E Revolution

by Giampi

The end is here.

12. 12th Revolution: Unity

E. Revolution

-12th Revolution-

:Unity:

---

The Sky Runner landed in a large clearing near downtown Fourside, in the ruins of what used to be a playground. The grass was brown, dead, and the earth it once used for sustenance was scorched. The swing sets, slides, and benches were crumpled and unusable.

The first thing Ness did after slowly disembarking from the craft was to survey the area around him. He was not pleased with what he saw: the once-majestic buildings of Eagleland's largest city had been toppled as if they were made of straw, their crippled appearance a testament to the horror that had taken place there so long ago. Massive holes were present in some, while others were let off easy, with shattered windows and charred façades as their only punishment. Someone or something of incredible power tore up the streets, ripping them apart or leaving them full of craters—this in turn caused some buildings to buckle under their own weight and fall over. Nothing was spared. There was debris everywhere.

"I knew they had trashed this place, but this…" Agent Poo removed his sunglasses from the pocket in his sleeve and slipped them on. "This…is unbelievable."

"Where are all the people?" Tony slipped off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder, unconsciously mimicking Frank Fly, who was doing the same. "Surely there were survivors, right?"

"Not very many, but yes, there were survivors," answered Jeff. "While I was still here I was with a group that had set up a shantytown near the old Topolla Theater. Most people stay on the move, though, so there's no telling where anyone is right now."

Ness tried to ignore the feeling in the back of his head that told him that his father and sister were amongst those who hadn't survived the attack.

"We should get moving," he said after a while. "It'll be dark soon."

"I agree," said Poo. "According to the GPS, we're still far off from any of the residential districts, where we should be able to find somebody who can help us. Let's get going."

As the group started to walk, Ness felt Jeff's hand on his shoulder.

"You still don't recognize this place, do you?"

The boy shook his head. "No. Should I?"

"Look around…look at this playground. This is where we used to play when we'd go visit your aunt."

Ness examined the playground more closely. He faintly remembered an old brick building next to it, but it wasn't there anymore. It wasn't hard to figure out what had happened to it.

"Oh man…"

Jeff nodded solemnly and tugged at Ness' shirt lightly. "Come on, we'd better catch up."

After a few hours of walking in silence, the group finally reached Ness' old neighborhood. The last traces of sunlight were disappearing from the horizon, and the cold, purple night was starting to filter through. The absence of any form of electric lighting made it very hard to see, although, ironically, the stars had never shone brighter. Ness recognized this street, for it was a short distance away from the apartment building in his home; he still felt that his family was gone, and the fact that he could see almost every building on the block in shambles did little to ease that feeling away.

"Hey, look!" Frank Fly burst out suddenly and ran forward, pointing out something in the distance. "I can see some light from over there!"

The seven men fell into silence again and broke into slow, wary runs, making their way to the source of the faint, reddish light that could be seen not too far away. At the same time something in Ness' stomach began to dig a hole in his gut.

Less than a minute later they arrived at their destination, and Ness suddenly felt very nauseous.

Only part of the front wall was left, and most everything had been ripped out or cast aside, but there was no mistaking it: this was Ness' apartment building. Parts of the edifice were scattered in the street in front of it; it was impossible to tell just what had happened to it. The light Frank had spotted earlier came from a fire inside, although the fragment of the wall that was still left standing made it difficult to tell who or what was there.

"Who's out there? Who are you?" A delicate, feminine voice rang out from the same direction as the fire. A few others could be heard as well, but this one stood out more than the rest, particularly so for Ness.

"Tracy…" his voice didn't work, but his lips mouthed the words. "Tracy…Tracy! Is that you!"

There was a pause before the voice was heard again. "Oh my God…Ness!"

A short, teenage girl appeared from within the confines of the building's remains. Her clothes were dirty and torn, and her hair was matted. Smudges of dirt and soot covered her arms and face. Her clear blue eyes were the only part of her that was clean.

As soon as the two siblings saw each other they broke into pained, joyful sobs and ran into each others arms. Tracy began sobbing as she buried her head in Ness' chest.

"You're alive…you're alive…I thought you were dead…"

Ness wrapped his arms around Tracy and held her close. "So did I," he said through stifled tears. "So did I…"

Two hours passed since then. Ness, his sister, his friends, and a few others were sitting around the fire, hearing the tales of SANCTUARY, Giygas, and the events of the past few weeks. Tracy, in turn, told her brother about her life after the attack on Fourside.

"Some of us left this place to join up with other groups or to get away from the city, so there's only a few of us left," she said. "The good news is we don't get attacked anymore…but we're running out of food, and most of the stores we raid for food are already empty. Things aren't really looking up."

Tony moved himself a little closer to Jeff and whispered in his ear. "You never mentioned that Ness' sister was alive."

"I didn't know until now," replied the blonde. "I was with another group, but I broke away from them to go look for my parents. I was already by myself when I was found."

Orange stared glumly at the fire and picked at a piece of lint on the sweater he was wearing. "Kinda makes you feel bad, doesn't it? All this time we at least had food and shelter…"

"We couldn't have done anything," said Apple comfortingly. "Besides, even if we could have taken people in, they would probably have died in the explosion."

Orange gave his partner a scornful sneer. "Your optimism is compelling," he muttered.

A few drops of water fell to the ground. No one had really noticed because of the darkness, but clouds blanketed the sky now, and it was starting to rain.

"We'd better get inside," said Tracy, who was already used to this. "Ness, you can bunk up with me in my tent. The rest of you guys can sleep over there." She pointed a long, slender finger at the wall of the building adjacent to where they were, which was still standing. A large aluminum shingle was propped up against the wall, providing a leaky, albeit usable, temporary shelter. The others filed inside without complaining, and Tracy led Ness to her tent.

Unsurprisingly, Ness was unable to sleep. He imagined the others felt the same way, especially given their accommodations. All he could manage to do was to stare emptily at the cloth that served as Tracy's tent and think about what he had heard and seen that day. It was hard to believe that only that very morning he was locked up in a cell in a place that no longer existed, talking to people that were now dead, his mind focused on proving to everyone that a girl long-dead was really alive.

"Can't sleep, can you." It was Tracy, who looked at Ness worriedly.

"I just…well, there's so much to think about…"

Tracy nodded. "Yeah. You sounded like you had your hands full too, back there."

Ness forced a grim smile. "More than you know. I'm glad I was able to find you, though…"

"And I'm glad that you're alive too, at least."

'At least'?

Ness propped himself up on one elbow. Then he realized that, despite his recent reunion, all was not right.

"Tracy…what happened to Dad?"

There was a long pause before he received an answer. "You…don't know," she stated. "I…thought you knew already."

Ness' eyes grew narrow. "Tracy…where is Dad? What happened to our father?"

Tracy sat up and motioned for Ness to get out of the tent. "Follow me. I'll show you."

The two of them crawled out of the tent and into the rain. Much to Tracy's surprise, Ness used a psychokinetic wave to form an invisible dome around them and deflect the downpour, although he wasn't willing to discuss that particular point then. Instead she led her brother out of their camp and around the corner, where they eventually came upon an empty lot, one that had been cleared out. The ground was full of small mounds of dirt, each decorated with a tombstone of sorts, made out of whatever could be found at the time.

Ness' jaw dropped and he began shaking his head. "No…"

Tracy took Ness' hand and stepped up to a mound in the back. The headstone was a mere wheel cover—Tracy had carved her father's name onto it, as well as the relevant dates of birth and death.

"He was one of the first to go," mused Tracy sadly. "He was trying to save me from one of those monsters…he had no chance."

Suddenly the invisible dome around Ness and Tracy vanished, and the rain fell freely, dowsing them. Ness fell to his knees, eyes blank, and stared at the grave of his father. Tracy kneeled down and put her arms around him, and the two sobbed quietly for a long while.

The next morning was greeted by a dense, gray cover of clouds that blocked a good portion of the sunlight and gave everything an opaque, dull glimmer, like everything had been put through a filter of gray. There were puddles all around the campsite, and some of their mud invariably ended up on everybody's clothes, regardless of whether or not they allowed it; it was impossible to tell who had been there for months and who had been there for hours.

The order of the days was a few spoonfuls of canned food, ransacked from the local grocer. Most of the food was approaching or had already passed its expiration date, and it tasted stale, but there was no one to complain. The knowledge that there was no other source of nutrition in that devastated city made the food at least tolerable.

"It's hard to believe that the military won't send a search and rescue team, huh," commented Apple while finishing up his last bit of creamed corn. "I wonder why."

"As far as they're concerned, everyone here is dead," replied Poo, who was kneeling down beside the remains of the previous night's campfire. "Hell, as far as we were concerned, this place was dead." He glimpsed Ness shuddering involuntarily at the mention of that last word, but kept it to himself.

"So what now? I know this will sound weird, but we've yet to encounter anything out of the ordinary," chimed in Tony. "So far we've only been able to get ourselves really dirty and maybe sick from eating weeks-old canned goods."

Agent Poo slipped on his sunglasses and reveled in the sense of comfort they provided him. "I was gonna suggest patrolling, but there's nothing to fight," he mused in his thick, Dalaamese accent. "I guess this means we're on the same boat as everyone else now."

Ness stared at the rapidly-cooling coals of the campfire and tried to bore into their core with his eyes, secretly hoping to find some answers there. It wasn't working.

I can't remember what his face looked like anymore…

"Exactly. Ness will lead us around, right Ness? Ness, you still in there?"

He quickly shook himself out of his reverie and focused on Jeff. "Um, what?"

"Patrol. We want to go look for other people and we want you to lead us around."

He glanced at the coals again, as if they would provide any more comfort, but their warmth had long since gone away. He looked to his friends and nodded melancholically. They didn't notice.

Two hours later, Ness, Jeff, and Poo had combed most of the surrounding area on foot. Not surprisingly, they found nothing.

"I guess this means we'll go back now, right?" Jeff took a moment to rest and sat on a large slab of concrete that had fallen from a nearby high-rise. "If we can't find anyone else here, then you can imagine what we'll find when we go to the less-crowded areas of the city."

As much as he hated to admit it, Jeff was right, thought Poo. "In that case, we'll go back after we finish checking out this neighborhood," he commanded. "It does make you wonder, though…"

Jeff stored his glasses in his breast pocket. "What?"

"Fourside has a population in the millions, and we've only managed to find a handful of survivors. Where did everybody else go?"

"They're dead."

Poo faced Ness and shot him a careful, slightly-less-penetrating glance. "Oh?"

"They're gone, all of them. They were probably eaten or something, I don't know."

Jeff rested his chin on his palm and stared at the buildings in the distance. "It would explain why we don't see so many corpses."

Ness' eyes widened as the full impact of what he had just said and heard hit home. A brief glimpse of his father being mauled by a wild monster flashed across his mind's eye. He tried to block it out, but slowly the image of a crippled, bloodied man came crawling up to him, covered in blood. His right leg had been chewed or torn off, leaving a trail of blood and sinew behind it. The man tried to raise a hand, as if reaching for something, but before he succeeded something shadowy and sinister grabbed him and pulled him into its inky darkness. Try as he might, Ness could not blot out the screams of pain and anguish.

That was when he realized that what he had seen wasn't just his imagination, and that he had just experienced a psychic vision of his father dying.

He stumbled a little, but he managed to regain his balance and stay upright by grabbing a nearby stoplight, one of the only ones still upright. Immediately he wished he hadn't. A precognizant image caught him by surprise and made his pupils dilate painfully.

"Look out!"

Before he could scramble out of the way, thanks in part to the debilitation his previous psychic vision had caused him, a bolt of lightning struck not a meter from where he was standing and knocked him to the floor roughly. The pole he was leaning on wobbled furiously before something uprooted it and cast it aside. Eventually the dust cleared and Ness was able to see again, but he soon wished he couldn't.

Standing above him was a vaguely human-shaped figure, as large as a very big and well-built man. Its arms and legs ended in tendrils, rather than hands or feet, and it seemed to be made of a dark, liquid metal, like mercury, which rippled and undulated in a way that suggested that it could collapse at any moment. Its head was actually a mound jutting out of what one could call its shoulders, and its eyes were two black slits that bore into Ness with murderous intent.

Like lightning, the Starman reared its left tendril and tried to ram it into Ness' head, but a combination of the boy's quick reflexes and sheer dumb luck made it miss by a few centimeters. The Starman attempted to stab Ness a second time, but he anticipated the attack and pushed against it using psychokinesis. The blast burst through the monster, ripping it in two from the inside and showering the upper half of the creature's mass behind it. Instinctively the Starman's integrity collapsed and became two blobs of liquid metal that regrouped and took shape once more. The minuscule break in hostilities allowed Ness to stand up and scramble to his friends.

"What is it!"

"How should I know! Is it Giygas?"

"I can't tell! It's like Giygas, but…different somehow. It doesn't feel right at all…"

The Starman lunged once again; this time its tendril stretched to compensate for the distance between it and its prey, but it was still entirely too fast and the group almost didn't have enough time to react and doge in time. The tendril burrowed furiously into a piece of upturned pavement behind them and quickly shrank back to rejoin its owner.

Poo wasted no time and vaulted two star-shaped blasts of energy towards the Starman, who stretched and distorted its body to the side to avoid the attack, its feet apparently glued to the ground. It had barely avoided the second blast when it bent backwards to dodge an electromagnetic shot from Tony's gun, which Jeff had borrowed and dowsed with blood previously. It went on like this for several minutes, with no one managing to land any hits on it until Ness and Poo blasted it simultaneously with psychokinetic waves. Since its mobility was inexplicably compromised and it wasn't pliable enough to escape two invisible forces pushing on it at the same time, it had to resort to drastic measures; in an instant it brought up its two tentacle-like arms and emitted its own psychic force to compensate.

For the first time in a long while, Agent Poo was actually very surprised.

"How can this…" his voice trailed off. "That's…impossible…"

Ness pushed harder against the Starman, only to find that his force was being returned to him in equal amounts. "Is that…it's psychokinesis, isn't it?"

"That's impossible!" Jeff fired another round at the Starman, only to see the monster twist to the side unnaturally and let the shot whiz by him. "You need an I.B. to be able to use psychic powers! No brain means no I.B., means no powers! It's gotta be something else!"

As if to agree with Jeff, the Starman discontinued its psychic countermeasures against Ness and Poo, and collapsed into a puddle of metallic goo which leapt over them in a splurt and landed behind them. The thing then began hopping down the street very quickly.

"Where's it going?" wondered Ness aloud.

"I don't know…wait a minute, which way did we come from before?"

Jeff cursed. "Oh no…it's heading for the others!"

Two grueling minutes later, the trio finally reached the street where the encampment was, only to find it eerily quiet. Tracy had been standing just outside and ran up to them the second they spotted each other.

"Ness, please tell me the thing that just showed up isn't going to attack us..."

Ness grabbed his sister comfortingly, albeit with a confused look on its face. "What? What do you mean? It hasn't attacked you?"

"No," replied Tracy. "It's just…standing there. It's really creepy."

The Starman was standing in the middle of the encampment, with its tendrils placed daintily on what a human would consider its hips. There was a circle of wary onlookers standing a good distance from it, so as not to provoke its ire. Apple, Orange, Frank, and Tony were the only people who dared draw near, although they too stayed a considerable distance from it.

"Why isn't it attacking us?" Jeff echoed the thoughts of nearly everyone present, except for Ness, who let go of Tracy and started ambling towards it. When he got to where Tony was he pushed him to the side.

"Hey, what are you doing?" he reached for Ness, but fear of the Starman stopped him. "What's wrong with you?"

"There's something I've been wondering," answered Ness. "Ever since it attacked us…I've had this weird feeling. I can't really describe it…but it's really familiar. Like I've seen it before."

Ness reached the Starman and stopped. Cautiously he put up his hand and tried to touch it. Satisfied that it would not react in any way, Ness pressed on and placed his fingertips on the creature's chest.

Ness…you came.

Ness gasped. "Paula…is that you?"

But…

"But what?"

But…you'd better run.

Suddenly the monster sprang back to life and blasted Ness at close range with a psychokinetic wave that launched him into the air. He crashed into Frank and the two tumbled to the ground roughly, eliciting screams and gasps from Tracy and the others. Soon enough, more bolts of lightning began striking the nearby area, and with each crack a new Starman, cold and sinister as the last, materialized and began wreaking havoc on its surroundings. People scrambled frantically; some managed to run away, while others were caught in the mayhem, their screams silenced instantaneously.

Poo drew the Jun Zhu Tan and pointed it his teammates, barking orders. "You two! Take Frank and run, see if you can save any others. Tony, find Tracy and keep her safe!"

Orange shot Poo a defiant look. "What about you?"

"I'm taking care of it. Go now!" The Agent raised his sword to parry an incoming tentacle, which bounced off his blade with a metallic klink. Fueled by the sacred sword's energy, he dashed forward and ran his blade through the center of a Starman, then slashed upwards and neatly cleaved it in two.

By now the encampment was completely empty save for Ness, Jeff, and Poo, and a whole gang of vicious, seething piles of anthropomorphic, metallic gloop. Given the circumstances, the pools of gloop quickly surrounded the three men and formed a circle around them, using cautionary strikes of their extendable limbs to coax them in the direction that was most suitable to the troop of Starmen. While each of the three humans had the means to hurt or at least stave off their attackers, they were clearly in no position to come out of this battle victorious, and eventually they discontinued their futile attempts at self-defense, and let themselves be herded, back to back, into the center of an army of Starmen standing in concentric circles around them and probably numbering in the thousands, if not tens of thousands. Those on the outside of the circle, who teleported to that location only after Ness and his friends were subdued, and thus were located outside the encampment, had to destroy parts of buildings or streets just to make room for themselves. From Ness' point of view, it looked as if the Starmen were destroying the city, bit by bit, all around him.

"So, um…any suggestions?" Jeff ran his hand through his blonde locks, trying to feign being nonchalant, but his hand was trembling far too hard for the illusion to work. "'Cause I'm having a really tough time coming up with anything that might get us out of this situation and doesn't involve dying."

"It's hopeless," replied Poo, deflecting a tentacle at the same time. "There's too many of those things to even attempt a successful counterattack."

"Meaning?" quipped Jeff.

"In plain English?"

"Please."

"We're fucked."

"Oh."

Ness growled at that last statement. "I refuse to believe that. Paula is here, somewhere, and she's connected to these…things, somehow."

Poo glanced at Ness out of the corner of his eye. "Do you still believe that?"

There was a short pause before Ness replied. "Have any better ideas?"

That familiar feeling was still there, in any case. Ness could still sense it, tugging at the pit of his stomach. He wasn't sure what it meant but he knew, deep down, that it was like the other times he had seen Paula. As a sensation, it had the same texture.

I know you're here, Paula…please, just talk to me…show me…

"Show me were you are!"

Immediately the Starmen retracted their tentacles and stood in silence. Ness' scream echoed through the encampment, reverberating through the Starmen's metallic bodies and setting off a low hum. No one moved, not even him.

By the time he noticed the pink flaps of her dress, she was already walking amongst the Starmen with her eyes fixed on the ground. She was immaculate, clean, and almost unearthly compared to Ness' grimy clothes and battered body. The wind played with her hair and dress, but the air did not carry her smell towards him, because she had none. Jeff and Poo shifted their positions so as to stand by Ness on either side of him. The three of them waited until she had finished gliding past the Starmen to try and speak, but Paula hushed them immediately.

"Why didn't you run?" Her voice cracked when she said this. "Why did you stay here?"

Ness looked at her directly, but she avoided his gaze. "I'm not going anywhere without you."

Paula shook her head. "I can't go anywhere with any of you. I'm trapped by this endless cycle now."

"That's not true."

"Yes it is."

Ness tightened his fists and stepped forward briskly, grabbing Paula by the shoulders and giving her a slight shake. "I don't believe that! If there's a problem, I'll take care of it! All I need is for you to tell me why! Tell me why you won't come with me!"

Paula looked up briefly, and for a moment Ness was able to see the tears in her eyes. "Because I don't want to have to kill you."

Jeff felt the hairs on his skin stand on end. "What the…"

Ness's pupils dilated, and he backed off from Paula. Her body suddenly grew very cold in his hands. Within seconds she was covered from head to toe with the same metallic sheen as the Starmen.

"Ness…I'm so afraid…"

With one last breath she became like liquid mercury in his hands and collapsed into a puddle on the floor. Ness stared at his hands before closing them, trying to catch what little was left of Paula before it slipped back to the Earth. He barely noticed the explosions that were being set off around him as thousands upon thousands of Starmen spontaneously exploded, their liquid particles clotting together to form giant balls of quicksilver that rolled slowly towards them.

Jeff was so startled by something that he fell to the floor and his glasses slid crookedly to the tip of his nose. Poo sheathed the Jun Zhu Tan and kneeled down beside him.

"Jeff, what's wrong?"

"It's…I…It's all so clear now," stuttered Jeff distractedly. "I understand now…"

"What? What are you talking about? What do you understand?"

"Everything," replied Jeff. "The attack on Fourside. Operation Giant Step. My uncle. Everything."

"How? How is that possible?"

"I felt it…the part of Giygas that's still inside me felt it."

Poo frowned. "So you know? You know why Paula's being held by Giygas?"

Jeff looked up, dumbstruck, and into Poo's eyes. It was as if he didn't believe what he was about to say himself.

"Paula is Giygas."

Poo's jaw dropped. He tried to speak but his throat sewed itself shut.

One of the large balls of liquid metal that had formed from the destruction of the Starmen lunged towards Poo from behind his back and toppled both he and Jeff to the ground. A second ball of gloop crashed into the first one and absorbed it, sealing its captives inside of it. Close by, another ball of metal had crashed into Ness and trapped him as well. Soon every orb of liquid metal coalesces into one gigantic sphere of shiny, rippling fluid that rose up into the sky. When it reached a certain distance above the ground, already outside of Earth's atmosphere it solidified and became still, like a second moon.