explosion would continue. I’m by no means an expert, but a nuclear reaction of that size would probably leave a dent.

“You really picked an annoyingly extravagant way to say ‘please don’t kill me’.”

“Maybe so, I’m not really sure yet.”

“Then what are you sure of? What exactly do you plan on doing?”

“Killing the two of them. No, wait. That’s what I was planning on doing, before. Had them both on the ropes. Then my luck turned. You showed up. Planning? Nothing more to do here, I’ll be leaving. The two of us aren’t supposed to kill each other.”

So he didn’t want to try anything else? Given what he held in his hands it’s not like I could refuse an offer of neutrality.

“But what about after that? Oakley Oldridge, Allison Albright, Emelia Emin. Are you going to continue to target them?”

“Hmm. Hard to say. I think I’ve already done all that. If it didn’t work, no need to try in the past. Can’t say what the prince will do, he hasn’t done it yet after all. Or maybe he has. I think he might have. What’s the date again?”

Useless nonsense. Even if he gave me a real answer it’s not like I would have trusted him. I only asked in order to satisfy my own ego. So I could pretend to be the hero.

“Where’s Emi Emi?” Another question I felt compelled to ask. Either way I was going to let him leave. I was too worn out. If his explosion went off I probably wouldn’t have been able to protect myself. Alli had no chance.

“She’s been a lot of places.”

“Where is she right now?”

“Can’t say. In a little bit, or a few minutes ago, she found herself standing on top of a metal sign that had been thrown by the other one a few minutes before that. I sent her flying. She’ll probably die from that. Or rather, she already died. I’ll only know one person lucky enough to somehow survive something of that nature.”

I lunged forward with my knife, but he managed to avoid my attack by launching himself straight into the air. He had choreographed our entire fight perfectly, so he’d end up standing on a large rock he’d already frozen and placed there.

Before falling back to earth, he reached in his jacket and pulled out a small metal rod. He then performed what I’m willing to bet will be the only midair bow I’ll see in my life.

Without warning or any time to properly accelerate, the rod he held firmly in his hand flew across the sky. In a matter of seconds I’d already lost sight of him.

I’d like to say I expected that, but I didn’t have the liberty to look that far ahead. If he had something as ridiculous as a nuclear explosion in his hat it only makes sense he’d carry around objects that he froze while they had high levels of force for a quick getaway.

Should I chase after him or check on Alli?

If given the choice, I almost certainly would have chased him down. Fortunately, my body gave out. Despite being a hot day I couldn’t help but notice I felt unnaturally cold while coughing up blood.

I pushed myself too far. Why?

Because I had to, or because I wanted to?

Those were my thoughts as I lost consciousness.

It didn’t take Alli and her abnormally sturdy body long to recover, and she carried me to the hospital. Amazingly enough, she actually ran into Emi Emi on her way out of the park. She was luckier than Mr. Top Hat thought.

Alli did mention to me later than Emi Emi seemed disappointed when she learned I’d already caused Mr. Top Hat to run away. Apparently she said something along the lines of:

“Even when I get a guaranteed winning ticket I still end up losing on all fronts.”

Later, after I regained consciousness in the hospital, Alli asked me an interesting question. She had been zoning in and out of it during my short conversation with Mr. Top Hat, so there were some details she didn’t follow. Her main question was how I knew he was going to avoid my last attack and run away.

The answer: I didn’t know. At that moment I was honestly trying to kill him. After hearing about Emi Emi supposedly being dead I acted on instinct. Whose instinct?

Certainly not mine.

I’m supposed to be a doll. The only instinct I have is what was programmed into me. Maybe that’s my problem. I was never meant to try and form relationships with anyone other than Mistress Oakley. I liked to call them friends, but was it possible that I was only capable of treating them like a lesser version of Mistress Oakley?

Of course, that’s not the answer I gave her. There’s no way I could have said something like that, especially since Emi Emi was in my hospital room as well.

Looking back, I said something along the lines of:

“Lie. When you’re as experienced as me something like that is no trouble.”

The two of them really look up to me, so I’m sure I had them completely fooled.

If only I could fool myself so easily. To me, the truth was becoming self-evident.

I had no idea. About anything.

What did any of my decisions mean? Was I right to lure the enemy to them? Was I right to abandon them? Was I right to silently watch over Mistress Oakley? What about when I abandoned her?

Was I right to get involved with any of it after originally taking a phone call from Alli?

Everything Seemed to work out well enough. Later I even learned that Father took care of things involving the death of the BAA Director, so even that was solved without incident.

But just because it didn’t end in tragedy didn’t make it appropriate for me to play a part in the first place. Everything could have just as easily went horribly wrong.

Despite everything seemingly working out I still couldn’t decide if I made the appropriate choices, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise. From the beginning, this has been nothing more than a query on responsibilities.