Chapter Text
Your name is Beck Strider.
Let's start there.
You're seventeen years old, born and raised on Alternearth, the planet your parents and their friends made when they beat the game.
You're not getting into the game now. It happened, everyone knows it happened. No need to go over that again.
You have a sister, one year your junior. Her name's Gwen. Gwendolyn, actually, but Dad groans every time Mom has to utter it and remind him that yes, he agreed that that was a good name for his child.
You all know he thinks it's a fantastic name, but the man has an image to uphold, however ironic it must be.
Your Mom and Dad are Jade Harley and David Strider, the Witch of Space and the Knight of Time. You have a title too, all of you and your friends do, but that's not terribly relevant now.
Your parents are thirty-seven, but they don't look a day over twenty. Side effects of being gods, you guess. That word has lost a lot of its meaning for your little group. 'God' really doesn't carry the same weight when that word is used to denote the person who still pulls pranks one would find at home in grade school.
On the subject of your uncle's pranks, you have hobbies too. You love to explore, always have, and you inherited your Mother's love for guns along with her specibus- Gwen took the swords your Dad was so proud of.
Now, all this is fine and dandy, but why do you need to repeat it all to yourself?
Right, right. You've just watched your hometown get razed to the ground by your close friend and mentor, and aren't sure if your parents are going to stagger out of the flames.
Glad we've gone and rebuilt your mental state. Let's cut back to the present.
All you can see is red. That's not entierly true, you see yellow and orange too. The three bright colors wrap around the city of your childhood, enveloping the houses and streets in blankets of ethereal fire. Tounges of magma seep from cracks in the ground, snaking towards the people who try in vain to escape the hellhole.
You can't take your eyes off the carnage. You want to, you wish you could with every fiber in your being, but you can't. It's horrible, you've never seen anything this awful, but at the same time, it's almost...
You don't want to think about it.
Gwen is sitting on the ground next to you. You only know she's still there because of her sobbing. It's loud, and comes in waves, much like the heat the smoldering city gives off.
She's clutching her sword- sheathed, you think and hope- much like how your knuckles are white from how tightly you've held your rifle. You saw some things down there that sure as hell required your weapons to get rid of, the two of you had killed quite a few horrors in your mad rush to safety.
Gwen suddenly stands up, and that tears your gaze away from the inferno. Coming up the hill are a few figures, you notice, and raise your gun accordingly.
The weapon is soon lowered. Approacing are faces you're more than glad to see: Dirk, Jane, and their children, Dallas and Jen.
Gwen runs forward and just about tackles Dirk when she sees his face, and he returns her hug in earnest. He was even less visible with his emotions than your father, but you could see in his eyes- shadesless, you noted- that he was relieved to see the two of you.
Jane frets over her as soon as she pries her off of Dirk, and he turns to face you. You swallow, suddenly overcome with emotion at how less bleak things seem, but he comes up and puts his hand on your shoulder, and you regain your composure.
Your uncle just has that effect on people.
His kids reach the top of the hill now, and Jen immediantly runs to Gwen. They freak out, as they tended to, and ran their mouths a mile a minute discussing the disaster.
Dallas made his way to you as Dirk and Jane talked amongst themselves. He was two years your senior, and was the brother you never had. A sword at his side and a stetson atop his head, he lived up to his heritage as a Texan in stride.
"I knew we weren't the only ones who got out." You began, smiling for the first time since you heard the first explosions.
He chuckled. "Come on now, we're tougher than that. You think English's little tantrum was enough to take us down?"
His reply made your stomach twist into knots. "So it really was Jake?"
His expression flipped back to somber. "Yeah, you must've passed the throne room too, huh?" You nodded. "It was him alright. Possesed by the green giant, mind you, but it was his body all the same."
The confirmation of what your eyes had barely processed while fleeing made your heart sink. Jake had been like family- well, really, everyone was like family, he was just a little closer- and to hear that he was responsible for this...
No, it wasn't him. It was that bastard English.
Dallas noticed the expression on your face, placing a hand on your shoulder in a way that was not unlike his father. "Hey, don't sweat it. Jake didn't really do this, you know that. We'll find a way to beat the England out of him somehow."
His words were reassuring, but now your thoughts drifted to your parents again.
"Did you see anyone else when you were getting out?" You ask, "I mean, we couldn't have been the only ones who escaped."
He nods. "We saw John, Elen and Grant fleeing west," (All of you had gone east) "and your Dad was raising hell clearing a way to Jade. They should all be fine."
You let out a breath you didn't know you were holding. "What about the Lalondes and the Trolls?"
"Didn't see any of them, but we saw some of Sollux's psiionic flares over in the park district." That would mean they had gotten out the south side.
Dirk turns away from Jane and towards the rest of you. "Hey, everyone-" he's stopped short by an ear-splitting blast of low noise that is accompanied by a red flare from the castle. As hands rush to cover ears, the noise seems to double back and reverse itself, and a red shockwave blasts a large chunk of the castle apart.
You see a figure in red flying out from the shockwave. Dirk's eyes are sharper than yours, though, and he recognizes the person and rockets into the air to intercept them.
Jane takes to the skies as well, and the body collides with Dirk soon after. He floats over to his wife, and the three are enveloped by a soft blue light as they float down to earth.
Dirk touches down, and sets down the body as he lands.
Your father opens his eyes a second later, a broken Caledfwlch in his hands, and you can see he's crying.
Dirk shakes him, tells him to get it together, and his triangular shades, cracked and nearly broken, slide from his face to the ground, where they snap in half.
Dave looks his brother in the eyes, red staring into orange, and chokes out two words:
"She's gone."