We leave the Nazis plus Hector tied up in the webs. For good measure, Midas volunteered to stay behind and watch them. I'm pretty sure he's just lecturing Hector on proper budgeting though.
We also found nothing after a thorough interrogation done by Thomas and Sophia. Sophia damaged his soul with her eyes, and Thomas dropped his nanobots in his mouth. Apparently, that's supposed to hack his nervous system and give us access to his memories. He only had orders to grab food from Doctor Graves, so that was a dead-end.
Thus, we continue scouring the store, sans Midas for the already explained reasons. We venture into the electronics section filled with dozens of TVs and cables and cameras that I've never seen anyone buy.
And now, people had another reason not to buy them: they're all sparking. Every single device, electronic or not, seems to just be broken.
I pass by a mirror on the countertop and it shatters when I look into it. If that doesn't scream, 'System,' then I don't know what will.
"Hey! Over here!" Thomas waves us over to the printers. There we find some soldiers taking apart printers and failing. It seems like 1940s soldiers are not adept at taking apart technology from centuries in the future. Who knew?
One of their screwdriver heads break and is sent flying our direction. I duck underneath it, and, weirdly enough, the Nazis don't even look in our direction. They instead just chuck the screwdriver onto a pile of similarly broken screwdrivers.
"Aw, geez. Did another one break? Sorry, guys," a new voice speaks up. Another soldier walks over, but he's not wearing a German uniform; he's wearing an American uniform from WWII. He has a shaved face with that is naturally inclined to scowl.
His demeanor opposes his scowl with the awkward voice, and the apologizing over nothing. The two soldiers sigh and just wave him off.
"That…is Major Inconvenience. As you can see, he's, umm, how do I put this? A living contradiction." Thomas gestures to the man whom has not noticed us. Major Inconvenience plods to the computer monitors which crack when he walks by.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
"Yeah, I think that fits," Thomas continues.
Huh. Major Inconvenience is dressed as a Major. "What's the plan?" I turn to the others; they shrug in response.
"There's only two soldiers, but…" Rose trails off at the end. What is she referring to? Wait…
[ Dexterity-Enhanced Undead Remnant - A corpse brought back to life via Necromancy Magic. While brought back with the memories of the deceased, the Remnants are loyal to the Necromancer. The Remnants are still capable of acting like their original selves despite loyalty. This remnant's abilities are focused towards dexterity and evasion while decreasing health. ]
Ahh. That might be an issue. Though if that description is correct, then it'll be hard to hit them, but any successful hits will definitely do some damage. We just need to work around that evasion.
"Bullets work against foes with high dexterity. Well, most of the time," Thomas explains. "But I think our guns won't work with him nearby." He gestures towards Major Inconvenience whom, uh, who is cleaning up the broken glass.
I sidle over to Thomas. "What's the difference between who and whom?"
"…I don't think this is the right time for a grammar lesson," he whispers in harsh tones. Then he does a quick glance to the others. "Who if the thing to which you're referring is the subject of the sentence, and whom if it is the object. The subject would be doing the primary verb that refers to the object."
So, he gestured towards Major Inconvenience whom is cleaning up the broken glass.
"You can probably see how badly Major Inconvenience is inconveniencing those Nazis," Thomas mutters.
I shake my head. "No, I don't."
"Dexterity doesn't just help with moving your body around—that's actually both Dexterity and Agility. Dexterity's main purpose is helping with fine movements for using, making, and disassembling items. I don't think those two are actively using their ability, but they should still have a higher-than-average Dexterity, yet they are failing to take apart a single printer."
"Yeah, but those things are impossible to figure out."
"No, breaking one is easy. It's fixing one that's hard."
Our useless banter is interrupted by the others. "We had a thought," Sophia starts.
"Essentially, we plan to fail to defeat them." Rose's statement is greeted with a facepalm from Thomas. "Things go wrong around Major Inconvenience, even effecting his own teammates." Ohh, I see! Our plan to fail might fail, and we can catch him. Then, any attempts they make to escape could fail too.
Might and could are the keywords though.
"I can see where you're going with this, but I'd like to say for the record, this is worse than my last plan."
"That's debatable," Sophia quips.
"Aren't his powers random? If we plan to fail, and it succeeds then he succeeds." Everyone goes silent as I bring up a major hole in this shaky plan.
"Ever hear of PACE?" Thomas suggests. A round of shaking heads to which Thomas sends a confused look at Sophia. He must have taught her before.
"It's a planning method that means Primary, Alternate, Contingency, Emergency. Our primary plan is set to fail to catch him. In the event that it succeeds, we move onto Alternate.
This could be try again, and see if Murphy's Law will take affect, or attempt to actually catch him. Those two can be our alternate and contingency plans."
"What's the emergency?" Rose asks.
"If we get to that point, and I mean 'if', I have a device that is certain to defeat him due to its inevitable nature." That last part worries me, for several reasons. I…don't want to know what the emergency plan is, if I'm being honest. I also don't want to know what would be a true emergency for him if that's his go-to option.