Chapter 69: Book 2 Chapter 1.1: Back Again (Again)

Vell beamed with a broad smile as he stepped back into the dining hall. The campus of the Einstein-Odinson Academy of Paracausal Forces was bustling with new students, new lessons, and more than likely new problems that Vell would have to solve. He didn’t think about those right now, though.

For the first time in two months, he was back on campus, and Vell had never thought he could feel so excited to be back at a place where he died and got hurtled through time on a regular basis. With one year of time loops, Deities, sort-of-evil girlfriends and definitely evil principals behind him, Vell was excited -and deeply, deeply terrified (though he was suppressing that particular existential dread very well)- for what the next year had in store.

What it had in store, first and foremost, was a delivery of his friend Harley, at ballistic speeds.

“Vell!”

“Harley!”

Perky as ever, and dressed in her ever-present red attire, Harley catapulted herself into Vell’s arms and squeezed him so hard he nearly got split in half again. The rune on his back started to ache along with the rest of Vell’s body.

“Okay, that’s enough love, today’s apocalypse can’t be hugs,” Vell grunted. Harley reluctantly let him go, and even then only because Lee wanted a turn. She had been following Harley at a much more reasonable pace. Lee stumbled once as she walked up to Vell and wrapped her arms around him.

“Good to see you again, darling,” she said. “It’s been far too long.”

“I hope two months with your parents wasn’t too much trouble,” Vell said. Like Harley, Lee had barely changed at all over summer break: she still dressed semi-formally and spoke with a comically exaggerated British accent. Her green eyes narrowed for a moment at the mention of her parents, but the jovial glimmer returned to them momentarily.

“Oh they were hardly home at all,” Lee said. “It was more being away from the two of you that was the trouble.”

Lee grabbed them both and pulled them into a much-needed group hug. Lee needed their love about as much as she needed food and water. She released them after a long hug and guided them to their usual table to sit and chat.

“So what’ve you been up to Vell?”

“Mostly, uh, working on dad’s ranch,” Vell said. He demonstrated his farmer’s tan by pulling up his sleeve. “Also doing some research on all the stuff.”

“Right. The stuff.”

Their close encounter with the Goddess Quenay at the end of last year had escalated every mystery in Vell’s life. At the very least, he had received an answer as to who had resurrected him after his childhood death -but now he needed to know why, and how, and ten dozen other questions besides.

“Anything of note?”

“Nothing whatsoever,” Vell said. “There’s no evidence that Quenay even exists.”

“Excellent. So it seems like our strategy is just to settle down and let the weirdness come to us.”

“As we so often do,” Lee said.

“Works for me, I guess,” Vell said with a shrug.

“And hey, maybe one of this year’s new loopers will be able to help,” Harley said. While it was not a guarantee, a new year brought new chances for more students to be caught in the campus’s mysterious time loop.

“Oh yeah, there’s a new batch coming in,” Vell said.

“Maybe. There were no new loopers the year before we started, if you recall,” Lee reminded them. The seemingly random factors that selected new students to become aware of the time loops often failed to find a suitable mark.

“Well yeah, sometimes there’s none, sometimes there’s a couple,” Harley said. “Could just be one guy, or it could be like...I don’t know, five?”

“The largest number of loopers in a new group is eight,” Lee said. She’d spent the last week of summer vacation brushing up on the mysterious history of the time loops that trapped the entire campus, just to have trivia like this on hand.

“Oh geez, I don’t know if I can handle babysitting eight newbies,” Harley said. “Vell was a hassle to keep up to speed sometimes, no offense bud.”

“Well, the new guys will presumably be able to read instruction manuals,” Vell said. Whatever forces of the universe conspired to keep Vell ill-informed couldn’t possibly affect everyone. Harley nodded in agreement.

“You guys want to do something, or like, stay here and keep an eye out for newbie loopers?” Harley said, changing the subject slightly.

“You guessed last year?” Vell asked.

“Yeah! And for your next question, no, we didn’t guess you,” Harley said. “Though mostly because Lee was busy eating shit and I was getting yelled at for showing everyone my boobies.”

“Right.” Vell could hardly forget his dramatic, and lewd, first impression of Lee and Harley. “Speaking of, should we cause some sort of commotion again? Give new loopers something to latch on to next loop, when something is different.”

“I could definitely show everyone my boobs again,” Harley said, grabbing the hem of her shirt. Lee’s hand snapped into place on her wrist to gold her shirt down.

“Let’s not, dear,” she said.

“Well I got to get something out of my system,” Harley said. “Vell?”

“Maybe not today,” Vell said. “I think Cane’s already found his dorm, though, if you want to track him down.”

Harley considered jumping bones with Vell’s old roommate, to end her two month dry spell. She was distracted from that consideration by Lee eagerly shaking her shoulder.

“Oh look, the first tour group,” she said, pointing to the far side of the dining hall. A group of four wide-eyed Freshmen came around the corner, shepherded by a senior demonstrating all the many features of the college campus. Vell wondered if he’d looked that baffled and overwhelmed on his first loop through.

“Okay, okay, Vell, we do it like this, just pick the one out of the four you think is most likely to be a looper,” Harley said. “I’m going with the short guy in the red t-shirt.”

“The blond, I believe,” Lee said.

“I was going to say the blond,” Vell said.

“You can double up, it’s fine.”

As more and more tour groups passed through, the loopers called out descriptions of those they believed might join their ranks. Vell was reminded of the sheer diversity of people who came through the campus on a regular basis. From a towering man with a tangle of bright silver hair, to a student with crimson red hair, to another student that had small horns, then a broad shouldered man with tattoos on his cheekbones, Vell found his eyes darting from strange target to strange target.

“Oh hey, I like that chicks taste in clothing,” Harley said, pointing to a woman wearing red, much like herself.

“That woman over there reminds you of a bit shorter Kanya, doesn’t she?”

“I can see that,” Harley said.

Vell scanned the crowd, looking for a promising target to point out. His eyes found their way to a new face in the crowd, but he didn’t say a word as he saw them.

“I think it’s definitely going to be that dude in the hat,” Harley said. “You see them too, right Vell?”

Silence.

“Vell?”

Harley and Lee looked over their shoulders to stare at Vell’s abandoned seat. They scanned the crowd and caught sight of his back, moving across the dining hall. He moved with almost wading motions, like he was caught in some kind of fog. Most curious of all, someone was moving towards him in the same way.

A young freshman woman, with sparkling eyes and jet black hair, and more beautiful than anyone Harley had ever seen, was pacing her way towards Vell, wide-eyed with awe. The two starstruck strangers stopped right in front of each other and stared silently for a second. Vell tiled his head right, and the beautiful stranger mirrored his motion exactly. Vell caught himself staring and shook his head slightly to shake off the fog clouding his thoughts.

“Hi, sorry, sorry, that seemed a bit weird, sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said, with a light chuckle. Vell tried to keep himself from smiling like an idiot just at the sound of her laugh.

“I just, it’s -I feel like you’re important,” Vell said. “Sorry, again, sorry, that sounds really weird now that I say it out loud.”

“No, no, I get it,” the stranger said. “I understand the feeling. I feel the same way when I look at you. Sort of like I’ve-”

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“-Known you my whole life,” the two of them said in perfect unison. It was enough to send a chill down Harley’s spine.

“I’m Vell. Vell Nadir Harlan. I’m a sophomore.”

“My name’s Kimmy,” the stranger said. She extended her hand, and Vell shook it, then refused to let go. She didn’t mind, and seemed to be gripping his hand just as tightly. “I just started today.”

“That’s great,” Vell said. “You’re going to love it here. If you ever need anyone to show you around or have any questions, I would love to-”

“If you’ll excuse me, sir, she already has a tour guide,” the senior guiding her said. “Kim, really glad to see you’re making friends, but we do have a schedule to keep.”

“Right. Schedule: a plan for carrying out a process or procedure. Of course, I’ll just- say goodbye real quick,” Kimmy said. She had to work to turn her wide-eyed stare away from Vell, and it took even more effort to pull her hand away. She managed to step away from Vell eventually. “I’ll see you again, Vell.”

“Yeah, of course,” Vell said. “I could meet you right here, in a couple hours.”

“That sounds great! I’ll see you then.”

Kimmy allowed herself to be led away, though she looked over her shoulder at Vell every few steps. He was there, waving at her with a dreamy smile on his face, every time, until she was finally led out of the dining hall and towards the next stop on her tour. Harley walked up to Vell and gave him a few seconds to sigh contentedly for no reason at all.

“Vell?”

“Yeah?” Vell said, his voice a sing-song whisper.

“What the fuck was that?”

Harley’s sudden vulgar shout knocked Vell’s brain loose and got him back in the real world. Mostly.

“What? What was what?”

“Was that chick a succubus or something? You looked like you were ready to run off and get married to her,” Harley said.

“I did? Why? Do you think she’d say yes if I asked?”

“Yes, I do, but that’s really fucking weird, Vell.”

“Oh stop it, Harley,” Lee scolded. “Don’t you believe in love at first sight?”

“Maybe,” Harley said. “But it took Vell a solid month to realize Joan was into him, and it was like a whole school year before he and Leanne sort of had a thing. I don’t buy it.”

“I guess Kimmy’s just something different,” Vell said with a sigh. “Something really special.”

“You’re weirding me out, man,” Harley said. “Come on, Lee, I know you’re romantic newbie, but this is weird, right?”

“It is...not how things commonly go,” Lee said, trying very hard to avoid saying “weird”. “But the attraction seems to be mutual, and I see no harm in it as of yet.”

Harley gave a low growl of frustration.

“Harley, dear, didn’t you just say that we should ‘let the weirdness come to us’?” Lee asked. That actually caused Harley to shrug and let go of her suspicions, for a moment.

“Alright, fine, you can keep your weird girlfriend,” Harley said. “For now.”

“He does not need your permission, dear,” Lee said.

“Alright, but when this gets weird, nobody can say I didn’t warn you,” Harley said. “Ugh. I need a distraction. Anyone want a tour of my new dorm room?”

“As long as we’re back here in a few hours,” Vell said.

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll be back here in time for your date,” Harley said. “Assuming we haven’t been blown up by then.”

They had not, in fact, been blown up by then. They’d been electrocuted.

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“Whoof!” Harley said. “I forgot how much that stings.”

Vell shook his head to try and shake out the lingering feelings of his teeth vibrating. Electrocution was a very twitchy business. The loopers reconvened on the second loop, preparing to deal with their second first day of school -and avert the electrical apocalypse that had ended the first first day.

“Judging from the electric storm’s initial location, and the intensity, I’d say it was one of the school’s generators overloading,” Lee said. “Which gives us a good start to work with.”

“Right, right,” Vell said. “We should get on that. As soon as-”

“You meet that Kimmy chick again,” Harley guessed. Vell nodded in agreement. “Come on, Vell, you can’t just throw away the apocalypse for a girl you’ve met once.”

“This is clearly important to him, Harley,” Lee said. “And besides, someone should be keeping an eye out for new loopers. The dining hall is the best place for that.”

“Right, I should stay here, this is where everyone comes through on their first day,” Vell said. “The fact that Kimmy will be here is just a nice bonus.”

“Ugh, fine, me and Lee can handle the generator,” Harley said. “But you need to actually be keeping an eye out, Vell, don’t just sit around waiting to flirt.”

“Of course.”

“Really though, do be vigilant,” Lee cautioned. “The signs of a new looper can often be subtle, they will may be hesitant and uncertain about the odd circumstances-”

The doors to the dining hall slammed open hard enough to rattle the glass across the hall.

“Run! Everybody run! We’re all going to die!”

The broad shouldered man with a tattooed face clutched their temples in panic and ran around the lunchroom, screaming at anyone who would listen about their impending doom. Lee sighed.

“Or they’ll do that,” Lee said. “Come on, we have to stop him.”

Lee and Harley scrambled off the to intercept the doomsayer. Vell checked the time to make sure Kimmy wouldn’t be arriving any time soon, and then followed once he was sure he had enough time. Harley intercepted the screaming freshman just as he was about to repeat his warning of electric death for the seventeenth time.

“Hey there, sorry about that buddy, we lost track of you, that’s our bad,” Harley said. She wrapped an arm around the freshman’s shoulder and pulled him in close. “Play it cool, kid, we’re going to be fine.”

“Sorry about this, everyone,” Lee said, speaking loudly to ensure as many people as possible heard. “We just, ah, had someone misunderstand an experiment here on campus. Just a simple misunderstanding, that’s all.”

“No I didn’t! I saw everything, this is-”

Harley elbowed their unfortunate new associate in the ribs to shut him up.

“Vell, would you mind helping me escort our friend here back to the experiment so we can show them it was all just a misunderstanding?” Harley said.

“But if I leave now I’ll-”

“Vell! Priorities!”

“Fine, okay!”

Vell grabbed the freshman by the other arm, and escorted him mostly against his will out of the dining hall. In spite of Vell and Harley’s reassurances, their new associate was not convinced the end of the world wasn’t coming. Across the dining hall, a stocky man with shimmering blonde hair broke away from his tour group.

“I know that guy,” he said to his confused tour guide. “I should probably help him chill out a bit, eh?”

With that threadbare excuse delivered, he sprinted off, tailing the group as they fled. Harley was the first to notice they had a tail.

“You following us for a reason, biker boy?” Harley said, noting their new follower’s stylish leather jacket.

“Yeah, this might sound weird, but that guy’s not as crazy as he sounds,” the biker said. “I saw it-”

“Oh yeah, cool, that’s convenient. Follow us,” Harley said. “We’ll explain everything.”

The jacketed freshman shrugged and followed along, figuring any chance at answers -and preventing his own electrocution- was better than none.

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The secret lair got it’s first use of the year as Lee made her introductory efforts. Harley and Vell noted that the building had been completely refurbished. Courtesy of Lee’s parents, the Looper Lair had received a complete remodeling and a few new accouterments. It even had a coffee maker. But coffee had to wait.

First came introductions. The man with tattoos on his cheekbones was Hawke, and the biker-jacket wearing one was Derek. The current loopers introduced themselves, and then Lee began her diatribe. She explained everything, taking special care to emphasize the three major rules of looping; that a daily apocalypse would occur every time class was in session, that the second loop would always occur identically to the first loop if they did not go out of their way change it, and the third, most important rule: that anyone outside the loops would go completely insane if they knew about them.

“Now, I know that’s a lot to take in, but does everything make sense?”

Derek nodded while Hawke shook his head.

“No. Everything you just said is completely insane.”

Hawke stood and started to pace around the room, clutching at his temples.

“I mean, time loops and monsters and the world ends every fucking day? What about that is normal?”

“We never said it was normal, we just said it happens,” Harley said. “Not the same thing.”

“You get used to it,” Vell said, echoing the reassurance Harley had given him last year.

“Dying? How do you possibly get used to dying?’

“You just have to do it five times,” Vell said. Lee and Harley nodded in agreement and held up five fingers each. Vell had to admit, it actually did feel good to be on the other end of an explanation for once.

“No no no no no,” Hawke said. “I can’t do this, I can’t.”

“Well, you’re free to not participate, dear, you’re not getting drafted,” Lee said. “The loops will happen regardless of your participation, however.”

“Yeah, we don’t get to choose who joins our little club, and the only way to leave is to not be a student anymore,” Harley said. “Sorry if it’s overwhelming, but it’s just how the chips fell.”

“Right.” Hawke said. He took several deep breaths. “Okay. Okay. Sorry I freaked out for a bit there.”

“Oh no, no apologies necessary, that’s a very normal reaction to all this stuff,” Harley said. “If anything, it’s weird that we’re so chill about it.”

Vell and Lee exchanged a glance and a nod. Harley had a point.

“On that note, Derek, darling, how are you feeling?”

Derek shrugged. He looked wide-eyed, but otherwise calm.

“If I wasn’t living it, I wouldn’t believe it,” Derek said. “But I guess we’re here. Might as well make the best of it.”

“Yeah! It’s not all bad,” Harley said. “Sometimes we don’t even die, and we can just chill and eat a bunch of food or join a sex cult or something until midnight.”

“Sex cults, you say?” Derek said, seeming very intrigued by the idea.

“Yes, there are a few benefits to being in the loops,” Lee said. “You have plenty of spare time, and the fact that all your actions will be erased means you can indulge in any desires, carnal or otherwise, that you might have.”

“Sounds cool to me,” Derek said. “I was expecting college to be pretty wild, but this is next level.”

“Sounds like Derek is on board,” Harley said. “Hawke, how are you feeling? No pressure, of course, feel free to sit it out for now and see how you feel.”

Hawke chewed on his thumbnail -a nervous habit he thought he’d ditched when he was thirteen- and contemplated the chaos in front of him.

“Okay, okay, okay, you say this has been happening for years, and the world hasn’t ended yet, so I suppose you must know what you’re doing.”

“That may be a generous assessment,” Vell said.

“I would more call us ‘functionally stupid’,” Harley said.

“You’re not helping,” Lee scolded.

“No, no, this is good,” Hawke said. “My dad always said anything you’re really good at, you can do with a smile. You can joke about it, that’s a good sign. Okay okay okay, I can give this a test run, this should be fine, yeah.”

“Excellent,” Lee said. “We’ll take the lead, so just follow along, do what you can, and feel free to bow out if you ever feel like it’s too much.”

“Ah, quit babysitting him, you’re only going to make him more nervous,” Derek said. “Come on, let me show off my moves.”

“Please save any and all ‘moves’ until they are necessary,” Lee said. “Just because we’re walking into the face of the apocalypse does not mean we take unnecessary risks.”

“That said, we probably should get moving,” Harley said. “Time’s a-wasting.”

“Right. Harley, you know the most about the technical side of things, perhaps you should take the lead,” Lee said. Harley saluted and got her new troops in line. While Hawke and Derek fell into formation, Lee and Vell ended up taking the rear.

“Sorry, dear, it seems you’ve missed your meeting with Kimmy,” she said. They were across the campus from the dining hall now, much too far for Vell to make it to his first (second) meeting with Kimmy in time.

“It’s fine,” Vell said, though his voice cracked with grief as he spoke.

“Come on, Vell, eyes forward, you can have your meet-cute later,” Harley said. She took hold of the doors to the generator room and flung them open with dramatic aplomb, then froze in place. “Oh you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“What, what’s going on?” Lee said. She pushed her way up to Harley’s side, as did Vell, to see a familiar face staring up at them, tools in hand.

“Vell?”

“Kimmy?”