CHAPTER 10. THE PERFECT PLAN.
6:50
When he opened his eyes again, he saw that he was no longer at the altar of the god Chronos. He was on the room that he had seen many times before. Also, to his surprise, it was not afternoon, it was still early, in the morning. Seeing this, he got up and saw that he was back in the room of the girl he had come to see, which was just as he had last seen it. But, seeing himself in the full-length mirror, he saw that she was also alive, because he was in her body again, his body wasn't there, but he didn't think about it. He was so happy that she was alive, so much so that he hugged himself. The joy he had to see her alive caused him to start crying tears of joy. This prevented him from noticing that the bedroom door had been opened.
"Let me guess, you're touching your…AH!" Little Donna was saying when she saw what was happening with the person she thought was her sister. When she entered, she saw that she was indeed touching her breasts, again. But, at the same time, her sister was crying.
"Girl" he said. "Donna!" She said getting up from the bed, but falling down, which made Donna close the door and run off.
A few minutes later, the little Donna was with her backpack on her back, in front of Aunt Antiope in the kitchen, still nervous and quite scared by what she had witnessed from the person she thought was her sister.
"I think Diana has gone crazy, so I'm going to go to school by myself today" Donna said before leaving. Before leaving the house, Aunt Antiope could hear her say one last sentence. "She went crazy, definitely. How scary" That before hearing the door of the house closing.
In those moments, Aunt Antiope thought that this emotional change in her niece was more than worrying. She had come back the day before in a broken mood and asking her to cut her own hair, so to cheer her up or help her a bit, she decided to make some tea. Shortly after the water was already boiled and she put the sachet in the water she poured over the cup, but she saw that her niece was already standing with her hands on her waist, watching TV, wearing her school uniform well.
On television, he saw that they were talking about the Petropoulos comet, since it had been visible in recent days, but the question they were trying to give viewers was when they would be able to see it, and they began to give that answer saying which was because it was moving in the direction of the sun.
"There is still time" He thought.
Seeing her niece in that position, considering what she had seen yesterday, it seemed suspicious to her, so she decided to see if her suspicions were correct.
"Good morning, Diana" Antiope said, but not in English, but in a language that he couldn't understand, and he knew it because he turned quickly, but he didn't give an immediate answer, but he supposed that she had said good morning to her because he had not seen her before, and that she had said her name made him act like that.
"Good morning, Aunt Antiope" He said, but in English, he couldn't speak Greek, especially when until recently he knew that it was a town inhabited by Greek descendants.
"You're not Diana, are you?" Antiope asked totally calm and staring at him.
He thought about making an excuse to Aunt Antiope or denying her accusation, but she looked so sure of herself, and the fact that he ended up speaking English when he found out she'd spoken to him in Greek was only prolonging the inevitable.
"You already knew it?" He asked, just as calm as the aunt, not wanting to alarm her.
In response, the aunt sat down and moved a chair, signaling for him to sit with her. He complied and sat down, but slowly.
"I didn't know from the beginning. But, your behavior in the last few days brought back some memories for me" She said this while staring at the teacup, as if it helped to see her reflection in the water in the cup. "I also had strange dreams when I was a child. But over time, I have forgotten the life of the person I became when I dreamed" She finished.
This made him think a lot. Had she seriously gone through the same thing as her niece? Who could be the person with whom she exchanged bodies? And most importantly, did everyone in her family go through the same thing? Maybe he could find out a bit about that later, or maybe not, but what had caught his attention the most was that she had forgotten who she was exchanging bodies with.
"Did you forget what life you dreamed of?" He said it because he didn't know whether or not to tell her that he always swapped bodies at that time.
"Value the experience" Was what Antiope replied. "Dreams always fade when you wake up. Diana's mother and I had similar experiences" She finished, thinking that this was going to resolve the possible conflict of changing bodies that she couldn't understand, but he did understand it, so he decided to talk.
"Perhaps all the dreams the Galanis had relate to what will happen today" He said, looking up. He knew that he had to warn her, she seemed like the most sensible person and that she would instantly believe him for having gone through a similar experience. "Listen, Aunt Antiope. The Petropoulos comet will fall on the town tonight, more than 500 will die" He told her.
A minute after he warned her of the impending comet strike, he was out of the house, running full speed toward the school. Furious and at the same time nervous about what Aunt Antiope had told him after he had warned her about what would happen that night.
"Oh really? Is nobody going to believe it? I didn't expect that from Aunt Antiope" He thought to himself.
This had made everything more complicated. He had to save the people, but Antiope was not going to help him. Perhaps the other two people he had met in this time could help him.
"It doesn't matter. If she thinks I'm going to let everyone die, she's wrong" He thought again, as he kept running.
XXX
8:50
"Diana! What happened to your…?" Iris tried to ask when she saw that worrying detail in the person who she thought was her friend and who was in front of her.
"To your…your hair" Barry managed to complete the sentence, even pointing his finger at her head.
After he arrived at school, he took a breath, he had run quite a bit, then he walked fast until he reached his classroom, where luckily, there were Barry and Iris, talking about who knows what, but they were interrupted and surprised at the same time of the condition of his hair.
The question from the two friends of the girl he had come to see had interrupted his thoughts. He only came with the intention of forming a plan to save the people of Little Volos from a fate that none of them knew was imminent, but when they asked him about it, he had finally figured out that that girl had cut her hair and now it reached only to the top of his neck.
"Oh yeah. My hair. It looked better long, didn't it?" He asked, grabbing a small part of her short hair in his hand. This was serious. It always seemed better to him that she had long hair.
"No. It looks good" Barry said, doing his best not to tell her otherwise, since he liked her long hair better too.
"Forget that! If we don't do something tonight, we're all going to die" He said this, not knowing that he was speaking out loud, so these sentences were heard by the other students in the room, who stopped talking with their friends when he said that sentence. Well, this also stumped his two friends. They didn't understand what he meant by saying that they were all going to die, but they didn't have a chance to respond because he spoke soon after. "It's up to us to save the people" He told them very decisively.
Barry and Iris refused to participate at first (well, they didn't understand about what he was talking about), but he told them that he would pay them somehow if they helped him, so he told them that he would go home quickly, and to meet later in a place where they could develop the plan. That place where they met ended up being a warehouse for many items that were not used very often, and that had previously been the meeting places for school clubs that no longer existed.
When they met there, he gave Iris money, money that he managed to raise thanks to the money he managed to find in the girl's room, and some money that he had found by pure luck in Aunt Antiope's room; and told her to go to the store to buy all the candies that she could get with that money. Iris was obedient and went to the store and came back a while later. When she was about to pay for the bunch of sweets she had bought, the cashier asked her if she shouldn't be in class, and Iris only replied that they had to save the town, she had not much creativity when it was about lying.
When Iris returned, both Barry and the person who was in her friend's body didn't open the door for her, because they were more focused on putting together the plan with some books and they had found, as well as a map of the town that was there, thanks to the Barry's father always needing a way to improve the town because of his work and because of his relationship with Mayor Princeton.
"Sorry, Iris" Barry said, as Iris dropped the bags containing lots of candy on the couch where they were sitting.
"No problem" Iris said, taking a refrigerated cupcake from a bag.
"Oh really? Do you pay us with these candies?" Barry complained as he took a piece of candy. "It's just that, looking at the amount, I don't see that you've spent a lot" He added.
"Stop complaining" He told him. He didn't like that Barry had pointed out that he was paying them with candies to help him save the town, and the most frustrating thing was that if he were in his original body, maybe he could call his parents to ask for a lot of money or a gold bar, his social status would have helped to pay them in a way that they had not seen coming in this alarming situation, but that was not possible, he was three years in the past and without his original body, which he had forgotten completely where it was.
"What have you thought? Do you already have an evacuation plan?" Iris asked before taking a bite of her cupcake.
In response, Barry and what he thought was his friend made mischievous looks, adding to Barry's evil laugh. This before they told him what they were going to do.
"A…a…a bomb?" Iris asked stammering. He knew that her two friends could be mischievous, but they couldn't use a bomb to evacuate the town. However, since her two friends already had the plan, it was Barry who gave the answer, while the other friend grabbed one of the candies, he hadn't eaten anything since morning.
"Oh yeah. We have gel explosives in the warehouse that we used in construction" Barry said as he munched on his candy.
"What about the alarm system?" Iris asked, but this time, without eating her cupcake. What she was hearing was too alarming to eat.
"We've investigated, and we found that the alarm system can be easily accessed via the initial frequency" Barry said, still chewing on his candy.
"This way we will transmit an evacuation alert to the whole town from the school" He said, after chewing his candy. Then he pointed to the map in front of him on the table. "Look, the school is outside the affected area, so we'll tell everyone to go to the school" He explained. It had been a good thing to see the disaster maps in the motel over and over again.
"That…that's a crime" Iris said, her voice trembling, just like her body. The plan they had made turned out to be even more insane than she had expected.
"And you will do the transmission" He told her.
"Why me?" Iris protested, almost wanting to leave the place.
"You are from the radio club. What other reason is there? Unless you want to take care of the explosives" Barry replied very happily.
"And I'll talk to the mayor" He said, pointing to himself.
"Why?" Iris asked again. This was something that her friend would never do, never, again.
"Because it is the duty of the council to evacuate the town. If the announcement doesn't come from there, no one is going to evacuate" Barry answered again, but this time, his friend joined him.
"So, if I talk to him, as his daughter, I could convince him" He said, very sure of himself.
"It's the perfect plan" Barry said, proud of himself and his friend.
"Oh, whatever" Iris said, lowering her head, and sighing to calm down. "It's a hypothesis anyway, isn't it?" She asked now, wanting to know if what they were really doing had any way to be verified or at least to know that they weren't risking their necks for something that was totally useless.
This made him hesitate. He didn't know how to answer that question, because the only thing he could think of to tell her was that he was from the future and that the comet destroyed the town years ago. This made him want to bring a book from the future, but it wasn't possible to do so either, he had left them at the motel to lighten the load going up the mountain.
"Not necessarily" Barry said, showing her the monitor of his computer that he had taken from his house to come here, coming to his rescue. "Do you know how the town lake was formed? It's a crater. So, a meteorite fell here a thousand years ago" He explained very excited. This was one of the times when he spoke based on facts and not on the black magic that Iris hated so much.
This made him realize two things. The first was that this was surely the reason why there was a comet drawn in the sanctuary of the god Cronos. The second was a hard truth, and that is that it seemed that the town of Little Volos was always doomed from the beginning when the Greek ancestors decided to settle there. Either they were too confident with the phrase "Lightning does not strike twice in the same place", or they were simply too stupid to live in a place where a meteor had already struck a millennium ago.
"Sure. That's it" He said in a whisper. "Good job, Barry" He said, pulling him up for a fist bump with him. He was truly grateful to him for helping him clear up that mystery, but now, they had to execute the plan.
Iris was just puzzled by her friend's behavior towards Barry, so she let out another sigh, but she wasn't prepared for what they told next.
"Let's go to evacuate the town" The two friends said in perfect synchrony.
XXX
13:00
The perfect plan to evacuate the town of Little Volos before the Petropoulos comet collided did not take a minute to collapse. He had gone to the Mayor Princeton's office, and directly told him to evacuate the town before nightfall because the comet was going to hit, and with this, it would kill more than five hundred people. The failure of the plan could be seen when the mayor did what Aunt Antiope said would happen.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Mayor Princeton asked, then leaned back on the back of his chair, annoyed to hear something so silly.
"As I said, we have to evacuate the entire town before nightfall or..." He was repeating himself, but the mayor interrupted him.
"Enough. Shut up" He said making a gesture that he should shut up.
The person who thought it was his daughter that he had left a long time ago was quite perplexed by how he was treating him. It wasn't because he hadn't experienced similar treatment, after all, he had experienced it quite a few times because of his status or out of simple malice, but because he couldn't believe how wretched this guy was who was supposed to be this girl's father.
Mayor Princeton rubbed his forehead with his hand, trying to calm down, he still hated hearing what this person was saying to him.
"Is the comet going to split and fall on the town? Are more than five hundred going to die?" Asked the mayor, now angrier. "How dare you say such nonsense?" He asked, this time raising his voice. "If you're serious, then you're insane." Hearing this, the person who thought it was his daughter was starting to get angry. "I guess the madness comes from the maternal side" He said, lowering his voice, but he could still hear him. It was the last straw.
Basically, in this short time that he had met this guy, he was already one of the most obnoxious people he had ever met.
Perhaps he would never know an important fact, but the girl he swapped bodies with did not have the last name Princeton after the mayor himself, but it is not because he did not want them to bear his name. The result was that he never wanted to marry Aunt Antiope's sister, it was only until the little Donna had already been alive for a few years when he wanted to propose to her, but she fell ill and died shortly after. Therefore, in order not to be connected to the Galanis, and so that it would not affect his political career, he left his two daughters with the sister of the one who had been the love of his life, so she and Donna stayed with the surname on the maternal side. And since it was a town, everyone knew who was who (except the kids, who lived in their own world), they knew that she and Donna were the mayor's daughters. This was something she was sick of knowing, so bad that she wished she weren't his daughter, but she couldn't change it, no one could.
Either way, Mayor Princeton didn't care that this person heard him insult his deceased wife's family, so he took the phone from his desk.
"I'll have someone take you to a hospital in the city" The mayor said, but in a kinder tone, almost worried. "I'll talk to you after you've had a medical exam" He said before pressing a key on the phone.
This was the straw that broke the camel's back. He was furious and frustrated. He hadn't managed to evacuate the town, so they were all going to die, again. But, worst of all, this person was this girl's father. Just like Aunt Antiope once wondered when she found out he stopped being a priest to be a politician, he wondered, what had the Antiope's sister seen in him?
Therefore, he quickly approached the desk and grabbed the mayor's shirt collar with both hands, looking like he was going to strangle him.
"Don't you dare do that" He said. Surprisingly, he regained his composure seeing that he had come very far, so he released the wretch of the mayor.
"Diana" The mayor said, taking a step away from her. But, from the behavior he was having, he surprisingly suspected the same thing as Aunt Antiope. "No. Who are you?" He asked, still very surprised.
Seeing that he had been discovered as someone else and not as the mayor's daughter, he didn't know what to say, so he decided to leave.
XXX
17.00
He spent a lot of time hanging around the whole town, only feeling great frustration and anger for not being able to carry out the plan. He felt so broken to see that all these people who were flying kites or having fun with each other were hours away from their deaths.
He was near an intersection when he saw a girl say goodbye to her two friends, a girl and a boy. He also heard that they were going to see each other later at the altar, they were the typical children who wouldn't go to sleep even after playing a lot.
He thought of telling them something about not going to the altar, leaving town and saying the same to the others, but since they were unknown to him, and since they were children, he decided against it. He was desperate, but he didn't know what else to do. Apparently, Aunt Antiope was right, no one was going to believe it.
"Diana!" Donna said, who ran up to him, forgetting how bad her big sister had been that morning. However, seeing that she was walking with her head lowered, and waving her arms a little as if she was fighting with someone, had her worried. "Why are you sad?" She asked him, somewhat worried.
Seeing that there was no other option, he decided to take out his frustration on the little girl, but he also thought that she might be the only person he could save.
"Diana" He began by repeating the name of the girl he had come to see. "She would have convinced him? This is all my fault?" He asked her, but he didn't give her time to answer. "Donna, swear to me that you'll leave town with Aunt Antiope before nightfall" He ordered her.
The girl gave him the most obvious answer.
"What?" She told her not knowing what else to say.
"You'll die if you stay here" He said immediately, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her a little.
"What are you talking about? And why did you suddenly go to Gotham yesterday? You've been acting very strange" Donna said very concerned, still not understanding what the person in front of her was referring to.
"Did I go to Gotham City?" He asked, rather surprised, almost in a whisper. He wasn't expected that she would have done that, especially not the day before the comet crash.
"Hey Diana!" Shouted Iris, who was riding on Barry's bike, while he was the one riding it.
The two of them reached the two sisters and stopped, Iris being the one to get off the bike.
"What did your dad say?" Barry asked, very attentive to the answer that his friend could give him, as well as Iris.
However, he didn't answer, just stood there staring at the ground as if paralyzed or hypnotized.
"Hey, Diana" Barry said, trying to get her to react, but he couldn't. "What's wrong with her?" He asked to Donna.
"I have no idea" Replied the girl.
In the time he was thinking, he came to a conclusion. Maybe she could be the one to convince that bastard Princeton mayor to evacuate town, but he needed to find her. But, they had exchanged bodies, so she must have been in his body, which was inside the altar dedicated to the god Chronos, on that great mountain.
"It could be there" He whispered, but it was enough for the little girl and his friends to hear her.
"What? What's there?" Iris asked. The response they received was just as strange.
"Lend me the bike!" He said pushing Barry, turning the bike around, getting on, and starting to pedal with all his might.
"Wait! Then what do we do?!" Barry asked him.
"Prepare everything as we planned!" He answered turning his head to tell them that. "I count on you!" He added, but this time without turning to see them. Now, the important thing was to go up the mountain, again.
XXX
17:10
As he started up the mountain on Barry's bike, she woke up, not of her own accord, but to the raindrops falling from the deluge that had fallen the day before. One of those drops hit her in the face, so she opened her eyes, surprised that she was not in her room, but in a dark place that looked like a cave. She rubbed her eyes to check if she wasn't hallucinating, but she saw that she was still in a cave, so she leaned on her hand, and then she looked at it and saw that it wasn't her hand, it was the one of the boy she had been swapping bodies with for the past few weeks.
"Hera! I went back to being Bruce" She said to herself, touching her entire body, from the torso to the legs.
Curiosity and the lack of normality of the situation made her get up and walk out of the altar of the god Chronos. It wasn't normal for the boy she was body-swapping with to be here, and not in his Gotham apartment, so it was best to explore the place, and why he had gone there.
She left the altar, but he only saw the rivers and the water formed on the top of the mountain, which gave her the answer that she was at the altar that Aunt Antiope had told her. However, this didn't answer why he had come here, so she ran up the hill and reached the top of the circular edge of the mountain to see the grand view of what had happened to the town, which left her shocked and at the same time terrified.
"The town...disappeared" She said, taking a pause.
This brought back memories of going the day before to see Petropoulos Comet while the others were still celebrating Katheri Deftera, only to end up watching the comet split in half and several of its fragments fall near her before everything went dark.
Remembering that, she knelt down and moved her hands to her mouth. What she had remembered about the comet made her realize something that would scare everyone if they went through the same thing.
"Does that mean... that I'm dead?" She asked to herself, receiving no answer other than the sight of the destroyed town, and the current of air that was blowing at that moment.