WARRIORS HIGH
ISLAND OF THE LOST
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
GRASPING MEMORIES
(Continues from Chapter 56 of Warriors: The New Era)
Everything was a blur.
The gunfire rattling in his brain, the screams of pain, Dusty could hear it all as he sprinted from the mountain, holding Sunfield close to his chest.
Tears burned his eyes and his chest heaved with fatigue. He had been running for almost ten minutes, trying to get somewhere where his friend's neck wound could be treated.
The golden-haired boy looked really out of it, eyes faded and blinking less and less. Dusty could feel his staggering breath grow weak.
"Stay with me…" he wheezed, "I'm getting you help."
"Dusty…"
"Shut up!" the boy half-sobbed, "Just...don't! I'm gonna get you help."
"Dusty…" said Sunfield, his voice either gentle or weak, "Please...put me down…"
The poor boy couldn't handle this.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP, SUNNY! SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
Sunfield's eyes were dripping with tears, yet his eyes glimmered with an ominous breed of acceptance. As if he knew that his death was coming, and was now just going through the funeral plans in his head.
Dusty was nigh delirious. Blood pounded in his skull as he held his fragile load in his arms, his lungs were burning and his eyes were so bloodshot some would think he was high. He stumbled around trees and over roots as the forest grew denser and denser.
Finally, it seemed the forest wanted the teenager to stop running from fate. After another two minutes in full sprint, Dusty mistimed his jump and twisted his ankle, causing both of them to fall to the ground.
"SHIT!" cussed Dusty, reaching for his ankle as Sunfield rolled to his back, the blood from his neck staining the grass below. The only thing holding him up was the slight rise and fall of his chest.
In the midst of his mess, he reached for his comm. "ASH! COALSTRIKE! WE HAVE A MAN DOWN! WE NEED MEDICAL ATTENTION! SEND IVYPOOL! SEND AN AMBULANCE! SEND ANYONE! PLEASE!"
Dusty put the mic to his ear.
Static.
They were out of range.
"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!" roared the brown-haired boy in rage, smashing his comm against the tree in one swing, "FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!"
Sunfield had dragged himself to the nearest tree, propping himself up to a sitting position. Blood dripped from the gash on his neck, coating it in a grisly shade of crimson with a flow only beaten by the tears in his eyes.
"Dusty…" said the golden-haired boy shakily.
"No! Shut up!" he snapped, looking around before quickly ripping his shirt off and wrapping it around his neck. Despite the cloth being army camo, a dark stain quickly soaked through, deeming the bandage useless.
The golden-haired boy glanced at his shirtless friend and smirked. "Well," he rasped, "Now...I see why Axis...had the hots for you…"
"Shut up…" said Dusty, his voice shaking violently, "Just...shut up…"
Sunfield could only watch as he completely broke. The soldier who he had spent weeks travelling the island with dissolving into a sobbing, shaking mess.
It broke his heart.
"I should have done something…" cried Dusty, "I could have done something...You don't...I don't want you to die...Sunny, I don't want you to die…"
Sunfield's grief was quiet, small, yet violent sobs expelling tears as his dimming gaze was cast upon the war-riddled mountain. He felt the throb of his open neck as the life slowly dripped out of him as his friend tried to hold on to the very last friend he had.
He was supposed to be Dusty's shoulder to cry on. He was supposed to be the friend he needed.
And here he was. He had let him down. They both knew it.
On ticked the seconds. Dusty was curled into a sobbing ball, holding his twisted foot as Sunfield slowly ran out of tears to cry.
"Dusty…"
Dusty just looked and reached over to give him a half-assed hug, wrapping his arms around his waist and burying his face into the golden boy's hip.
"Dusty…" repeated the dying boy.
After another thirty seconds of tears, the soldier looked up at his friend.
"In...my pocket…" he said quietly, "There's...an mp3 player…"
"Sunny," whimpered Dusty, "This i-isn't the time…"
"Please…Dusty…"
With a whimper, he opened the pockets and rummaged through them, his fingers finally grasping a small black player. The screen was chipped and the buttons were greasy with the user's fingerprints, but Dusty could see the screen light up as he pressed the on button and with a shaking hand, handed it over to Sunfield.
Sunfield didn't take his eyes off of Dusty as he held down the volume button and pressed shuffle.
Despite his bleeding heart, he almost laughed as he heard the opening notes of "Tiny Dancer" from the player.
"Y-You're dying and y-you s-still want to listen t-to Elton John…" the soldier muttered.
Sunfield looked at Dusty and gave a weak, yet resounding smile.
"Whatever it takes...to make...you happy…"
Dusty finally looked up and stared the boy in the eyes for the first time.
"Sunfield...y-you're all I have...without you-"
"I know," said the boy, his face falling, "I'm sorry...I failed you…"
As Elton sang about Jesus freaking out in the streets in the background, Dusty slowly shifted until he sat next to him, his heartbroken gaze never leaving him. They were silent, the only music being the glamorous rock star fighting to drown out the distant sounds of war.
Both could feel their time together tick, tick, ticking away, the blood slowly draining the weight out of the golden boy's head.
"When...did I get...as tall as you...?" he half-slurred.
"Have you?" said Dusty, dimly lighting up at the change of topic and tone.
Sunfield shrugged, wincing at the throbbing in his neck. "Well...it's definitely...the first time we've seen...eye to eye. Never did the entire...way back…"
The boy blinked.
"Are you seriously giving a life lesson to me on your deathbed?"
He got a witty smirk back.
And Dusty suddenly found himself chuckling.
"Why you?" he said, wiping away some tears from his eyes, "Of all the people this war could take, why did it have to be the one the world needs most…?"
"You flatter me."
"No, I'm serious," said Dusty, looking over to him, "You...Your optimism...The way you can smile through anything...The world needs more people like you...You shouldn't have been the one...It should've been me...A useless bastard who can't do anything right...I can't fight...I can't save my friends…"
Dusty curled up into a ball again, starting to cry.
And even with his neck seizing up, Sunfield leaned over and hugged him just as Elton hit the chorus.
Dusty hugged back, sobbing into his shoulder.
And this time, he wouldn't let go.
"I'm sorry," whimpered the golden boy, "I...I should have been more careful...I should have fought harder for you...I don't want...to leave you…"
Dusty gently pressed his hand on the back of his head, stroking his fingers through his dirty blonde hair as Sunfield weakly wept with him.
The luxurious piano wrapped around them as they swayed with the soft rhythm of the drums.
"Dusty…?"
"Sunny…?"
"What...do you want me...to say to him…?"
Dusty almost broke there, but he kept his head rested against him.
"That I miss him. That I hope he's at peace...wherever he is…"
"I…"
The silence told Dusty all he needed.
Gently, he rested the boy down onto his back. His breaths were weaker than before, and his eyes glimmered with fading affection and thankfulness.
He took his hand, and he squeezed back all he could.
Dusty watched as Sunfield worked himself into one last smile.
Moments later, his grip on the soldier's hand slackened and his chest fell still.
Dusty felt heavy. Heavy with intense emotion like never before. He had neither the energy nor the power to wail his grief to the world.
Not when Elton John was still singing.
With a dull, grieving smile, Dusty slowly closed Sunfield's eyes.
"Rest easy, sunshine."
The song slowly faded out. Reaching over, the boy waited until the song had one second left, pressed pause and nestled it gently into Sunfield's pocket. With one last tearful glance, he turned away and towards the mountain.
And then he was blinded.
A white light filled all of existence, causing the soldier to throw his arm in front of his eyes as a bright explosion covered the mountain.
He slowly removed his light deterrent as he saw a massive mushroom cloud, sending piece after piece of shrapnel and debris high into the air. Raw heat blasted his skin as the temperature rose by a good forty degrees, causing him to cringe up as his body was cooked.
Before he could pick himself up, a shockwave blasted him onto his back. He felt his left eardrum explode painfully as blood splattered from the useless ear and his back throbbed with pain.
Hand covering his impairment, Dusty slowly turned around and looked at the marvelous destruction, slowly coming to an epiphany.
The bomb's radius was smaller than it should have been.
He should have been dead the moment it went off.
That could only mean one thing.
They had won.
And even though he knew he should be celebrating, he felt his heart throb all over again.
If Sunfield had hung on just a few moments longer, he would have seen their victory.
Now he would never know that they had avenged his death.
For a while, Dusty stared blankly at the fiery sky, chest heaving, lungs burning, ears ringing at a deafening volume…
And the world seemed to fade, the pain in his body drifting away as a white blanket brought him to a future that he would never really know.
December 17th, 2024
11 days after Chapter 58 of Warriors: The New Era
...
...
...
"Sir?"
He could pick out a voice amidst the blinding sound.
"Sir? Can you hear me?"
Somewhere nearby, somewhere beckoning to a place he would never get to know.
"Sir!"
Dusty gasped awake, panting, hyperventilating as he placed a hand on his heart and tried to breathe.
"Are you alright?" The boy turned to see a woman, dressed in a white and blue outfit and wearing a stout white cap with an airline insignia.
Dusty looked around. He was surrounded by rows and rows of blue-threaded seats. In the background, he could hear a faint whirring.
Dusty blinked, trying to calm his heart.
"Where...Where am I?" he breathed.
"You're at Forrestlake, sir," said the woman, who looked appropriately unnerved, "We've arrived from Los Angeles."
Wait.
WHAT?!
Now Dusty was even more confused.
"I'm...on a plane?"
The flight attendant just looked worried. "Would you...like me to call a medic?"
Okay, he needed to get out of here.
"No…" he lied, "Sorry, long day."
She didn't exactly believe him, but she stepped aside, giving him the benefit of the doubt and room to slowly open the overhead, where he saw a black suitcase waiting for him.
As he slowly pulled up the handle and walked down the 19 rows of seats in front of him, things began to dawn on him.
He was on a plane for LA to Forrestlake.
But Forrestlake had been nuked.
That meant that either he had been in a coma or something had happened that he didn't know about.
He walked fast. The wheels on the bag rolled loudly as he ran out of the tunnel and into the perfectly glitzy and flashy concourse of Forrestlake, bustling with tourists and gleaming with green decorations and red...ornaments?
Dusty felt sick. The world seemed to rock him back and forth, and he stumbled to one of the many seats in front of the window live with planes, trucks and a non-nuked city plastered on the horizon.
Nothing made sense.
He was sitting in a terminal on an island that had been nuked.
Was he dead?
Was this heaven?
Was this hell?
Dusty was pale as a security guard, having been called over by the staff.
"Sir? Are you alright?"
He didn't respond, just staring outside blankly.
"Sir?"
The voice to the teenager was weak as the guard pat him on the side of the neck.
"Can you hear me?"
In response, Dusty threw up, his regurgitation sickeningly splashing on the concourse carpet. Passing travellers jumped away in disgust, though some's gaze turned to unseen sympathy for airsickness.
As the guard called for medical attention, he lost his grip on his sanity within what he could see, and slumped over, unconscious once more.
"...and all tests came back negative. Seems to be regular airsickness."
"Thank you, Doctor. May I speak to him now?" said an English accent.
The door to the clinic's office opened. Dusty, who had been perpetually dozing since he was revived at the airport hospital, blearily looked up.
At the doorway was a handsome, yet old man. He had balding gray hair, a slowly wrinkling face, but was decked out in flashy clothes, like a shiny jacket fresh out of a disco, baggy khaki pants and a pride wristband on his wrist.
Dusty felt something shift in the back of his brain, as if he should recognize this man.
The man waited until the doctor left the room before shaking his head in the most condescending manner Dusty had ever seen.
"Alright Dusty," he muttered, "What the hell did they inject into you in LA?"
Dusty blinked.
This man knew him?!
"Was it crack? Speed? Steroids the NFL hates?" he said, leaning against the wall across from him. "C'mon, just spill so that I can think of an alibi when the news sees your arse stumbling drunk on Mulholland Drive."
Dusty just stared awkwardly.
"W-Who are you again?"
The man threw up his arms and scoffed. "Goddamnit man! We don't have to play this game. It's not like we've been probed yet!"
The boy was staring at the ground, still trying to process the world speeding around him at 90 miles an hour. "I'm sorry! It's just...the airsickness. It's gotten to my head."
The man sighed, sitting next to him and patting him on the shoulder, which unnerved Dusty further.
"Elliot Hennessey Gray. That name ring a bell?"
Dusty thought a minute. He swore he could feel the mention tickle something in the back of his brain.
"Elliot Gray, Elliot Gray, Elliot Gray…" he muttered to himself.
This man obviously had some distinctive traits. So where would he remember him…?
Something popped in his head.
"If you act paranoid, they'll know you suspect them. If you play along and let them lower their guard, you can react with much more command over them."
Well, it wasn't much, but it was something. He didn't even remember when he was told that nugget of info.
But he played along.
"Oh!" he said, faking an epiphany, "You're the guy! From the...thing…"
Elliot Gray bit his lip. " Okay, close enough. Come on, the limo's waiting outside."
Limo.
Something clicked.
Top pocket on the suitcase. Give him the envelope.
Dusty wasn't even questioning himself.
"Do you have my suitcase?"
"Again, the limo," said Elliot, getting up and gesturing for him to do the same, "You can give it to Kale when we get to your house."
Dusty was barely listening as he was checked out of the clinic and led out into baggage claim. As the tourists clearly not concerned of a nuclear fallout flocked around the carousels to grab their baggage, the boy had his eyes closed, trying to grasp something, anything that would help him make sense of why everything was erased.
And also why the temperature was so low, he saw his breath as he left.
Elliot led him across the departure lanes, keeping a precariously close yet non-threatening eye on him as they walked, and into the parking garage. He went to the elevator where they entered and pressed a button to the 17th floor.
As the elevator slinked up the several stories, Elliot glanced at Dusty.
"You know, if you were molested and you're too embarrassed to talk about it, you should talk to me about it."
Dusty didn't know whether he felt more repulsed at the poor sentence structure or terrified that something bad did happen and he had no idea. He wrapped it all up in an uncomfortable glance at the older man that made it clear he wasn't up for talking about anything that wasn't an explanation about why they were not walking through a nuclear wasteland.
Finally, the silky voice greeted them to the seventeenth floor, and the pair got out, where Dusty saw a sleek, black limo waiting for him. He would have done a double take, but he had grown numb to the surprise that he was alive.
"Hop in," said Elliot, getting into the passenger seat, "And whatever backseat shenanigans you boys decide to do, just don't let me hear it."
Dusty nodded, trying to hide the grimace of uncomfortability he had as he slipped into the car.
He had almost settled into his seat before he noticed he wasn't alone.
"Jay?"
Jaywhisker looked up from his laptop. "Hi."
"What...what are you doing here?"
He blinked in confusion. "You...told me to join you on the way back?"
Dusty blinked. "I did?"
Unlike the old man in the front seat, Jaywhisker immediately knew something was up. "You don't remember?"
Dusty caved incredibly fast.
"Look, I don't know what the fuck is going on!" he hissed, "I was in the forest when the bomb went off, next thing I know I wake up on a plane from Los Angeles on an airport that is not destroyed and where everyone is okay and not BloodClan or ARS and I meet this crazy old man whose somewhere in the gray area between a gay rights activist, a pedophile and a fucking grandpa, and now I'm in a limo. So if you could tell me what the hell is happening and why the air has dropped forty degrees in temperature, that would be just fine with me!"
Jaywhisker blinked at him, and Dusty feared that he had vented to someone who had no idea what he was talking about.
Then he relaxed, shutting his laptop and smiling in obvious relief, which made Dusty even more confused.
"Thank God," he muttered, "I thought that you were never gonna get back here."
"What do you mean?"
Jay leaned forward and looked Dusty in the eyes.
"The timeline was reset."
Dusty's jaw slackened.
"Reset?"
"Yep."
"Like, reset reset?"
"Yeah."
"So…"
"The memories from the timeline, likely from contact from the Moonstone, have been coming back at a staggered pace. Which is why it's been about two months since the battle and why you don't remember anything clearly from then to now-"
"Stop stop stop stop stop."
Dusty was in so much disbelief, he was smiling.
"So...what you're saying is…"
Jaywhisker grinned.
"We won."
Dusty felt his heart soar.
They had won.
Dusty launched forward and wrapped Jaywhisker, which he returned tightly after a hiss of surprise. After a couple moments of embrace, made unsteady by the turning of the limousine, Dusty broke away, near tears.
"I can't believe it…" he said, "After the bomb went off, I thought…"
Jaywhisker nodded. "There's a lot to go over. For now, check your texts. Your memories should start flooding back in from there."
Dusty nodded, his hands shaking as he unlocked his phone and sifted through his contacts. Foxleap, Jaywhisker, Coalstrike, Ashtooth, Daffodil, Seashell…
Wait.
He scrolled up again.
Daffodil.
He blinked, thinking that it was an old contact and ready to heave a sigh of depression before checking for the last text.
A text about picking him up from school.
December 3rd.
He checked the date.
December 17th.
And yet he had seen her get shot in the head on the day of the reset.
"Jay?"
He looked up and glanced at the text from Daffodil.
"What about it?"
"She's supposed to be dead."
Jaywhisker blinked, as if he wished he didn't figure this out.
"One of the side effects of the reset," he said tentatively, "Is that some of the deaths were undone. We don't know if everyone got reset, but…"
Dusty felt his heart beat faster. "So who did get reset?"
Jaywhisker leaned back in his seat.
And let Dusty finish the question in silence.
Fifteen minutes later, the limo pulled across from the mansion, completely intact to Dusty's numbed surprise.
He was busy running across the street, Jaywhisker stumbling behind him with his laptop nestled into his right arm.
He burst through the door, spooking the non-Resistance lingered around the house, and cast his wild eyes around those who were supposed to be dead.
Mallowleaf.
Seashell.
Daffodil.
Berrynose.
Breezepelt.
As Jaywhisker shouldered the burden of why he was so white in the face and gave an awkward introduction to Elliot Gray, Dusty ran up the stairs to his room.
He hesitated, saying one last prayer to God before opening the door.
"Oh hey," said the handsome, brown-haired boy on the other side of the door, "You're back."
Dusty's heart flew to the moon.
It was Axis.
"Geez, you alright?" he said, getting to his feet with a worried glint in his eyes, "You look white in the face-"
He was cut off by Dusty running forward and kissing him.
It was the hardest, most possessive move he had ever made. To Axis, this would seem like loneliness finally getting balanced out or a release of stress from a week in Los Angeles.
To Dusty, this meant so much more. So much that, no matter how much he loved him, Axis would never understand.
"Wow," chuckled the boy as Dusty slipped his hands under his shirt to disrobe him, "Rough week, huh?"
Dusty just chuckled.
"You have no idea."
As the young couple stumbled to the bed in the back corner, in an intense lip lock, Jaywhisker peeked in through the cracked door.
"Welcome back, Dusty…" he said under his breath with a smile before shutting the door and wishing everlasting mercy on the unfortunate soul who might accidentally open it.
As Foxleap poured drinks to celebrate, Jaywhisker walked back to his own project. His personal favorite which had grown on him.
After a couple knocks, an eight-year-old boy covered in dirt, grime and a cute little smile answered the door.
"Hi Jay!" he said chirpily.
"Hey, Russ," said Jay with an uncharacteristically big grin.
"I need some help with the car I'm making Mole and Cherry," he said, opening the door for his friend to come inside, "I was wondering if you could help with the soldering and the programming."
Jaywhisker responded by grabbing some work goggles from his pocket, and after a glance at the Bluejay Mk. 7 in the corner of Russ' room, put them on.
"I'll see what I can do."
I know I said this is the end.
But there's one more thing I have to do.
And then comes the future.
If you're still here, after all this time...
Thank you.
Best,
~Res