Pushing away any stray thoughts about meeting that crazy bitch again outside of the Origin Timeline, I sat down on the fire escape and entered my Imaginary library.
One of the perks of this little Technique I had come up with long ago was any influx of new information would instantly be categorized and organized in my preferred manner, allowing for simple and easy access when it came to looking for the data I wished stored within the memories of those I extracted.
Soon enough, I was sitting at one of the many empty study tables, with two books opened in front of me, one with the title "Jennifer Rowing Surveillance." and the other "Overwatch High," Compared to some of the books here in my library, these two were drastically shorter as my Technique filtered out anything I would classify as "useless" information, leaving only the important details.
"Overwatch High, Real Name Velli Odakai, Talent: Aeromancy, Alpha-Rank level nine. Racial Classification Basic Human…wow, this guy was utter trash. He was a low-tier member of some no-name European Faction and was only able to return to the past thanks to being nearby when the leader of his Faction offed himself to return." I mused while reading aloud.
"By looting any remaining resources in the Faction’s storage and selling them off at low prices, he barely earned enough cash to get the return pill; that’s pathetic…no wonder he was easy to control and kill."
"The dude had a mediocre upbringing, a lame back story, and he hasn’t even been back in time for very long, and yet he was almost able to cap out the Alpha-Rank thanks to being a trash Basic Human." It didn’t take me long to become bored of reading through Velli’s life story, so at some point, I lazily flipped through the pages until I couldn’t stand reading it any longer.
"Blah blah… there’s nothing worth noting in this guy’s life; even his skills and techniques are trash tier." Rolling my eyes and flinging the book over my shoulder, I picked up the more important of the two while the one filled with his info vanished into the oblivion I nicknamed Deletion.
"Although it only goes back to June 1996, there is plenty held in this one…" flipping the pages slowly, I spent around 15-20 minutes reading through the book organized in the format of a standard diary. While I can’t say it was a riveting adventure, it was enough to satisfy my curiosity as I ended up making several faces along the way.
Finishing up the book and being brought up to speed with what I had seen today, I learned how, for months, the area around the Mammoth Café had been heavily contested by around 20-25 different Returners, all harboring similar ideas to me when it came to taking over the franchise written by Jennifer Rowing.
For months, small scuffles took place nearly every night, where small groups of Returners would fight under the cover of darkness, maiming each other but never going any farther than that.
Unfortunately, as all of them wore masks or had multiple means to hide their identity from each other, it was rather difficult to get names or defining features apart from the few Talent skills that got fired off in battle, so there wasn’t a whole lot I could learn about the cowards who inevitably gave up fighting for a shot at claiming the Henry Potter series as their own.
In the end, only three people remained, taking on the handles of Overwatch. The three stalked Rowing no matter where she went, and surprisingly, they had a rather decent plan.
Essentially, what it boiled down to was they planned on waiting until she had submitted the final draft for the Magician’s Stone, then following her to London, where they would work their way into the Publication company management and forge all the documents pertaining to the book in their names.
Then, they would kidnap and deal with the woman before submitting their own version of the other six books in the series, before splitting and profit the book made.
So, while their plan had multiple different holes in it, the ideas they had decided on could still be considered decent.
"I expected as much, though; they don’t have my Psy-Kinesis, so their plan, while rather thought out, is still risky as hell." Placing the book down and leaning back in my chair, I digested everything I had learned before taking a moment to go over my own plan and make some changes; adding in a few bits and pieces from theirs, I fleshed out a much better strategy than I originally conceptualized.
Before, I planned on simply killing Rowing off and using my Coersion to take over the rights to the story, but now, I had a more twisted idea in store for the unsuspecting woman.
Wearing a smile, I left my imagination library and returned to the real world.
Twenty minutes later, I could be seen standing over the corpse of Overwatch Mid in a small office on the second floor of the local grocery store a couple of blocks away from the Mammoth Café.
I had wanted to be quicker in my dealings with the second member of the group. Still, as luck would have it, right as the burly man’s corpse hit the ground, I heard three distinct beeps coming from the walkie-talkie resting by the window I had seen the idiot looking out of earlier in the day.
Follow curr𝒆nt nov𝒆ls on fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com.
"Fuck…" It was time for the group check-in, and after not hearing from Overwatch High first, Overwatch Low, whose name I learned was Ryan Bishop, took the liberty of doing his check-in first.
Thinking on the fly and entering my Xipher persona, I did the only logical thing I could come up with: I picked up the brick-sized device, pressed the button, and began talking.
"Where once was three, there’s now only one—a poor little groupie who should have learned when to run. Sitting alone in the Mammoth Café, the poor little groupie should come out to play."