Author's note: Happy 25th Anniversary, everybody! Couple days late, but who cares, right?

If you can believe it, the rough draft for this chapter was actually finished an entire month ago, but after summer camp hit in the way, things hit a bit of a halt for a while. That, and I got a copy of Pokemon X a few weeks ago, so... yeah, I have no excuse.

Thanks for your patience!

If nothing else, I can safely say that the first five minutes or so of my adventure went wonderfully. The air was warm, the sun was shining, and any cares that had been plaguing me felt like they'd been left behind at my doorstep. I was doing something I actually wanted to do for once, something exciting, something that, as a bonus, might actually change the world for the better. My pace quickened to an excited stroll as I made my way down the dirt road. My spirits felt higher than they had in a long time and, for a while, I couldn't stop smiling. It was when I reached the main road of town, however, that I realized I had forgotten something kind of important: I literally had no idea where I was supposed to go.

It was probably stupid, and maybe a little bit insane, to get frustrated with a voice in your head, but that's how I felt all the same. The dream voice had given me a lot of useless information why couldn't it have used that time to tell me something helpful? Like what part of town I needed to go to? Podunk wasn't exactly huge, but a tour through the entire town just to find a lead for this mystery would still have been far too long, not to mention incredibly boring.

Then I was struck with an alarming thought: what if the place I needed to go wasn't somewhere in Podunk? The voice had said the entire world would be in trouble, what if I had to go somewhere completely different? I still had quite a bit of pocket money thanks to Goodman's bribe, but I seriously doubted I could afford many plane tickets. And even then, the world was a pretty big place...

I had just sat down on a park bench to reevaluate my plan, when a loud voice got my attention.

"Hey! Hey, you!"

Looking up, I saw a small, familiar person coming toward me.

"Hey, Pippi."

Pippi trotted happily up to me, smiling all over her cheeto-freckled face. Her overalls were stained and, as she got closer, I started smelling something suspiciously similar to garden sludge.

"I've been looking all over for ya," she said. "What'th up?"

"Just sitting here, thinking of ways to save the world."

"Cool," she replied, digging distractedly around in her pockets. She must not have thought I was serious.

"I got that thing I told you about," she said, finally locating what she wanted and producing it. After looking at it critically, she spat a loogie onto it and started wiping it off with her sleeve.

"What's that?" I asked.

"It'th called a Franklin Badge," she replied, handing me a slightly unclean hunk of metal. "My Granny gave it to Momma when th'e wa'th little, and now I'm gonna give it to you!"

A reasonable conclusion, I thought to myself. I took the grubby thing in my hand and looked at it. The badge was perfectly round, moderately heavy, and about the size of a silver dollar. The metal was a shiny shade of bronze, and it had a colorful decal on the front depicting a simple bolt of lightning and the word "Franklin" emblazoned on the top. If it had any sort of significance, I didn't recognize it.

"It'th to say thank you for helping me," she said, her hands clasped behind her back. "Be th'ure to keep it on every th'ingle day, okay?"

I didn't really see the point of it, it just seemed like a cheap flea market trinket, but she was looking at me with so much admiration that I couldn't tell her no.

"Thanks, Pippi," I said, pinning it to the clasp holding my neckerchief in place. "I'll be sure to do that."

Pippi said nothing; she just smiled her partially toothless smile.

"Is that the only reason you're here?" I asked.

"Oh, no no no, I'm al'tho here becau'the the mayor wanted me to tell you 'th'omething."

My stomach sank with dread.

"What does he want?" I asked.

"He want'th to know if you'll help him with the animal'th."

"You mean the ones tearing the zoo apart?"

"Uh huh. He told me to tell you that you did th'uch a good job taking care of the zombies la'tht week, that he couldn't imagine a'thking anyone el'the for the job."

I was about to ask her why he had sent a seven-year-old to tell me this instead of something more practical like a phone call, but then I answered my own question: it was a lot harder to say no to the face of a little kid than the voice of a very unlikable adult.

"Can't the grown-ups take care of it?" I asked.

She shook her head no.

"He th'aid everybody he'th th'ent over there ha'th juth't come back all beaten up. Whatever it i'th that'th making the animal'th all mad i' th al'tho making them really, really hard to fight" she explained.

I sighed and leaned my forehead against my fingers. As much as I hated doing anything that benefited that selfish creep, this was starting to look like the best lead I had for looking into the problem I was supposed to solve.

"Tell him I'll be right there," I said.

On most days, it was a fifteen minute drive my house to the Cream Puff Zoo. If I'd still had my bicycle I could have gotten there in maybe twice that, but on foot it took me almost an hour. Once you got out of town, the landscape around Podunk became very overgrown with trees, so I followed the side of a river to avoid getting lost. It would have been easier to follow a road, but my accident was still too fresh in my mind to feel very safe around vehicles.

As I got closer to the zoo's wrought metal entrance, I kept expecting to hear a lot of noise coming from inside, but it was actually surprisingly quiet. Feeling a little nervous, I gripped the bars on the gate and peered inside. The glass in the ticket building window was cracked, there were two or three overturned trash cans spilling their contents everywhere, and all around the pavement there were signs of a scuffle: scratches and footprints were strewn wildly across the ground, and here and there, torn clothing and blood sat in ominous little patches. Still, there wasn't a single living thing in sight; every last animal and person seemed to have just vanished.

Steeling my nerves, I pulled the keychain I'd picked up at the mayor's office and began to fiddle with the lock. It was slow going, as the lock was rather rusted, but it eventually creaked open with a grinding squeak. After taking a few steps inside, however, the feeling that I was being watched began to creep up my spine. Reaching for my bat, I turned around and looked up.

A furry black monkey was sitting on one of the gateposts, looking down at me with inquisitive brown eyes. I recognized him immediately: he was the only living monkey the zoo had anymore, and was often advertised in the zoo as "The World's Only Singing Monkey". I'm pretty sure that was a load of crap though; in my years, I'd seen that monkey do a number of interesting things, but I'd never once heard him sing.

I gave the monkey a friendly wave, but otherwise didn't pay the him much attention; of all the animals running rampant at that point, he was probably the least of my worries. He, however, clearly had other ideas. I had only walked a short distance into the zoo when he hopped quite suddenly down from his perch and scampered right into the middle of the path, sitting down in front of me with his tail wrapped around himself. He was still looking at me with great interest.

"Uh, hi?"

The monkey blinked and cocked his head to the right.

"What do you want, a cookie?"

I kept waiting for words of reply to appear in my head, but none did. Instead, he approached me cautiously and held out both of his grubby little hands, as if he was either going to give me something or asking me to give him something. Curious, I got down on a knee to see what he wanted...

It happened all in one razor-quick motion; one second, the monkey was sitting there innocently with his hands up, then the next, he had snatched the baseball cap off of my head, stuffed it onto his own, and then turned to run.

"H-hey! Give that back!"

I made a grab to catch him by the tail, but he was already scurrying away from me at full speed.

"Get back here, that's mine!"

"Not anymore, butt-brains!" said a cheeky voice in my head.

Completely abandoning any caution I had before, I barreled down the concrete road. The monkey zigzagged his way through trash and metal benches, outstripping me easily as he made to get away with my beloved hat. After a bit of running, he hopped nimbly onto a chain-link fence and began climbing it, the hat now wrapped in his prehensile tail. It reached the top in about a second and, instead of continuing on its way, he sat smugly down on the top bar, looking extremely pleased with himself.

Once I reached the fence myself, I had to stop and catch my breath for a minute; even on a good day, running for longer than thirty seconds made me feel like my lungs were half their usual size.

"You... you stupid fleabag..." I panted as I gripped front of my shirt, bent double from the effort. "I... I swear, when I get up there..."

But I wasn't able to finish. Instead, once I was able to breathe again, I started the difficult task of climbing the side of the fence. The chainwork made effective, if rather painful, handholds, and after so much time climbing in P.E, I knew I could reach the top with manageable difficulty. Still, I knew I was no match for a monkey; at any second it could have leapt from the fence and gone somewhere else if it wanted to.

For whatever reason, however, that decision never seemed to cross his mind. Even when I managed to scale the fence and balance precariously on my hands and knees on the top rung, he still didn't seem fazed. I watched with increasing fury as, only a few inches out of reach my reach, he put the hat into his mouth and began nibbling on it.

"I'm warning you, if you don't give that back to me right now, I-!"

Suddenly I felt a hit. I toppled, my balance on the top beam lost. I only managed to get a grip at the very last second, my sneakers scrambling desperately for a foothold. Something massive had suddenly collided with the side of the fence, making the whole thing shake violently. If I'd acted half a second later, I would have fallen to the ground.

Dreading what I would see, I braced myself and looked down. What I saw made my heart come to a stop

It was a twelve-foot drop from the top of the fence to the ground. A fall like that could easily leave me with a sprained ankle, maybe a broken neck if I was unlucky enough, but that was suddenly the least of my worries.

I wanted to pummel myself for being so stupid; I'd been visiting this zoo ever since I was tiny, how could I have forgotten that this was the tiger exhibit?

The chain fence was flexing dangerously beneath the paws of the gigantic cat. Standing up on its rear legs, it had just thrown all four hundred pounds of its weight against the fence, snarling and hissing at me when it failed to knock me off. As I watched, it swiped up at me with a massive padded paw, its claws missing me by only a centimeter.

Powered by a sudden surge of adrenaline, I clawed my way back up the fence and hugged the top beam as tight as I could. My fingers were stiff from climbing the thick metal wires and blood was pounding in my ears, but I was so numb with panic I didn't even notice. I didn't have time to catch my breath, though; after getting over my fear enough to look, I saw that climbing down the other side of the fence wasn't going to be an option either.

Four golden brown animals were crowding around the fence below me. They were a lot smaller than the tiger, but they seemed no less eager to rip me limb from limb. Recognizing their long, viscous faces, my mind snapped back to the rusty information plaque that had been built by their enclosure; a little nugget of information that had kind of fascinated me as a child, but not something I thought I would have to experience first-hand:

"Spotted hyena," the plaque had read. "Though they resemble domestic dogs, you should probably reconsider keeping one as a pet; these nasty African miscreants have both the teeth and the attitude for chewing through solid bone."

Every swear word in my vocabulary was firing through my head at this point, but my jaw was still frozen shut. I looked desperately around for somewhere for me to drop down to, anywhere that would keep me safe long enough to get away. I'd probably lose the monkey by that point, but I'd much rather sacrifice my hat than my life. There was a pool of water a few yards to my left, but that wouldn't work since I knew tigers could swim. There was a tall tree by the gate that I might have been able to hop on to, but if I got stuck up there my situation wouldn't change very much. There was also... well, that's actually where my ideas stopped, because before I could execute any of them, something snagged the back of my shirt, and I fell.

My eyes squeezed shut as I plummeted painfully downwards. Pulling my arms over my head, I braced myself for the jarring impact on the ground, and the fleeting sensation of tiger jaws clamping down on my throat.

Before any of those things could happen, however, something... largely unexpected happened. For a fraction of a second I felt an alarmingly hot sensation on every inch of my skin, heard a weird, snapping sort of noise, and saw a blur of colored light glow through my eyelids. Next thing I knew, I was sprawled out in the grass, feeling winded, but relatively unharmed. My head spinning, I sat up and started dazedly ahead.

I was definitely inside the enclosure now, but I was much, much further away from the fence than I should have been. More importantly, however, I was not being mauled to death by a tiger. Instead, the gigantic cat was standing about a stone throw in front of me, looking wildly around. I didn't think it was possible for a tiger to look confused, but it did all the same. On the other side of the fence, the pack of hyenas had suddenly become very quiet.

I decided I would question what had just happened to me later; it had granted me a fighting chance, and I wasn't going to let it go to waste. My body suddenly felt a lot like how it did back when I was fighting the zombie - I could feel power surging from my head down to the tips of my fingers, like an electric charge about to be set off.

It was then that the tiger finally got over the shock of me literally slipping through its paws and, with a roar of rage, started to pound its way toward me. There was no way I could outpace it even without an inevitable asthma attack. Steeling myself, I reached for my baseball bat and stood to prepare for a swing. Might as well go down fighting, I guess.

The tiger seemed to grow larger as it pounded its way toward me, growing and growing until it was a galloping mountain of muscle and striped fur. Then when it sprang into the air, roaring with its claws outstretched to grab me, I lost my nerve. The baseball bat loosened from my grip and brought my arms up to shield myself.

That primal gesture was what set it off. There was a loud bang and a flash of light, like a firecracker, and the tiger suddenly went careening backwards. It had been stopped by a nearly invisible shield that I had just conjured into the air. For a brief moment, I had actually seen its face and paws flattening up against it like a bug on a windshield. Its yellow eyes had gone wide in surprise, and the next thing I knew, we were both propelled backwards.

I could tell right then and there that this was something that would be hard to get used to. Putting up a psychic barrier between yourself and an oncoming attacker, I came to learn, was sort of like putting a giant inflatable rhino in front of your face and then instantly blowing it up; it'll cushion whatever is about to hit you, but that doesn't mean you'll be safe from the collateral damage either. What's worse is that sustaining a shield requires concentration, and its pretty hard to concentrate when the wind has just been knocked clean out of you.

Out of sheer willpower, though, I suppose, I managed to get to my feet and keep the shield standing. This effectively kept the tiger at bay, and... I'll be honest, it felt pretty awesome. Try as it might, the tiger couldn't penetrate the shimmering wall separating the two of us; the four-inch claws that should have been shredding me to ribbons had been rendered completely useless. In spite of myself, I began laughing. It was a nervous, slightly maniacal sort of laugh, the kind you make when you're terrified, but know that nothing can actually hurt you. I could see frustration and rage growing on the tiger's fierce, colorful face as it swiped futilely . at the air, like I was a mouse sitting barely out of reach in my hole.

Feeling brave again, I picked my bat off the ground and held it up in my best offensive stance. The tiger eyed it briefly, but paid little attention to it until-

THUNK

Even with my hardest hit, the tiger's skull was so strong it felt like I was hitting a concrete wall. Still, it hurt enough to make it recoil backwards in pain, hissing. Once it knew that I was armed, the tiger stopped swiping and instead backed up a few inches. It wasn't giving up completely just yet, but I could see fear starting to spark in its eyes.

"That's right, back!" I shouted, swinging my bat threateningly. "Back to your den, you big pussycat!"

The tiger hissed at me, but still didn't want to get close to my weapon. Good thing too, because I could feel my concentration waning and, consequently, my shield starting to weaken.

I was slowly advancing on the tiger now, but my sense of safety was quickly wearing thin. The cat was tucked low to the ground in a prowling stance, its teeth bared and its whiskers flaring wildly. I could tell it was furious for being told off by a creature that was supposed to be its prey, and while it may have been giving me some slack now, I knew at any moment it would find its second wind. I had to look around for an exit, but even a split-second glance at my surroundings would leave me open to an attack.

Then the tiger crouched down for a spring and I knew I was out of time to think. Trusting my instincts, I brought the bat down hard on the tiger's head again - my goal was to incapacitate it, but I think I just made it more angry - and began running as hard as I could in the opposite direction.

This was the kind of running I was good at, short bursts that could take me from plate to plate when playing baseball, not the long-distance kind that made my lungs feel like they were shrinking in the laundry. I remember pelting around shrubbery at breakneck speed, my eyes wide open for a way of escape. I remember hearing massive paws thundering behind me and feeling puffs of hot breath hitting my neck. Then, once I was sure I was done for, I remember seeing a small building standing mercifully up ahead. It was a supply shed-type thing adjacent to the enclosure's fence that I think contained toys for the tiger, and decided it would be my best bet. Never mind that it was probably locked and barred and had a window I could barely fit into, it was either that or a very painful death.

Suddenly there was a silence - the tiger's paws stopped pounding behind me and the only sounds were my breath and the beating of my heart.

Half a second, one, one and a half...

SLAM

My entire body was forced the ground, bruising my ribs and knocking out one of my teeth. I can think of only precious few moments in my life being as scared as I was right then. The tiger still couldn't touch me, but the impact of its pounce was still strong enough to overpower most of the shield's cushioning. I could hear its claws shredding away at it like a piece of cloth, only instead of tearing, it was making an unearthly scraping sound that I can't really compare to anything else; just substitute whatever you imagine a psychic barrier being torn apart sounds like and I'm sure it'll do just fine.

I had just managed to roll myself over onto my back when several things happened almost at the exact same time. First, I felt something incredibly heavy and soft crush into my left arm, accompanied by the terrifying sensation of glass-sharp claws finally meeting my flesh. Next, the tiger began to roar, maybe to celebrate the end of its struggle to catch me, sending a draft of horrible hot air at me and making my ears ring. And in that tiny second, as I was staring down into the fleshy pink depths of the gaping maw, I did the first thing my uncompromising desire to stay alive told me to: with my one free hand, I drove the short end of my baseball bat into the tiger's throat.

It may not have worked - in fact, in hindsight, it probably shouldn't have worked - but by some miracle it did anyway. The tiger let out a strangled howl of pain and recoiled, taking its weight of my arm and giving me enough time to get out.

The next few seconds are only a fevered blur in my memory - one moment I was wrenching myself out from under the giant animal, next I was breaking down the window of the window of the shack (the lock, like most of the metal in the zoo, was rusted enough to break if you were strong or desperate enough), then the next I was squeezing my way inside it, not caring a bit about the scrapes and the bruises. All I know is, I did get inside the shack alive, and more or less in one piece.

I don't know how long I spent sitting there, moving only to take very shaky dregs from my inhaler, but it felt like hours and hours. My hands and knees were both shivering violently from adrenaline, but I was too terrified and exhausted to stand and walk it out. I was hurting all over, nowhere more so than anywhere else, except for the wound on my arm, which stung and smarted in the open air. I didn't dare look at it, though; I had to take up as little space as I could, and turning my head felt like it'd be too big a risk. So for what must have been ages, I was frozen with my back pressed against the splintered wood wall, convinced that any second the shack would be torn open and my adventure would be cut short by a set of hungry white teeth.

But it never did. The window sat still and broken, the door remained shut and locked, and the walls never once made a sound. So, once I was finally convinced I was safe, I decided to take inventory of my injuries.

Well, I didn't look quite as bad as I did when the zombies beat me up, so I guess I could say I'd seen worse. There were bruises along my back and ribs from squeezing through the door and hitting the ground a few times, but those would heal just fine. My fingers were all very stiff, and the insides of a few of my knuckles were bleeding from when I climbed the fence. That would drive me crazy for a few weeks, but I'd live. And the arm that the tiger had stepped on was... oh...

Oh, God...

It was the same sort of effect as when you get a minor injury but don't end up noticing it, and then some time later you glance down and realize you're bleeding for seemingly no reason, only worse, a thousand times worse. The tiger's claws had gotten in deeper than I thought they had, and at least one of them had reached an important vein. My entire arm, everything from just above the crook of my elbow down to the tips of my fingers, was drenched in a brilliant shade of scarlet. Even as I watched, I could see blood oozing freely down to the floor, accumulating into a small puddle that my hand had been ignorantly sitting in the entire time I had been in the shack.

I had absolutely no idea how much blood you could lose before you died, (admittedly, it was probably a lot more than that) but at the time, that technicality didn't cross many mind: however remote it may have been, the possibility that I might bleed to death seemed too real for me to care about anything else. At least the tiger would have made it a lot quicker.

Thankfully, logic intervened before I could lose my head completely: I had brought supplies with me, and considering the laundry list of stuff mom had made me take, there had to be something that could help me. I reached backwards for my pack, but, with a thrill of horror, my hand only met with the air behind my back.

I had dropped it. In my rush to escape the tiger, I had slipped it from my shoulders and let it drop to the ground. It would only slow me down, I had reasoned, I could go back and get it once the animals were done freaking out.

Well, I thought back to myself, even when you took out the fact that there was a tiger after me, it's pretty unlikely I'll make it far if I'm bleeding this bad. Good thinking, past me.

Joking aside, things were looking pretty desperate. My arm wasn't just stinging anymore; it was searing. My breath was coming out in shallow hisses as I looked around for something, anything, to staunch my injury. I had hoped there'd be some sort of first aid kit in the shack, it'd make sense to have one around a tiger, anyway, but there didn't seem to be anything around but stacks of chewed up tiger toys.

Another horrible throb; I felt slightly sick as a gush of thick hot liquid rose beneath my fingers, running to join the pool that was still growing at an alarming rate.

Think, I told myself. Think! You're a superhuman! You just wrestled with a tiger, for God's sake!

Yeah, but my superpowers aren't going to help new much now, are they?

Maybe they can! Think!

And so I thought. But for all the thoughts my fevered brain was able to manage, nothing helpful was among them. I tried to stand up, see if I could drag myself to the door, but my legs felt like they were suddenly made out of pool noodles. I held on to a shelf for support, wincing as my wound was now exposed to the open air.

Then, as my thoughts began to waver perilously on nothing but fuzzy noise, a sound suddenly cut through my memory, fast and unexpected as a gunshot. I didn't know what it was at first, but it was very familiar: a dull, unpleasant crunch, gone as fast as it had come, like stepping on a hard insect or breaking into a car window. .

Breaking... something breaking...

Yes, that's what it was. How could I have forgotten so easily?

Fourth grade. May. The second game of the season, if I recall correctly. I had been the first one up to bat, and a kid I didn't know called Dennis was pitching. My team had beaten his team once before, though, so I should have known he'd be a force to be reckoned with.

I remember he had stared me down for a while, trying to intimidate me as best he could, and I could only squint back because the sun was bright and I have an old habit of wearing my hat backwards. Still, I would have hit it, I really would have, but not for another habit that I also can't break: underestimating people.

The wind-up, the pitch. The ball had come fast, faster than any ball I'd ever had to hit. By the time I started my swing it was far too late.

CRUNCH

There had been a confusing blur from all five of my senses: my vision blinking white before extinguishing, the sound of people all around gasping, my mother and sisters the loudest of all of them,

(Oh thank God they aren't here to see me now)

my nose instantly filling with an ugly metallic smell, my mouth quickly following with a similar taste, and worst of them all, pain. This, I thought, must have been what being shot in the head felt like.

I had staggered backwards on the spot and doubled over, my hands clamped tightly against my face. Hot blood began rising through my fingers just like it was as I was recalling this memory. Several of my teammates had gathered around me, a few of them trying to move my hands away, but I wouldn't let them. Beneath the pain and the blood, I was dimly aware that the place where the ball had hit was now swelling at an alarming rate.

Eventually, my coach fought his way through all of us, and, after getting one glance at my face, said in a low voice:

"Broken - get him to the nurse."

And so I was immediately led through the cool halls of the school by a teacher and a few other kids. Among them was Dennis, who kept alternating between profusely apologizing and insisting that it wasn't his fault; he was supposed to throw the ball as hard as he could, he insisted, how was he to supposed to help if I was too slow to hit it? Honestly, I might have forgiven the guy if it weren't for him talking to me like that.

I kept my hands pressed over my face all the way into the nurse's office, and even then, it took a lot of coaxing on her part to get them off. She just wanted a look, she insisted, she wasn't actually going to touch it. But I knew that wasn't true; she was going to have to touch it, and even though I knew she could make it better, my fear of being hurt even worse kept me from listening.

When she finally did get my hands away, though, I'll never forget the befuddled look she had given me. In the middle of my bloody, tearstained mess of a face, she found not the mangled, swollen fracture she was expecting, but a perfectly normal nose. Somehow, inexplicably, it had healed itself.

No, not itself...

Back in the present, my eyes snapped open as I finally made the connection. There was no other explanation for it; if I had the ability to teleport and protect myself from danger, then it wasn't so implausible to assume I had the ability to heal injuries. Whether or not this ability had limits, and what consequences there would be if I breached them, I had no idea, but if I could heal broken cartilage, theoretically I could heal broken skin. At least I hoped so. It's not like I had any other choice.

Curling up my fists and concentrating hard, I focused all the energy I had on the part of my brain that felt different, the part that had gone crazy when I summoned the force field. It took a lot more work than I anticipated; after a few seconds, my entire body began to feel hot, like I was getting a mild fever. Sweat began to break out on my forehead and armpits and my breathing grew shallow and harsh. I could feel my heart pumping furiously, working with all its might to send blood to my brain.

Then, all at once, a bizarre sensation began to spread from my head down to the tips of my fingers, like a cold, electrified fluid. It was sort of like the feeling when your foot falls asleep, neither pleasurable nor painful, but definitely something that would take getting used to. Then, redirecting my focus from my head to my arm, I used my powers voluntarily for the first time in my life.

The effect was almost immediate.

"Ow... OW!"

You know that itchy feeling you get when a cut scabs over, but as soon you pick at it, you just end up opening it again? Imagine that feeling, amplify it enough times so that it goes from irritating to actually painful, and then imagine that entire healing process happening in just a few seconds. It was over before I knew it, but I still shudder a little every time I think about the first time I used my powers to heal myself. At the time, I almost swore I had done something wrong and I was actually making my injury worse.

But, after those few seconds had passed, the pain came to an abrupt halt, and in its place was nothing but a slight shivery feeling that was already starting to fade. My eyes still squeezed tight, I reached up and nervously touched my arm.

There was still a lot of blood, and it was still warm and gross, but it felt a lot stickier than it was a moment before. Feeling braver, I squinted an eye open and glanced down at my cut. Or, by that point, where my cut should have been. Other than the blood, there was literally no indication that I had even been hurt in the first place.