Chapter 3

"Your highness! You can...you can..." Straaten gaped at the Royal in disbelief as he clutched his wounded shoulder.

"Yes, I can speak." The Royal turned to the four boys. "We Royals typically cannot speak the way you can, but you see I—"

"Wahhh! Get Kyle out of my head!" Butters cried. "Make him stop yelling!"

"What's he saying?" The longhaired blonde girl asked. She was the first to go over and inspect her 'other self' up close. She guessed he was kinda cute, but his personality and appearance were both rather girly.

Butters stopped freaking out for a moment and listened to what Kyle was screaming inside his head. 'Someone help me! I can't speak! Stan! Someone! Help me! Help me, please! Someone help, I can't talk!' Kyle was writhing on the floor with his mouth stretched open as wide as it could go, his cheeks turning pink as he tried to scream, but couldn't make a sound. He had tears in the corners of his eyes.

"Kyle! Are you ok? Kyle, speak to me!" Stan used his good arm to pull Kyle up into a sitting position.

"He cannot." The Royal had been waiting patiently for things to settle down, but that would've taken much too long at this point. Her and Straaten's other selves were losing control over their emotions and would become dangerous if she didn't calm them down. "You must listen to me, and I shall explain things as best as I can, but it will be brief, for the eight of us are in danger." She had felt their pursuers reopen her portal before she had relinquished her powers to the redheaded boy in front of her. If they did not hurry they would all be killed. She cursed her carelessness.

Kyle had stopped panicking and was holding his head in his hands.

"Kyle, I can't understand you. Try to speak more clearly so I can translate for you." Butters cupped his ears, as if to channel any telepathic messages Kyle could be trying to send.

"They are almost upon us." The Royal warned. "Kyle, that is your name, correct?" Kyle nodded. "Kyle, you need to open a portal for us to go through."

Kyle glared up at her.

"Ah, umm... Kyle says, 'You still...told us...the...why...' Uh, sorry, that's all I got, Kyle. But I think he means something like 'you still haven't told us why' or something..."

"I'm sorry, but we're running out of time, they're surely drawing nearer."

"Wait, wait, wait...you're telling me that this fat asshole is my other self!" Cartman scoffed in complete disbelief. Stan was about to comment on how his other self actually did appear to be a little more 'big boned' rather than just fat when Stan's own other self cut in with almost the exact words he was about to use.

"While he is fat as hell, you're still not the skinniest one here." Straaten finished his quip with a smirk, one that Stan mirrored perfectly.

"Who the hell are you callin 'fat' butt fucker! I'm a quarter giant! I'm—"

"'Big Boned' yeah, yeah, we've heard it all before." Straaten shushed. "We don't have time for that."

Kyle felt a tingle run up his spine, warning him of approaching danger. It felt almost as if there was someone inside of him, sneaking about, trying to cause harm to him and those within his immediate vicinity. Suddenly, and almost without thinking, he summoned energy he hadn't even known was there—it felt almost like it was coming from his sternum, like he was releasing a sort of pressure he hadn't known was building up. His vision clouded over and he saw an expanse of night. It was dark, really dark, but there were glowing white balls in varying sizes: no bigger than a tennis ball, but no smaller than a pea. He could see faint, unmoving shadows of the other seven people he had been with. The logical part of his mind didn't understand what was going on, but there was something like a primal instinct that told him what he must do. He looked amongst the dots of glowing balls. Some were within several feet of his being, while others seemed to be millions of miles away, but he could still reach out and grab one if he wanted. He saw one ball float past a little faster than the others.

'There you are.' He caught it before it got too far. It was warm in his hand and he marveled at the sensation of holding a ball of light. Then he felt as if the tips of his fingers had opened and something that felt like warm water was flowing out of them. The light absorbed it, turning pale blue and then slowly getting darker till it became black. He released it and told it, telepathically, to send the four foreigners or aliens or whatever they were to where they were supposed to be. The ball danced towards them, and then exploded into a dome of black light.

They vanished.

Kyle didn't know where he'd sent them, but they were gone.

He grabbed another ball out if the sky; that same flow of warm energy emerged from his fingertips, turning blue and then black like the other one had. This time, instead of letting it go, he sat down where he'd been sitting and released it there. It floated in front of him for a bit before expanding like the previous one had.

And with that, the four boys vanished as well, and just in time, too. Groote-Nusen and his gang appeared in the same chamber, or whatever it was, that had just been vacated, in a pile of angry, thrashing, magic men. Groote-Noosen pulled himself half-way out from the bottom of the dog pile and whipped his head back and forth until he found what he was looking for: another flicker of dwindling flame. He flailed and scrambled, desperately trying to get out from underneath the heavy mass of people as the flame slowly became nothing more than that of a dying candle's flame. HE finally freed himself and lunged, only for the black fire to disappear mere inches from his fingertips. "DAMMIT!" He cried, sending pulses of electricity through the air, messing with the other wizards' equilibriums, making them totter back and forth for a moment until the pulses stopped and they regained their senses. "We were so close!" Another pulse. "I could practically pull on that brat's curly, red hair!" This pulse was the strongest of the three, sending the other wizards to the floor. But this pulse had been so powerful that it had ripped a hole in dimensional space, something he hadn't known he was capable of, and a group of young men tumbled through the rip.

"—URE! They were right—" Big-Nose was cut off when his face hit the floor. He rolled over and placed his hand over his mouth and nose, loudly cursing to himself. "Shit! Fucking hell, man, that fucking...wait...where the fuck are we?"

Groote-Noosen's mouth curled into a horrible, twisted sneer. "Perfect~"

o()o()o

The Royal, Straaten, Autome, and Botere all fell out of Kyle's little 'energy bubble' and into a discombobulated heap on the ground. Straaten struggled to pull himself up onto his feet. He looked around. There were trees, with short spiky leaves that were all colored with a beautiful shade of deep green that he hadn't seen in years.

"You guys, look! We're in a forest!" He ran up to one of the pines, embracing the trunk and smiling childishly when the bark scratched his face and sap stuck to his hands and cheek. "The trees...they're alive!" He breathed in their fresh scent. Never in his life had he dreamed he'd be able to see a real, living tree. All he'd seen were the charred and shriveled trunks of trees that had perished long ago.

Autome shoved the Middle Child off of his chest and looked up at the trees before quickly standing up. Autome tried to take a step forward, but his feet stuck fast in the deep sow bank and he toppled. "What is this? This...cold, wet...white stuff?"

The Royal looked down at the snow beneath her and a slow tear made its way down, paving the way for many more. "It—It's snow!" She hugged some to her face, ignoring the sting of the intense, sudden cold, and let her tears melt away little holes here and there. "Maybe..." she muttered, "there is hope."

Author's Note

Well, there you go. My third update in under 12 hours. I'm fairly proud :D

Well, The Chapters, from here on out, may be epically (in the correct sense of the word) long. Like...for real...yeah...

*awkward goodbye*

-PD