Jack heard a roaring thunder fill the air.
Then, seconds later, a deafening smash of something hitting the ground hard and sending tiny crumbs of earth flying several feet into the air.
"What in the world -", Jack began, but stopped as he looked down at the devastated landscape he was flying over. He saw the remains of a city, the houses laying in waste and the streetlights flickering in a last, hopeless attempt to keep sending out their absurdly small amounts of continuous light against the all-possessing darkness. There was not a single human soul to be seen anywhere - the houses were abandoned, the streets empty. Where was everybody?
Jack slowed down as he spotted what seemed to be a debris-covered hole in the ground. He landed, kneeled down and looked inside. What he saw was a scene that nearly took his breath away. Uncountable figures were stuffed inside a space that was clearly too small for them. Some were shivering with fear, some crying, and some were fighting for their consciousness in the hot, damp air, their sweat-covered bodies leaning against the concrete walls. But what hurt him most was seeing the children, staring into void with eyes full of resignation and despair. They had come to a point where their parent´s incantation about how everything would be fine and nothing bad would happen no longer give them hope. They had seen too much, had been thrown into harsh reality far too early. They should be outside, playing joyfully and be oblivious to the hardships of their parent´s lives. Yet here they were, sitting inside a bunker somewhere in Europe and hoping to survive without knowing what their lives are even going to be worth living for.
Jack turned away. He couldn´t take that. This was not his battle to fight, not his concern to worry about. He was the guardian of fun and helping those children was clearly neither possible to him nor was it his job. But whose was it, then? a gnawing voice inside his head asked. Who is going to save those children? Who can?
Jack felt his insides revolving.
He didn´t know, and he didn´t know who would. But somebody had to do something. Why weren´t the guardians here? They had sworn to protect the children of this world, so why weren´t they here? Then it slowly dawned on him that they would be just as powerless as he was. In that moment, Jack would have given anything - anything - to be a real person just for once and at least attempt to help those children. But it did no good. He stayed in this body that was slowly becoming more and more of a prison, unseen and unheard. He began to feel like there were a thousand prison bars, and no world behind them anymore and he was forced to keep running in circles in a shrinking box - no matter how much he strengthened himself, no matter how convincing the facade he made for himself to hide behind, he was always too weak to break free, and he always ended up more desperate.
Jack never forgot that scene. Even when he returned to North America and convinced himself he was not powerless at all, when he carefully rebuilt his facade, Jack never forgot, even when the war ended. Whenever night had fallen and the town had gone to sleep, he sat down on a rooftop and asked the only one he knew for advice. He wanted to know what the Man in the Moon had planned for those children. The only answer he ever got was silence.
And what other answer should the Moon have given him? It is up to us, the mortals, to let every adolescent have the chance to have their memories, their dreams, their hopes and their wonder to be guarded. I trust humanity to prevail in the end, but it is our choice on how we will prevail. Will we keep fighting until there is an enemy we can only defeat united or will we come to the conclusion that we are all humans and should therefore unite earlier?
Because when hand-grenades are flying and the rattle of machine guns fills the air, no guardian is strong enough to keep those lights flickering.