I was glad to finally have some momentum in this storyline. Finding out that many Insight tropes were completely corrupted was a terrible surprise.

Trope Master took forever to use because I had to wait for a new nightmare each night to get a little more information about our enemies. But it was the loss of the Dailies that was most upsetting. At the end of the day, I didn’t get any information in the normal way the trope presented.

I got no raw footage, boring or otherwise, not until I went to bed. When sleep found me, I did get footage, for sure. I got the footage in my nightmares.

The trope was practically useless, not just because of the nightmarish inversion, but because I could barely remember my dreams when I woke up.

It was frustrating, but we were making do.

I was in the pizza place, hiding from Gus Junior as he locked up.

That was a lot harder than it sounded. Not only did I have to hide from him, but I also had to avoid being On-Screen at all because my character had no reason to stay late or at least no reason that wouldn’t have given him undue prominence in the storyline.

Instead, I had shot a scene where I loitered about, unsure of what to do, as Gus called for everyone to vacate the premises.

I did this thing where I was cleaning everything while staring at the oven, at the place where Isaac had been. Maybe that made my character conflicted.

If only I had brought my Cutaway Death trope and my Director’s Monitor. I could just end my character’s life in some comical way without having to die at all, and be able to watch the rest of the story safely while being there for my teammates.

But of course, the enemies in this story didn’t want to kill you. They wanted to drag you straight to hell, a fate worse than death, which is why I didn’t bring those tropes to begin with.

Luckily, I had Just Out of Shot. For as hard as it was to stay Off-Screen normally, that trope allowed me to see the cameras in the scene whenever enemies were around so that I could avoid them.

All I had to do was find some enemies, and staying hidden would be a breeze.

Gus finally locked the door and left.

I observed from the shadows as Camden meekly poked his head out of the break room.

He had stayed in his hidey-hole. His plan was to stay past 1 a.m. and hopefully stay hidden. He had his Hide and Seek trope, so we were going to give it our all.

We needed to know what this little side business was that the demons were running: the sin-eating.

My character couldn’t investigate this. Camden had to.

Technically, this subplot didn’t even have to be solved to beat the storyline, but resolving it was necessary if we were going to do a good job.

Camden crept through the dark restaurant until he saw a clock on the wall, illuminated by security lights, showing the minute hand ticking toward 1 o’clock.

He showed all the proper emotions: nervousness, hesitation, regret. And then he went Off-Screen.

We had talked. We had theorized. We had planned. There was no more of that to be done.

We tried small talk for a moment, but the truth was, small talk couldn’t fill the vacuum of awaiting the arrival of demons. Even demons that were pretending to be cartoonish.

“Are you sure that tonight will be Second Blood?” he asked me, whispering even though we were Off-Screen.

“Yep,” I said.

Ramona had been doing a phenomenal job of being Isaac’s foil. Where he had run toward danger, she had run from it. He was killing it down there from what I could tell by listening in. I had half a mind to go check on him.

I only got to listen to Ramona as she fled in her parents’ car. She was in Carousel Heights, but that wouldn’t matter to the demons. She just kept driving without sleep.

Fortunately, one of the few tropes she had helped her cure the symptoms of sleep deprivation. Still, the demons chased her, and, if the sound of it all was to be believed, she gave quite a good performance. But I couldn’t know for sure.

I just hoped that by guaranteeing she would be Second Blood, she had had space to get some screen time and earn some rewards.

The truth was, she was way under-leveled. If she could play even a meager role, it would be a huge boost.

As I sat there, contemplating all of the different threads moving in the storyline, I could hear Camden’s nervous breathing beside me.

He believed he would get captured and sent to hell. And if worse came to worst, he would. After all, Avery’s only sin was attempted trespass onto the property, and that’s what Camden was doing just then.

“You’re going to do great,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said nervously. “I’m just worried about you accidentally walking in on one of my scenes and ruining the shot.”

We laughed. He didn’t want to admit weakness. Even when his arm was missing, he couldn’t show weakness.

We went back to silence after that, though I could hear the faint whisper of Camden practicing his lines under his breath. I hadn’t really given him lines. If everything went well, he would never need to speak.

But of course, if they didn’t go well…

We would cross that bridge when we came to it.

A few minutes later, time jumped forward a bit.

“Hey buddy, can you go to your corner of the restaurant? I’m really trying to stay Off-Screen here,” I said, as a timer appeared on the red wallpaper stating that I would go On-Screen in five minutes. It was suddenly 12:55 a.m.

“Right,” he said.

I was in the shadows of the corner of the dining room. Camden found a hiding spot near the trash can bay.

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As soon as he walked away, the timer disappeared from the red wallpaper.

I was safe once more.

Camden went On-Screen at exactly 1 o’clock in the morning.

Nothing happened.

Carousel was gathering footage of Camden sitting, not knowing exactly what he was waiting for. He fiddled through his book on demon folklore.

Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect.

And then it happened.

All of the animatronics, which had all been shut off, sprang to life.

They started talking to each other. They weren’t saying anything freaky, but in the dark, quiet restaurant, it was spooky enough.

“Do you want extra cheese?” Isabella Mozzarella asked.

“Here comes the champ!” the Pizza Boxer said.

“Bah bah bah bah bah bah bah,” Tony the Tosser replied, through the layer of plaster pizza dough covering his head.

But of course, none of them were the star of the show. Not tonight.

It was Hot Head himself who sprang to life, his eyes moving from side to side, his little arms waving from their place on the wall next to the oven. His mouth opened, revealing the fires of the oven.

I could have sworn I remembered to shut that off.

But of course, these fires weren’t from the gas line.

These fires were from hell, or at least a version of it.

And as I watched Hot Head from the shadows, something happened that I had not yet seen.

Hot Head’s mouth began to open wider and wider. His head rose as the wall above him shrank, and the distance between the top of his head and the ceiling disappeared.

And from hell, four figures rose—not speaking, not acknowledging each other, not even taking steps until they were ten or so feet into the front kitchen.

Steps were all part of the performance. They could levitate.

They each practiced moving their skin suits. There were three generic-looking men and then one very particular-looking woman, short, with her gray hair in a bun: Miss Verity Pryce, in the flesh. Or someone’s flesh.

She looked around the restaurant.

She looked right at me.

But of course, that didn’t matter, because I didn’t exist in this scene. The cameras couldn’t see over here. I had picked a good spot.

Camden did exist in the scene, though.

And I could see from across the room that his Chase Scene indicator lit up almost immediately. The demons were onto him, if not within the story, then at least within the meta.

Luckily, in a Chase Scene, he could use all of his Savvy in place of his Hustle in order to hide, and he had a lot of Savvy. Twelve points. He was a heavy hitter.

They weren’t going to find him. Not so easily, at least.

Miss Pryce turned to speak to one of her associates, but I couldn’t quite hear what she was saying, because she wasn’t speaking English. She was speaking in a voice that sounded like the screams of tortured souls.

The man she said it to nodded and then walked back around the counter toward the hallway that would lead him to the back kitchen.

The other two men didn’t stay still.

Instead, they walked out into the restaurant, picked up a long table, and moved it toward the front of the store, into an open area that led in one direction to the front kitchen and the cashiers, and in the other to the arcade.

They set the table down.

They didn’t even bother to get chairs.

After they did this, they stood perfectly still. So did Miss Pryce.

They didn’t stay still in the way a human would. They did it in the way a demon would.

They looked like mannequins.

They were On-Screen. And occasionally, Camden would be too, as he cautiously watched from afar.

I heard the back door close, echoing through the silent restaurant. Even the animatronics were afraid to speak. It would seem they had been powered on at the same time as Hot Head, but they weren’t running through their lines anymore.

From the back kitchen, the final demon was making his way back into view.

He wasn’t alone.

There was a man with him, a man dressed like he was either about to do a lot of cocaine or traffic a lot of cocaine. He had a flared collar and walked with a swagger.

He wore his hair in a mullet.

Whatever swagger was in his steps had failed to make it to his voice, because though he was trying to sound tough, his voice cracked as soon as he said, “This is the last one, right? I’m tired of this.”

Suddenly, the demons were moving again.

“This is the last,” Miss Pryce said, “assuming you haven’t added any more skeletons to your closet.”

He shook his head. “No, I haven’t. I’m out of that line of work. I’m in import/export now.”

She gestured toward the table.

“If the only sins you’ve committed are petty lies like that, tonight should be the last,” Miss Pryce said.

The man nodded. On the red wallpaper, he didn’t have a name, just the word Sinner. I would think you’d need to be more specific than that in Carousel.

He was an ordinary NPC.

The man, clearly having been here before, began unbuttoning his shirt. Then he climbed up on the table and laid down.

“Just get it done,” he said. “I’m tired of living with this.”

“Oh, you’ll be born anew,” Miss Pryce said. “Innocent as a swaddling child.”

“Does that mean I’m going to crap my pants?” he asked, just a nervous joke.

“No,” Miss Pryce said, refusing to humor him or put him at ease.

He bit his lip awkwardly for a moment.

“I’m still having the nightmares,” he said. “Even after all of our… sessions.”

“No more nightmares after this, I assure you,” she said. “Just sweet dreams. Imports, exports—your life can be whatever you want. Be noble. Be righteous. Be what you choose.”

The man’s breathing was irregular. He was afraid, but he was also desperate.

He nodded.

The man who had retrieved the Sinner had also been carrying something in his hands, something I couldn’t quite make out yet. But soon, he walked up to the table where the mulleted man was lying.

He held out the object for all to see. I even got the sense that he was trying to hold it high enough so Camden and I could see it from our various hiding places.

I was horrified.

He had taken some of the pizza dough I had prepped, portioned, wrapped in plastic wrap, and refrigerated.

I thought it had been those heathens from the front kitchens taking my dough.

He unwrapped the dough and placed it gingerly on the man’s chest.

Perhaps I shouldn’t tell Isaac or Ramona about that part.

The man’s breathing was fast-paced and rough.

Around him, the demons, Miss Pryce included, began to chant in their screams-from-hell mother tongue.

“This is cold,” the man said, quivering.

We watched.

After the demons were done chanting, the dough was taken from the man’s chest, placed back in the plastic, and then moved again to the counter near the front kitchen.

“Am I done?” Mr. Mullet asked.

“You are now pure as the driven snow,” Miss Pryce said. “Go and sin no more.”

The man placed his hand on his chest. Slowly, he breathed in and out, and a smile formed.

“I can feel it. It’s gone. That was my sin, right? It’s all gone now.”

“Gone from you. Once eaten by one of this establishment’s lucky customers, gone for good,” Miss Pryce said. “Now, our fee.”

The man nodded, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a wad of bills.

I didn’t know how much it was, but it must have been in the tens of thousands of dollars.

The demon led him back down the hallway toward the back door.

I was thinking about how strange it was for demons to do a deal for money until I saw Miss Pryce throw the wad of bills over her shoulder and into the mouth of Hot Head, where it appeared to catch fire before it even entered, sending flames up into the air as it fell.

Miss Pryce couldn’t suppress her smile.

The man had been tricked.

They only charged him money so that he would never learn the true price. There was no easy way out of damnation. Except for the whole forgiveness thing, but clearly that wasn’t something that occurred to him.

Throughout this, Camden watched on in horror.

There were more men and women that night, only four or five. Carousel was collecting footage, perhaps for a montage, or maybe just to ensure it had enough.

The thing that interested me was that three of the people brought in that night were not dupes, or at least not to the degree that Mullet had been.

They knew the demons. And they had made deals with them.

As the pizza dough was placed onto the chest of a woman who, if stereotyped, was probably a trophy wife or gold digger (post-digging), Miss Pryce plainly told her, “Your time is up soon. Wouldn’t want your soul traveling to the Pit of Hell with all these marks on it.”

This was a sin laundering operation. They had acquired the souls of certain people through deals, and they wanted to clean them up before sending them home to be with… whatever the opposite entity of Elidel was.

You had to admire these demons’ hustle.

A pure soul was probably more valuable than the soul of a Sinner, even if you had to squeegee it out first.

These interactions went by without a hitch.

They were not the main event, at least, not plot-wise.

The main event arrived in the trunk of a car.

I could hear her kicking and screaming before she even got to the back door. She was a fighter.

Wherever she had run, wherever she had hidden, they had found her.

And for whatever sins she had consumed when she ate that sixth pizza, she was about to be condemned to hell.

Second Blood was upon us.

And Ramona’s fate was already sealed.

Camden’s, however, was still unknown.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep