Flip. In a brightly lit room a man sits behind his desk relaxing in his chair turning the pages of his book. Adorning his wrinkled pale face was a pair of round glasses. Looking at him, you can tell his prime has ended and has begun to decay so might as well do it as professionally as possible. So as he cozies up in his chair with his book, he is outfited with a gentleman's vest of black and white with a nice tie attached. His legs covered in tan trousers and black dress shoes complete the outfit.
The book in his hand is covered in wears and tears from countless page flips but the man has no sign of boredom despite it. Every page turned feels like the first time again as smiles, frowns, and other such emotions come and go with each passing turn. Eventually, the book ends and is closed with a sigh. The man sets the book down and gazes up at the clock on the wall. "Karone, truly the best of his time," the man speaks with a somber aged voice.
As the man's voice begins to fade in the echo of the room, a orb of silver light begins to hover above the chair across from him. "Looks like my next appointment is here." With a groan, he gets up and reaches for a random black book on his bookshelf. Sitting down, he sets the book in front of him and waits for the orb to fade. When it does, what appears in the seat is a black-haired youth clad in animal fur.
The youth's eyes start to flutter and he is alarmed to find himself in this ordinary looking room. The youth begins to turn in every direction but is stopped by the man as his forehead feels a tap. In that tap, the youth's eyes begin to shrink then expand back to normal as he gain focus. With a sigh he says, "Hello Mr. Jagues. Time for my report?"
Mr. Jagues nods his head as he opens the book in front of him. Pulling out a pen from his desk drawer he looks the youth in the eye and asks, "What happened today, Mr. Qin?"
Young Qin sits up and begins his recount as Mr. Jagues pops his led out and presses it to the book at hand. "In the Paragon Valley, I am still undergoing training in the Breaker Principle. Each piece of progress comes at the expense of ten swings and twelve falls. Today I managed about 350 swings before calling it a night. In another few days I should be able to grasp the Breaker Principle and be able to knock away my enemies as if they were paper. Just you wait Yadgirez."
Scribbling down the account, Mr. Jagues looks up at young Qin. "Any emotional events you wish to divulge? Remember, each piece of emotion could be the key to a breakthrough."
The youth seemed hesitant but started to think about it carefully. After a moment's consideration he came up with his answer. "When I was undergoing the Breaker training, I found my attention drawn to this one rock that would be shown when the waterfall parted. There was nothing special about it but every time it appeared I would stop thinking and became clearheaded until the waterfall concealed it again. Several times I tried to duplicate the effect but get stumped at the beginning. Does that satisfy you?"
A rock? My clients can be weird sometimes, Mr. Jagues thinks to himself. Of course, he knew that the rock was probably going to involve some sort of law or understanding that will transform the young Qin but it was too early for him to mention it. These youths need to find the answer for themselves. His job was to record and not interfere so despite seeing similar situations for a thousand times he cannot give Qin any guidance.
Writing the finding down in his little black book, Mr. Jagues gets up and leads Qin out the door. There is still several minutes left for the appointment and Mr. Jagues was kind enough to let Qin use as much of it as possible to relax somewhat.
Outside of his little office was a hall with many doors, half of them were offices just like the one he came from while the other half were personal break rooms where employees like himself and their clients can sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee/tea.
Sitting at a round table, Qin ponders once more about the bizarre room he is in that is different from any in his world. Mr. Jagues pays this no mind because all of his clients find something strange about this workstation of his when they get here. With time, they will be so used to it they won't even find it bizarre anymore. Of course, does help that they break common sense on a daily business.
From down the hall a yell can be heard. Qin gets startled but Mr. Jagues just sighs and waves Qin to stay in his seat. Walking out into the hall, he finds other men and women in similar attire to him opening their doors and looking out.
"Sounds like Larry got himself an annoying one. Wonder if it is a miser or a glutton," one of them ponders aloud.
"Wanna bet on it?" another asks with a grin.
"Sure. I'm betting glutton," the first one responds.
"Then I'll take miser," the grinning man says.
A woman calls out, "I'm betting a mix."
"Why not something else?" Mr. Jagues says with a smile.
"Jagues, put away the Morgan Freeman voice. This is why we can't have nice things like movies or video games," the woman calls out.
"Just read a book," Mr. Jagues laughs.
The door where the instigator came from opens and a young pudgy man stomps out with a furious impression on his face. Turning to the hall he yells, "I can't take it anymore! Not only does this guy try and eat a dragon but he want to raise its children just so he can have food in the future."
"Hahaha, looks like I win," the pondering man whoops. The rest of the betters groan as they reach into their pockets and pull out several red gems and hand it over to the winner.
Mr. Jagues walks up to Larry and places a hand on his shoulder. "I get that you are new here Larry, but you have to get used to it," he says to poor Larry. "Protagonists aren't supposed to be measured by common sense. All we can do is break our own common sense as soon as possible and record their activities when we can. Eventually you will miss that glutton showing up in your office."
Larry looks up teary eye. "You're not the one who has to fill up the pantry each time he comes."
A couple of employees laugh and some just shrug. One even grunts, "Goddamn it Larry."
Patting Larry on the shoulder, Mr. Jagues takes Larry back to his room and gives a nice shove before closing the door. Larry then tries to bust out with several bangs but Mr. Jagues is firmly holding the door close. After several minutes it finally stops and Mr. Jagues lets go. Turning to his colleagues he says, "Back to work everyone. These stories don't record themselves."
Walking back to his break room, Mr. Jagues picks up his cup of coffee and sits down with Qin. After a few minutes of conversation, the two return to the office and Mr. Jagues says to Qin, "Sooner or later the Breaker Principle will come to you and you'll get back at Yadgirez." With that finished, the young Qin sits down at his chair and starts to turn translucent. Before he totally vanishes, Mr. Jagues reaches out and taps Qin on the forehead. Qin gets dreary eye and goes unconscious before becoming a silver ball of light and vanishes.
Mr. Jagues sighs and goes back over to his book, picking it up. On the front is WR-13279 Mu Qin. Closing it, he places it on the bookshelf before grabbing a silver book from the same shelf and opening it to read.
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After an hour or two, another orb of light comes into being and once again Mr. Jagues stops his reading before pulling out a new book from the shelf. With his little black book in front of him, Mr. Jagues watches as a child comes into being before him.
The child seems afraid as he looks around the room in a dirty little shirt and roughed up shorts. Dirty blood stains can be seen on his clothes and Mr. Jagues sighs at his appearance. Dusting himself off, Mr. Jagues walks around the desk and kneels before the young child. "Hello there, My name is Jagues but you can call me Mr. Jagues. What's your name?"
The child quivers but answers in a clear voice, "Daniel. Mr. Jagues, where am I?"
"You're in a special place. No one is here to harm you," Mr. Jagues replies softly. "Tell me, what do you know?"
Daniel calms himself and sits up a little straighter. He feels that Mr. Jagues means no harm so he begins to answer his questions. He comes from a place overridden with zombies who try and get at everyone. He lives with a group of traveling survivors who move from place to place. Recently, he started to learn how to fight from a nice man in the party called Miguel. Miguel was nine at the start of the outbreak so he has forty years of experience behind him. Daniel learned as much about the zombie apocalypse from Miguel before going to sleep and awakening in this office.
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With all of his questions answered, Mr. Jagues sighs and sits back down behind his desk. Inside he mourns for the young
Daniel. The lad came from a Dystopian Reality and those protagonists have the thinnest set of plot armor out of anybody the workplace receives. Aside from the legendary Horror realities that number in the dozens of recorded because those protagonists have no plot armor at all and generally die before they can get the report. Those records go down to the Dark Records to be regarded as cold cases for study.
Daniel also has the unlucky fortune of being called in at a young age and those youths practically always end up with misfortune not long after making their debut in the office. In order to make Daniel feel as comfortable as possible, Mr. Jagues talks in a soft voice. "Daniel, this place exists outside of your reality. While here, you can be free to relax and forget about the events in your reality. You just need to tell me what happens during the day when you are awake and then we can be done. Just like a dream, each time you leave you will forget about the events that transpire here and won't know any different."
"Does that mean this isn't the first time we've done this?" Daniel asks.
The kid's smart, Mr. Jagues thinks to himself. "No," he shakes his head. "This is the first time I've met you but my job is to meet people just like you who are special and will likely be responsible for many things in your realities. In order to make sure you all are not forgotten, we record the events of your realities and store them away before distributing versions of the stories among the different worlds. Look in a book you find in the world and study the main character. Odds are, they appeared in this same workplace and sat exactly like you are doing right now. After each visit they will forget about the events here and then remember the next time they show up. Eventually, it will be normal for you. Now, do you want some treats?"
Taking Daniel to the break room for some treats and back, Mr. Jagues waves to Daniel as he begins to fade and once more taps the youth in front of him to make them forget. Once he is done with that, he writes on the cover of the black book he set out, DR-3071 (1) Daniel. Dystopian Realities have the unlucky feature of sometimes shifting the protagonist role around after killing off the previous holder. That is why it is considered the unluckiest reality that even horror realities can't compare to. Horror realities end at one protagonist but Dystopians continue on and one..
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Taking a look at the clock, Mr. Jagues waits for his next appointment. Who arrives this time is another Dystopian Reality resident, a young man in blue stripes covered in this blood. Mr. Jagues frowns. Odds are this next appointment will be problematic.
The lad looks left and right in confusion and backtracks into the wall behind him. Mr. Jagues tries to tap his head to get him to calm down but the man grabs a chair and swings it wildly at Mr. Jagues. Mr. Jagues sighs and vanishes from the man's eye sight. The next thing he knows, Mr. Jagues is pressing a finger to his cranium. Stepping back, Mr. Jagues asks in the nicest voice he can while under a temper, "What happened Brian?"
Brian shakes and kneels on the ground. With a wimper he speaks in a whiny tone. "They had us surrounded on all sides. At first we were able to keep them at bay but somehow one got through. I think it came in when Quinn went to take a piss and that dumbass idiotically opened a hole that was found by the infected and probably got himself chomped. From there, the infected led his friends and got Michelle and Gaiden by surprise. From there, the defenses fell and we got overrun. God it was a bloodbath. Thomas even shoved Emily into the horde to try and save himself and nearly got me too if I didn't get him first. Seeing no hope left as my friends were getting chomped I ran. The last thing I could hear was Thomas's screams.
"Why?! Why do I have to be so special that I managed to survive? When I first came here you said I was special and had a story to tell. I was supposed to be like all of those heroes in the books I read growing up then why wasn't I able to save my friends like a hero should?"
Mr. Jagues face turned gloomy. This was one of the hardest parts of taking on a Dystopian client. They always blamed them for the things that go wrong in their reality. What could they do though? All these employees can do is write down what they can. What were they supposed to do? Their worlds were like dreams to them so were they supposed to do everything they can to save what was the equivalent of an imaginary world?
"Not everyone is the same," was the closest thing Mr. Jagues could reply to Brian before reaching out and press the stress button on his desk. Brian started to turn mad as his body started to leave this reality. Striding forward, Mr. Jagues presses a finger to Brian's head as he leaves the best message he can. "Time will heal these wounds."
Brian finally vanishes and Mr. Jagues marches back to his desk to make the report.
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It's time for second Breakfast as Mr. Jagues walks to a big cafeteria a good distance away. He didn't mind. It was Taco Tuesday.
Grabbing a pair of tacos, Mr. Jagues sat himself down by the three who joined him for the bet earlier. Their names were Talia, Drey, and Casper. Casper was the winner of the bet while Drey was the one who mentioned the bet. Of course, Talia was the girl.
Sitting by them, Jagues started to talk with them about the cases they had. All in all, Drey had the best time as he had a Silver Book case in which one of his clients came to thank him for the help as he explained how happy his life was now that he had defeated the Game Boss of his death game. As he finished recording the events, the black book in his hands started to shine and turn silver meaning the end of this client-worker relationship. As a reward, Drey gave him a copy of the record he had made for him so that he will remember where he started from.
Talia got second best as her clients were pretty good with one of them finishing his school year at some school called Toad's Tongue. Magic Schools have weird names. Talia reminded him to come visit during the summer break before he left.
Casper ended up drawing the short straw and Larry barged in while he was talking to a girl about her relationship with a friend of hers. Larry ended up spooking her so Casper had to hold off girl talk until the next appointment. A shame, because Casper felt she was making real progress in that department.
At the end of the morning, three incidents had occurred with Larry and Brian being two of them. The third was a girl who somehow managed to sneak a god-rabbit inside. Must have been a failure at TD if that happened. The people there got a scolding before they were finally able to get the rabbit out of their hair.
By the time they finished talking, it was close to time for the next appointments so they split up and went back to their offices.
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Hello, this is a pretty okay attempt at this kind of story. I feel like I have forgotten a few genres but do not know what. Many of the ones not talked closely about appear as cameos (sort of) This story can always be edited so if you guys have more to add just let me know.