“Hey, I found Feng!”
Todd and Xavier looked over at Mark to see him motioning the two of them to come to the door of the theater. The Raijū made his way over to the white-furred fox, with the white stag following close behind. Todd quickly entered the theater and looked inside. Feng was standing on the stage, bending down to pick something up. In his left arm, he held a small Dormarch that Todd had never seen before. Not far from him was a chair that looked like one of the props for the magic show. The stage crew must’ve forgotten to take it backstage.
“Feng!” Todd shouted, getting the Kirin’s attention. The Raijū ran into the theater and up onto the stage, stopping in front of Feng. The Kirin looked him up and down, a confused look on his face.
“Todd?” he asked. “What happened to you? I heard the screams and the electricity from downstairs, and I thought-”
“I died?” Todd asked, cutting him off. “Sure does seem like literally everyone thinks that I’m the most likely to die. I wonder if it has anything to do with people constantly leaving me alone when there’s danger.”
“I-I didn’t mean…”
“Just forget it.” The Raijū sighed and shook his head. “Where’s Roc? And what’s with the Dormarch?” Feng didn’t say anything as he held out his right hand, revealing the three chips he was holding. Todd looked at the chips and frowned.
“Mind Dolan beat him,” Feng explained. “I’m not sure what happened. By the time I got here, I just saw Roc’s body…disappear.”
“What happened to Mind Dolan?” Mark asked, sitting down in the chair. “Did he get away?”
“No, I turned him into that chair you’re sitting in.” Mark jumped off the chair quickly, causing it to fall backward.
“Why a chair?” Xavier spoke up. “Why not something more interesting, like a sex toy or a machine?”
“Because I’m not a fucking pervert,” Feng snapped. “Let’s just hurry and find a blank to put Roc’s chips into.” Feng turned around and started to walk off the stage, but Todd grabbed his arm.
“Hang on,” the Raijū said. “You never said what the deal was with the Dormarch you’re carrying. Where’d you get it?”
“What, you mean Rover?” the Kirin asked, confused. “I’ve always had Rover.”
Now it was Todd’s turn to be confused. “Feng, I’ve never once seen that Dormarch before in my life,” he said. “What if he was someone we knew? Come to think of it…aren’t we missing someone? Who all have we been working with?”
“Uh…let me think,” Mark spoke up. “There’s you, me, our Xarxos, Troy, Feng/Prime Xarxos, Rok, Xavier…that’s everyone, right?”
“Yeah, but I can’t help but feel like there was someone else,” Todd replied. “Maybe they were turned into a Dormarch and erased from reality. That would explain why we don’t remember them.”
“Sucks to be them, I guess,” Xavier said, shrugging his shoulders and earning glares from Todd, Mark, and Feng.
“Why couldn’t he have been the one to be erased from reality?” Mark muttered under his breath.
-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-==-
The group went back downstairs to the main lobby, where a few blanks from the bathroom were still wandering around aimlessly. With few Dolans around to tell them what to do, they all seemed lost. Todd held out his hand to Feng and the Kirin dropped Roc’s chips into the Raijū’s hand. Todd grabbed the arm of one of the nearby blanks.
“Real sorry about this,” Todd said to the blank before pressing the chips into his head one by one.
Almost immediately, the man began to change. His body slowly began to increase in size, gaining muscle in his arms, legs, and chest, with ribbons of fat criss crossing his changing form. As his belly began to bulge out slightly, a large metal belt *popped* into place to hold up his pants.
“God…my head…” the man complained, his voice beginning to deepen. As he clutched the side of his head with one hand, his eyes migrated to the center of his face and merged into one, large eye. A single horn burst through the new cyclops’ growing forehead.
Feng stepped forward and placed the Book of Divination into the transforming cyclops’ left hand, and it immediately burst into sparks of energy. The sparks quickly shot into the changing man’s pupil, merging the book with his eye.
As the new cyclops’ skin turned rough and blue, his hands began to lose digits. Three thick fingers now held his face as his shoes shifted from casual dress shoes to laced sandals.
As the changes subsided, the cyclops removed his hands from his face. He blinked for a second and looked around the room before his gaze fell on the group in front of him.
“Uh…why are you guys staring at me?” Rok asked, earning a sigh of relief from everyone. “What happened? The last thing I remember was my battle with Mind Dolan. Well actually, it wasn’t really a battle.”
“I’m not entirely sure what happened, but I know that you lost,” Feng said. “Thankfully your chips dropped out. I managed to get them and your book after I turned Mind Dolan into a chair.”
“What happened to ED Dolan?”
“Turned him into a plushie for Rover.”
“And Robo?”
“Mark turned me into a Raijū and I fried his circuits,” Todd spoke up.
“Huh…cool. Is Troy still angry?”
“We haven’t seen him ever since the incident in the bathroom,” Mark said. “We should probably go find him. There are still other Dolans that are more than capable of stealing his book.”
“You’re right, we should go looking for him before one of the Dolans gets a jump on him,” Feng said. “We’ll stick together and search the casino so none of us get singled out. Let’s start on the Body floor.”
As the group moved to go up the stairs to the Body floor, Todd stayed where he was, eying the fire escape.
“You guys go on ahead,” he said, stepping towards the fire escape. “I’ve got something I need to take care of real fast.”
Feng stopped and turned to face the Raijū. “Let one of us go with you then,” he said. “Rok, you go with him.”
“No, don’t worry about me,” Todd objected. “Trust me, I’ve got this.” Before any of them could object (or blink), Todd was gone.
-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-==-
Dolan was scared. Really scared.
Just a few hours ago, he had everything under control. The money was flowing in, no one had gotten even close to challenging him for his book, and the other Dolans were (mostly) following him unquestionably. Now, everything was starting to go south.
He’d watched on the cameras as Feng took out both Mind and ED Dolan. He wasn’t concerned in the slightest. After all, another Dolan would just take their place. But after a minute passed and no one had taken their places, Dolan started to get concerned. He looked at some of the other cameras to find out where the other Dolans were, only to find that they’d all been stabbed in the leg or arm. None of them had died, but they were all far too weak to cast spells.
His gaze fell on the lobby camera, where he saw the deactivated corpse of Robo Dolan, and everything made sense. Just to make sure he wasn’t going crazy, Dolan quickly rewound the camera.
The footage started normally. Robo Dolan started using the Book of Time to mess with Todd and beat the shit out of him. He was about to deliver the finishing blow when lightning burst through the ceiling and struck Todd. The fox suddenly got up, started effortlessly dodging his robot self’s attacks, and then in the blink of an eye, he was a wolf. Before he knew it, Robo Dolan was lying deactivated on the floor.
At this point, Dolan had seen enough. He no longer had the advantage here, and he needed to escape if he wanted to fight another day. Clutching the Book of Time close to his chest, Dolan quickly left his office and made his way down the hall to where the fire escape was. He threw open the fire escape door, ready to sprint down the stairs faster than he’d ever run before in his life, only to be clocked in the face by a furry fist. The man shouted in pain as he recoiled backward, clutching his nose. He looked up at his assailant, and his heart sank.
“You’re looking pretty pale, Dolan,” Todd said as he stepped out of the fire escape stairwell and into the hallway. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
Not wasting a second, Dolan sprang to his feet and ran as fast as he could in the other direction. This was bad. Really bad. He turned his head and saw Todd standing in front of the fire escape, arms crossed with a look of impatience on his face. Why wasn’t he chasing him down? What was he playing at?
The panicked man threw open the doors to his office and quickly locked them behind him. There was no other way in or out of the room beside the penthouse elevator. He was safe. Now all he had to do was get in contact with one of the other Dolans and let them know that he was in danger. He turned around and started to walk over to his desk, only to cry out in shock when he saw Todd standing behind him.
“St-Stay back!” Dolan shouted. “D-Do you have any idea who you’re dealing with?!”
“Someone who’s clearly intimidated by me,” Todd replied. Quick as a serpent, the Raijū grabbed Dolan’s shirt and pinned him against the wall, holding the Book of Time in his other hand. “Now, you’re going to tell me everything I want to know, and if you so much as try to make a run for it, I’ll fry you to a crisp. Understand?”
Dolan nodded his head rapidly, and Todd dropped him to the floor.
“Now, let’s start off simple,” the Raijū said. “Why did you speed up time in Sebastian’s maze?”
“I…I…” The man stuttered for a second before taking a deep breath, his eyes narrowing. “Fine, I’ll tell you. You’re a threat to my victory.”
“And so is every other book user,” Todd retorted, rolling his eyes.
“But you were a threat that hadn’t been accounted for.”
“Explain.”
“Like I said during our first meeting: most versions of you don’t get involved with the books, and every version that did get involved ended up dead, transformed, or something else equally as bad. What I didn’t tell you, however, was that those who did get involved had the potential to become major threats to my victory. So, the other Dolans and I decided to snuff out the problem at the source. What none of us accounted for though was a timeline split with a .02% deviation from the prime timeline. A timeline with that little difference shouldn’t exist logically, but apparently, the Auditors wanted to spice things up a little.”
“And look how that’s turned out for you,” Todd remarked. “Maybe taking out various versions of me across the multiverse wasn’t such a good idea after all.”
Dolan scowled. "It doesn't matter. You don't even know the repercussions of using those powers of yours. You're just making it easier for one of us to kill you in the end."
The Raijū lowered his guard slightly, and Dolan smirked. He lunged for the Book of Time, but Todd quickly pressed the book against the tattoo on his left hand. There was a bright flash, and the book was gone.
“Now, let’s test this thing out…” Todd said. As Dolan started to get up and lunge at him again, the Raijū pointed at him and shouted “Freeze!” Instantly, Dolan was frozen in place, a look of anger plastered on his face as he was frozen in time.
“Huh…neat.” Todd walked away from Dolan and went over to his desk. Time to do some snooping. The Raijū began opening drawers and digging through Dolan’s belongings, looking for anything that could be useful. As he pulled some books off the shelves, a folded-up piece of paper fell to the floor.
“What do we have here?” the wolf asked as he bent down to pick up the paper. He gently unfolded the paper and slowly began to read what was written on it. It didn’t seem to be anything interesting…at first. As he began to read more, certain bits started to stand out.
“Wh-What is this…?” Todd muttered, reading more. “From the way all of this is worded, it sounds like…” The Raijū trailed off as his eyes went wide with realization.
“Oh. My. God.”
Dropping the paper, Todd bolted out of the office. He needed to get back to the others. Fast.