G - ∞

Remember me.


Mark - January 14, 2019 - 3:03 PM

I can feel the SCAMPER moving as I sit in one of the seats, holding my empty Lightning Gun and looking down. Now that I'm out of danger, everything's coming back to me. I can't stop thinking about Aidan being killed by Fusion Buttercup, and her giving me that creepy grin, her eyes piercing into my soul. Her eyes were not the same eyes as the one I've been seeing in my dreams. So I still don't know whose eyes they belong to, but I think they may belong to a Fusion. Fusion Buttercup's eyes had the same color and similar shape to the eyes in my dreams, but every time I see the latter, I feel an indescribable level of dread.

I eventually start looking back up when I start feeling motion sickness, because my current view does not show movement, but I feel it in the roaring of the engines and me tilting forward. The SCAMPER must be moving left. I turn to look out the window behind me, and I see the carrier getting closer and closer. I'm going to be up there soon. There are other SCAMPERs coming toward and arriving on the helicarrier. As we get high enough to see the deck of the helicarrier, nce they arrive and the people start leaving, some people tie the SCAMPERs down to the carrier. I don't see Amanda and Lucas yet.

The SCAMPER we're in starts to slow down as it descends onto the carrier and lands. The moment we stop moving, Evan and I get up and get ready to leave. I want to see my surviving friends. As the door opens, I can feel the air rush out, due to the air up here being thinner and of lower pressure than the air that was in the SCAMPER. The air in the SCAMPER doesn't get sucked out extremely fast like how it would on an airplane or in outer space, because from what I could tell from when I was on the ground, the helicarrier is only 4 to 5 thousand feet up and not over. Also, I get a weird feeling in my ears. That feeling where you change your altitude very quickly, and your ears feel odd, and you have to either yawn, chew gum or some other method in order to clear that issue up. However, that's the last thing on my mind right now.

As Evan and I leave the SCAMPER, we slip away from the group. Numbuh Five notices and asks, "Where are you going, Mark?"

Evan and I turn around and Evan says, "Mark needs to see his friends again. Do you need him somewhere?"

"Yes, we need him at the control room," Numbuh Five says back. "But it isn't too urgent, so just make sure to bring him to the control room after finding his friends."

"Copy that."

Evan and I turn back and start walking around the deck in search of our friends. I look around, and wow, this deck is huge. It's bigger than any other battleships or military carriers I've ever seen. Evan notices me looking around in awe, because he says:

"Y'know, if you think this is huge, you would have been amazed by our Gihugeacarrier. Ours was so huge it had a ton of buildings on it and a whole lot more. That is, until it was blown in half by... chocolate ice cream, of all things."

"...What?!" I ask after being silent for a moment. Did I hear that right? A giant carrier was blown in half by ice cream? I don't know how to process that without thinking Evan's insane. But I know he's not, which is even stranger!

"Yeah, things are weird in the KND."

We continue looking around the deck, with more SCAMPERs showing up and landing. Aside from the SCAMPERs, there are large wood and metal crates that are also tied or bolted down to the helicarrier. There are so many operatives around too, and with every operative moving around and making noise, I can barely make out anyone in this crowd. My eyes dart from operative to operative in order to try and make out anything I recognize about Amanda or Lucas. Some of the things I look for are brown or black hair, or if their eyes are purple or gray eyes. I know, not much to go on, but I can't go by clothes because they're probably wearing the armor all other operatives are wearing. Evan said they're up here, so they were probably fighting at some point, too.

My eyes catch something. I think I see a shade of purple on my right. I look there. Oh, never mind. One of the operatives is hauling this container of strange purple crystals out of a SCAMPER. OK, time to keep looking.

"Amanda! Lucas!" I hear Evan say, his voice gradually getting farther to my left. OK, they must be there. I turn left and see, about 25 feet away from Evan, are... Yeah, it's them. As I expected, both Amanda and Lucas are wearing KND armor. It's strange seeing Amanda in something other than purple, or Lucas without some article of clothing related to the Gangreen Gang. Amanda, like usual, has her hair in a ponytail hanging off on her left side. Lucas's hair is a bit more messed up, though, with strands going loose everywhere. There are a couple small bruises and marks on both of their faces. Speaking of which, I haven't seen the mark on my face yet. I hope it's not too bad.

Amanda and Lucas don't see me yet. They see Evan. "Evan!" Amanda says, before sighing in relief. Then she gets a bit concerned. "Wait, where's-" She looks past him, at me. Yep, she sees me now. Her eyes widen, she leans back and then stands up. She says something, but I don't hear her. I think she says my name. Lucas looks at her in confusion for a bit, then toward me. Then his eyes widen. Amanda squints her eyes, probably to make sure she's not hallucinating. Then she turns to Lucas, and he turns to her. They both look at me again, and run.

Amanda and Lucas sprint toward me, but Amanda gets a large head start because she started running at least a second before Lucas started. They don't let anything get in their way as they head in my direction. They can't believe I'm here, because the last time they saw me, I was in a time machine experiment that was going horribly wrong. And now after this big battle, I've returned to them. Amanda even pushes another operative out of the way to get to me faster, and once reaching me, she doesn't stop like Evan and Aidan did. She keeps going, and she surrounds me in her arms. Lucas catches up very soon after.

Both Amanda and Lucas immediately start pouring out questions. Some of the questions they ask are, "Are you OK?" and "What happened?".

"I'm... I'm OK, I guess," I say. I'm at least partially alright.

"Wait, where's Aidan, though?" Lucas asks. Oh, shoot. I don't know how I'm supposed to respond to this. I look to Evan for guidance on what to say, but he similarly doesn't know what to say. Maybe it'd be better to do what Evan and Aidan did when I asked them about Chris and John: I should say nothing, and let the silence speak for itself. Amanda looks at Evan, and then notices the crimson stains on his gloves. When she looks back to me, I can't say anything. I can tell she's started to figure out what happened, because her expression is now shifting from concern to sadness. She knows she's lost yet another friend.

"H-how?" Amanda asks. "What happened to..."

I can't answer. I don't want to answer. I can't tell Amanda that Aidan died the way he did. But she wants to know. But I can't lie to her! Ah... what do I do?

"We were in one of the groups assigned to rescue Dexter," Evan says. OK, good, he's going to explain it, because I don't know I could bring myself to do it anyway. Our SCAMPER crashed. We got to the DexHotel and found Dexter, but Fusion Buttercup ambushed us and... she killed Aidan."

I'm relieved that Evan didn't tell them flat-out that Aidan was punched through the chest by Fusion Buttercup. They don't need to know that gruesome detail. Besides, I think they'll figure it out anyway. I look to Lucas, and he's looking down. I can hear him saying, "Not again," under his breath. He looks up again and his eyes are gleaming. He then sucks the tears in again, and in the corner of my eye, Amanda wipes a tear away.

"I'm... I'm so sorry you had to see that," Amanda says. "I can't imagine what... what that would be like for you."

"I... I still can't believe you're... you're back," Lucas says to me. "We... we knew we would be seeing you again, but... I still can't believe it. A lot has happened while you were gone..."

"I know," I say. "You know, I actually almost didn't make it out. I was actually chased up a building by a Tech Wing and then Cyberusses! I would've been a meal if Ben and Numbuh Five hadn't found me and brought me to Tech Square."

"And then when Dexter got kidnapped, Aidan and I found him there. And we, um... told him about Chris and John."

"Speaking of which... what happened to them?" I ask.

"Oh, great," Lucas says, before walking away. Actually, I get that. I wouldn't want to be there if I were Lucas either. Lucas walks away a bit, at least 30 feet away. That also makes me realize that this place is rather noisy. There's the rocket fire of SCAMPERs landing, people moving things around, and other people talking. Yeah, he won't be able to hear us from here. I look to Evan and Amanda again.

"So, what happened?" I ask again. They then begin to relay the first story. Apparently it happened at our school during class.


Evan - September 8, 2016 - 12:59 PM

Right now, I'm in Humanities class, which in all honesty, I don't really like. Sometimes it's cool when the teacher plays vids, but the rest of the time, it'd be boring if a good amount of our group wasn't in here. Amanda, Lucas and John are here, which is pretty rare given that this school has a ton of students and many different classes. Aidan and Chris, on the other hand, are in other classes. Aidan's in Bio class and Chris's in Art class. Mark, he's... well, we don't know. Last thing we knew about his whereabouts, the time machine had warped into this weird dimension. Dexlabs had found a way to get in around two months ago, but they hadn't found anything but a piece of old paper that somehow is counting down the days. It's weird how that happened at almost exactly the same time that Andrew got a lot more... "energized" than before. That'll be weird for Mark when he finds out about it.

Anyway, after doing the Do Now and a small activity, the teacher says that on Friday, we're going to get this book that revolves about striving for individuality and other themes that match with what we're learning about in this quarter. We're supposed to read it over the next two weeks and then make a literary analysis of it by the 26th. John knew someone who had read the book, and he said that it was weird, and that it defied a bit of logic sometimes. I heard that at one point, a person feels really cold so they try to take a swim in the warm pool, but it turns out they're so cold they end up freezing the water to ice. And they're supposed to be a normal human too. It's not like it's a superhero that just gained ice powers and is learning to control them (although I'd totally read that). Well, I'm a bit interested anyway to at least see how weird it gets.

After the teacher announces that, we're given our bookmarks that have the main characters and a few of the themes. The teacher also says that if we really want to, we can start reading early. Now, I wish I could say that I'd do that AND read as much of the book as possible within the smallest amount of time so I could not only no longer worry about it, but I'd also be free of most Humanities homework for a while. But I know I'm not going to do that. Procrastination is a very powerful force. I know that Amanda will start reading early. Yep, and there she goes. She and some of the other students are getting out of their seats to get some of those books.

Of course, anyone who picks up the book doesn't read it immediately. They put the book away in their backpacks. As for now, I guess I'm just gonna wait for whatever the teacher's gonna say next. But I get distracted when somebody screams, "WHOA!", right before I hear something fall and crash loudly. The ground shakes as soon as the crash happens as well. Of course, every kid in the room gets up and moves to the windows, causing a ton of commotion. Even the teacher is interested this time, unlike some other occasions of something strange happening outside, like a battle between the Powerpuff Girls and another monster or villain. I manage to push my way through the crowd of students so I can see what's going on and...

Dude. It's one of those Terrafusers. Looks like it just landed, because there's a ton of dust around it, and it's completely crushed one of the cars. As the dust starts settling, I can notice the car's details, and it looks the car belongs to... Really? Of all the cars in the parking lot, it crushed Ms. Keane's car. And she's one of the nicest teachers in the school! The Terrafuser then begins to bury its tendrils into the ground and Fusion Spawns come out of it. They start bouncing in all directions, and I see one of them jump into a car. We watch as that same car proceeds to transform and mutate into a monster-car. It has jaws, legs, and even a spiky tail. It's like the car became part T-rex! Other spawns jump into the telephone poles, and transform into large, beast-like monsters with spikes on their backs.

"Guys! Look up!" I hear Amanda say. I do what he says, and I see Planet Fusion in the sky, and what I guess are a few more Terrafusers coming down from its direction. They're just specks in the distance right now, but they're very green specks. And it looks like they're heading toward us! Are they actually going to collide... OH GOD! THEY ARE!

"EVERYONE, RUN!" I scream out. Looks like everyone agrees with me, because we're all rushing for the exit doors. There's one of each side of the room, going to the hallway. But so many people are trying to get through each door at once we're having trouble. Thankfully, Amanda, Lucas, John and I had a head start, and most of us are the first to get out the door. However, John gets separated from us by the crowd of people, and ends up a bit behind the rest of us. Once we're out the door, we hurry as fast as we can away from the door, but meteorites are fast, because less than a second after we're out the door, the wall explodes and its fragments fly after us. The explosion also knocks me right to the floor, and the crashing sound is so loud it causes a ringing in my ears. The heat strikes me the most in the back, as flames roar out behind us.

For a moment, I feel extremely numb, and I hear nothing else but a ringing noise and my rapid breathing. I look up slowly and I see students running for their lives. I see Amanda getting up, dust collecting on her purple hoodie. She sees me, rushes up to me and helps me up. Lucas then comes to us as well.

"Hold up. Where's John?" I ask. Amanda and Lucas look at me in confusion. They don't know either? I turn around, and immediately see them. John is lying on the floor about 10 feet behind us, with a gash in his head. Oh no! Was he hit by a piece of the wall or something? It looks like he's still conscious, but barely. He's looking around slowly.

"Guys..." John says slowly. "Help."

Of course, we rush over to John and help him up. As we do this, I look at the ruins of the classroom. It's been completely wrecked. Almost everything's been vaporized or burning. There's another one of those Terrafusers smack dab in the middle of the room, and it's starting to root itself into the floor. This hallway is filled with dust, and there's fire in a lot of points in the classroom. These set off the fire alarms, causing loud buzzes to echo through the hallways. The roof sprinklers also go off. OK, Spawns are probably going to leave that Terrafuser any moment now, so we better move!

"Come on, guys! Let's go!" I say. And we head up the hallway as fast as we can.

I hear a notification on my phone. I look at my phone screen and see the notification in my group chat. I set up a group chat between me and our group of friends a while back, and we chat on there most of the time when it's a group thing. We all set our texts in that certain chat to be different colors so we could tell who was what. Aidan has red, Amanda has purple, Mark would have green, and so on. We added Andrew after that... incident, and his texts have a sorta yellowish-green color (yellow and green are his favorite colors). In this case, the text I see is indigo, which shows it's from Chris.

"dude"

"wth just happened"

Then I see a text in red show up. That's Aidan:

"are you guys OK"

"what was that crash"

I respond as fast as I can, and my text pops up:

"it was a terrafuser"

"we're alright but john is hurt"

"find out where everyone's going & tell us"

Just as I text this, we make a right and head down the back hallway. We're on the 3rd floor right now, so we have to take a few turns before we can reach an emergency exit on the ground floor. The first thing we need to do is just head straight. We don't move too fast, of course, because John is badly hurt and apparently another bit of debris hurt his leg, so he's having trouble walking. On top of that, he's probably got burns too if he was that close to the explosion. Maybe the rest of us got some, too, because my back feels like it was just on fire. So, we have to move more slowly. As we do that, I see students running about, most of them having no idea what is going on.

Then we hear something none of us wanted to hear: I think it's another Terrafuser about to hit the school. And sure enough, an explosion happens above us, and we're knocked to the ground. The ceiling in front of us caves in, and dust rains on us. But the ceiling is not the only thing that gets messed up. Everything does for a while. By the time we get up again, I look up and see the ceiling and the roof above it have been ripped apart, showing the blue sky. We can see a really large Terrafuser on the roof, and its tendrils are digging into the school-

What in the world? A telephone pole was just thrown onto the roof. The wires have all been cut, of course, but what are they trying to- Oh, no! They're making more of those large, spiky-back monsters. We have to hurry away from this area. The hallways in this part of the school are rather big, so those monsters could fit in here, and I don't want to come across them. None of us do. So we run.

We're careful to avoid the debris on the floor that collapsed when the large Terrafuser hit the roof, and we just go. We just go. While we're hurrying, I keep hearing messages on my phone, but I've got no time to check yet. When we get to a staircase on the left, another Terrafuser flies through the ceiling and into the stairs, causing the entire stairway to break. OK, looks like we're not going that way. We go into the hallway opposite of the now broken stairway, and head down that.

Hold on. I hear someone coming up the stairs. OK, it sounds human. When I see his dark hair and then his gray eyes, I realize it's Chris. WAIT, WHY IS CHRIS HERE? WHY ISN'T HE WITH AIDAN?!

"Lucas! Guys! Are you OK?" Chris asks.

"Y-yeah," I say, but not too loudly. "John isn't very alright, though."

"Come on. I know a safe way out," Chris says. He turns around and faces toward the hallway on our right as he does so. The moment he looks that direction, he freezes. That's when I hear a noise. It sounds like something large is running toward us. Chris bolts for the stairway that he came from, but something massive appears on his right before he can reach it. It's that large monster with the spikes on its back. In the split-second I see it, I notice that the telephone poles are its legs, except they've been widened out and bent to act like real legs. It's at least as tall as the hallway, too. It head-butts Chris with the side of its head and sends him flying down the stairway and into the wall.

OH NO! CHRIS! WAIT... WHAT IF THE MONSTER SEES US! We're out in the open right now! WE NEED TO HIDE! Without thinking, we split up and hide behind lockers or inside a storage closet that must've been abandoned by a janitor when the Terrafusers struck. Lucas and I bolt behind the lockers on the left side, while Amanda and John run into the closet and stay quiet. Lucas tries to scream out Chris's name, but I cover his mouth. If he screams anything, we're done for. And we wait. We wait and we wait. As soon as I think I hear that monster walking away to the left, I peek out from behind the locker. OK, I don't see it. I sneak down the hallway alongside the lockers, and the others do the same behind me. Lucas is trying as hard as he can to be quiet. He's panicking about Chris. When we make it to the hallway between us and the stairway, we run through it as fast as we can, all at once. We run down the stairs and see Chris. He's lying on the floor-

...Oh god. Chris is... His head is just... It's... This is horrible. Amanda covers her mouth with her hands. She's pale as a ghost. We all are. I can hear myself breathing rapidly. No, no, no, no, no, no, no... no... Chris is... He's...

"CHRIS!" Lucas screams. "Chris, please... say something..."

I take two of my fingers and check for a pulse. Nothing. I try again for longer this time, to make sure I didn't miss anything. Still nothing. I hear something hit the wall. I get startled when I hear loud screaming. I turn around, and Lucas is leaning against the wall and sliding down it. He collapses to the floor and just stares into space. He then proceeds to let it all out. Tears and tears stream down his face, droplet after droplet hitting the floor. It's at this point the Powerpuffs show up. I hear them zipping throughout the school, probably taking out all the monsters they can. They must see us with their X-ray vision, because Blossom shows up in front of us, followed by a loud zipping sound and a ton of wind. She must get affected by... what Chris looks like now... because she looks shocked too. Then in a millisecond, we're outside. She must have zapped us out.

As soon as we realize we're outside, we find the nearest ambulance and hurry over to it. We get Chris to the paramedics even though we know it's futile, and we also get John in an ambulance too. He's pretty injured as well. Maybe all of us here should get checked to make sure, but John needs to go first. As for Lucas, he's inconsolable right now. You can see the tear drops from the front pathway where we were brought to where we are now. I don't even blame him. It's at this point I hear another text. I look to the phone... I see a bunch of texts from Aidan, from as recent as right now to a minute or two ago. The texts say:

"YO"

"CHRIS JUST RAN INTO THE SCHOOL LOOKING FOR LUCAS"

"YOU NEED TO FIND HIM AND GET OUT OF THERE"

Then the ones that came just a few moments ago are:

"did you find chris"

"& have you guys made it out of there?!"

I look at that message for a few moments. I don't know what to say for this. I don't want to be the one to tell my friends that a close friend is dead! Uh... OK... I reluctantly start typing.

"yeah"

I keep trying to type some way to explain what just happened, but I keep deleting and then trying to re-type it. What the heck am I supposed to say? When Aidan messages me again, asking if we're OK, I simply say:

"chris didn't make it."

Aidan doesn't respond for a while. He's probably just as shocked as us. I wouldn't know what to say either if I was told via text that one of my friends was gone forever. When he finally does reply, we start sending quick, short texts to each other as fast as we can:

"where are you"

"in front of school ambulance"

"which one"

"straight across from front door"

Amanda, Lucas, John and I decide to all get ourselves checked by the medics, just in case. Turns out a few of us still got some first-degree burns from the heat of the explosion. John was the worst off, though. According to the doctors, John got a second-degree burn on his back, and he got some bad wounds on his head and legs from pieces of debris. But he'll survive. As for the rest of us, who still got some burns, we were advised to take cold baths often to prevent the burns from swelling, as well as use special burn treatment ointment after that to help heal our skin.

As we wait for Aidan, I look back to the school. It's been damaged a lot. I can see the Terrafuser on the roof, the hole in the classroom we were just in, and the Terrafuser in that parking lot. Fusion Spawns and those monsters frequently come out of the school and try to attack, but SACT agents that must have shown up not that long ago start pushing the monsters back as a flying Dexlabs vehicle also shows up. It deploys strange triangle-shaped devices that implant themselves into the ground. I think they're making a perimeter around the entire school campus. A bit later, they start beaming upward and creating a force field that completely surrounds the campus. Yeah, I've seen this before. When a ton of Terrafusers had come down and infected Goat's Junk Yard, I saw a video of these same devices forming the barrier around the infected area.

After five minutes, Aidan finally finds us, and when he does, he runs up to us as fast as he can. As soon as he reaches us, he starts saying a ton of stuff as fast as possible:

"I'm sorry. I tried to stop him, but he wouldn't, he wouldn't listen to me. I grabbed him and he pushed me away. He ran inside. I couldn't stop him. I'm sorry..."

Aidan proceeds to slow down, before he says: "This...This is all my fault..."

"No... it's mine..." Lucas says. "It's because I was there that he ran in. He's dead because of me..."

"Lucas, you have nothing to fault yourself for," Amanda says. "He wanted to find you and make sure you were safe. And he saved us. If Chris wasn't there, that behemoth monster or whatever it's called would've certainly found and killed us."

"He should've lived, not me," Lucas says outright, with a lot of anger in his voice.

"Then he'd be in the exact same situation as you!"

Amanda and Lucas start arguing, with Lucas continually saying how it should've been him instead of Chris, and Amanda saying that Chris wouldn't want that either, and that he needs to calm down. Aidan and I try to intervene, but nothing helps. The argument escalates to the point where Bubbles shows up. She lands behind Lucas and tells us to please stop fighting. However, the argument is getting louder and louder. Suddenly, Lucas loses it. He yells, "JUST SHUT UP!", turns around and tries to throw a punch, but Bubbles stops it with her super strength and speed. As soon as Lucas sees Bubbles' face, he visibly starts to stop getting as angry. Lucas then starts crying harder and hugs Bubbles. Bubbles comforts Lucas as much as she can.

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry..."

For the next few weeks after the attack on the school, nothing felt right. It felt like there was something missing from everything we did. Everything felt even more broken than after Project Future. What happened at Pokey Oaks Junior High broke Lucas the most out of all of us for very clear reasons. I can't imagine what it would be like for someone to lose their twin, because I hear twins, especially identical ones, share a very strong bond. Well, now I've been able to see first hand what happens when that bond breaks. For weeks, Lucas isolated himself, and when he came back, he was even more different. He hated the Fusions, and told us he'll do everything he can to hinder them. He then proceeded to show how much he was willing to go when he saw a Fusion Spawn in an alleyway, then ran after it and beat it up till his hands were burnt from the Fusion Matter. OK, he's serious about this. We'll help him as much as we can. All of us.


Evan - January 25, 2018 - 1:27 AM

I've been sitting at my computer for hours now. I actually have been binge-watching the Realms series to catch up on it before we watch the Season 3 finale this Saturday morning. I know our entire group is going to gather together and watch it, because it's apparently going to be big. I hear that in this, the Dark Matter invaders may finally reach Earth. Me, Amanda, Aidan, Lucas, John, Andrew, Jade, Andrew's neighbors and friends, we're all going to be at one of our places to see it. No Fusions will stop us from watching it.

I look at the clock and wow, I've stayed up a lot longer than I should have. I should really go to sleep soon. Well, maybe after one more episode. I'm only about 7 or 8 episodes away from the season finale. Right before I click that, I hear a notification sound. I look down and it's in our group chat. During this invasion, we've got a good amount of members added to group chat, some of which are Andrew's neighbors. They're rather interesting, since they're not exactly human. At all. Also, everyone in our group also decided to set sounds to their texts in the group chat, so we can tell who's texting just by the noises their messages make. The sound I hear is a guitar strum, so it's from Lucas. I guess I'll see what he's saying before I watch the next episode. I open the chat and he's saying:

"OMG"

"GUYS"

Then he gives out a link to a news article. I can't see much from the text link, but other than the website name and stuff, it says something about a Fusion attack on a home. I click it anyway to see what's happening. The headline says:

"THE LATEST: Suburban homes destroyed in Fusion raid, 5 killed"

OK, this is odd. Why would Lucas show me this- Oh, no. I just scrolled down to the picture. It's a picture of the house that was destroyed from across the street, with cop cars, fire trucks and ambulances everywhere. The entire block is illuminated red and blue by the combined light of all the vehicles there. There's even a SACT armored truck, and there are agents carrying containers of Fusion Matter out of the house and toward the truck. The house is surrounded with caution tape, and there are holes in several of the walls. However, the thing that shocks me the most about this picture is the house itself. It's John's house. Oh, no, no, no. No, no. My morbid curiosity gets the better of me and I start reading the article:

"TOWNSVILLE - 5 have been killed and many more wounded after a group of Fusion monsters attacked a house in Southern Pokey Oaks Wednesday night.

"The earliest reports of the raid came at 10:10 PM Wednesday night, when residents called the police claiming that they heard screaming and glass breaking, and when they went to see what was happening, there was a hole in the wall and Fusion Monsters that have been identified as Gravel Golems were storming into the building. However, before the police could arrive, the Powerpuff Girls showed up on the scene and destroyed the Gravel Golems that remained on-site at 10:12 PM, as the rest ran off. The ones that ran away reportedly attacked houses in their way, causing 2 more deaths and several more injuries.

There have been several casualties, ranging from 16 years old to 51. While most of the casualties in the raid involved injuries commonly associated with being attacked by Gravel Golems, the youngest casualty, Jonathan Ramone, had deep claw marks all over his body. His parents, who were also killed in the attack, had a combination of the two forms of wounds mentioned. The SACT has yet to identify what Fusion could have inflicted the claw marks.

A connection between past Fusion raids has yet to be discovered."

So John's gone now too... I just stare at his name on the screen. "Jonathan Ramone"... "deep claw marks"... "all over his body"... I end up reading those parts of the article over and over again, and all the while, I'm hearing multiple notifications going off on my phone. All of them must be in the group chat. A meow, a splash, a hopping sound, a firecracker, an electric zap, and more. Yeah, a lot of our friends have seen it too, and are responding. And I'm just sitting here, knowing that another friend is gone. Now I don't even want to watch the next episode. I don't know if I can after finding out something like this. That'd be disrespectful to John's memory. We might have to postpone the viewing of the Realms finale because I'm sure all of us won't be able to watch it much. All of us will have to stop using social media for a while because I know we'll get spoiled on the finale if we do. Once we're ready, at least, we'll watch it, but not for a while... I can't believe this... Not again... What are we going to tell Mark?


Mark - January 14, 2019 - 3:10 PM

"And that's basically what happened with Chris and John," Evan says.

Dang... That's what happened? That's... that's insane. I knew the stories were not going to be fun, but I'm even more depressed now. Chris died from a monster I barely know anything about except that they're made when those Fusion Spawns combine with telephone poles. And it's not even clear what happened to John. To be honest, I'm kinda glad I wasn't there to experience that, but still, what happened to Aidan was probably the worst out of all of them. And Amanda and Lucas didn't see that first-hand like Evan and I did. So it sorta evens out.

Lucas, who was still far away from us so that he didn't hear the story, comes back when he sees that we're not speaking.

"You guys are done with that, right?"

"Yeah," Evan says, before quickly changing the subject. "So, Mark... did you see anything weird when the time machine warped away?"

"Yeah, actually," I say back. "It was so trippy too."

"How trippy are we talking here?" Lucas asks.

"I'm talking 'ended up in this greenish-blue dimension where everything was swirling and stuff' trippy."

"What in the world? What else did you see?" Evan says.

"Now, I noticed weird things outside. First, there were two people and one of them was glowing, but then the time machine fell through the floor and turned over. Then the time machine resurfaced in the same place, but there were more people there. The glowing guy was there, but there were a few other not-glowing guys next to him, and across from them were a bunch of people. I couldn't make any of them out before I fell through the floor again. The next time I resurfaced, I saw someone running, with another person behind them, but much farther away. I remember seeing the person in behind stopping, then the person in front fell, and then the person falling behind went over to the person in front. Sorry if this is all confusing. It happened pretty fast."

"No, we're still following along," Evan says. "At least I am."

"Anyway, after a bit, the glowing person appeared next to them and lifted one of the people up, and then everything distorted. Like... a ravine split open and pushed the other person to the other side, closer to the white circle. I didn't see any more because the time machine fell in, and then it was just a tube of space I was falling through. There was green, blue, everything in between, and I think I saw another time machine, but it disappeared right after I noticed it. Then I just blacked out."

"Whoa... you saw all of that? So, what do you think the glowing guy was?"

"I honestly have no idea, but I think the glowing person inhabits it, because he showed up in every scenario I saw. Maybe it's the Guardian, for all we know. Maybe that place is his dimension."

"That's interesting. What about the other people? Who do you think they are?"

"I... I have no idea. I don't know how I could figure it out unless the Guardian were to tell or show me. Speaking of which, what else happened in the time I was gone, other than... the things you just told me about?"

"...Where do you want to start?" Lucas asks.

"Right after the Guardian visited Andrew. I want to know everything that you remember seeing and experiencing right after that moment."

Before Evan, Amanda or Lucas can speak, Evan's communicator starts ringing. Evan answers, and I see Numbuh Five's hologram.

"Numbuh Five thought you were going to bring down Mark," Numbuh Five says, still using the third person. I want to know why she does that, but not right now.

"Yes... I know. I'm gonna bring him down to you now," Evan says, looking annoyed and at the same time, trying to hide that. "We'll be there in a few minutes."

Evan then stops the call and says, "Alright, we need to go to the control room."

"Where is that?" I ask.

"Don't worry, we know where it is," Amanda says.

My friends then proceed to lead me from the helicarrier deck into a small hangar bay. Inside the hangar bay, I see even more SCAMPERs, COOLBUSes and one giant mosquito-looking vehicle. We walk past the vehicles into a doorway that leads to an elevator. I'm excited, because I've never been on a helicarrier, ever. I can add this to the list of weird, crazy and strange things that have happened today. After going up the elevator, we arrive at a large, dome-shaped room. There are control panels on all sides except for one side, which has a large, wide window that looks out over the deck. There are other windows on other sides, too, but they're smaller. People are in chairs, and it looks like they're manning turrets of some form of machinery.

"Mark," Numbuh Two says on my left. I turn and he's in this room, along with Numbuh Five. "Glad to see you found your friends."

"Yeah," I say. "So why did you want me here?"

"Greetings, Mark," a voice says behind me. "I am glad to see you've made it out of Tech Square."

That voice... it sounds like Computress. I turn around to try and confirm this, and yep, she's there. She looks no different from when I saw her last time, either. She's still blue, she's still got that holo-clipboard, and she still levitates on that small disc.

"Oh, hey," I say. "Yeah... we made it out. What do you need me for?"

"I told you that I would answer all the questions you had when you arrived here," Computress says. "I am ready to answer them now."

"Well, most of them were already answered by Numbuh Five and the squad she assembled during the search for the transmitter, but I do have a few questions I feel should be answered."

"And what questions are those?"

"Well, I want to know how this started, most of all."

"Very well. The war started not that long after the Project Future incident, about two months after. Mojo Jojo had discovered something new on the outskirts of the solar system. He led an army of his Monkey Minions into space to try and conquer this "new planet", but as you have likely guessed, that "new planet" was Planet Fusion itself. It was sending Terrafusers to every celestial body in the solar system, likely to investigate them for what they were worth, and if they had intelligent life on that planet. Once it found out about our planet, it sent down several Terrafusers to different locations on Earth. Most of them happened to land in suburban areas, one of which was actually not far from Sector Five-"

"IT'S SECTOR V!" almost everyone in the room who heard Computress says at once. A few seconds later, a series of beeps suddenly happen on our left.

"Commander, we're getting a transmission!" a voice says on my left as well. I turn, and an operative is looking over a device that's projecting a message. It looks like that device is the transmitter, too. It has the same shape, color and everything.

"Who's it from?" Numbuh Five asks.

"It's... it's from Dexter," the operative says. Dexter? He's still trapped in Dexlabs! Is he OK?

"Well, play it, then!"

The operative presses a button, and a hologram of Dexter appears above the transmitter. Dexter then proceeds to speak:

"... This is Dexter. ...This is the last transmission you will receive from me... Despite our best efforts, Downtown Townsville has been lost to the Fusions. And while the eruption from Mojo's volcano meant that most of the Fusion forces there were eliminated, it will still be claimed by the infection in a matter of weeks. And unfortunately, the lives of some of our best heroes have been claimed as well. Blossom... Bubbles... Ben... But they're a few among the many, many operatives and soldiers that lost their lives as well."

My god... Bubbles and Blossom are gone? And Ben too? What happened?

"What happened to them?" I ask, but Dexter doesn't respond in any way. This must be a one-way transmission or something.

"However, I want to make this clear: You must not lose hope. This war may seem futile now, but believe me: This war is not over yet, not by a long shot! And how is that the case, you ask? Well, during today we discovered something. The time machine I had made a few years ago, the machine I believe would have been lost, returned today. And with that time machine came someone: Mark Emeron. You almost certainly remember him from the Project Future mishap. Now that he's arrived, we can send him back without causing any time paradoxes, which is what would happen if we were to send anyone else back. Not only that, but he has proven to me and fellow operatives first-hand that he is willing to help fight against the Fusions. It is imperative that he survives, as he is the greatest chance we have against the Fusions.

Now, in order to send Mark back, you'll have to do something that I usually would not like happening under normal circumstances. You... you will have to work with Mandark. He's the only one I know who knows almost as much about technology as I do, and you will need him in order to understand the complex quantum calculations and more. I'll let him take the glory in this timeline. Between him and Numbuh Two, one of the best technical operatives I've seen in the Kids Next Door, I am certain that you will be able to rebuild my time capsule and send Mark back to the past.

Don't try to come back for me, no matter what. I will be fine. As for you, you need to get back to Sector V and to safety as soon as you can. I wish the best of luck to all of you. Dexter out."

The hologram then fades out here, and we just stand there in silence for a moment. So many people with names to them... Blossom, Ben, Bubbles... and Aidan... they're all gone. And now I'm apparently the biggest hope for Earth now. My thoughts are interrupted when I hear someone running fast into the room. I hear panting, too. Whoever is running in must have run a lot to get here.

"Commander!" the operative says. I turn around. The operative's got hazel eyes and brown hair.

"Yes, Numbuh 501?" Numbuh 5 says.

"Commander! ... We tried as hard as we could, but... the blast... the blast had done too much internal damage... we were unable to save him. ...I'm sorry."

Who? Numbuh One? Dang... that blast from Fusion Dexter's weapon must have done something really bad to him. Numbuh Five turns back to the transmitter and looks down. Then within a millisecond, she slams her hands down, causing a loud bang that startles all of us.

"...Broadcast Dexter's message to all KND operatives here, in Sector V... in any of the bases," Numbuh Five says, but in a much less friendlier tone. I am actually a bit scared right now, but I don't know if I can leave yet. I look to Computress with concern, and she says:

"You are allowed to leave now, Mark. We can catch you up at a better time."

Yeah, I want to leave. I need to leave. I don't want to be here right now. It's awkward and kinda scary. And Evan, Amanda, Lucas and I all walk out at the same time into the elevator down to the hangar again. After that, we run all the way back out to the deck. Once we get back out, I get a transmission on my NanoCom, and when it starts, it's the same message that Dexter had given us. We listen to it a second time around as commotion happens around us. Interestingly, when the transmission starts for everyone, everyone stops doing what they're doing to listen. And when the transmission ends, everyone starts talking about me. Well, it seems most of them don't realize that Dexter's talking about somebody near them, so that's good. I wouldn't want to be stared at by everyone on the helicarrier. If they did, I would probably just want to leave.

"Wait, does Buttercup know if..." Lucas starts saying, but stops partway through. I know what he's talking about.

"It's very, very likely," I say back. "She was probably the first to know."

"Do you think she'll be OK?" Amanda asks.

"No. Nobody would after losing their family."

"We are now approaching Sector V," Computress's voice rings out loud over speakers on the helicarrier. They'd be much louder in the hangar, with its metallic walls and large size. Numbuh Five mentioned Sector V when we went back to the time machine before it got destroyed. Guess I'll soon see what she was talking about.

"Oh, that's right!" Amanda says. "We should probably tell you more about the Kids Next Door and what it actually is! So, the Kids Next Door is essentially a secret organization run purely by kids, which you think wouldn't end well, but it's actually one of the most organized militia out there! We protect the world not only from evil adults who might try to do something bad, but we protect the world from finding out about us, because believe me, if they knew kids working together could do this kind of stuff, they'd be using us so much for stuff we wouldn't actually have a childhood."

My friends proceed to explain more about the Kids Next Door, such as what the bases are (i.e. "The Treehouse", "Moon Base", "Arctic Base", etc.) and the processes of decommissioning and recommissioning operatives. It's all very interesting, but it's odd how everything they're talking about still feels familiar. But I clearly never remember going to the moon. And I thought that the decommissioning process supposedly "erased" my memories. Well, maybe they didn't erase them. Maybe my memories of the KND are just buried deep within my mind, waiting to be unlocked again. I'm told that when I get recommissioned, all my memories will be back for me, and I'll remember everything. I guess that's why they're not really explaining it too much, because I'll know it again when my memories return.

After a bit more of them telling me about the KND, Numbuh Two leaves the elevator and heads over to us. He tells us that we're getting ready to go to the Treehouse right now. Oh, so we're actually about to visit one of their bases. This is gonna be exciting!

"Where's Numbuh Five?" Lucas asks.

"She's... venting," Numbuh Two says. "She's not going to be coming down with us. We're going to bring Mark to the Treehouse first for recommissioning."

"We're coming with him," Evan says, before facing me. "We want to be there with you when your memories come back."

"I figured you'd do that," Numbuh Two says. We head over to a part of the hangar with SCAMPERs lined along the wall. There's a large label on the wall saying, "Use at Any Time". On another side, there are different types of vehicles, with white paint painted on the wall saying, "SOOPER RESERVED". Yeah, this definitely feels like something kids would do, but that misspell is triggering me. I ignore it and we go into the SCAMPER. After a bit, the SCAMPER takes off and leaves the hangar, flying forward. Once the helicarrier is no longer under us, we fly downward. Once we stop going downward and I can see the ground, I look out the window on my side and see...

... What the heck? OK, I knew I was going to see a huge treehouse, but... this treehouse is floating. I mean, the ground the treehouse is on is floating high above the rest, and the floating ground is being held by chains! Not only that, but I can see a large ship, and even an AIRPLANE being held up by the ridiculously thick branches. I swear, each branch on here is larger than the base of a giant tree's trunk. Did someone hit this tree with a Grow-Ray or something? This is just weird. Also, at the very top, I can see letters on one of the large wooden rooms saying "KND", and there's a large satellite on top. And once again, that unknown feeling of familiarity hits me.

The SCAMPER I'm in circles the Treehouse a few times before it's given permission to land in the hangar now. As we approach the hangar a fifth time, it turns into the hangar and lands. When we land, we wait until the SCAMPER comes to a complete stop, just like we do on theme park rides or on the Slider bus. Once it stops, we get up and leave. I look around the hangar to see as much as I can. I never imagined that kids could make all of this. I see operatives moving about from place to place. There are some wearing welding masks and fixing or working on things. There are tubes coming out of the walls, and operatives are either being sucked in or out of them. They must be transportation tubes.

"Mark?" A voice says on my left. That voice! It sounds like Andrew! I turn to the left and yep, there he is. I can recognize him not only by his still scraggly black hair and bright emerald eyes, but Jade is with him as well. Strangely, Jade isn't green now. She's a sort of greenish-blue and much shinier than before. They both are looking at me with a similar look of disbelief like Evan, Aidan, Amanda and Lucas looked at me, but it seems like they aren't as surprised. I see Andrew has a NanoCom, too, so he must have heard the transmission from Dexter. He must have been so happy when he heard I was back, and that I was alive.

When Andrew sees me, he stands there in shock for a moment, and looks at me for a second or two to make sure it's actually me. When he figures it out, his face shifts from hope to absolute joy within a microsecond. He runs toward me, and he's so much faster now! I've never seen anyone run this fast, ever! I swear, there could be a trail of lightning around him and it would make sense! Jade is flying toward me as well. Within moments, they reach me, and when Andrew touches me, I get shocked. By that, I mean that feeling when you have static electricity in your body and you touch metal. That's what I feel as Andrew knocks me over. Before all this, Andrew could knock me back a fair amount, but to straight-up knock me down is something new! When we fall down, Andrew, Jade and I hug each other tighter than I think we ever have in our lives. We're so happy to see each other again... after so long...

"Hey, Mark," a voice says from my right. I've never heard that voice before. I look to where the voice came from and... it's a cat. The voice came from a cat. But this is not a normal cat. He's not even shaped like a cat like Jade is. This cat is blue, standing on two legs, looks way different in anatomy, and has this weird cartoonish look about him. He's wearing a tan sweater with a brown collar and cuffs, and gray pants. Who is this? How does he know Andrew? Regardless, the cat says:

"Andrew's told me a lot about you... My name's Gumball..."