(Author's notes
1: This story is a sequel to "Memories of the Future" by A Psychedelic Leviathan, and is written with his permission.
2: The fic is completed already, so there's no chance of lagging off in the middle. It will be updated once every day with at least 1 chapter.
3: This Prologue serves as a refresher for the events of "Memories of the Future" so you do NOT have to go back and re-read all 100,000 words in order to understand enough to enjoy this fic. If you haven't read "Memories of the Future" before, I highly recommend it, though it's probably not completely necessary to understand, in a general way, what is happening in this fic.)
Prologue: Memories of the Future
January 29th 2013
It seems like life just doesn't like humanity as a whole. The best of us are slaughtered, while the worst of us always take the reigns. And suffering is all we can seem to bring to each other. At last, it's balanced out... but it doesn't matter. Just as humanity is on the verge of reaching a plateau between good and evil, it looks as if it's about to be annihilated. How did this all happen? It's a very long story... one I suppose is best recorded in case history is lost as tends to happen. If there are any survivors, they deserve to know the entire truth of human gullibility, greed... and sacrifice. And I should write it all down now, because the invasion is expected to begin any day.
I suppose it first began back in June of 2005. A mass of Christian zealots were gathered outside of the White House, so me, Alex, and Clover were dispatched by WOOHP to try to rescue the President from the potentially deadly hoard. We were almost there, but listening to the man who would come to be known only as 'The Reverend' out front drove Clover insane, and she launched herself at him. This sparked an outcry and response that dwarfed the White House... and the entire American government. Out of the ashes of America rose the Imperium of Christ, a new nation governed by an extremist interpretation of the Bible that suppressed all other points of view. The rest of the world watched in shock while America slaughtered and enslaved its own people. The three of us were captured in the ensuing raids against WOOHP and turned over to the Attitude Correction Corp. Me and Alex were freed by Jerry and brought to England where WOOHP had rebuilt itself... but Clover wasn't so lucky...
We spent years searching for Clover, but it turned out that she never left the American continent. She was freed after a few years, and set about fighting the government in her own small way. She even managed to find Mandy teaching a Grade School under an oppressive and very... evil little bastard named Octavio. Clover tells me that Mandy didn't remember anything, about us, about America... about pretty much anything before the Imperium took over. After a while of fraternizing with Clover, they were both captured and locked up by the ACC to be reconditioned to become respectable citizens of the Imperium of Christ. Which is to say, completely without independent thought.
Clover tells me they spent months rotting in that anti-psych ward before they managed to break through a window and jump into a raging ocean. That should tell you something about how well they were treated by the Imperium. They washed up on an island and spent several months rotting there as well, with nobody but each other for company. I spent only a few weeks in the ACC facility, so I don't think I can imagine how hard it must have been to escape from it into a world where you had nothing but one other human for contact. It apparently drove Mandy to the breaking point, because she set out onto the ocean in a small makeshift raft with no food. That Clover decided to spurn her for being a lesbian probably didn't help her mental state, but judging now is exactly what we DON'T need to be doing.
Mandy somehow managed to survive the voyage and wash up in America, because me and Alex ran into her during our hunt for Clover through the American continent. She was hiding in a small shack behind the old Beverly Hills High School... I'm ashamed to admit, I wanted to leave as quickly as possible. I know that in this world, a mind cannot last long, especially in the hands of the Imperium... but the haunted, unfocused... desperate look in her eyes scared me beyond reasoning. Alex I'm proud to say didn't share my idiotic knee-jerk response... but regardless of my idiocy, something good did come out of it. She gave us a general location for Clover's whereabouts, and we were able to go pick her up in the WOOHP Leviathan Jerry gave us to help search for her. It was so great to be a three woman team again after so long...
Apparently Mandy in the meanwhile had been doing more than sitting around being creepy. She managed to join a resistance cell designed to fight against the Imperium, and she even reunited with an old high school flame named Lisa who, ironically, was working as a police officer and got Mandy a job as one as well. So while she stroked the Imperium with one hand, she punched it in the face repeatedly with the other. I can appreciate the poetic justice in this, but really I'm not sure if she got better mentally or if the feeling of power only drove her even more insane. I suppose it doesn't really matter anymore... but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Me, Alex and Clover struggled to do what we could to the Imperium's plans while Mandy struggled with her own life, and her own fight against the Imperium. Details are sketchy, as there's no one who intimately knows what happened, but apparently some have reported seeing her and Donna Ramone of all people together. Some say they were locked in an epic battle of wills, others insist they were lovers. Whatever happened there in California will now never be known, since the Imperium, to quell an uprising Mandy helped start, dropped a nuclear weapon and turned the state into a smoldering crater. We WOOHP girls didn't fare that much better unfortunately. We were captured for a time... along with another WOOHP team... but none of them made it out. Not even Brittany...
Some people say they saw Mandy and Alex traveling together after that... looking a bit more intimate than I would have thought. Alex has refused to talk about it though, so I haven't pressed her on it. It's really none of my business, it's between her and Mandy. And it should stay that way as long as Alex wants it to.
There was even a time we thought Clover was dead, after a failed assassination attempt on The Reverend. The war took its toll on all of us, physically and emotionally... but none moreso than Mandy. When she saw Clover again, I swear I thought she was going to explode and try to kill either Clover or herself right there. But thankfully it didn't happen and they both lived to fight the good fight, going for the big prize. After such a long struggle... and so many horrors witnessed... I saw Moscow wiped out in an instant with a sonic cannon capable of such sound that it could wipe out an entire city. Millions of people executed in the blink of an eye... unearthly technology...
Unearthly it was. When Clover was about to kill him once and for all, he revealed himself to be an alien... or perhaps even a demon, if you believe in that kind of thing. Yes, I think demon is a better word. A demon from the stars. Nothing we had could stop it. Bullets, rockets, all of it pretty much bounced off that hideous ball. Ultimately... it took nothing less than the ultimate sacrifice to bring it down. Was it one of us who was trained by the government who did it? Was it one of us who always lived and loved each other like sisters, who always put ourselves at risk to save the world?
No... it was Mandy. She drank an experimental chemical called Faustium developed by the government to create the perfect soldier. But as a side effect, the soldier's genetic makeup accelerated until... detonation. She couldn't fight him... so she threw herself up into the atmosphere and took him with her. We couldn't do anything... only watch as the woman who'd spent too much of her life trapped in the bonds of her own mind blew herself up to save the rest of us. But the Reverend's words have set us all on edge... more are on their way despite Mandy's sacrifice.
I can only hope... and perhaps pray... that humanity can survive the coming disaster. But I know we only have this chance because of Mandy's sacrifice... so we're finally going to lay her to rest soon. I wish nothing more than to bring her back and set her mind at ease... but as it is, I can't. But I can honor her and everything she did in her life, everything she fought even as we all have to continue fighting. At least she can finally rest wherever she is now... and where we'll one day go.
If you future generations read this, remember and don't repeat our mistakes. And always honor the name "Amanda Victoria Delaroyale".
Don't disbelieve it.
No matter what your friends might say.
We'll meet up again some place some way.
We love you Mandy.
Samantha Simpson
1: This story is a sequel to "Memories of the Future" by A Psychedelic Leviathan, and is written with his permission.
2: The fic is completed already, so there's no chance of lagging off in the middle. It will be updated once every day with at least 1 chapter.
3: This Prologue serves as a refresher for the events of "Memories of the Future" so you do NOT have to go back and re-read all 100,000 words in order to understand enough to enjoy this fic. If you haven't read "Memories of the Future" before, I highly recommend it, though it's probably not completely necessary to understand, in a general way, what is happening in this fic.)
Prologue: Memories of the Future
January 29th 2013
It seems like life just doesn't like humanity as a whole. The best of us are slaughtered, while the worst of us always take the reigns. And suffering is all we can seem to bring to each other. At last, it's balanced out... but it doesn't matter. Just as humanity is on the verge of reaching a plateau between good and evil, it looks as if it's about to be annihilated. How did this all happen? It's a very long story... one I suppose is best recorded in case history is lost as tends to happen. If there are any survivors, they deserve to know the entire truth of human gullibility, greed... and sacrifice. And I should write it all down now, because the invasion is expected to begin any day.
I suppose it first began back in June of 2005. A mass of Christian zealots were gathered outside of the White House, so me, Alex, and Clover were dispatched by WOOHP to try to rescue the President from the potentially deadly hoard. We were almost there, but listening to the man who would come to be known only as 'The Reverend' out front drove Clover insane, and she launched herself at him. This sparked an outcry and response that dwarfed the White House... and the entire American government. Out of the ashes of America rose the Imperium of Christ, a new nation governed by an extremist interpretation of the Bible that suppressed all other points of view. The rest of the world watched in shock while America slaughtered and enslaved its own people. The three of us were captured in the ensuing raids against WOOHP and turned over to the Attitude Correction Corp. Me and Alex were freed by Jerry and brought to England where WOOHP had rebuilt itself... but Clover wasn't so lucky...
We spent years searching for Clover, but it turned out that she never left the American continent. She was freed after a few years, and set about fighting the government in her own small way. She even managed to find Mandy teaching a Grade School under an oppressive and very... evil little bastard named Octavio. Clover tells me that Mandy didn't remember anything, about us, about America... about pretty much anything before the Imperium took over. After a while of fraternizing with Clover, they were both captured and locked up by the ACC to be reconditioned to become respectable citizens of the Imperium of Christ. Which is to say, completely without independent thought.
Clover tells me they spent months rotting in that anti-psych ward before they managed to break through a window and jump into a raging ocean. That should tell you something about how well they were treated by the Imperium. They washed up on an island and spent several months rotting there as well, with nobody but each other for company. I spent only a few weeks in the ACC facility, so I don't think I can imagine how hard it must have been to escape from it into a world where you had nothing but one other human for contact. It apparently drove Mandy to the breaking point, because she set out onto the ocean in a small makeshift raft with no food. That Clover decided to spurn her for being a lesbian probably didn't help her mental state, but judging now is exactly what we DON'T need to be doing.
Mandy somehow managed to survive the voyage and wash up in America, because me and Alex ran into her during our hunt for Clover through the American continent. She was hiding in a small shack behind the old Beverly Hills High School... I'm ashamed to admit, I wanted to leave as quickly as possible. I know that in this world, a mind cannot last long, especially in the hands of the Imperium... but the haunted, unfocused... desperate look in her eyes scared me beyond reasoning. Alex I'm proud to say didn't share my idiotic knee-jerk response... but regardless of my idiocy, something good did come out of it. She gave us a general location for Clover's whereabouts, and we were able to go pick her up in the WOOHP Leviathan Jerry gave us to help search for her. It was so great to be a three woman team again after so long...
Apparently Mandy in the meanwhile had been doing more than sitting around being creepy. She managed to join a resistance cell designed to fight against the Imperium, and she even reunited with an old high school flame named Lisa who, ironically, was working as a police officer and got Mandy a job as one as well. So while she stroked the Imperium with one hand, she punched it in the face repeatedly with the other. I can appreciate the poetic justice in this, but really I'm not sure if she got better mentally or if the feeling of power only drove her even more insane. I suppose it doesn't really matter anymore... but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Me, Alex and Clover struggled to do what we could to the Imperium's plans while Mandy struggled with her own life, and her own fight against the Imperium. Details are sketchy, as there's no one who intimately knows what happened, but apparently some have reported seeing her and Donna Ramone of all people together. Some say they were locked in an epic battle of wills, others insist they were lovers. Whatever happened there in California will now never be known, since the Imperium, to quell an uprising Mandy helped start, dropped a nuclear weapon and turned the state into a smoldering crater. We WOOHP girls didn't fare that much better unfortunately. We were captured for a time... along with another WOOHP team... but none of them made it out. Not even Brittany...
Some people say they saw Mandy and Alex traveling together after that... looking a bit more intimate than I would have thought. Alex has refused to talk about it though, so I haven't pressed her on it. It's really none of my business, it's between her and Mandy. And it should stay that way as long as Alex wants it to.
There was even a time we thought Clover was dead, after a failed assassination attempt on The Reverend. The war took its toll on all of us, physically and emotionally... but none moreso than Mandy. When she saw Clover again, I swear I thought she was going to explode and try to kill either Clover or herself right there. But thankfully it didn't happen and they both lived to fight the good fight, going for the big prize. After such a long struggle... and so many horrors witnessed... I saw Moscow wiped out in an instant with a sonic cannon capable of such sound that it could wipe out an entire city. Millions of people executed in the blink of an eye... unearthly technology...
Unearthly it was. When Clover was about to kill him once and for all, he revealed himself to be an alien... or perhaps even a demon, if you believe in that kind of thing. Yes, I think demon is a better word. A demon from the stars. Nothing we had could stop it. Bullets, rockets, all of it pretty much bounced off that hideous ball. Ultimately... it took nothing less than the ultimate sacrifice to bring it down. Was it one of us who was trained by the government who did it? Was it one of us who always lived and loved each other like sisters, who always put ourselves at risk to save the world?
No... it was Mandy. She drank an experimental chemical called Faustium developed by the government to create the perfect soldier. But as a side effect, the soldier's genetic makeup accelerated until... detonation. She couldn't fight him... so she threw herself up into the atmosphere and took him with her. We couldn't do anything... only watch as the woman who'd spent too much of her life trapped in the bonds of her own mind blew herself up to save the rest of us. But the Reverend's words have set us all on edge... more are on their way despite Mandy's sacrifice.
I can only hope... and perhaps pray... that humanity can survive the coming disaster. But I know we only have this chance because of Mandy's sacrifice... so we're finally going to lay her to rest soon. I wish nothing more than to bring her back and set her mind at ease... but as it is, I can't. But I can honor her and everything she did in her life, everything she fought even as we all have to continue fighting. At least she can finally rest wherever she is now... and where we'll one day go.
If you future generations read this, remember and don't repeat our mistakes. And always honor the name "Amanda Victoria Delaroyale".
Don't disbelieve it.
No matter what your friends might say.
We'll meet up again some place some way.
We love you Mandy.
Samantha Simpson
