"Up and at em."
Before he was awoken on the floors of the ODETTA, BB had a dream. He was the host of a light night talk show. He was simply sitting there with his mug and a black suit. He felt like he was out of control. Did I have this dream before? This feels so familiar.
"Hello?"
"Why, hello to you back, handsome."
A woman with pure black hair and a thin form came onto set. She was smiling and had chapped lips.
"You look-"
"Just like you?"
Somewhere in the audience of voices and shadows came a laugh track. I'm dreaming. Either that or I'm mediated to a piece of television nobody actually watches.
"Yeah. Why am I here?"
"Because it's your show?"
The laughter played again. I need to get out of here and fast.
"Okay, so I guess I'll ask you some questions?"
"That is the point of the show."
The laugh track played once more. I need to make this unfunny or I'm going to revert back to old bad habits. BB raised a few cards from under his hickory desk and looked at them. Henny Penny was the font.
"What brought you here tonight?"
He read the cards. Everything really is planned out. Sip cup? BB, without any free will, grabbed a cup that said, we air pain at 11, and drank some disgusting office coffee.
"Well, I'm you. We met before. We meet every time we look in the mirror, and you've met a mutual friend of ours in that black and white place."
"How do you know about that?"
"Same way you do. ODETTA changes the timeline, makes a new crew, kills the old one. You took out the old one a while back. Now, I'm coming for your chair, muchacho."
The laugh track changed to gasps as BB got more annoyed whilst maintaining his cool.
"You know, this coffee is pretty good. Have you tried it?"
"No, I haven't."
BB threw the hot coffee onto her before jumping over his desk. Like a wild animal, he proceeded to beat her and scream in glee. After he committed the act of barbarity, he proceeded to get back in his chair, and a small crew of interns came out and fixed the desk.
"Next?"
The laugh track came back, and two other people came out. They were the black and white BB, and the other was Sugar.
"I bet this is like looking in the mirror."
"I swear to God, if that laugh track-"
The stupid laugh track played one more time. BB was willing to do the same he once had but he didn't like to commit such things in front of people he liked.
"Shouldn't we get this started?"
"Shouldn't you shut up and let me get this on with?"
"That's what I was planning on doing?"
Despite all that time, BB still had no social intelligence. He was intelligent, but he wasn't smart in some places.
"Okay, now tell us about how everything has been going down there."
"Well, the depth of your sins has been good to us. We know that you'll be joining this little band of ours."
"No. This is a dream."
One way that BB had figured out how to begin lucid dreaming was via placing his right hand in front of his face. Though, BB always experienced a sharp pain in his chest when he had lucid dreams. He interpreted it as his heart stopping and making him be on the clock.
"You're right. But you do know that what remains of her will be coming at you when you wake up."
"Wake up."
"Doesn't work like that."
"Wake up!"
Finally, he woke up in a cold sweat. Next to him on the floor of the breakroom were people he hadn't seen in a long time. Scott was dressed in a black and blue suit that may or may not have come from a high-profile criminal in the seventies. Besides whether or not ODETTA stole the suit from Ted Bundy or not doesn't matter. But what does matter is the fact that he was back in his original body. His sideburns were grown out, and his hair was combed backwards.
"Hey, stranger."
The two gave a brief embrace before Scott noticed something, Alexandria was behind BB. BB also made an analysis. He found Sears snoring behind Scott. At once, they both figured out what was happening and pointed it out simultaneously.
"They're alive!"
Immediately after they pointed such things out, the rest of the crew woke up. BB started to get his mind fired up for his plan. I need to figure out ODETTA's game. If she is actually a creature that has a real endgame, then she most likely is going to try and get the old band back together. If we can simply find a way to disable her then that would work perfectly.
"Yes, I am?"
The last thing that all of them remembered were their deaths. Alexandria remembered how she was riding her horse whilst hunting and a branch came out of nowhere and knocked her off. Then, she had a strange dream and woke up in the ODETTA once again. Sears remembered living in his beach house with a woman whose name he couldn't remember. She was dressed in white, and his fever was so bad that she could have been anything to him and he wouldn't realize.
"Wait, how are you alive?"
"I guess ODETTA brought us all back."
"Back from?"
"The dead."
Gasps came over the conscious four. BB had gotten his side of the deal and knew that if he wanted a little extra, he was going to have to work for it and work fast.
"Impossible."
Something had hit BB in his mind; he had romanticized the idea of them as his second family so much that he had forgotten just how stubborn they had been. Despite how much he had wanted to, he let Alexandria off the hook for such a remark. He was devolving and fast. He was devolving and he knew it. He would become that scared little boy in the orphanage again if he didn't stop whatever effect ODETTA had over him.
"It seems true though it is very likely that there is some bad blood and that ODETTA is going to be making some demands that are less than reasonable. Just let me do the talking and the planning. You'll have your time."
They knew it was true. He was crafty and so much so that he was able to restart humanity under his own hands, He utilized unorthodox tools. He cloned Alexandria and put her in a place of power to save face. BB lied about his lectures as a way of using propaganda.
"How did anyone know?"
"ODETTA, long time no see!"
"Guess what?"
"Chicken butt."
Sears and Scott gave a look of horror at BB. They thought he'd gone insane before they thought about what had happened to those who called him crazy.
"Very good. Now, do you want to talk turkey or just sit there like an idiot?"
"What do you want us to do now?"
"Well, I need the bunch of you knuckleheads to catch someone."
"Catch someone? Can't you just go to the future and see who did it?"
Everyone looked at Scott like he was an idiot. Well, he was an idiot. It was obvious that whoever did this was actually never caught. If they were never caught, then that means that he must've been crafty, like me. If he was never caught and crafty and his crimes weren't figured out by ODETTA, who figured out who I was, then that would mean that he is smarter than me. If he was never caught, was crafty, and worked at the same time as me, then that means that he's smarter than Dials.
"No... I'll need all of you to catch him and to do it fast. See, my creator made a list of people to become crew members. He wanted the best and brightest on his team and some of them were crooks."
"That doesn't explain the time part."
"We need fuel."