Written: Friday. July 24, 2020.
Amanda had been working on the ship’s repairs for quite a few hours since she and the others overheard Toby and Lady Veergha’s conversation about the state of things, and the things to come, still. They had gotten out of the igloo Sphen the Tinkering Penguin had made, and he switched it back into a mini-igloo — it sort of looked like a cute key-chain from afar — and pocketed it into one of his many pockets. Amanda found it adorable that Sphen was wearing what seemed like a multi-zipper fanny pack of some kind. The fanny pack was made out of pure ice. She still wasn’t clear as to what perma-frost meant, but it seemed to be what made the ice not melt.
It took a moment for her to collect herself when Lady Veergha tasked her to do repairs on their ship. She said that it was lethal to remove the Inheritance in her system, especially now that the Earth was being destroyed every passing hour. It might cause her to die if she gave it back now, so it was up to her to do the repairs. Her only concern was if she even knew how to handle repairing an alien space ship. The Lady told her that she only needed to put both her palms toward any surface of the ship, and she’ll be able to know what to do. She wanted to ask more questions after hearing that, but Lady Veergha walked off, as if no further conversation was necessary between her and Amanda. She saw the Lady turn into an amalgamation of two or three wild animals. She couldn’t, for the life of her, begin to describe what she saw, but it was too late for that anyway, since the Lady ran off somewhere faster than she ever did when she had those powers.
When Amanda put her hands on top of the ship’s hull, she began to see things inside of her thoughts. It was like seeing a million pictures of the insides of a computer — a very weird, definitely alien-made, computer. She took it all into account, no matter how overwhelming it all felt. She barely noticed that she had closed her eyes, and when she opened them up again, her hands weren’t hands anymore. her fingers sort of etched themselves into the metallic skin of the ship. It was as if both of her arms were melded together in some sort of alloy similar to the ship. And she noticed glowing lights running from her, and through the entire ship. She noticed that the massive holes were slowly being closed up by new incoming metal. Was this her power? To be a supply of metal that can escape her body at will in order to do repairs on whatever technological surface it could find or recognize? What if she held a broken Nokia? That’d be ridiculous. Nokia’s don’t break. They just retire.
“Looking good with those ship repairs, Mandy.” Tom regarded her. She looked immediately to where she heard him speak, and was confused at what she saw. Amanda was looking at what might’ve been Jeff Goldblum…’s half-way transformation into a Cronenberg Fly. Only that Tom’s clothes were still intact. She loathed looking at his smug face even before he turned out like this. But now that Tom looks like a complete abomination, Amanda seemed…to be okay with this. “I know what you’re thinking,” Tom said to her, as he dangled from a silver thread. “It’s not that I wanna look like this. I don’t want to look like this at all. But I think the new atmosphere we’re in is affecting my handsomely good looking face.”
“And entirety.” Amanda added.
“Yes. That too. Remind me again, will you?”
“And entirety.” Amanda happily obliged.
“God damn you. Anyway, just wanted to check up on how you’re doing. And also maybe try to scare you with how I look right now. I think I could pull this off, you know. That son of a bitch Omnius might bolt out of our planet if he happens to see me looking like this. Or maybe he’d recruit me cause I definitely look like a monster, which is what Omnius probably is at this point. Do you think you could spare me a little ounce of your blood?”
“What? No! Go away!” Amanda tried making all of her body into pure metallic alloy, but nothing seemed to happen. “Didn’t Lady give you any chores to do while we prep up for the fight? Like honing your bug abilities?”
“I didn’t pay much attention to what she said, I was busy figuring out if I liked her knew look or not. She still sort of looks like that Mara girl from school. I dunno if liking how she looks is a bad thing to be doing since that’s Toby’s girl, or whatever their deal is.” Amanda laughed at him. Tom tilted his head. “What’s so funny?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t take you seriously, dude. Do you seriously not see yourself right now? You look like something straight out of a horror movie, and you’re still worrying about girls.”
“Hey man! It’s the end of the world, what do you want me to do? Get depressed? That’s the last thing I wanna feel at this moment. I wonder if I could still get some cell-service — “
“The towers are probably destroyed already. And who in the hell are you gonna text at this point? All your girlfriends are probably dead by now. Don’t you understand that?”
Tom let go of the thread and landed on the floor to meet Amanda’s line of sight. His voice deepened, “No need to be too serious, Amanda.” He turned back from her and started walking. “Let us know if you’re done with the repairs, or whatever.”
Amanda didn’t know what to say. She was just being realistic. My friends and family are probably dead, too… Was he just trying to cheer me up? Make conversation? That bug-boy has never been clear to me.
June and Toby were the only ones capable of flight, so they were tasked on finding supply for the ship. Any food or water they could find from broken down marketplaces. And if they find civilians trapped inside of buildings — or just alive in general — they would help them escape or reach a safe place in all this mess. They’ve been flying for a long time now, in a very silent, non-talkative fashion. Toby didn’t look like he wanted to have a conversation right now. June wanted to respect that. But who knows how much time we have left? June thought to herself. The world is in great peril, and he decides to mope around like an emo kid? “Toby — “
“Look! Over there!” Toby pointed downwards. They were about thirty feet high off the ground. June looked to where he was pointing, and saw a bunch of people waving their hands up and heard faint shouts.
“What do we do?” June asked Toby. She had been following his lead the whole flight. “Do we land? Do we help them out?”
“We should, but what help can we do?” Toby said to her, which made both of them silent again as they hovered above the newly found survivors.
“We could carry them to — oh wait, no, that’s a bad idea for me to do.” She remembered that she was basically a female version of the human torch, and that anything she touches could get burned. “But we can’t just leave them — “
“That’s what we’re gonna do.” Toby answered her, with a tone as cold as the igloo Sphen the Penguin had made.
June shuddered at the thought of leaving these people. “We can’t just do that, Toby!”
“We should find food first.” Toby said to her. “I’ll gather enough for ourselves, and carry as much as I can to give for the people down there.”
“I thought you said we should leave them?” June asked him.
“Yeah, but like, just for the moment. We don’t really have anything to offer them when we land. We can’t carry them, cause we just means me. And we don’t have food yet. They’re probably hungry right now, and they can’t really go anywhere safely like we can.”
June took what Toby said into account. “Alright.” June sighed. “I really thought for a moment there that you’d actually let us leave them just like that.”
Toby didn’t answer her. They continued on with searching for supplies.
Drew was left to watch over the four strange characters. He was fond of conversing with Tetsu and Sphen. They were both equally willing to talk about things they did in the other realm, where they came from. Squidward the Wizard wasn’t really up for small-talk. He was always distant from the five of them. Macrodon was distant as well. He conversed a little, but he would often scout the area for potential trouble. Must be a knight’s code of conduct, or something.
“Don’t mind him.” Tetsu said to Drew, as if reading his thoughts as clear as day. “He’s probably sad.”
“How come?” Drew asked the turtle ninja. He resisted asking the most important question he could ask the turtle: Does he like pizza? Or does pizza even exist in their realm?
“The first time I saw Macrodon,” the turtle ninja said, “he wasn’t even a knight yet. He knew nothing of the sword. But when he broke me out of my cell — long story — I swore to teach him what I knew of the way of the sword.”
“How does that explain why he’s distant from others?” Drew asked, in the most polite way possible. But inside, he wasn’t sure if Tetsu was in the same page as he was.
“I trained Macrodon for about half a year in your human-time, and when he was ready to wield the Legendary Weapon — the one he’s holding right now — we were off to defeating the Dark Dragon.”
“I don’t wanna be rude, now.” Drew said, cautiously. “But I still don’t know how all this is relevant to my question earlier — “
“Macrodon is strangest frog I’ve ever met.” Sphen the Penguin butted in. “I’ve met a couple of Anurans before, but never as strange a story as his.”
Great, now I’m following two stories.
“Whenever he talked of the human realm — this realm that we’re in — the three of us were always skeptical of him. Well, Octopoda wasn’t that much surprised out of us three. He’d read the archives pertaining to the other realms. And the human realm was one of them. But we were always ignorant to the thought. A realm without even a hint of the Source? Those were foolish nonsense to us Zo’otonians.”
“That’s what we’re called, little human brother.” Tetsu added. “Zo’otonia is the name of the country we live in on our realm.”
“Right.” Drew said to the turtle. He faced back to the Penguin. “So why is Macrodon acting that way?”
“I’ll tell you why he’s acting that way.” Octopoda the Wizard came up to join them from behind. The Turtle Ninja and the Penguin Tinkerer jumped in surprise. “It’s because he’s devastated by what he sees before him right now. All this destruction. All these dead humans lying about in the dark flat grounds. He imagined returning to this realm seeing everything he had remembered from it before he was transported to Zo’otonia.”
“Thank you.” Drew said to the Octopian Wizard. He looked to the other two, seeing if they were offended by it. Bu they weren’t. He let out a sigh. “Well, I guess I know now why he’s acting that way.”
“I told him we should’ve went at earlier moment in time.” Octopoda said to him. “To capture the Fjankhetto in its infancy.”
“Wait, you could do that?” Drew said.
“Of course I can. I’m a wizard! I know Chronomancy spells. Well, I’m no expert, but I most certainly know enough of it.”
“So you’re telling me we could go back in time to fix everything that happened?”
“We could.” Octopoda answered, and then folded his tentacle arms. “But I’m not doing it for you, out of protest.”
“Come on, man.”
June and Toby went to where the survivors were once they found a bunch of supplies that survived the destruction. The survivors were hesitant at first, but when June cleared out her flames, they slowly and cautiously went near them to greet them for their salvation.
“Thank you!” All of the survivors said to them. There were about eleven of them that were huddled up together. Three of them were Adults, five of them were teenagers, and the remaining three were children. Toby recognized one of the teenagers to be his former-neighbor, who was also a childhood friend of his, since he would always come to their house to play toys.
“Are any of you okay?” June asked the group of survivors. All of them nodded, until one of the adults pointed towards a kid who had his head down the whole time.
“Brandon’s got severe burns on his right side.” One of the Adults said. The kid named Brandon looked up slightly, and moved his shirt up, revealing the massive burns on the sides of his stomach, all the way up to his arm. A part of his face was also burnt up.
“How did he get burned?” June asked. Shit, we didn’t even think to find medical supplies. She moved towards the kid, but Brandon stepped back once she did. She was confused, bu then Toby put his hand to her shoulder.
“I think I should handle this one, June.” Toby said to her. She still didn’t understand, until she looked back again to the kid, and realized why. He was scared of her. Does he think I’ll end up burning him or something?
Toby crouched to meet Brandon’s line of sight. “Hey, buddy.” The kid moved further away from him, and put himself behind one of the teenagers.
“Toby,” one of the teens — Toby’s childhood neighbor — spoke up. “Brandon’s a bit of a shy kid.”
“Is he your little brother, Karl?” Toby asked his neighbor.
“Yeah, man. He came around just a year after you guys moved out from the house in front of ours.” Karl answered. “Come to think of it, our house is probably in ruins right now.”
“You and me both, Karl.” Toby said to him.
“Do you know what’s going on here, Toby?” Karl asked him. “What was that big black thing back there?”
Toby didn’t answer him. Instead, he grabbed a water bottle from the supplies they’d brought. “Hey Brandon, wanna see something cool?”
Brandon looked out from behind Karl’s legs. Toby opened up the bottle and let the water drip out. Only, the water didn’t exactly follow the rules of physics. It circled around the air, like its gravity was being manipulated or something. June realized that the atmosphere must’ve been making the water levitate easily as she observed what was happening. Toby moved his hands in the air, and slight shifts in the air caused the water to move around Toby’s will.
“Come take a look, Brandon.” Toby said to the kid.
“How’re you doing that, Toby?” Karl asked him. Toby only concentrated on the water floating in the air. When Brandon was near enough, Toby asked him to raised his shirt up. “Trust me.” he said to him.
Brandon raised his shirt, and Toby let the water touch Brandon’s skin. Brandon shifted in pain a little, bit soon, he was letting out gasps of air. Like how one would react when alcohol hits a wounded part of their skin.
“There, see?” the water slowly went from Brandon’s stomach, and onto his arm and face. The burns slightly looked like it healed themselves once the water fully evaporated.
“How’d you do that?” June asked out of surprise. She realized Karl had asked the same thing.
“I don’t know.” Toby answered plainly. “Who else here needs tending to?”
Amanda had been working on the ship’s repairs for quite a few hours since she and the others overheard Toby and Lady Veergha’s conversation about the state of things, and the things to come, still. They had gotten out of the igloo Sphen the Tinkering Penguin had made, and he switched it back into a mini-igloo — it sort of looked like a cute key-chain from afar — and pocketed it into one of his many pockets. Amanda found it adorable that Sphen was wearing what seemed like a multi-zipper fanny pack of some kind. The fanny pack was made out of pure ice. She still wasn’t clear as to what perma-frost meant, but it seemed to be what made the ice not melt.
It took a moment for her to collect herself when Lady Veergha tasked her to do repairs on their ship. She said that it was lethal to remove the Inheritance in her system, especially now that the Earth was being destroyed every passing hour. It might cause her to die if she gave it back now, so it was up to her to do the repairs. Her only concern was if she even knew how to handle repairing an alien space ship. The Lady told her that she only needed to put both her palms toward any surface of the ship, and she’ll be able to know what to do. She wanted to ask more questions after hearing that, but Lady Veergha walked off, as if no further conversation was necessary between her and Amanda. She saw the Lady turn into an amalgamation of two or three wild animals. She couldn’t, for the life of her, begin to describe what she saw, but it was too late for that anyway, since the Lady ran off somewhere faster than she ever did when she had those powers.
When Amanda put her hands on top of the ship’s hull, she began to see things inside of her thoughts. It was like seeing a million pictures of the insides of a computer — a very weird, definitely alien-made, computer. She took it all into account, no matter how overwhelming it all felt. She barely noticed that she had closed her eyes, and when she opened them up again, her hands weren’t hands anymore. her fingers sort of etched themselves into the metallic skin of the ship. It was as if both of her arms were melded together in some sort of alloy similar to the ship. And she noticed glowing lights running from her, and through the entire ship. She noticed that the massive holes were slowly being closed up by new incoming metal. Was this her power? To be a supply of metal that can escape her body at will in order to do repairs on whatever technological surface it could find or recognize? What if she held a broken Nokia? That’d be ridiculous. Nokia’s don’t break. They just retire.
“Looking good with those ship repairs, Mandy.” Tom regarded her. She looked immediately to where she heard him speak, and was confused at what she saw. Amanda was looking at what might’ve been Jeff Goldblum…’s half-way transformation into a Cronenberg Fly. Only that Tom’s clothes were still intact. She loathed looking at his smug face even before he turned out like this. But now that Tom looks like a complete abomination, Amanda seemed…to be okay with this. “I know what you’re thinking,” Tom said to her, as he dangled from a silver thread. “It’s not that I wanna look like this. I don’t want to look like this at all. But I think the new atmosphere we’re in is affecting my handsomely good looking face.”
“And entirety.” Amanda added.
“Yes. That too. Remind me again, will you?”
“And entirety.” Amanda happily obliged.
“God damn you. Anyway, just wanted to check up on how you’re doing. And also maybe try to scare you with how I look right now. I think I could pull this off, you know. That son of a bitch Omnius might bolt out of our planet if he happens to see me looking like this. Or maybe he’d recruit me cause I definitely look like a monster, which is what Omnius probably is at this point. Do you think you could spare me a little ounce of your blood?”
“What? No! Go away!” Amanda tried making all of her body into pure metallic alloy, but nothing seemed to happen. “Didn’t Lady give you any chores to do while we prep up for the fight? Like honing your bug abilities?”
“I didn’t pay much attention to what she said, I was busy figuring out if I liked her knew look or not. She still sort of looks like that Mara girl from school. I dunno if liking how she looks is a bad thing to be doing since that’s Toby’s girl, or whatever their deal is.” Amanda laughed at him. Tom tilted his head. “What’s so funny?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t take you seriously, dude. Do you seriously not see yourself right now? You look like something straight out of a horror movie, and you’re still worrying about girls.”
“Hey man! It’s the end of the world, what do you want me to do? Get depressed? That’s the last thing I wanna feel at this moment. I wonder if I could still get some cell-service — “
“The towers are probably destroyed already. And who in the hell are you gonna text at this point? All your girlfriends are probably dead by now. Don’t you understand that?”
Tom let go of the thread and landed on the floor to meet Amanda’s line of sight. His voice deepened, “No need to be too serious, Amanda.” He turned back from her and started walking. “Let us know if you’re done with the repairs, or whatever.”
Amanda didn’t know what to say. She was just being realistic. My friends and family are probably dead, too… Was he just trying to cheer me up? Make conversation? That bug-boy has never been clear to me.
* * *
June and Toby were the only ones capable of flight, so they were tasked on finding supply for the ship. Any food or water they could find from broken down marketplaces. And if they find civilians trapped inside of buildings — or just alive in general — they would help them escape or reach a safe place in all this mess. They’ve been flying for a long time now, in a very silent, non-talkative fashion. Toby didn’t look like he wanted to have a conversation right now. June wanted to respect that. But who knows how much time we have left? June thought to herself. The world is in great peril, and he decides to mope around like an emo kid? “Toby — “
“Look! Over there!” Toby pointed downwards. They were about thirty feet high off the ground. June looked to where he was pointing, and saw a bunch of people waving their hands up and heard faint shouts.
“What do we do?” June asked Toby. She had been following his lead the whole flight. “Do we land? Do we help them out?”
“We should, but what help can we do?” Toby said to her, which made both of them silent again as they hovered above the newly found survivors.
“We could carry them to — oh wait, no, that’s a bad idea for me to do.” She remembered that she was basically a female version of the human torch, and that anything she touches could get burned. “But we can’t just leave them — “
“That’s what we’re gonna do.” Toby answered her, with a tone as cold as the igloo Sphen the Penguin had made.
June shuddered at the thought of leaving these people. “We can’t just do that, Toby!”
“We should find food first.” Toby said to her. “I’ll gather enough for ourselves, and carry as much as I can to give for the people down there.”
“I thought you said we should leave them?” June asked him.
“Yeah, but like, just for the moment. We don’t really have anything to offer them when we land. We can’t carry them, cause we just means me. And we don’t have food yet. They’re probably hungry right now, and they can’t really go anywhere safely like we can.”
June took what Toby said into account. “Alright.” June sighed. “I really thought for a moment there that you’d actually let us leave them just like that.”
Toby didn’t answer her. They continued on with searching for supplies.
* * *
Drew was left to watch over the four strange characters. He was fond of conversing with Tetsu and Sphen. They were both equally willing to talk about things they did in the other realm, where they came from. Squidward the Wizard wasn’t really up for small-talk. He was always distant from the five of them. Macrodon was distant as well. He conversed a little, but he would often scout the area for potential trouble. Must be a knight’s code of conduct, or something.
“Don’t mind him.” Tetsu said to Drew, as if reading his thoughts as clear as day. “He’s probably sad.”
“How come?” Drew asked the turtle ninja. He resisted asking the most important question he could ask the turtle: Does he like pizza? Or does pizza even exist in their realm?
“The first time I saw Macrodon,” the turtle ninja said, “he wasn’t even a knight yet. He knew nothing of the sword. But when he broke me out of my cell — long story — I swore to teach him what I knew of the way of the sword.”
“How does that explain why he’s distant from others?” Drew asked, in the most polite way possible. But inside, he wasn’t sure if Tetsu was in the same page as he was.
“I trained Macrodon for about half a year in your human-time, and when he was ready to wield the Legendary Weapon — the one he’s holding right now — we were off to defeating the Dark Dragon.”
“I don’t wanna be rude, now.” Drew said, cautiously. “But I still don’t know how all this is relevant to my question earlier — “
“Macrodon is strangest frog I’ve ever met.” Sphen the Penguin butted in. “I’ve met a couple of Anurans before, but never as strange a story as his.”
Great, now I’m following two stories.
“Whenever he talked of the human realm — this realm that we’re in — the three of us were always skeptical of him. Well, Octopoda wasn’t that much surprised out of us three. He’d read the archives pertaining to the other realms. And the human realm was one of them. But we were always ignorant to the thought. A realm without even a hint of the Source? Those were foolish nonsense to us Zo’otonians.”
“That’s what we’re called, little human brother.” Tetsu added. “Zo’otonia is the name of the country we live in on our realm.”
“Right.” Drew said to the turtle. He faced back to the Penguin. “So why is Macrodon acting that way?”
“I’ll tell you why he’s acting that way.” Octopoda the Wizard came up to join them from behind. The Turtle Ninja and the Penguin Tinkerer jumped in surprise. “It’s because he’s devastated by what he sees before him right now. All this destruction. All these dead humans lying about in the dark flat grounds. He imagined returning to this realm seeing everything he had remembered from it before he was transported to Zo’otonia.”
“Thank you.” Drew said to the Octopian Wizard. He looked to the other two, seeing if they were offended by it. Bu they weren’t. He let out a sigh. “Well, I guess I know now why he’s acting that way.”
“I told him we should’ve went at earlier moment in time.” Octopoda said to him. “To capture the Fjankhetto in its infancy.”
“Wait, you could do that?” Drew said.
“Of course I can. I’m a wizard! I know Chronomancy spells. Well, I’m no expert, but I most certainly know enough of it.”
“So you’re telling me we could go back in time to fix everything that happened?”
“We could.” Octopoda answered, and then folded his tentacle arms. “But I’m not doing it for you, out of protest.”
“Come on, man.”
* * *
June and Toby went to where the survivors were once they found a bunch of supplies that survived the destruction. The survivors were hesitant at first, but when June cleared out her flames, they slowly and cautiously went near them to greet them for their salvation.
“Thank you!” All of the survivors said to them. There were about eleven of them that were huddled up together. Three of them were Adults, five of them were teenagers, and the remaining three were children. Toby recognized one of the teenagers to be his former-neighbor, who was also a childhood friend of his, since he would always come to their house to play toys.
“Are any of you okay?” June asked the group of survivors. All of them nodded, until one of the adults pointed towards a kid who had his head down the whole time.
“Brandon’s got severe burns on his right side.” One of the Adults said. The kid named Brandon looked up slightly, and moved his shirt up, revealing the massive burns on the sides of his stomach, all the way up to his arm. A part of his face was also burnt up.
“How did he get burned?” June asked. Shit, we didn’t even think to find medical supplies. She moved towards the kid, but Brandon stepped back once she did. She was confused, bu then Toby put his hand to her shoulder.
“I think I should handle this one, June.” Toby said to her. She still didn’t understand, until she looked back again to the kid, and realized why. He was scared of her. Does he think I’ll end up burning him or something?
Toby crouched to meet Brandon’s line of sight. “Hey, buddy.” The kid moved further away from him, and put himself behind one of the teenagers.
“Toby,” one of the teens — Toby’s childhood neighbor — spoke up. “Brandon’s a bit of a shy kid.”
“Is he your little brother, Karl?” Toby asked his neighbor.
“Yeah, man. He came around just a year after you guys moved out from the house in front of ours.” Karl answered. “Come to think of it, our house is probably in ruins right now.”
“You and me both, Karl.” Toby said to him.
“Do you know what’s going on here, Toby?” Karl asked him. “What was that big black thing back there?”
Toby didn’t answer him. Instead, he grabbed a water bottle from the supplies they’d brought. “Hey Brandon, wanna see something cool?”
Brandon looked out from behind Karl’s legs. Toby opened up the bottle and let the water drip out. Only, the water didn’t exactly follow the rules of physics. It circled around the air, like its gravity was being manipulated or something. June realized that the atmosphere must’ve been making the water levitate easily as she observed what was happening. Toby moved his hands in the air, and slight shifts in the air caused the water to move around Toby’s will.
“Come take a look, Brandon.” Toby said to the kid.
“How’re you doing that, Toby?” Karl asked him. Toby only concentrated on the water floating in the air. When Brandon was near enough, Toby asked him to raised his shirt up. “Trust me.” he said to him.
Brandon raised his shirt, and Toby let the water touch Brandon’s skin. Brandon shifted in pain a little, bit soon, he was letting out gasps of air. Like how one would react when alcohol hits a wounded part of their skin.
“There, see?” the water slowly went from Brandon’s stomach, and onto his arm and face. The burns slightly looked like it healed themselves once the water fully evaporated.
“How’d you do that?” June asked out of surprise. She realized Karl had asked the same thing.
“I don’t know.” Toby answered plainly. “Who else here needs tending to?”
End of Chapter.
* * *
* * *
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