Chapter Text
Prologue
It was like everything had stopped moving as Five watched Alison hit the button. There was a quiet around him that felt as familiar as the apocalypse. It was then followed by a bright white that caused Five to close his eyes. When he opened them, the world around him had changed.
He took a quick look behind him and noticed that he seemed to be in one of the hotel’s elevators, however as he took a step out of it, he found that he was in what looked like a small park, and in the middle of it was a bust of his Father. That was the first thing that Five noted was wrong, the second thing was that none of his siblings were with him. He glanced around to see if they would materialize like one of his jumps. He tried looking around three times to make sure that they weren’t hiding somewhere. It was then getting quite clear that they weren’t going to be showing up any time soon.
Five wasn’t a person who would normally panic, he liked to pride himself on his resolve. Even now, when he had no clue what had happened, he refused to panic. There was always some sort of reason for something. Whether that reason was something that a normal person would find illogical and maybe even insane. Insane was the only word that could have described the last three weeks for Five. Therefore, there would be a reason for why everything was the way it was.
As Five reached up to scratch his head with his right hand. Wait, right hand? Five looked down at his arm, and sure enough there was his right hand and not the stump that he had been left with. He tried not to remember the excruciating pain that he felt when he had been cut off by one of the Guardians. He flexed his fingers and sure enough they were his fingers. Not some magical hallucination. Five’s eyes then flickered down to his wrist and where his umbrella tattoo would normally sit. Except it wasn’t there. His wrist was blank. Five still didn’t panic, instead he was going to start a mental list of things that didn’t make sense quite yet. This was the third one to add to the list.
Perhaps he just needed to find somewhere in the city and make sense of everything and then he would try and find his siblings. If Five had ended up in this new universe, then they surely would have too.
He prepared himself to jump and calculated a few feet away, into the city’s streets and pulled at the air. Nothing happened. Five remained where he was, his hands clasped almost pathetically in the air. Five tried again, making sure the calculation was correct but again, there was nothing. His powers were gone.
Five felt lost, like when he had done when he was properly thirteen and had transported himself to the apocalyptic wasteland. His powers had always been a part of him, for forty five years he had relied on them. Even if sometimes they weren’t the best, they had always been there as a failsafe for him. And now they were gone! It was like somebody had ripped a hole in him. What on earth was he supposed to be without his powers?
He remembered back a few days ago at the commission, he had wanted retirement and to have a normal life but he couldn’t help but think of Lila’s words as they came back to haunt him. ‘ A normal life filled of groceries and taxes? You would die of boredom.’ Was this the universe's fucked up way of saying that this was his retirement? He would lose his powers so that the world would be safe? Whatever had happened with Allison’s deal had obviously contributed to this new world and no powers had been part of that.
He decided to take a few steps towards the bust of his Father. It read Obsidian Memorial Park, and it had been donated on the 1st October 1989. Five sighed, the mystery of what had happened was only getting deeper. Five walked out of the park, and went down a path that was covered by a stone archway. In fact there were several paths covered by the same stone archways that were arranged in a circle. Five didn’t make anything of it and carried on down the path.
It lead him on to the street where several cars zoomed past. The street lights flickered as he gazed up at the sky, and saw the skyline of skyscrapers above him. The skyscrapers were covered in the Hargreeves name. There was even a building called Hargreeves Financial. Now Five knew his Father had quite a few investments in properties over the years, but this was a new one. When Reginald had been using the ‘oblivion’ machine, he must have been resetting the universe to cater around him. It was almost a cruel joke, that his Father had set the universe to reserve around him. Although Alison had killed him it was highly likely that Reginald Hargreeves was alive and Five didn’t like it all. His problems just seemed to be amounting up.
As a car drove past, going faster than the speed limit, he dug his hands into his pockets. He was still at a loss about what to do but then his stomach rumbled. He looked across the road and saw a coffee shop sign. It was neon and brightly lit, it was almost inviting. Five then made a decision. First he would get some food, and then he would find his siblings and second he was going to find out what the hell had happened.