Ch 37 – Dead Man’s Party

San Francisco, California, United States

Coming into the office that day, everyone was in high hopes. They had just secured a contract with a major hospital chain, and now they were going to handle all their database and inter-hospital communication operations. The excitement even rubbed off on the new intern, a smile on her face as she typed away at her computer.

The team’s first task was simple enough— upload the local hospital’s patient data to a secure cloud. So each one of them worked merrily, looking forward to their bright new futures.

That excitement and optimism in the air lasted for all of three hours, before the world turned upside down. The ground beneath them started to shake, slowly at first, but rapidly accelerating.

The California natives were no stranger to earthquakes; it had been a fact of life in the state for as long as anyone could remember. This, however, was something much bigger.

By the time the first wave ended, dozens of tables and computers were knocked over, and everyone in the office’s phones were buzzing with the same emergency alert:

Evacuate all buildings immediately. This is only a foreshock. The San Andreas Fault has shifted.

Their earlier excitement immediately forgotten, the various employees ran for the door. They knew what the emergency alert meant: this was the big one, the earthquake with the power to destroy the entire west coast.

Only one person didn’t join them. The intern remained at her desk, making a desperate attempt to back up the patient data they had on hand. The local hospital would have to be evacuated, and all the records would be inaccessible. If they couldn’t get this info, people would die.

So despite dust and debris starting to rain down from the ceiling, the intern remained. She wouldn’t let herself leave until the confirmation message popped up on her terminal.

M1ra updated 510 file(s).

The patients would be fine. It only took a few more seconds for the building to collapse around her, that final thought granting comfort while she became buried in rubble.

But a few hours later, hours after the massive earthquake and its aftershocks had finally passed, a figure within the remains of the office building began to stir ever so slightly.

British Columbia, Canada

Pieces of shattered rock and ice lined the base of the mountain. Up until a few minutes ago, it was a picturesque scene: a beautiful national park, and a hiking trail just barely visible over the layer of snow left behind from the previous day, with only the footsteps of a group of six hikers to disturb it.

Then the earthquake hit, and all of that was thrown aside. Rock formations above the trail began to loosen and fall off, crashing down one after the other in roaring thuds.

Five of the hikers managed to make it out. One did not. A massive boulder descended from above and landed squarely between the fifth and sixth members, forcing the rear hiker to stop running and figure out a way around.

She would not get as much time as she would have liked. A surge of rock and snow slid down above her, carrying her off the trail and off the side of the hill.

“RUNE!” One of the other hikers stopped to try and turn around, but was pulled away by the others. The earthquake continued to dislodge the ground surrounding them. They needed to get to safety and wait this out before even considering coming to her aid.

Meanwhile, the sixth hiker was lying in a pile of ice, snow, and stone at the base of the mountain, where she would remain undisturbed for hours. For someone to have survived what she just went through would have to be a miracle.

Yet somehow, a single one of her fingers seemed to twitch.

São Paulo, Brazil

The echo of gunfire slowly came to a close as the cops lowered their rifles. After years of trying and failing to hunt her down, an anonymous tip left one of the greatest thieves of all time finally cornered.

It was a simple shack hidden among countless others in Parelheiros, with walls that looked like a strong gust of wind could topple it over. However, they had underestimated Fanita too much in the past to take the shack at face value.

There was no knock on the door, or some command to come out and surrender. At once, dozens of rifles opened fire, easily tearing through the shack’s walls and striking the person sleeping inside.

After a minute of continuous fire, the head officer raised his hand to call for a stop. He slowly walked forward and peaked his head inside, just to make sure. Lying on her bed, covered in bullet wounds, the legendary thief Fanita lay unmoving.

To say he was pleased with his work was an understatement. He had just removed the largest thorn in the side of São Paulo. With his signal, the rest of his subordinates left, not bothering to dispose of the body or search the rest of her residence.

But as the last officers walked away, the wounds slowly closed up as Fanita’s chest began to rise and fall once again.

Atlanta, Georgia, United States

Fire and smoldering debris covered the impromptu runway, melting away a thin layer of snow. Shredded pieces of cloth lie around the wreckage, joined by shards of wood and remains of a rotary engine that had completely exploded.

Not too far from the destroyed homemade plane, a lifeless corpse was face down in the snow. Resting in her limp hand was a photograph, depicting a girl that looked like a much younger version of the corpse, standing alongside a female astronaut in a navy blue polo. The lower half of the photo, where there was once a signature, was now burned away. The only remnant was the last part of the autograph: Ride.

Slowly, the picture folded over as the young woman’s fist balled up.

Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico

Two men stared at the woman lying across from them, and the three bullet holes that punctured her body.

“She should know better than to get in the way.” The taller of the two men rubbed a black and purple section of his cheek, while moving the gun pointed at the woman back to the other man. “Now if you don’t want any other ‘rescuers’ to go the same way, you’ll come with me.”

“Y-Yes sir.” The other man was shaking in fear as he was led away from the riverbed. Yet he couldn’t help but let his eyes drift towards the woman who tried to save him.

She had no idea who he was or what was going on. Despite this, she immediately tried to save him anyway. But the only thing she could do was deliver a punch squarely to his attacker’s face before she was gunned down.

As he slowly followed the gunman away from the Rio Grande, he whispered a silent prayer. The woman was, beyond any shadow of a doubt, crazy. But for anyone to have immediately come to his aid like that, she must have been an angel.

He made one final look back, and noticed a kid looking on at them on the American side of the river. He was so focused on the kid that he didn’t notice the bullet holes in his would-be savior begin to close up.

Sector NE-2, North Atlantic Federation

Air raid sirens echoed around the remains of the city, somehow still blaring despite the complete annihilation of everything around them.

What was once a great city filled with people was now a nuclear hellscape, a transition that occurred over the course of ten minutes as the North Atlantic Federation went to war.

The only structure that managed to remain standing after the carnage was a concrete nuclear power plant, on the fringe of the city. While thoroughly irradiated, it was still intact. In the control room was a series of bodies. A few stirred, others lie dead, but only one was sitting in front of the control panel: a child, no older than 12.

The foreman barely had time to understand what happened. One moment, everything was business as usual; the next air raid sirens went off. And while all his highly trained workers were panicking and yelling, this kid came in.

He could recognize the manager’s son anywhere, those leaf green glasses were their own kind of fashion statement. And he knew the kid was some sort of prodigy, but he didn’t expect him to sit down at the control panel.

Then within 30 seconds, there was bold red text on the monitor: Reactor emergency shutdown activated.

He didn’t even have the chance to thank the kid, the radiation sickness making him collapse moments later.

The foreman rested with a smile. He was terrified that it was a kid who had to save them, but because of his sacrifice the city would be habitable once again. And as he closed his eyes one last time, he could swear he saw the kid’s face shift just barely.

Laredo, Texas, United States

The fireball was visible from blocks away, as spectators raced towards the epicenter. In the center of a crowded street, a pickup truck had completely blown up, scattering debris into the air.

The onlookers let out cries of sympathy as they saw a charred corpse land alongside the wreckage of the truck. While it was too scarred to be recognizable, there was no doubt that the driver was young, probably someone who had just gotten their license.

And as police cars raced down the street from the direction the car was heading, a single man ducked into the shadows, pulling out a flip phone and saying a quick message in Spanish.

“The witness won’t be reporting anything.”

He hung up before the other side could respond. The blast was way too big to be a simple accident, anyone would be able to figure that out. But his boss was clear: some kid saw him take down a girl getting in the way from the other side of the border, he needed to be taken out before he could make it to the police. Not that it was likely the Americans would get him, but it could make some of their operations more difficult than it needed to be.

So with a hidden bomb and grandiose explosion, the secret died with the kid. But as he walked away from the blast, he could swear he noticed some of the charred remains looked less broken than before.

Must have been his imagination.

Sion, Switzerland

Snow lightly fell over the resort as a dozen servants scampered about, every single one of them confused. All the British housekeepers knew was that a member of the German royalty was in the building next to their own crown prince.

Why they decided to do this while the Great War was raging on was subject of countless debates, both within the German and British groups and, when they were confident their bosses weren’t looking, between the groups as well.

What started to make things very odd was when the crown prince entered the German’s room, explicitly stating he was not to be followed. He did, however, demand one servant to keep a camera with them.

When they asked the single German housekeeper who could speak in broken English what was happening, they gave a similar story: The German heir wanted to be left alone in his quarters, but to allow the British man passage. Just like his counterpart, he instructed one servant to carry a camera.

So the 12 waited outside, occasionally shooting charged glances at each other in equal parts concern and curiosity.

Eventually, after an hour of standing out in the cold, two simultaneous gunshots rang out. Immediately, the two servants closest to the entrance burst through the door, concerned for the worst.

What greeted them was a sight none of them had expected. The heirs to the British and German thrones both lay limp in their chairs, each carrying a pistol that was facing towards themselves. Hung up over the fireplace was an old Swiss newspaper, talking about the Christmas Truce of 1914. Written underneath the headline in bold red ink were two sentences, one written in English and the other in German. Both said the same message.

End the war.

The two servants began to understand what was happening. They took pictures of the scene, making sure the photos left no doubt of what had happened here. This was not a firefight or a duel, the room’s interior was far too calm for that. This was two young men giving away their lives in a desperate plea to end the Great War.

As the British servant finished taking her pictures, she took one last look back at the would-be monarchs. They had shot themselves, and were unquestionably dead. Yet it almost appeared their faces had more color than when she first broke in.

Mammoth Lakes, California, United States

When Blizz was physically capable of perceiving anything again, the first thing he noticed was the cold. It started as a dull nipping sensation, but the closer he returned to consciousness, the more intense it got.

It wasn’t something he was used to feeling as a Treecko or a Grovyle. As he was wondering why he was feeling it now, the realization began to set in.

He couldn’t feel the streams of grass coming off from his hands, or the tail he once had. There was just a pair of normal arms and legs. No grass type energy coursed through his body, nor could he feel the weight of his bag that had become a constant through his time in Varin.

The only semblance of familiarity he experienced was a pair of red and green goggles pressing into his face.

He struggled for a moment, desperately flailing to get his head above the ubiquitous layers of snow and ice that had buried him who-knows-how-long ago.

After some struggle he finally managed to poke his head above the ground. All that greeted him was a vast white expanse of snow, and a cloudless blue sky above. When he looked back down, there was a normal human upper body.

It was over.

There were no teammates around him, no beautiful view of Varin, not even that desperate silence after Absol activated the conduits. He was back on Earth.

He could hear birds chirp as he struggled to free the rest of his body from the snow. Something about this felt way too familiar.

“This isn’t how it’s supposed to go for you.”

A voice rang out in Blizz’s mind, distracting him.

“All alone on a mountain that should have killed you.”

Blizz thought back to his last moments in Varin. This wasn’t Mewtwo, nor was it that mystical voice that spoke to him as he fell from the Hall of Origin. It was more human and down to earth. Instead of the deep reverb of a god, there was a simple plainness.

In some abstract way, it almost reminded him of his own voice.

“This isn’t the ending you want.”

“What are you talking about?” Blizz’s voice was lower pitched than he remembered. Even compared to his Grovyle form, it seemed like the human version of him was a couple octaves deeper.

“Isolated and alone. None of your friends are here, and from where you are now, you’ll never see them again.”

Blizz knew that. It was a thought that lingered in the back of his mind since the moment Mewtwo explained they would be sent back. It wasn’t very much of a surprise that now-

“I can change that.”

That immediately cut off Blizz’s internal monologue.

“…What?”

“I can set things to the way they should be. You’ll be returned to Varin, and live among them once again. You just need to accept.”

A very small part of Blizz was concerned. He had no idea what he was agreeing too, nor did he know what this voice was.

But he also knew this was his only chance. Even if he could somehow figure out who everyone else was on Earth, they were scattered through time. Here, he was given the choice between a world he was only barely starting to remember, or the land that he saved alongside all his friends and allies.

To even call it a choice was a gross overstatement.

“So you’ll take my offer?”

“Alright,” Blizz said, still staring out at the horizon. “…I accept.”

For a brief moment, it looked as if the sky above him cracked.