VIDEO BEGINS TRANSCRIBING — — —
The video begins in the dark with a pale face leaning forward, distorted by the camera. They have an arm reached out of frame, pressing the button to start recording. It’s odd this part hasn’t been edited out.
The man in front of the camera is not one we have seen before, his cloak, however, is easy to recognize. For the first time the face of Tim is on record, uncomfortably large. As he sits back in the darkened room, he makes no attempts to hide his face, in fact he does the opposite. Taking care not to let the brown cowl fall over his eyes, and keeping his gaze locked into the camera’s lens. It’s as if he can see right through the frame. The panic in his eyes draws the audience in, his gaze pierces as if you are sitting in the room right across from him.
If it weren’t for those eyes any person would pass by Tim on the street, never remembering him. His brown hair is cut short and curly. His nose is a middling size. Not big enough to be noticeable, not small enough to be cute. His face is a tad bit rounder than you might expect, not cherubic but still round. If you were desperate, or maybe entranced by his style, he might have been cute, but without that attention he was just a guy.
His eyes ruined that idea of normalcy. They were the wrong color- a deep magenta. The purple might have been something you could miss, or mistake for brown, if you had only seen them in passing. Here, fully framed in the camera, a single light shining on his face? Not a chance. His eyes were purple.
He sits down on a camp chair, spotlit by a single light, as if he was about to give a monologue in a play. He runs a gloved hand over his face, checking his cowl one more time, he has to stop himself from instinctually pulling it down. Then he leans forward, clasping his gloved hands together and planting his forearms on his legs.
He begins to speak, “I need to start with this, I’ve always believed in magic- No I should be clearer, I know that magic is real. Because of it we are in trouble, deeply in trouble. I can’t imagine I’m going to be able to edit what comes next, but we’ll still have to make this into videos. I’ll just roughly cut them together. We have poked the bear, and it's about to rip our faces off. Judy, you don’t know. Fumushu, you can't even imagine what's about to happen…. I can. I do… It terrifies me.”
His hands stop wringing and tighten together, the creak of the leather gloves can be faintly heard. “Let me explain a few things, to you guys, and also to the Jujubees.
I… know I absolutely went off the deep end in the video I commented on this week. A lot of people were confused, but, more people reached out to help. Thank you. The choice I had to make was very real, and… not easy. I listened to what people said in the comments and chose the option that will let me sleep at night. You all are horribly cliche, but still right.
So, I did. I chose Judy, I chose to keep her safe. The other choice was to listen to orders, to listen to an organization called the MWF.”
Two voices speak up tiredly from behind the camera, the loudest is amused, and surprisingly deep and raspy for the small girl it belongs to, “Wait, that's why you wouldn’t let us watch the video? Because you got sappy?” Fumushu’s morning voice is surprisingly nice to listen to.
“Shh, Tim said he wanted to get the whole story out before we commented on it. If we are commenting though; Thumbs down for taking back the ‘magics not real’ thing now that Fumu proved you wrong... Not cool. Booo” Judy sounds equally tired, though her morning rasp is not nearly as satisfying as Fumushu’s.
Tim ignores the twos’ outburst, continuing where he left off, “MWF stands for the multiple worlds foundation, Judy’s grandmother started it. It was supposed to shelter people who suffered like she did, people who were isekaied and made it back, Returners, they call them. It uhm… doesn’t do that anymore.”
Tim looks down shamefaced, “Not all worlds were as kind as Elenteir, hard as that is to believe. A fair few of them were hostile to all life that wasn’t… native. Once Ulana Trinaday had gathered enough members, the foundation’s purpose almost completely reversed. All of a sudden, it went from making sure people could make it back safely, to preventing anyone from crossing dimensions at all. Ulana was not happy about that, so they kicked her out.”
Tim shrugs and finally looks back to the camera, “The MWF turned into… how to put this? The magic police?”
He untangles a gloved hand, raises it and flicks a finger, a little lick of flame ignites like a candle above it. He looks at the flame and continues talking, “They determined what magic was safe and who could have it. I'm an Acolyte in MWF, not really important but a step above a novitiate. As you climbed in ranks, they tell you more about the foundation and trust you with more magic. Most of us don’t really know what's going on, sometimes we joke we’re like grunts for team rocket. Even have a friend of mine who quit after some ten-year-old almost killed him." He refocuses, "The MWF does have a point, Returners are dangerous to themselves and everyone around them.”
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He makes a fist extinguishing the flame, then looks back into the camera. His panic has faded a bit, now he looks more guilty, his piercing magenta gaze has softened. “I just wish they were kinder when dealing with them. I’m glad that wasn’t my job.
They asked me to keep an eye on you, Judy. I thought they wanted to keep you safe. It fit the reason I joined the MWF. To keep people here on earth, to keep them safe. I had a little brother… “
He shakes his head, “That's another story, what you need to know is that I was wrong.”
Tims gaze sharpens, “They didn't want you safe, they wanted to make sure you never became the threat your grandma was. Ensure you were happy, distracted- kept away from the magic at all costs. A few weeks ago, right when you inherited the lodge, I got the order. Stop you at any cost. Your grandma’s dangerous ideas about magic and multiversal travel should ‘in no way be shared’. I asked for clarification, they were very explicit in what that meant. ‘At any cost’.”
Tim looks away again, leaving that statement clouding the air.
“Tim what the *Beep*?” Judy’s voice, tired and confused, rings out, the volume at odds with Tims quiet shameful speech. “I’m glad you're telling me this but It’s four in the morning, couldn’t this have waited? Let me wake up before you drop world shattering information?”
“Wait. Wait. Tim, the multiple worlds people wanted you to, what?... kill Judy?” Fumushu’s rumbly voice is dead serious, scarily so.
Tim stands up and circles around the cardboard table behind him, the one light casting it into an ominous mix of shadows and light, highlighting two black duffle bags sitting on top of it. He takes his time, not showing his face to the camera. When he finally does make it to the other side of the table, he slowly grabs one of the bags and pulls it towards him.
The look on his face makes it obvious he doesn't want to answer the two girls’ questions. “Fumu… I’d rather go skydiving without a parachute than hurt Judy. But… I saw no way to do it all. To get Judy to be satisfied with what she’d found and get the MWF off my back about what they were afraid Judy was going to discover. They were too afraid of what ‘Jujubee' could release to the world.”
He slowly unzips the bag, “So I’ve been hiding some things, things I think now… we might need.”
Inside the bag is a mess of items, most of them have intricate fractal patterns engraved on every inch. A few of the items tickle the same space in the back of the brain that the magic detector Judy had stabbed herself with earlier. All of those things rest on heaps of papers and books, stacked neatly in the bottom of the bag.
“One of my friends in the MWF just sent me a warning. The Herald is coming. We have a choice to make. Run or fight.” Tim grimaces, “I suggest we run, the guy who's on his way is bad news.”
“What the actual F*ck? Tim. You're going to wake me up at 4 am, Tell me every single interaction we have ever had is a LIE. THEN TELL ME WE NEED TO FIGHT SOMEONE? WHAT THE H*LL, TIM!” Judy's voice just gets louder and louder. Then she walks into frame, and we can see her shaking in rage. “WHY DON'T I TELL YOU WHAT I THINK ABOUT-”
As she closes the distance between them Tim yells over her, “IF YOU DON’T LISTEN TO ME, THEY’RE GOING TO KILL YOU.”
Him yelling back at her doesn’t halt her advance; he tries to hold his ground, but she won’t be stopped.
"OH LIKE YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO DO?" She isn't listening.
She pulls back a tightly balled fist, he cringes away.
She clocks him. Then leans over intelligibly screaming, her shadow looming in the spotlight as she punches and kicks him.
Fumushu rushes onto frame then stops on the other side of the table, cringing away from the two and holding out her hands like she could pull them apart with her mind.
Her mouth moves underneath her bucket hat but whatever she was trying to say was far too quiet to be caught on video.
The video cuts.
There is no transition, just a cold, hard, jump from one frame to another. It's jarring and bad editing, but who could blame the editor? He’s currently on the far end of the box round table, nursing a bruised and battered body, an ice pack held to his head, hood down around his shoulders.
“I’m not sorry, I won't apologize. Why don’t you explain one more time how you got me into this sh*t?” Judy is sitting on the other side of the table, arms crossed- sitting up ramrod straight. She is tilted away from the camera, facing towards Tim. She won’t look directly at him.
Tim sounds tired and defeated, “We need to run away-”
‘I’m not leaving grandma's house.” Judy leans forward and cuts him off her hands clenching around her arms, nails digging in.
Tim cringes away, “You don’t have a choice, staying here would be a really bad idea.”
Judy won’t relent, “You said it yourself; run, or fight. What if I want to fight?”
Tim can't get any smaller, “You’ll die. They are sending a guy they call the Herald of the End. He’s on the Council. Imagine Gandalf then make him, like, twice as strong… or more.”
Judy just glares just above Tim’s head as he tries his best to cringe away from her rage. He’s got nowhere to go. She waits long enough for him to start shaking a bit before speaking again.
“Fine, how long do we have?” Judy looks away.
“An hour now, maybe two. My guy said, ‘before the sun rises’.”
“I’ll get packed, I’m going to assume that second bag is your stuff. Actually, I don't care. If you so much as twitch from there before I’m done, me and Fumu are going to tie you down and leave you here; so your ‘Herald’, or whatever, can deal with you. Do you understand me?”
Tim emphatically nods. As Judy goes to stand up, he flinches so hard he almost falls off his camp chair.
>>>PAUSE<<<