Chapter One: Prelude
The world is a sphere you know, the mind is a bouncing ball. Life is a rolling stone, Death is as mysterious as the dark side of the moon. Kids these days are cruel, treating their elders like relics of the past, old people are so square. I am a special kid, I was born with kindness, I’ll let you know this, I didn’t cry after birth. When I was born I was home, this planet is where I naturally belong, I couldn’t be more content standing on the soft, sweet grass with the warm, round breeze brushing aside stray hairs and tickling my skin.
Did you know that everything is a sphere?
I oppose the popular belief that there are two sides to every coin; there are a thousand facets to every flat surface, a million unique atoms to every penny. So I know that when I say I love this earth I’m saying that I love an unimaginable amount of things, I know that if I hate it when something hurts my home that I could be hating the very thing I love.
Fate knew that I was like this too, and decided to test my faith.
It was night time and the stars hung in the sky like taunting piñatas just outside of a good bats range, but twinkling merrily so to keep up the hope that they could someday be swatted from the heavens. As I often do at night I was sleeping, soundly and dreaming of an enormous slice of pie, and I’m not one to exaggerate these things, this pie was at least the size of sky’s horizon. I don’t know if you can really know my joy, but all I could see was pie in all directions, if there is a physical container of pure contentment, it is the pie tin.
I did not get to enjoy my dream for long, there was a noise. A noisy noise. An awfully noisy noise, a crash so to speak, a bang, a thunderclap on the hills of my beloved mother earth. I’ll let you know, noise causes vibration, you can sometimes feel it, especially when the noise is loud. Well, my awakening noise was loud in that way, loud enough to raise my bed, move it off the metal legs it stood on rather flimsily. Needless to say crooked beds don’t hold boys and I was captive to downward pull.
I can’t sleep on the floor, too stiff, far too stiff. So, what can a boy do in such a situation? I stood up.
The lights came on and I knew something was going on, my family is not one to suddenly get up in the middle of the night, no sir. But, this was a good thing, it was a confirmation of noise. You know, no one is really too aware of what’s going on when they wake up, I’m no exception, I could have fallen off my bed, my bed could have tipped over, that noise could have been part of my wonderful dreaming of pie, but no, there was something actual about the situation, there was something going on.
To the door, out into the hall to my sister’s room, this was the logical path, and so it was done with a killer intensity, I was a beautiful galloping stag right up to the point where I opened Tracy’s bedroom door, brought my foot through a carefully wrapped present the size of a doll house, through a dozen shrink wrapped chocolate chip cookies and tripped face first, landing inches away from Tracy’s feet. She screamed, most likely out of rage, cookies are a rarity around these parts, hard to keep a hold of really.
I rolled over onto my back stared up at her still open mouth and waved timidly at the person who was most likely at the given moment to beat me to death with the family security device, “Old Smashy” and sure enough, it was already in her hands, which were far over her head, poised and ready to crush my face into several small pieces.
“Hi Tracy…”
“Ness, what are you doing?”
I rolled out of the way and sat up on my knees, present still firmly attached to my ankle, “I came to see if you were okay…”
“Aw, how sweet.”
Tracy’s arms fell limp to her sides and she had a warm glow to her eyes, so I of course snatched Old Smashy right out of her hand and made for the door, she reacted quickly, a little too quickly if you ask me, and kicked the door closed, assumed the battle position she had learned god knows where and proceeded to kick me in the forehead. We both stood/ flailed in pain there for a second, then without speaking trotted downstairs to find Mom ready with a pie in each hand. Now that’s service.
Now to say that my Mom and I don’t speak often or about much wouldn’t be an inaccurate thing to say, we have an understanding with each other, an underlying sense of duty and respect, a love of pie and a desire to make it. I could tell with one look at those freshly made and steaming beauties that we had a long night ahead of us, I turned and looked to Tracy, she nodded and we sat down at the dinner table, hands outstretched and eager to partake in this delicious dessert.
Time Passed, as it tends to do, and I found myself standing beyond my beloved fence, bat in hand, cap firmly in place. My shirt flapping gently in the wind, several sizes too large for me but oh so chic, the purple and yellow parallel bars contorting and creasing creates a field for the mind, I looked up from the scene, the world reflected the vibrating illusion my shirt had cast, I blinked and it was gone, strange but intriguing.
Tracy was there, standing next to me, wrapped up in a bright yellow sweater, which was dimmed by the pale moonlight cascading down over these rigid hills. I could see it in the distance, the sphere on fire, attacker of my mother earth. It was a bizarre light show up there, moving like the tide of the ocean, there would be a strong surge of orange burning glow, followed by a quick foaming of red and blue flashed against the strong trees and mincing invader. I could hear it too, the sirens and cracking, but even with the presence of noise there was an eerie silence. Tracy looked nervous, so I took her by the sweater sleeve and tried to look as confident as I could, marching up hill towards the maelstrom of color, noise and activity.
The hills are a complicated series of winding paths set against steep cliffs and thorn bushes, shrubs and ingrown trees. I’m not one to get scared easily, but tonight the atmosphere was almost too much to handle, the moon was bright and there was a white glow washing onto the hillside, this would be nice normally, but the fire at our destination was making the shadows sinister, every black shadow and bit of twilight was outlined with its own shadow of red and yellow flickering light. Every movement of light brought about a sense of activity to the serene night’s scene. I could see the local animals, hidden in bushes, under tree’s branches, peering out of their burrows and caves. There was something going on, even with the animals, for a moment I thought I saw a dog looking at us, with an expression of contempt on its face.
I noticed tire tracks running haphazardly along the walking trail. The police were here in record time, probably sleeping in their cars waiting for the local gangs to cause some trouble. I imagine it was probably a pretty funny site to see, as the cops were bounced from their seats, coffee and doughnuts suspended in midair for a second before cometing down on freshly cleaned uniforms. I could see them up ahead, flashlights swaying in the distance, we approached with caution, we probably weren’t supposed to be around after such a serious event. He was kicking at the bushes, hitting them with his light, and yelling loudly.
I saw it about a second before it happened, dropped Tracy’s hand and dashed forward towards the scene. A feral dog had snuck up from behind the cop and was ready to pounce on the unsuspecting fellow; I slid across the grass and straightened up just as the dog began to fly through the air, mouth wide open, slobber escaping like a jet of shining air. I raised my bat to my protect my chest and its teeth clamped to the wood fiercely, pushing my back with pure kinetic force, right on top of the policeman. The dog landed with its feet on my chest, wrenched its jaw back and forth and nearly pulled the bat out of my hand, I reached up at the last second and caught the bat by the thickest part, pulled back and slapped the dog across the face with the handle.
It grunted and lost its balance, I kicked out and pushed it away from me, got to my knees and got ready to swing. Tracy came flying past me, feet out and aimed at the stumbling dog, I winced as her attack landed, sending the dog tumbling into the brush that lined the path, yelping at an earsplitting level. It was so unexpected I just sat there with my mouth open, anything that had been wanting to fly in could now easily do so. When did Tracy learn to do that? She was standing there, with her back to me, silhouetted in the fire’s glow, it was an impressive sight.
I turned slowly to the policeman, he was laying facedown with his arms and legs stuck out in strange positions, I poked him on the back, he wasn’t moving. Tracy came over and kneeled down next to him, looking concerned, we rolled him over and made him lay flat with his arms and legs flat against his body. I noticed it first, his skin was very discolored, almost like he was suffocating, I listened for his breath and he seemed to be fine. I looked over at Tracy who was rolling up his sleeve and looking at his pale blue skin with a strange grin, I asked her “What do you think is going on?”
She shrugged, “I’m not sure, this sure is weird…”
“…We should leave him here…”
She looked a little worried, “I guess… if you say so.”
We stood up and looked towards the fire, there were shadows being cast over the cliff side, there were a lot of people up there for sure, probably all cops. We approached slowly, crawled through the bushes to avoid the creepy guy that lived by himself on the mountain, who was standing outside his house with a shovel in hand peering at the shadows with a suspicious expression, and stopped to rest right outside of the short path that led to the summit.
I shuddered, I just couldn’t help it, I could hear his voice, out neighbor was already up there, talking real fast in his high pitched voice, shouting things at the other people up on the hill. Tracy was already running up the path, I got up and ran after her, we both turned the corner at the same time and gasped. There was a giant burning rock surrounded by policemen, photographers, and our neighbor with his little brother. We didn’t have to be very close, because even in the strong orange light we could clearly see that their skin was a shocking blue. Our neighbor was turning towards us, I caught a glimpse of his chubby but otherwise normal face, I was relieved slightly, but then instantly angry, his massive hand slowly raised up, pointing to us, I read his lips, “Hey, look.”
I grabbed Tracy’s sleeve and pulled her backwards around the corner, down the trail a bit, but already I could see the shadows of several men walking down to us, I looked around frantically, where wouldn’t they look for us? Tracy said it for me, “Behind the fiery rock.”
We sprinted to the hill side, took a few steps up it and crawled the rest of the way up the steep dirt. I caught my hand on the warm grass of the summit and dragged Tracy up with me, peered over the edge and saw several of the blue skinned police walking down the path their guns drawn, apparently not very observant people. I laughed a little and tugged on Tracy’s sleeve to show her the cops walking past where we were, she was sitting very still, not making any noise, I felt a chill run down my body, emptying into the ground through my toes and fingertips. I looked back over my shoulder, there was a suddenly a lot more light than I remember, a big blinding pillar of it, in fact, and the fire was getting brighter too. There was no more noise save for a low buzzing, like a bee had landed on my eardrums, I looked to my side, Tracy was staring up at the sky, I followed her gaze and saw it, a little black spot spiraling down towards us.
I was overcome with Déjà vu as I saw this, a name was on the tip of my tongue and as I remembered it, Tracy once again beat me to the punch, “Buzz Buzz…”
The order of events that happened next are uncertain, they happened in the blink of an eye but my perception of them seemed to be taken in an eternity. The meteor began to unravel, like peelings coming off of an orange, the spiraling shell flashed and faded away, beneath the shell there was a metal apparatus with a large nose and black spirals all over it, it too flashed and the light became a dome around the shiny shiny object. The dome encased us suddenly, that’s when I went blind and could only hear what was going on around me, it had only been a second when the screaming started, Tracy was screaming, our neighbor was screaming, someone else was screaming too, a high pitched scream. There was one more scream, but I don’t know if it was real or not, it seemed like it might have been coming from far behind me, maybe from the police officers, but something was screaming my name.
After a long time I must have gone deaf, or maybe everyone stopped screaming, but there was nothing but darkness and silence for the rest of our journey, somewhere between here and there, I fell asleep.
Chapter Two: Rock and Roll Meets The East
I wont lie, almost all of my dreams are of pie, mostly due to obsession. When the conditions of slumber are perfect I dream of pie even more so, magical pies and pies that you wouldn’t even get the point of if I told you. The conditions happened to be perfect, soft bed and a warm sensation. There was one problem though, life wasn’t simple at the moment, the illusion was shattered and my eyes opened slowly onto the sunny beaches and blue sky. Where was I?
Turning around and looking, the best way to look in my humble opinion, revealed more beach leading to a cement wall on which was a road and several planters holding palm trees and behind those were pastel buildings in a line, the thought got me before the reality, this was Summers. Somewhere I had never been, what’s the deal with that. I recalled my life’s events, it only took a second or two. First there was Onett, then there was a long stretch of Onett followed by some more Onett. This place somehow had pervaded my memory and made itself known to me. Odd, but this place was shiny and I liked it.
I sat up, dusted the thick layer of yellow blanketing sand off of my shirt and festive shorts, relaxed for a second as the waves rolled up the beach, soaked through my sneakers and in between my toes, then got up and got ready. The first thing I did was remembered. I remembered what happened last night, spent a few pointless minutes digging in the sand to look for Tracy, but found no trace. Second thing I did was laugh to myself as I said it aloud, “No trace of Tracy, haha.”
That sunk in quick, she was in danger and I was delayed in paradise, I need to find a phone fast. I stumbled up the beach, took the cement steps two at a time and hit the road running. I spotted the café first, it was radiant with potential, I think. I kicked the door open enthusiastically and possibly someone standing behind it was knocked into the wall, they didn’t say anything and I was too busy to notice. Anyways, I saw a jackpot right off the bat, some guy was talking on one of those fat gray portable phones and you better believe I knocked it out of his hand, grabbed it off the floor, hung up on some woman and held my finger up to indicate the number of minutes I planned to talk on the guy’s phone, which was one and I made sure he knew by putting it right in front of his face. I dialed my house’s number, was told I needed a area code and dialed again with some additional numbers.
I got the operator again, that damn robot operator telling me that number wasn’t available right now. Instantly within the minute I was concerned, I wanted to try again but the guy found me huddled under a velvet draped platform which was holding up a rock of intermediate size. I gave it back and stuck out my tongue as he turned away. Questions were racing through my mind, questions like; What is going on? Where is Tracy? What happened last night? What’s with the rock?
Well, one of my questions was going to get answered pretty quick, a bony hand grasped my shoulder and I turned to see a man with a very big frown and a very pointy beard, he was talking fast and I didn’t catch on until, “Who do you think you are, almost destroying my precious rock?”
I stuck up my thumb, thrust it back with gusto and hit it against the rock with a thud, “This rock?”
He answered with a shriek, which was also a yes, but mostly a shirek. I asked the obvious question as loudly as I could so that all the people who were thinking what I was would have an answer, “What’s the big deal, its just a dumb rock.”-
The room was devoid of air for a few seconds, due to the melodramatic gasping of every person in that room, followed shortly by a large bout of heavy coughing. I let them finish then looked to the pointy man for an answer, he rambled, “Well, I never, this rock is, like, the meaning of life for one, not to mention the single rarest stone in all of Eagleland, not that I would expect a little twerp like you to understand of course.”
There was some haughty laughing and some snorting. I stood in awe and spoke slowly, “So you’re a cult?”
The frown reappeared, “No, this is a café, not a cult,” He turned to the espresso sipping mass, “Whose kid is this?”
Nobody spoke up and I stepped away from the guy out into the archipelago of round-ish tables and the round-ish people around them, made my way towards the exit but the pointy guy was fast and blocked my entrance, “Listen kid, we need to find your parents, okay?”
I told him straight up, “They aren’t here, sorry.”
He gave me the look, the appraisal for lairs and judged me incorrectly, “Listen kid, I wasn’t born yesterday, you just wait here and I’ll go get the cops, alright?”
I flashed back to last night, blue faced cops with guns. This guy was getting dangerous and fast, I needed to get out of there, I ducked under his legs and evaded his grabbing hands, got to the door and met it head on with my face. Someone kicked it in, the nerve. I slammed into the wall and lost my breath in an instant, nearly blacking out but coming back after a few seconds of fuzzy shapes floating across my eyes, things had changed.
The door had come off its hinges apparently, because it was laying against the wall over me, I pushed it back and looked into the room, it was obscured by a group of four standing about seven feet into the café. None of them were particularly big, in fact, they all seemed to be about my age, one of them had a pony tail and was the tallest of them all. Anyways, what was mostly obscuring my view were the weapons, three of the four door breakers were holding sizeable swords in front of them, and when I say sizeable I mean three to four size the size of the carriers. I noticed the tall one had a sword too, just a pretty normal sized on strapped to their back. It was a boy, but I was pretty sure the rest were girls, and he was talking, “Just bring them out, they had enough time!”
Pointy beard was on his knees begging, “I told you, I haven’t seen them in a while, they must have gone out on the boats!”
The ponytail boy advanced on pointy beard and drew his sword, “Some team they are, we’ll just destroy this place to show them we’re serious, how’s that?”
“What?” The bearded guy was on the verge of crying, “that’s ludicrous!”
The ponytail boy laughed, it was a cruel laugh, I could tell he hadn’t actually laughed in a really long time, “It was going to happen eventually, so it might as well be now.”
I got to feeling pretty sorry for that rock cult jerk, so I got out from behind the door while they talked and got right behind the group of four, ready to rumble. I clenched my hands and realized my bat was gone, I said it quietly but they still heard, “Crap.”
The boy whirled around, sword where my neck would have been, but I was ready the second I let my voice slip, rolling backwards down the steps of the café, I landed with a thud in a heap at the bottom. The boy was in the air above me in an instant and I rolled over just as the sword cut into the cement. Our eyes met and he glared, that glare is going to stick with me for a while, this guy hated me for no reason at all and it was the most intense hate I had ever felt.
Then I really felt it as the sword grinded through the cement and kicked my elbow sharply, you better believe I cried out, it hurt like a thousand paper cuts. I closed my eyes and forced the pain away from me. Surprisingly that worked pretty well and the pain stopped completely. That wasn’t right, I glanced down at my cut and surprise, it was gone. I know I didn’t imagine it, there would be blood on his sword!
As I looked up there was a large lack of ponytail boy, and a large lack of cement sidewalk too. There was pretty much a circle of dirt beneath my feet and nothing else. After a quick glance he was found, the ponytail boy was on his butt about thirty feet away, broken cement all around him. He frowned at me as we met eyes again, “I didn’t think you would be this strong yet Ness.”
That was startling, this guy not only hated me with the fury of a thousand suns, but he knew who I was. He was on his feet again in an instant, I leapt out of the way and down towards the sand, and frankly I was leaving him in the dust, my adrenaline was pumping and for some reason I knew exactly what to do. I jumped, cleared the railing and a vacant beach chair, hit the sand softly and I was off again. My eyes scanned the shoreline as I ran but there was no sign of the family bat anywhere. Before I know it my feet were kicking up water and soon I heard the boy behind me. There it was, the bat was spinning in place along the edge of the water, jackpot. I dove into the water after it, caught the taped up handle and spun around on my knees to face my pursuer.
My memory sparked for a second, hold that bat in my hands and he with his sword outstretched, this has happened before. His name was Poo and he was my friend. My grip loosened and the bat fell with a splash, he kept advancing on me, only feet away. His sword arced back behind him then over his head directly on top of me. It hit my forehead and glanced into the sand, I felt no pain, in fact, my head felt cool, I could feel a cold pulse across my entire body. Poo fell backwards and suddenly he was grinning at me, more images flashed in front of my eyes; Poo arriving from the sky on a carpet of stars was the most vivid image of them all, he spoke, “What are you doing Ness?”
I was almost at my limit; so much was going on, “Remembering you.”
He laughed, “Then why aren’t you trying to kill me?”
“You’re my friend!”
His cruel laugh echoed over the beach, he wouldn’t stop, it lasted forever in the moment, finally he got to his feet. His laughter faded and his face was full of grief, “I would never be your friend, not after what you did.”
It didn’t make any sense, I knew we were friends, I had never been more sure of anything! I spoke, mostly to myself, “I know you’re my friend, we’re friends Poo!”
He looked at me cruelly, his eyes were mocking me as they examined my figure. He said the words slowly, knowing something just beyond my grasp, “You don’t remember Giygas, do you?”
The world faded. I was stuck in a moment deep within my mind. It was a horrible dark image, a deep mixture of black and red and I was a silhouette before an enormous abomination, then the voice came. I matched it immediately to the scream I had heard last night, the high pitched nearly yelping voice, it called my name, “Ness,” and repeated it infinitely until the moment began to move, the red and black titan began to swirl into a thousand vortexes each with its face apparent. Then my face appeared, larger than life and traced with veins like an eye. My head’s mouth opened and there lay Poo and two dark figures, all dead. I urged my body to flee the scene but there was no reaction, I stood in horror as I was being swallowed into my own gaping mouth. There was a tug on my shirt and a voice in my ear, Tracy whispered, “Why did you do this?”
By luck alone I remained alive as I came back to reality, above me stood two trunks of flash covered in short black hair. It was a nasty sight for waking eyes, but a welcome scene was to follow. A sailor man stood over me, pushed back by the force of a blade being pushed forward while the sailor clasped it between his palms. Saviors had appeared, it seemed. Sweaty, hairy, salty saviors.
Chapter Three: A Night To Stay Silent
I peeled back my eyelids and my vision wandered about, I smiled as the roof of a circus tent whirled around above me. I sat up and grabbed a hold of my knees, peering around the straw covered scene, where four children animatedly waved their arms around, one of them, a small boy with a pointed nose and long brown hair turned and walked out into the night through a clear plastic sheet.
"Danny! Get back here!" A little girl with squinty eyes and short black hair demanded at the plastic curtains.
A different boy with wild red hair pulled at his hands pensively, then took a long step and ran out after his friend. The little girl clenched her fists and looked like she was going to cry. The third boy, who was sitting on a large wire spool looked away and sighed loudly, his hair was short and black too, with squinty eyes like the little girl. He kicked his feet out and stirred up a pile of dust and straw, sending a few pieces flying out over the girls feet.
I contemplated speaking up, buzz buzz was supposed to be back by now, I waved a little and cleared my throat, "Did I miss anything?"
The little girl marched over to me and gave me a dirty look, "Who are you anyways? you and your dumb bee have caused me a lot of trouble!" then she turned around and folded her arms, the little boy rolled his eyes at me.
"Erm," I lifted myself off the ground, getting sawdust all over my palms, "my name is Tracy, nice to meet you," I extended my hand but she looked away again, the little boy hopped off his seat and walked over to me, "I'm Allen and this is April," he gestured to the little girl lazily, "We're twins by the way."
"I noticed that," I said in a hopefully cheerful voice, "did that uhm... bee... come back yet?"
"No, not yet..." he looked back over his shoulder at the entryway to the tent, "do you need me to go get Danny and Eric?"
"I'm not sure, lets wait and see, okay?" I smiled at him warmly.
He grinned at me a little then grabbed his sister by the shoulders and steered her back to the tent entrance, where they both sat down on the spool and looked around. I wiped off my hands on my sweater and thought back to the night before, everything had happened so suddenly, what did Buzz Buzz have planned? Where did Ness go?
I yawned and strolled over to the animal cages lining the back wall of the tent and peered around inside, looks like the carnival hadn't been operational in a while. A tuft of white fur was caught in the seal between the wooden frame and the bars, I picked at it carelessly, pulling out a few hairs and blowing them off my fingers.
"Okay, sorry about that, I'm here," Buzz Buzz drifted in through the plastic divider and hovered over Allen's head.
I turned and jogged over to him, focusing in on his jittery movements and listening intently, he landed clumsily on Allen's ear, "Alright, where did those other kids go?"
"They left, sorry," Allen look uncomfortable and tried to hold still with his head tilted to the side.
"Oh, well then, memorize what I say then," He scuttled along Allen's earlobe and found a suitable stage for his announcement, "Tracy, I'm sure you've realized that the Giygas cycle has restarted," I nodded silently, "after our complete failure last time we've decided to approach this in a different way."
"Giygas cycle?"April inquired in a rude tone.
"Yes, this is the third Giygas cycle, anyways," he searched himself for a moment, "oh, right, Tracy, this is the Threed team, I told you about the chosen contest, right?"
"No, you had more important business, it seems," I folded my arms, he had gotten so forgetful lately, "whats this all about, shouldn't the chosen four be assembled by now?"
"Thats the thing, my superiors have scrapped the chosen four scenario."
"What?" I shouted and stepped forward, "Thats nonsense!"
"Tracy! I know, theres no need to yell at me, I did everything I could, okay?" He took a moment to let that sink in, "now, we've set up a contest this time, to inquire as to the true nature of the chosen power, thus we've made teams of gifted people in each of the cities that fit into the Apple's prediction."
I was shocked, how could they do this to me? I turned my back to Buzz Buzz, collecting my thoughts, "Buzz Buzz, what have they done to Ness?"
"They sent him to Summers, with Poo and Dalaam's team, its the first match."
"Ness against a whole team?"
"No, Dalaam against Summers, its just convenient that Ness die there, you shouldn't have let him near the meteor."
"You know I feel about him," I glared down at Buzz Buzz, causing Allen to recoil away from me, "he won't die and you know it."
"We'll see," He lifted off and landed on my nose, "but for now you need to get familiarized with the teams, I believe Twoson's team is headed here now for a match against Threed."
"Why are you doing this?" I inquired apprehensively, he was hiding something.
"Because I want you to win, Tracy, but you need to learn from these new teams before you can do anything," he flew up above me.
"What? Am I on a team," I was puzzled, there weren't any others besides Ness and I with adequate abilities, then it hit me, "Pokey? You did something to Pokey?"
"I didn't do anything to him that wasn't going to happen anyways, and yes, you're on the Onett team, with the Minch brothers."
"What about Ness? shouldn't he be on it too," I was getting frustrated, Buzz Buzz and his superiors were pulling strings from behind the scenes, "Why do you want him dead so badly?"
"How can you ask that, you know what he did!" He was screaming at me, "You're lucky to even be alive, you idiot."
I curled up my lip, aimed a punch at him then reconsidered, folded my arms and set off out the door. I pushed through the sheets and out into the cold night of Threed, the wind caught up and me and a cold sensation pushed through me. I needed to get to Ness quickly, this was out of control. Summers? I needed a plane or something, how frustrating.
I plopped down on a wooden fence and stuck my hands into my pockets and discovered my old, folded up photograph stuck in the crease of my jean pocket.
There we all were, Poo, Paula, Jeff and I, the chosen four.
"How long can I keep running away?" I tugged at my hair a bit, rubbing away the tears from my eyes, "Why did everything go so wrong?"
I pictured Ness smiling in my mind, that day when he killed all of my friends at the Devil's Machine. Giygas writhing, out of control, behind him. I remembered Paula's face when she saw him emerge from the dark folds of the machine, who was crying more, me or her? The memory faded away painfully, I wasn't ready to deal with it yet.
There was a flash behind me, I could hear shouting but the words seemed stretched and otherworldly. Another bright sphere erupted on the road leading up to the cemetery. I swung my legs over the wooden fence and sprinted towards the action, there was a small boy laying face down on the pavement, Danny? no, it was the other one. His hair seemed to belaying flat now, he had little cuts all along his cheek and forehead.
I looked up as another flash kicked up the dirt around my feet, a small girl strode across the windswept street and knelt over a trembling mass, I stood up and squinted over at her. She kicked over whatever she was looking at and seemed to be studying it carefully. Another small girl stumbled through the grass towards her and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her back towards the graveyard.
I crept around to the iron railings surrounding the small field of crosses watching them intently, they dissapeared into the secret path at the graveyard's rear. I slipped between the rods and ducked between two mausoleums. A taller girl came striding out of the brambles holding something in her arms, I tried desperately to make out her face as she positioned herself between the two children.
I could barely hear them speaking, the tall girl spoke with a monotone voice, "How many?"
"Two," the bossy girl reported.
"I'll take care of the rest, you can take Ana home now," The tall girl handed her bundle down to the bossy girl.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, its no problem," she replied casually.
"Okay, see you at home Paula," the bossy girl shifted under the weight of 'Ana' and marched off towards the cemetery exit.
"Did you see the fly, Elli?"
"...no," The little girl whispered.
"Oh well, I'm sure he's around here somewhere, lets go," the little girl held her arms out and Paula picked her up gently, walking slowly towards the tent.
I considered stepping out and saying something, but I knew better than to surprise Paula. I sighed secretly as she moved away, how can I ever speak to her again?