(12) head wound

“Do you ever wonder about how we could die?”

The night was only mildly warm. There was a slight breeze up on the hill, which was to be expected. Will didn’t answer immediately, not taking his eyes off the city below them for even a second.

It wasn’t their city. This was someone else’s, but even so, it was pretty. Pretty large. Will briefly wondered how much power a city of that size required.

“Will?” Marcy asked again.

“We die all the time.” He eventually supplied.

The smaller girl scoffed. “No, you idiot.” She took a bit from her sandwich, waiting for a moment to chew and swallow before speaking again. “I mean for real. Permadeath. Could it happen?”

Will shrugged. “Probably. Don’t fall into any lava anytime soon, alright?”

“Ooh, geez.” Marcy shuddered.

But that was what they always said when someone brought up the topic. What if there was some injury they couldn’t recover from? She had a legitimate point, he realized.

The calm he was feeling slowly started to simmer and evaporate.

They still scar.

“What do you think happened to Artie?”

There was a sharp gasp, coming from Marcy taking in a sudden breath of air.

The question left a dull taste in Will’s mouth.

He swallowed. “Sorry, that was dumb.”

She nodded. “It’s ok.”

Silence once more. The lights of the city twinkled. Will was suddenly feeling a lot less reckless than he was when he asked that question.

A bird chirped nearby. The wind blew the trees in a gentle dance.

It was Marcy who finally spoke. “Wanna go get ice cream?”

“Fuck yeah.”

---

AND IN THE EENDDDDD

I’D DO IT ALL AGAINNN

I THINK YOU’RE MY BEST FRIENNDDD

DON’TCHA KNOW THAT THE KIDS AREN’T AL- KIDS AREN’T ALRIGHTT??

(11) old earth

Old earth was childhood.

The light that passed through the tree branches as she walked to school. The sound of pencil on paper. Laughter. The taste of the apple her sister always packed her for lunch.

The bliss of knowing one was safe.

Reading stories before bed, the mint of toothpaste. The way the wood planks of the old house settled, the way the radiator ticked. Window seats and birds singing the next morning.

As she grew it got a little trickier. The morning news. Packing lunch for herself. Wrestling her hair into a nondescript ponytail because why bother. The grumbling of the car engine turning on.

The scratch of pencil on paper accompanied by the quiet phone notifications. Math problem after math problem on an old notebook. Kids talking.

The sound the car keys made when they were tossed on the counter. The leaky faucet. The turning of pages.

News report after news report, the sound carrying from upstairs. Hurricanes, wars, death, sadness. Creaking of floorboards.

Then life.

The chatter of kids on a street corner, the way the cold wind urged them to continue conversations inside. Clinking of glasses at a restaurant. The cry of joy when someone found out they got into the university they wanted. Pool balls hitting each other to spiral off in separate directions. Sports fans on TV.

The way glasses always slide down his nose. The scuff of boots on pavement. The bubble of boiled water when it’s cooking something. Laughter, hands moving through hair.

The way he always said her name. Scarlet.

Staying up late to watch the comedy channel. Messaging each other back and forth all day, even during class. The way he talked about how he was going to college far, far away from where they were. She said it was a little early to be thinking about such things, but she might go to school out of country. It was what her sister did.

The crackling of the fireplace during winter. The smell of first snowfall. Frost covering the window until she couldn’t see through it. Leaving dishes of leftovers outside for the cats who liked to visit.

Thinking of space. Of flying away and never returning. He mentioned she should get a tattoo, something relating to flying. She said she’d think about it, but she never did.

The smell of hot chocolate and textbooks. Twitter alerts lighting up the dimness of the room. Glue and newspaper clippings splayed across the floor. Quiet chimes from earrings, audible only to those who wear them.

The confusion when there was a crash. The panic when the garage caved in, relief when she found out no one was in it at the time.

The safety issued when her sister came home and told her everything would be ok. The glittering of the sunrise on the frozen lake, the way the rest of the world moved unhindered by time.

It was the week he went missing, only to return besides himself with unease, that Scarlet knew things were beginning to change for good.

(10) rebirth

whether you’re a brother or whether you’re a mother,

you’re staying alive, staying alive

feel the city breaking and everybody’s shakin

but we’re staying alive, staying alive

ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive, staying alive,

ah, ah, ah, ah, staying aliiiiiiiveeee

---

It wasn’t how Steve had expected it.

It took Marcy screaming for him to realize anything had actually happened. The sensation was sudden, a shock, but it didn’t really hurt until he looked down and realized oh God there’s a knife in my chest.

The pain became almost unbearable. He tried to struggle away, but the attacker wasn’t keen on letting him go.

The knife went out-- slick pain oh ssssssshit shit shit shit-- and then struck once more, this time in a different position.

How much time had passed?

Steve’s veins were still pulsing, maybe from adrenaline or pain-- was that feeling really pain-- and something knotted in him when the knife twisted and

Maybe he blacked out or something of the sort. Things got a little faded. Maybe he was on the ground. Someone was looking at him from above, grabbing onto his shoulders.

Void.

Then light invaded his senses. Life. Confusion took hold of him until Steve realized this was a familiar feeling.

He’d jumped. He didn’t remember jumping… did he?

He wasn’t alone. He was on a street, like something out of the 1930’s, old timey cars and all. There was a park on the other side of the road. Steve was on the sidewalk in front of a few apartment buildings, it looked like.

A crowd was gathering, people pointing at the kid sprawled on the pavement. Whispering. Looking concerned.

What happened? Was this… was this what happened when Marcy got shot?

When she died? That means he must’ve…

He died? Oh.

A big belatedly, Steve looked down and instantly tried to cover up the massive blood stain on his shirt. No wonder people were staring. God, his hands were stiff. Also covered in blood… like his shirt.

He just had to wear white today, didn’t he? This was a nice shirt too, fuck. He was going to wear it to his cousin’s wedding, and-- not the time, dumbass.

Scrambling to his feet and curling his arms around himself, the teenager tried to grin. “Hey there.”

The crowd looked affronted.

He could maybe try to unbutton the shirt? But the shirt under it was white too. That wouldn’t help. He didn’t think these people would appreciate it if he went entirely shirtless, either.

A groan came from the ground not that far from Steve, and that’s the person who stabbed him.

The teenager let out a squeak and flinched so forcefully he literally bounced backwards a few feet.

Someone came forward from within the crowd. Long coat, billed hat. Police club. Built shoulders and the attitude of someone who wanted to get issues over with quick. He demanded something in a different language that decidedly wasn’t from Steve’s Earth.

The crowd around him shuffled as if they were afraid to say. Was there tension between the police and the people? Understandable, but really not the time to be thinking about that.

Steve skittered backwards a few feet, inadvertently drawing attention to himself from the policeman. Whoops.

The man opened his mouth and scowled, saying something else. A brave onlooker said something in response, which in turn made the police a little confused.

...Yeah, Steven really could not understand a word that was going on. He took a hesitant step backwards, and when no one said anything, he took a few more.

The police only raised his voice to a shout when Steve was practically halfway down the street, sprinting as fast as he could go.

He needed to get back home.

---

at first i was singing that song because i’d successfully finished the school year but then i realized it kind of matched this part and i was like yes, perfect. 

(9) solace

Rui absentmindedly threw and caught something blue as Rex and Marcy carefully examined the crate of fruit some kids had brought in. The blue article Rui just so happened to be throwing up and down was some of the fruit previously residing in the crate.

“I think it’s a pear.” The girl said, pausing in her methodical exercise.

Rex frowned at her. “It’s blue.”

“I think it’s a pear.” Rui repeated in a manner that suggested she wasn’t budging in her judgement.

“Are you sure it’s just not an overgrown blueberry?” Marcy suggested.

“Nah.” Rui shook her head with a rather blasé look. “It has that weird pear lump, see? It’s a pear.”

Rex took something orange and apple-like from the crate and leaned backwards until he came to a sitting position upon the ground. A fall breeze blew through the trees around them, bringing with it the warning of colder weather that was soon to come. Sounds of cooking came from the lodge besides them.

“How come the fruit’s even like this, anyway? I expected all the nature, but how come the food decided to mutate?” Rex inquired.

Rui shrugged. Marcy continued to examine the crate, even going as far to sniff some of it out of curiosity.

“Maybe it had something to do with the Change?” Rui offered. “We still don’t know what full effect it had on the land, after all.”

Marcy muttered, “The presence of otherworldly creatures drove the entire world completely batshit.”

“How’s it going?” A voice called from the lodge, Steve emerging from the garage door. Amraphel wandered after him. Her face immediately grew into a grin when she saw the fruit crate.

“We were wondering how funny it would be if we made Will eat this stuff.” Rui announced loudly.

“Do you think the food’s toxic or something?” Steve frowned.

“Nah, I just think it would be hilarious, is all.” Rui shrugged.

Marcy added, “It’d be like a new age Green Eggs and Ham.” She offered some of the fruit to Amraphel, who sat besides her. “Check out these weird bananas.”

“Oh, God.” Steve blanched. “I think they’re all pretty weird.”

“Think they’re safe to eat?” Rex asked.

“I-” Steve made the second person to sniff the fruit since it was brought back, “Maybe? Wow, I don’t know.”

Out of curiosity, Amraphel broke one of the strange bananas in half, rather than peeling it. Almost instantly, something green oozed out of it. Though the girl didn’t drop the fruit, her casual gaze turned into one of horror, a shiver visibly traveling up her spine.

Marcy slid back from with a disgusted look. “Ooooh, gosh.”

Rex was frozen, looking at the banana like it had insulted his mother. Steve said nothing while Rui poked it.

The banana continued to ooze strange liquid.

“...Let’s get fruit from some other universe.” Steve said after awhile.

Everyone agreed.

A few hours later, a shout of horror rang through the base as Will took a bite of a suspicious pear by mistake. This delighted Rui and Marcy to no end, because they didn’t even have to force feed it to the boy. He screwed up all on his own.

It was Will’s insistence, in the end, to go get more ‘normal fruit’ right that bloody instance.

---

fun fact, the overall title for the story universe these kids are from is ‘Foolproof.’

I just didn’t add it to the titles of these one shots b/c it was messing with the minimalist feel of everything. That’s seriously my only reason.

ALSO this plotline continues in part 16, b/c i could only squeeze out half of that and i want MOVE ON for a little bit.

(8) newbie

He was incredibly young when it happened, so logically almost no memory was retained.

He remembers his mom, and the way she dropped him off at daycare with a tired gaze. She had barely left when the world started to quake and fall out from beneath everyone.

The daycare was only on the distant outskirts of the city, so they weren’t directly in a center that got attacked. Everyone still felt it, though. The terrifying minute where the world stood still and for some reason every single member of their species was frozen in fear.

Something entered their world that hadn’t in a very long time.

Like everything else, the daycare became chaotic once the world span back into action. Parents that hadn’t yet left grabbed their kids and ran, but those children who were left were herded into a back room with the door barricaded shut.

There was something in the air.

The second the roof caved in, he jumped.

Landing in a desert, a kind old man found him. Told him where he was, and how incredibly peculiar it was for a toddler to be wandering the desert during the off season.

The off season, he came to learn, was much more dangerous than it was named.

Six years he lingered on Yerine. Six years he lived on a planet where he felt he didn’t belong.

When he left, of course he didn’t have any understanding of his species’ physiology. He was four, for God’s sake. Yet on Yerine, living with the man who found him, he came to the understanding that he was not the same.

Those who lived on Yerine were thankfully close to humans, all for quirks. Used to the more demanding conditions of the desert, they were able to walk for miles and miles without need for water. They thrived off of sunlight.

He, on the other hand, did not share those traits. He thrived in the dark, and required water much more regularly. He was much stronger than most natives, and seemed mesmerized with space.

The planet Yerine as a whole preferred to stay on the ground, where they thought it was safe and predictable. Very few even had the guts to travel over water.

He found this largely ridiculous, mostly because a majority of their planet was covered in water. “It’s better than the desert,” his argument would go.

It was his 10th birthday when another person fell out of the sky. Her hair shone like gold, and her eyes instantly narrowed when she noticed him staring at her so intently.

She told him to close his mouth or it’d get stuck like that.

Her name was Gloss and to him, she was a goddess.

The one time he called her that, she smacked him with his own shoe.

It was through her that he found out what happened. She was like him, she said. She notified him that their planet was still functional, if a bit deserted. Their species was slowly crawling back to populate it, but millions had yet to be found.

She was with a group that had taken up residence in a North American mountain range, and there were other settlements popping up across the globe.

Six years and it’d taken this long to get society going again.

When he told her that it was such a relief to meet another human after so long, she laughed. She then brashly announced that “Sorry, buddy, but we were never human.”

His entire world stopped once more… or so it seemed. Gloss later informed him that he had just passed out. He did it again, too, when she told him that they were part of a species called the ‘Cattlayans.’

So they were the aliens all along?

He preferred to ignore that stunning turn of events. And the fact that Gloss was a little too blunt for her own good.

Instead, he asked to go home.

Six years later, he breathed his first breath of mountain air. Gloss lead him up to a building that may have been a ski lodge a long time ago, but was now their base of operations. At that moment there were roughly 10 people present, but it still felt incredible.

Then Gloss pushed him into the pool.

It still felt incredible.

(7) death

Marcy was the first. A bullet pierced her neck when nobody was expecting it.

Steven had managed to come back on his own the first ‘trip’ to another dimension, so he didn’t need the ability yet. The outsiders sure as hell had no clue, and even the Cattlayans-- back when they weren’t Cattlayans, just ordinary humans according to the rest of the multiverse-- weren’t aware.

Those watching were ready to scream when her body had hit the floor, but no one expected it to disappear almost instantly.

The girl herself woke up in another universe, confused and with a sore throat. She was alive, miraculously.

She had cheated death.

After that, the rest were quick to follow. They didn’t all go to the same universe, of course not, but they all went through the same experiences.

Steve, stabbed in the chest. Rui, hit by a truck. All equally brutal and fully the fault of those who didn’t know what they were dealing with.

Rex was the only one after them who died before the Change; struck down by another gunshot. He was also the first new Cattlayan to appear in Gordon City (he shocked quite a few people when he appeared on the sidewalk with a torso covered in dried blood).

...Not long after, billions were dead.

Those who died then wouldn’t ever be able to come back.

There were those, however, who were able to assimilate before they died. Those drifted through the void before popping out in the multiverse somewhere. Those who escaped the fate of their home began to realize things they never realized living among their own species. Things like greater senses or athletic capabilities.

There were also new changes solely thanks to the Change. The ability to understand and travel through the multiverse. The newfound and stunning almost-immortality. Those tricks were unlocked with the fear of the event.

Of course, something many of these people also realized was that many of them had a quite beautifully blooming case of PTSD.

Pure death, some learned, only comes from the monsters.

(Marcy and Will had a theory that their species may now also still die from old age, but neither of them are sure how long they were supposed to live now).

Of course, there were certain glitches in the system. Everyone still physically scarred, so no one was very eager to see what effect lava had on their powers.

No one knew what would happen once society was rebuilt, as well. Would overpopulation be bad?

The fact that was an extremely long time away soothed some.

For now, everyone was just concerned with fixing their ‘endangered species’ status.

...’Everyone’ being about 40 people spread out across the globe; those that managed to find their way back home on their own.

Later on, more outposts would grow, more survivors gathering together. The last relics of society. They’d rebuilt things completely some day.

After all, history tended to repeat itself.

---

Sometimes i think i should add ‘cattlayan’ to my laptop’s personal dictionary so it doesn’t try to correct it, and other times im like. naaah.

(6) run

Before...

Steve turned to see Rui standing by the door of the science room, an exceptionally angry look on her face. He braced himself, but tried to look casual.

“What’s up?”

“They’re coming.” She strode forward into the room with the confidence she almost always had, dumping her backpack on one of the lab tables. Her eyes shone with the kind of energy that made Steve nervous.

Not to mention that he had no idea what she was talking about.

“What do you mean?” He hadn’t moved.

Rui huffed, turning to him like he was an idiot (he kind of was). “I mean, the people who did all of this. The ones that sent Michael and Hood to us.”

“So it’s Michael now? When did you two get so close?”

It was probably too late for them to be in the building, anyway. Maybe he could get her to leave with him, diffuse the situation a little bit.

She automatically bristled, appearing to forget what she was going to say before. “Hey, it’s better than calling him Mr. York like he’s my teacher or something. He’s only about 22, maybe.”

Steve frowned. “And also somewhat of a space criminal.”

She really was angry.

Where was everyone else?

She was talking. “But we don’t know that! We don’t know anything about the people who keep coming here or the worlds we keep going to! We know that time passes when we leave, but we don’t know why!”

If he could frown anymore he’d make some kind of world record. “What’s your point?” His headache was getting worse. All he wanted was to go home, take a nap, and finish this damn biology project.

“My point is is that we’re a bunch of idiots abusing power we didn’t know how to handle, and we’re paying the price for it.” Rui was growling, pointing one of her fingers in his face. The setting sun washed over her features and darkened some of them into shadow, adding more effect to her actions.

...Wait.

“You said something earlier about someone coming. What do you-”

There’s a break in the facade, something like fear. “Someone’s been watching us.”

Fear. Definitely fear. Steve drew, eyes widening. He didn’t move to say anything, so Rui continued, waving her hands for emphasis.

“You’ve probably noticed it. You keep bumping into the same group of people no matter what world you’re in, continuously trailed by the same shady van whenever you walk somewhere. Both Michael and Hood have the same story of how they came here, being pursued, lapses of memory, a blackout. What are the odds that that’s coincidence?”

“You think someone’s been following us?” a deep breath.

“Steven, are you even listening to me?”

He’s cautious. What if she’s just overreacting? What if this is some kind of mental issue? “Yes, but-”

There’s a loud crack from down the hallway. Both teens freeze, almost nose to nose. There’s a beat before Steve turns to go out. “What was-”

Another, louder crack. This time, he actually jumps.

“Steve.” Rui isn’t talking quite so loud anymore, grabbing his hand. “Steve, we need to go.”

A third crack. It’s closer. This time, Steven can hear the thump that follows.

“Shit.” He’s regretting not paying attention to Rui the second she walked in, not answering any of the texts she’d sent him earlier. Regretting staying so late.

The two awkwardly shuffle out into the doorway, Rui preventing the boy from walking too far away.

As they look out, everything’s still except for the two men in assault gear creeping towards their room.

Panic. There’s a second longer where all four people stare at each other. Steve is petrified. He whispers, “Oh.”

Rui slams everything back into action. “Outside!” She barks, shoving Steve to the stairwell.

The two men say nothing as they spring in hot pursuit of their targets. One aims his gun, shoots something muffled, and the brick besides the teens shatters a little.

Rui leaps down the steps flights at a time, slowing down just long enough for Steve to get into gear and follow after her.

“The football field.” He gasps. There’s an opening, he can feel it in his very being, which admittedly hadn’t been something he’d told anyone else but that really shouldn’t be the topic at that moment and SHIT THAT’S ANOTHER SHOT.

Rui yells, “I know!” and barrels out the door.

The sun has finally receded behind the mountains in the distance and the feeling of the early fall chill gives Steve the energy to run faster and he can catch up to Rui who’s almost by the edge of the bleachers and he can

go.

The next bullets hit empty air.