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Kayla wasn’t a man that bent easily, but for the sake of his family, his friends–
He would do everything in his power to push on, even if it cost him everything.
Everything seemed like the end of the world, the apocalypse was truly here, with the shadow creatures attacking their homes relentlessly, as if they had infinite reserves of energy, slowly but surely, Kayla saw the despair in the people, the ones who pulled the triggers not to those creatures but to their own skulls.
Kayla sighs. Tai and Chen were arguing in the house again, so he couldn’t help but indulge in some tomfoolery, that included climbing out the window, escaping into the dark forest that the neighbours Masuyo, Sam and Pyotr always liked– despite Kouya not approving of such.
He smiles, remembering the times the Japanese siblings, the small orphan and the odd Russian boy would run out into the wilderness across Earth’s continents during the late 80s with him and Michael, subsequently going home, to the dingy old apartment the entire family lived and getting yelled at for the next two hours.
Kayla sighs for the umpteenth time that day as he looks to the orangey-red sky, mirroring his own unnatural vermillion irises. Great, it seemed like the sky was getting darker with time, and he is only getting deeper into the forest, maybe he should turn back right no-Huh?
A short, white blob, in the bushes. To the slightly nearsighted Kayla, he nearly mistook it for an extremely large white mushroom until he saw it shuffle and move. His hackles rose, his focus peaking with his alertness, his eyes locked on the animated object, wary and paranoid.
“Is this a shadow creature?” Kayla moves his hand to his back, in search of a familiar metal object, however, he had realized a little too late the familiar too-wide handle of the Glock he owned or the sharpened army knife he sometimes carried just so happened to be left at home today. “...Shit.” He fumbles around, trying to channel some of the soul-energy he hadn’t lost from getting stabbed in the gut by another more spindly shadow creature earlier that week into a form he most familiarized himself with – a long sharp-tipped umbrella, but even that couldn’t manifest at his fingertips at the behest of his shaking and sweat-slick palms.
Terror finally claims him, as Kayla backs away, heat building up behind his snug canary yellow scarf, cowering like prey that had accidentally bumped into its predator, knowing its fate can only go one way– if he didn’t start running now. His knees bent to the side, his muscles readying to sprint far far awa-
To his surprise, a small head pops up from the lump instead of a dark, swathing ball of black energy, a head of straight spruce-brown hair slicked down peers out of the snow-colored garment, before they looked around, seemingly dazed.
“What’s this…” Kayla squints, confusion dampening the earlier adrenaline that fired up his synapses. “…guy doing here?”
“Hey, you probably shouldn’t be out here.” Kayla walked towards the short figure, swallowing a bout of awkwardness-induced coughing to hopefully direct this possibly-lost civilian. “It’s dangerous, shadows and everything.”
A hoarse feminine voice came from under the hood the stranger was wearing. “I know.”
“A little girl?” Kayla bites his lip. “No. Their voice is way too mature, no way. Who even is this…?”
Kayla paused, glossing over theories and choices of interaction alike. “Are you lost by any chance? I know the way out, if you don’t live in this place.” He eyes the gaps in the birch trees, tall and obscuring the fading sunset glow, casting a threatening, clawed shadow into orange-tinted grass that split the two like a jagged, shadow-lightning.
The stranger struts towards Kayla, an air of artificialness penetrating the every move of the girl that always seemed to just look wrong to the man. “That would be appreciated.”
As the hooded girl came closer, a sense of nausea stabs him in the gut when his eyes met a saturated navy blue, piercing like the cold Siberian winters, watchful like an eagle, targeting its next prey, everything about the stranger made Kayla freeze in his spot, made him dare not to breathe any louder than the freezing winds that buffeted his sides, despite their smaller and much kid-sized figure. Wait, why are the winds suddenly picking up? He didn’t recall a monsoon of any kind, nor any weather phenomenon.
Kayla waits until the stranger walks in front of him before following from behind. A precaution, Kayla supposes to himself, to this oddball that could just possibly be his undoing.
He, while a superhuman and a supernatural phenomenon in itself, isn’t fully immortal.
“So…mind dropping an address?” Kayla slips his phone out of his pocket, before speedily tapping at the screen keyboard, quickly texting Garbrielle about the situation, praying to the lord she didn’t lose her phone again nor does the eerie stranger have a grudge against seeking help from his greatest assistant, or with modern technology. “I do need to know where you live.”
Silence. Kayla almost mistakes it for the girl somehow losing track of him, but the clear, composed adolescent’s voice returns to interrupt his low-key texting.
“Aren’t you tired?”
“Huh?” Kayla felt his gut clench, as something akin to dizziness overcame him. He grits his teeth, planting the soles of his feet to the ground in an attempt to ground himself from this sudden, unexplainable gut feeling to cower and hide . He looks around, his eyes catching nothing in his perception, but even with the light, that single line covered every trace of any escape, catching him off guard like a deer in headlights, and keeping him unable to just club the kid over the head by something akin to an aura that commanded nothing less than respect and fear .
Something was wrong, terribly, horribly wrong.
“Your world, your reality, plagued by corruption.” A thin, unnatural smile glowers under the hood, almost cheshirelike. “The creatures you see may seem like shadows, but are the corruption eating away at your dimension originating from the depths of the Void.”
Kayla nervously laughs, not daring to take his eyes off of the stranger in case he saw the silver glint of a switchblade, or even the dark metal barrel of a gun. He backs off, reaching up to pull back a strand of loose hair near the flower that rested his soul, praying to Jesus or the Lord that he still had enough energy to withstand another physical injury without passing out. “I’m…not sure what you are talking about.”
“Lying isn’t good for the soul.” The stranger giggles, sharp, artificial, uncomfortable . Kayla resumes walking. “Your world was never supposed to have that explosion, that gaping hole straight to the Void. It’s an anomaly, one that I will have to fix.” The stranger continues following Kayla with little to no sweat as he urges himself to walk faster. “You are but a creation. A malleable obstacle in the grand scheme of things. Don’t you want to know the origin of your suffering? Don’t you want to bring peace back to your beloved metropolis of Atlas?”
Atlas…oh Atlas, overrun by shadowy pin-creatures that destroyed everything he knew, killed thousands with its sharp needle legs that stabbed, slashed, punctured the flesh of innocents, before daring to trample over the wreckage of the home he (albeit with reluctance) swore loyalty to after the small area he was born and raised in.
“Don’t you want to bring justice ?”
“I…what the hell are you talking about?” Kayla stumbles backwards, his hand fumbling for anything that constituted a weapon or a fast way out in his pockets as the hairs on his neck stood rigid, alarms blaring in his headspace, instincts kicking in hard and begging him to run. “Listen, kid.” He grits his teeth. “You’re being a little cre-”
Interrupted. “See, the corruption around you, your world crumbling into the darkness.” The stranger pointed behind them, Kayla whips his head to face the object the stranger stared down with little to no terror in the dark depths of those cerulean eyes, a shadowy creature was stalking them from afar, its pin-like feet stabbing into the grass.
An orange light flickers from the stranger’s finger, as if the duo were in a fantasy movie, and with a flash, a large gaping hole was cast into whatever flesh the shadow creature had, exposing drifting citrus-colored lines of what seemed to be code peeking out of the wound, and with a sound akin to glass shattering, crumbled into dust and ashes.
“Do you see the truth now?” The stranger looks at Kayla, his mouth agape and fingers shaking, unable to tear his gaze from the pile of ashes that were now dissipating into the grassy earth below. She sighs, as if the reaction disappointed her. “…I should’ve expected such a shocked reaction. A character part of a story cannot comprehend this, not especially after…" The stranger brings up an orange-outlined panel, almost like those holographs you see in sci-fi movies. "...The political disasters, the coronavirus…yeesh, what have you been up to?" She huffs, exasperated. “So much for ‘letting characters develop naturally’...”
Kayla manages to collect himself together enough to utter another question. “Who…are you?”
The stranger looks up at him, seeming joyful at the enquiry. “I am not a god. I am the structure, the reason why you stand alive now, why our universe stands undisturbed and spotless. You have died many times, Kayla, however my creator has a fascination with you in particular. No wonder I am ordered to cycle your story backwards whenever you or your family dies. Now I think I understand this…’obsession’ of theirs.” The stranger smiles, one that bore itself deep into his frightened soul. “I like you, and I’m feeling a little too generous today to just loop backwards, an experiment this shall be, I guess, as impromptu this unfortunately is. Plus I do need an assistant…” The stranger seems to ponder something quite important. ” Hm… let me offer you a deal, fair sire.” They reach out a hand, and only now did Kayla realize the stranger was wearing an outfit that definitely looked like something out of an anime, the nail claws, the collar that seemed to glow in the darkening light of a sunset Kayla fervently wished could go by faster. “Join me and escape from these restraining bounds of your story, as well as remove all of this corruption at my side, at the cost of your superhuman nature, or stay and face the possibility of seeing everyone and everything you know crumble into dust and into the void, as the cycle starts anew, as my creator likes it.”
Kayla was silent, his mind blank, the noise of wind rustling through the cracks in the trees barely quieting the loud drone of rushing thoughts in his ears. The stranger laughs lightly upon noticing his shock. “Don’t worry, I’ll let the deal sink in for a little. Statistics I’ve obtained show that humans require time for… processing.” She squints, as if such was abnormal, but snaps back within seconds into a smug, knowing and confident expression. “You’ll know where I’ll be when you need me.”
Kayla blinks, reaching out to the stranger in a daze of terror, anger, confusion . “Wai-”
The hooded figure walks back into the forest, uncaring of whatever question he was going to send her way. However, she pauses midway. “Oh, by the way, a lot of people will be knocked out in 2 days, in quite the catastrophic accident, even the people right next to you. And the one you call Samuel will nearly die from an accident, of the…crushing kind, I think. Bide your time, Kayla-” The girl looks back, her ocean eyes now tinted with a glowing, glaring orange. “ Pick a route that you will not regret .” Kayla watches, as they gave a wave, and disappeared, leaving Kayla alone in the night, forehead beaded with sweat and even more questions.
On autopilot, he turns, and walks, stumbles mindlessly back to the bunker, immersing in a distant memory.
Blue skies don’t always mean good moods, to the lady, the boiling sun was making her kick the legs of the poor park bench she was sitting on even harder, hoping her torture and boredom would be voiced by the pained creaks of wood.
She throws her head back, combing strands of brown hair off her face, not even bothering to fix the messy bun held up only by a single hair tie, the white and crimson flower tucked behind her ear stayed in place despite all the fuss, it’s glow can’t even compete with how the sun blazed down on the town of Atlas.
The town that kept her here , kept her trapped stuck static …safe.
She misses Hong Kong, her hometown, misses living in that dingy apartment with her little found family, misses being able to travel freely across the world for the past few centuries with the equally semi-immortal friends she had, misses feeling like the freest man with all the time in the world.
Kayla tastes the wind, and its flavors are absent of home. She sighs, wondering how Pyotr and Samuel were coming along, the aforementioned Russian probably still having a hard time reading the English labels in the town market and Samuel still sleeping over at Masuyo and Kouya’s while his house gets renovated after a particularly rough weather season this August.
Somewhere, she hears the sound of footsteps heading her way in her peripheral, by instinct, she straightens, pulling her legs back together and smoothing out her hair. Hopefully Chen didn’t catch her sitting “unladylike” again-
“Brother?” Instead of a rather fierce, dark-skinned and admittedly bony old man, she spots a familiar short and twiglike man approaching, slumping onto the bench once he was in the radius of the seat, his messy dark brown hair covering most of his leaf-green eyes, and in the bun that he pulled his hair up in, attached a flower similar to her own, just in a rather pleasant, pale green variation.
He takes a moment to recompose himself, and even Kayla could feel the heat radiating off his tiny frame under the pearly white button-up he donned. “Hi, mind if I join you in sulking?” Wow, he sounds pretty breathless, this weather really is hazardous to human life.
“What?!” Kayla gasps, her fidgeting betraying her nervousness. “No! I wasn’t sulking!” She hid the scuffed bench leg with her black heels, also slightly scuffed due to kicking poor inanimate objects, namely the bench that served them both.
“You sure, Kay? This park bench looks like it’s about to cave in at any moment.” The sly grin of Michael was always an indication of pure malice, a foretelling of tragedy, a threat to society, one that Kayla must eradicate!
“It’s just because the Atlas Town Council hasn't changed these benches since forever.” Kayla huffs, before retaliating “Well then, why are you in formalwear again? I thought you hated it.”
“Well, I think it looks fine, I was just exaggerating whenever someone looked at me weird.” he adjusts his thin, gold-framed glasses. “Plus, whenever I have to work at the casino, I don’t need to change as much, just need to pull on my gloves.” He wiggles his hands at her, in some attempt to prove his point. “Also protects my image as the cool rich casino guy speaking a sexy language no one but Porty understands .” He smirks, making Kayla sigh.
“You mean to protect your fragile ego?” She shot back.
“I DO NOT HAVE A FRAGILE EGO.” Those words came out so squeaky in Michael’s mixed accent it made the other roar with laughter before realizing she wasn’t as composed as she should be and promptly eases back with a sigh and re-dons her practiced poker face.
“...I know you don’t like being a woman.” Michael quiets down to a whisper. “But it’s so hard to tell Father because of how he views these people, or get that thing from Li’s hands without alerting him.”
“Where did this come from?” Kayla whispers back, her fingers gripping the side of the bench until her knuckles turned white and the metal burned her palms redder than the red gradients of her flower.
“Y’know..the..uh..whatever!” the man threw his hands up in mock defeat “English isn’t my thing, but just know I’ll support you, yeah? Anything for my fellow brother!”
“Mm, yeah.” Kayla breaks out a smile. “Thank you, brother.”
“No problem.” He smiles, one with so much genuinity that it shocked Kayla his mischievous, game-wise calculating brother was even capable of reaching levels of genuine honesty that him, her blood-sworn sibling could even attain. “Now, I think I missed something.” Michael scratches at his arm. “Because I’m so sure this conversation was going to lead somewh-”
“Oh!” Michael perks up, almost like an animated rubberhose character, dragging a giggle out of Kayla. “Tai told me to bring you over to his side of the house, he’s got something to show you.” He shoves his hand into hers, and drags her along. “Now c’mon! Before Father comes back.”
“Ugh… can’t you let me sulk in despair for slightly longer?” Kayla whines dramatically, her messy hair getting all over her face. Michael rolls his eyes and continues on with a chuckle, with a disobedient stubborn lady trying to win the Oscar being dragged back to the large temple that stood out amongst many smaller homely houses next to it, namely Samuel’s typical American quaint-ish suburbian residence he never bothered to give more personality to since he moved to Atlas, and Masuyo and Kouya’s shared smaller orientalist house, the sakura tree that somehow grew into the infrastructure of the house being the only thing that stood out enough to draw attention to the quaint little cottage next to their large, looming residence. How the heck can a sakura tree even grow here? Kayla chalks it down to “Atlas shenanigans” as always in the minute silence she was getting by being pulled along the heated pavement.
“Micheaaaaaal, let me gooooooo.” Kayla whines as she is dragged to the garden of the temple. “I want to run free with the birds and the beeees.” Posing as her heels dragged on the ground, the supposed younger brother sighed in mock annoyance.
“Breaking my poor, thin, fragile and youthful spine won’t change the fact I’m not going to let you torture park benches just because you’re sulking all day, Kayla.”
“Hmph, nor will calling the name I dislike.”
“I- oops, I’m so sorry.” His expression morphs into one of guilt. “Force of habit.”
“It’s alright.” The lady giggled as the pair entered the wide gates of their home. “I wasn’t that bothered. Come on, where's Tai?"
"Right here!" A familiar figure leapt at the duo, putting his arms around their shoulders, his raven hair pulled up into a ponytail by a glowing, blue hair tie grazing across her locks. "Hi brothers!"
"Horrible James Charles representation, 0/10, not even the right gender, I hate you brother Tai." Michael hisses as Tai practically snaps his neck just to pretend to flip his hair like an Instagram icon. Kayla facepalms incredulously.
"Oh, my sweet baby brother Michael, no need to get sour, where's the baby Michael we all know?" Tai teases, reaching down to poke at the youngest’s cheeks.
Michael swiftly swats the hand away, bluffering. "I-I'M NOT A BABY!" Kayla was holding back from exploding into an uncontrollable fit of laughter by a thin hair, her hands pulled up and pressed to her face in an attempt to stop what was inevitable for most of these brotherly interactions. Ah,sibling love.
"Mmm, little man! Little baby boy!" Tai picks up Michael with relative ease, with Michael scrambling to try and escape the grip of the taller and much bigger man.
"OTHER BRO, TELL THIS MENACE THAT HE'S WRONG! I'M A GROWN MAN!" He squeaks helplessly, dangling from the hands of Tai.
"No, Michael, Tai's right, you are small."
"HEY!" Kayla finally bursts into uncontrollable laughter, her cackling could possibly be heard even in her other foster father's house.
(Hey, he probably didn't mind, Asher was even louder, to the testament of her other foster father. She could recall Mr. Smith burying his face into his top hat as Asher laughed at a knock knock joke at the dinner table.)
(Speaking of which, Kayla needed to dust the one he gave her all those years ago, she had hidden it but she liked it nice and clean and very much unwrinkled, like how his other foster father liked it. She mentally notes it down.)
"You're lucky Father isn't home." pouts Michael, finally put back onto the grassy ground as he dusts himself off from the manhandling while Kayla giggles, tears in her eyes. "He would've already come down and beat us all with a sandal if he heard this racket."
"But he isn't! So I literally don't care." Tai lets out a shit eating grin and half a shrug, receiving a sigh from Michael and a light chuckle from Kayla.
Tai swivels to face Kayla."So, 'bout the thing I wanted to show you, it isn't here, rather I've already hidden it in your closet." Tai stuffs both of his hands into the pockets of his white hoodie. "Lean closer, my kin, I'll tell you what it is."
Kayla narrows her eyes. “Is it another shotgun? I swear to Christ, if it's another one without an adjustable stock-”
“No, no, even better!”
Kayla raises a brow. “...Ketamine restock for the stoners around the public school in the next street?”
“No, no!” Tai nearly shrieks. “I don’t serve those kiddos.”
“Then why are they still so high off their rocker?” Michael points out. “In broad daylight too!”
“That’s their problem.” Tai shrugs. “Plus thats Pyotr’s sister serving the crap, complain to her! Chen would obliterate me if he knew I sold crack to kiddins.” His gaze darkens. “And I don’t mess with him like that, not in broad daylight, as you said.”
Silence. Kayla scrunches up her nose. “...Is the mead finally finished?”
“Yes, but you’re still wrong!” Tai hisses. “J-just come closer and let me tell you!”
“Fine, fine!” Kayla struts over to Tai’s side. “What’s so damn important and secretive for this?”
Tai looks to his left, and his gaze darts to the right, before he leans in and whispers to her ear-
…
…
…
"WHAT?!" Kayla's eyes lit up like a burst of fireworks. Her voice wobbles as she looks at her shorter big brother with nothing short of being moved. "Tai, thank you!"
"Hmhm, no problem bro. Evaporate those titties." Tai gets smothered into a hug from the taller and chuckles. “Aww, you’re making me blush! Don’t worry, it’s what your older, bigger, more handsome big bro will do for the new addition to the boys party.” That earned a glare from Michael.
"But," Kayla pulls away with a worried furrow. "-how did you get it past Chen? He’s pretty tight on surveillance.”"
"Simple." Tai shrugs "Michael disabled all of his cameras "unintentionally" by "accidentally" spilling smoldering hot coffee all over his PC, then sister Li came around to help me distract Chen because she just went to get some more comfortable clothes after her chest surgery like a week or two ago, and Samuel is out delaying him right now. Also, Masuyo told me she has a special tactic dealing with the old man, but I wouldn’t worry about Masuyo, Sam’s probably sweating buckets right now." Tai chuckles.
"Wait, Li wasn't born a woman?" The bewildered expression on Michael's face was comedy gold. “But like-” He flaps his hands at the air, stuttering confusedly.
"...I'm not even going to ask or imagine about how Father reacted, but thank you two so much." Kayla smiles.
"Alright, let's not get too sappy before Chen comes home, I still haven't cleaned the dishes." Tai walks back into the temple through the gaping door, leaving Michael and Kayla with a bewildered expression, soon morphing into pure horror and panic.
"YOU WHAT?!"
Kayla ends up speedrunning dishes with his two brothers. While getting dish soap all over her in the panicked hurry, it was a happy moment nonetheless.
Kayla waved goodbye to Michael and Garbrielle on the couch, before walking out into the not-so-great outdoors, the muggy weather was simply aggravating, leaving his skin a sticky mess and his lungs struggling for any sort of crisper air amidst the disgusting dampness that clung to every corner of her body.
“This…isn’t very ideal for running.”
He scrunches up his nose, before walking to a specific point in the inner garden, amidst the exotic array of flora. “Now, where is he-”
Kayla spots a head of black hair in midst of the greenery, and jogs over, ignoring Li, who stared at him with her watchful eyes before sighing, slinking away as the smoke from her pipe drifts like a ghost behind her.
“So, you wanted to talk to me?” Tai lounged on the fence of the rock bridge that led to the courtyard in the middle of Chen’s expansive not-damaged (yet) temple-mansion. “I have all the time you might need. Chen is taken care of and veeeeeery far away.”
That mischievious grin…oh her Father was definitely very hands-full now.
“It’s a shame he’ll never know what’s coming.”
Kayla musters a smile at an attempt to soothe her own fraying nerves. “That’s nice. But…” his expression drops. “I have something to tell you.”
“I’m so sorry.” Kayla wishes he could say that before he was going to do what he planned.
“What is it?” Tai jumps down to follow Kayla, who had started walking towards the backyard, towards the deep, dark, familiar forest. “I won’t judge, it’s kind of hard to when we’re being surrounded on all sides by weird shadow-thingies.” He gently chuckles, before falling silent, waiting. “Well?”
“Unaware, unaware of the disaster that will befall us-”
Kayla chokes out the inevitable elephant in the room."Do…you think everything is just a simulation?"
"What?" Tai blinks, before coughing. "Well…not really, I guess?" His gaze darts around. “What brought this on?”
"Tai, the stranger I told you about. They predicted everything today. A day after that, they came back, and they described every single person that were dead that day." Kayla's eyes were round with fear, his voice shaking. "They got all of them right. And Sam? He’s out like a light, he got his ribs crushed because of one of those damn shadow creatures."
Tai reaches out to Kayla, his expression nothing short of worry and an extremely poor attempt at comfort."I-it's probably just a coincide-"
"NO! No it can't be, no way in fuckin hell.” Kayla was bordering on hysterical, shaking violently from where he planted his feet.
“He doesn’t know. Doesn’t know how fucked we are!”
He grips the corners of his hoodie, his breathing labored. “Tai, you have to trust me, in fact, follow me!"
Kayla turns his heel, feeling his muscles tense, before he sprints off through the backyard, vaulting over the fence in a hastily practiced move he managed to execute within the week, and into the darkness of the birch tree forest, zipping around the tall giants of wood with a point in mind, and like a moth does to any light, he knows the direction, he knows where to go.
And he feels compelled to go closer to the source.
Somewhere behind him and over the sounds of his wheezing breath, aching muscles and blood roaring in his ears, he faintly hears Tai racing behind him, noisily kicking up piles of leaves, a signal of autumn. “Hey, WAIT UP!”
Compelled to run faster, Kayla resists every urge to collapse and give in, his legs burned from the sudden exertion, his lungs gasping from air, but he knows what he seeks was close, and he will see it for himself, the truth, ah, the truth. My dear little creation will see it for himself.
He closes in, reaching the point of no return as the trees slowly parted in his path, as if inviting him to come and see, the thing the stranger utters of, the destruction of the foundation of reality that Kayla once believed in, and possibly the beginning of how, why Atlas and the world fell to the force of shadow-clad creatures.
He runs, and finally reaches a clearing, and he saw nothing but bright sunlight for a split moment, and for a moment, he falters, until he looks down-
–then the void.
In the corner of his peripheral, he saw Tai finally catch up to him, panting before his eyes too widened at the void before him, arms of the same shadows that had been haunting their world for now a year snaking out from the dark mass below. "What the…" Tai utters out, amidst his fear, his confusion.
Kayla froze as he watches the Void below loom invitingly to him, the shadows yet again forming clusters of very familiar shapes, swathed in orange lines of code that seemed to emanate from nowhere but their bodies as they formed the same things that terrorized the streets.
The same ones that tore their normalcy away from their already abnormal lives.
“It’s so unfair.”
A new voice cuts in, like a heated knife to butter, cutting in the thick silence of realization with the smoothness of margarine. "Do you see now?"
Kayla and Tai jumped at the smug voice, and turned to see who it was, and really, only Kayla could even remotely guess who that confident, sure and uncomfortably artificial voice belonged to.
A person with shoulder length brown hair, the fringe swept over to the right, covering their left eye, with a blinking navy blue rectangle somehow visible as their left eye, almost like a cartoon character. Hanging off their shoulders was a hood, the same one the stranger wore when Kayla first saw them, but now completely off, showing off the beanie that sat comfortably wrapped snugly against her head. And only when she was floating like this now, did Kayla notice how simple yet imposing her outfit and shape was against the light, the long curved tails to her overskirt drifting loosely like a celestial behind her, the only thing that didn’t make her look completely out of Lore of Olympus was the fact the innermost layer seemed to be a bodysuit of some sort, and her platformers were actually quite high, really, she was quite short.
The stranger didn’t take mind to the two’s staring, plainly stating while pointing a clawed finger at the abrupt end of the land. "This is the boundary of your world. The Creator didn't bother making more to conserve energy and storage space." The stranger smiles. "But, I can change that. Now, Kayla, it seems you have made a choice, no?"
Kayla gulps, his eyes fixated on the being before him, the setting sun like a golden-orangey halo around her, and the shadow she cast stretching to cover him whole. He takes one shaky step forward.
A voice. "Kayla, what are they talking about?" Tai stared after him in abject horror, a look that will most likely haunt him for the rest of his life.
Regret, regret hit him like a freight train, splashing red all over the train tracks, had him stuck like a deer in headlights, then the guilt kicks in.
And for a second, Kayla wanted to turn back, run to Tai and hope his dear brother could forget all of this with an apology and tell him to take him home where he used to belong.
But this…this is all too much.
“And I will never be the same again.”
Kayla took a deep breath, before he turned to the stranger. "It's a deal. Take it, if it means all of them will be saved."
"Kayla, what do you m-"
"Splendid!" The stranger cackles. "Follow me then. As per our agreement, I'll restore this world, and reload the assets it was missing to save energy. And of course, you have my word, all of them will be safe."
"Wait! Kayla!” Tai reaches out towards Kayla, calls for him to turn back. “Where are you going?"
"Somewhere." Kayla gazes wistfully towards the sky, noting the clouds seem mistier and lighter today, threads of white spun like cotton candy smeared over a canvas of baby blue. "But I won't be back for now. Tell Garbrielle she's in charge of my duties now, of everything I am involved in. If Chen doesn't agree with it, the papers are on my desk."
"Wait, WAIT UP! WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU M-"
Thump!
With a swift move, Kayla lets Tai drop to the floor, motionlessly flopping flat into the short spring grass. He flexes his arm, trying not to think too much about the feeling of Tai’s throat against the crook of his arm as he pressed his arm against his throat, feeling the bumps of his windpipe as he shuts off the flow of oxygen to his brain, knocking him o-
The stranger sighs, an air of understanding to her tone. "Family is sometimes annoying, I get it."
"What are you going to do with him?" Kayla gets lifted up to face the stranger, now floating midair. He briefly scrabbles in the air, before realizing he wasn’t going to fall just yet, and relaxing, allowing himself to drift midair.
"Leave him in the backyard. I'm not as cruel as to get him accused of murder. Though he will remember very little about this…encounter. It won’t be enough to track us down and most likely will be chalked down to delirium." The stranger holds out their hand. "Now that’s done and fortunately dealt with, you will need some proper training, but then, everything should turn out fine. And for introductions, I am Laverne Cycles, Administrator of the Citrusverse, and your civilian name?"
Name, huh? He actually decided on one a few years back, but he never got the guts to tell anyone, nor did he ever use it much within his circle of family and friends.
However, he was starting a new life, wasn’t he? Guess a change of identity and impression…would greatly suffice.
"Tristan Wong, Miss Cycles. Good to know you." Tristan shakes Laverne's hand, a signifier of their start to his new life, this new line of work, and to their agreement.
Laverne’s expression speaks of nothing but a simple smile that puts a pit in his stomach that he promptly ignores, and says. “Tristan…I can see this will be a great partnership between us both.”
“One that will benefit the both of us.”
Tristan hopes for that too.
"W…k…!!"
"P…..,I …'t ..se y.. …!"
"HEY!"
"Agh?!" Tai was shaken awake by an extremely, uncharacteristically distraught Michael. With a quick observation of his surroundings as he was helped up from the uncomfortably hard floor, he realized he was in the backyard, and Chen was standing there with a crutch by his side, an even outlandish worried expression on his face, and everyone else, Samuel, Masuyo, Kouya, Pyotr, Li, Gabrielle .
Tai nearly pisses himself right then and there.
"Tai! You're finally awake!" Michael wails in relief, bringing Tai into a tight hug. "You've been gone for nearly two days!” He lets go, and Tai only realizes now that Michael wasn’t even embarrassed to hug him in front of literally everyone else, and could only muster an apologetic, awkward smile before Michael continues to ask, tears brimming behind his gold frames. “Do you know where Kayla is?
"Kay…la?"
Kayla.
Something itches at the corners of his mind, wanting to break free of something, something that held it down with dark tendrils.
Something he couldn’t name.
Tai racked his brain. “I only remember meeting him outside, a few snippets of him talking, until he just…vanished.” He looks to the floor as the mixed gazes of everyone else bore down on him like spotlights on a stage.
Like a deer in headlights.
"This is…unpredictably annoying." Chen grumbles, his voice hoarse. "I've already sent search parties to find him, still no news. Be lucky the shadow creatures seem to be dissipating in numbers, or we won't have any chance of finding him." He sighs gratingly. "Now the problem is, who will take over his duties…"
"Garbrielle will." Tai almost automatically spoke, as if something just resurfaced in his mind, a simple request that his subconscious deemed so important that it simply passed through any process of thought, for some reason.
"Huh?" Chen raises an eyebrow.
Tai looks at Gabrielle, looking like a ghost as he accidentally puts her on the spot. "Well, she was his right-hand, she'll pick up his duties in no time. Plus she's already very used to the workload he gets…"
Chen paused, his brows furrowed, before he sighs. "Very well. Gabrielle shall take over his duties until we devise another plan. You better get some rest, Tai. I have already given Li your duties today, don't worry, she won't touch your…letters between the Smiths and you." He scowls lightly at the mention.
"Alright, old man." Tai grins, before his face falls into a serious look. "Thanks, Chen."
Chen was almost surprised, before he huffed, looking away. "You're welcome."
Michael helps him up as Chen exits the backyard, flanked by a whispering Masuyo, talking to Kouya, a distant-gazed Samuel who stuck to the ever-silent Pyotr, Li at the very back, and they all re-enter the courtyard.
Tai looks up to the sky, his hair tie bobbing with the motion, and sees a cloud trail in the midst of the clear, azure sky, almost like a shooting star that split the skies into two, blazing a trail that reached beyond what he could see in the small window to the sky in the courtyard.
His mind seems to edge at a memory again, but he recalls nothing, nothing of importance again, atleast.
Tai shrugs to himself, before going back inside.