acoolguyscoollife

[acoolguyscoollife]

Chapter 45: Survivor’s guilt

Tabitha

People cope with grief in many different ways. If I’d been using common sense, I would have been sure to be honest and reach out. But then, common sense tends to not be an easily found resource when it comes to loss. As it stood, I’d convinced the others that I was fine, and hell, I almost managed to convince myself. It wasn’t even that much of a lie. When I didn’t think about Uchen, my mind wasn’t too plagued by memory, but any small thing to ignite a recollection of him was soon followed by many more memories.And of course, with those memories came the one solid thought that punctuated all of them and made a lump grow in my throat. It was too soon. 

I had always told myself that I was guaranteed more time with him, that everything I wanted to tell him about how much he helped me was something I’d be able to do later on. I never considered that I might not have that time after all. As I watched the rest of the group standing amongst the still-smouldering buildings of the town that had just been attacked, I couldn’t help but feel a mixture of emotions undoubtedly similar to what they were feeling, but sparked by something else entirely. Seth’s face was stony, looking down at the ground with a hand on his chin thoughtfully. With what CG had told him, I wasn’t surprised. Amy was still crying, but refused to let herself stop. Despite the tear-tracks running down her face freely, she still swallowed the sobbing and talked to the rest of the group who had helped us. The commander couldn’t look any of us in the eye, as the rest of the group that B had been with were the ones to discuss it instead. B himself was still on top of one of the buildings like had been previously, though now with binoculars and a gaze unwavering from the tower. And CG himself had removed his glasses, staring at Seth with an expression that looked like a mix of worry for him, and concern about his presence. From what I’d heard, I didn’t blame them. I knew that if I just said the right things to them, I could make them see that it wasn’t anything to worry about. That Seth wouldn’t become that gunman, however the events had played out, whether it was somehow a future version or whatever it could be. That CG wouldn’t have to fight his friend. That Aki would be rescued and Amy wouldn’t be alone, no matter what. But as bad as it was to have things remind me of him, the worst times were when nothing should have reminded me of him. The times when I’m needed, and that pit in my stomach returns. For all intents and purposes, nothing about the events that had gone down should have made me think of Uchen, and yet here I was with nothing but him on my mind. No, that was a lie. I had the needs of my friends in my mind too, but I knew I couldn’t do anything about it. I didn’t want to say I was the only one who could help them, but at the same time, I’d been doing this for long enough that if I didn’t, it was going to take longer. But the thoughts just kept coming back as soon as I tried to take a step. It was all the same voice. The same words that echoed in my mind. I didn’t even know him as much as someone who would normally care this much. I thought I knew him, of course I would have. He never had family he told me about, and I never found anyone else to tell. But honestly, I knew him for such a short period of his life, despite how long it was of my own. A quarter of my life, but only five years for him. Yet I still felt like I was the one who cared the most about his death. It felt selfish.

 All the thoughts in my head caused me to barely even see the things I was looking at, the things my mind actually focused on being the moments I’d shared with him, so I didn’t notice that Seth had stopped his pensive gaze downwards and had walked over to me.

“Penny for your thoughts?” He offered with a weak smile, and I winced a little at the fact that he was ignoring the shit he had to dwell on in favour of me.

“I think with the amount of thoughts I’m having, you’d need a lot more money.” I replied, and he chuckled. It wasn’t much, but making Seth laugh even a little was a small comfort. I had sat down on a bench a little while ago, and Seth sat next to me, close enough that his body heat was something that cut through the chill of the wind, however slightly.

“Well, time is money, and I have a lot of time.” Seth said, perfectly countering what I said. At first, I was tempted to dig my heels in and not talk to him, but I recalled how he had helped me get through everything else. If I didn’t talk to him, I wouldn’t have anyone to talk to.

“It’s just…” I began, before realising I would probably need to take a breath to get everything out. “Everything that’s happened, it’s overwhelming me a little. The gunman being who he was, this dimension not being what it should have been, people being kidnapped, CG being shot, the whole predicting the future thing, and Uchen…” It was the first time I’d said his name in this context, and it was starting to choke me up a little. “I thought I was over it, I thought doing everything I could for him, and continuing his legacy and work would make me feel better, but it’s just this constant reminder of him. Every time I get lost in thought about him, it’s like a stinging feeling right in the back of my mind.” Seth nodded, not saying anything, but at this point I was already talking without an end in sight. “I can’t get over this, even after how long it’s been, and I keep thinking about how I deserved more time with him. If I had known the last conversation we had would have been the last, I would have told him everything I should have said from the start. I would have told him that he gave me a meaning to my life, where I’d been wandering without a proper purpose. I’d have said that he made me feel happy with who I was, even when I didn’t feel like I was succeeding. I would have told him he gave me somewhere I could be safe. I’d have told him he was more than family, that I loved him for his kind heart.” I could feel the tears now, and it was starting to hurt to talk, feeling my words starting to reach a higher pitch as I strained to push past the feeling. “But he died thinking we would be able to talk again, that saying goodbye wasn’t something we needed to do. He died because of me. I pushed Untermeyer’s buttons in exactly the way he wanted me to. I could have been smarter and gotten closer, then saved him.” I finally found where the sentence’s end was, but it wasn’t something I was happy with finding out. I felt responsible. I was responsible. I had been the one to choose to not say anything, keeping to myself as much as I had despite knowing the risks. Seth still said nothing beside me, but as I turned to look up at him, he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me close to him and holding me tight. It was the final push of my emotions, causing me to start crying into his shoulder as he hugged me against himself. I didn’t bother to care whether or not anyone else could hear me sobbing, choked cries into the jacket he was wearing that I was most likely making a mess of. The two of us sat there for a moment, nothing audible except the noise of my crying, which eventually died down as I felt nothing more was going to come out. Seth held me for a few more moments, before pulling away eventually.

“Now listen, because I know you’re going to end up doubting what I have to say because you’re convinced of what you’re thinking.” Seth started, predicting me all too well. “What you did was something incredibly brave. You were going to do what you needed to in order to save him. You risked your life to get to him, finding a way to travel between universes despite the danger. Even if you didn’t say everything you needed to, I’m sure he knew, and I’m sure he felt the same way. He took you in, even though he probably didn’t have to.” It was Seth’s turn to speak without an end in sight, and I could feel myself welling up again despite how much I’d just cried. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened. Untermeyer did what he did and was going to no matter what, you couldn’t have done anything. He did it specifically to try and get an edge over you. He wanted to hurt you. It wasn’t your fault to have that happen.” My cheeks were dampened again by fresh tear tracks, but I made sure to not make any noise and instead listen to everything Seth had to say. “But there’s something you need to understand. It’s completely okay to still be sad about this. There’s no right or wrong way to grieve, and you shouldn’t end up letting yourself fall into this pit of worry about the fact that you feel like you’re still focused on it when you shouldn’t be. You’re allowed as long as you want for things like this.” Seth smiled at me again, this time one full of confidence and warmth instead of pretending to be happy. “We’re all here for you, because you’re the glue that brought us together. If Uchen was the one to give your life meaning, you were the one to give my life meaning.” Hearing Seth say that made an odd, unfamiliar feeling build inside me. I knew how much Uchen meant to me for what he did, and knowing Seth felt a similar way towards me was almost like an affirmation of at least some of the things I’d been doubting. He was important to me. Without even really realising, I started to lean towards him, eyes closing as I went to kiss him. It was slightly startling when his finger pressed against my lips instead, and I opened my eyes again to look at him, confused. “As much as I want to do that, I don’t think it’s quite the right moment for it.” Seth raised a good point, despite the fact that I still really wanted to do it. But the fact that I wanted to was most likely exactly the point he was making. I cleared my throat awkwardly, sitting back up straight and looking directly ahead. The two of us sat there for a moment, neither one particularly keen on starting the conversation again. The nagging feeling to be close to him slowly faded as I started to think rationally again, but it was replaced by another nagging feeling, something else I wanted to do.

“Thank you.” I said quietly, unsure that he’d even heard. It had been what I needed to hear, and most likely exactly who I needed to hear it from. With everything he’d done for me, I had to pass it along back to him. “I promise, I’ll make sure that whatever that gunman was isn’t you.” I looked over at Seth, who was still looking ahead, clearly thinking about them again.

“I hope you’re right.” He said, about as quietly as I had. His hands were gripping his knees, and I placed mine on top of his, running my thumb along the back of it in an attempt at reassurance.

“When am I ever wrong?” I said with a smile, and he smiled back at me again, bringing that feeling of being able to help back to me once more. A memory of Uchen crossed my mind again, thinking about how he was exactly the same to me as I was to Seth. But it didn’t hurt as much this time. It just reassured me that I had the best training for being as good as I could be. The time I spent with him was something that bettered me even when I wasn’t even trying to learn. I knew I’d make sure to do the same for everyone else.

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[acoolguyscoollife]

Chapter 44: Who Will Save You Now?

The sound of automatic gunfire added an odd musical feel to the fight as I turned one of the attackers into a shish kebab, barging them off the sword with my body and skidding to a stop to swing it quickly into another arc, making the others jump back. They had guns, but the ones that were far enough back to get me before I could get them were either focusing on others or were shot by Blake before they could aim at me properly. An alarm only added to the noise that was mixing with the sound of my blood pumping in my ears, sounding hand-cranked and tinny as I felt it all blend into nothing. 

After I had killed Untermeyer, I had felt an odd feeling for a few days while I’d been back at home, obviously never having killed anyone before. But now that these people were attacking, that nausea feeling was at the back of my mind, covered up and hidden by the adrenaline that had immediately sparked as the fighting had started. The sickly stench of blood was all that I could smell, making it undeniable that the attackers were nothing but human. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Nonetheless, any feelings I had about disliking the situation went to the back of my mind as I forcibly pushed myself forward, stabbing one of them in the gut as I went for my dagger to slash at another, only to realise that I didn’t have it. The person I’d been looking at swung with the butt of their gun, cracking it against my face and making the smell of blood a lot more prominent as it dripped from my nose. It hadn’t been a direct hit, but I could tell all the same that it was gonna be sore afterwards. The one who’d hit me was moving to get closer, but their head flung back out of nowhere as if they’d had their neck snapped by an invisible ninja. They fell down into the light snow on the ground, a blossom of blood growing behind their head as I finally yanked the sword out of the unfortunate first person I’d stabbed in the group. A third was about to attack before they got stopped by what looked like a snowball, but which hit like a boulder as they went flying backwards like a ragdoll. I looked behind me just in time to see Amy half running, half bouncing as spires of snow grew underfoot, giving her a little more height every time before she leapt off one and straight onto one of the attackers, legs wrapping around their neck as if she’d been a Russian assassin this whole time. The others were not far behind her, Seth wielding a bulky looking rifle that he would occasionally burst a few bullets from at targets that I couldn’t even see. Tabitha was the one with my dagger, and she swung it through the air and sent a shockwave flying from the cut in the air she’d made with the dagger, which blew the legs off of some of the attackers that were advancing on them.

 There were others I didn’t recognise as well, someone wearing a green shirt that looked as if the arms had been cut off of it haphazardly, and another group of two people that were wearing the same clothes that Blake, Jane and Tony had been. I wondered if one of them was the B person that Blake had mentioned, but it soon became clear that the only person that it could possibly be was the one leaping between the rooftops, taking precise shots with throwing knifes into people attacking below. It felt a little on the nose to me, like he’d seen even more anime than I had, but I was just glad he was on our side. I wasn’t able to see any of his face, a hood covering most of his head with a bandana hiding half of his face for the rest of it. The only details that were visible were his eyes, which were too far away for me to discern anything from. As I watched the carnage unfolding around me, finally able to take a second to breathe now that everyone else was here, I realised that something sat wrong in my stomach. I took another sweep of my surroundings, hoping I was just looking too quickly the first time around, but no matter where I looked, I couldn’t see Aki anywhere. Taking inspiration from B, I ran towards the nearest building, pushing all the energy I could into my feet as I leapt towards it, planting my feet firmly into the wall and keeping my running going. I didn’t have many steps before I’d fall, and the feeling of gravity pulling me backwards didn’t help, but all I needed was a few steps and a final jump to grab the edge of the roof to pull myself upwards, and that was enough. It felt a little too generous to call the metal sheets covering the houses a roof, since it felt if I stood on the wrong points, my foot would sink right through, but I managed to get high enough to get a better view of the town, perching just on the edge.

 The more I looked, the more I realised exactly how many forces were being thrown at this place, multiple groups of attackers coming from all directions. They were determined to take people, and I guessed that by us being here, we had made this place an even higher value target. From the higher vantage point, I scoured the area for Aki, wondering if she’d just been hidden behind a building or if I’d just missed her being behind somewhere else. It took me a moment to realise it, but after a few seconds I spied the smaller group of enemy soldiers converging on one small area. For a second, I couldn’t guarantee it was Aki, but as one went flying backwards from a well-placed kick, I saw her throw herself up and over one of the other soldiers, landing behind them and clawing him in a surprisingly brutal way for her. Her fighting was keeping the soldiers at bay, but she didn’t have much more time before they overwhelmed her, which started me running again, needing to get there as soon as I could. I leapt from the building and rolled as I hit the ground, barely stumbling as I used the motion to immediately get back into a sprint. The medical work Blake had done on my leg was working wonders, it seemed, barely feeling any sign that I’d even been shot.

 But, as things usually do, a stark reminder of getting shot burst into my mind, memory sparked by an identical gunshot that barely missed me. I quickly spun around to face the attacker, knowing that I would have had a few seconds before they could fire again, and took a deep breath, knowing I’d most likely have to dive out of the way of bullets again. The gunman was clad in all-black clothing, dark tactical trousers with a fitted leather jacket that I would have been happy taking as a trophy from him. The most interesting thing, however, was his head, or what was on it instead. The majority of the face was obscured by a mask, which was starting to be a trend, except this one was slightly less cool and slightly more… cartoonish. It seemed to be a mask that was little more than a basic smiling face, except where one of the eyes would have been was missing, showing a slight part of the person underneath. What little flesh there was had been deeply scarred, and the eye itself was robotic and glowing red, a little too reminiscent of robot assassins from the future for my liking. The two of us met gazes for a second as neither of us moved, finally regarding each other completely. I couldn’t know for sure, but I was positive that his eye was scanning me, analysing my stance and other statistics. I made a mental note to start holding my sword in the other hand sometimes to throw people off the trail of how I’d act, before my attention snapped back to the situation at hand. We both moved at the same time, neither of us wasting a second as we went to attack. The sniper that the gunman used was bolt-action, and I’d seen he hadn’t had enough time to pull it back yet. I was twenty feet away when it clicked, ready to fire again, and he levelled it at me, awakening a primal fear in my mind – or, as primal as the fear of a gun can be, anyway – as I stared down the barrel of it.

 I shut out the visions of my life flashing before my eyes, instead choosing to use the small amount of time I had to calculate things. A rifle of that size was bound to have a strong kick, and from a standing position, he’d have to brace himself to avoid falling over like a dumbass. As well as that, he’d make sure to fire as late as he could, making sure to follow my movements with most likely pinpoint accuracy. So, overall, the chances of not being shot were pretty low. The odds of surviving through the day were even lower. Feinting wasn’t an option, with how close I’d have to get to have a feint work, it’d be too slow to avoid the shot. Zig-zagging was a useless idea as well. I briefly thought about trying to cut the bullet in half, but I had a feeling I’d be relying on mostly reflex for that, and given how I was already running on adrenaline, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hit it with my sword. Plus, a sniper’s bullet would probably go through it anyway. Each idea I had was useless, and I cursed internally that at the point of no return, my brain had fallen short. And then, I could have sworn the lightbulb had gone off above my head, as the obvious answer came to light.

 I kept myself true, running directly towards the gunman, who had braced himself and aimed the gun with a steady hand. I had maybe a second to mentally prepare myself for what was about to happen, knowing that if I screwed up, I was dead. Right as I reached the point where I knew he was going to fire, I took a breath and dropped backwards into a slide, ducking underneath the aim of the barrel right as the trigger was pulled. From this close, all the other sounds went quiet as the fierce ringing in my ears took over, but I didn’t let it perturb me, kicking at the gunman from my slide and hopping back to my feet right after my foot struck him in the abdomen. He jumped back a few feet as a response, but didn’t have time to even pull the bolt back on his rifle before I came at him again with the sword. Instead of keeping hold, the gunman let the gun go, pulling a knife from his belt and using it to block the swing of my sword, the two blades sparking slightly as mine went to the handguard of his. His foot shot out in an attempt to knock me off-balance, but I shifted my weight and pirouetted on the other foot to slam the back of my heel into his ribs. Stumbling slightly, he swung a fist in retaliation, which easily missed me by a good few inches, as I moved to slam my elbow into him. Too late, I realised his trick, as the knife was thrown to his other hand and he swung at me. The pain as it slashed my sides burned, but compared to everything else I’d been through recently, it barely felt like more than a scratch. I dropped my sword and used my now-free hand to catch the arm he was swinging the knife with, whirling my other hand directly into his throat, getting just underneath the mask to do so. Knocking the wind out of him was the final blow needed, as he crumpled, the only part of him still raised being the now-limp arm I was holding him by, but I wasted no time in veering it downwards, snapping it over my knee for good measure. It felt like overkill, but he wasn’t going to be able to use that sniper with one arm.

 The gunman yelled in pain as I let his arm fall, and something about it brought me to a stop. Despite it being impossible, there was something about his voice that was familiar. As he scrambled for his sniper, I grabbed a hold of him, yanking at the mask to reveal who was underneath, before freezing as I saw whose face I was staring at. The shock that kept me stuck to the spot was just enough for him to grab the sniper, and I went to move in turn before I saw his figure phase slightly, before disappearing entirely. I swung at where he’d been just to make sure, but there was no mistaking that it was a teleport. I kept telling myself that it wasn’t true, that it couldn’t be, that it was a literal impossibility, but I couldn’t deny what I’d seen. It was far from the first time I’d dealt with a situation like that, of course, but this time was different. A scream was what brought me back to earth, as I remembered with horror what I was supposed to be doing. Turning to where she was, I had just enough time to see Aki for a brief moment, her arm raised towards me as she and her captors phased in much the same way that the gunman had.

“CG, what happened?!” Seth yelled from beside me, and I jumped with a yelp. I hadn’t noticed that the assault was over as quickly as it had started, and the survivors were now running around in a panic. “I saw you fighting the gunman, and you just stopped!” Looking at Seth, he was clearly angry, which only served to further the pit in my stomach as I faced him, the glare boring into me much like it already had.

“I took his mask off.” I started, breath heavy as Seth’s eyebrow raised. “He was beaten, different. His eye was robotic, and he looked older. But…” I took a breath, still uncertain of what I should say. “It was you, Seth.” I finally let out, his eyes widening in surprise. “The gunman was you.”

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[acoolguyscoollife]

Chapter 43: Recovery

B walked the rest of us into the small, rustic-looking village, some of his men carrying CG for us now. A few others stayed at the back of the group, walking backwards as they aimed their guns in the direction we’d come from. He made a hand gesture to the people carrying CG, and they took him towards a building, which I began to also walk to before he raised a hand.

“This way.” B said, as he started to walk towards a different building. He got about ten steps before he turned back, realising we hadn’t moved.

“CG-” I began, but he stopped me before I had a chance to even figure out where I was going with that sentence.

“Will be fine. We’ve got some of our best medics in there, when he wakes up, he’ll be right as rain. You guys, on the other hand, need to meet the commander.” I looked to the rest of the group, who gave a mixture of different types of shrugs, forgoing their autonomy in favour of me making all the decisions. I sighed as I gave a quick glance back to the building CG was in, before following B towards the building he had pointed out to us. He held the door open for us as we walked inside, but didn’t enter the room, instead walking away swiftly. The guy inside was fresh-faced, not looking like he was much older than we were, but he definitely seemed like the one in charge.

“Oh, you must be the ones B was talking about!” His voice came out as more of a nasally waver than an actual voice, sounding as if he had been violently assaulted in the crotch region. “I’m Commander Philip, or, I guess that’s what the others call me.” The lack of confidence definitely didn’t instill any in me, but I leant against the nearest table anyway, wondering why we had been brought here.

“I’m Tabitha. That’s Seth, Amy and Aki.” I introduced each of us in turn, pointing as I did so. “Cool Guy is currently having his leg fixed due to a bullet that fairly ripped from the biggest iron I’ve ever seen.” Philip gave a wave to everyone, almost smiling naturally before realising he was clearly supposed to give off a different demeanour.

“You guys couldn’t have come at a better time. We’re outnumbered, and outgunned. The only thing we have now is you guys and B, who is… more of a free agent than anything else.” Philip seemed happy we were here, so I held off on mentioning that we weren’t planning on staying much longer than we had to. It was good to do the right thing, but we couldn’t save everyone, and taking the risk when we’re here instead of keeping ourselves safe was something I wasn’t keen on, especially when we didn’t know what was on the line. “The leader of those forces in that tower have taken… oh gosh, it must be about a few thousand people now, I suppose… anyway, they’ve taken a few thousand people hostage. Every day, they come and attack, and take more people, and there’s no sign of them again. People are getting paranoid that they’ll be next, especially since we don’t know where they’re going.” It stung a little to hear how much shit people were going through right after I’d thought to myself that we couldn’t save everyone, but what could I really do? “Hopefully, this will turn the tides a lot. The next time they try and get more people, we’ll be able to hold them back a lot better.” As if on cue, an alarm sounded, most definitely hand-cranked, but still blaring across the small group of buildings. “Christ, that must be them now. Can you guys give us a hand with this? I know this is mostly throwing you in at the deep end, but we’re already low on people here.” Philip took a step back, throwing a rifle at Seth, who caught it effortlessly, glancing over it before pulling at it in a way I didn’t understand, but I was sure he did.

“How many of them are there normally?” He asked Philip, who thought for a moment before raising his shoulders in a shrug.

“Too many.”

 Cool Guy

I tried opening my eyes properly, but water from the cloth being dabbed on my head had already dripped down to them and made me have to blink repeatedly to try and get it out, earning a small chuckle from the person who was doing it.

“Hey, you’re finally awake.” He said, smiling down at me from where he was sat. I had been put onto some sort of stretcher that seemed more like a hammock than anything else, and I was almost positive that usually stretchers weren’t used aside from bringing someone into a medical building. My head thumped with pain, mouth dry and vision still spinning slightly, but whatever had been done to me while I was asleep had definitely improved the amount of blood in my body. “Good to see that you’re, y’know, alive and everything.” Despite everything that ached, I still felt surprisingly better, full of energy despite the fact that I could tell I didn’t have the dagger on me.

“You sure I haven’t just died and gone to heaven?” I asked, putting effort into sitting up slightly, supporting myself with my elbows. The man who’d been nursing me laughed again, turning away to wring out the cloth into a bucket before dipping it into another, wringing it out again to make sure it wasn’t too damp.

“I appreciate the compliment, but I don’t think you’d be so lucky.” I could feel my hair stuck to my forehead from where it had been touched by the cloth, so I had to wonder how long he’d been doing this. “I’ve heard all about you, you know. A lot of it isn’t actually… well, true yet, though.” The man wiped the sweat off my forehead again, getting close as he leant over to get both sides of me. He was dressed like he’d been hiking, but the gun strung over his shoulder clued me in that he’d probably been responsible for where I am.

“Lemme guess, prophecies?” I asked, groaning a little as I tried to sit myself up further. It was nice to get this attention, but I felt a little awkward all the same.

“Something like that, yeah.” As if sensing why I’d sat up properly, he handed the cloth to me, and I went to clean my leg, before stopping as I actually saw it. There was a giant hole in the fabric where the bullet had hit, but the leg itself was fine, looking a lot better than other wounds I’d fixed with magic. The idea of me actually being in heaven crossed my mind once again, as I instead messed with my hair slightly, using some of the dampness from the cloth to try and style it into something that didn’t scream sweat-soaked patient. “I’m Blake, by the way.” I looked over as he spoke, and saw he was holding a cup of water out to me, which made me realise how dry my throat was. After I’d let the hydration hit my throat and relax my neck’s aches, I sat myself up a little further, feeling a little more energy inside me now.

“You probably already know my name, but my friends call me CG.” I replied eventually, before looking around the room as I went over what I’d said. “Where are they, anyway?” Blake shrugged, glancing over at the door as he did, where two other people were sat having a conversation between themselves. I couldn’t make out many of their features from a distance, but I was pretty sure at least one of them was a girl from the pitch of the words I could faintly make out.

“They were the ones to bring you in, I was the one to stay back with the rest of the town. You’d be better off asking them.” Blake had now begun tending to other people in the room, most of whom were unconscious. A beat passed as I looked between Blake and the people by the door, wondering whether shouting them over was the smartest idea. Slightly turning to look over someone, Blake must have caught sight of me not moving, as he looked fully over at me. “Oh, should I go get them?” He asked, and for a second I couldn’t tell if he was messing with me.

“If you were as smart as you were attractive, you’d probably have fixed my leg up enough that I could walk over there myself.” I snarked, motioning to the leg as I spoke. In response, Blake walked over and poked at the exposed skin with a finger, which gave a surprising lack of pain.

“Maybe you should try walking on it before you go making assumptions that I’m not as smart as I am pretty.” He replied with a smirk, and I moved my leg, nervous of the spike of pain I was anticipating. When nothing came, I tested standing on it, shakily getting to my feet and putting my weight onto it. It was as if I hadn’t even been shot. Even so, I didn’t plan on going fast on it for a while.

“I never said pretty, just attractive.” I clarified to Blake, as he gave a once-over to the other patients before walking slowly with me to the other people.

“Ah right, because that’s so much better. I really hope you’re not so fragile about your masculinity that you’re worried how I perceived you there.” Blake laughed, and I felt as if the sweat on my forehead was beginning to be there for a different reason.

“Hey, I still said what I said. Can’t say I’m overcompensating when I called you attractive in the first place.” I replied coolly, trying not to let him get to me like he was obviously trying to. I knew it was just friendly teasing, but there was something about it that was making me second-guess everything I said. Maybe I was fragile after all.

“Nobody brought up overcompensation but you, you know.” Blake was clearly having fun with this, and I had a retort planned out, but I didn’t get the chance to use it since we’d already arrived at the other people.

“-telling you, as long as we stick to the plan, B said he’d help us on our end.” I only just caught the end of the conversation that I felt I shouldn’t be privy to, but the two of them straightened up as we approached.

“CG, this is Jane and Tony. I’d specify who’s who, but I hope you could probably figure that out yourself.” Blake introduced me to them, but I guessed from the lack of a similar introduction to them that they also knew who I was.

“Sup.” Jane said, which was a little removed from the professionality that I’d expected from what I could only figure was a gang of mercenaries.

“What were you guys talking about?” I asked, despite the other questions on my mind. My curiosity had been peaked with how many new things to figure out all being at the forefront of my attention, meaning that my brain was running at a faster pace than my thoughts could actually keep up with properly.

“The guy that brought us here. We know barely anything about him, and he’s expecting us to just go along with this random civil war to help us out on our end.” Tony scowled, making a deep scar on his face shift slightly as his jaw set like stone.

“It’s not exactly like it’s an environment we’re not familiar with.” Jane retorted, and I got the feeling I’d accidentally re-lit the fire behind this argument.

“Yeah but we could be more useful back there. B hasn’t told us jack shit about how he’s going to even help us, and now we’re messing with people like CG and the like, which we know isn’t something we’re supposed to be doing.” Tony wasn’t yelling, but there was still anger behind his words, clearly in a position of feeling like he wasn’t doing enough.

“Wait, you guys are going against a prophecy?” I asked, bewildered by the possibility. Mary hadn’t mentioned these people, so whatever was going on here definitely felt like an outlier. The two stopped arguing for a moment to look at me with a similar expression of bewilderment that I must have had myself.

“Prophecy?” Jane began, as if she couldn’t even process the idea. Her eyes darted to Tony, then behind me to where Blake was. “How much do you actually know about what’s going on?” I made a show of thinking, eyes drifting off to nowhere as what I actually thought of was cotton candy and rainbows.

“Right now… absolutely nothing.” I finally finished. “I woke up in here after being shot and I don’t even know where my friends are.” Jane looked at Tony again, and I got the sneaking suspicion that this wasn’t the answer they had been hoping for. “Why, is there something else I should know?”

“No!” Answered Jane quickly, in perfect synchronicity with Tony. “Nothing at all.” She added, doing her best at giving a convincing smile. “There’s nothing more than just boring stuff.” Jane added one more lie, and was probably trying to think of yet another when I responded.

“I really hope you don’t work in covert ops.” I said deadpan, prompting an explosion of laughter from Jane, which Tony joined in on quickly. The situation was quickly turning uncanny, so I dropped the subject, turning to Blake who was now looking at me apologetically. “So anyway, Blake tells me you two will know where my friends are.” I said to the two as the fake-laughter finally died down.

“Oh, they’re with the commander.” Jane said. “I’ll take you if you want!” I was trying to think of the polite way to tell her no thanks, you creep me out, but thankfully Blake came in and saved me at the last minute.

“I’ll go with CG, you keep an eye on my patients. You always had a more delicate touch.” Jane grumbled as she otherwise-wordlessly complied with Blake’s instructions, and he led me outside into sunlight bright enough to hurt my eyes even through the sunglasses.

“What gives with those weirdos?” I asked when I felt like we were out of earshot enough. The small village didn’t have many buildings, or even far to walk to get to the one we needed to get to, but Blake stopped walking after a few steps towards it, instead choosing to stand as he answered the question.

“It’s complicated. As you could probably tell, they were lying about nothing being involved, but it’s not technically prophecy that we’re following either.” Blake watched the small groups of people as they went about whatever tasks they had to do, dirty-faced people who looked like just living was an arduous task. “As much as Tony complains, he’s happy we’re here. Unlike where we normally are, we actually make a difference here.”

“You shouldn’t be hard on yourself, I’m sure you’re helpful back home… wherever that is.” I reassured him, while trying to subtly needle for more information. Blake laughed at that, still watching the people. I noticed that his eyes would occasionally go to the edge of the village, watching the horizon, or at least what parts of it were visible from between the treeline.

“I appreciate the sentiment, but I was basically an accountant back home. But when someone like B comes along, you can’t say no to him asking for you.” Once again, B had been mentioned, and yet I had no idea who he was. I hadn’t seen him yet, at least not that I was aware of, and everyone danced around revealing who he was. “Hell, I’ve never even learned how to shoot properly.” Blake added, gesturing to his gun, but I was already on another line of thinking.

“Who is B anyway?” I asked, and Blake glanced over to me, finally looking away from the treeline.

“Nobody really knows, but all we know is that he’s helped out a lot on our end. Keeps his name and most of his face hidden. Says it’s necessary or some shit. I reckon he’s just self-conscious.” Blake’s eyes were still on me, but I could tell he wasn’t registering me, instead lost in thought. “Truth is, I almost wanted to say no. This felt like too much of a risk, especially with the… with everything going on.” He trailed off for a moment, eyes staring off behind me now. “But… well, he made a very convincing argument. Plus, I didn’t wanna get on the bad side of someone who has a track record like his. He tends to blow things up a lot.”

“Maybe he’s just got an explosive personality.” I quipped, but Blake didn’t even seem to notice. He started to speak again, but fell silent, looking at me curiously.

“You know, you look kinda like…” Blake almost managed to get out a full sentence before the commotion reached us. A cacophony of yells as footsteps rang out around us, people running to different places as we snapped to attention. Blake looked at the horizon again, and this time, so did I. Where there had been nothing before, there was a conspicuous absence of nothing there now, masked foot soldiers marching into the village. “Damn it, they’re back already?” Blake exclaimed, grabbing me by the wrist and dragging me to a place out of their view. “Whatever you do, don’t let them take you.” He said before swinging the gun around from his back so it rested against his chest, pulling it into his hands and taking aim around the corner. A few shots were fired as I pressed myself into the wall, trying to make myself as small as possible, when I caught sight of the other end of the village. More were coming. I swore under my breath, taking my sword out of its sheath as I ignored the feeling of weakness in my leg.

Here we go again.

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Chapter 42: A Hazy Shade

The only way I could know which way was forward was by looking behind at the trails left in the snow as the five of us walked through it, movements slowed as our feet dug a few inches into the softly-set snow. I could barely see anything except the tower and the distant treeline of a nearby forest, which was the only other way we knew which way forward was, even if we had silently seemed to agree that’s not where we wanted to go first. Nobody wanted to speak, for fear of whatever would come if we started to question where exactly we were, and what had happened. According to everything Tabitha had said, we should have been in a world similar to our own, so to have this drastic of a difference was… unnerving. 

Everything felt empty, the only noise being the wind as it whipped at us, biting whatever exposed flesh we still had. No matter what direction we went, the tower still seemed to loom ahead of us on the horizon, almost as if it was moving. But I knew that was ridiculous. No, the disturbing truth of it was that the tower was bigger than we’d thought. The closer we got, the more we realised just how far it was, and how much it had grown in size. That would have been bad enough, but each step towards the monolith filled me with an odd feeling. It wasn’t fear. I’d experienced that enough to know what that was, despite keeping a calm front. It almost felt like anticipation, but not in a positive way. Each step, it felt as if a drip of water fell into my brain, cold enough to send icy sparks through my veins. Or maybe it was the weather. That thought was a hopeful one, but I knew as I got closer that it was something else. I had felt the feeling before, I know I had, but I couldn’t place it, which was never a good thing. If I knew my own rotten luck, I’d end up realising right at the last moment before something bad happens. The hair on the back of my neck was already stood on end, as most of my body hair was, but as I felt the ice drip once more, I realised what it was, making me stop in my tracks and look at the tower.

“CG, you okay?” Seth called over to me, having to talk a little louder than usual to be heard over the wind, which seemed to be picking up. I had to steel myself to stop my stance from wavering as I stared at the tower, trying desperately to see anything. It had taken longer than I’d realised to figure it out. That feeling that grows when you’re walking alone outside, or you think you are. That feeling of knowing someone else is near you, without knowing for certain. The feeling of being watched. Every step we took to get closer, we got a little further into the line of sight. But did that mean anything? Even if we were being watched, maybe the people in the tower couldn’t do anything. But then, until now we’d been difficult targets. Moving, however briefly. I saw the glint of the light hitting something near the top of the tower, and had a second to react before the bullet cracked through the air. I wasn’t sure who it was aiming at, so I grabbed the dagger from its sheath on my leg and stabbed it into the snow, packing and stacking it in front of the group as quickly and sturdily as I could. It wasn’t enough to stop it, but that wasn’t what I was going for. Any gun capable of firing from a distance that far, it would have had some heft to it. I needed to slow the bullet before it hit its mark, which the wall of snow served to do. Everyone else dived into the snow as the sound of the bullet registered, my leg immediately feeling like it had burst into flames once more as the snow began to stain red with blood. I cursed under my breath as I grabbed a handful of snow, packing it against the wound. I wasn’t sure how long we had before the next bullet hit, but the sounds of magic and the feeling of the snow underneath me shifting told me that Amy and Tabitha were busy making a stronger wall than I could. The snow stung as I pressed it against the wound, and I realised I wasn’t sure that this was the way to go about fixing this issue. Before I had a chance to think about other ways to fix it, I felt a hand grab the collar of my jacket, and had a brief moment to look behind and see Seth before he yanked both of us into a ditch that had been made in the ground. The grass underneath the snow was lifeless, making me wonder exactly how long this dimension had been like this, but I didn’t waste time thinking about that. The snow was melting at the warmth of my skin, burning the wound even more, but the bullet hadn’t come out of the other side so fixing it with magic wasn’t as easy as just pressing my hand to it.

“Who the hell is this guy?” Tabitha asked in a hushed whisper. She must have felt safer to be quiet, despite the fact we were still miles from the tower at least, and I definitely shared the sentiment.

“We were being watched. Should have realised sooner.” My teeth were grit as I responded, the cold making my hands shake too much to be able to properly try and take the bullet out. Each attempt sent a wave of pain through my body as the nausea set in. I had lost enough blood to be feeling it, apparently. Tabitha quickly got to work on my leg as I let myself fall backwards, only just being caught by Aki in time. My vision was swimming, reminiscent of times I had experimented with drugs, except without the mind-altering effects.

“CG, stay awake.” A voice cut through the haze, and it took me longer than it should have to place it to Seth. There hadn’t been subsequent sniper shots, and I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. But then, if there had been, I might not have even registered them. Everything felt hazy. Each time I blinked, the sky seemed to shift a little, pulsing as snow fell onto me. God, this can’t be good.

“Okay, don’t move. The bullet’s out and the wound’s healed, but the last thing we need is for you to lose consciousness.” Tabitha said, appearing in my vision.

“You got it.” I said, right before I lost consciousness.

Tabitha

I had kept talking for a few minutes more before I realised that CG had passed out, and cut off my sentence with a few choice curses, another complication to factor in.

“Is he gonna be okay?” Aki asked, lowering CG’s head to the ground as she shuffled back an inch or so. There wasn’t much room to work with, but the lack of further shots made me think that the shooter must have had a limited amount of ammo. I watched CG’s chest as he continued to breathe, skin pale… or, paler than normal. Leaving made the most sense, but I would have to run the risk of CG’s life. If something went wrong, even in a minor way, he might not survive. God, I wished I’d gotten everyone’s blood types sooner.

“He’ll be about as fine as we are right now.” I replied eventually, less to reassure and more to remind everyone of the current situation. “Seth, can you estimate the distance from where we are to the tower?” Seth took a moment to think, and I sighed a deep breath of relief as his skills went to work. He was surprisingly well-versed in things such as this, which would hopefully serve well for getting the hell out of this.

“About two kilometres. I can’t tell for certain what the weapon was, but it definitely packed a punch if it did as much as it did to CG from that far. If I had to guess, that was our warning shot.” Seth gestured to CG’s wound as he finished talking, still deep in thought. “We’re pretty much surrounded on all sides by nothing but snow. There’s no buildings, nothing except the forest, and that’s going to be damn difficult to get CG to. The only cover we have is the one that’s here.”

“So we wait. Surely we can last long enough for CG to wake up and be in a state where we can get out of here.” Amy said, glancing up at the wall of snow above us. “I should be able to keep this going for a while, and I’m sure you could take over.” I wanted to believe that would work, but I had a grim feeling that this was a trap we’d set ourselves.

“What if someone else comes? We’re sitting ducks right now.” I tapped my foot against the grass, trying to think of what I could do. Realistically, our best chances were to get to the forest, but we’d get shot before we could. I looked over at CG, trying to estimate how fast we could move when carrying him, and my eyes went to his hip, where the sheath for the dagger usually was. After he had used it, it had fallen to the ground when we’d moved the snow for the wall. Could the magic be enough to build a wall of snow far enough along for us to get to the forest? Either way, we needed a path that wasn’t snow underfoot. A shiver rocked through my body as I kept thinking, my small foot movement not enough to keep my body warm, so I clicked a finger and sparked a small flame in the palm of my hand, watching as the air above it became hazy. With the spark in my hand, an idea sparked very similarly in my mind. I grabbed the dagger while keeping the flame going, feeling the small amount of magic I needed to keep the fire lit practically disappear. Experimentally, I let the fire grow larger, with it eventually leaving my hand and surrounding my body, making it a lot more difficult to see. The nearby snow melted quickly, turning to water and then to steam, and I let the flame grow larger still, splitting it to let the others inside the barrier.

“What are you…?” Seth began as the flame wrapped around him, but his words stopped as he saw the wall of steam around us growing thicker. If I got the fire hot enough, the snow would melt into vapour immediately. I wasn’t sure if this counted as sublimation, but it was close enough that I wouldn’t need to worry. With the magic of the dagger, I would be able to keep it going for a while. I just had to hope it was long enough that we could get to the forest.

“When I say so, run to the treeline. Keep pace with each other, we can’t split now.” Each of the group nodded, with Amy and Aki grabbing CG by the arms and legs respectively. I could feel the warmth of the sphere of heat growing as I let more energy flow into it, the snow making a soft noise of dripping as it melted. The wall protecting us was beginning to fall, swaying slightly as we stood up, preparing to run. After a couple of seconds, it toppled, not having a chance to land against the bubble before it melted into steam. “Now!” I extended my hand forward, moving the bubble ahead of us and moving to keep up with it. I had to focus all my concentration on looking forward and keeping the fire going, so I had to rely on the others to keep pace with me, while making sure I didn’t go too fast for them. A crack shot through the air as a bullet flew past just ahead of us, leaving a small trail through the steam that the bubble had created. I wasn’t sure how long it would take the sniper to reload, but the fact that the first shot had been off its mark enough that even undercompensating would have the second bullet miss, I felt a surge of adrenaline as I realised that we were going to actually do this. The trees ahead of us grew larger as we made it about a hundred metres away, the second shot echoing like thunder as it narrowly missed me, making my heart skip a beat. “We’re almost there, keep it up!” I yelled back to the others, taking a second to look back as I did. Amy was red-faced, sweat dripping off her forehead, and I could only imagine how Aki felt under all that fur. Seth had grabbed CG around the waist with one arm like a lumberjack hauling a log, but the three of them were keeping up with me well enough. A few feet from the trees, a bullet crashed into the nearest tree, splintering it and sending bark flying into the shield, where it set alight and burned for a few seconds as we ran past. I let the fire from behind stop wrapping around the group, bringing it all to the front of me as I swung my arm forward, letting the flame fly ahead and melt a path into the snow. It crashed into the first tree in front of us as we continued running, igniting it for a few seconds before I could extinguish it, using the small amount of energy I could feel left to briefly create a vacuum where the fire was, snuffing it quickly. The path the fire had cleared soon disappeared as we traipsed back into the snow, not stopping until we were deep inside the forest. I practically collapsed into the snow, the coolness actually a relief after how hot my body felt after I had pushed myself that hard. I heard Seth take in a deep breath as he sat against the base of a tree, Amy and Aki lowering CG unsteadily to the ground. It was risky, definitely. The sniper could still have a way of getting us, but it was unlikely now. My inner voice of reason had only just begun to reassure myself that we were safe when I heard the footsteps. Fast, getting closer, and plentiful. I stumbled getting to my feet, preparing what little energy I had left to fight, but the cold barrel of a gun inches away from my head removed my will to fight immediately. The person holding the gun closest to me wore a dark leather helmet, bandana covering his mouth as his hazel eyes darted from me to the others. Seth’s hands were reluctantly raised as another person pointed a rifle at him, prodding at him to stand. Hazel-Eyes raised a gloved hand, pulling the bandana down, the other hand lowering the pistol as he did.

“You Tabitha?” His question caught me off guard, not least because of the lack of a full sentence, and I stared blankly at him.

“Yes?” I answered finally, looking at the other people who had arrived. None of them were aiming at us anymore.

“Call me B.” Hazel-Eyes said, extending the same gloved hand for me to shake, which I reluctantly did. “You’ll wanna come with us.”

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Chapter 41: Man, It’s A Hot One

“You’re listening to KBL Radio, the #1 station for summertime magic and music, and now, here’s Santana and Rob Thomas with Smooth.”

 The radio’s signal was surprisingly good, given that it was just a couple of parts that Tabitha had thrown together, and it definitely added to the atmosphere I’d been going for on the roof. In fact, just about everything that had some semblance of normal technology was just something Tabitha had made herself as some sort of challenge. It wouldn’t have been so bad, had she not had the habit of taking apart pre-existing technology to make her other things. I missed my iPod. As the beginning guitar riff started, I took a moment to adjust my sunglasses a little, finding they were slipping down my face from the small layer of sweat that had accumulated from sunbathing for as long as I had. I wasn’t particularly interested in getting a tan, but this weather was too good to pass up laying up here, especially considering it was rare to have bright, sunny days like this in the UK.

 For once, I wasn’t the only one wearing sunglasses, with just about everyone else on the roof sporting them too, though nowhere near as good as my own. It had been a few weeks since the school reunion, and the group had split into two. Paul and Amy were the two communicators of the group since that just made sense, and we’d split into having Rose in charge of the secondary group, with all the people I was slightly less familiar with over there. Thinking about the rest of my group got me pondering something, and I opened my eyes and looked around the roof. It was only me, Amy and Aki (who was, as cats normally did, asleep in the sun) up here, and while Tabitha being hard at work wasn’t too unexpected, Seth not being up here goofing off was odd to me. Where was he?

 Seth

“So whatcha up to?” I asked, breaking an incredibly awkward silence that had formed since my last attempt at breaking the very same awkward silence. Tabitha was at her computer, as usual, though with about ten box fans pointed at her to keep her cool. I had been trying to work up the nerve to mention what we’d talked about in the grid, but so far it wasn’t easy. Adrenaline had been pumping for everyone there, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know whether Tabitha was being serious anymore. Nonetheless, I owed it to myself to get a straight answer, which was why I’d basically tagged along with her like a lapdog.

“The same thing I was doing the last time you asked.” Tabitha responded in a monotone, not looking away from the screen. As easy as it was to just say that I needed a straight answer, actually working up the nerve to ask for one was a lot harder. “Which is to say, whatever comes to me. Mary told us to just do our things, and I guess for me that means… this.” She paused for a moment before letting out an aggravated groan. “This is so bullshit! We’re just… existing!” I watched awkwardly as Tabitha brought up her knees and placed her elbows against her legs, head in her hands. I had a feeling she was going stir-crazy, and I couldn’t blame her. There had been a whole lot of nothing happening, and I would have given anything to get out of this seemingly endless loop of boring.

“Well, what do you want to do?” I asked her, emphasising my word to remind her that we were supposed to be doing whatever we felt like. Her glasses were perched precariously at the end of her nose as she looked up at me, so she had to tilt her head at a weird angle to actually be able to see me, which made her eyes look weirdly small. “Whatever you want to do, you’re right, apparently.” A small smile broke out on her face, as she began to type with renewed vigour.

“First off, we’re finding somewhere with a better temperature to relax in. My brain feels like it’s frying here.” It was refreshing to see Tabitha with this much energy, smiling as multiple different numbers and statistics flashed across the screen. I had asked her to teach me about the different meanings of what was on there, but we hadn’t gotten much further than me remembering the code that was assigned to our universe. It wasn’t something I’d need to know any time soon, thankfully, since Tabitha would be around to do it for me. “Second, I’m curious about that whole Omega thing that Mary mentioned, so I’m going to look into cross-referencing the Greek numeral system with other dimensions and see if it gives me anything interesting. Who knows, maybe that’s the lead that we needed to act on.” I watched the screen as multiple symbols flashed across it, and while I wasn’t fluent in Greek, it didn’t take an expert of context clues to realise what they were. “Third, I’m gonna ask what’s on your mind, since you’ve been lurking here for a while.” I wasn’t aware it was possible to choke on my own breath, but I somehow managed to as she asked this, caught off guard almost immediately. I mean, in retrospect it must have been obvious, but I still hadn’t expected that to be the next sentence out of her mouth.

“I… uh…” I stammered out, feeling my face turn even redder than the sun had made it. Tabitha had turned to look at me now, and I knew that playing dumb would get me nowhere. Unfortunately, my mind had decided that now was the perfect time to shut off my ability to actually speak. And even if I could, what was I going to say? That I felt awkward about the last proper conversation we’d had, that I wasn’t sure about where the two of us stood now, that… wait, that was exactly what I needed to say. “I’m… uh… feeling a little weird after the last conversation we had.” Eloquent as ever, Seth. Tabitha took a moment to think back onto the last conversation, clearly only realising what our last proper conversation had been just now.

“Oh.” She said, no obvious change of expression on her face. “Okay.” I don’t know exactly what she means by it, but it seems vaguely positive, and I wait in anticipation for where she goes next. The silence after that lasts for longer than I’d expect it to, however, and I realise that was probably my cue to say something more.

“Everything we said… it wasn’t just heat of the moment, was it?” I asked, hating myself as I asked it. The question dripped with doubt of Tabitha and I’s truthfulness, as much as I tried to frame it as just a question. I knew she’d know what I meant, or at least I hoped, but it still stung to even say.

“Seth, of course not.” I hadn’t noticed I was looking at my feet until she spoke again, and I felt any anxiety wash out of me as I looked up and saw her smiling. “I’ve just been thinking a lot. I want to be in control of my own destiny, but with the whole Mary thing, am I actually?” Tabitha’s ponderings seemed unrelated, but I waited for her to continue nonetheless. “Prophecies aren’t set in stone. We proved that with Untermeyer and… everything that happened. As much as I loved Uchen, he was definitely not the most loyal that The Elder mentioned.” I had almost forgotten the first prophecy at this point. It all felt like it was so long ago. “But I’m worried that prophecy wasn’t quite what we thought it was. Our numbers only just grew, after all.”

“You think the entire prophecy hasn’t happened yet?” I asked, and Tabitha sucked her teeth for a moment before responding.

“No. Yes. I don’t know.” Hearing Tabitha say that she was unsure of something was a rare occasion, and I’d have poked fun if it wasn’t for the fact that not knowing right now was definitely not something to make fun of. “But I don’t know enough about this shit to make judgements. I want to be in control of my own destiny, no matter what. I need to know that if I make a choice, it’s because it’s what I know I would do.”

“So you’re waiting to go out with me?” I had pieced it together at this point, and the conversation left a dull feeling in my stomach, like I’d swallowed a small boulder.

“What if, and bear with me because I know this is stupid paranoia shit, I’m setting events in motion by acting like I feel like I should instead of how I actually want to? If the first prophecy wasn’t about Uchen and Untermeyer and was about what’s yet to come, I don’t want to spark the flames that start that.” This was clearly something Tabitha had been thinking about a lot, and I was sure she knew of the holes in that theory before I pointed them out, but I still felt like I had to.

“But that same argument could be made about you not doing that.” I pointed out, and she nodded.

“Exactly. Which is why I’m waiting until I’m 100% certain that you and I are supposed to happen. Because I know that any action I take that I’m 100% certain of is aimed at changing that future.” Tabitha finally finished her rambling word-vomit, looking at me expectantly as I took in everything she said.

“You’re aware you’re a crazy person?” I asked, bluntly.

“Oh, absolutely. For all I know this could be a total waste of time, considering I do like you and it’s more of a case of whether it happens now or later. But hey, might as well be certain that the time is right.” Tabitha’s eyes never dropped from me, despite the hand gestures she made idly as she spoke. “Are you… alright with all this? My stupid crazy stuff?” It was only for a moment, but I heard the uncertainty in her voice. A slight quaver in the words, eyes glancing away for a second. It took me a moment to think of the answer. It felt unnecessary to me. It probably was. But at the end of the day, was it my place to say?

“What sort of gentleman would I be if I got annoyed at you for waiting? After all, if all goes well I shouldn’t sour things by being a douche now. It’s just a small delay, that’s all.” I replied, and Tabitha let out a laugh that was almost definitely a cover for her relief.

“I’d call you many things, but a gentleman is not one of them, Seth.” Tabitha’s regular smile had returned, the cocky one that warmed my insides whenever I saw it. The confidence was back, and more bountiful than ever.

“Well, m’lady, mayhaps I need to prove myself of how courteous I can be.” I said, mock-gesturing and bowing until I was almost at a 90 degree angle. In return, she swatted me on the head gently, still laughing.

“Dumbass.” She said in an annoyed tone, but her smile as I stood back up gave away her happiness. “Anyway, we’ve got work to do. You should probably grab the others.” I nodded, each of my steps as I ran to the stairs to get the others taking me off the ground with how bubbly and full of energy I felt. Nothing could go wrong today.

Cool Guy

Immediately, the chill wind of the new dimension bit at my bare skin, arms prickling and feeling as if they were burning from the bitter cold. I quickly retrieved my leather jacket from the pocket world that we’d stored a lot of stuff in, which still stunned me with how it managed to work so well with what I was trying to get.

“Where… the hell… are we?” Seth said, shivering as he tried to move his muscles enough to gesture for his own jacket, but was unable to stop reflexively hugging himself to maintain his warmth. I turned to Tabitha, wanting to know the very same, but the shock on her face told me that she definitely wasn’t expecting this.

“We’re… this is…” She stammered, not hit by the cold but instead by fear. “This world is supposed to be like our own. I thought it was winter here, but the readings say that it’s the same time of year.” I looked at the snow falling from the sky as Tabitha checked, double-checked, and triple-checked her watch. The middle of summer, and it was snowing. But that wasn’t the noteworthy part. The horizon, barely visible through the snowfall, was a bleak, grim red, and a cliché, yet foreboding dark spire reached up to the clouds. Whatever had happened in this world, it wasn’t good.

“What the hell happened here?”

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[acoolguyscoollife]

Chapter 40: A Taste of What’s to Come

I hadn’t actually filled anyone else in on the situation, so Seth and Tabitha were now awkwardly standing around outside the school, occasionally making light conversation with each other as Rose and I talked about what we thought might happen next. In addition to this, Paul was with us too, having decided to wait for Amy to show up much like the rest of us were, and so I figured he might as well join us. 

Talking to Tabitha had felt kinda strange given everything that had happened, so I didn’t say much other than some small platitudes and empathising with her shitty situation, which she at least seemed thankful for. Surprisingly, it only took about ten minutes of waiting before we caught sight of Amy walking to us. It had totally slipped my mind that Amy and Paul didn’t live too far from the school, so naturally it wasn’t going to take too long. But that wasn’t anywhere near as surprising as who was with her. The two of them had clearly put effort into making Aki look as inconspicuous as possible, an effort which paid off now that I was able to see her. Aki’s face was covered by one of those masks that looked like a surgical one, but was more than likely one of the ones that K-Pop stars would wear, with her head covered by a hood and the bulge her ears would make disguised by what I could only assume were a pair of bulky earphones. And, for the eyes, a pair of sunglasses that rivalled my own. I had to admit, I was almost jealous. I couldn’t see how they’d hidden the tail or her hands until they got closer, where it became clear that Aki’s tail was tucked into the jeans that Amy had most likely lent her.

“Hey guys!” Amy said cheerfully as she closed the distance between the two of us. Aki was drawing a little bit of attention from other groups, short glances being stolen in her direction, so I wasted no time in ushering the group into the school. Unsurprisingly, there were people in here as well, so I took a moment to think of where Mary would want to meet with us. Considering the circumstances, it would need to be somewhere in the school that nobody would go, even if it was open for people to go into. I was about to pose the question to the rest of the group, before I realised what the most obvious place was.

 I had never really understood why people didn’t like libraries. The smell of books alone was enough to make me enjoy being in the room, though that wasn’t the only thing in the room I could smell. There was a tell-tale smell of perfume coming from the far end of the room, a corner hidden from the rest of the room, blocked from sight by bookshelves and with a collection of bean bags and chairs to sit in. I didn’t need to be a prophet to know where Mary would be.

“I think the worst part of knowing the exact time you guys were supposed to show up is that I was still hoping that you’d arrive sooner.” A voice said, one that didn’t take much work to place as hers. Mary poked her head around from one of the bookshelves as we approached, blue hair that reached her shoulders still being a part of her look since she had adopted it way back in high school. We rounded the corner to the little reading nook, with Mary beckoning for us to sit. The tables that were there were pushed together with the seats all positioned around it, with a cup of steaming liquid to go with each of them. “Sit in the ones you want to, your drink will be in front of you either way.” Mary smiled wryly as she said this, and I had the feeling she was showing off a little.

“You’re Mary, right? From class 4-A?” Amy asked, and Mary nodded an affirmation. While I think I only had one class with Mary when we had been back in school, I could tell Amy had interacted with her a lot more. “It’s good to see you!” Amy continued, while shooting a glance my way. I forgot that none of them knew what was happening, and explaining it would have taken a lot more time than it would have taken to just show them. I shot an apologetic look back, and Amy rolled her eyes as we sat down in the seats that Mary had marked for us. The mug in front of me had what looked to be coffee in it, which I wasn’t too much of a fan of, but I wasn’t about to say something to Mary about it. Instead, I took a sip, quickly being caught off-guard by the taste of it. Despite the lack of cream, there was enough whiskey in the coffee to knock out a horse!

“You wouldn’t say anything about how you liked it, so I had to guess. Judging by your expression, I got it right?” Mary asked me, and I nodded while swallowing the first sip I had taken. Even the temperature of the drink had been gotten exactly right. Whatever job she worked must have been easy as hell for her. “By the way Aki, you can take off your disguise now. Nobody’s gonna bother us.” Mary said casually, not even looking at Aki as she took a sip from her own cup. Aki let out a small gasp of surprise at this, but must have thought that Mary had been told by one of us, since she was quick to remove the mask and sunglasses, taking off the hooded jacket to reveal she was wearing her regular clothes under everything else. Aki’s previous gasp was then mirrored – and amplified – by Paul as he saw what was underneath the hood.

“What the hell?!” He asked, before turning his head towards Amy so quickly I thought most of his body would turn with him. “You were telling the truth?” Amy’s response was just to put her head in her hands for a moment, groaning loudly before popping back up.

“I kept saying I wasn’t messing around, but you wouldn’t believe me.” Amy replied, annoyance clear in her voice.

“But why didn’t you bring her down to prove it? I would have definitely believed you then!” Paul said, excitement building in his voice as he spoke. “Holy shit, this is amazing!” Hearing the sentiment coming from a fresh pair of eyes did well to make my mood brighten somewhat, reminding me of just how extraordinary the entire circumstance was.

“Your house is small, with windows everywhere, and you guys have really nosy neighbours. Amy’s room, however, has a tree right outside the window.” Mary said, bringing the group’s attention back to her.

“That’s… exactly what I was going to say.” Amy said, stunned somewhat as her words came out as barely more than a mumble.

“How come she never mentioned you then, Mary?” Paul asked, clearly thinking back on the story that Amy had told him. Mary’s cup was already empty as she placed it back on the saucer, pushing it further onto the table before sitting back in her chair with her hands behind her head.

“Oh, they didn’t know I factored into things yet. They still don’t actually know, really.” Mary said, eyes glancing towards the side of the tables that Seth and Tabitha were sat at.

“That’s a point, actually. Why are we here?” Tabitha asked, and I realised that Mary was following the direction of the person who was going to talk next. I wasn’t even sure that was showing off, honestly, the movements feeling closer to something subconscious.

“I’m a prophet. I contacted Rose about this, since I told her basically everything that had transpired with your group, including details that she didn’t even know.” Mary’s words were still casual, but the atmosphere had become anything but, with just about everyone there buzzing with energy as they held in the urge to yell questions into the air. “Have the rest of you tried your drinks yet? I can assure you they’re exactly what you prefer.” Sure enough, each of us apart from me took a sip from their cups, shocked expressions appearing on each of their faces soon after. “No, it’s not just useful for cheap tricks, but you have to admit, it’s pretty cool, right?” Mary winked at us, clearly having fun with everything happening.

“That’s all well and good, but that doesn’t exactly answer the question of why we’re here.” Tabitha was being insistent, but I could tell it wasn’t out of impoliteness. There was a small glint in her eyes as she watched Mary’s every subtle movement, seemingly trying to take in each action she did. I couldn’t tell for certain whether Mary noticed, as the two of them were sat on separate sides of the table, and following the person speaking with my head was starting to give me a headache. Nonetheless, I turned my head back to Mary, whose expression had changed as she leant forward a little, hands knit in front of her mouth with elbows on her knees as she glanced between us all.

“I have… information, I suppose.” Mary’s tone had changed slightly with her posture change, and I had a feeling whatever she was about to say wasn’t going to be great. “I can’t see everything. Short-term futurevision is one thing, but long-term is harder for me to do. It’s only happened a few times since the first time I saw the future, but every time it did, a picture is being painted of what’s going to happen.” I frowned, wondering what exactly she was getting to here, as it was definitely on the track to be something negative. “Everything you’ve been through so far was nothing but a precursor to things that are coming. Things are going to get tougher.” I heard Seth sigh loudly through his nose, before his movement to lean forward made him slightly visible in my peripheral vision.

“Is it part of some prophetic clause that you have to be as vague as possible? First that other guy, now this, it’s starting to feel like everything is coming together to make sure we get screwed over.” Seth’s complaint rang valid, though I wasn’t sure I’d have been as outspoken as he was. I’d rather have complained in my head and dealt with it, though Mary didn’t seem to be offended.

“This’ll probably sound like a non-sequitur, but do you ever remember drama class? You’d get a line in some shitty play that wasn’t quite anything actually interesting, but since it was school you had to follow the script to the letter, with no improvising?” I had a feeling I knew what she was talking about, with her ability to see the future telling her what she already said. “Well, my life is basically like that now. If I say something that confuses you, hopefully you ask me to clarify so I can explain it.” Seth nodded along as Mary spoke, but I wasn’t really sure if he understood completely. If he didn’t, he must have chalked it up as not worth asking about further, as Mary continued to speak. “I don’t know too much, but what I’ve seen is worrying.” Mary’s attitude had seemed cocky from the get-go, but it was only now that the façade began to drop that I noticed that it was being used to mask her true feelings. Glancing around, I could see the energy of curiosity had gone from the group, faces now grim as each one of us had the same realisation I had.

“Tell us everything.” I said, more as comfort than anything else, and Mary proceeded to do exactly that, taking a deep breath that only heralded a lot of words coming.

“Out of everything I could see, the main things I could discern was that there was someone referred to as Omega.” The gasp I let out was a reflex, but Mary didn’t stop, barely even breaking her stride. “There’s a council of people, all wanting to stop him, and a group of people working with him, but they all blend together, like they all have the same face. And if we don’t stop them, they’ll take over multiple different worlds, including our own.” The mention of the name Omega again only served to confirm that not only did Mary have the ability to see the future, but Untermeyer possibly had as well.

“The faces, what did the people look like?” Seth asked, and I watched Mary’s eyes as they moved for a brief second to me before continuing to talk.

“I can’t tell. Their faces looked like they weren’t quite there, but then I’ve not been able to piece it together quite right yet.” I almost believed her, but I saw Mary’s tell for a very brief moment, clueing me in that her glance towards me wasn’t an accident. As she had spoken, her hand had tightened ever so slightly, gripping the other just a little harder. I was most likely the only one to notice her fingers go white for a brief moment, sitting in just the right place to catch it, but I wasn’t going to be the one to bring it up. She must have had a reason for it, or at least I hoped. “But they’re bad news, which is why I started making a plan.” That must have been the cue, as someone walked around from one of the bookcases. I’d seen him before at school, but since then his appearance had changed somewhat. What was once long dark hair was now tidier and a deep shade of brown, band t-shirts replaced with a tidy, if slightly unkempt, short-sleeved shirt. I’d not spoken to John in a long time, enough time to have forgotten his last name, but he smiled at us as if it hadn’t even been a day since we’d last seen him.

“Alrigh’ lads? Mary’s filled me in on everything, so you don’t gotta worry about explaining it. I’m just here to help where I can.” John spoke with a slight accent that I couldn’t place as his, with the last time I heard him speak being little more than quiet murmurs.

“John is going to be helping me piece together more things from my visions, as well as working with me, Paul and Rose. Meanwhile, you five will be doing whatever comes naturally to you, until the pieces begin to set in motion for us fighting the Omega.” Mary spoke with such authority that even though I’m sure Tabitha would have preferred to take charge, none of us spoke up or complained about the plan. “I can’t guarantee everything that will happen, but what I can guarantee is that if we aren’t careful, someone will die.” The mention of death was the bleak punctuation on the end of the long omen of bad times to come, and nobody spoke for a few moments.

“So… do we all put our hands in the middle and yell go team or is that too cliché?” Amy asked, adding a much needed break to the tension.

“We can if you want.” Mary replied, a smile returning to her face.

“Will it help?”

“No.”

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Chapter 39: Non-Humble Reunions

I don’t consider myself a particularly smart person. In fact, I’d say I was probably far from the ideal pick for a trivia night in a bar, never mind anything actually substantial. However, ever since the day we had fought Untermeyer, I had been thinking a lot. There were things that didn’t quite add up, as much as I tried to make them. It had gotten bad enough with my mind going to multiple places at once that a corkboard and red string had been the only way that felt right to plot my thoughts.

 Untermeyer talked about the future a lot, even after we had seen through his ruse of not knowing what would happen next. And on top of that, he’d called me the Alpha, referring to someone else called the Omega. The more I thought, the more I found questions with no answer. And with those lack of answers came a lack of purpose. It had easily been a month now, though I’d barely noticed the passing of time. I wasn’t going outside much anymore. None of the others had contacted me, despite how much I’d wished they would, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do next. If it hadn’t been for the letter, I wasn’t sure I would have gone anywhere or done anything. But, when mail came through my door actually addressed to me once again, I knew it was going to be what led me back to my friends. So you can imagine how disappointed I was to read that it was a school reunion. It had only been a few years since we had left high school, but I guess they already wanted us back since after our year had left, things had gone downhill fast. They most likely needed to make a good impression on people, which made it a surprise that they invited me since I usually do the opposite of that. Whether it was a mistake or not, I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to actually leave the house. Plus, while I doubted that Seth, Amy or Tabitha would be there, I had a feeling someone else would be. Someone I had to talk to.

 Walking back into the grounds of your high school as an adult is a surreal feeling. There were a lot more groups gathered outside on the path to the building than I had ever seen even when I was at the school, most people now waiting to say hi to people they’d not seen since leaving. Sure enough, some people waved in my general direction as I walked past them, and I was polite enough to give them a wave back even though I barely knew them or particularly wanted to when I had been in the school. The main path to the school was easily bigger than any common roads, and groups stood at either side, leaving a clear path down the middle for anyone who actually wanted to enter the building. I took a moment to look at the building, which even only a few years later felt smaller than I remembered, before starting the walk down the path. To give Seth credit, he at least gave me about five or six steps before accosting me on the path out of nowhere.

“CG!” He called out happily, and I couldn’t stop myself from grinning in response. “You son of a bitch!” Seth added as he closed the distance between the two of us, raising his hand to catch mine in a mixture of a high-five and an arm wrestle. We had watched Predator about once. The handshake scene still held firm in our minds ever since. I caught his hand, feeling my arm muscles tense as we both attempted to overpower the other.

“You’re getting rusty.” I noted, gesturing with my head towards our arms. Usually, he’d quickly have me beat, but I was managing to hold my own for a decent spread of time. “Got you pushing too many pencils, huh?” Seth rolled his eyes, letting go of my hand and shaking his palm to get the blood circulating in it again. The two of us continued walking up the path, waiting a few moments to get to the less busy parts before continuing our conversation. “So how is she?” I had a feeling Seth would have been talking to Tabitha during this last month, and he didn’t disappoint.

“She’s better. Still a little shaken, but she’s buried him now and that seems to have helped her. She’s actually here, just in the building.” Seth replied, not taking his eyes off the school as we got closer. “Amy, on the other hand, I’ve not heard from since everything went down. I can only assume being with Aki meant she didn’t really notice how long it had been.” We were about twenty feet away from the school’s entrance now, but my pace slowed to a stop as I spied someone who would know more about Amy’s whereabouts than Seth or I would, and he was talking to my ex-girlfriend. I gave a quick, shrill whistle to catch the group’s attention before jogging over. Rose seemed to almost be caught off-guard by my appearance, and the guy she was talking to looked as if he wasn’t quite sure that I was real. It had been a while since I had talked to Amy’s brother, but Paul had been quite a close friend to Seth and I before school had ended. His looks hadn’t changed much, but I could have sworn he’d somehow gotten even taller.

“Oh, hey CG! Didn’t expect to see you here.” Rose said, putting just a little too much enthusiasm into her voice and accidentally revealing how uncomfortable the entire situation had gotten. “I was just talking to Paul, because I wondered where Amy was.” That made two of us. Looking over at him, Paul was definitely confused as to what the two of us were so focused on, but he must have decided to not question it.

“She didn’t want to come, said she didn’t wanna be around people she never knew.” Paul said, and I nodded in understanding. “I can give her a call to see if she’ll come up now you guys are here, though?”

“That sounds great! Thanks, man!” I said, happy that I’d be able to talk to her too. Paul began to walk away from the group, but stopped a few steps away.

“By the way, is this about that weird LARPing thing she talked to me about? She mentioned the two of you and some other REALLY weird stuff, like having a catgirl girlfriend, but I have no idea what she was talking about.” Both Rose and I shot a glance at each other as Paul spoke, and the expressions on our face must have given it away. “No, she’s not introduced me to her yet, either. I’ve heard her girlfriend in her room, but I wasn’t about to go barging in on them. You gotta explain all this stuff to me, though, because she was insisting it was real and I have no idea why she’s so determined to make me part of that stuff.” Paul added casually, before putting his hands in his pockets and walking away, making casual greetings towards Seth as he did so.

“So Amy told him?” Rose asked me, and I shrugged. It was possible she was trying to make the events so unbelievable that he thought it was just fiction, but I couldn’t know without talking to her. “I...” Rose began, before stopping herself. It was clear she had something else on her mind, though, and I knew exactly what it was.

“Rose, listen. I’m okay. I know things are super weird right now, but part of the reason I came here was to see you.” I turned to face Rose, who I could have sworn could see my eyes through my glasses, since she knew she was meeting my gaze. “I… think I know what you meant. By the thing that was there.” Rose paused for a moment, eyeing me with an eyebrow raised.

“You only think you know? CG, it was kind of one of those things where if you knew, you definitely knew.” Rose replied, and I quickly interjected.

“I don’t exactly have a way of finding out right now, y’know? But the more I think about it, the more it… kinda makes sense.” I said, saying as much as I could without flat out saying it in case I was wrong about what she had thought it was. “And yeah, I get why just telling me would have made me deny it. I honestly don’t think I would have known if I hadn’t had to think about it properly.” Rose smiled, a mixture of her cocky smirk and a warm one underneath, happy that I was feeling better about things.

“You clearly weren’t happy being in a relationship with me, either time. Connecting the dots lead to two outcomes, and I’m pretty sure out of the two, my theory is accurate.” Rose said, her smile turning wicked. “What sort of guy would turn me down, after all?” I laughed at this, happy that there was no longer this weird feeling between her and me. But then, right as she stopped laughing with me, I caught something else. There was a flash of different emotion on her face, eyes going to the side as her mind clearly went somewhere else. Something was worrying her, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t me.

“Rose?” I questioned her as soon as I saw it, and she must have known I’d seen it, because she didn’t try to hide anything. “What’s the matter?”

“Do you remember the elder?” She asked me, and I nodded slowly, wondering where she was going with this. “Well, he said something that got me thinking, about finding prophets in other places. At first, it didn’t seem like much, just a sign that you guys would go into other worlds and find more people like him. But it was the specific words he used that’s made me think a lot. He said in more places than you think.” Rose paused to make sure I was following her so far, then continued. “Now, maybe I’m reading too much into this, but like… we’d obviously think prophets existed in universes where they’re supposed to, right? Does his prophecy mean that they exist in other universes too?” Rose asked, and I had to admit, she had a point. But too many things didn’t add up, and it was a bit of a loose question to answer.

“What you’re saying makes sense, I agree. But we can’t really go anywhere with that, y’know?” I replied, and Rose was quick to jump in before I continued.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. It made sense but it was kind of useless at the minute. But then, something happened.” There was something in the tone of voice that she used that made me realise she was going somewhere big. “Do you remember a girl called Mary Ludenberg?” The name rang a bell, but I couldn’t match a face to it. “Near the end of the last year, dyed her hair neon blue?” Now I began to remember. People kicked up a massive fuss on both sides, teachers saying it was causing a distraction while students fought to say it was her right to have her hair how she chose. “She called me one night in a panic, having had a nightmare.” The story seemed to have hit a dull point now, and I guess it must have shown on my face.

“Is that… a big deal?” I asked half-heartedly, slightly disappointed that the conversation had seemed to become boring.

“She didn’t have my phone number.” Rose said, and the story became interesting once again. “And she told me everything I had done, including travelling to another world with you.” While the phone number could have been explained in other ways, knowing what we had done in an alternate dimension led to only one conclusion.

“She’s a prophet?” I asked, and Rose nodded, happy that I had reached the same conclusion as she had.

“She has to be! It’s the only explanation!” Rose exclaimed, and I had to admit, I was pretty excited too. Magic things existed in our own universe? That was a game-changer! “She said she’d be here, and that we should find her after we get everyone else. So let’s get to it!”

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[acoolguyscoollife]

Chapter 38: Endings

Cool Guy

Immediately, the five of us moved to attack Untermeyer, but a single raised hand from him was enough to make us stop, each unsure of whether the others would be the one to deal with any attacks. He let out a cackle that echoed around the area we were in, giving away that we were boxed in now. I hadn’t even noticed it, but now that I examined the surrounding area closer, I could see corners where dark walls connected. Just more of Untermeyer’s illusions.

“So what, now you’re scared? After everything I’ve witnessed you do, this is the point where you can’t push yourselves forward?” Untermeyer goaded, but Uchen shifted himself so his body was turned to face us properly. His face was beaten and bloody, one eye blackened as a small trickle of blood leaked out of his nose.

“He’s trying to make you attack, don’t listen to him!” Uchen called out mainly to Tabitha, who nodded in response, moving her outstretched leg back into a standing position instead of preparing to run forward.

“You forget I’ve seen the future, dear mentor. I know what I’m going to do next, and what they’re going to do. I know their plans before they do.” Untermeyer’s taunts rang true as far as I was aware, disappointing me with the bitter cruelty of fate.

“He’s lying, he only knows about our pasts. He can’t predict the future any more than we can.” Seth cut in suddenly, surprising me with the knowledge I hadn’t been aware of. I could feel my confidence rising, but it was quickly quelled by Untermeyer’s grin refusing to leave his face.

“That may be true, but I know what I will do next. The question is, can you stop me in time, or will you see that my side is clearly the superior one?” He extended the hand that was little more than a skeleton now, beckoning for us to approach. “My powers are vast, but with the budding flower of your abilities on my side, we could conquer the universe.” He was bluffing, as was to be expected, and thankfully, nobody would have bought what he was offering. But as a gleam flashed in his eye, and I saw the direction of his gaze turn, a sinking feeling grew in my stomach as I realized what he was about to do. “And it will guarantee the survival of Uchen.” Untermeyer was speaking directly to Tabitha now, and I saw the moment where she calculated the odds and realized which one was likelier.

“Tabitha, no! If you do this, he’ll be unstoppable!” Seth yelled out to her as she took her first step towards Untermeyer. Her fists had been firmly clenched at her sides since we had arrived at him, power slowly building in them, but I knew that while Uchen was in danger, she would be holding back. I could only hope she had a plan, but horror set in as I saw those same fists relax, a stony expression on Tabitha’s face as she continued walking towards Untermeyer. She had given up. And if she gave up, I knew I had no choice but to give up as well. I wasn’t going to risk killing my friend. With a sigh, I placed my sword back into its sheath and straightened up my body from the battle stance I’d been in. Looking around at everyone else, I met Amy’s gaze and saw the disappointment. Everyone else watching me had the same look, as if I was the one who was supposed to have found a way to overcome this. But I couldn’t always be the one to find a way out of bad problems. If it was easy enough to be a mary-sue, I’d have chosen to be that a long time ago. I followed suit with Tabitha, walking towards the two scientists at a slow enough pace to see any traps coming before they happened.

“I’m not going to give myself up.” The one to speak up and refuse to give in surprised me slightly, as Aki stood firmly staring down at Untermeyer. He regarded her coldly in turn, barely giving her a passing glance.

“You weren’t even supposed to be here, cat. Time changed,  and so did the fate of someone as insignificant as you. I wasn’t asking for you to join my side, you were never important to my plan.” As cruel as the words were, at the very least they gave me some hope that Aki could get out of here without getting hurt. “I don’t fear you stopping me.” Aki retorted in kind, but as she did, my brain started to zone everything out. It felt like time was slowing down, adrenaline kicking in for some reason when nothing noticeable was going to happen. Something about what Untermeyer had said had made the back of my mind tingle, like there was something on the tip of my tongue about to spring forward. Like a mental switch had flipped, I realized exactly what he’d said to us, and why it was his downfall. I just had to hope I could use it.

“Tabitha, wait!” There must have been something in my voice that conveyed what I was going to say, as she stopped her walking to look back at me. She looked defeated, as if she knew that this was the only choice she had to save Uchen. Hopefully, I was right and she was wrong. “He mentioned needing people for his plan, he can’t actually win without us surrendering to him!” I watched Tabitha’s face as multiple expressions crossed it. First, doubt, the convenience of the situation feeling a little too easy. Doubt quickly changed to slow realisation that Untermeyer was that ego-centric that he would have missed that. Finally, her expression began to set back into the one that I’d seen before, though this time with a few subtle differences that I knew Untermeyer wouldn’t notice. It was a clever change, one to make him think she hadn’t believed him, but right before she turned back to him, she gave us a wink.

“Is that true?” Tabitha asked Untermeyer, voice monotone. In response, the half-human looked between her and I, clearly wondering what the long game was here. For the first time since he’d started speaking, I felt like I held all the cards. “Uchen is your safety net to make sure we turn to your side.” Tabitha’s second statement was in response to Untermeyer’s silence, and wasn’t so much of a question as it was an explanation of the situation at hand.

“Not quite, dear.” Untermeyer smiled again, though it wavered enough to make me know that we were getting to him. “Uchen is more of a… trump card, an extension to my abilities, if you will. When you join my side, you’ll all become part of me. If you refuse, he dies, and I’ll take your powers from your corpses.” Untermeyer’s smile stopped wavering, as he looked directly at me. I felt sick to my stomach as everything clicked in my head, and I realized the chain of events I had set in motion.

“So even if I side with you, he’ll die, and so will we?” Tabitha asked, and Untermeyer’s attention turned back to her. I hoped, in the back of my mind, that she wouldn’t say exactly what Untermeyer wanted her to. He was goading her again, but this time, it wasn’t obvious enough to stop.

“Tabitha-” I began, but she’d already begun to speak before I could stop her.

“If he dies either way, why would I side with you?” Tabitha asked, clearly thinking there was another element at play, a factor she hadn’t seen that gave Untermeyer a reason to keep Uchen alive. She didn’t realize that she was the factor. In response to her question, Untermeyer acted faux-contemplative, looking over at Uchen, who had been following the conversation with his eyes up to that point.

“I hadn’t thought about it like that.” Untermeyer said simply, flashing a grin before it happened. None of us were close enough to even see it coming, much less make a move to stop it. Uchen’s body stiffened as he shot bolt-upright, half propelled by the menacingly dark shard stuck through his chest. The shape was almost like an over-sized needle, coated in a thin layer of his blood as it protruded out of Uchen’s chest almost comically. He tried to say something, but words weren’t forming, instead choked gargles as he looked desperately at Tabitha. A mixture of foam and blood leaked from his mouth, as he mouthed something repeatedly. The words were hard to make out at first, but as his body began to slump, I realised what he was mouthing. It’s okay. Uchen’s body hit the floor with a dull thud, movements finally ceasing, and my gaze went to Tabitha. Untermeyer’s move had clearly shocked her, eyes wide open as she looked at the corpse of her mentor, and the reason she had even been here in the first place. Her face was wet with tear-tracks, the rise and fall of her chest with her ragged breathing being the only movements she made. It felt like my ears were ringing, but as my head cleared from the fog of shock, I was able to hear what the noise that echoed in the room really was. Untermeyer was laughing triumphantly, looking at all of us as I was. Seth’s gaze was directly on Tabitha, and I could tell the sorrow he was feeling from seeing one of his closest friends the way she was. Amy had moved back to protect Aki after the movement that Untermeyer had made, and I was… just stood here. I hadn’t done anything when I needed to, I’d just frozen. It felt like time had stopped again, though this time, it was just an excuse for my sorry actions. No, that wasn’t quite right. It was fear. For the first time in longer than it should have been, I was feeling fear. Nobody in the room made a move, knowing that the first move would be the spark that ignited something that couldn’t be extinguished. As Untermeyer’s laughter died, I realised another noise was present. The slow, steady footfalls of someone moving. Tabitha was slowly walking towards Untermeyer, who only grinned in response as he beckoned her closer.

“You… bastard.” Tabitha growled, fists now clenched so tightly that veins were popping out of them. Untermeyer laughed again, the cold laugh sending shivers down my spine.

“So you’re still going to fight me? Even after Uchen died wanting to save your life one more time, you’re still approaching me?” There was a flash in the empty eye-socket, but other than that, Untermeyer made no moves. Tabitha’s walking didn’t falter as he spoke, now only a few feet away from him. “At least you’ll be joining him soon.”

“I can’t beat the shit out of you without getting closer.” Tabitha said in response, a line that rang familiar, but I wasn’t quite sure why.

“Oh? Then come as close as you like!” Untermeyer said, as he started to walk towards her in turn. They had barely any space left between them now, and I knew I had to do something soon. But before I could move, Tabitha stopped, and Untermeyer did in turn.

“I’m going to kill you.” Tabitha said, a tone in her voice I’d never heard before. And with that, the first punch was thrown. Tabitha quickly closed the gap between the two of them fist first, and to my surprise, it actually connected, causing Untermeyer to recoil slightly. I started running to get over to the two, unsheathing my sword as I did so, and Tabitha swung at his upper body with a leg surrounded by fire. The cloak that Untermeyer was wearing burned slightly at the fire’s touch, but if it hurt him, he didn’t show it, retaliating with a swift hand movement that caused her cheek to bleed.

“Get down!” Seth yelled, and Tabitha quickly complied, letting him fire a barrage of bullets into Untermeyer, knocking him back slightly with each one. I was still a few feet away as Aki now attacked from above, dropping down from what I could only assume was a mass of the surrounding area that Amy had made change to give Aki height. She clawed at the skin that was still on his face, the first attack to actually make him yell in pain, but it was also the first one to have a retaliation that hit properly. His skeletal hand smacked straight into Aki’s chest, knocking the wind out of her and causing her to crumple into a ball as she landed. Aki’s attack had given me enough time to close the distance, and I swung the sword from above my head directly through his body. Black blood sprayed me as I pulled it away, but Untermeyer’s body didn’t fall apart into two pieces. It almost seemed as if he would, but shadows seemed to hold him together at the last moment, keeping his body formed properly. Tabitha let out a war cry  as she pushed both her hands together, outstretching them and sending out a torrent of fire from the palms of her hands at him. She’d already been exhausted from the previous attacks, and a quick glance at her told me that she was using energy that she really shouldn’t have been. As she maintained the pillar of fire, blood started to drip heavily from her nose, but she refused to let up. It was keeping Untermeyer in place for more attacks, but she wasn’t going to last long. Flames began to lick at her clothes as the attack bounced back at her, and I could see she was being burned as the fire became more unstable. A crazy idea crossed my mind, and I acted on it without even thinking. My free hand grabbed at the dagger, and I sent it flying towards her, immediately feeling weary without the flow of energy from it. I knew she wouldn’t catch it, but despite the grunt of pain she let out, the dagger stabbing into her leg didn’t slow her down. The flames quickly began to stabilize, and Seth pumped another clip into Untermeyer  as Amy sent a chunk of ground flying into him. A claw from Aki, a slash from my sword, Seth’s bullets not missing their mark, Amy’s transmutation of the ground stabbing into him, and Tabitha’s constant fire shooting into him, yet he still held steady.

“Mirrors!” Tabitha yelled to us, and I quickly took a step backwards, mental image of the mirrors manifesting as I pumped energy into bringing them here. Five mirrors appeared, one for each person, and each of us took aim at him, magic flowing through it and pulling at him. Immediately, it was a noticeable difference, as he let out a scream of pain. Darkness flowed from him into the mirrors, but they barely had any time to take from him before they shattered. All part of Tabitha’s plan, I could only assume.

“You little shits, I’m going to kill you!” Untermeyer’s efforts doubled down as shadows fired at each of us, causing us to have to dodge in different directions. Tabitha barely had time to dodge before he was on her, gripping her neck and raising her off the ground. Darkness built up in his hand, glowing as it moved closer to her, but he was jerked sideways as Seth took him down by tackling him. As  he was down, Seth jumped back, and the second set of mirrors appeared, from him this time. I repeated the actions I had before, and the mirrors took the same amount of Untermeyer before shattering, this time taking part of the cloak with them. Untermeyer’s body barely existed, almost rotting with how much it was falling apart, held together only by shadows. He tried to move, but Amy transmutated the ground to hold him down, exertion on her face as he struggled to try and break it.

“Third set, come on!” Tabitha yelled at us, and I raised my hand to catch the next mirror. Amy counted us down before she let go, and for the third time, we sapped energy from him. The skin on Untermeyer’s face fell away, disintegrating into shadows as he stumbled to move. He managed to get to his feet right as the mirrors broke, but I knew that he didn’t have much left in him. It was one final lunge from him as he went for me, unable to stop as I twisted my body to the side and let him impale himself on my sword. I watched everyone else as the final set of mirrors landed for them, catching the last one in my free hand. Untermeyer’s face was close to my own, the smell of rotten meat all I could smell as he looked at me with his empty eye-sockets.

“You haven’t won, Alpha. He’ll stop you.” Untermeyer said, raising a fist at me as if to attack. One finger extended to point right at me. “The Omega is coming.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up.” I replied, shoving him off my sword before I aimed the final mirror at him. The last ones were enough to cause his body to completely fall apart, shadows dissipating into the mirrors as they shattered, falling to the ground in pieces. Untermeyer was dead. I let out a breath, falling onto my back as my legs finally gave out.

I hadn’t even realised I’d passed out until I came to, back in  the stark white of the lab in the real world. I sat up from the lab table I’d been laid on, looking around the room at everyone else. Tabitha’s leg was bandaged, but that wasn’t the most noteworthy thing about her appearance. She had clearly been crying a lot, with Seth still stood next to her from where I’m sure he’d been comforting her. I gingerly tried to stand up, found myself unable to, and settled for sitting on the side of the bench. Amy wasted no time in speaking to me as soon as she saw me moving, getting up from where she sat to walk over to me.

“Tabitha’s just finished saying that we should probably leave for a while.” She whispered to me, catching me off guard. “She needs some time, after… everything.” A pang of guilt racked my body as I looked over at her. She looked away. “She doesn’t blame you, but… she just doesn’t want to see anyone right now.” Amy smiled sadly. “Aki’s gonna come with me, so we won’t have to worry about that.” I tried standing again, slowly able to walk myself to the exit of the room. I wasn’t sure there was anything I could say, or even anything I wanted to say. I still felt like I was to blame, even if Tabitha said otherwise. I’d made it to the door before I heard her speak.

“CG...” Tabitha began, and I turned to look over at her. Despite the tears still in her eyes, she smiled slightly. “Thank you.”

#cool guy #A Cool Guy's Cool Life #story #creative writing

[acoolguyscoollife]

Chapter 37: And It Feels Not-So Good

Cool Guy

It had been a few hours, and yet Untermeyer still hadn’t attacked, which had put me extremely on edge. While the others were sat around talking strategy, I wasn’t able to keep myself from pacing, feeling myself shaking slightly as I did so. The words coming from everyone else barely registered in my mind, unable to really focus myself on anything that wasn’t keeping people safe. 

I had barely known Eddie, but even if he wasn’t much to me, his sacrifice was still enough to have shaken me slightly. Seth was still taking it hard, barely saying anything, eyes sunken into his head, staring blankly at the makeshift campfire Tabitha and Amy had been able to make… somehow. I hadn’t questioned the logistics, instead just writing it off as Amy just being really good at alchemy now.

“Do we let him come to us?” Amy asked someone else from behind where I had turned, piquing my interest. “After all, he has Uchen, so why would he go anywhere?”

“Do we even know what he’s going to do next? As far as I can tell, he was either trying to recruit us or kill us, and neither of those are very good prospects.” Tabitha responded, and I turned around to face them.

“So surely he’d come to complete that goal. Maybe we could set a trap for him.” I offered as a suggestion, and Tabitha seemed to mull it over for a moment.

“I doubt we’d get that lucky. So far, the prophecy we were given is proving to be accurate, if a little bit disoriented and confusing.” Tabitha stoked the fire slightly with a stick, watching aimlessly as embers floated up slightly, fading out of sight after a few moments. “I can only hope that the sacrifice it talked about already happened.” She added, and nobody wanted to break the silence left after that. It ended up lasting for a few minutes before Seth sighed, standing himself up.

“We should probably go to him. Uchen is most likely in danger the longer we wait.” Seth said, flexing the arm that had been wounded earlier to test it out. My leg felt almost as good as new now, having had a few hours for me to not use magic on anything else and just focus on repairing what had been injured. It still felt stiff, though that was debatably from walking on it for a while now. It would have to do.

“How do you figure that he’s in danger?” Tabitha asked Seth, beginning to stand up as well. Seth took a moment to answer, checking the ammo in his gun before making sure it was ready to go whenever he needed it.

“He knows we’re after him now, so Untermeyer doesn’t need the bait of Uchen to bring us to him.” Seth had a point, and I saw a flash of concern cross Tabitha’s face as he said this. Amy and Aki had clearly realised that Seth was right too, as they also began to stand up, with Amy helping Aki to her feet. “What’s the plan?” Seth had turned to me to ask this, as everyone else had. I wasn’t sure why I was the one who had to come up with the plan, but it seemed like everyone expected me to.

“I think making a single plan isn’t a good idea. We should probably brainstorm a few ideas, make plans for every eventuality, just in case things go awry.” I didn’t want to say that the plans were in case of anyone else dying, but I think everyone had already been able to guess that. The way everyone looked at me gave that away, people unable to meet my gaze as I looked between them. With nobody else opting to speak, we quietly gathered ourselves, before setting off for wherever Tabitha’s watch guided us.

Seth

With everything that had happened, I’d been given a lot of time to think, and for some reason, there was only one thing on my mind. The last thing Eddie had said to me before sacrificing himself had struck a chord with a conversation we’d had before, about how much I was putting off things because I knew I’d have time to do them later on in life. But, like he’d shown, I wasn’t guaranteed to have that time. He didn’t want me to waste my chance, which was the reason I was at the front of the group, walking alongside Tabitha a few feet away from the others. Starting the conversation took a few false starts before I could get the words out.

“Hey, you got a minute?” I finally said, managing to keep my voice level despite my nerves. Tabitha looked up from her watch to look at me instead, smiling slightly as she did so. God, this was going to be more difficult than I had thought.

“Yeah, what’s up?” Tabitha said after a moment of me not saying anything, an obvious prompt for me to actually speak instead of staring at her gormlessly. I took a breath, cleared my throat, and just pushed through without looking back.

“I was just thinking, you know?” I began, which was already a terrible way to do it, but I’d started now, so I might as well have seen it through. “Eddie had told me not to waste my chance, so I kinda just wanted to… talk about something with you.” I was hoping she’d make the connection, so I wouldn’t have to outright say it. Despite the darkness surrounding us, I might as well have been a lighthouse with how much I was sure my face had lit up, flushed with nerves.

“Were you thinking about how to be clear and concise with words? Because so far, you’re nailing it.” Tabitha’s smug expression that she usually had when it came to her sarcasm was on her face yet again, making it even harder to talk to her.

“Tab’, I just wanted to say…” I tried finishing the sentence, but it felt like my throat was closing up. “I don’t want to make a big deal out of this, you know? It’s not a huge thing, so like, don’t worry about how you respond, you know?” At this point, Tabitha’s smug look had been replaced with genuine confusion.

“Seth, what’s up?” She asked, and I rubbed the back of my head as we walked, embarrassed slightly.

“I just wanted to say that like… I kind of like you.” I let the words sink in for a moment, before clarifying. “Like… romantically.” I added, but I knew she didn’t need me to explain that. Her eyes widened slightly as I said it, the shock not enough to stop her walking but still enough to register on her face. “Like I said, it’s not a big deal or anything, just something I wanted to get out there. It’s tiring to act like a schoolboy and just never talk about it.” Tabitha didn’t say anything for a few moments, opting instead to look at her watch a few more times. After the third time she looked at her watch, I caught the sound of her laughing.

“Oh man, if I’d known that was all it was, I probably wouldn’t have bothered listening in the first place.” Tabitha said, looking back up at me with a different smile. It was happiness, but not from the usual sources. It almost seemed more genuine than her other smiles, but I knew that was exaggerating. “It wasn’t exactly a secret, you know. You basically admitted it to me back when we were fighting demons with how down you seemed when I said someone like you.” I didn’t remember exactly what she had been talking about, but it rang a bell in the back of my mind.

“I mean, what do you expect, I’m not exactly subtle.” I gestured a little as I spoke to make a point, and she laughed.

“Yeah, but luckily, neither am I.” Tabitha responded, and it took a moment for me to get what she was saying. “Honestly, if we weren’t right here, I’d have considered what we would do for stuff like that.” She said while looking at her watch again. “I like you, don’t get me wrong, but right now I really can’t think about anything except Uchen and Untermeyer.” Tabitha looked up to me, and I gestured again, trying to cut her off.

“No no, I don’t expect anything right now. Trust me, I’m focused on that too.” I reassured her, self-conscious as to how lame it sounded.

“But after, we could maybe talk about getting a drink?” Tabitha winked at me as she said it, before compulsively checking the watch again. “Or, you know, just go and kill more demons.”

“I’d like that.” I said, smiling at her as I looked over her shoulder to see what the watch said. We weren’t far off from the other life-signs now, so I mentally prepared myself for facing Untermeyer again. It was going to be tough, but I had to see it through.

“Hey, Tabitha, you got a minute?” CG said, suddenly having appeared at Tabitha’s other side. “Need to ask you about the logistics of how you store stuff.” Tabitha looked over at CG, then back at me, then back to him again. She seemed to have almost been caught off-guard by him appearing, which made two of us.

“What’s your question, CG?” She asked, and CG thought for a moment, looking as if he was trying to pick the words right.

“Would it be possible to transport ourselves to where the mirrors are, to teleport or something?” CG asked, and Tabitha shook her head.

“Maybe as a last resort, but that’s not exactly something I’m keen on doing. Assuming we can, it might be useful to avoid any attacks he might throw at us, but it could easily go wrong and I’d rather just be safe.” She explained, which didn’t really give any information as to why we specifically couldn’t do it, but I was happy to take her word for it. It didn’t sound particularly safe, after all.

“Alright, what about if someone brought someone else to and from that place?” CG asked, basically rewording what he’d already asked.

“…No, probably not good.” Tabitha said flatly. “Please tell me you guys have come up with plans that aren’t those.” CG’s silence spoke volumes, as he scurried off to talk to Amy and Aki again. The three quickly joined us soon after, letting us brainstorm plans as a group, making sure that we had so many backup plans that we were probably wasting time to keep coming up with them. All the while, we walked closer to where we could tell Uchen and Untermeyer were, knowing we were about to go into battle. After a few more metres, we reached the point where the two figures were visible. One was on their knees, with the other towering over them, and as much as I wanted the one who was incapacitated to be Untermeyer, I knew I wasn’t going to be that lucky. Uchen’s outfit wasn’t too different from the person I’d seen before on one of Tabitha’s videos, a ragged laboratory jacket similar to the state Tabitha had hers in, only added to by the bushy white hair and beard that he sported too. Untermeyer looked different to how I’d seen him as well, sporting a long, dark coat that reached to his feet and seemed to almost meld into the ground. His face was even more worse for wear now, and I could definitely see parts of him were peeling. Then, instead of looking down at Uchen, Untermeyer turned to face us, and the extent of what Eddie had done to him became apparent. The skin that was peeling from the left side of his face was apparently the side that had taken the least of the attack. His entire right side had been burned away, the only thing remaining of that part of his head being a skull with a crack running through it vertically. Even though there was no eyeball, I could tell he was watching me through it. He raised his right hand, which was also now skeletal instead of human, and gestured towards Uchen, who fell to his side, pushed by something we couldn’t see.

“So glad you could join us.” Untermeyer said, smiling wildly as he did so. “Now the fun can begin.”

#A Cool Guy's Cool Life #cool guy #cool #story #creative writing #writing

[acoolguyscoollife]

Chapter 36: Family Matters

Amy

There was a knock at my bedroom door, but I didn’t even look up from where I was sitting hunched over at my computer, typing rapidly to try and finish the story I was writing as quickly as I could.

“It’s open.” I called out, and from the corner of my eye, I saw my brother enter the room. Paul was a few inches taller than me, his hair on the darker side of brown and clipped close to the ears, though unruly at the top. As per usual, he was wearing a t-shirt that had the logo of some old sci-fi movie I’d never seen, and his face had glasses with rims thick enough to rival Tabitha’s. I frowned to myself for a moment as that name crossed my mind. It had been a long time since I’d thought about her. Had it? My mind began to run, but Paul speaking brought me out of it.

“Didn’t know you had company, Amy. D’you want me to come back later?” He asked, and I looked up at him, confused. His expression wasn’t one that suggested he was joking, and besides, that wasn’t exactly his sort of humour. Looking over at where he was looking, I saw who he was talking about. Of course, it was Aki! I’d completely forgotten that she was sat there on my bed, watching me type. Why is she here? She seemed as confused as my brain was about the situation at hand, but I shrugged it off with a smile.

“Oh no, this is perfect!” I said happily, spinning in my chair before hopping to my feet. Energetically, I brought Aki to her feet, dragging her by the wrist so that she and Paul weren’t that far from each other. “Paul, this is my girlfriend, Aki. Don’t mind the fur.” I said, and Paul extended a hand sheepishly. “Aki, this is Paul, my brother I mentioned before.” Aki took Paul’s hand in the limpest handshake I’d ever seen, all the while still looking at me.

“Amy, what’s going on?” She said, looking from me to Paul worriedly. “Weren’t we going inside The Grid?” Those words reminded me of something, like a tickling at the back of my tongue. An errant hair of questioning, as it were. Ignoring those feelings, I focused instead on Aki.

“I can’t believe I totally blanked on introducing you to my family properly, man! I feel like such a klutz now.” I said, rubbing the back of my head in embarrassment. Listen to her. My head was really starting to confuse me now, thoughts felt as if they weren’t my own sometimes, as if trying to tell me something. Thankfully, ignoring the voice in my head that told me to do stuff or not to do stuff got me pretty far in the first place, so it wasn’t an issue now.

“Don’t worry about it, Amy. So tell me, how’d the two of you meet?” Paul asked, grabbing a chair from the side of the room and sitting down in it, looking at us eagerly. I frowned, forehead wrinkling as I recalled how I’d met Aki… where?

“I…” I began quietly, nothing coming to me despite how hard I tried to think about it. Damn it, I wasn’t an amnesiac, why couldn’t I remember where I’d met Aki? The voice in my head was screaming at me now, but whatever it was saying was incoherent, words clouded over by my mind focusing on what I was trying to think about. Seeing this, Paul quickly stood up, hands outstretched and shaking from side to side as if trying to catch my attention.

“No no, don’t worry about it! We’ll just talk about something else…” Paul said, starting to walk towards me, but he slowly stopped talking as Aki placed herself between him and me. “W…what are you doing, Aki?” He asked, stammering for a second as he looked at the door like he wanted to run for it. Looking at him now, he did look slightly worried, but what was even odder was that he didn’t seem to ever stay looking away from me. Whenever he looked away, it was brief, immediately back to focusing on what I was doing.

“Amy, don’t listen to him, I don’t think that’s your brother.” Aki said, a warning tone in her voice that only made my confusion and concern amplify. How could he not be Paul? He looked just like him. Don’t trust everything you see. “Amy, we met in my universe, when you and the others travelled into it. You defeated the king and saved my people, and I came with you when we went back to your own universe.” Aki explained to me, and there was a sharp stabbing pain in the back of my head, causing me to nearly double over in agony. Either I’d had an aneurism, my brain had gotten too confused and given up, or something was trying to keep me from remembering. “We came into The Grid to find Untermeyer, and I think this is him adapting the world. He made it, remember?” I didn’t remember. None of what Aki was saying made sense to me, and tears were beginning to drip down my cheeks. But you do remember. You just don’t want to, or rather, HE doesn’t want you to.

“This is ridiculous. Amy, come on, it’s obviously me.” Paul said, and looking up at him, it certainly seemed like it was. The same tall, skinny guy I’d known for my entire life. The dumb, caring positive influence in my life. But at the same time, Aki’s desperate look whenever she glanced back at me briefly was one that didn’t seem disingenuous. Who was I supposed to trust? Sighing for a second, Aki took her sights off of Paul, turning to focus exclusively on me.

“Amy, please, if you’re in there, I really need you right now.” Aki whispered, looking deep into my eyes. She was close enough that I could see my reflection in her eyes, but the person that was reflected definitely didn’t seem like it was me. My hair felt a lot less tidy than it was shown to be, and my bones had a weariness that I wouldn’t have gotten from just sitting at my desk. I had been running recently, and a lot. Kiss her! For once, the voice that I had been ignoring had a suggestion that I wanted to do, and I placed my hand on the side of her face, bringing her close to mine as she kissed me, eyes reflexively closing. When our lips met, multiple memories flashed through my mind, the exact events that had led me to meeting her playing back at an insane speed. Past that, I also remembered other things, like meeting Rose, seeing CG broken, and hoping that he had been better and not just putting on a façade. But then, as Aki pulled away, the memories stopped. Whatever had happened in The Grid, I hadn’t remembered that yet.

“Aki, I…” Words were slow to form, but they were there, gradually building up. However, something else was quicker than my words. My eyes widened as I grabbed Aki by the arms, shoving her to the side as Paul’s arm completed its downwards arc, narrowly missing her head. The expression on his face was filled with fury, eyes darting between me and Aki. Whatever doubts had still been in my mind were gone, and I placed one foot behind the other to brace myself against any other attacks the fake-Paul would throw.

“You couldn’t just leave well enough alone, could you?” The not-Paul sneered. “I would have given you everything you would ever have needed, you know!” I slid my hand along my arm, feeling the familiar crackle of foreign energy build up with the friction as I ducked down to slam it into the floor. The shockwave rippled the room violently, flying directly into not-Paul and knocking him back a few feet, into the wall. But when he would have hit the wall, the wall instead fell away, and not-Paul landed on his feet, body beginning to shift with the energy that had been forced into him. Quickly, the body shifted, revealing a pale-skinned, wrinkly man that was even taller than Paul had been, though not by much. It didn’t take much sleuthing to figure out that this was Untermeyer, but that wasn’t my main focus. He seemed to have been stunned by the attack, so I grabbed Aki by the arm, running past him and sprinting into the void. For a brief, terrifying moment, there was nothing visible, and I feared that I wouldn’t be able to find anyone else, but before my mind could spiral into that way of thinking, I heard a familiar, yet agonised yell from the distance. Turning myself to face it, the two of us quickly reached the source of the voice.

“How many seconds… in eternity?” Tabitha said to herself, before punching at the wall again. There was an audible crack, and both Aki and I winced. We quickly began moving to her, but were cut off by her yelling, and another punch to the wall. At that point, she had fallen to her knees, and my running had slowed, mere feet away from the wall now. I nodded for Aki to go to her, as I moved to the wall. Even only a foot away, Tabitha didn’t even notice that I was stood there.

“And as the entire mountain is chiselled away, the first second of eternity will have passed.” I said, causing Tabitha to finally look up as I swung my arm into the wall, bracing myself with magic and my stance. The wall rippled under my hit, but I converted the energy that it was sending back, forcing it to make the barrier ripple under the weight of my punch. Aki had helped Tabitha up to her feet now, and she was looking at me, mouth open as if she wasn’t sure if I was real. “Personally, I think that’s one hell of a bird.” I said, looking over at her with a grin, expecting her to respond in kind with something equally funny and referential.

“Okay, either some deity loves me or I just got incredibly lucky.” Tabitha replied, with all the wit of a dry tomato. “Ow!” She added, having tried to move her arm. “Yeah, that’s definitely a broken wrist at least.” With Aki’s help, Tabitha stood unsteadily on her feet, holding her other hand to the broken wrist, and letting out a whimper as energy flowed into it. There was a gruesome noise of bones setting back into place, and the lip that Tabitha had been biting now dripped with blood, but after a few moments, she was able to gingerly rotate it.

“Are you alright now?” Aki asked her, looking over Tabitha with concern, but in her usual fare, she waved Aki off, hobbling towards me and the crack in the wall I had made.

“You seem to be way better at this than I am. How do I help you?” Tabitha asked, and a roar filled the air before I had the chance to respond. A quick glance behind me revealed that Untermeyer was heading towards us, and joining him was… another Untermeyer. Shaking my head briefly, I quickly concluded that I didn’t have time to question it, and turned back to the wall.

“Keep them off my ass while I do this.” I said to the two of them, and they quickly took up battle stances. I ignored the sound of their combat as it started, instead focusing on the wall itself. I was an alchemist, and a fairly good one at that. All I really had to do was identify the wall’s structure, and find a way to disassemble it, before moving it to a different shape. Taking a few moments to feel the types of energy coming from it, I moved my hand back, before letting one more punch fly, this one infused with a different purpose than the other ones had had. I had no idea what I was doing, and no idea how to do it. All I had was energy inside me and a dream. With a war cry, the first hit the wall, and I could feel the reverberation as it shook the foundation of the area surrounding us. The ground began to crack, splintering and twisting like rock, but with that, so did the wall. It slowly fell apart, and as it did, the sound of fighting became louder, both from Tabitha and Aki, and from the other side of the wall. “Come on!” I yelled to them, stepping through to the uneven ground on the other side of the wall. Sure enough, backed against it and fighting more clones of Untermeyer were CG, Seth and… also Seth? I didn’t have time to question it, however, as the Untermeyers that Tabitha and Aki were fighting began to step through the broken wall too.

“About time!” CG called out to me, having noticed my arrival. He pirouetted in place while swinging a sword to slice through an Untermeyer, raising a leg as he did so that I could see was injured. I slammed my hands into the floor, channelling energy through it to the wall, sealing it as the second Untermeyer was moving through. He was quickly severed, disappearing into nothingness as I could see the others doing. “Tabitha, we could really use some magic defences here!” CG’s second sentence was punctuated by him being smacked in the face, a thin spray of blood hitting the dark floor from his mouth. Standing himself back up straight, he used his free hand to wipe the blood away, twirling the sword in his hand as he began to advance towards the Untermeyer that had done it. It barely lasted a few more seconds.

“Tabitha’s not in great shape, CG! We need another idea!” I called out to him, hearing him curse in response. Looking around for a second, he turned to Tabitha and tossed the dagger from his hip, letting her catch it. Quickly, a bubble of shimmering light was created, and we had a chance to take a breather. I let out a breath, looking forward again after having followed the knife, and stopped short as I saw what had happened. The Untermeyer clones had stopped, and Eddie was outside of the barrier. He was held by the neck by an Untermeyer that I could have easily won a bet on saying that he was the real one. He seemed more complete than the others had been, and the others were watching in silence. Eddie was crumbling, the shadowy manifestation flickering slightly.

“Eddie, no!” Seth called out, running for the barrier, but CG raised an arm and stopped him. “The connection between him and I is gone! He’s going to die!” Eddie looked over at Seth, a smile growing slightly on his face. The expression was weak, and it was obvious to all of us that Eddie didn’t have long.

“Hey.” Eddie said plainly, looking Seth right in the eyes. “Don’t waste your chance.” Untermeyer saw what was happening a second too late to stop it. Eddie’s manifestation was crackling with energy, and with a scream, he exploded, sending shockwaves through that hit most of the Untermeyer clones. The barrier fell, dust clouds being kicked up from god knows where, but when they cleared, the only people left were the ones that had been inside the barrier. Listening out for a second, I couldn’t hear any more clones approaching, so I turned to CG and quickly began to work on his leg, trying to mend it a little bit more. Everyone else seemed to be shell-shocked, most of all Seth, whose eyes were welling with water as he looked at where Eddie had been stood. While he hadn’t been around long, I was sure the two of them had gotten along well at that point. The Elder had been right. Of course he had, but even so, it wasn’t something to be happy about. “What do we… do?” Aki asked, looking between everyone to gauge who was going to speak. Tabitha looked ready to, but before she could, someone else spoke up.

“What we were always going to.” Seth said, a quiet fury present in every word that came through gritted teeth. “We’re going to rip him apart and shatter him so far across the universes that he’ll be in pain forever.” With that, Seth finally fell to his knees, punching the floor once before his head fell against it, almost as if in prayer. With nothing we could do, the other four of us stood where we were, listening to the quiet sobs coming from below.

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Chapter 35: The Shepherd’s Boy

Tabitha

The illusions were the least of my issues. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that Untermeyer was using The Grid to create a fake reality to accommodate me and keep me distracted, so breaking it down was simple. Unfortunately, I think he had predicted that I wouldn’t be fooled that easily. Whenever a wall was broken, another would soon appear, and I only had a few moments to get out of whatever situation I had been put in. I had to admit, while I disliked that he knew so much about me, it was interesting to see exactly what memories he chose from my life to try and slow me. 

The first one was easily predictable, the lab, exactly the way I had left it before we had entered The Grid. However, the more illusions I broke down, the more it seemed to regress. Machinery that I had cobbled together from schematics and computer-assistance disappeared, stains on the metal walls fading. The further I went into the false realities, the younger the lab got around me. I saw the layout of the lab change, saw  where I had sat to watch Uchen work, and while it didn’t feel like it was that long ago, the lab I had seen earlier today was like a whole other world. It would have been amazing to see, something I’d even have been thankful for, if Untermeyer’s voice hadn’t been in my ear for every step of the way.

“You see how everything changed when you showed up?” He whispered in the back of my mind, which, despite my usual ability to block out intrusive thoughts on an otherwise good mood, refused to be silenced. I tore through another wall, and the lab was finally gone. It must have been before I was there now, and he must not have had a need to show me. Instead, the room I was in had a distinct smell of disinfectant, and the bright white walls and floor burned at my eyes in comparison to the slightly dull light of the lab that had been shown. It was the science lab in my high school, the first place I’d really begun to care about exactly what could be done with simple physical changes. Before then, I’d been a little less obsessive and tunnel-visioned, a trait I sometimes missed in the times when I felt myself focusing too much on one thing. Granted, the others helped me with that, but I remember how much effort it took to even get to the point where I could let people in. Even now, I could still remember the others telling me to lighten up on numerous occasions. I was always too serious, even when I was trying to be clever and funny. An insecurity which, I was sure, Untermeyer was going to try and use against me.

“They made me better.” I said, before he could say anything to me. Seeing the room again after so long, taken straight from how I remembered it, had given me pause, and whenever my eyes glanced across a reflective surface, it wasn’t myself that I saw in it. Untermeyer was with me, even if I couldn’t see him. “Without them, I was…” I continued, then stopped as my words hit me. Without them, what was I?

“Depending on others. Just like he did.” Untermeyer’s voice, still whispered, had a cold undertone to it. Dismissive and callous. I hated that, on some level, it felt like my own inner voice. The one that fuelled my doubts, made me uncertain of every move I made.

“He never depended on me, it was the other way around.” I said, though my voice betrayed my uncertainty. I could hear it myself, knowing that it was something he could latch onto.

“How much do you know about Uchen, really? Past all the assumptions, past every little detail you gleaned from the logs on his computers. In reality, you barely know more than I did.” This time, I didn’t have to break through the illusion to see it change. I could tell it was my mind causing it now, shifting to reflect my memories. Untermeyer’s words had started my brain going into overdrive, thinking about all the things Uchen had told me, or rather, hadn’t told me. Scenes from my life with him flashed before me, and I realised exactly how brief that time had been. Hell, he hadn’t even told me his first name, I’d had to find that out myself from his computer. He’d hidden the truth of the machine he’d built from me for months before finally revealing what it could actually do. “How many more protégés do you think he had? How many of us were there between you and I?” With all the faults in the machine, I had never considered the fact that maybe some of them hadn’t been caused by Untermeyer breaking it. The fault in the tether that kept us connected to the real world did very obviously stick out like the mistake of a bumbling assistant, not noticeable until it was too late.

“I… thought I knew him.” I said, the scenes in front of me finally coming to a stop, with a younger, but still aged, Uchen stood there. I remembered this day vividly, even now. The day when he had lost the usual demeanour that he maintained, due to a mistake I’d made frequently. A simple error with machinery, but one that rendered everything else unusable until fixed. I could have sworn up and down that I’d made sure to do it properly this time around, but every time, I hadn’t. Eventually, it had gotten to the point where he lost his temper, shouting and raving about things that, at the time, I could barely even understand. That I was ruining the only shot he had, that without this, he would be screwed. Untermeyer was showing me moments out of context, but even though I knew that he was purposefully manipulating me, I couldn’t help but agree with him. I didn’t know anything.

“Now, Tabitha, we both know that’s not true.” While I had been looking at the floor, unwilling to look at Uchen’s angry face, hearing the voice cut through as something I didn’t recognise made my head quickly shoot upwards. Uchen was smiling at me, and part of me thought back to see if I could remember what had caused his mood to change, before I realised that it wasn’t actually a memory. Now that he was in front of me, I realised that there had been an ambient hum in the back of my mind, only noticeable now that it was absent.

“Professor…?” I said, scared that saying anything might end up causing him to disappear. “Is it really you?” Uchen continued to smile, though it faded a little at that question.

“Not exactly. I’m not actually with you right now, just passing on a few messages of goodwill towards you while I have an easily-borrowed vessel.” He looked himself up and down, holding his arms out to look at them, seeming particularly intrigued by the back of his hands. They were most likely younger than he’d seen in a while. “You remembered even the close details about me. If it wasn’t for this, I might have had a harder time breaking into this.”

“There’s so much I want to say…” I could feel myself welling up a little, and I swallowed hard a few times to get rid of the painful lump in my throat. It had been so long since I had been given a chance to talk to him, and now that I had it, nothing was coming to me.

“I know, Tabitha. While we don’t have much time right now…” He paused, giving me a wink with an energy that I’d never actually seen him have before. It was slightly mischievous, head half-cocked to the side, as if he knew something I didn’t. “I have the utmost faith that you’ll find your way to me soon.” Uchen finished, reaching out a hand and placing it on my shoulder. The memory couldn’t actually touch me, but at the same time, it almost felt like his hand was actually there. Maybe it was because I wanted it to be.

“I can hear him coming back.” I said, frowning despite how happy I felt looking at him. The hum was slowly fading back into my hearing, almost like a cicada’s chirruping, and I knew that Untermeyer was going to be there soon.

“Okay, listen to me.” Uchen’s serious tone caught my attention quickly, his smile now entirely gone. “Remember that the machine can find the others for you as long as they’re tethered, but Untermeyer will be blocking that, which is why you can’t find them. Instead, look for energy foreign to this dimension, their magic will be giving off a way to track them.” He explained quickly, and I followed along with his instructions as he told me them. A few setting tweaks, a quick reboot of the watch’s tracker feature, and I quickly had multiple blips. “I’ll do what I can to stall Untermeyer. Get out of here while you can.” I began to start running, but one last sentence from Uchen stopped me, causing me to turn half my body to look back at him. “And don’t even think about saying goodbye. We’ll be seeing each other again soon.” I nodded, quickly wiping away the few tears that I’d been holding back that had escaped, before turning myself back to the wall of the memory-lab and focusing my magic on it to break through. This time around, the illusion didn’t follow me, and I found myself inside a blackened room similar to the void that the computer had put us in. I heard rumbling behind me as I ran towards where the energy had been coming from, leaving Uchen behind to delay Untermeyer. It was only now that I realised that he might not survive causing a distraction, and part of me urged myself to turn back and make sure he did. No, Tabitha. You know better than that, he’ll survive. Nodding in agreement with myself, I kept going, hearing nothing but the sound of my own rapid footsteps as I ran towards my friends. I had almost closed the distance entirely when I reached the barrier; a pure, shimmering wall of shadows that separated me from where the energy I had been following had come from. While it was made from what looked to be a rather thin shadow, placing my hand against it made it very clear that it was a lot sturdier than it looked. Now that I had been stopped, I realised that the hum had returned fully.

“Really now, did you think I’d put you somewhere with those three? The last thing I need is you and that shadow creature together.” Untermeyer mocked from the back of my mind, but it was already working in overdrive, not even focusing on his words. In Lower Pomerania is the Diamond Mountain, which is two miles and a half high, two miles and a half wide, and two miles and a half in depth. Fairytales were one thing, but I needed something more. I had heard that story somewhere else, but it had been different. Every hundred years, a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on the diamond mountain. Of course. I let my right hand fill with energy, channelling everything I felt in my body into that one hand, before letting out a yell as I punched the wall. I wasn’t sure if the crack I heard was the barrier or my hand, but pain still coursed through my arm either way.

“How many seconds… in eternity?” I said to myself, knowing that Untermeyer would hear. I grit my teeth, bracing myself before I let another punch hit the barrier. The pain was even more potent this time, which gave away that it was definitely my hand I’d heard cracking. The tears had returned, trailing down my cheeks as I punched at the wall over and over. It was holding steady, but I knew I could get there. I had to. “Come on!” I yelled at myself, punching again and whimpering as the pain made me fall to my knees. There was no point using magic to heal the wound, it would just be made again. At this point, I needed a miracle.

“And when the entire mountain is chiselled away, the first second of eternity will have passed.” A hefty thwack filled the air as something else hit the barrier, a shoulder suddenly under my arm and helping me to my feet. There were people at either side of me, and I honestly couldn’t believe my luck. Aki was holding me up, as Amy focused attacks repeatedly on the barrier, barely breaking a sweat as she did so. “Personally, I think that’s one hell of a bird.” She said, looking over at me with a coy grin.

So that’s where I remembered that from.

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Chapter 34: A Few Moments Ago

Cool Guy

“Can you pass the salt?” My father asked me, which was what made me snap to attention. Entering the grid had been much different to entering other places, and it felt like I had been sleeping until I had heard the voice snapping me out of it. Sure enough, looking up, I was at a familiar dinner table, with two faces I wished I was less familiar with. I was sure my mouth was open, looking back and forth between my mother and father as they looked back at me expectantly. “Did you hear me, CG?” He repeated, and things began to set in. 

The tone of his voice hadn’t raised in the handful of seconds since he had last spoken, words filled with concern instead of irritation. That was enough for me to know that something was wrong with where I was. The dull haze over my thoughts began to fade as I realised that I shouldn’t be where I was, and looking between my parents, seeing their warm expressions, only served to punctuate that. A glance over my shoulder revealed that I was still wearing the Cobatana, and I could feel the dagger at my hip. I stood up, and the two said nothing as the chair behind me tumbled backwards to the floor.

“You’re not real.” I said, more matter-of-factly than accusatory. It was this that prompted my mother to stand, moving to approach me for some sort of purpose, but she only got a few steps forward before my sword slashed through her. For a brief, horrible second, I thought I had somehow made a mistake, that something had caused me to briefly forget how I had gotten here just enough to cause this, but when she didn’t split apart or start bleeding, I knew that I had made the right call. Instead of blood, black goo began to drip out from her, and the room around me shimmered, shifting slightly as if my vision was blurring, but the fake versions of my parents stayed clear, features now melting into the same black goo that was bleeding from my fake mother.

“Astounding, isn’t it, how quick you were to make that call.” A voice said from behind me, and I spun around, throwing the dagger in the direction it came from. It hit the man I could only assume was Untermeyer, who quickly evaporated, leaving nothing but a small puddle of goo behind. I focused my magic on bringing the dagger back to me before it struck the wall, catching it and turning back to face my fake parents, but they had already disappeared too. I moved to the door to exit the kitchen as it began to crumble, not sure what to expect on the other side, and stepped through just in time to get out before it completely disappeared. I was in the abyss now, which I could only assume was The Grid, and I couldn’t see anything around me. I turned a few times, making sure that I didn’t miss anything, and only narrowly avoided Untermeyer throwing himself at me, hand outstretched. My foot stepped to the side, and I fell to one knee, letting my sword fly upwards and severing him in two. The two pieces landed with a dull thud each, quickly dissipating back into goo that melted into the floor. “You must have hated them a lot to do that.” Another voice, and this time when I turned he was too close to avoid. A wrinkled, bony hand grabbed me, and the two of us struggled as he tried to pull me to the ground, only being stopped when I managed to unfasten the dagger and stab it into him. A bright light burned from his eyes before his body melted away, thankfully not covering me in any way.

“Yeah, trust me, a meal with them is basically my worst nightmare.” I replied to nobody in particular, before looking around again. I couldn’t hear anything approaching me this time, but I could hear something in the distance that I began running towards. The closer I got, the more that I was able to make out the sounds of fighting, and also voices, both easily recognised. One was Untermeyer, but the one he was talking to was Seth, who had said something about not joining him. The ground below me tilted upwards, and after a few feet of steps upwards, I saw that I was on a makeshift wall that had been used to box Seth in, and Untermeyer was preparing to attack him with something I was sure he wouldn’t survive. I had to step in.

 The barrage of attacks after I had stopped the initial one was hard to counter, one or two having slipped past my sword and reached me instead. I could feel a gradual trickle of blood leaking from my nose, filling my mouth with a metallic tang, and it was beginning to hurt to breathe. With as clear of a mind as I could muster at this moment, I gripped the dagger, trying to create some sort of shield to defend myself and Seth, who was stood behind me and shooting Untermeyer’s clones that were running at us. Thankfully, they only seemed to need one hit to take down, but there was still enough of them that they would sometimes managed to get to me, requiring me to cut them down.

“Eddie! What do I do?!” Seth yelled at the being inside him, and I glanced back, wondering why he was focusing on talking to a parasite instead of me. His head was tilted to the side as if listening to someone whispering in his ear, and his firing had stopped, which was making my job even harder. I had gotten about a foot of a magical shield coming from my dagger hand before the Untermeyer clones reached me, causing me to stop my focus to slash through them. It carved through them like butter, but the distraction was just enough time for Untermeyer himself to hit me, knocking me onto my ass. The clones took this as a chance to dogpile me, only cementing the fact that I really didn’t like clones. My vision began to fade into a dark mess of people on top of me, making me think back to the King, but before it could disappear completely, a wave of… something blasted over me. It sent the clones flying, destroying them before they even hit the ground, and I tilted my head back to see what was behind me. Seth was there, firing his gun as he had been before, but next to him was someone I couldn’t quite make out. The figure was dark, but not entirely unrecognisable. I scrambled backwards to regroup with them, and the closer I got, the more it looked like Seth. The features were all near-identical, with the only difference being that it looked like it was made from shadows. It was only as it spoke that I realised exactly who it was.

“Get behind me!” Eddie yelled, and I was quick to do so, watching as he threw up something from the ground to block the attacks from Untermeyer. Finally able to take a second to pause, I slowly stood myself up, taking a few deep breaths to ease the pain that filled my chest. Glancing between Eddie and Seth, I noticed that Seth was sweating slightly, and I realised that he was using magic to make Eddie real.

“Wow, looks like you have your own stan-” I began, but Seth put his hand over my mouth, face stony as his jaw stayed set.

“Finish that joke, and I’ll shoot you, I don’t care how much we need this.” Seth’s voice was slightly raspy, and I could tell that he was using more energy than he let on. Looking back, I saw that Eddie was easily keeping the defences up, so I had to keep it up. Passing the dagger along wasn’t something I was sure I wanted to do, but as soon as Seth took it, his stance noticeably changed, back straightening up as he let out a harrowed breath.

“So where do we go from here? We gotta find the others but with all this noise there’s no chance we’ll be able to find them the way I found you.” I asked, and Seth looked around. The wall that I had jumped from was gone now, so leaving was an option, but we had no idea of knowing if we’d be going the right way. And right now, standing our ground made a lot more sense considering Eddie would have to drop his barrier if we wanted to move. I opened my mouth to say something, but instead of words, all I could hear was a rumbling that was loud enough that I worried that something was going to fall from above like a cave-in. However, instead of the ceiling, it was the floor that began to move, breaking apart into chunks. I jumped from where I was, which had started to move rapidly, but hadn’t seen that other parts of the ground were moving too, meaning that when I landed, it was on a part of the ground that was sticking out directly towards me. I didn’t have any time to react before it pierced my leg, burning with the worst physical pain I’d felt in my life to that point. My yell of pain was accompanied like an agony-symphony – A symphonagony – by Seth yelling in a similar manner, clutching his arm in a very similar way to how I was holding my leg. The flow of blood was steady as I pulled it out, staining my hand a sticky crimson as I held it shut, and I quickly tried to focus magic into it to try and heal it. I hadn’t realised how much I needed the dagger until I didn’t have it, even the simplest level of energy into my wound sending waves of fatigue through my body. Slowly and painfully, I sealed the exit wound, then focused on the entry point, which was dripping a lot more blood onto the dark floor. The shaking had subsided slightly now, but it was still difficult to keep steady, especially with my head now swimming from the blood loss. Soon enough, I had managed to close the other wound, and I took the time to look over at Seth again. His was already sealed shut, and he looked a lot less pale than I felt, so I could only assume he had only been glanced by something. I tried standing up slowly and gingerly, and winced in pain as I felt waves of heat shooting through my leg. Thankfully, I was able to keep myself upright, at least long enough to look around and figure out what had caused that. While I couldn’t see anything that was clearly the cause of the floor cracking, I could see that Eddie’s barrier was beginning to struggle, now transparent instead of a fully solid object, showing how he was attacking. As the clones ran at the wall, tendrils shot out and pierced their brains, disintegrating them, but the amount of them that were running at the wall now had multiplied a lot, and Eddie was definitely not going to be able to hold it for much longer. Seth had noticed too, moving to my side and offering his shoulder to bring the two of us closer to the barrier. I could still walk, but having him helping got us there a lot quicker than I would have by myself.

“On my mark, lower the barrier.” Seth said to Eddie, who nodded in agreement. I took my sword in my hand, and Seth passed the dagger back to me, causing him to wince slightly as all the effort of keeping Eddie up came back to him. I could only hope that Eddie dropping the barrier made Seth’s job easier, but having the dagger in my hand numbed the pain of my leg, so I wasn’t going to complain too much. “Three… two…” Seth counted down, raising his pistol as he paused to look at exactly how many there were left. “Now!”

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Chapter 33: Mirror Image

Seth

The first immediately noticeable thing was that wherever I had been placed, nobody else had been put here with me. The second noticeable thing was that I was at home. Now what in the heck? Eddie was quickly interested in everything surrounding us, and it was hard to keep myself in control to get my bearings properly. It was my bedroom, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that it definitely wasn’t really.

Sure enough, when I tried to interact with my computer, instead of being greeted by my usual background of inappropriate pictures, I witnessed a view of my room from a bird’s-eye corner. It was slightly trippy, to say the least. I tried pressing random keys, but each one gave me no response. Knowing I’d get nowhere, I looked around the room to see if there was anything out of place that I could remember from the last time I was here. At that point, I realised exactly how long it had been since I had been at home, and any idea I’d had of how my room had been left when I had last been in it had quickly faded into the back of my mind. On instinct, I went to a bookshelf and took one of the books off of it, examining it carefully. The spine was well-worn, a title I’d gone through again and again when I was younger, but the familiar words that were normally on the front of it were now jumbled, incoherent messes. Each page read the same, nothing legible at all in it. What was most odd about this was that while I knew it was supposedly impossible to read in dreams, I also knew that the subconscious would be able to fill in what the book was supposed to read if I already knew that. Whatever this place was, it wasn’t engineered from my mind. It was engineered from someone else’s view of the room, which only begged the question of how they knew what this room was. Maybe they were spying on all of you? Eddie’s theory didn’t hold much water, but it definitely led me into thinking. The details of the room were barely there, but the general idea was. It felt like the answer as to what was going on was at the tip of my tongue, but yet nothing could possibly explain it. On top of everything else, I knew that despite the already glaring errors of the room’s details, there was something else that stuck out like a sore thumb. I swept my eyes across the area again, looking carefully for anything that was clearly wrong, and for a moment, I didn’t see it. But then, when I looked back, what I had assumed to be a trick of my mind or the light revealed itself. The mirror’s image of me wasn’t following the same movements as I was. It was just watching, with a smug smile and a look in the eyes that made me uncomfortable seeing coming from my own expression.

“Confused?” Mirror-me asked, in the voice of someone I’d never heard before. Was that what I sounded like? Dear god, I had to fix that. That’s clearly Untermeyer. Eddie had a valid point but even then, I would have hated to sound like that.

“A little, yeah.” I replied, not giving him the satisfaction of getting worked up. “You know, you could have given me something to read. How’d you make this place, anyway?” In return, Gerald smiled wryly, the curve of his (my) mouth slightly exposing one of the canines inside my mouth.

“I have witnessed everything that your group of rag-tag misfits have been doing since the start, even before the four of you were reunited.” Gerald replied, clearly happy with himself.

“Yet you couldn’t get the details of the books down.” I said deadpan, causing his smile to disappear.

“I wouldn’t dream of concerning myself with the details of your petty lives. I have seen everything in time leading to this moment, no matter how long ago it was. I have gained omniscience, and I can tell you now that the plan you have won’t work.” The mirror’s image rippled for a moment, and briefly I saw the man who was underneath. The skin was gnarled and pale, wrinkled beyond belief. Despite having never seen Untermeyer before, I knew that he was definitely not how he had looked before.

“So, there’s no surprises with the plan then. How do you know it won’t work?” I was keeping my casual demeanour, but my eyes were darting around the room, trying to figure out how I could get out of here. Magic felt like something I would have to try, but I had no experience working with it, so it would have to be a lot of energy put into one precise way to break out.

“Your friends can’t be trusted. The one you called Cool Guy lied to you about the girl he was in love with, Tabitha consistently keeps secrets from you, and Amy is barely honest with herself, never mind anyone else.” The mirror-me was smug, more than he had been before. He was enjoying this, and he wasn’t intent on hiding it. Luckily for me, I was also enjoying this.

“Is that really the best you can do?” I asked, causing the smirk to drop from his face. “You played your hand too soon by saying you had seen everything leading to this moment, and you know just as well as I do that neither of us can say what the future holds. You’re bluffing.” Bingo. The mirror cracked slightly from the sides as the version of me on the other end shimmered, then disappeared. Untermeyer had revealed himself, and it was worse than I had thought from what I’d seen briefly of him before. His skin wasn’t just wrinkled, it was stretched taut in some areas and peeling off in others. He was decaying. There was little hair left on his head, small tufts and strands straying off in random, uncoordinated directions. His eyes were grey and glassy, pinprick pupils staring directly at me as if trying to look through me instead of at me. I had no words, stunned into silence from his appearance. Eddie, however, did. Gross.

“You must think you’re clever, bonding with a shadow to defeat me. But even that won’t help you. A parasite is a parasite, just a creature with no brain functions and only a single desire, to feed. Soon enough, you’ll lose what he’s given you. And then, where will you be?” When Untermeyer opened his mouth, it revealed the few remaining teeth, brown and rotting, most likely unused at this point. He’s lying. I’ll stay with you ‘til the end of the line.

“I’ll be the same as I was before, a guy with a gun who knows how to use it.” As I said this, I raised the pistol to punctuate it. He didn’t flinch, staring down the barrel of the gun directly at me still. “And you’ll be shattered, forced to forever be incomplete again.” The smirk returned to Untermeyer’s face, looking a lot more forced this time around with his leathery skin.

“Then why aren’t you firing? Surely, if you hit me now, you can gain the advantage?” He was trying to goad me into attacking him, and I knew full well that breaking the only thing separating the two of us would be a fatal mistake. “Or, are you aware that without your friends, you’re nothing?” My finger instinctively tightened, and I almost fired at him with that remark.

“You say that as if it’s a bad thing.” I replied through gritted teeth. “We’re a team, and I’m not stupid enough to think I could defeat you by myself.” Despite the fact I wasn’t truly by myself, I still knew that Eddie and I wouldn’t be able to do it alone.

“You’re not stupid enough, no. But you’re also not strong enough to even try. The one with the sword immediately tried to take me down, even by himself. The alchemist and her little familiar have both been putting up a good fight, and even Tabitha, my replacement, has been destroying the manifestations I send at her while still searching for her – no, our mentor. Yet you have been standing stock-still since the moment you got here, running your mouth more than anything else.” Untermeyer’s cold, empty stare finally began to work its way into me, making my skin shiver and the hairs on my neck stand on end. “You’re nothing. Just a bit-player in a battle you couldn’t even begin to comprehend.” Something about his words hit me then, but not in the way he was intending. As if a lightbulb had illuminated above my head, I realised exactly what he was trying to do. He had given away that he was fighting everyone else at the same time as being here, so while he normally would have destroyed me if I had tried to fight him, he wasn’t at his full power. I said something to Eddie in my head, getting a confirmation of the plan back to me, and smiled at Untermeyer.

“I’m more than just a bit part.” I said, confidence filling my body like warmth from a fire. “I’m Seth Allen, and I fight for my friends.” His expression turned to one of worry as he realised that I’d caught on. “Bitch.” I pulled the trigger, and the mirror shattered. As the shards fell, so too did the room around me, crumbling away into nothingness and revealing the abyss behind the illusion. The bullet-hole in Untermeyer had already began to heal, but Eddie was quickly on it as I raised my hand. Tendrils of shadow shot out from multiple places on my wrist and hand, stabbing into him and ripping chunks out of his body. The wounds healed nearly as quickly as I made them, but I wasn’t aiming to kill. Screaming, Untermeyer swung at me, a blast of something very similar to what was coming out of my hand flying directly towards me. Acting on instinct and what I had seen Tabitha do before, I dropped to one knee and raised my other arm as a defence, the shadow-beam hitting my arm and a now-existent translucent panel. As soon as the barrage of energy stopped, I spun on my heel, diving for the pistol and firing it into him repeatedly. Each one stunned him a little, but he still began to advance on me, body shrugging off the hits. Eddie’s attacks ceased, his tendrils receding inside me again, as I moved to get more distance behind Untermeyer and I.

“You can’t escape destiny!” He half-growl, half-yelled. “I’m going to destroy this world, and all of them! Reality will be mine to do as I command!” I continued running, looking back at him every chance I got, but the ground shot up in front of me, preventing me from running further. “Do you think staying loyal to your friends will save you?!” With nowhere else to go, I turned back to face Untermeyer. He was still advancing on me, no smug smile this time, instead a face filled with rage and hatred. I shot at him a few more times, but this time, he barely faltered as the bullets hit him. One of Eddie’s tendrils shot out quickly, holding another magazine for my gun, and I reloaded as fast as I could before putting a few more bullets into him. I wasn’t sure how I was going to escape from this, brain rapidly trying to find an escape route. But then, the same lightbulb from before clicked, this time bringing a much worse realisation. Loyalty. He hadn’t explicitly said it, but Untermeyer was trying to turn us. And at this junction, there were only two options. Join him, or die staying loyal. I recalled the Elder’s prophecy as Untermeyer closed the distance, knowing already what I was about to do. The most loyal would die.

“I’m not going to join you.” I said, energy gone now. Untermeyer stopped in place, around fifteen feet away from me. He raised a hand in response, small orbs of darkness beginning to join together in his hand, growing larger. I took a deep breath, my heart-rate surprisingly steady as I accepted what was about to happen. “CG, you’d better kill this son of a bitch.” I said, more to myself than to Untermeyer, before closing my eyes. I heard the sound of the ball of darkness firing towards me, my breath catching in my throat as the loud noise reverberated across the chasm-like room we were in. A sound came after, a sharp striking noise that pierced my eardrums, and then, silence. Silence and darkness. It felt peaceful, serene and calm in just the right ways. In fact, it would have been perfect if not for… Wait, what the hell just happened? Eddie was here too. It made sense, of course. He had been part of me when I died, so now, in whatever afterlife we were in, we were still linked. Hey, dumbass, we’re not dead. Open your eyes. I hadn’t realised I had been making an effort to keep them closed until I let myself open them again, and realised with a start that something had gotten in the way of the attack. There were two craters in the ground not far from either side of me, where attacks had clearly struck, but neither of them had directly hit me. And, directly in front of me, where Untermeyer had attacked from, stood someone else, almost silhouetted by the light emanating from the front of him.

“You know, as cool as that was, it’s my job to be cool.” CG said as he looked back at me, grinning. Oh, that motherfu-

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Chapter 32: The Grid

The next two days were, to put it simply, busy as hell. Tabitha was closing in on Uchen’s location, and while we hoped we were wrong, it definitely seemed like we were going to fight, which meant training. I didn’t mind too much, finding that sinking my time into what I was doing helped keep my mind from other issues, but I could tell that people were getting as tired as I was, and had no reason to push themselves further like I did. I felt especially bad for Amy and Aki, who were the ones that were training with me constantly. 

Seth and Tabitha only came in when there were short periods of downtime between the computer doing… something I wasn’t aware of. Aki, however, was forcing herself to fight on the same level as I was, challenging me at every chance she got. I wasn’t stupid enough to go easy on her, because if she thought she was already on a similar experience level as I was, she would end up being reckless and it could get her hurt. I tried not to pull my punches too much, but there are only so many ways you can fight with a sword without actually severing any limbs or stabbing them. Amy posed more of a challenge, with the two of us pretty much hitting an even level of exhaustion when we duelled, only stopping because if we tried to fight harder, there would end up being more than just basic injuries. By the end of the second day, however, Aki had gotten a lot more improved, only having slight flaws in her fighting style that seemed more like flukes than anything else. When she challenged me to another duel, once again with no holds barred, I could tell that something was different. Sure enough, I hadn’t been as prepared as I should have been, and almost got my ass kicked for it. However, at crucial points, her attacks were slower than they could have been, so knocking her down was an opening quickly given to me. It was only when she used one of my signature moves against me that things began to click. Her foot connecting with my groin, knocking the wind out of me and causing me to cry out in pain, made the gears in my head turn. The slower movements, where she had been as agile as the cat that most of her appearance and mannerisms seemed to come from, were because of tiredness, more than usual. And while I didn’t have a patent on groin-kicks, the way she had let herself fall onto her back, and how she had been fighting leading up to that, made it clear that she had chosen to mimic me, presumably with the recording of us training. The sheer number of cameras in this place was insane. With her having taken me down, and with my own move no less, I had to concede her victory, and congratulate her, both while keeping my cool demeanour.

“Ow.” I said, one hand on the back of my head and the other on my unmentionables. Looking around the room, I could see that Amy was wincing, one eye covered very poorly by her hand, and that Aki was clearly considering whether she had gone too far. “Good round.” I reassured her, despite still not being able to feel my legs. “Here’s hoping that whatever we fight has balls though, otherwise that move won’t really work too well.”

“Well, it’s just one guy, right? No matter how smart someone is, they can be defeated by a kick in the nards.” Amy’s wisdom as to testicular torment got me thinking, mostly about how much pain I was in, but also in how little I actually knew about Uchen’s former protégé. Tabitha had told me that that the guy was smart and also insane, which, judging from her having roped us into this whole thing, wasn’t too uncommon. The more I thought, the more I wanted answers, and I knew I wasn’t going to get those answers by sitting around and fighting someone who was now able to fight back. I needed to go straight to her.

 The three of us marched back into the main room, where we were greeted by a bleary-eyed Seth, and a manic-haired Tabitha, neither of whom were a very good welcome wagon.

“Sup, man?” Seth asked, or it might have been Eddie. It was getting annoying that there wasn’t any way to distinctly figure out who was who, but what could I really do except bitch about it? I gave him a wave, not stopping my stride towards Tabitha.

“Oh hey guys, you’re just in time. We’ve pretty much locked on now, but obviously we need to brief each other and prepare for what’s coming.” Tabitha said, looking up at us with a smile that definitely suggested that we were test subjects.

“Yeeah, on that subject…” I began, drawing out my words ever so slightly because I had a feeling that she wouldn’t like putting her plans on hold for some boring exposition. “Me and the others were thinking that maybe we should know more about the guy we’re fighting. The last thing we need is to go in unprepared.” I finished, and before I had even been given a chance to close my moth, I was sold down the river.

“I never said that.” Amy said, to which she got murmurs of agreement from Seth and Aki. Tabitha raised an eyebrow.

“Why would you screw me like this, damn it?” I said, turning back around to face her. Seth giggled from where he was, and I quickly knew what he was going to say before he said it.

“That’s what she said!” He almost exploded, before bursting into peels of laughter. We let him take a second to finish, before turning our focus back to the main task at hand.

“So, you were saying something about how we should delay the important thing we need to do in order to make sure you know some life details about someone we’re probably gonna end up killing?” The room quickly fell silent as Tabitha finished her question, with my only response being to nod.

“Honestly, now that he brings it up, it makes sense.” Seth conceded, making me feel less like the only one who actually gave a shit about this stuff. Tabitha gave a sigh, before turning her attention to the computer again. Without looking at us, she began to speak.

“His name was Gerald Untermeyer, and he was… well, amazing.” She began, almost as if fangirling over him. “I told you about the stuff he’d been working on, but I barely even touched on everything he’d already made. Without his help, I doubt Uchen would have even been able to get as far as he did with the machine.” Though Tabitha didn’t say what the machine was, it didn’t take much effort to figure it out from context clues.

“He helped that much? Surely if he was that smart, he’d have made it by himself and the whole issue of what to do with it would never have come up.” I said, briefly forgetting that the guy in question had been insane and probably would have just not thought to do that. However, Tabitha had a more reasonable explanation.

“He lacked the money. While some of what he had worked on was astounding, it was a net loss overall. So he came to work under Uchen, and soon enough they were like partners.” Tabitha tapped a few buttons on the computer keyboard, and diagrams appeared on the screen. There was a lot of scribbling that I could barely decipher, but a 3D-rendered image of some of the machinery I could see in the room was also visible. “Uchen worked on the hardware, and Untermeyer worked on the software, including…” She trailed off as she hit more buttons, causing the screen to now display something entirely different. It almost looked like a room of sorts, with neon lighting covering the floor and walls. I watched as the colours pulsed, and changed, with every few moments. “The Grid.”

“Aptly named.” I replied, deadpan. “What is it?” The room didn’t changed as the view zoomed out, revealing more of what was inside the room. Or rather, revealing more of what wasn’t in the room, which was anything.

“The void we stay in sometimes is an offshoot of The Grid. The void holds our physical attributes, while The Grid digitizes whatever data it can, serving as a backup in case of any issues that might arise.” Tabitha pressed a button, and figures appeared in the grid. Though I’d never really seen it from an outside perspective before (aside from the clone in Despair), one of them was unmistakably me. The others were everyone else that was in the room and listening to her, which only prompted more confusion. “These are our data selves. They remember pretty much everything we do, but they’re not alive. If we end up losing memories, we can use them to restore our own.” Tabitha looked over at them. “I’m not going to lie, even I’m not completely sure what they can be utilised for.”

“Then what’s the point in telling us about The Grid? Surely we should be focusing on Untermeyer, right?” Seth asked, and I could tell from Tabitha’s expression that it wasn’t that simple.

“In theory, that would have been the situation, but the closer we lock on to Uchen, the more apparent it becomes as to where he is.” Tabitha bit the bottom of her lip as she paused, looking back at the screen. “They’re inside The Grid.” Of course they were.

“What does that mean for us?” Amy questioned, and Tabitha shrugged.

“How are we going to get in?” Aki chimed in, and Tabitha shrugged again.

“Will we even escape?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer, and not sure that Tabitha even knew it. Sure enough, Tabitha shrugged in response.

“I can’t answer any of these questions because I don’t know The Grid like Untermeyer or Uchen do. Thankfully, when we get to him, Uchen should be able to help us get out of there.” The general situation didn’t bode well at all, but Tabitha at least had a plan for getting out. “My assumption is that Untermeyer ended up becoming purely digital, so the mirrors, while working, will only be splitting him into separated chunks of data. From there he should hopefully fade into nothingness with time.” Tabitha reassured us, or maybe it was herself.

“I swear to god, if we end up riding on motorbikes and throwing disks at each other, I’m going to kill myself.” I said, looking back at the rest of the group. “Actually, thinking about that, what are we going to be fighting with?” I asked, unsheathing the Cobatana and the magic dagger and looking at them. It would be the first fight I would have done with the dagger, which was definitely going to be interesting.

“Well, nothing really changes, we still have everything we had.” Tabitha said, doing a hand-wavey gesture to signify her magic. “Except Seth, who for some reason threw away a shotgun ages ago.” Tabitha raised a very valid point, and soon enough all eyes were on Seth.

“I like my pistols more.” Seth said, and I groaned aloud. He had forgotten what every game we’d ever played together had taught him, and had decided against hoarding everything he could weapon-wise. What a moron. “Besides, Eddie should be able to help me, and I’ll just get Amy to make me a second pistol.” Seth finished, and now it was Amy’s turn to be annoyed.

“What am I going to be making a second gun from? The air?” She asked exasperatedly, and from the look on Seth’s face, it was clear he didn’t know that wasn’t possible.

“I… uh…” Seth began, which was a glorious way to start a sentence, in the grand scheme of things. Amy rolled her eyes.

“I can probably tweak something we have, but you really need to tell me when we’re doing stuff like this.” Amy replied, and Seth moved to thank her. However, a chime rang out across the room before he had a chance, and I looked around in confusion.

“Was someone microwaving something?” I asked, unsure of where the noise had come from.

“We’ve locked in. Ready or not, we’re going.” Tabitha said, moving to the area where we would be in the sights of the machine. I was most certainly not ready, but I was also definitely not about to say that. We were in the endgame now.

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Chapter 31: One Reason Why

Seth

It had finally happened. After all this time, I’d seen Tabitha in front of a whiteboard. Etchings and scribbles made in marker pen covered the entire surface, some words in foreign languages that I couldn’t understand, other space filled with glyphs, runes, and whatever else you would call some really weird drawings that are used for language. Her hair was slightly unkempt again, not unlike she’d been when we met her at the start of all this, but every time she turned around to look at us, her eyes were wild, mind solely focused on the one issue that had not only been plaguing her, but all of us, since it had become prevalent.

“Okay, so nobody has any ideas? You’re just gonna leave me working this out myself?” Tabitha asked, shaking me from my almost-dozed state as I had watched her work. Giving a quick glance around, everyone else had been in the same state of uncertainty and near-asleep-ness as I had. Aki had her head resting against Amy’s shoulder, and while I couldn’t see the catgirl’s eyes, I was pretty sure they would have been almost closed. Amy herself was chewing on the end of a pencil, which can’t have tasted good, as it was one of those ones with an eraser on the end of it. And Eddie, that voice that seemed to enjoy sharing my body, had gone quiet for the first time since he’d started to speak to me.

“I mean, we have ideas, but… don’t you think this is stuff we shouldn’t be working on? He’s kind of our friend, after all. If he didn’t want to tell us, and neither did Rose, isn’t it kind of dickish to do all this?” Amy replied, the end of the pencil now out of her mouth and tapping against the knuckles of her other hand, no rhythm or reason behind it. While I agreed with the fundamental points of what she was saying, the curiosity of what exactly it was that had caused the two of them to split up was burning as furiously as it had been the first time CG had told me about it all those years ago. It was a mystery neither of us had been able to solve, and now more than ever, working it out may have helped him.

“On the contrary, if we can narrow down the fault that Rose sees in CG, maybe he can get rid of it and win her back.” Tabitha said, grinning like a madman. The looks on our faces must’ve given off that she had said the wrong thing, since she rubbed at her eyes for a minute before rephrasing. “He’s our friend. Even if he doesn’t get back together with her, knowing something that people dislike about him is important to him.” While it was a little better, it was still painfully obvious that Tabitha’s main focus had shifted from finding Uchen to solving this mystery using whatever science-y methods she could.

“Where is CG, anyway? I’ve not seen him since the stairwell…” Aki said, looking around the room as best as she could without moving from Amy’s shoulder.

“He’s on the roof.” I said casually, before realising what the implications of my words were. “Getting some air.” I added, and the shock on everyone else’s faces quickly disappeared.

“Okay, we’re getting nowhere with this casual conversation.” Tabitha said, bringing all the attention back to her. “What do we know about Rose, and what do we know about CG?” It was a question posed to the rest of the group, but silence hung in the air as both Amy and I wondered if the other was going to be the first one to speak.

“Well let’s see. CG…” Amy tapped her mouth with the pencil, and I had to admit, it was doing wonders at making her look like a legitimate scientist instead of someone hypothesising over what amounted to not much in the grand scheme of things. “He likes anime, and he likes sword-fighting.”

“He liked Rose.” I added, almost a mumble from between my fingers.

“Had his whole cool persona he held up sorta shattered by showing emotion.” Amy pointed to me with the pencil after I had finished speaking, so I felt I had to continue.

“While I honestly didn’t know much about Rose, apparently she’d had a crush on him for years before she said anything.” I remembered when CG had first told me about Rose, and how excited he had been. It must have been a real confidence boost.

“All this just says that Rose definitely likes him more than just a friend, but for some reason can’t be with him, which we already knew.” Tabitha sighed, clearing off the whiteboard as she talked. “Anyone know any more intimate details about the two? Does CG have a crooked penis?” I coughed loudly on my spit.

“Jesus, that took a turn.” I said, between deep, rasping breaths.

“With Rose, I’m not sure that would have mattered. She had a habit of not really caring about the negatives. Like a negative magnet.” Amy had sat up straight now, so Aki was no longer leaning against her, instead just lounging slightly in her chair, disappointed.

“That’s a pretty positive outlook to have.” Tabitha said, doodling on the whiteboard.

“I’d make a joke about their relationship being charged, but we’re kind of already pushing it with the magnet jokes.” I said, cracking a small smile for the first time since we had found out about CG.

“Freakin’ magnets, how do they work?” Aki said, joining in on the fun with a joke that she shouldn’t have even known, even as she managed to butcher the actual quote at the same time. It seemed to be the final tipping point for us, setting everyone off into gigglefits of laughter. I knew CG was going to be okay, he had before after all. Why worry so much about something that would ultimately not matter? Even if we had all come to that same conclusion that it didn’t matter that much, it definitely started to matter again when CG walked into the room.

Cool Guy

Now, I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but when you see a whiteboard with your name on it, next to a doodle of a flower that conveniently shares the same name as your ex-girlfriend, it doesn’t take much effort to figure out what’s going on. Nonetheless, I decided to give them an out, hoping their answer would be clever enough that the situation would give me a little bit of a chuckle.

“What’s going on in here?” I asked, glancing between everyone. The laughter had died down very quickly as I’d entered, and I could tell from the expressions that they felt bad. I stood awkwardly in the doorway for a few moments, waiting for any of them to give me an answer, before someone finally spoke up.

“Surprise birthday party planning?” Seth said, holding his hands up as he did so. I almost felt bad for how bad the lie was, but I didn’t have to, since the cringe that crossed his face after he had said it gave away how much he hated saying it.

“We were trying to work out why Rose left.” Tabitha admitted, only confirming what I had assumed. I didn’t blame them, as much as I disliked having the reminder. I would have stayed on the roof longer, but it had gotten too cold up there.

“I know it’s not you guys, she liked you a lot.” I said, wheeling a chair over and sitting on it so the back of it was in front of me. The rest of the group seemed shocked at me speaking, but surely they must have known that I was trying to work it out too. “Plus, it was the same issue as it was years ago. We have to figure out what stayed consistent in my life from back then to now.”

“Sorry, can we just address what you’re doing with that chair?” Seth said, but nobody listened as Tabitha began to write on the board.

“The clothing style? Shades? Personality?” Aki offered, with Tabitha scribing every possibility as it was said. “Do you wear a cologne?” I shook my head at the last one.

“My scent is all-natural Cool Guy.” I replied, blasting a fingergun at her. “That, and I just bathe.” I added, which only served to remind me that it had been a very long time since I’d been home. I missed showering in my own shower, where I’d finally found the perfect temperature.

“I think we can rule out personality. Rose’s personality definitely mirrored CG’s, even if it was a little less… intense.” Tabitha said, turning to look at me as she paused.

“The clothes are a definite yes for her. She made me wear them the first time we ever did…” I let everyone else finish the sentence in their head, and when they had, Tabitha slowly crossed off the clothes as an option. “As for my sunglasses, she was the first person I took them off for outside of my family, so I think she didn’t mind them.” It definitely felt like we were just guessing, but then, we didn’t have much to go off.

“So, it’s not the way you’re dressed.” Amy said in a monotone voice. “And it’s not us, so it’s something you wouldn’t think to bring up.” Everyone fell silent as we tried to think of what I wouldn’t bring up, or even know about.

“I’ve got it!” Aki almost-yelled, startling me slightly, but bringing all attention to her. “The reason is…” The pause for effect was killing me, but I knew hurrying her would get us nowhere. “…completely pointless.” She finished, getting a groan from everyone else in the room. “Oh, come on, think about it. What are we gonna solve talking about this stuff? If it’s a fundamental part of him and he chooses to change it for her, are we really gonna be happy to let him do that?” While I definitely wanted Rose back, I had to admit, she had a point. Would I even wanna change a huge part of myself for her?

“If it’s what makes him happy…” Seth said, but he was clearly unconvinced.

“I just think all we’re doing here is dwelling on the past instead of focusing on asking the real, important questions in the present.” Aki said, spinning in her chair to face me. “How are you doing?” She asked, and I tried to come up with an answer that was funny, to break the tension. Nothing came. I then decided to go for a false happiness, to try and act tough. Nothing came then either. The words didn’t feel right, almost like an act.

“I don’t know.” I finally responded, and with that, the words started to pour. “It was only one day, after all, but it still stings. Especially seeing you four and how happy you all are with each other. I just feel kind of shitty for not being happy to be with you guys.” Aki wheeled over, putting her hand on my shoulder as she reached me.

“Dude, just let us know if we can do something to help.” Seth had walked over to my other side, and I had a feeling this was going to be another group hug situation. “Eddie offers to come inside your body because he has a habit of making people happier.” He added, and I smiled slightly.

“There’s a joke I could make there.” I said, which caused him to chuckle a little. Shaking myself off slightly, I stood up, walking over to the whiteboard and erasing the flower. Even though I knew it was corny, I instead began to doodle the rest of the group, making sure to include every detail I could for each of them. Amy and Aki holding hands, Seth holding a gun, and Tabitha holding onto her sanity while she deals with us. Finally finishing with myself, I took a step back, planting myself firmly in the middle of the group that had formed behind me. Smiling, I awaited their praise.

“Where’s my tail?”

“Why am I holding a sex toy?”

“Why is my head so big?”

Everyone’s a critic.

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[acoolguyscoollife]

Chapter 30: Truth in Moonlight

Sure, it hadn’t gone well, but like, worrying isn’t something I should spend time on, right? We’d managed to help some people, so I wasn’t too worried about lost time. When we got back into the lab, Rose leant over to me, putting her hand on my shoulder.

“Meet me on the roof.” She whispered to me, and I grinned, knowing we were going to pick up exactly where we left off with our date. I didn’t even bother to ask her how she knew the way up there, just sat around impatiently for a few moments as I tried to think of a subtle way to ask Tabitha how to get up there. After a moment or two, I came up with the perfect excuse, one that would blend with the sort of person I tried to be incredibly well.

“Hey Tabitha, how do I get to the roof? I wanna sit up there and brood like a superhero.” I said, grinning as I did so. Tabitha just gave a world-weary sigh in response, pointing me towards the staircase and going off to do more stuff with tracking down Uchen, or whatever she did when I wasn’t around. I took the stairs three-at-a-time, still on cloud nine, and, after a few moments, I was walking through the roof-access door, into the brisk wind. Bit of a mood killer, but it didn’t stop me. Rose turned to look at me as I came through, and her lack of a smile made my own begin to peel away.

“CG…” She began, in a tone of voice that felt all-too familiar. “We have to talk.” As if everything up to that point had been a balloon, I felt myself deflate, my mind slowing down as the cold of the wind actually hit me. The moon was out, not full, but enough to illuminate the roof on this clear night. Almost like a defence mechanism, my brain stopped all thought, functioning on autopilot as I took a few steps towards Rose.

“I hope, genuinely, that I’m wrong about what we have to talk about.” I replied, and Rose tried to smile, but her emotions betrayed her, lips squashed together as her face struggled to stay straight.

“I mean, I can’t be the only one out of the two of us that saw it, right?” She asked, and honestly, if I’d been able to think clearly, maybe I could have agreed with her. In hindsight, so far on, the signs were definitely there.

“If by it, you mean how well this was going, you definitely weren’t.” I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say, but I definitely wasn’t done, speaking over her when she tried to say something. “I mean for god’s sake, I let you in again, even after everything that happened before with us!” I was struggling to control my emotions myself, feeling my hands clenching in anger. I felt like an idiot. Some dumb idiot, sat on a roof with a leather jacket and a shitty blue sword on my back.

“I’m sorry, okay? I screwed up again, like I always do, and it hurt you. If I could go back and stop myself being that dumb, I would have.” Rose said, raising her voice slightly as she replied. “It’s not my fault I missed the friendship we had, you yourself said that you should have talked to me more!” A voice in the back of my head said to respond calmly, to not turn it into an argument, but the person at the wheel definitely thought it was too far for that.

“Yeah, because you refused to tell me why you were even doing it in the first place! Even now, you’re not saying why you’re doing it!” I was definitely the one to start yelling first, and I hated every second of it. “What is it this time, something you can’t say again?” I scoffed, and Rose turned away from me, staying silent for a moment. Slowly, the truth began to set in, with nothing but the wind to hear as we stood there. “Oh, my god.” I said, no longer having the energy to shout. Rose turned back to me, eyes redder than they had been when she had first turned. The voice at the back of my mind, still trying to get my attention, pointed out that she was definitely conflicted, as if she wanted to tell me but couldn’t.

“It isn’t just that.” She said, putting her hand on my shoulder. If the anger had still been there, I might have moved away from her touch, but at this point, I was more confused than anything else. “You’ve felt almost like you’re… not invested, you know?” I stopped looking at my feet long enough to look at her, and it just hurt even more. Everything hurt, and even if I knew it wouldn’t hurt forever, I still hated how much it hurt now.

“I don’t know how I can be more invested than I am.” I said, choking it out, the lump in my throat catching me off guard. “I love you, Rose, I just don’t understand why this is happening.” Rose took her hand off my shoulder, taking a few steps back. “I swear I did everything right.”

“But the amount of times you pushed me aside for other things, it just hurt to have happen.” Rose said, tears starting to well in her eyes again. “I know I say some dumb shit sometimes, flirty stuff that has no purpose, but not even getting acknowledgement from you is like a knife digging into me.” It was like the dam broke with that sentence, with Rose almost unable to finish speaking through stutters. “I-I get it, you know? There’s important shit that needs to be done, but they don’t involve me, so I kind of hoped that you would.” It was hard for me to hold back my own tears, but I did my best to, knowing we wouldn’t get anywhere if neither of us could speak.

“But these aren’t things you break up with someone for immediately, this is stuff you talk about to the person!” I tried reasoning, even though I knew it was pointless. My gut was already telling me that it was over, but I still wanted to fight it, just in case there was a chance. “Rose, we can still make this work.” I was almost pleading at this point, and the small amount of effort I’d put into not crying had already been expended, my cheeks becoming gradually stickier.

“But that’s not just it, though!” Rose said, rubbing at her eyes to get rid of some of the tears. “I know it’s stupid, I know I shouldn’t keep going on about it, but the reason I broke up with you before is still there, and I just… can’t tell you myself.” I swore loudly as she finished, pissed off that it had come to this again.

“Why does everything have to be such a cryptic god-damned mystery with you?!” I yelled, more to myself than to anyone else. “Just tell me what this flaw is so I can work on it!” It just felt unfair now, because I knew that if I was told what this was, I’d be able to fix it immediately.

“It’s not something you can work on! It’s just something that’s… there, and when you realise, you probably won’t even want to be with me anymore anyway!” Rose tried to interject, but I wasn’t having any of it.

“Why are you dying on this hill? Just tell me what it is, I’m not going to hate you for trying to help me here!” I begged, taking off the sunglasses so I could see her better. Her entire face had reddened now, eyes slick and mouth quivering as she looked at me.

“I can’t… I just can’t do it.” Rose said, and I groaned loudly. I couldn’t understand for the life of me why she was doing this, and why it had to be something like this that ended it all. “If someone did that for me, instead of letting me figure it out myself, I don’t think I’d have even believed them, never mind actually appreciated them doing it for me.” I scanned her face as she spoke, and there was no hint of her lying to me. Of course, that just sparked me wondering what the hell it even was again. What could be so fundamentally screwy with me that it could have ruined two relationships? I didn’t even know what to feel anymore. I knew that I probably would never work out what it was about me that Rose knew, and my mind didn’t even want to try. It was over. It had been short-lived, with someone I already knew inside and out, but it still hurt to be over. I never understood the idea of a broken heart, and even now, I still don’t know that I do, but even if the world wasn’t ending, and even if the friendship itself wasn’t going to die, it still hurt like hell to be where I was. My relationship was over, and everything felt slightly worse now. But even then, in the back of my mind, the voice was still chiming in, trying to take the reins and make me do things. As it set in, my mind left autopilot, beginning to think again as the voice began to talk to me. She tried to talk to me, but I didn’t want to notice. She’d wanted this relationship to last as much as I had. She’d wanted to be wrong, wanted it so badly that she’d sabotaged herself and me. But if she was right, even after wanting it to be wrong so much, then I knew I had to believe her. She wasn’t looking at me anymore, staring at her shoes much like I had, and I realised some time had passed now without either of us saying anything.

“You know my friends now, so you know who to pester if I end up ignoring you again.” I said, a joke feeling like the only fitting thing to do at this point. Rose looked up, unsure of what was happening, my tone having changed a lot since I had last spoken. “But, this time, I won’t. I promise.” I put my hand on hers, pulling it up in between the two of us. The voice in the back of my head was now the one that had been in control before, and now it wanted me to not let go of her. To do anything I could to get her back, even if it destroyed my dignity. Instead, I used my other hand to bring her into a hug, losing my resolve for a second to kiss her cheek. I was glad she didn’t return it, knowing where it would end up going. She pulled away, a small smile now on her face, even if her mouth still wavered as if wanting to say something else. “I love you, Rose.” I said for the second time now, hoping that it wouldn’t hurt her to say that. She just blushed slightly, looking away for a moment to rub at her eyes before facing me again.

“I love you too, Kyle.” Rose said back, hugging me again. “I’m sorry.”

Amy

Rose was heading down the stairs in a hurry, but we still ended up running into each other, Aki in tow behind me as we set off towards the bedrooms on the second floor.

“Oh hey, you’re in a hurry.” I said to her cheerily, before I caught sight of her face. I didn’t really know what had happened, or even how to respond to it. I felt like a deer in the headlights, but thankfully, she gave me an out.

“Yeah, I was… just going to head home, actually.” Rose said back, gesturing a thumb in the general direction of the door. “It’s pretty late, you know?” Whatever was on her mind, she was making it clear she didn’t want to talk about it, and I didn’t want to be the person who harassed her for the reason.

“Well, you’re welcome back here any time. I know I don’t have the say in that, but I think it’s safe to say you’re a friend to all of us in here.” I put my hand on her shoulder, and she shivered slightly at my touch, looking down at the hand. “Stay safe, Rose.” I finished, and she nodded, face stoic as she took the last few steps down, and started down the hall towards the exit.

“What was wrong?” Aki asked, having stayed silent up to now. “She seemed upset.” I wasn’t sure whether I should have said anything, but I wished I could have helped, even if it would have been hard. We watched Rose turn around the corner, and then, listened until her footsteps trailed away. Soon after they had stopped, another set of footsteps started, and Tabitha and Seth rounded another corner, this one a lot closer to the staircase.

“Shit, we missed her!” Seth said, taking a few hesitant steps down the hallway in the same direction she had gone, before seeming to decide it wasn’t worth it.

“What? What’s going on?” Aki asked, saying what I had been thinking, and Tabitha’s expression made it clear that something was definitely up, because she seemed concerned about this too, glancing down the hall as if wishing Rose would walk back up. Out of everyone, I had felt that Tabitha had liked Rose’s presence the least, but now I felt I was wrong.

“I uh…” Tabitha started, glancing between Aki and I. “Okay, I kept this a secret, but I saw something the other day on the security cameras. It was CG and Rose.” It took a few seconds for what she was saying to add up, but after that, it hit me all at once.

“Oh!” I said, excited. Then, the way Rose had looked coming down the stairs hit me. “Oh.” I repeated, the excitement quickly draining out of me.

“Yeah, I couldn’t hear anything, but I watched what happened.” Tabitha said, still looking down the hallway.

“We both did. Even without sound, a breakup looks very distinct.” Seth added, his own gaze looking up the stairs every few moments. “It wasn’t fun to watch.”

“Poor CG.” Aki said, dejected. “You think he’s okay?”

“I hope so.” I said, looking up the stairs. “I hope they both are.”

Cool Guy

The last thing I had been expecting when I reached the bottom of the stairs was the faces of my friends, all looking at me with expressions of sadness and worry.

“Whoa, who died?” I asked jokily, smiling as I did, but none of them gave me a response. Instead, Amy just grabbed me, holding me tightly, her head only reaching my chest as she squeezed me in one of the tightest hugs I’d ever been in. As if they’d been waiting for her, everyone else followed suit, all four of them hugging me at once. They knew. Of course they did. I might have cared, if I had any energy to do so. But with all of them being here, holding me and just… existing when I need them to… it was all too much. This time, I didn’t put the energy into trying not to cry.

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Chapter 29: Worst Date Ever

Cool Guy

I took another look at the paper in my hand, ink now slightly smudged as I kept idly rolling it in my fingers while we walked. The directions were supposed to take us to a restaurant, which I felt was going to be the best date I could have taken Rose on. Rose, who was a few feet behind me, awkwardly following along and occasionally giving side-glances to the people that were around us. When she saw me looking, she gave me a smile, though a layer of uncomfortable-ness still bled through every so often. I didn’t blame her, of course, since the area was pretty bustling at the minute.

“So, how far away are we from it?” Rose asked, having now caught up to me since I had stopped my movements to try and focus more on the paper. Unfortunately, the inked-in directions were now almost illegible, with my mind having not even retained the directions that I’d already read, since my brain had a tendency to be an absolute bastard when I needed it to be useful. I took a moment to consider what my answer was going to be, as when I had mentioned the idea to Rose, I had seen her get visibly excited. Disappointing her wasn’t something I was keen on, so instead, I lied.

“I’m not quite sure on where we go next, so I’m going to ask around and see if other people know.” I replied, flashing her the patented half-grin before quickly scuttling away before she could respond. Once I was out of earshot, I let out a sigh, wiping my brow with the same piece of paper that had the scribbled directions on it. Probably left a stain, but I couldn’t see my own forehead so what did it matter? A few quick glances around my surroundings, and I picked out a merchant sat behind a stall that had no queue. I weaved my way through the crowds, having to crouch slightly in certain places just so I could get through the gaps that people weren’t leaving. Part of me was tempted to take my sword out and see if people gave me space, but the last time I took my sword out in a public place, people weren’t happy, so I decided against it.

“Hello, good sir!” The man greeted me, a loud booming voice reaching me while I still had a few more steps to take. “What can I do you for today?” I flipped a coin in my mind as to whether I was going to pretend to be interested in his wares or if I was just going to cut to the chase, but before I could, I noticed what looked like a map on a chair behind him.

“Sorry, could I borrow that?” I pointed a finger towards it as I spoke, and the merchant glanced behind himself with a small look of confusion. When he turned back, his barely-visible mouth was even less visible, lips pursed and almost covered by the large amounts of facial hair that quivered with every jaw movement he made.

“Well, ah, I don’t see why not, only…” The man’s accent sounded vaguely Scottish, but the softer kind of Scottish, not the scary kind. “I don’t suppose you could do me a favour, could ya lad?” By now, Rose had heard the conversation (as had, I imagine, many other people in the vicinity) and had come over to see what the fuss was about. “See, I’m trapped behind this thing all day, and sales aren’t so great, so all I can do is just stare at other people all day.” Rose looked at the man, then to me, then back at the man once more, this time more focused on him.

“So, you want a book or something?” I asked, uncertain, and the man snapped his fingers into a pointing gesture, which I could only assume meant I was right.

“A long one, if you could. Do that for me, and I’ll let you keep the map.” The merchant’s mouth became wide with a large, beaming smile, and I awkwardly returned it before turning away, Rose in tow.

“Did you just… start a side-quest?” She asked after a few moments, a hint of annoyance in her voice. I looked back at her, and her face confirmed what her voice had hinted at. There was probably a better way to have gone about things, but hey, at least it’d be fun.

“It won’t take long, and we get to help people out! It’ll just make the meal even better once we’ve worked up an appetite.” I reassured her, and though she didn’t change her expression, I had the feeling I’d gotten to her, since she didn’t speak up after that. I got us back to the middle of the town square, giving the area a quick look-around. Books shouldn’t be that hard to find, surely? Sure enough, after a few moments of searching, my eagle-eyes spotted a book stand, which I practically bounded over to, Rose still following with lacklustre enthusiasm. The woman behind the stand seemed to be the almost-textbook definition of an old, weathered woman in a war-torn land, as if she hadn’t gotten the memo that I had helped everyone to be able to live slightly better lives with what they wore. Though, on the other hand, the rags that she wore did look pretty damn comfortable, so maybe I’d have done the same if I’d been in her position. The ragged, oily hair, however, I couldn’t have dealt with having. I always kept a small comb in my pocket to keep my hair looking stylish, as it went well with my shades as framing my face pretty well.

“Whatchu wan’?” The woman said, spittle flying out with every word. Even though I knew that the world wasn’t a video-game one, I still kind of felt sorry for her, since she seemed to be such a clear stereotype that I almost wanted to pull a Pretty Woman on her, and I hadn’t even seen that movie.

“Uh, hi, I’m looking for a book!” I said, with a little too much enthusiasm that caused the woman to squint at me. Though, that could have just as easily been the fact that she probably needed glasses.  She gave me the suspicious look for a moment, before making a broad gesture with her hands towards the haphazard piles of books at her stall. It hadn’t occurred to me until now that her stand was also one that didn’t have any people coming to it, and I was starting to see why. “But uh, I actually don’t have any money, I don’t suppose you have a discount for people who helped end the rebellion and tyranny of the royals?” I flashed the cool grin again, but the woman was unimpressed. Her hand moved to her side, fingers twiddling on the handle of a knife. “Or, I could help you out with something?” This seemed to be the winning ticket to get me out of this conversation, as her hand came off the handle and sat back on the stall’s top.

“Bread.” The woman said, the one syllable coming with so much spit that a llama would have been jealous.

“Bread?” I repeated, sans-spit, just to be clear that we were on the same page.

“Bread.” The word had now been uttered for a third time, as if it was some secret code in a 90’s kids movie, and along with the word came a loud, annoyed groan from Rose.

“Fine, we’ll get your damn bread.” Rose said, grabbing me by the wrist and almost pulling me off my feet as she led me away. When we had gotten enough distance, she turned around, and the annoyance she’d had before had nothing on her now. “Why the hell are we doing this? Why didn’t you just steal one of her books while I caused a distraction?” It was pretty surprising to hear her saying all of this, since I would have thought she’d be against stealing.

“I’m not a thief!” I replied back, in a complaining tone that felt kind of ironic, since it was being reprimanded for not doing the morally-questionable thing.

“You stole your own damn sword, remember?” Rose reminded me, and I cursed under my breath, immediately regretting having told her everything that we’d done. “And then promptly set a town on fire.” She added, almost like she was rubbing it in.

“Yeah, but that was when I thought it wasn’t real, remember? If I could go back and fix that, I would have, but right now I’m keeping up with Tabitha, since she’s the one who knows where we need to be.” I tried explaining as best as I could, but I had the feeling Rose wasn’t happy with it. “It’s one more small diversion, and then we’ll get back on track.”

 One small diversion quickly turned to five, and while small diversions are, quite obviously, small, anything small in a large quantity will still be quite large at the end of the day. We’d definitely spent a few hours at this point, but the map was in my hand, and we were heading in the direction of the building that was the fancy restaurant that people had been hyping us up about any time we’d mentioned it. Soon enough, it loomed in front of us, even fancier than I’d imagined. I kind of felt awkward about not wearing any kind of suit, but I had a sneaking suspicion that if I tried to get a more formal attire, Rose would probably get even more infuriated. We began our walk to the entrance, and were a few feet away when Seth and Tabitha walked out of the door.

“Oh hey, guys! I was just about to contact you!” Tabitha said, cheerily, but my attention was immediately on Seth, recalling how he’d been acting beforehand. He met my gaze, almost able to look me dead on in the eyes even though the sunglasses didn’t give away where I was looking, and gave me a wide, toothy grin.

“So, is that Seth or Eddie?” I asked, and Seth/Eddie sighed a deep, long-lasting sigh that went on for at least five seconds longer than it had to.

“Does it matter, CG? Either way, it’s your BFF, the one who knows most of your secrets.” Seth said with a wink, and I grimaced a little, thinking of all the things he could end up telling people. Instead of giving him fuel, I turned my attention back to Tabitha, who was still smiling happily. For a moment, I worried about some kind of body-snatcher situation, with the parasite making its way into her body, but I knew that wasn’t going to be accurate.

“So, any leads on Uchen?” I asked, and Tabitha nodded so vigorously that I was prepared to catch her glasses if they fell off.

“Not only do I have leads, I have a sure-fire way to zone in on his precise location, give or take a few metres or miles. It’ll take a few days to reconfigure the machine, but after that, I’ll be able to find him!” Tabitha’s excitement was contagious, and the worries of everything else just slipped away, everything beginning to shape up to be pretty damn good.

“How’d you figure that one out?” I asked, once again impressed by the amount of prowess Tabitha had in areas like this. She opened her mouth, taking a deep breath in preparation for one of her patented Tabitha Technobabble speeches that I wouldn’t understand, but Seth stepped in.

“Eddie’s DNA is linked to the space between dimensions, so we can use that to analyse where people have travelled to, and use minute traces to find the person’s almost exact location in that dimension.” He explained, while also quickly giving away that it was indeed Seth I was talking to.

“Damn! That’s pretty awesome, now I feel bad for being weirded out by him.” I said, not including the fact that I still felt like he was a glorified tapeworm. Seth just grinned, as did Tabitha, and I could feel myself grinning too. As Tabitha began to tap away at her watch, most likely to contact Amy and Aki, I turned to Rose. “Everything’s worked for the best, huh?” I said brightly.

“Yeah, everything did.” Rose replied, her voice low, but I didn’t even notice. Everything was right, wasn’t it?

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