EDIT: December 30th, 2014. I resubmitted this chapter because anyone who still follows this story should vote on the poll up on my profile, because I'm not sure if it's worth continuing this story :u I'll probably still do the omake thing, but as a separate story, idk.
what the fuck, this story is a fucking trainwreck, i started it in 2009 as a way to test my skills at writing an OC/Canon oneshot but it escalated into this actual documentation of how i improve at story-telling and characterization and dialogue, and i am so sorry that i put you all through this shit, i mean the fucking plot has changed at least ten times throughout this ride, i romanticised OCD, i add new characters every paragraph, and there are so many plot holes i just, and i'm still continuing it i mean
wow
anyways, enjoy the latest installment. "-:-" still equals change of POV, and expect foreign terminology and plot coupons. godbless you all you poor bastards.
and yes i just crossover'd with wtnv, i'm trash
xxx
We ride out into the desert, the boy leading us on his skateboard contraption (he had named it after a demon for fuck's sake-) and us following him in a hastily borrowed car. He had offered to have his own car drive us, but we didn't want the coat damaged due to the raging sandstorm brewing out there, goddamn our politeness...All we could manage to steal...I mean borrow was a cheep looking jeep with no windows, and we wouldn't let him give us money for a rental...We are currently paying for our politeness with our blatant discomfort. Clyde drives the car whilst Rachel sits at shotgun, eagerly leaning forwards as the boy guides us to this point where our universe and another connected. I'm in the backseat with Jon, huddling up to him in his jacket as much as I can in order to shield myself from the sand and sun biting at my skin. I am in no shape to be facing the elements with such sensitive skin, and I actually prefer the terrible and very much uncomfortable feeling of having my sweat stick my skin to the leather of Jon's jacket. Better to be hot than burnt.
It must have been half an hour before the boy finally circles around, signaling us to stop. By now, the sandstorm has calmed down to a light breeze, making it safe to breathe again. Rachel is the first out of the car, before it has even come to a complete stop, and she hops and gallops over to him as he takes out a small radio from the inside of his coat. He begins to expand out the absurdly long antennae and turn the dials, searching for some signal.
Clyde is the first to speak, "So, what exactly is out here that makes you think it evidence to our theory?"
The boy had no time to explain previously, "I was out here a year or so ago on a mission when I picked up something strange." He turns his attention to a different dial once he seemed satisfied with the first he tinkered with, "There was a radio signal all the way out here, playing clear and as loud as if it were being done live just a few feet away."
"Radio technology has gotten better since it first came out," Jon states the obvious, "what makes this unusual?"
The boy briefly shot him what might have been a rude look, but it was too quick to really take notice, "I enjoyed the strange broadcast, though unfamiliar, so I tried to listen to it in other places...At home, on different missions, so on and so forth." He moves to the final dial, "And no matter how far or near I went from this spot, I could never get the signal."
Clyde tilts his head, already thinking up the possible answers as to why. Jon only looks skeptical, and Rachel is peering intently at the little orange radio in the boy's hand.
"So I tried tracking it," he continues, seeing that Jon had no counter question, "simple enough, right?" Clyde is the only one who nods, "But I can't."
I see Rachel's eyes flicker towards his face now.
"And the broadcast always speaks of...strange occurrences." He pauses, appearing to be trying to remember some occasions, "At first I thought it was just some sort of radio play...Like Orwell's War of the Worlds."
This time I tilt my head, "You have witches and demons running around in your city...Just how strange could these broadcasts be?"
He looks surprised that I spoke to him directly, and I can't help but feel guilty. I push it out of my mind as he answers me, "Just listen."
He sets the radio down in the sand.
"...No dogs allowed in the dog park...Perfect teeth...hair...Glow Cloud..."
"I thought you said it could be heard clear as day." Jon says.
"It should be," he looks frustrated, "I must have stopped short of the actual spot."
"Speaking of," Rachel pipes up after almost half an hour of not talking, "how were you able to even get close to the spot where we'd be able to hear it? There are no landmarks for miles."
The boy clears his throat and adjusts his suit, "I have a very keen memory and sense of direction."
So he was just probably nervous and distracted when he lead us here; that's what threw him off and made him stop short.
"...Thank you." I find myself saying, shocking myself and the boy.
"...I...Uh-"
"This is a very big thing you're doing...Getting involved in this...Helping us on nothing but a whim..." I continue despite myself, "Really, I don't know how we'll ever thank you."
Beside me, Jon nods in agreement, and Rachel chirps something about treating him to ice cream later. The boy looks flustered by the attention, and opens his mouth to respond when the signal from the radio becomes much louder and clearer than before.
"...searching for a fugitive named Hiram McDaniels, who escaped custody last night following a 9pm arrest. McDaniels is described as a five-headed dragon, approximately 18 feet tall, with mostly green eyes and weighing about 3600 pounds. He is suspected of insurance fraud."
While I was making my gratitude known, Clyde had gone ahead and looked at the radio, no doubt taking it apart in the process. Whatever he did, it worked, because we were getting every word.
"..Is the guy who hosts this show on drugs?" Rachel asks as she leans in towards the radio from her squatting position.
"I have checked every news site of his reports, and have come up with nothing. I have also searched for any transcripts of radio shows in and out of the area." The boy states, seemingly not amused with Rachel's quipp. "There is nothing. For a while, I contemplated aliens, but now," he looks at Clyde, "now I think I truly have an answer."
Clyde nods and looks towards me and Jon, "I think we fucking found it too."
"Whoo-hoo!" Rachel shouts and she jumps up to high five the boy. He, however, is taken by surprise, and Rachel only ends up roughly slapping his shoulder in celebration.
"Now all there's left to do is prove it." Jon comments, placing his hands in his pockets, "And Marie-Jollie's not here to help, so..." he drifts off, thinking of how to solve our predicament. From the corner of my eye, I see my brother doing the same thing.
"...Pardon," I turn my attention towards the Boy, who is clearing his throat, "if you don't mind me asking, who is this 'Marie-Jollie'?"
Rachel stops in the middle of her jumping and celebrating, standing still for a few seconds, she looks at me, then at the Boy.
"Oh boy." she sighs and scratches the back of her head, "This is gonna be long."
xx
-:-
We ran out of gas.
But the A/C on the car still worked.
Luckily, there's a storm coming in from the west, so the clouds blocked out the sun's harsh rays. Jon and Clyde squat next to the radio, tuned down to a tolerable volume, and speak in numbers and calculations. They draw figures and lines in the sand and discuss possibilities and probabilities.
Nerds.
Ellie, Kid and I sit in the Jeep, though I don't think Kid is affected by the heat as much as we are, so he sits in the back whilst Ellie and I take up the front with the air conditioning. The seats were rotatable, so we are both forced to face Kid as we tell him about what he asked about. He said it would take about half an hour for help to arrive, and my cousin and I both figured that was enough time to tell kid about 1/64th of what we knew about Marie-Jollie.
"Well," I begin, twiddling my thumbs, avoiding eye-contact, "you're not really at that level of trust clearance where we can tell you everything." I say, hoping that Kid fails to mention to Ellie that I told him all about our parents, despite the fact that she probably already knew, considering I had brought Kid to the library with me.
Ellie nods, folding her hands on her lap, searching for the right words, no doubt, "Still, I...we figure that you deserve to know at least something...Considering you've involved yourself with our mission."
Kid says nothing, but nods, telling us to carry on. What a polite guy.
"Right." I say, agreeing with Ellie, "The first thing to know is...There is absolutely no way to contact Marie-Jollie."
His face remains impassive.
"..The thing about it is that she does not exist...in this physical plane." I continue.
He quirks an eyebrow.
"Remember when we talked about alternate universes?" Ellie asks, and Kid nods. "Well technically they're not...alternate." she pauses, not sure how to explain the next part; a rare occasion, considering she's always on top of her vocabulary and diction. "In reality, they are just past universes." She doesn't look him in the eye, preferring to look down at her hands, "And future universes as well."
"Do you mean that they come and go out of existence?" Kid prompts, "In different planes of reality?"
"Nono," I interject, "this isn't like that multiverse thing we learned about in class a few days ago...Two universes can't exist at the same time...because then they'd be occupying the same place."
I can see the gears in his head turning.
"What she means is," Ellie attempts to clarify, "When this universe ends, there will be another one born in it's place...and that is how it will continue to be." She swallows a lump in her throat, "Forever."
I can tell that Kid thinks we're wacko.
"What evidence do you have of this?"
Ellie cringes and her shoulders stiffen.
"We can't tell you." I say, upset that that was the truth of it. "...Not yet, anyways." I add on, trying to soothe the fact.
Kid is definitely not happy with this information, but he takes it in stride. Classy. I like that about him.
"Well," he clears his throat again for what seems like the hundredth time, "what can you tell me then? What does this have to do with the woman I asked about?"
"That's the thing!" I say, moving my hands about this way and that, "It has everything to do with her-She was born in an earlier universe than ours."
If Kid thought we were crazy before, surely what's coming out of my mouth is leading him to believe that this drive out to the desert was a mistake.
"She's...dead?"
"Yes! No! I-" I huff and mess up my hair in frustration, "It's complicated!"
Ellie lays a hand on my shoulder, and I slump into my seat, closing my eyes and letting the A/C wash over me.
"The first thing we should have said about Marie-Jollie was that she isn't human." Ellie speaks for me while I try to recover from my epic failure to explain shit to Kid.
"Was...is she a witch?" Clearly Ellie's use of isn't rather than wasn't confused Kid. I don't blame him either. If I hadn't gone through all the shit that went down just a year ago, I'd be confused as fuck right now too.
"No." she replies, "What she is doesn't matter. But she did have certain...powers granted to her." I visualise Ellie shrugging to herself, "By a third party, by God, I don't know...But over time she had these powers. As far as I know they're only transfiguration, skinwalking, and the ability to disappear. But I have no doubt that she has more hidden up her sleeve."
No sound from Kid. He must be listening intently to Ellie. I frown a little, though it goes unnoticed thanks to the hair in my face from when I messed it up.
"We came to know her...four years ago." She cleared her throat, "Not getting into the complication that is time and space, that is the allotted time in which we have known of her existence." Ellie still hadn't removed her hand from my shoulder. "But it is not a date." Her voice is firm. Like Mom and Auntie's. I miss them.
Kid hums in acknowledgement, and I wonder what it must be like to have him hang on your every word.
"At first, she was just an...a passerby." she corrects herself before saying acquaintance, "Not even an acquaintance." I snort lightly, and I can practically all but see the two of them pausing to look at me in bemusement.
"...Well, eventually, we had to...team up." Ellie continues, and I'm glad that it isn't me talking anymore, because she's being so careful about the words she uses in front of kid, and if it was me, I would have fucked it up by now. "There was a danger that was threatening all of us," she stops again, surely to look and gesture at Jon and Clyde over by the radio, then to me, "Marie-Jollie became an ally, and then a friend."
I sigh deeply, and this time they didn't stop to look at me.
"She was the one who taught you about all this?" Kid asks, and it's awfully refreshing to hear his voice.
"Yes." My cousin sighs quietly, "She learned by experience."
I can definitely tell that that is what messes Kid up the most out of our story. He immediately starts with questioning us.
"But if two universes cannot exist at the same time, then what is this perpendicular theory of yours?"
"Well, I'm not really the brains of that," I peak out from my strands of hair in my face to look at her and see that she's gesturing over her shoulder towards Clyde and Jon, "but I'm guessing that means there's a hole in our universe. Right at that spot where the signal reaches."
"She's right."
Ellie jumps, I can tell by her hand, still on my shoulder, and I reach up to move away the strands of hair in my face to see Clyde.
"It's not a visible hole," Clyde states, moving his hands, "it's not even physical."
"Explain." Kid says with authority in his voice.
"Think of it as a hole in the ozone layer." Clyde starts, "Or better yet, the hole between the spectrum. The one that makes pink visible to us."
Kid tilts his head; he must have missed this lesson in Chemistry class. Did that damn school even have real Chemistry? Probably not.
"Pink isn't on the spectrum." Clyde elaborates, "It's just a hole between the end of the spectrum and the beginning of it. What you see is your brain filling in the space. Think of our universe as the spectrum, and pink as the radio signal that fills in the whole."
Kid nods, "So then, the place that the pink signal came from, the brain, that's the source, so that's the other universe?"
"You got it!" Clyde gives a thumbs up. "We're lucky it's something as harmless as a radio signal too; it could have been something else. Or a different sized hole."
Ellie looks at her brother like he's crazy, and I giggle.
He only ruffles her hair, "I mean like, this hole only allowed radio waves to come through. Imagine if it was like, gamma rays or UV rays." he sniffed, "Or if it was physical! This universe sounds wild! Some crazy disease could have come through there, or whatever the hell that fucking glow cloud is."
Ellie scrunches her nose at him and then bops his own nose. Clyde reciprocates with pinching hers.
I hear the soft rumble of a car motor, and I silently thank my lucky stars that help came earlier than expected. I don't think I could take much more of this awful weather.
xx
Kid leaves to go find his weapons, and Ellie and the boys leave to explain what's happening to Carla and Lucia. I go home to my room to nap. I dream of being on a stage. I am Ophelia. I am the swan. I am Sleeping Beauty. I am Juliet. I shine. I burn and fall.
I wake up to Meg standing before me. She looks upset, though her facial expression never moves from it's usual stoic expression. I smile wide and open my arms for a hug I know she won't give. She tells me I haven't eaten in hours, and I cannot deny her.
I don't ask about what she needed to get done for today, but she asks me about my day. I know before I explain to her what happened that she already knows.
When I am done reciting the events of today, she is quiet. Not that she's ever not quiet. I imagine the mention of Marie-Jollie upsets her, and I reach out my hand to grasp hers.
xxx
i was thinking of making an omake chapter...one with Kid and his own thoughts on what he learned today. i might make it a part of this story, or just a separate oneshot all on it's own. what do you think? is anyone even still reading? does anyone even still care? did i update for nothing? stay tuned. at this pace, the next update is due in a year.
