Forward: After Omori [DISCONTINUED]

Just So You Know

*The Next Day*

In Headspace, it was always easy to tell when the Dreamer was asleep. There wasn't any physical change, no flashing lights or alarm, nothing that outright told them he was there. But the air would be sweeter, the sunshine brighter, the laughter louder.

That's when Omori would come out for another adventure.

Except Omori is missing, and even though the Dreamer is asleep, he hadn't come to Headspace, and Stranger seemed to grow more agitated with each failed attempt to find him.

"What are we going to do?" Aubrey asked. Everyone had finally reunited after yet another fruitless search for a clue of Omori's whereabouts, and they were sitting at one of Mari's picnics, but the food remained untouched. Aubrey, Kel, and Hero were flipping listlessly through the photo album, Mari watching them with detached interest, Basil seemingly trying to do everything he could to not look at them.

"We just need to keep looking," Hero said. "We can't give up now. There's gotta be something we can do."

They all looked over at Stranger, who was sitting a little away from the group. He had refused food when Mari offered him some, and had taken a stick and was stabbing the ground angrily, muttering to himself. He seemed to sense their gaze on him and turned towards them.

It was unlikely he heard their conversation, yet he still answered, "I cannot force the Dreamer to return. That is something he must do on his own accord."

"But why hasn't he come back yet?" Aubrey asked. "Doesn't he like it here?"

Stranger stared at all of them steadily, as if pitying them for their ignorance, then said, "The Dreamer made Headspace as an escape, in order to forget the truth. But now that he has remembered it, he no longer needs this place, or the protection it gives."

"So he's never coming back?" Kel asked.

"He has no reason to, unless something happens in the waking world that will force him. A feeling of danger, or some kind of emergency."

"We don't have the time to wait for that to happen," Hero said. "Headspace could be destroyed by then. We need him to find Omori."

"What if we could find a way to fix Headspace without bringing Omori back?" Basil muttered just loud enough for the others to hear.

"What ... what do you mean by that?" Kel asked Basil, slightly in shock.

"I mean," Basil hesitated. "There's got to be some way we could fix Headspace without Omori. He can't be our only solution, right?" 

Hero laughed nervously. "W-wow, Basil. If I was another person I would've thought you didn't want Omori to come back. But that's crazy, why wouldn't you want him back?" There was a moment of awkward silence as they waited for Basil to answer.

Mari, who had been fiddling with her picnic basket and had not given any indication that she was following the conversation, turned to Basil and asked, "Do you want him to come back?"

"I ..." Basil was unsure of how to answer that. Mari was staring at him with a blank expression, as if she didn't care what the answer was, but her eyes were shining, and he knew she wasn't going to like the truth. He decided to tell it anyway. "No. I don't."

His friends gasped. "You can't mean that!" Aubrey exclaimed.

Basil glanced at Stranger, who hadn't reacted at all. He briefly wondered what his shadowy doppelgänger was thinking, before realizing Mari had grabbed his hand and was leading him away from the group.

It was impossible to tell where they were going. Headspace had broken into pieces, and those pieces had scattered and scrambled and mixed together in a way that made pinpointing any one location pointless. They passed parts of the Playground, different rooms from Sweetheart's Castle, various games from Mr. Jawsum's casino, and even a bookcase from the Lost Library. Finally Mari dropped Basil's hand and turned to face him.