From a Tumblr prompt.
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New Futures
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It was the end of the world.
Really, it should have been no surprise. The apocalypse had begun ten years ago. And yet-
Yet-
When that monster had disappeared, Valerie had let herself hope. Hope that she and the few other survivors of his latest attack could rebuild. That, perhaps, they could seek out other survivors from elsewhere in the world. That they could recover.
"What happened?" asked Valerie, staring at the gray-brown remnants of their crops.
"I don't know," said Star, wiping her hands on her overalls. "They were doing fine, before the, well, before the shield went down."
"Do you think it's some kind of disease from outside?" asked Valerie.
"I don't know. Maybe." Star bit her lip. "It isn't just the plants," she said. "It's the animals, too, and nothing that's already been harvested is going bad, but..."
"The animals?"
"They're sick," said Star. "Vomiting."
"Do you know if any people-?"
Star shook her head. "You'd have to ask a doctor," she said. "But it reminds me of... Do you remember those 'clean pig' experiments?"
"Uh, not really?"
"Basically someone got the bright idea to kill off all the 'germs' on their pigs couple years back... But they killed the pigs' gut flora, too, and you kinda need that to digest food."
"Flora," said Valerie. "As in plants."
"Yeah," said Star. "You see where I'm going?"
"Yeah," said Valerie. "Crap." At least they had plenty of reserves and food stores, and they would last longer now that there were fewer people.
Valerie refused to think about why there were fewer people too deeply.
"We'll figure it out," said Valerie, projecting confidence.
Star gave her a skeptical look. "No offense," said Star, "but you aren't a biologist. And most of our biologists are dead. Not to mention the labs."
"I can go out and look for plants that aren't affected, though," said Valerie. "If this is a common thing out there, some of them have to have adapted, right? That's basic evolution."
"Maybe," said Star, her mouth set in a grim line. "I'm not sure it works that way if everything dies, though."
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Valerie sat down on her hoverboard, hands gripping the edge to keep from shaking.
"What is that?" she asked, even though there was no one near to answer her.
The forest was gray and crumbling. The ground was spiderwebbed with something pulsing between lurid green and red, the red lingering longer than the green.
"What is that?" she repeated. Whatever it was, it stretched to the horizon. She looked up. It was in the sky, too.
"The end of the universe."
Valerie whipped around, pulling out her weapons and leveling them at the ghost who had, somehow, managed to sneak up on her.
How long had it been since she had seen a ghost that wasn't him?
"Who are you?" she demanded. "What do you want?"
The ghost smiled, the blue pseudo-skin around his eye wrinkling.
"I am Clockwork, and I am here to make a deal with you, Valerie Gray."
"Are you causing this?" asked Valerie, jerking her head towards the wasteland.
"I do not control the Red Country," said Clockwork, "nor its consumption of unmade worlds."
"What?"
"You encountered the paradox yourself, Valerie Gray. This world is now never to be. And even if it could come to pass, there is no King in the Infinite Realms. No one to order it and guide it. And so, here as there, things fall apart. All of this was hanging by the most slender of threads." The ghost gestured back toward Amity Park.
Valerie stared at the ghost. "I'm going to pass," she said. Nothing good came of trusting ghosts.
"Very well," said the ghost, acknowledging her decision with a nod. "If you change your mind, you need only call my name."
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It didn't take long for the remaining humans of Amity Park to start feeling the affects of whatever had happened to the plants and animals. About the same amount of time as it took for the blight afflicting the land and the sky to come into sight of the city ruins.
It took just a little longer for the first person to die.
(Mikey, the last person left from Valerie's class other than Star. His health had never been robust, but he had persevered through every other crisis.)
And a bit longer than that for Valerie's resolve to break.
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One hundred and forty-four. That is how many humans stepped through the ghosts portal, confident in nothing except that whatever the ghost was going to do to them was better than wasting away.
"Where are we?" asked Valerie. The sky was Ghost Zone green, but the landscape was almost earthly forests and fields.
"A better question might be when are you," said the ghost, twirling his staff. "Which is about nine years ago, from your perspective, and in a different timeline."
"A different-?"
"Daniel never went to Vladimir," said Clockwork. "Nor did his parents die.