A/N: Hello folks! I have returned with a selection of short teasers for act 2. Yay!
Anyway, It will begin at some point in two or three months. Sue me. I need rest.
Regardless though, it has been a great honour to see all of you reading, I am so happy to see this fic actually well-received.
Also, Spyzee has finished the new-cover art a few days ago, which I'm sure you've all seen. Be sure to give him your thanks, he's quite awesome.
Anywho, I own nothing, save the OC's.
Please review, and I hope you enjoy!
Cold.
Chester was so cold.
With that one thought, he finally shook off the last clinging vestiges of unconsciousness. Though his entire body ached, and he was too exhausted to even stand up, Chester was now finally conscious, and began to take a mental awareness of his surroundings.
...After a few seconds, he was able to, indeed, confirm that it was, in fact, really cold.
Thinking as hard as he could, Chester then tried to remember what had happened...
He vaguely remembered a strange silver platform... Arguing with Evan... Then... he wasn't sure. It was probably Evan's fault though. Most everything usually was.
Normally, he would have tried to get up and do things, but at the moment, and despite the biting cold, he felt quite comfortable in his current position. Though he knew such thinking was dangerous, and that one shouldn't sleep out in the snow, lest they didn't wish to wake again, he was simply too tired, and his brain powerless to resist. At this stage, and after all the crap he put up with, Chester figured he could rest a little bit, before figuring out just what the hell was going on now...
...
...
Seemingly no more than a few moments had passed before some form of hard cylinder sharply poked him in the back. It was accompanied by a...girl's voice?
"Alright Bub. Who the heck are you, and what are you doing here?" The strange, female voice interrogated.
At that, Chester would have jumped up in shock, were it not for the whole aching and tired body thing... so he instead cracked open his eyes. After flinching from the sheer brightness of the white landscape around him, his eyesight quickly adjusted itself, and he was able to discern that he was, in fact, lying face-first in snow. 'Well that explains things.' he thought to himself, before trying to identify whoever was poking him.
As he tried to slowly stagger to his feet, the foreign object poked him again, and the voice repeated itself,
"HEY! you stay still. Now how did you get here? And what do you want?"
Exasperated, and too tired to argue, Chester stopped moving, and called out to the mysterious individual behind him, "Look. I don't mean any harm. I don't know how I got here and...I'm not really too sure about what I want right now." then, he snarkily added, "Although. If you could stop poking me with that stick or whatever. That would be much appreciated."
For a few moments, the voice was silent, assessing his answer, before continuing, "Okay, I guess you're harmless enough, up you go."
Chester lay flat for a moment, before shakily putting his arms out, and staggering to his feet.
Glancing around, he noticed that the owner of the voice, was none other than a strange girl. She seemed about his age, and had long, dark hair, with striking green eyes framed by glasses. For whatever reason, she was out in knee-deep snow in some sort of unholy fusion of a lab-coat and a dress.
Oh, and she was pointing a rifle at him.
XXXXX
Evan snapped awake, suddenly sitting up, and scanning the environment for dangers.
For a few moments, his vision was blurry, and unfocused, so he could only see grey shapes moving in the distance, while a red glow dominated the area.
'Am I back on my planet?' he wondered, still dazed and confused, head shaky after his swift awakening,
Then, he noticed what had woken him up. All around him, were various clanking and hissing gears and pistons. Large spires and catwalks of metal extended all around him, rising from a lake of magma that carpeted the ground as far as the eye could see. The air was thick, sweltering, and hot.
'Okay, so...not my planet,' Evan concluded.
Rising to his feet, he shrugged off the last vestiges of tiredness, and uncaptchalogued his chainsword. Evan then simply chose a direction, and began walking...
...
...
For a while, he simply navigated the machinery and metal that made up the platform on which he rested, slowly continuing in the direction of his choice.
He could always fly, but that was no fun. Besides, he needed his exercise, if he didn't want to become a flabby weakling like Chester.
Then, as he continued walking onwards, towards a particularly large structure? He saw in the distance, a strange sight caught his eye...
There, leisurely walking along the shifting gears, was a boy.
However, it was not Chester. Nor, was it Chris.
That fact alone made Evan pause and do a double-take.
He hadn't been paying too much attention to Chester, but he was reasonably sure that the nerd had mentioned Earth being destroyed, and everyone dying. Yet, here was a human, that certainly hadn't entered their session with them, walking around like he owned the place, with a over-exaggerated stride that screamed *cool-kid*. (Evan had seen plenty of these..."High-School musicals. He was well aware of how children his own age acted.)
The strange kid, at that exact moment, turned, saw Evan, paused for a moment, then simply nodded, and began walking towards him. Evan, seeing nothing better to do, went to meet him. He even lowered his sword (a teeny bit) as a gesture of...what did Chester call it? Peace? Non-violence?...something like that...
As they closed, Evan noted some details about the other boy. He was slightly shorter than him, (then again, Evan towered over practically everyone), and wore totally cool dark shades, along with a very tastefully classy suit. The boy was about as lanky as Chester, though he had pale, blonde hair, as opposed to the brown haired nerd.
Except.
Evan had found a problem.
The suit. Was. Red.
The universal sign of communism.
He subconsciously caressed the trigger of his sword, expecting violence...
When they both closed to a few hundred feet, they stopped.
After a brief pause, Evan saw no signs of harmful intent from the boy opposite him, so he cautiously lowered his sword further.
The other boy simply adjusted his shades, and confidently called, "Sup?"
XXXXX
Chris was quite unhappy.
He had woken up in some strange area that was extremely bright and open. There wasn't a comforting shadow or piece of cover within sight.
Sighing dramatically, he kept trudging through the sandy, golden beach which made up the area. His destination for the moment was a two-story building that dominated the beach from a small hill of sand.
As waves gently lapped at the shore, Chris found himself wondering what had happened. He remembered receiving a message from his new friend...He remembered doing something with a shiny door-knob...then...there was a great pulling, and lights and sounds...
Now he woke up on a beach.
Pulling the coat tighter around himself, he shivered, and grumbled something incoherent.
He really didn't like sand. There was no sand in Seattle, so it was only now that he realized that sand slowed one down, and was loud and squishy. It completely ruined his plans to stealthily approach the house (and perhaps burglarize it for shinies).
Soon, he had climbed the hill, and went around the strange house. It was like, one of those, new, "Square modern houses" that Chester had mentioned in his lecture on the history of architecture.
Chris didn't like it. It was too flat and blocky, there weren't enough crenellations to hide in, or climb. Still, he made his way around, to where he assumed the back-door would be.
He was over-joyed to find that the door was a glass sliding door. He had the perfect instrument for this...
Fiddling with his fetch-modus, he withdrew his trusty glass-cutter, and pressed it to the door. With a quick turn of it's crank, he had silently cut a hole in the glass.
Re-captchaloguing the tool, Chris had slowly removed the neat, glass circle from it's hole in the door, and gently reached through the hole, and gingerly slid the door open...
Like a ghost, he crept inside the house, inadvertently tracking soggy sand all over the floor by accident. Ooops.
As he sheepishly scanned the interior, and got his bearings, noting the locations of a kitchen, a den, and many, many...wizards?... he froze.
There was a girl sitting in one of the chairs on the other end of the den, a laptop placed on her knees. She had short blond hair, and wore a knee-length skirt and a T-shirt that had a purple, horrific, eldritch creature depicted upon it. Chris was horribly reminded of a certain Light Souls boss...
She had looked up from the screen, and was staring at him with a mixture of curiosity and mild alarm.
Her face swiftly settling into an un-readable expression, she slowly reached for some kind of wooden stick on a nearby table, while venturing conversation, "Greetings stranger? ...What brings you inside my residence?"
Chris panicked, and began his normal routine for getting caught where he wasn't supposed to be. He had to convince her that he was lost, and not a robber. He definitely didn't fancy his chances against her if it came to a fist-fight...
"IerwellI...errr...I'mlostpleasehelpme!" He cried, removing his helmet, and trying to use his adorableness to convince her of his harmless intent. (Desperately hoping she didn't see him break in)
She lifted an eyebrow, looked at him for just long enough to show she was onto him, and with an exaggerated sweep of her arm beckoned to another arm-chair,
"Have a seat, I suppose. Would you care for some tea?"
XXXXX
Elsewhere, In a place between simple concepts like time and space, a lone figure rose from behind a monitor.
Reaching out of her robes with a gnarled, green hand, she closed her laptop, and drew it into the folds of her black and grey cloak.
The first phase of the plan had succeeded...after much assistance on her part.
Now, she had further things to do, and other places to be. There was much to still arrange, and little time to do it in. Not that time was a concept that even particularly applied out in the void of the furthest ring.
Besides, this location was no longer safe. She had spent too much time here, used too much power... Dark things would inevitably be drawn to this stretch of paradox space.
One being in particular...
She did not intend to be here when he arrived...
Sparing a last glance at the monochromatic spiral that had served as her place of refuge for the past while, she turned, and ventured outwards into the twisting depths of the furthest ring.
There was still much to do...