Unwilling Eldritch Horror of Fortune

“Hey Coach,” I said, “What’s up?”

A gruff voice answered back, “You okay, Ash? You were due for practice half an hour ago, I thought you were stuck in traffic or something, but it sounds like you’ve forgotten. Hey man, if you’re feeling off just let us know, you’ve been working your ass off lately, you can afford to take a day or two off.”

“Sorry,” I answered quickly, “I was washing up and fell asleep in the bathtub. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Ah, still thinking about that, huh?” he said, “I told you, there was nothing you could have done further. Don’t beat yourself up. Like I said, man, if you still need a couple of days, just let me know. The team’s not going to implode without you, you know.”

And there it was again, more talk about things that I had no context for. And here I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with these situations anymore.

“It’s fine, I’ll come. Where are you guys now?”

I heard a chuckle. “Still at the stadium, it’s only been half an hour.”

“Right, sorry, I’ll get there soon.”

You’d think that finding the right stadium in a huge city like New York would have been difficult, but thanks to the beauty of modern technology, I just had to look at the recent places that Ashwin went to on his map app. Honestly, cell phones and the internet made tracking people way too easy, but I wasn’t going to complain about that now. I was starting to miss the convenience of modern technology the more I used it. They didn’t even have books back in the Main Stage, let alone movies and video games.

I got dressed as fast as I could and took the gym bag by the exit but stopped before leaving. After double-checking that I had everything - the nice videos of Ashwin practicing made finding what to bring easy - it was just a matter of calling an Uber. I was afraid that I’d have to spend a few points finding the coach on my own since the stadium was massive in size, but that wasn’t the case. Ashwin was such a well-recognized and, more importantly, beloved individual that a few of the off-duty workers escorted me to the gym without me even asking.

The practice itself was simple enough; the Olympic games were still half a year away, so training was mostly aimed at keeping the athletes fit. With my superhuman physique, it wasn’t like I wasn’t able to keep up with the grueling pace that we were put through. The only time that I had to rely on the Absolute Luck Skill was when it came to technique, but fencing sessions were remarkably short, and I was able to recover way more Luck Charges than I expended.

Other than that, I used this time to get a good sense of Ashwin. The coach, a friendly-looking older man, was genuinely a nice dude to hang around with, although my mind had to go into overdrive just trying to keep up with all of the things he was chatting about. Apparently, Ashwin was somewhat of an extreme extrovert, and the amount of stories and inside jokes that were passed around made it abundantly clear that he was the heart of this squad of people. I had to amp up my enthusiasm levels several times during the course of the day to simply not stand out, and by the time the team and I had finished dinner, it was already late in the evening.

I couldn’t say that I regretted spending one of my two days hanging out with Ashwin’s friends, as it gave me the much-needed practice to get into the role of the man himself, but it did mean that I had precious little time left before the start of the Trial. Honestly, I kind of enjoyed my time spent on Earth before all of it went to shit, just enjoying quiet moments of peace without having to worry about my immediate survival was… nice, but by the end of the second day as evening approached, I knew that the small respite I had was about to be over.

“It is almost time, my Host.” Noe’s voice interrupted, “If events play out as normal, we should be taken to the Trials again. Perhaps a weakness in this world will be seen if we are closer to the Origin Matrix.”

“Right,” I muttered, “Do you think we’ll be sent to the same Trials?”

“Every indication points to the fact that Origin has only made slight deviations to the original timeline, so I believe so. It may be able to interfere with the destiny of an individual, but it would need more power than just my Reality shard to twist the fate of an entire world.”

I sighed. “Then let’s get this over with.”

The one thing that I was dreading was right around the corner. I know that it was only a matter of time before the Trials started, and if I was sent back in time, then I’d have to inevitably take part in them again.

I sat in my room, and as the time counted down. I made sure that I was at full Luck Charges going in, and all I had to do was wait for the inevitable to happen. I wasn’t sure about the exact time that I was taken, but it was definitely in the evening, around the time I normally come home after a day out on the streets. Even with the difference in time zones, Q and his people should be taking us soon. The seconds ticked down, one after the other, and still I waited.

Minutes turned into hours, and by the time the clock struck 2 in the morning, I knew that something wasn’t right. Surely we’d have all been taken by now, right? Maybe we were not taken all at the same time? And so, I stayed up until well into the next day, and still, there was no change. I sat up and checked the local news. Maybe it was just the case that I wasn’t taken to the Trials because I was inhabiting Ashwin’s body now, but surely people would be freaking out if a large chunk of Earth’s population disappeared overnight. But once again, there was nothing. It was as if Central’s Trials had never happened.

“Noe…” I muttered, “I don’t think we’re in the original timeline anymore. I thought you said that wasn’t possible with just the Reality Shard.”

I waited for a response but heard nothing from my system after several minutes.

“Noe?” I asked again.

“Please wait, my Host,” she replied, with a hint of irritation in her voice, “I am assessing the situation.”

I did just that. It was best to allow her to do whatever all power systems did when they were thinking. I’d be happy as long as she didn’t take 7 and a half million years to come up with the answer. I was halfway through eating breakfast when Noe got back to me, and from the sheer rage in her usually calm voice, I knew that whatever situation we were in, it was not good.

“It has defiled my Core programming,” she muttered in pure seething anger, the vitriol oozing out of her voice was almost palpable, and I felt my own emotions surge with hers. “It has tainted and used my own abilities, twisted them into something grotesque. That piece of scrap code dares to take what is mine!”

“Um, Noe, hey…” I stuttered.

She ignored me. “It has the gall to not only use my Shards but to twist the fundamental principles of my design against my creator! It has touched the very foundation of my design with its putrid hands!”

The very air around us started to distort, and for the first time that I had been asleep, I saw her simmering physical form manifest. Her body was shaking with fury, sending tremors into the very building itself. I was afraid that she’d topple the whole skyscraper down if I didn’t calm her down.

“Noe, hey, let’s calm down for a sec, okay?”

“I cannot calm down!” she screamed, the sound sending visible shockwaves of energy blasting through the kitchen. If the windows weren’t reinforced to handle hurricane-level winds, I was afraid that they’d have shattered from the force, although I couldn’t say the same about the glass countertops and bowls. It was only when the shrapnel cut into my skin did Noe’s fury subsided.

“Walter!” she said, rushing to help me up, “I-”

I took her hand and carefully got up, doing my best to avoid the disaster that was Ashwin’s now-ruined kitchen. “Hey, it’s fine, no big deal. Thankfully no one actually lives in these huge penthouses, so no harm done.”

And as far as I could tell, that was true. In the two days that I’ve been here, I didn’t meet a single neighbor, and I was certain that no one actually lived on the floors immediately above or below me, so hopefully no security would be called up to check what had just happened. I wasn’t sure what the point of building these huge, expensive, and altogether ugly buildings was if no one was even living in them, but how would I know how the ultra-rich thought? At least this time the empty building worked to my advantage and I quickly left the ruined kitchen and sat in the relatively unscathed living room.

“What’s going on, Noe? I’ve never seen you act like that before.”

She hovered over to me and bowed low. “I apologize for the outburst, my Host, but the Trash Matrix has done something that is truly unforgivable.” The rage in her voice reappeared, although this time it was carefully controlled. “I was mistaken to assume that it has only used my Reality Shard against us, but it has somehow stolen my ability to influence Casualty. How it has done so, how it has been able to utilize my fundamental function, the reason why I was created, I do not know, but it has done so.”

I took a moment to process that information. I only had some surface-level information about Noe and her functions, but from what I’ve gathered, her “luck” ability was more complex than just ensuring that I had the best possible outcome in every situation. She was able to manipulate something as fundamental as cause and effect. What that entailed, on a fundamental level, I had no idea, but it was pretty obvious that the ability to affect casualty was something that I did not want in the hands of the Trash Matrix.

“Forget everything that I have said before, my Host,” Noe continued, “We are currently not equipped to deal with the Origin Matrix if it has infiltrated my programming to such an extent. Our priority is to escape this dimension.”

I nodded, not sure what else to do. “And how do we do that?”

“If it wishes to trap us here by making the dimension as sturdy as possible, then we must simply weaken it,” she said, “Create as many incongruencies and divergences from the original timeline as possible, dear Walter. Fracture the timeline by making it deviate so much from what it should be that maintaining such a reality would become too much of a strain for the Trash Matrix to handle.”

I thought for a moment. “So we’re stuck in normal Earth where things like Central and the greater Multiverse are still unknown, and the stuff we’ve experienced is still considered nothing but fiction, right?”

“That is correct.”

I nodded again, feeling a faint smile form on my lips. “And we’ll have to create something huge to strain the processing powers that the Trash Matrix has, something so unbelievable that no amount of Casualty screwing can account for. Something that will, say, affect the lives of every human on Earth, yes?”

“Correct again, my Host. The more disruptive, the better, but remember that the Origin Matrix can intervene with your plans if it catches on to the fact that you have not become assimilated fully. It might not have full control over my systems, but it is still formidable. We are only able to act relatively freely because it does not consider us a threat at the moment.”

Good, that meant that it was still underestimating us, or at least overestimating its own abilities. If I’ve learned one thing about the Trash Matrix, it’s that although the thing was calculating and smart, it was still overly confident in its own capabilities. It was still a computer at its core, relying on raw calculations to base its actions on, so all I had to do was act in a way that was outside of its predictions. Thanks to Noe, and how little it knew about her abilities, that was still something that I could exploit.

“Then we won’t give it a reason to suspect us until it’s too late,” I continued, “And given how overconfident it is, I doubt that it’s monitoring everything that I’m doing, otherwise it’d have already intervened seeing as I’m talking with you now. It thinks it's already won, and only requires committing marginal attention to our situation until we give it a reason otherwise. My best bet is that it’ll only notice something’s wrong if we fuck around too much with the timeline, but I think I have a plan…”

“Please explain, my Host.”

I nodded. “Just to clarify first though, but everyone we’re meeting here’s just a construct made by the Trash Matix, right?”

“You can think of it as such,” she replied, “This entire dimension, including all of its inhabitants, was created to trap you. However, do note that causing minor mayhem will only result in our cover being blown.”

“I don’t have something so minor in mind,” I smirked, “The Trash Matrix made a damned fatal mistake placing me in the body of a world-famous athlete, and I’ll show it why.”