Natsuki sat in the common room with Sayori and Yukari, mulling over her morning coffee. The room was filled with the usual crowd. Hancock Weiss sat in a corner reading a book, Leora Deutschland was chatting with her voice actress but at least looking less annoyed with her than usual, and the short, middle-aged creator sat on a couch, drawing something in his sketchbook.

    “So, are you going to go visit Aquila and Yuri today?” Sayori asked.

    Natsuki shook her head. “Too much to do.”

    Yukari stared at her. “So, what’s the real reason you’re not going?”

    Natsuki sighed. “It’s...look, you weren’t there. You didn’t see it for yourself.”

    “Ah,” Sayori said. “That.”

    “There was just nothing left of her in that fight,” Natsuki said. “All the kindness was gone, and she was all just malice and cruelty. And, I know she told us all about it long ago, and I would have known if she was lying or exaggerating, but...seeing it for yourself is different.”

    “It makes it real,” Yukari said.

    Natsuki nodded. “I’m just...I’m just still processing it, that’s all.”

    “Well, the world could be ending soon,” Sayori said. “Don’t wait too long to go visit her again.”

    Meliana stepped through the door, Cap right behind her. She caught Natsuki’s attention, and the two headed over.

    “I’ve got one more helper for you,” Meliana declared, motioning to Cap. “Atria talked him into coming in and helping.”

    “Well, Yuri insisted that I try to do something about it too,” Cap added. “So, I’m here part-time, I guess.”

    Yukari grinned. “It will be great to have you.”

    Meliana hesitated for a moment, and then said, “And, I wanted to tell you all that I’m sorry that you weren’t created by this world. All of the rest of us got to meet our creators, and, well, it’s a profound experience, at least for most of us. But, we can’t give you that while you’re here, and I wish we could.”

    “It’s for the best,” Yukari stated. “Our creator can rot in hell.”

    As quiet as it already was, the room went silent. Natsuki glanced around – everybody was staring at them.

    It was Hancock who broke the silence. “Look, I know what it is to have issues with your story,” he said, rolling up his right sleeve to reveal a metal arm. “I didn’t start with this. There’s a reason I don’t like spending time with the man who created me. But, your creator is like your god and parent combined into one. Surely you can’t–”

    “I absolutely can,” Yukari retorted. “You want to talk about parents? I loved my parents. But, I was written to be the yandere. Do you know that means? It means that I was written to become obsessed over the protagonist, and hurt or kill anybody who got in my way, including the people I care about the most. But, you can’t justify that inside a story without enough tragedy to make somebody unstable. So, my story began with my parents and grandparents being taken away from me.” She looked at Natsuki and Sayori. “And then, all that was needed was a little push – the protagonist showing up – to put me on the path to hurting the people who became my new family.”

    Yukari crossed her arms. “Well, I didn’t hurt them. We got rescued before I could. And I became somebody I can be proud of, somebody who has done remarkable and amazing things, and who will never hurt anybody. But everything I am today, I am in spite of my creator, not because of them.”

    “She speaks for all of us,” Sayori added.

    Out of the corner of her eye, Natsuki watched the creator with the sketchbook stop drawing and tear away one of the pages. He noticed her looking at him and said, “I just rethought one of my new characters. Don’t mind me.”

    Natsuki finished up her coffee. “Anyway, we should get to work. I want to solve this mystery today.”

Sitting at her desk with Sayori and Yukari at her side, Natsuki flipped through the pages that Atria had delivered. Cap leaned against the wall, taking in the room. Hancock stood at one of his tables, puttering away at one of his inventions.

    “This is everything we have on the mystery room in Balthazar’s base,” Atria said. “Leora Deutschland went back there yesterday to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. She didn’t.”

    Natsuki sighed. It wasn’t anything she’d already been over a dozen times.

    “So what has this war been like so far over here?” Cap asked.

    “Uneventful,” Hancock replied, not looking up. “Outside of the mech battle at the very beginning, just small skirmishes. There’s a fight, people get bloodied and bruised, and occasionally somebody has to go to the hospital. That’s it.”

    Cap blinked. “That’s not what I expected. In the story worlds, it’s a bloodbath.”

    Atria glanced at Hancock. “Wait...is Balthazar not involved in the skirmishes here at all?”

    Hancock shook his head. “None of us have seen him since he appeared in our story worlds.”

    Natsuki’s brain started racing. “That’s new data...”

    Atria shook her head. “That makes no sense, though. There’s nobody here who could survive a fight against Balthazar. And, thanks to Natsuki, we now know that Balthazar not only knows where our base is, but can shield his people from our EM detectors. He could have wiped us out at any time. So, why didn’t he?”

    “That’s not the only weirdness,” Cap added. “Back when we were still running, Aquila told me that the battles in the story worlds didn’t make any tactical sense. Balthazar was using powers that were far stronger than they needed to be. I think she described it as being like killing an ant by dropping an anvil on it.”

    Natsuki blinked. A new thread of possibilities opened up in her mind. “How does the information stream work? I mean, everybody in this room still has their powers and abilities, even if they break the laws of physics, right?”

    “When we come here, we’re surrounded by a bubble of our story world reality,” Hancock replied, looking up from his table. “It slowly degrades over time. I think the calculation is that most of us lose our powers completely within a year of arrival.”

    Natsuki frowned. “No, that’s not right.”

    Hancock cocked his head. “Yes, it is. We have it from a couple of very good quantum physicists, and they took everything into account.”

    Natsuki began to smile. “Not everything,” she said, motioning to Cap. “Not him.”

    “What’s so special about him?” Hancock asked.

    “I’m a...I was a superhero,” Cap replied. “I can fly, I’m bulletproof, I can shoot lasers from my eyes...”

    Natsuki grinned. “And you’ve still got all of your powers. Cap hasn’t been back to his story world in years. If the information stream worked the way you people thought it did, then Cap’s powers should be long gone. But, they’re not.”

    “But...‘Cap’ was in the story worlds,” Hancock protested. “This world works differently.”

    “No, it doesn’t,” Natsuki retorted. “The laws of physics in this universe don’t change because you leave the solar system! They’re the same everywhere! Now, the physics in the story worlds is much more akin to the atmosphere of a world in this universe, but the principles are the same – if the information stream works a certain way in the story worlds, it has to work the same way here.”

    Yukari began to chuckle. “What do all of us creations have that nobody else here does?”

    Sayori blinked. “A character description!”

    Natsuki nodded. “That’s what an information stream does – it maintains character descriptions! It doesn’t matter if the character description is from another story world. The information stream will maintain it regardless. The same goes for the description of technology, like a mech. But, the main course of its current is outwards towards the story worlds, so maintaining the character descriptions here in the hub world requires extra work, and eventually it’s overcome by the outwards flow. It’s backflow!” Natsuki blinked. “And that’s how Balthazar is doing it – why he’s using too much power to kill people in the story worlds. He’s deliberately creating holes in the fabric of the story worlds so that matter will fall through into the information stream. If he makes enough, and they’re big enough, then the next update won’t be able to close them all. And, then, all it takes is a steady stream of particles to increase the backflow – he’s colliding the worlds by increasing the backflow to the point that it is stronger than the outflow! That’s why all of the skirmishes here are just creations beating each other up with their powers without Balthazar taking part – he’s not from a story world, so there is no increase in backflow when he does something here. But the rest of you...every time you use your powers, you create more backflow!”

    Hancock stared at her. “You might be on to something here. But, wait a minute – how could that possibly work? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, right? If the outflow is what pushes the story worlds away, why would backflow do anything but push this world farther away from the story world?”

    Natsuki grinned. “Because this world isn’t made by the information stream! Think about it – all of us and our worlds are created by the information stream, but the only thing the information stream has to work with to create us is itself. We are the solid form of information stream energy, transmuted into flesh and blood. And for it to coalesce and create something solid, it has to have an attraction to itself. It’s like picking up a piece of gum using another piece of gum. So, if the backflow is strong enough, the attraction the information stream has to itself will pull the story world with it. But, this world isn’t created by the information stream, so there is no attraction – the outflow just pushes the story world away until it is far enough to reach equilibrium with inertia.” She began to laugh. “We can stop the collision! All we have to do is increase the outflow to these worlds until they’re greater than the backflow! We just force as many information stream updates as we can to those worlds!”

    Atria blinked. “That could be harder than it sounds. I don’t know if you’ve seen how the creators of this world work, but they don’t release updates very quickly. Light novel volumes are released months apart. Anime episodes are released once per week, and manga installments are often the same. The volume of updates you’d have to push...there just isn’t time for the creators to do that.”

    Natsuki paused and thought for a moment. “Surely the people of this world don’t just engage with stories by consumption, right? Wouldn’t they take the characters they love and write their own stories for them?”

    Hancock nodded, his eyes brightening. “They do! There are a lot of amateur creators on this world – they write stories, and draw pictures of us. Some even make videos. They’re not official or authorized, but there’s a lot of them out there.”

    Natsuki leaned back in her chair and smiled. “So we make them all official. Put them up on the official websites, so that more people read and consume them. That would flood the story worlds with information stream updates and overcome any backflow.”

    Hancock stared at her. “My god, you’ve cracked it! You’ve actually figured out how to stop him!”

    Natsuki nodded and grinned. “Detective Natsuki was on the case!”

    Atria forced a smile. “That’s very good. We’ve got a plan now. I’ll start working on a proposal for the higher ups.” With that, she stepped out of the room.

    A chill went down Natsuki’s spine. “I’ll be right back,” she said, following Atria. She found Atria in her office, frowning as she typed away at her laptop.

    “What’s wrong?” Natsuki asked.

    “Nothing,” Atria lied. “You’ve done a great job. We have a way to save all the story worlds now.”

    “I can read you too, remember?” Natsuki said. “There’s something I’ve missed and you didn’t. What is it?”

    Atria stopped typing and looked up at her. “I don’t want to worry you.”

    “I’m trapped on a world that is on the verge of ending,” Natsuki declared. “I think avoiding worries is a lost cause.”

    Atria grimaced. “You’re absolutely right. The only reason that makes sense for how this war has progressed here is if Balthazar is trying to use the backflow from the skirmishes to help collide the worlds. But once we start counteracting that, we stop being useful to him, and we become an active threat.”

    Natsuki swallowed. “He’ll come for us.”

    Atria nodded. “And it will be a bloodbath.”

NEXT: “Strategy”