Chapter 25

"First off, you can't just go stealing other people's lines! Second off, you can't just introduce yourself like you're some essential character when we're already this deep into the story!"

"This deep? Please, you're just barely half way done."

"I just broke the universe. Look up at the sky! If that isn't the end of the story, I don't know what is."

"That is just the start of the second act. It's also the perfect time to introduce the final essential character."

"Another thing, can you stop referring to the world as a fictional plot; that's totally my thing."

"Actually it's my thing. If anyone can talk about the plot of the universe, it's me."

"Anyways, how do you know about me and Terri having powers?"

"Please. It's not like you go and hide it. You realize this very building is the epicenter of a giant split in the earth, right? It's like you have a line drawing right towards you. Either way, that's not actually how I did it. I used my power to figure you bunch out."

"Well, don't hold out, what's your power?"

The black haired man shoots an expression like he's trying to hold back his tongue.

"Spit it out, we're just like you, we can handle it."

"It's not that. It's that, the way you handle it, it's just going to be endless frustration."

"You don't know that for sure."

"Sadly… Yes I do."

I could feel the twisting of my expression sync exactly with the realization dawning upon me.

"You're psychic, aren't you?"

"Every time."

He mutters under his breath.

"What?"

"Every time, every single time, it's always the same thing!!! Fucking Psychic!!!"

"I mean you just said-"

"I'm not a psychic. I know telling you that won't change you calling me that ten trillion times, but I really need you to understand that I'm not-"

"Psychic. You know I wont change because you can see the future. That's what you would call being psychic."

"For the love of God, please listen to me. I don't see the future. I see the obvious conclusion to the plot line."

"The obvious what?"

"You know when you're playing a mystery game or a detective show and you can feel out where the plots going way too early and you predict how it goes?"

"Yeah, I guess. I do that with visual novels all the time. There's this one series that uses the same teopes so much I can pretty much figure out the whole plot about a quarter of the way into the story. Except for one of their games that used the fact that I would do that to pull a perfect double twist and catch me completely off guard with the true plot."

"Yes, just like Chaos;Child."

"How did you know-"

"Because you were gonna say the game's name if I didn't guess it. You were just trying to be subtle about getting me to ask you about it. That's what I do. Except we don't live in the later entry in a long running series, we live in a fresh faced story that has the most predictable plot you can imagine. My power is to predict how the plot will go based on what's already happened."

"I dunno. Can that really be called a power? I mean, I can predict an episode of Columbo, but that doesn't make me a psychic."

"You bitch, stop calling me that! Also, this isn't a TV show episode, this is reality. If you really want to be convinced though…"

The man pulls out a pocket umbrella and opens it up, holding it above his head. Just then, a few drops of rain begin to fall.

"Oh, come on, my phone can predict the weather. Hell, we live in Ohio, predicting rain is just a fifty-fifty coin toss."

Then, he sticks out his arm, pointing to an old flag pole standing next to our headquarters.

*BAM*

Lightning strikes the spot.

"Ok, that's a power."