Chapter One: New World Order "We don't have to do this." This is the story of a coward. "What do you mean?" This is the story of a failure. "We did all we could. Let's quit while we still can." This is the story of when humanity itself failed. "If that's what you want to do, Ness..." This is my story. It was 1998 when this all began. I don't know what it became while we were in the Cave of the Past. And no one is any more sure of the date than it is spring of 2008 now. But what is time besides numbers anyway? It's a gauge that holds us back. The Phase Distorter let us get around that. The Phase Distorter was our carriage into hell and out of it; even if that was not its intended purpose. Its intended purpose was impossible. So we fled. Forgot our mission. Forgot our purpose. Forgot the lives of everyone but ourselves. At the door of the end of our journey, we still only had the guts to turn around and run. But I don't like to pin the blame on myself; after all, dedication wasn't one of the three virtues Buzz Buzz told me we would need when we first met. We had changed enough. The immediate future was not the post-apocalyptic nightmare Buzz Buzz had made it out to be. We had obviously postponed that. We had postponed the obliteration of an entire world. It was still just the postponing of an inevitability; that much was accepted now. Religion was abolished. Hope was an archaic term. Life was now a countdown to a fate accepted worldwide. The monsters we had fought so valiantly, the evils we thought we had dispelled; everything was renewed. Everything that was at one-time a plot against humanity was now against us specifically. Psionics did nothing. Physical combat was obsolete. Poo died to drive that concept home for the other three of us; but he was just another statistic to this new world. Death tolls were a regular part of the evening news. Monsters and gangs were tracked instead of the weather. This was of course assuming your city still had television broadcasts; Fourside was more an exception than a standard. It was the strongest city we had left; a beacon of resistance against an encroaching evil that had already swallowed the rest of Eagleland. But hey, Buzz Buzz came back to get us "Chosen Four" because this happened. We'd stall for more time and send someone back in the Phase Distorter; recruit the next Chosen Four. Maybe even the Chosen Eight. Didn't matter who they were; numbers were probably the bigger advantage. That was another realization Poo's failure brought to us; we were no more gifted than anyone else. But that was the brilliance of our plight; of our failure. It had spawned a generation, an entire genesis within the ranks of Giygas; a spread of strategy and mechination designed solely to stop bats and psionics. They weren't ready for the onslaught of bullets met from the military; had no defense to heavy artillery shells. But that wouldn't change them now. The sheer madness of Giygas left him occupied with nothing more than the eradication of us. The conquering of the human race was postponed until he had slaughtered us a thousand times over first. So we hid. We just kept running. The military watched over us; kept us safe as assault after assault came and failed. The whole world protected us-- we were the world. That's the situation right now. I sit with legs folded in the center of a circle of armed soldiers in the back of a storage room on the sixty-third floor of the Monotoli Building in Fourside. The soldiers were cannon fodder. Bodies to feed to an ever-growing flame-- the statistic of lives that were lost to protect the single teenage boy that was me. Just more bodies to be reported on the evening news. It was a lonely existence we lived. It was hell for everyone. It was going to sleep at night with the risk you might not wake up in the morning. It was the realization of a million childhood fears. And like a wave it had swept across Eagleland, entire cities turned to ruin overnight. There was no order to the enemy we fought. Anything could be a foe. The enemy was a banker by day and an assassin by night; this is what made the war impossible to fight. We didn't even know who the enemy was anymore; it could've been your brother, your father, your dog that killed you; it was just as likely as anyone else. But people kept living. People kept dying. It's the most horrible thing I could imagine; people were living just to die. The number of suicides was staggering. It was a new world that revolved around death. I'm going to give them something new to report. I'm sick of all this running. Sick of all this death that I've propagated. Sick of being the center of someone else's plan, sick and tired of waking up just to be used in a fight that was an accepted loss. Inevitability. There was no point. This was where I gave it all a new purpose. This was where Ness came and fulfilled that promise he made so long ago. Giygas might have been able to raise an anti-psychokinetic army but real people were still as susceptible as ever. As naive as ever. As unsuspecting as ever. My heart beat a little faster and I went over the numbers; Paula would be on floor twenty-three, Jeff on the roof past the ladder on floor seventy-eight. He would have the new model of the Sky Runner "liberated" for our use. I just had to get down to Paula and then up to Jeff. Simple. One and two. The beating of my heart intensified. The beating became a throbbing in my head. The throbbing spread throughout me. Routinely, fluidly I channeled it; in and out. Inside and outside. A silent pulse came forth, a wave of psychadelic hues that resonated in the steel-laced room. The guards swayed a little, then promptly collapsed. Hypnosis. I wouldn't kill anyone if I had the option. I rushed for the elevator and kicked the down-arrow. The doorman was happy to see me at first. The smile drained away as I pressed the barrel of my gun against his waist. Like I said; bats were obsolete. Down we flew, faster than the ticker atop the little brass box could count; stopping abruptly at twenty-three. I wasn't very good at operating the elevator. The doorman was on the floor, infused with an overkill dose of paralysis. I felt no compassion for him nor cared if he would recover. Sacrifices would have to be made, after all. The door slid open. Paula nodded from across the room, a fanatical and maniacal grin as the ropes that kept her bound to the chair singed through and blackened without even a flicker of flame. She had gotten quite good. I stood in the door of the elevator and held it open. She rushed towards me; the soldiers tried to get in her way, tried to hold her back with armed rifles but that didn't matter to her. They were under strict orders not to harm us. The flames that trailed her hands knew no such orders. We were in the elevator. I kicked the radio away from the mouth of the doorman but the speckled voices that came through were already confirming help was on the way. The stairwell door swung upon across the room. The elevator door closed right in front of us; the same place the bullets stopped. I punched the button and we were off; a quick motion made painfully slow when punctuated by the gunfire that followed us. The building had been bullet-proofed to ensure our safety; ironic how that had all worked out. The scariest part was the sheer fact that we were being fired at; the elevation from being an object to be protected to an object to protect yourself from. We were just objects to them after all. We were hardly fed. Hardly allowed to sleep. Always moving. It wasn't a life fit for a person, that was sure. The door slid open. Paula and I ran. Across the floor. Footsteps clanging. To the ladder. Footsteps banging. Opening the hatch and crawling into the sunlight; only me. I didn't actually get out of the hatch. I stopped in fear as soon as I saw Jeff's body a few feet in front of me. Unconscious. Not dead. "Ness, what's the hold-up?" The heli-pad was as windy as one would expect a heli-pad to be. The ground was plain concrete, gray and cold. This was where it was not covered by a body; three soldiers were knocked-out across the platform, and a pair of researchers in white lab-coats were tremoring besides the Sky Runner. There was only one person on the whole roof-top who still stood except for me and Paula. One soldier. With no gun. I kept staring at him until I was compelled to turn away. Forcably. Psionically. "This wasn't supposed to happen, Ness." I recognized the voice instantly. Buzz Buzz. "How can you say what is and isn't supposed to happen? There's no script to life..." I felt flawed just saying it. I knew I was wrong. "I can sense your dissention. I can tell you don't mean that. And I know every bit of your plan to get off of this building." He smirked triumphantly and rested a hand against the side of the Sky Runner. "You don't know what we'll do after that though." He intended to destroy our one venue out. "Only because you don't know either." Buzz Buzz was right. We had no plans. This was our grand escape. It all ended right there. I approached slowly. Edged towards the precipice he stood on. "We mean well. We're not running away!" My voice quavered with fear. "I can't be sure of that." "What're you planning to do, then?" "To keep you here because that is all I can be assured of that will aid in the battle against the Cosmic Destroyer Giygas." It reminded me. There was a question I had bore for far too long. "How come you were spent back to tell us? Why you, out of everyone?" I shared Buzz Buzz's power of premonition. I knew the answer. I just kept moving forward as he focused on the conversation; shifted my feet in hope that he wouldn't notice me. "I knew your father." But I didn't feel the shock until he said it. "Tell me more." My interest was piqued. I couldn't bear to move forward anymore. I needed to proverbially milk him for every bit of information he had. "I wish it were that simple. It's one of the few things I am specifically not to tell you." "How does your knowing my father tie into you being sent--" He waved a finger in the air. Cautioning me. A big stop sign. He patted the Sky Runner with his other hand. "I already said that I cannot tell you. Your passage off of here will not be permitted." The game started coming together. He expected me not to hurt him because he had information I wanted. That was the Ness he knew ten years ago. Impulsive recklessness was a new trait of mine. I was close enough now. I leapt. I lunged. Just me jumping at him, half-tackling, half-punching, half just-throwing-myself-at-him. He stepped aside hastily, and I caught my balance right at the end of the roof. There was no ledge; it was a pure drop. I pivoted and Buzz was already there and waiting for my next move. "If you can't tell me that, tell me who you are!" I didn't get an answer. I got an attack. At first it felt just like a gust of wind coming at me, but when I realized the wind was blowing the other way I was quick to dodge; dodging in the right direction assuredly. I wasn't going to end up dead on a street. Not after all this. "I'm just a person Ness." Connotations. Person; a person could be a lot of things. What was a person now? Waiting to die. What was a person ten years ago? Waiting to live. No one ever really had gotten much out of life in either time period; I realized now for the first time that nothing had really changed. "That... that makes two of us." He nodded and raised an arm, slowly, ominously. Again. Another blast that I couldn't see, couldn't feel until it was almost on top of me-- and this time it was. I stagged to the side, my chest sore as if it had just been impacted quite hard. I returned the favor. Quick and deftly, a swift dose of concentrated flash. It never reached Buzz. A wall formed around him and the flash dissipated on it; a shield. Psionics were his game, not mine. "You can't beat me Ness." I didn't believe him. "You can't beat Giygas." I was a little scared. "You can't beat us." I was very scared. Flashback-- Buzz Buzz said he was just a person. Farther back. Eleven years ago. We first met. He said was not a bee. Then he was squashed like one; he had forgotten what he was and had walked right into a trap. "I don't care if you're with Giygas." He didn't want to live anymore. Didn't want to fight anymore. "You're still just a person." I slipped the gun from my pocket and pulled it into position, firing all the while; a spray of bullets. One, missed, two, closer, three, far off-- I kept shooting and kept missing. Last bullet. Nothing. He just stood there laughing. "And you're still just a kid in a world of grown-ups. That toy's a bit too advanced for you, little Ness." Little Ness. Flashback-- fifteen years ago. At school. Being made fun of. Always being made fun of-- being called little Ness. I always believed in what they called childish; believed in magic and wishes and all of that stuff your parents told you wasn't real when they thought you old enough. I was still just a kid. "There's nothing you can do, Ness! You know it yourself. The whole world knows it. It is. Inevitable." "What would you think if I told you that the whole world was wrong?" "You can only wish of such things, Ness." I just smiled and pulled the trigger. I had aimed the gun precisely at his chest while he was convinced it was empty. Had ensured if I had one last shot it would meet its destination. And it did. I turned away when I first saw red. "I can make my own wishes come true." I heard the body hit the ground. Opened my eyes. Saw Paula staring at me in a mix of exaltation and fear. Saw Jeff in her arms stirring ever so slightly. Heard the elevator bell below us. The doorman must've woken up-- either that or they just pried the door open themselves. Either way, time was up. I told Paula to get in the Sky Runner and I walked up to the body of Buzz Buzz. I bent down and checked his dog tag-- Jon Grey. It sounded fake so I let the dog tag stay on his body as I nudged it with my foot. Towards the precipice. Silently he started to fall and I rushed to the Sky Runner just as the first footsteps were on the ladder. Paula jabbed furiously and futiley at the buttons, trying to get Jeff back to able consciousness again at the same time. I manned the joystick controls and waited for a bit of engine power. She hit the right button eventually; the engine started and I shot us off into the clouds. Jeff woke up. "Ness... go to Threed..." I pointed us in the right direction and leaned back. No one felt much like talking.