Before
Time was a strange thing. It could be described as even more fickle than fate. Only less people know how fickle time is while fate likes to parade it's fickleness for everybody to see. The Captain was one of those rare people who get to see fates fickleness and he knew it and boy did it give him headaches.
When he had stepped through his portal to the Beginning he had expected to see lots of dust and raw power, all clumped together enough for Chaos to form the universe. What he saw was very different and threw even him.
He ended up standing in a large room complete with settees and CCTV and there was even a hot tube in the corner. He knew his father could be a bit of a scatterbrain sometimes and that he liked to have everything on hand but the hot tube in what could only be a sitting room with the cinematic TV's and line of bookshelves in danger of falling in the hot tube and many thousands of coffee tables was a bit odd even for him. The next thing that struck him was the flowery pick wallpaper and blaring neon yellow carpet, very soft carpet but still, and more blaring neon yellow carpet on the celling complete with circles of bright red and blue and green and orange which made his head spin every time he glanced upwards, because of this it took him longer than he'd like to admit to realise that he was standing in an early twenty-first century room decorated in the nineteen seventies. A bit odd for something at the very beginning of time, several billion years before even the nineteen seventies.
The Captain immediately started thanking his father for letting him have his mother's sense of style and decided that the best course of action would be to leave the room ASAP. He somehow made it to the door at the other end of the room without going blind and opened it to see a calm empty corridor with no other doors leading off of it. Quickly deciding that he needed to find Chaos before he went mad, he turned left and followed the corridor out into a Roman courtyard complete with fountains and mosaics of things even the Captain didn't recognise. He looked up to find that the sky had a red tinge and was actually made of dust and raw power like he'd expected though he could see large lumps of rock beginning to form into planets and stars.
"It's beautiful isn't it?" a familiar voice said behind him and the Captain managed not to jump, a technique learned through millennia of practice.
"The sky or the Roman courtyard because I have to admit the courtyard is nice though I got tired of it after twelve thousand and thirty years and even then it hung around for another few thousand." Chaos laughed and the Captain turned slightly to see that he hadn't changed a bit. His red eyes glowed with laughter though not with fury and it made a nice change.
"Well it's good that you appreciate it but if you wouldn't mind who are you and how did you get here?" He wasn't demanding an answer, another nice change, but asking out of curiosity.
"I made a portal, in the future we have a bit of a problem. Time's changing and existence is fading, we've sorted out the time problem, mostly, but I needed to come here to fix the existence one." Chaos nodded.
"Understandable, though I can promise you that I had nothing to do with it." The Captain nodded despite not really believing him.
"The Captain." He said.
"What?"
"The Captain. My name." He repeated and Chaos nodded.
"Real or nickname?" He asked curiously watching him out of the corner of his eye.
"Real enough." They stood in silence for a minute as Chaos too his son in, not that he knew he was his son; not that he needed to know.
"I think I know what you're looking for." He said finally. "It appeared the other day that's when the building got a makeover, not that I'm complaining, its quiet nice, but it does cause one or two problems. I get lost more for one and if what you say is true then a wrap in the space-time continuum could be causing it and causing problems in the future of significance though it's an environmental paradox and shift and the self-fulfillingness of it means that the quiddity of existence I threatened which could cause one or two pinpricks which would be a nodus." Chaos said looking at the Captain as if he expected him to understand a word he was saying.
"Yep. Uh huh. Exactly." Chaos looked satisfied, turned and lead the Captain down another corridor. He obviously hadn't made enough people yet to understand confusion. They walked for about half an hour before Chaos lead the Captain into a dark room which, unfortunately, he recognised.
"There." Chaos said pointing at the back of the room where a small hole was in the wall, the Captain glanced around to check his proportions before coming to the conclusion that the hole was sitting directly in line with where Chaos' throne would once sit when he ordered the destruction of all he had made filled with confidence that he knew he was doing the right thing. The Captain had never believed him until now, when it was painstakingly obvious what had happened. After all existence had to be controlled by something and Chaos was lord of everything and nothing, the two categories existence could and would fall under.
"Well that solves that problem." He murmured under his breath and ignored Chaos' curious looks asking what problem? It wasn't this Chaos' fault but the less he knew the better. Deciding that YOLO would be the best approach to his problem the Captain marched forward and took a look through the hole and jerked back in surprise before leaning forward to get a better look.
The Captains good friend Merlin stood trying to persuade his good friend Arthur about something in his throne room, when Ronald Weasley ran in grabbed Merlin's arm and pulled him outside to see his sister, future wife and brother in law along with Katniss and Peeta Melark and Percy Jackson, Annabeth Chase, Jason Grace and Piper McLean. It was hard to tell but the Captain thought that they were holding something. He had seen enough though and leaned back so that he could place his palm on the hole to close it.
Golden light spew forth and the Captain concentrated harder until the light vanished and he deemed it safe enough to remove his hand and watch the hole close.
Only instead of closing it slowly tore open.
Nodus is actually a real word; I found it in the Oxford Dictionary. I don't own Percy Jackson, Harry Potter or The Hunger Games and talking about the Hunger Games next chapter will be all about the troubles of Panem. Before of course everybody gets zapped back in time.
