Time Looped

Finding someone in a ten-minute window was more difficult than one might expect. The irony was that the target of the chase was the person that people normally wanted to avoid. There was hardly anyone at school that didn’t know Alex and his annoying character. He was the type of person that gave nuisances a bad name. Even bullies only picked on him as a last resort. The only reason that he was tolerated at all was because beneath the initial layer of annoyance, he was actually fun. Also, everyone enjoyed watching him pester someone else from a distance, preferably a teacher.

“Where the heck could he go in ten minutes?” Will asked.

Every loop started with him rushing from somewhere about ten seconds in. Unfortunately, Will had never made it a point to see exactly where that was. The logical assumption was that it had to be from the outside. The goofball wasn’t the sort of student that willingly went to school early, so unlike Helen he couldn’t have been anywhere inside. That meant he had to come from the outside… yet where?

“Stone!” the coach roared. “Come down here right now!”

The boy looked at the ground below. A small crowd had gathered, busy taking pictures of him to post. A few teachers had joined in, their expressions a lot more serious. Given that he was standing on the school roof, that was to be expected. If a kid had a classmate that climbed to the top of the building, that would make them cool by association, especially if they took a photo of the event; if a teacher had one of their students there, they risked serious consequences.

“Just admiring the view, coach.” Will shouted back. This was the third time he’d tried to spot Alex in this fashion. And just like all the previous times, there was nothing to be seen. If one didn’t know better, it was almost as if his friend had never attended school.

His phone rang. The number was marked as unknown, but the boy knew who it was. At this point, he had remembered it by heart.

“Nothing,” he said upon accepting the call. “Any luck on your end?”

“No,” Helen replied. “He still got the files.”

That wasn’t good, although it confirmed that he was still somewhere in the school area. After the first loop running about school in an attempt to find Alex, Helen had come up with the idea to try and get Daniel’s files. According to general logic, if the goofball was running from them, there was a chance that he could have disrupted his usual routine, rendering him unable to snatch the pieces of paper. Unfortunately, that hadn’t occurred.

“What about the nurse’s mirror?”

“That’s not him.” The girl’s annoyance could be felt all the way through the phone. “It’s still taken.”

So you did check, Will said to himself triumphantly.

“Mister Stone,” the vice principal shouted. “I don’t know what made you go up there, but you won’t find any answers. I can sympathize with what you’re going through. It’s been difficult for everyone. I’m sure that a talk with the school’s counselor will manage to put your fears at bay.

“He’s not even here,” the boy shouted. Maybe it was a bit harsh of him to say so, but after chasing someone throughout school for twenty loops, he had no tolerance for bullshit.

“Doctor June is on his way. He merely had a slight traffic problem. He’ll be here by the time you get down.”

As if.

Less than two minutes remained until the end of the loop. There was no chance that the vice principal would get to see him climbing down, even if he wanted to. Not that this was a reason for him to do so. Getting down meant lots of questions and, despite what the harpy had promised, punishment. At the very least, his parents would be called. Most likely they already were along with the police, the firefighters, and likely an ambulance for good measure. If Helen or Alex had extended their loops, they would get a chance to see the entire thing.

The prospect seemed just as surreal as when the boy had heard it for the first time. From his perspective, each loop ended at the start of the next. For everyone else, though, it continued. Will could have all the fun and the non-looped him would pay the consequences.

“Hey,” he said into his phone. “Things keep going on after the loop, right?”

“We’ve been through this.”

“No, I mean, for everyone else.”

There was a long moment of silence.

“I don’t get it.”

“Once the longest loop of everyone in eternity is over, what happens?”

There was another pause, this time shorter. “You’re starting to sound like Daniel. He used to say that the loops were a dot in time from where an eternity of futures began. Each loop was a different future, and those futures existed in parallel, like alternatives.”

“Wow.” That sounded deep. Either that or the musings of someone who was bored after spending countless loops doing the same thing.

“Don’t go philosophical on me,” the girl said sharply. “It’s not worth it.”

“What about before the start?”

“I just told you not to—”

“We’ve been trying to find Alex based on what he’s been doing after the start of the loop. What if we look before?” This time the momentary pause suggested that the girl had grasped his idea. “Even if he’s got the ability to teleport, he can only get that after the loops begin and not before.”

“He can’t hide what he’s been doing before the start of the loop,” Helen said. “And people will remember it.”

“Yeah.” The boy smiled. “We don’t chase him to find out where he’s been. We just ask people that are there.”

“Sounds good. Who do we start with?”

“I think I have an idea.”

Restarting eternity.

The school building was in front of him once more. The boy looked around. Inevitably, the familiar pair of girls passed by. One of them instantly noticed him looking at her and winced.

“What do you want, weirdo?”

“Your number?” He gave a confident smile.

“Dream on!” The girl laughed, looking away.

Noticeably, her pace of walking slowed down a bit. Her friend tried to subtly pull her along to restore the speed, but the resistance was stronger than expected.

“Hey, hold up. I have a question for you.”

Both girls looked at Will, one clearly more disapproving than the other.

“Did any of you see Alex today?”

“Muffin boy?” One of the girls arched her brows. “Did he pester you for money, too?”

Now that the topic of conversation had shifted to the school fool, their attitude instantly changed. Alex was always a good source of gossip, whether it be talking with him, or talking about him.

“Did he pester you?” Will shifted the focus onto them.

“You have no idea.” One of the girls—the one with the purple highlights—rolled her eyes.

“Jess,” her friend said, on the border between a polite reminder and an annoyed hiss. “We’ll be late for class.”

“We won’t be that late!” Jess said, then turned back to Will. “He’s been begging for muffin money for weeks. Always the same story about forgetting his phone.”

That was a clear lie. Will knew his friend had his phone with him. Why lie, though? And why the obsession with muffins? Even if he loved them before, he’d quickly have gotten tired once the loops started. Right now, Will didn’t even want to look at chocolate mousse.

“I’ll get him to pay you back,” the boy said.

“It’s fine. No way I’d give anything to that weirdo.”

“Not with the way he steals,” the other joined in reluctantly. Despite her initial opposition, dumping on Alex came naturally. “I saw him breaking off car mirrors.” She snorted. “It wasn’t even good cars.”

“Car mirrors?” Will’s attitude suddenly changed.

That sounded like a thing. All this time he had been focusing on the mirrors within the school, or on rare occasions on buildings. Of course, there would be thousands of mirrors traveling along the streets every day.

“Where—?”

The boy’s phone rang.

“Sorry,” he offered a charming smile and picked up his phone.

For better or worse, that gave Jess’ friend the necessary initiative to pull her back to school. And to be honest, it wasn’t like the girl had a crush on Will… although given how readily she had engaged in a conversation, maybe there was something.

“He’s been buying muffins every morning for the last few months,” Helen said from the other end of the phone. “The guy calls him a regular. The football team have also seen him a few times this week.”

“How did you get there so fast?”

“I jumped out of the window,” Helen replied, as if it were the most common thing possible. “What about you?”

“Hold on.” The boy made his way to the school gate.

There were lots of cars, but none with their side mirrors missing. Alex couldn’t have gotten any of them without causing a loud fuss. In today’s day and age, it was impossible to get away from anything of the sort without someone taking a picture. At the very least, the people inside would have been able to provide a description.

“I think I know where his starting point is,” he continued along the school fence.

“Where?”

“The parking lot.”

“I checked that five loops ago.”

“The external parking lot.”

In theory, the spot Will was thinking of didn’t belong to the school. It was an open space of asphalt that shared a wall with the bricked part of the school fence. Officially, it was owned by the city and provided to the local businesses as a place where they could part their vehicles. However, after some aggressive negotiations on the school’s part, the less fortunate teachers—those that weren’t deemed important enough to park on the few spaces in school property—had been given parking permits as well. It would be a lot easier to snatch mirrors from there, although even that should have triggered alarms.

“That’s a way off,” the girl said. “Would take him over a minute to reach the entrance.”

“Not if he sprints.” Thinking back to the archer’s loop, Alex had proven to be quite fast—faster than when Will was a rogue even.

After another short while, the boy found out he was right. Of the two dozen cars parked there. Several had their side mirrors missing. To make it more sinister, it was only the reflective components that were gone. The plastic elements remained there, completely untouched. From a distance, one might even think that everything was fine. After all, what thief or vandal would take the time of carefully removing a mirror, and more importantly—why?

“He’s been here,” the boy said, standing at the corner of the lot. “He’s taken a lot of mirrors.”

“A lot of what?”

“Car mirrors. He snatched them.”

“Only static mirrors have an effect. The rest are useless.”

“I’m telling you what I’m seeing,” Will said, his glance moving from car to car. “I’m looking at five cars missing their mirrors. There’s no way that—” he stopped.

At the far end of the lot, there was a pole. At first, it seemed like a road sign that one could find in the city. However, after looking more carefully, the boy had found that it was a mirror—one of those places so people could get a glimpse of approaching cars as they went on and out of the parking lot. It was one of those city initiatives that was largely useless, however, not when it came to the looped.

“Will?” Helen asked. “You there?”

“Yeah. I think I found his mirror.”

Keeping the line open, the boy went to the pole with the mirror. The reflective surface was nothing more than a polished piece of metal—the cheapest durable solution the city could find. Yet, it still fulfilled the requirements of eternity. A greasy hand-print suggested that someone had given it a high-five at some point. There was no point in speculating who that might have been.

TRAP ACTIVATED

Entangled.

Will quickly looked at his feet. Beneath him there was a mirror pane the size of a large tile.

“Big oof, bro,” Alex said right behind him. “Didn’t think you’d fall for that twice.”

Deep inside, Will was cursing his head off. He really felt stupid for walking into that again. The last time he had the excuse of running along rooftops while dealing with the archer. This time, though, he had just stepped into it.

“Hey, Alex,” he said, trying to keep his external composure. “No muffins today?”

The goofball didn’t reply. Instead, he looked at a point in the distance as if calculating something.

“You shouldn’t have left the building, bro,” he said.

“Or what? I’d end up like Danny?”

“You’re clueless, bro. Anyone can take you out. Rogues explore. Knights fight. You—

KNIGHT’s BASH

Damage increased by 500%