Chapter 38
"Ed, you've got to get some serious allergy meds, dude!"
Kevin clung to a swollen leg with all his might as the blimp-shaped Ed flew higher and higher away from the train. Edd and Jimmy had managed to clamber around to the top of his body and hang near his head, both trying to ignore the disgusting welts and gigantic purple spots underneath them. The icy tundra wind bit at the children through their thick coats as they were tossed around in the air.
"Hang on! This cold should start reducing the swelling quickly!" Edd called, trying to keep sight of the train. Its image quickly blurred into a yellow glow in the distance as white air engulfed it.
As predicted, Ed's back began to shrink at a rapid pace, and they sank to the earth quickly. Ed had enough horizontal momentum to plow through the snow and scrape his knees along the ice underneath, and the four of them soon tumbled along the frosty ground.
When he managed to get to his feet, Kevin groaned, "I don't even want to know how that worked."
"For once I agree with you," Edd remarked coldly as he helped Jimmy up out of the snow. "In the interest of protecting my sanity, I've learned to stop questioning the laws of physics as they so very loosely apply to Ed."
"I'm allergic to bunnies, Double-D."
"We know, Ed." Edd, after brushing the thick snow from his coat, looked around. White. In all directions, everything was white. He couldn't remember in what direction he saw the train from in the air, and if there were any landmarks to identify, they were well hidden in the blizzard. He had to strain his eyes to pick up the slightest hint of contrast, but he could barely differentiate the sky from the icy ground below. "We know."
"W-where is the train?" Jimmy asked, shivering as wind swirled around him. The integrity of his coat held up to keep him fairly warm, but he could feel the cold slowly creeping through it.
"Where's anything?"
Kevin opened his mouth, but he felt a sickening series of rumbles shake his feet. A slight musk filled nostrils, and he dove out of the way before he even realized what was charging at him. He rolled through the snow, ignoring the sudden chill on his neck as some of it found its way inside his collar, and looked. Before him, skidding along the ground to a stop, was a polar bear the size of a mammoth. Turning back toward the boys' direction, it roared in anger at having missed its target.
The bear's fur was white, making it hard to see in the blank around it, but the unruly tangles and unnatural spikes it formed around the thing's body were a clear indication that it was not natural. The monster turned and glared at the children with wild eyes, sending a shiver of fear down Kevin's spine amongst the numerous chills of cold.
Kevin brandished his ratchet and charged. The bear stood on its hind legs and swatted him to the side. Pain rocketed through his body as he flew through the air, and his fear immediately began to boil into rage.
"PK Riding!" He ignored the feeling of familiarity just as he ignored the buzzing pain in his side, focusing only on squeezing as much energy as he could into the wave. He felt the attack hit the bear with full force and then some as Ed hit it with a blast of flame.
"Kevin, look out!"
A glimpse of fur rammed into him and reminded him of his broken bones wailing in pain. The sight of another monster hare boiled his blood in anger, but the pain was great enough that he begrudgingly took his attention away from it to heal himself. He scrambled to his feet and summoned up the energy for a PK Flash, but then a sudden stroke of rationality managed to worm its way through his rage.
PK Brainshock is a useful but very dangerous ability, one of my personal unfavorites. Instead of doing physical harm, this attack temporarily alters the mind of the target, taking away its ability to distinguish between friend and foe. It is useful for causing chaos amongst multiple opponents. The ability can even cause an enemy to attack itself somehow, though how that is even possible in some cases where it's been observed is beyond me.
Shaping his energy in a different way, Kevin let it flow out of his body rather than burst. A wave of color streamed from his body, undulating up and down as it swiftly arced toward the hare. The hare swayed from side to side in rhythm to it, as if hypnotized by the light. When the wave collided with it, the energy dispersed into a series of horizontal lines before disappearing, and the thing growled in fury. To everyone's surprise, however, it suddenly turned and charged toward the mad polar bear. It kicked the beast hard, and the polar bear confusedly retaliated.
"S-since when could you do that?!" Edd asked in amazement.
"I learned it a while back," Kevin panted, the distraction of his life in peril wearing off to remind him that he was still in pain. "Didn't think to use it till now."
"That's scary," Jimmy lamented, watching the two beasts battle amongst each other. He huddled next to Ed, and shrank behind the large boy.
"That's why I didn't want to use it."
"Can you teleport us back to the train?" Ed asked. He shifted his attention nervously and haphazardly between Kevin and the two monsters. They exchanged blows of powerful bites and scratches, and soon one of them was going to win.
"Yeah, get behind me," Kevin replied. With the other three lined up behind him, he broke into a sprint and concentrated. He felt the pull of the tunnel through space increase his speed. He more slid along the ice than ran as the now-familiar gargling noise rang through the windy air. Though the snowflakes stinging his face, he could see the train through the rift, battered and bruised, but still gliding along the tracks as fast as possible.
His vision was suddenly replaced with a wall of fur, and he only had time to gasp as he ran straight into the polar bear.
Boom!
A more-than-uncomfortable wave of heat flickered around his body on the impact, and it instantly turned into a layer of black soot around him. He turned to see the others blackened against the bleak white of the area, including a frightened yet normal-sized snow hare. He almost let out a laugh as he noticed that the polar bear got stained with some ash as well.
He almost laughed, because before he could let it out, the bear swung a massive paw at him. It knocked him up into the air and out of consciousness.
~ααα~
Jimmy did not want to be here.
It was cold. It was dangerous. There were monsters everywhere. Why on earth was he here?
He watched Kevin get launched into the air. High. So high up. And then the boy began to fall back down, head first. Ice was below.
Fear zipped through him. If Kevin were to hit that ice…
He felt nauseated. He didn't want to picture that image. But it would become a reality soon. In just a few seconds, which were ticking away with each beat of his heart, closing in on him as if the moment would crush him into nothing.
His arms suddenly lifted up on their own, pointing at the ice. He hardly realized it, as the fear of seeing Kevin hit the ground turned into a spark in his consciousness. He couldn't see it, but he felt as it fluttered through his thoughts and landed in the back of his mind, on a cage he had constructed to keep the monster that lurked in the depths of his head from reaching his waking thoughts. As if it were made of wood, it burst into a bright flame in an instant and dissipated just as quickly. The thing he had been restraining burst forth through his body and out of his outstretched hand.
Melt the ice. Make his landing softer. Save your friend.
Chaotic thoughts and feelings zipped around through the boy's mind and almost ripped him away from consciousness, but he stayed terrifyingly lucid as he watched a jet of flame burst from his hand onto the frozen ground below Kevin. In almost an instant, the ice turned into a rapidly growing circle of water, which then began to steam.
Jimmy watched Kevin land in the water with a great splash, and, seeing that his fear did not become a reality, gave into his exhaustion and fainted.
With absolutely no orientation and the firm belief that he was unconscious, he wondered how he could feel his legs moving from underneath him. His eyes were open—slightly—and he could hear everything around him—partially—but his brain insisted that he wasn't awake, and gave Jimmy no control over his body. He felt Edd carry him toward the newly-formed pond, wrapping the boy's arm around his neck so he could stumble along. The other Ed dove into the steaming water in a blurry flash and surfaced an indeterminate time later with Kevin, both coughing and sputtering and gasping as the freezing air chilled the lukewarm water on their skin.
Safe. He's safe. Thanks to you. Thanks to your power. My power.
Suddenly frightened by the voice inside his head, Jimmy felt it was a good idea to stop being partially unconscious and promptly woke up.
~ααα~
Kevin coughed. He then gained enough consciousness to realize that there was still water in his lungs, so he coughed again. He then realized that he was somehow coughing water out of his lungs, and opened his eyes to see what on earth was going on.
He felt himself floating in a pool of strangely-warm water, held above the surface by Ed. He felt icy air whip at his face as Ed pulled him towards the shore. He shook his head and swam on his own, though the larger boy refused to let him entirely out of his grasp. The mixture of warm water and freezing wind distracted him from questioning what was going on, but as he reached the edge of the pond that stretched up two feet above the water, he began to wonder why he was even in there in the first place.
He clawed at the wall, a sudden panic adding to the mixture of adrenaline pumping through his body. Ed finally let go of him to pull himself up with his massive strength, and then reached down to lift Kevin out as well. Both of them convulsed in their sopping wet winter clothes as they felt the heat get immediately sucked from their bodies.
Jimmy and Edd ran up, the former with an expression of shock and amazement and the latter with one of great concern.
"Oh god!" Edd said, his eyes turning in a flurry of directions as he tried to haphazardly analyze the situation around them while he danced around in worry. "Do you have any kind of 'PSI Drying' or 'Water Removal'? If you stay wet in those clothes—if you stay wet in this weather-you'll most certainly freeze to death!"
"Yeah, sure I do," Kevin spat, "along with PSI Deodorant and PK Spin Cycle!"
The two exchanged sneers just before Ed came and almost violently pushed them apart.
"Don't fight each other, fight that!" he said, pointing to the bear that was charging at them.
"Outta the way, useless," Kevin spat, stepping forward. "This is what I'd do to you if I was that kind of guy. PK Riding!"
Burning. His mind felt as if it had suddenly burst into flames. Kevin cringed as a small wave of energy burst from him and tripping the bear in its tracks. He fell to his knees, clutching his temples through the hood of the wet coat as his mind continued seething, the void of energy so immense that it felt as if it was trying to fill itself with his very consciousness.
Looking through buzzing, sparking eyes, he watched as the bear continued its rampage with hardly a scratch until Ed rammed into it with his head, sending the massive thing flying back.
"Kevin! Are you okay?" he heard Jimmy ask.
"No, I'm not. My head feels like I just barfed in it or something—it burns." Ignoring the fact that his remark repelled the boy away from him in disgust, Kevin forced himself to stand and shivered intensely as his coat siphoned more heat from his body. "God, why did I have to land in water of all things?"
"I-I-I—" Kevin turned to Jimmy with an expectant look. "I m-made the water. F-from ice—I melted the ice so you wouldn't h-hit it!"
Ignoring the spectacle of a large beast and a proportionally much stronger boy grappling behind him, Kevin asked, "You mean you used PK Fire?"
"I-I have no idea how—"
"Way to go, now you're a step above Double-Dork," he said brightly before sneering at Edd, who returned it with equal malice.
"I-I think Ed needs help!" Jimmy shouted, if nothing more than to break the tension. The two boys broke from their staredown and turned just in time to see the bear knock Ed into a hill of ice, and gasped as they saw his head ram into it hard enough to cause large cracks and shards that cut into his temples.
"Ed!" The two screamed.
Suddenly, the boy burst forward, his eyes open wider than it seemed possible and his face contorted in a scowl of blind rage, and he blasted two jets of powerful flame at the monster. Edd and Jimmy cringed as the sudden heat seared toward them. Kevin felt the water begin to evaporate off of his face and clothes. The fire hit the bear straight on, the very force of it causing fur to rip off in the blast. Soon the peculiar gray smoke joined it, and Ed realized what was happening just in time to stop his attack from harming a now-innocent and frightened polar bear, which waded away from him through half-melted ice and snow.
"Whoa, Ed!" Ed turned to Kevin, his scowl replaced with a look of horror.
"I-I'm—I d-didn't mean to—"
"No, that was awesome, man!" Ed almost took a step back when Kevin approached him. "You totally beat it! And you dried us out a bit in the process, too." The boy shifted around in his parka, realizing that it was only damp now instead of sopping wet.
"…I didn't mean to—I didn't want to—" He shook violently, not from the cold, but the horror of his own actions. The image of him burning the bear echoed through his mind, and he couldn't get it out.
"Oh lighten up, you saved us!" Kevin tried to hide the annoyance in his voice.
"Kevin, he's clearly disturbed at the thought of nearly roasting another living being alive, as would any decent human being," Edd spat, walking up to comfort his friend. "But the polar bear is okay, Ed. You freed it from the malevolent force that turned it into that monster."
Noticing that the fog in the air was suddenly less dense, Edd lifted his arm away from Ed's shoulder to squint at two lines of a dull, dark grey off in the distance. "Look!" he shouted, gently ushering Ed to them. The sour face Kevin made made as Edd passed by him quickly vanished as he saw the boy was heading toward a pair of metal rails on the ground. He and Jimmy quickly followed, but their excitement died down when they reached the train tracks.
"Which… which way do we go?"
Edd paused, looking for any sign of what direction the train could have headed. "Kevin, can you make another attempt to teleport?" he asked.
"No, I can't," the boy spat. "My mind feels mush and it stings the crap outta me if I try and force any PSI out."
Edd let out a sigh of frustration, shivering as a strong gust of wind passed through him, but then made a sly smirk. "Well, look who's useless now?" he sassed. "Now we are surely lost without your miraculous ability to psychically inflate your ego to such a size that you could use it to crush any adversary unfortunate to be caught in its wa—"
The sudden sting of ice only complemented the blunt pain bursting in Edd's cheek as Kevin punched him in the face. He pirouetted and fell down onto the unforgiving wood planks that held the rails together, the shock making him forget to yelp in pain. Kevin made his way over to the boy, his eyes wide open and his pupils the size of pinpricks.
Ed felt a twinge of horror buzz through his head as he watched the Kevin kick at the writhing figure on the ground, helpless to…
And then he suddenly realized that he could help.
"You dork! I'll kill you, you son of a—"
It was Kevin's turn to feel a combination of frost and blunt force ramming him to the side before he could get another blow in on Edd. He stumbled back, and when he regained balance he saw Ed giving him a livid scowl. Part of his own anger immediately froze into fear.
"No more fighting!" the large boy shouted. "Ed will not be the friend of friends who hurt each other!"
Despite how awkward the sentence was, each word was tinged with anger that trickled fear down Kevin's spine. He stood, paralyzed, watching Ed help Edd to his feet. Jimmy stood far behind them, shivering in fear, but Kevin noticed he seemed distracted somehow.
While supporting a bruised Edd, Ed's legs buckled, and he knelt to the ground as his anger quickly dissipated.
"E-Ed, I…I…" Edd didn't know what to say.
"Let's just get back to the train," the large boy said with an unnerving air of seriousness. Before anyone could ask how, he stood up and began walking down the tracks.
"Wait, Ed!" Edd called. The boy stopped, and Edd reached into his coat to pull out a compass. "Our best bet is to follow the tracks in the eastern direction. We arrived from the Atlantic Ocean, and the train most likely heads deeper into Europe."
"H-how long have you had that?" Jimmy asked.
"Unlike some people, I prepared—" he cut his accusation short when he felt Ed glowering at him, "err, I brought it from Chestnut Falls. A simple yet vital navigational instrument."
"What about the sexy thingy?" Kevin said without looking at Edd.
"That can measure latitude and works well with a map, but would be useless here since I can't see more than ten feet in either direction, much less be able to pinpoint any celestial object such as the sun." After an uncomfortably long pause, he added, "So I think we should go this way."
Ed turned around, and ushered everyone to go ahead of him with a gesture. They began their hike along the tracks, with Kevin and Edd in the front making sure not to make eye contact, Jimmy in the middle lost in his own thoughts, and Ed in the back keeping watch over them. Though he kept an aloof face, his anger had faded into sadness, and he wondered if he had done the right thing.
A while passed, and then another. The air thickened again, and it seemed as if the tracks were the only thing visible in the void of white swirling around the four boys. At last, Edd noticed a fleck of red in the distance, which turned into a flicker, and then a flare. And then he noticed that it really was a flare, almost dead but still sparking diligently to signal their attention, and everyone quickly hustled to it.
The flare stick sat haphazardly on the tracks, and next to it was a metal box. Kevin pushed past Edd as rudely as he could to open it, and found a note inside.
Children, I give my deepest apologies that I have failed to keep you safe on my own express. Furthermore, I must protect the rest of the passengers as well, so we cannot stop to look for you until they are in a safe place. Further down the line, a few miles about, there is a safe house built for emergencies. Enclosed in this box is the key, as well as a few rations and extra clothing for the journey there. We will do our best to return to the safe house and pick you up as soon as possible. Please be careful out there.
—The Conductor.
"…He signs letters with his title instead of his name?" Edd remarked, earning a confused shrug from Kevin. The boys looked inside the box and found some energy bars, a first aid kit, and some extra gloves and hats. Underneath all of it was the key, which Ed quickly snatched.
"I'll open the door," he said sternly, trying to keep the unsureness out of his voice. The three others gave him a look, but said nothing.
Not another word was said as they continued their hike along the tracks, nor were there any other monsters to attack them. There was just the cold, attempting to dissuade them from taking another step for each one they took despite it. Kevin's face was numb. He blinked to hide his gaze shifting over to Edd for a second, and blinked again to look away.
Stupid dork. Dork, dork, dorky-dork.
As he seethed, he noticed safe house up ahead. It was small and partially buried in the snow, but the black door to it stood out against everything else. Everyone waited impatiently as Ed fumbled with the key in his unsteady hand until he finally unlocked it. The four went in without a word, and Ed closed the door behind them.