Time Looped

There was something indulgently awful in watching someone attempt to extend their loop. Will still remembered how long he had struggled with it at the time. Stretching the loop by five minutes was seen as a tremendous success. Finding a way to stretch it by ten felt as if he’d won a gold medal; or at least it was so the first few times. It was inevitable that even the greatest achievement became boring after being repeated hundreds of times.

Alex had taken the time to give Jace a few pointers, explaining that the actions needed were always linked to a person’s personality and the class that had dragged them into eternity. In the case of the jock, that meant that finding and fixing problems were one certain way to move forward. At first, Will thought the requirement to be comical, but that was before he found out that Jace had spent years helping his father disassemble and assemble cars.

Another thing the goofball claimed was that everyone had a special cheat that let them extend the loop virtually for free. In his case, that was eating muffins with the paper still on. The hint had been given to him as a reward for hunting down wolves and proved rather useful.

“You know what?” Jace asked, fixing the leg of one of the class chairs. “This is a pain in the ass.”

“Could be worse.” Will shrugged, refusing to admit that he wasn’t particularly good at it, either. “At least we don’t get to find goblins every loop.”

“Yeah? I could use stabbing a few goblins in the neck.” After he finished meddling with the leg, the jock took a step back and looked at it. The piece of furniture looked just as rickety as before. However, the past few loops had shown the effort to be enough to grant him five additional minutes. “How many rooms do you think there are?”

“Five, ten…” Will speculated. “What does it matter? We’ll have to go through them all, eventually.”

“Ten rooms of goblins, plus the boss. Sounds like fun.”

Helen and Alex didn’t join the class till later. Since the two had started cooperating in clearing the first goblin room, they had been getting together a lot more often than usual. Both Will and Jace had joined them at different times, only to find that the pair were indeed discussing tactics. From what one could make out, the “toothy” goblin was the greatest hindrance, often messing up the optimal sequence. Also, it seemed that he was the only one that dropped loot. The item—which Helen had acquired twice so far—was a long dagger. Useful in combat, it was difficult to hide and extremely punishable. In one loop, it had attracted the attention of a teacher, who promptly had called the vice principal, putting an end to the loop pretty much as it started.

“I think we should search for the rest,” Jace said when all four managed to extend their loops to the first recess. “We’ll have to do it sooner or later.”

“I agree.” Will nodded. “Always better knowing what to expect. Unless you’ve already gone through the rooms.”

“Didn’t work,” Alex said. “All four must be in the loop.”

“I knew it!” Jace said a fraction louder than needed, causing several students in the general area to look in his direction. “I knew it,” he whispered a few seconds later. “You’ve been exploring the school.”

“It’s not exploring,” Helen grumbled. “It’s the same rooms. I’ve been through it thousands of times. We told you that alrea—” Seeing Alex shake his head, the girl stopped. “Point is, you two need to boost your loops till evening.”

“What the heck?!” Jace almost shouted again.

“Exploring the school will be a lot faster if we do it when it’s closed.”

“For real.” Alex nodded. “There’s just one guard. A bonk on the head and he won’t hear a thing.”

“Except the bonk on the head,” Will added, words dripping with sarcasm.

“For real, bro! I tried it before. Guy sleeps so much that he won’t say a thing. Trust me.”

There were worse plans. Besides, there was something intriguing about exploring the school after dark, like in a game. With four of them together, they could go through the challenges a lot faster, plus there was one additional benefit—Will would have a chance to go home.

Before the loops had started, he never thought he’d miss his family. While not openly hostile towards one another, they weren’t on the best of terms. There was a time when he’d use any chance he got to avoid them. After so many loops that he’d lost count, getting to see them didn’t sound like the worst idea.

Will looked at his phone. Several minutes remained till the start of class, but that wasn’t the reason he had taken it out. He had never phoned his parents since the start of the loop. With time passing “normally” for them, they would probably be annoyed, worried, or both when getting his call, but chances were they would reply.

“What’s wrong?” Helen asked.

“Nothing,” Will lied. “I was just thinking about what happens after we defeat the boss.”

“The tutorial ends?” Alex asked, tilting his head to the side.

“Yeah, but what then? The loops won’t end. If they did, this wouldn’t be a tutorial. Are you sure Danny didn’t say anything about it?”

“Bro, Danny didn’t know about the tutorial.” The goofball was quick to point out. “He used rewards to get out there.”

“Well, the only way to know for sure is to find out,” Jace said. “Right, Stoner?”

No one reacted.

“I still say we should do some exploring during the day.”

With the sound of the bell, the suggestion was quickly ignored. Will and Jace went back to searching for ways to extend their loops, while the other two did whatever they usually did at school. The mirror fragment didn’t prove to be much help either, occasionally spitting out a line of song lyrics or other.

Dozens of loops became hundreds, and then thousands. Will had gotten to know so much about Jess that one would say that they’d been going out steadily for months. The only drawback was that only he and the other looped were aware of it.

Meanwhile, Jace was having issues of his own. The actions needed to obtain his class and prolong his loop had kept him away from his jock friends, and the longer his loops became, the more it was visible. Although from their perspective, only a few hours had passed, having him “ditch” them to spend time with geeks and losers clearly rubbed them the wrong way. Jace had tried to reason with them, to come up with an excuse, or even somewhat return to his normal behavior from before eternity. The issue was that despite all his efforts, he kept feeling out of place and it showed.

“Seriously, dude?” the jock yelled in the hallway. “Well, fuck you! Didn’t know my team was full of little girls! Just fuck off and give me my space!”

Leaning against the wall, Will kept on looking at his phone. The latest conversation with his parents had gone just as predictably as he had expected. The words, the intonation, even the pauses were so similar that they sounded like a very realistic recording.

“I don’t know why you try,” Will said as a very annoyed Jace walked up to him.

“They’re friends, just…”

“They’re friends who won’t remember any of this.”

So far, both of them had managed to stretch their loops till the end of school, though not more. That was one of the more annoying things. During school, the tasks were more or less obvious. After that, though, the lines seemed to blur. Will had tried a whole lot of things, but for some reason, the loop always ended precisely five minutes after the final school bell. Jace didn’t seem to be faring much better.

Helen had suggested that they do the same things they did before the loop. For whatever reason, that didn’t seem to be working.

“Think you managed this time?” Jace asked.

“We’ll see in four minutes.” Will paused for a few moments. “How about we do some hunting next loop?”

“Hunting?” The jock didn’t sound too sure. “Wolf hunting?”

It was bad enough that they had to avoid certain rooms in the course of the standard school day. Searching for trouble would cause a lot of chaos, not to mention mess up the entire loop. Still, there was a certain sense of adventure in the suggestion.

“Without the rest?”

“Alex does it at the start of the loop and Helen…” Will didn’t finish. “Or we can search for our multi extender.” The name was terrible, but both of them knew what the boy was talking about. “I sort of know mine.”

“Sort of?” Jace gave him an unconvinced look.

“Okay, I know it, but it’s not fun.” And will hurt you more than it’ll hurt me. He added mentally.

“Well?”

“Fighting.” Will put away his phone. “Remember how Danny used to fight with you guys all the time? Each time the rogue evades an attack, he gets five minutes.”

“Each time?”

Jace thought back to all the times Daniel had gotten into fights with him. The first time had been so sudden and shocking that neither Jace nor his friends were even able to react. They were standing in the schoolyard, drinking soft drinks, when the skinny, quiet kid of their class walked straight up to them and kicked a soda can right out of the quarterback’s hand. The scene seemed right out of an anime. There hadn’t been any grudges between them, no particular bullying. The jocks barely spoke with the guy—he was just someone who was in their class, keeping to himself.

Of course, the provocation couldn’t go unpunished, not with so many others witnessing it. Maybe Jace could have laughed it off with a comment or two, but deep inside, he could tell that Danny had come for a fight. And since that was what he longed for, the football team planned to let him have it.

The result was disastrous. The only thing more humiliating than a skinny kid beating up a jock was a skinny kid beating up five. And it wasn’t even a proper fight. It was as if Danny was playing with them, evading their punches with a series of fast jabs. For several minutes, he kept on doing just that before finally he struck back, bringing one of the larger boys to his knees.

From them on, things got progressively worse. Danny would pick fights every day, sometimes even more. The targets shifted from the jocks in his class to the entire football team, to pretty much any delinquent that would take the bait, even people outside school. Back then, Jace didn’t see the logic of it all. It wasn’t for money or boasting rights, Danny never made any demands whatsoever; he’d just get into a fight, and when it was over, go back to class as if nothing had happened.

“Evasion,” the jock said.

“Yep.” Will nodded.

“Guess it makes sense,” he said, trying to move past his painful memories. “What do you think a crafter’s supposed to do?”

“Craft?” Will had no clue. “Assemble and disassemble stuff? Didn’t Alex give any hints?”

“He says he didn’t use it much.”

“Might be something completely different. Eating muffins isn’t related to being a thief.” Although, maybe it was a metaphor for something? This was probably the only time Will regretted not paying more attention in literature class.

“So, you’re saying I should eat all sorts of crap to check?”

“It’s not like there’s anything else to do.” Will couldn’t help but smirk.

Restarting eternity.

The fights didn’t start right away. For a few dozen loops, both Will and Jace tried out the eating method. Alex had suggested they try with muffins, which didn’t work. Helen, on her part, claimed that such cheap tricks were beneath her. That didn’t stop the girl from verbally pointing out “injustices.” It helped that her nature was similar to that of her initial class, granting her a huge advantage.

After a while, it became clear that none of the food combinations were any good. In a way that was a relief. Will dreaded that it would turn out that his most hated food would end up being his ticket to day-long loops. Come to think of it, Danny mustn’t have found a method, either. If he had, he wouldn’t have spent all that time fighting.

As for Jace, after seeing that gulping down food wasn’t the answer, he decided to go for the next best thing. During recess, one loop, he used the excuse that he needed to go to the toilet to sneak away from the group and to a corner room with mirrors.

All in all, there were four of them in the school, most of them common classrooms currently filled with people. Yet, there also was one storage room. Located in the basement, in an area that students weren’t allowed to venture into, it was small, filled with old desks and other appliances that the school hadn’t gotten to throwing away. A single chipped mirror hung on a wall—all that was needed to let the wolves out.

Making sure that no one was following, the jock snuck into the basement corridor, heading towards the room. This wasn’t the first time he had faced wolves; despite the warnings he had had a go at them during one of his previous loops. The creatures ended up a lot stronger than he’d expected and, despite all his attempts, ended up tearing him apart every time. This time, though, it was going to be different. Since hand to hand and chairs were practically useless, he had managed to assemble a short spear using school materials, including a knife he had borrowed from one of his jock friends and wasn’t supposed to have.

“So, you’re really going for it?” a voice asked behind him.

Jace instantly turned around, swinging the spear forward. The only thing the weapon hit was air, though not due to lack of trying.

“Cool it!” Will said, a few steps safely away. “Sheesh, could have killed me with that.”

Sorry, Jace thought. However, that wasn’t at all what he said out loud.

“Fuck it, what do you expect?! I thought you were someone else.”

“So, you’d have killed someone else?”

The question paused an interesting enough question, causing Jace to slowly lower his weapon. There still wasn’t a word of apology, though.

“I knew you’d go for the wolves,” Will continued. “Surprised it took you this long.”

“And I guess you’re here to stop me?”

“Heck, no.” Will smiled. “We’re not like the rest. They’ve had thousands of loops to learn how this stuff works. We’re catching up. If we want to get ahead, we need to use cheats, and green mirrors are cheats.”

The jock didn’t say a word. He agreed with Will’s conclusion, but at the same time, had hoped that he’d do this solo and gain an advantage over him. Even now it was difficult to forget the rivalry between them. Still, better that they team up for the moment.

“Right.” Jace nodded. “Let’s do this.”