Aral made an excellent detective. Of course, being omniscient, she had a slight advantage over every other detective, but even so, that didn’t mean it wasn’t fun. Add that she enjoyed laughing at some people’s stupidity, and that detectives occasionally had a higher intellect than the average human, and that she did occasionally have black spots in her omniscience, she made an excellent detective.

Of course, that didn’t mean her career path followed that of a detective. On the contrary, she was a journalist that often just got caught up in detective work for the sake of it. Honestly, she enjoyed being a journalist immensely more than a detective, especially as she was able to bring it back to the other Fragments, creating more use for her existence as a Close Fragment.

“Unfortunately, Aral is also completely aware of Center’s useless narration of her omniscience, and would like you to kindly shut up.”

No.

“Your intelligence is minuscule, and you deserve everything that’s coming to you.”

That’s rude, Aral.

“You know what? I’m taking over narration, idiot. It would make much more sense for an omniscient, grown, most-definitely-human-and-not-anything-else adult to tell this story instead of an immature idiot who believes themselves the center of the universe and named herself accordingly, like an idiot.”

That’s not happening, Aral realized, or knew already, as she was omniscient and not stupid.

“Fight me.”

That is also not happening, as Aral would know everything that was happening, and I would just rewrite the story to change that, but then her omniscience would adjust and she’d still know everything. Eventually, Aral and the narrator would arrive at a stalemate. Aral knew this but said the comment to spite me. She knew it would delay me telling the story, which would give her more time before she had to go be a detective alongside someone she deemed a complete idiot who believed himself to be, and I quote, ‘The Shit™.’ Yes, even with the trademark.

“You don’t want to delay me anymore. I know this because I am not an idiot, Center.” Aral said.

The narrator ignored Aral and continued the story.

An irritating man called Gary Hent was approaching, his irritating face looking irritatingly smug and irritating. As you may have guessed, he irritated Aral. She had asked the Centre to write him out of existence many times, but that proved pointless because it is actually Center’s friend who is writing this paragraph.

Aral knew that as well and rolled her eyes as Center wrote the next paragraph. This would be a long day. Aral knew that was an expression, but it was also true, as that day would actually have been extended six hours by the local government of the town she was in, which was a stupid decision, as the next day now had six fewer hours, making it a very short day.

Aral knew the exact address of the crime she had to investigate along with ‘The Shit™’ and was already there an hour earlier than the detective would get there, and also knew everything that had happened with the crime, including the culprit. Unfortunately, there was also a blank spot in her omniscience here.

To clear up the ambiguous nature of Aral’s omniscience, Aral was to provide expository dialogue to the detective. This is yet to happen and is not in this story. So you will not understand the nature of Aral’s omniscience until the next story, as the story is not about Aral’s omniscience, but Aral shedding a blank spot in her omniscience, hopefully spawning a chain reaction of other blank spots to be shed. That was another blank spot in Aral’s omniscience. Would there be a chain reaction?

The victim of the crime greeted Hent. He was completely unamused at the nature of the investigation (he was supposed to be going to a bar today), but did find some small consolation in the victim’s appearance. They were very beautiful, of ambiguous gender (but leaning towards feminine), wore a summer dress and a sun hat and according to the clipboard on the table in front of Hent, they were, in fact, a cis female suffering from various traumas. Of course, he didn’t care about how she looked, he just cared about the amazing tea she had served him. Aral was aware that this contradicted what Center had just said, and later told Center to edit it. As such, this paragraph has been edited to apologise for the factual inaccuracy - Gary Hent DID enjoy the appearance of the woman, but only because she reminded him of an old friend and he believed the tea was divine. It wasn't. Much better tea has been made.

“Thank you, Ma’am. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to call us.” Hent told the woman, a smile on his face.

The woman nodded and shied away from what Hent meant as a comforting touch. Hent was unaware of this and brushed her shoulder gently, making the woman very uncomfortable.

Hent left the woman to her own devices, investigating more of the crime scene. Stepping out of the lounge into the next room, he observed what surrounded him.

To the left, he observed a dusted counter, on which there was a circular imprint. Above it was a window that showed the swirling winter sky, and a crow perched on a telephone wire that croaked indignantly. To Hent’s right, there was a sink that had been badly dented, in which was what used to be an expensive vase, but was now a mess of shards. There also appeared to be a strange, viscous substance that shimmered in a strange black colour. This would have disturbed Hent, if he hadn’t been so focused on the person in front of him.

Aral smiled falsely as she greeted him, standing, and gesturing to a door.

Blue had been waiting in the cathedral for about a day since explaining themself for the self-proclaimed ‘Gods’ of this universe - one of which, Amun, had been ridiculously nice, surprisingly, if not sad behind behind his stony facade. Blue decided they liked him the most.

Blue found Crow disturbing. Ever since their first meeting, in fact, and the fact that he seemed to know more than he let on. They’d be sure to ask Aral about that in the next meeting at the Cafe, if they remembered to. Then again, forgetting things was not something they were prone to doing, unlike someone else Blue knew quite well.

Just as they had reached the point of boredom that they had begun to watch moss on the wall slowly get eaten by a rat, Blue was alerted by a caw of a Crow in the other room. Crow, specifically. Blue slowly got to their feet and creeped over to the door, reaching to peer in at what was happening.

There was a swarm of feathers and fire behind the door, and Blue jerked back involuntarily as the door swung open and they were grabbed by a tall figure. Their eye, the one that looked like a broken mirror to another world, gained another crack as they were thrown to the floor before being picked back up. They felt their world begin to close in at the all-too familiar feeling of things falling apart around them as they were once again hoisted up by the tall stranger clad in a suit - Crow, what was he doing? - and the yelling of Amun.

“They are necessary to gain information, Crow! By any means necessary! Your insolence is putting us all at risk!”

“They’re a kid! I’m not letting you hurt a kid!” Crow retorted, before swearing under his breath and ducking out of the way of an extremely sharp set of nails. “Dammit, Bas, you and your idiot brother are making this really difficult!”

Crow lifted Blue’s now-limp body with ease, hoisting them fireman-style over his shoulder. “Dammit, creep lady, you told me what would happen, but didn’t tell me how to get out, huh? How am I supposed to help this kid now?” He then lifted his head to address his fellows in a raised voice. “Look, guys, I get you’re upset right now that I crashed my funeral, again, and that I won’t let Kit go into someone’s head, again, and you have every right to be! I just think you should maybe calm down, because I think you’re all just a bit misguided here! This kid probably has good intentions, right? Surely you couldn’t hurt me because of this! Now, if we all just calmed down, and -” Crow was cut off by a swipe of sharp air past his head that he narrowly dodged. “You know what? Fuck this.”

And Crow did what Crow did best. Ran.

Medium was watching Center again.

Granted, this isn't unusual for them - it - they can often be found watching Center, but this time was different.

This time, they were watching them with Center knowing Medium was there. Though, not Medium, exactly. Center was simply now aware of their repressed feelings and emotions, and becoming gradually more accepting of those feelings, and, by extension, more accepting of Medium.

Medium watched Center as they wrote. Center found writing therapeutic, Medium guessed. It believed that Center used the writing, and their characters as a way to get out their own feelings, being unaware that those characters were real, while also aware, in some sense. It was strange enough, Medium supposed, but it was not one to judge Center.

Medium watched as Center stood, stretching, and walked out of their bedroom, across the hall, to the bathroom. Medium didn’t follow Center in there. It figured Center would want some privacy, and instead turned down the hall and down the stairs, deciding to exit the house and breathe for a while.

Reaching the front door, Medium moved their hand and opened it to go through, finding something unexpected on the other side.

A red blur tumbled through the door after the rest of the Close Fragments arrived, swearing and cursing as rust tumbled to the floor in clouds of orange.

“Finally, Clock. Okay, let’s get this meeting started. Shut up, Crow. We’ll explain in a second.”