WARNING!! This au discusses heavy topics and potentially triggering topics such as Fear, Depression, Mental/Emotional Abuse, Unreality, and Mental Manipulation. Welcome Home is a horror project and, while I tend to lean toward hurt/comfort in my stories, there still has to be HURT for there to be healing/comfort in the story.
That’s an excellent question that needs to be addressed too. I’m honestly not sure how it would go. If it would all fall on one character, or if multiple would end up tackling the mystery from different angles without knowing. But I can think of at least 3 good starting points for it all.
Let me go over them;
One option/perspective is Barnaby B Beagle: being Wally’s Best Friend means he would have a very large Wally Shaped hole in his day. He may shrug it off for a day or two (maybe, before all the Script stuff started, Wally was the sort to need “Me” days or just quiet days where he wanted to be alone and Barnaby still remembered that fact), but a whole week? With no one in town seeing him? Now that was just weird.
Plus, when something happens to the main character, it’s up to the Best Friend to fix it and find out what happened.
(And the feeling of a Watcher, one that was very intense at his back would break the illusion for Barnaby. No matter how well collected he’d been before then.)
Something that was urging him to find his friend quickly, yet also telling him to be funny and make jokes at the same time. (He’s the comic relief, he’s supposed to keep the tone light) How was he supposed to be funny when his best friend was missing? Missing people was a serious thing!
The contrast in tones that were being forced on him would be what finally made Barnaby self-aware and snap him to “reality” for their neighborhood.
It would be a… distressing discovery. Even for someone who was as relaxed as him.
Another potential perspective is Frank Frankly: People like him (me included) and he seems like someone who pays a lot of attention to small details and to routines. As such, he could notice that Wally didn’t seem to be following his routine all of a sudden and that Home seemed oddly distressed yet very reluctant to share why.
His urge to know facts, to know the truth, could probably push him to find out what was going on with the town’s resident artist.
He’d make lists, try to gather information from his fellow neighbors, and build a theory/deduction from there.
(Since he’s friends with Julie, it’s possible she could get dragged in as well.)
But, slowly, as he searches and investigates, he starts to notice things. Strange things. Things that don’t quite seem right once he’s started putting them together and trying to find patterns to them.
People not reacting the way he feels they should to his questions. All of them oddly blase about Wally being potentially missing. (Except for Barnaby, who seems strangely… Jumpy? Stressed? He’s not acting like he usually does.)
And, thanks to his methodical approach, he figures it out.
Achievement Unlocked: Frank is now Self-Aware! XD
And the last one (which I think would be interesting/funny/potentially really sweet) is Howdie Pillar: The running gag is him having to defend his apples from Wally, so the idea that he notices something is off because he’s not having to do that is really funny. Like, “Where’s that little gremlin gone? He’s not bothering me, what is he doing??”
Or “Huh, Wally should have come by for his weekly grocery run by now. I wonder why he hasn’t yet…”
He’s also the one who seems to have the closest thing to an “antagonistic” relationship with Wally (mostly over his Apple theft and inability to tell a joke), which makes him being one of the people to notice that Wally’s gone really fun to explore.
(I also just like the funky caterpillar man and think that him finding Invisible Wally first and trying to slowly help him back to visibility is really sweet.)
He may not even realize the invisible person he’s found is Wally. Just that he’s found someone that can’t be seen and can’t seem to speak wandering around (maybe he almost trips over him), and decides to invite them to stay with him for a bit. If only so he can make sure nothing happens to them.
If no one could see or hear them, how would they get help if they got hurt? It’s his duty as a responsible person to help!
And, hey, maybe Poppy has heard of something like this before? She knows a lot of stuff about people’s health, there might be something she can do about it! It couldn’t hurt to ask her.
He’d ask Frank, but he’s really focused on trying to figure out what’s happened to Wally. And he doesn’t want to distract him, because he’s worried about where their resident artist went too.
But helping this mystery person is a good distraction. They seem nice, if almost shy, once he figures out a way for them to talk to him. (Sure, it’s mostly yes or no questions, but they’re getting there!)
It’s nice to be more than just “The Shopkeeper” with someone. To let himself share things he liked and spend time with someone who wasn’t a customer…
(Actually, when was the last time he actually tried to get to know someone? Or let them get to know him?)