Thursday morning before work, she threw herself into her forums with a vigor she hadn’t had in weeks. Maybe since Janette became Janey.
Erin let herself be dragged into old haunts of topics, like how many Protagonists there were, and their statistical traits, by powers, story genre, or acting ability. It was always interesting to read about gaffs made by different Protagonists as they momentarily forgot to act like their own character or spoke a contradiction to their backstory.
She also dug into the list of heroes who were not Protagonists or known Pawns. Surprisingly, this list wasn’t short. There were lots of people who still fought crime and tried to keep order at night for the rest of the sane world. These folks were oddballs, even in a world where everyone was just a piece of backdrop to a strange comic book universe, but they existed.
Rex Magnum wasn’t anywhere. Erin even checked the ‘known associates’ page for Silverknight. She saved this for last, as she was a little leery to see if it had been updated recently.
It had been updated recently, but Rex Magnum wasn’t the new name on the list. It was, instead, her own name, “Erin Razor”. She hesitated before resigning to click on the link.
The thread, titled “Known Silverknight Associate: Erin Razor”, had an unflattering picture of her cropped from a work holiday party, as well as a detailed list of information about her personal stats, from eye color to where she sat in the office at Divinilogic. It listed Erin as a close friend of the Puppet Janette Grayford, and that she was known to have spoken to Tyson recently.
It wasn’t much, but it was enough that Erin was annoyed to see all these details, with the status indicating she was “Pawn imminent” or “at-risk.” The details even mentioned it was rumored that Erin spoke to the police recently during the investigation of Greg’s suicide - which was already linked to Ennui. No one seriously accused her of being responsible, at least.
As a last resort, Erin looked up the name Rex Magnum on the overall internet.
The forums she perused were not traditionally searchable. People got invited by word of mouth, as backdrop vetted each other initially, and then would ask a mod to invite the interested backdrop to make an account.
Since Erin found literally no reference to anyone named ‘Rex Magnum’ on the internet, she had to assume she was about to go on social calling with a Protagonist that had not ‘entered the world’ yet.
After work on Thursday, she tried to log in to the site admin page, planning to announce that they needed to find someone new.
The password didn’t work. She tried it again.
She couldn’t log in.
A sinking feeling her stomach and her emails confirmed it. She did server service for four different forums, three of them local to the Meridian City and the state of Carolina, the last server being less regional and centered out of Dallas. She had four emails stating that her services were no longer necessary in varying levels of formality and gentleness.
Her fingers shook as she tried to log into the forums as a normal user, afraid she’d been locked out of the community of backdrop humanity all together.
The first two wouldn’t let her log in, and there was no option to register a new account. Having given up hope, she tried to log into the last of the local forums, one that focused mostly on Meridian City rather than the whole state. It worked.
She felt herself so relieved that she hadn’t been completely shunned. There was a private message sent to this account by the main admin, and she pulled it up.
“Erin, I know you’re in a bind, but if you remain backdrop, you don’t deserve to be blocked from seeing what happens in your own backyard. Best of luck and best wishes.”
Erin felt her eyes burn. She wasn’t much of a crier, but this was more than enough to mean something. Even if she were just a normal user, most forums required identity disclosure to the admins. Anyone could turn into a Puppet, after all.
After trying to log into the last forum of the four forums, which was more of a national forum - she was locked out there too - Erin pushed back from her little desk/command station of three monitors.
She was no longer server admin, and, as a result, had no responsibilities. Tomorrow was going to be her last, and it seemed like everyone already knew it.
Erin didn’t think she would sleep Thursday night, but she almost felt surlier when her alarm woke her because she felt almost denied something to complain about.
The Protagonist news that morning held more than enough to give her reason to be irritated for the day, though.
The evil genius Modulus - a recurring major villain in Meridian City and Pawn - had converted a major dog food factory in the industrial section of town into a mini-bot factory. The bots had begun seizing all the cars in the inner city with computer chips and turning them into roving gangs of killing machines, menacing the streets. The Cavalry, along with several other hero groups, were overrun, until a new Hero jumped onto the scene.
According to reports and street cameras, he was driving some classic muscle car, old, and souped up, and, above all, ‘alpha-masculine’. From it emerged a tall, extremely buff man in a stylized and modern version of a circus muscle-man’s outfit, cut to show off an impossible number of pecs and abs. It was certainly possible to see the blonde man’s impeccable surfer haircut and his square jawline, but his outfit was definitely designed to draw the eyes downward, rather than up.
His power set seemed to mainly involve beams of light that lanced from his eyes and blasted the mini-bots off of the hoods of cars. The blue lasers seemed to be mostly kinetic in nature, but there were a few images and videos, as the night wore on, of different colored lasers that seemed to either emit heat or even electricity.
Days later, Erin would read that there was some speculation that his different eye beams seemed to reflect off of different surfaces, such as the electricity off of glass. Not she could have known that was useful information.
Eventually, The Ferret disarmed the control beacon in the factory, and the cars were disabled, while Modulus was captured by the new hero in town. A reporter, a common Pawn of the local news, caught footage of the new hero surveying the wreckage of cars before him. The reporter asked who this new hero was.
The blonde surfer dude with laser eyes and impossible abs smiled winningly into the camera. “Oh me? I’m Spectacular. I have a feeling I am going to love it in this town.”
Erin exited out of the video footage in disgust. She was going to have to go on a date with that tonight. She seriously considered how hard it would be to convince the Plot that she actually was villain material. Anything to keep from being a Puppet girlfriend to that. Maybe she could try to smuggle a weapon in her small purse.
Erin was in too much of a haze to remember work that day. Erin texted Janey to tell her that she would meet the group at the restaurant. Janey offered to give her a ride one last time, but Erin rebuffed her. She wasn’t going to drink tonight. Her motorcycle would be her transportation. She would ride home under her own willpower.
The Plot hadn’t taken her yet. Erin had to pretend.
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