Chapter Text
It was a cold, dreary dawn that November, the oppressively dark clouds blotting out the sun. Missing posters fluttered in the breeze like paper butterflies. Eventually, one landed on the window of a haunted house built in the likeness of an old, dilapidated pizzeria with a barely audible slap, followed by a faint crinkle. As the clock struck 6:00 a.m., a tall, lanky man shuffled through the doors with a dull expression. The man, Michael Afton, shuffled forward, gloved hands buried in the pockets of his black pants. His stiff, dark violet security guard uniform shifted uncomfortably. Michael took solace that he could get out of it soon.
As Michael walked away from the haunted house attraction and out of the theme park with an activity book wrapped beneath his armpit, he lifted one hand out of his pocket to straighten his sunglasses and security guard hat. He hated that he had to do this again, but with this being the quickest way that he could think of to find and end his father finally, he had no other choice. And perhaps in doing so, he could finally bring peace to all those his father hurt, and maybe even bring his agonizing existence to an end.
However, while contemplating this, he realized something strange about the path he was walking on. He had walked this path many times since signing up for this job at Fazbear’s Frights, and it looked nothing like this. Buildings were missing, or replaced by new ones. There were new streets and buildings, and trees where there weren’t trees previously.
What really made Mike aware that something was wrong though, was when, instead of the high school that he went to, he found a shopping center composed mostly of empty stores, with only one store still open, labeled “Mandela TECH.” Now well aware that something was wrong, Michael began running around the city, deviating harshly from his normal path home. During this sprint across the city, Michael found numerous places and signs that all made him well aware that he was not in Hurricane, Utah anymore, but some place called “Mandela County,” a place he had never heard of before.
‘Oh, bloody wonderful,’ Michael thought. ‘Somehow I got lost in what is, in essence, the middle of bloody nowhere, and to make matters worse, I can’t even find a place where I can buy a pack of gum!’
Michael let out a dejected groan, though there was no puff of breath escaping his black bandana. He quickly bottled up his confusion and annoyance and turned around.
“Well, looks like I won’t have to go to work tonight,” Michael remarked. He then turned around
As he continued on his exploration of the county, creeping through the streets like a cryptid, he suddenly heard the sounds of gentle scribbling coming from the logbook he had resting under his arm. He quickly opened it up and flipped through the pages until he found the page that the scribbling came from. A question appeared on the page letter by faded letter, the question addressed directly to Michael with unusual specificity.
“Where are we?”
“We? Can he see this place?” Michael pondered out loud. However, knowing the spirit writing to him couldn’t hear him speaking out loud, he pulled out a red pen and wrote directly below it.
In red pen, Michael wrote to the book’s spirit the message, “I don’t know.”
Almost instantly, the second spirit replied to Michael with another question. “What is ‘Mandela’?”
After it was confirmed that indeed, he could see, Michael wrote two messages in response. The first message repeated his first message to her, and the second was, “What do you see?”
“I can see everything. She can hear sounds.”
Michael knew exactly who “she” was, and as if on cue, the text that was already in the logbook began to change. Michael watched as a message was written in altered text, watching as each letter morphed and shifted until it formed the sentence, “I’m scared, Mike.”
It was unusual for them to be this talkative, let alone for the girl to address him so directly. Though this wasn’t the first time, this was perhaps the longest they’d ever remained on a single topic. Perhaps this was prompted by the bizarre circumstances, and them both clinging on to the first familiar things they could in this completely unfamiliar environment. A part of his mangled soul ached when he realized that they likely acted like this before when they ended up the way they were now. When this thought entered the man’s mind, he stopped in his tracks and wrapped the logbook in as tender a hug as his broken soul could muster.
For just a moment, Michael felt a little bit of warmth. He soon released his embrace and returned to his exploration of the quiet town of Mandela. All the while, he was completely unaware of the eyes following his every move.
While following the streets, logbook in hand, Michael noticed something peculiar. It had been at least an hour since he left Fazbear’s Fright, meaning it should be around 7:00 a.m. And yet, despite that, he hardly saw anyone around town. There were a few people out and about, but they all seemed scared. Not just scared of him, but of every other person they saw. What made things more unsettling was that no matter where Mike went, he always found missing and wanted posters taped to every wall and stapled to every power pole, sometimes even stacked on top of eachother. Suddenly, the gloomy weather felt all too fitting.
“How are you two feeling?” Michael wrote in his logbook, awaiting an answer.
“This is not a good place. We need to leave.” The faded text replied.
Michael nodded, then closed the logbook and continued onwards, now looking for a way out of this county. To better scout out the area, he climbed up the tallest building he could find so he could see the layout of the rest of the town. It looked like a typical southern suburbia town, with a mountain bordering the northernmost side of the county. The infrastructure was built to support a much greater population, but with how much said population had seemingly declined, much of it was left to decay or be demolished. As he observed the city, he also felt the ground shaking slightly. It felt like there was an earthquake slowly building.
“Looks like this town isn’t long for this world,” Mike said to himself.
He took a seat and flipped through the pages in the logbook, passing by several copies of pages that had yet to be written upon, before eventually reaching a blank page where he could draw what he wanted in it. He took out his trusty red pen and began drawing a layout of the city. In a few minutes, he was able to draw a map of the city, marking and labeling each location of interest, including the police department, church, and most importantly, the exit, which happened to be very close to the mountain. After completing the map, Michael leaned back a bit when he saw the words on the top of the page glow with a dim, white light, before changing from “FREE-DRAW” to “MAP.”
Mike let out a light chuckle, “Thanks, little lady…”
Mike then climbed down from the roof and continued his walk through the county. As his walk continued, he could feel the rumbling growing stronger. With this in mind, Michael began to pick up the pace, as while he wasn’t sure if an earthquake or avalanche would finally do him in, he’d rather not find out right now.
Eventually, Michael reached the neighborhood, which was just as quiet as the rest of the town. Feeling an unnerving sensation begin to set in, Michael decided to make his visit to this part of town short. He slipped the logbook into his uniform, then walked down the road, lengthening his strides, but trying not to draw unnecessary attention to himself. The last thing he wanted was to make a town that was already on edge think that there was a demon in the streets.
As Michael walked along the sidewalk, he slowly approached a man who was walking in his direction. Michael found it a bit suspicious that the man wasn’t deviating from his path, but he paid it no mind. Whatever that man could do to him, it wouldn’t be enough to do anything serious, and Michael knew that. But then, as soon as they got shoulder to shoulder with each other, the man turned towards Mike, grabbed him by the shoulders, pulled him in close, and whispered things into his ear.
The things this man, no, this thing said, would be enough to break any man beyond repair. It spoke of horrifying, existential concepts beyond mortal comprehension, things that were neither truths nor lies, things almost tailor-made to destroy a human fundamentally. And when it all ended, the entity released Michael and waited for its work to be complete.
“Yeah, that might as well be a thing,” Michael said with a shrug, before walking away.
The eyes of the humanoid thing remained locked on Michael as he walked away. A select few humans were able to resist the effects of their forbidden knowledge before, but to completely dismiss it and move on? That was unheard of… and it was dangerous. Its kind would normally avoid using crude physical tactics to destroy their prey, instead reveling in psychological torment, but this man’s complete immunity to that made him too much of a threat to all Alternates. One way or another, he needed to die.
Mike barely got three steps in before he was suddenly blindsided by a strike to the side of the head. The force was so great that it launched Michael off the sidewalk and straight through the front door of a house on the opposite side of the street. The strike managed to dislocate Michael’s jaw, but he quickly snapped it back into place.
“Ow!” Michael groaned, lifting himself out of a pile of wood splinters and couch stuffing.
As Mike stood up, he glanced to the side and saw a girl on a staircase, likely a teenager, if not very early 20s. She was huddled behind the railing and gazing down at Michael, terrified for her life. Mike reached out and apalogized for the mess, but just then, the same man from before suddenly burst through the window and landed on all fours. His limbs had warped in shape and size, becoming longer and more gangly, his neck had grown in length as well, and his face had been twisted unrecognizably, now bearing a pair of unblinking eyes with enormous, vantablack pupils and an impossibly wide mouth. The amount of stretching and warping of its face and body made the creature’s skin look more like rubber than flesh. The alternate’s face constantly warped and shifted into various impossible shapes, yet even when faced with a creature like this, Michael showed not an ounce of fear.
“Shit, mate,” Mike said with a soft chuckle. “You’re almost as ugly as me.”
Michael stood up, took off his sunglasses, and gazed at the monster with his black eyes and white pinprick pupils. He then took off his bandana and revealed the putrid, rotting, purple flesh of a man who died years ago, yet continues to walk the Earth despite everything he’s been through. He grinned with crooked, yellow teeth as the Alternate stood twitching in place.
“Almost.”
Mike beckoned the Alternate over, and it immediately lunged for him. Its arms extended forward towards Mike, but he dodged and rolled out of the way, causing it to lodge its arms in the wall behind him. As the Alternate attempted to dislodge itself, Mike got up behind it and delivered several kicks to the back of its knees until it finally broke free. It flailed its lanky arms around, with Michael dodging each swing and following counter-attacking with punches to the face. Mike swept the Alternate’s legs, but instead of tripping, the creature, in defiance of physics, fell up and landed on the ceiling, where it grabbed Michael by the legs and slammed him onto the ceiling fan, then back onto the floor. A coffee table collapsed beneath him on impact, before the ceiling fan came down on top of him, sparks flying out of its snapped wires.
Mike groaned in pain as the Alternate jumped down at his feet. Before it could strike again, however, Michael grabbed the downed ceiling fan by its broken wires and threw it at the Alternate’s face. The fan shattered against its face, sending sparks and shards of the fan across the living room. This dazed the Alternate long enough for Michael to rush in and suplex the thing. As it lay on the ground, arms sprawled out and seemingly unconscious, Michael hefted half of the broken couch over his head with all his might and dropped it on the Alternate. Unfortunately, the abomination against nature stood up in the blink of an eye without even visibly using its muscles, dodging right before it landed.
Michael looked around for any potential weapons, but before he could find anything, the Alternate kicked him in the chin, causing several teeth to launch out of his mouth, before shooting its arm straight through his chest. Black fluid spurted from Michael’s back and chest as his legs and arms dangled just above the ground. The girl on the stairs gasped in fear, but her eyes then her eyes filled with shock, fear, and a tinge of hope when she saw that Michael wasn’t done yet. The purple man grabbed the Alternate’s arm and dragged himself forward, much to its shock.
“You know… I just stitched this up too…” Mike spluttered with a smug smirk. “You didn’t think we were done, did you mate?!”
Michael donkey kicked the Alternate in the groin while pushing himself backward. As the Alternate fell backward, its arm slipped right out of Mike’s chest, and he backflipped into a standing position. The Alternate was infuriated that Michael was continuing to fight back. It began swinging its extended arms with reckless abandon, ripping the walls apart in its tantrum. Michael dodged below and jumped above the swings while the girl on the stairs rocked back and forth until the stairs collapsed beneath her. Thankfully, Michael managed to catch her and then jumped out of the broken window onto the front lawn.
Mike caught his breath as the creature still raged on inside. “Are you alright?” Michael asked.
The girl nodded nervously.
“Good. And, sorry about your house.”
“Th-this isn’t my-”
Before the girl could finish her sentence, the Alternate rocketed out of the roof of the house and landed on the sidewalk in front of them. Its mouth opened even wider as it started letting out an emergency alert siren for a scream. Michael set the girl down and raised his fists to continue his battle with the alternate as its face twisted into one of incomprehensible rage. Its pupils expanded until its eyes turned black, and its hands and feet grew longer and longer, till one hand alone could completely wrap around Michael’s torso.
“Okay, now you’re uglier than me,” Mike teased.
The Alternate’s scream became louder and more prolonged before it charged at Michael on all fours. Its legs and arms twisted as it scuttled towards the undead nightguard, before lunging at him. Michael effortlessly dodged out of the way and watched it slam head-first into the open window. He proceeded to drop kick its neck, which did little more than anger it further.
Mike continued to dodge swipe after swipe from the Alternate, until the rumbling from the ground returned, now even more intense than before. The quaking of the ground was enough to throw him off balance and allowed the Alternate to finally get its hands on him. He grunted as the monster grabbed him by the torso and slammed him on the ground repeatedly, in the process ruining his guard uniform. It then proceeded to grab Michael’s leg, digging its fingers deep into his flesh and making him howl an agonizing howl as black goo oozed out of the wound before it ripped his leg off completely.
As Michael groaned in pain, pinned beneath the Alternate’s hand, with nothing left to throw at his enemy, the demonic entity’s smile returned, now wider than ever, and also far more mocking of Michael’s situation.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, you prick?” Michael grunted.
The Alternate proceeded to laugh in thirty voices all at once.
However, just before it could strike Mike down, a gunshot rang out, and fractions of a moment later, a bullet hit the Alternate right in the side of its head.
“Hey, look, you got a hole in your face!” A man laughed with a gruff, manly voice.
The Alternate jerked its head towards the man, so furious that it didn’t even notice or care that he was less than half of Michael's height, had gray skin, and no arms, only a floating pair of hands. It did however notice that he was not alone, with another like him standing by his side, this one only having a plus shape for a face, yet it still had a cigarette sticking out of where its mouth should be.
“Or not?” The other one said in a less manly, slightly raspy voice. “The hell is that thing?”
“That’s what I wanna know!” Michael shouted.
“That question applies to you too, kid!” The one in sunglasses with the more masculine voice called.
The Alternate screeched at the two grunts that had interrupted its battle, and charged at them. However, before it could even close the distance, Deimos shot it in the face with a grenade launcher, before the two rolled to the sides and opened fire on the now quadrupedal Alternate. It shook its head and writhed as smoke billowed out of the segment of its head that had just been blown out.
“Reloading! Sanford, cover me!”
“Gotcha, Deimos!” Sanford replied.
Sanford whipped out an SMG and hook attached to a wire, before doing a backflip to dodge the several swipes from the Alternate, which extended its fingernails until they were as long and sharp as bear claws. Sanford eventually landed a few shots directly into its mouth, which, while causing no visible injury, did seem to anger it even further. Sanford continued to dodge and shoot at the Alternate, even embedding his hook into its wound and wrapping it around its neck.
Sanford jumped onto its back, wrapping his wire around the Alternate’s neck before tugging hard. The Alternate responded by twisting its head around and trying to swallow him whole. Sanford looked to his right and smirked, then jumped off right as Deimos fired two more grenades into the Alternate’s side, followed by a volley of assault rifle shots. Just as the Alternate shifted its body towards him, Michael charged towards it and tackled it into a car, before pummeling the open wound on the Alternate’s body, tearing away chunks of flesh that attempted to fill the hole left behind.
Sanford blinked a few times as he stared at Michael’s leg, then looked back to where he was before, and found that the black goop-stained pants leg was still there, but not the leg it was attached to. After giving an impressed nod, he looked back at Michael as he held back the Alternate with all his might while it clawed and scratched at his back. Sanford swung his hook at the Alternate’s eye, then tugged it right out and fired his SMG into the open hole. After taking several hits to the face, the Alternate lifted Michael in front of its face and used him as a human shield.
Michael let out a howl of burning agony but used this opportunity to plunge his fist straight into the Alternate’s open eye socket. While the Alternate thrashed about, screeching in agony from the combined assault of Sanford gunning it down and Michael rooting around in its head with his fist, Deimos set a bomb and slid it beneath the monster’s foot.
“INCOMING!!!” Deimos cried.
Sanford ducked behind cover, while Michael continued to pummel the Alternate’s face up close with as much brutal fury as he could muster, until the bomb finally went off, blowing up the car behind it in the process. Mike was blasted back and tumbled across the pavement, his battered body leaving a black sticky streak behind.
As Sanford and Deimos stepped out from behind cover, Michael quickly checked his burned and tattered suit to make sure the logbook was still there and in one piece. It was, which was a great relief to him. After that, he stood up, dusted himself off, and got properly acquainted with the two grunts that saved his life.
“Thanks. Say, I never really got your names. Or what you two were, for that matter.”
Sanford spoke first. “I’m Sanford, and this here is my partner, Deimos.”
“Yo.”
“We’re grunts. Now who and what are you?”
“I’m Michael Afton. I am- or- I was a human. Now…” Mike shrugged, hands buried in his pockets. ‘I guess you could say that I’m a zombie?”
“Well, whatever you are now, you’ve got some skills. Not to mention, you’re tough as hell,” Deimos raised his hand to shake Michael’s. “It’s good to meet you, Michael.”
Mike smiled and shook Deimos’ hand. “Good to meet you too, Deimos. And you as well, Sanford.”
However, while Michael and the two grunts were talking, the fire of their presumed victory still surging behind them, they suddenly heard a distorted voice coming from the fire. The voice sounded feminine, but also muffled and grainy. It was as though the voice of a middle-aged woman was being filtered through an old VHS tape, with occasional glitching mixed into it.
“Michael-el-el… come to mama-ma- ma. ”
Michael’s ghostly eyes widened and his pupils dilated. He jolted around and saw the Alternate limping out of the fire, its body and “clothes” shape-shifting into something more recognizably human again. The human form it took on had long, radiant locks of fiery orange hair, skin as white and soft as snow, and a humble, fuschia sweater and pair of brown pants. Her deformed smile compressed into a pair of ruby lips, and her wide, black eyes shrank down and turned emerald green. Well, one did. The other, the left eye, the one that was ripped out and which Michael dug around in, was replaced with a large, white flower.
“It’ll be okay my darling. Ma-Ma-Ma- Mama’s here n ow,” she said, her voice occasionally shifting in pitch.
Sanford and Deimos were both stunned into silence at the sight of the beautiful woman who had emerged from the flames. Michael, however, was not stunned in the slightest. No… He was just enraged.
Michael swiped a handgun from Deimos and fired it right between the Alternate’s eyes, causing its disguise to briefly distort.
“Never… and I mean NEVER!!! BRING. UP. MY. MOM!!!” Michael screamed as he emptied the entire magazine.
The alternate laughed maniacally, its face warping once again. Michael proceeded to run over and pistol whip it to the ground, the glow of his eyes intensifying further and further as his rage increased exponentially. Then, suddenly, the Alternate’s body exploded outwards, launching Michael off of it. While Deimos helped Michael up, Sanford straightened his sunglasses, attempting to understand what he was seeing.
The Alternate’s body had exploded outwards and expanded into something far worse. What was once a beautiful woman had become a writhing mass of deformed arms and legs, all different colors and belonging to different people. Then, from the center of this unspeakable mass emerged an array of fleshy stalks, all wriggling and writhing as the tips blossomed into different heads of people the three of them knew, each with permanent, wide-eyed smiles etched into their faces.
One became a warped version of Michael’s mother, with dark blue hair interlaced with orange and a flower still replacing one of its eyes. Another became the head of a little girl, her orange hair wrapped in pigtails, with clown makeup covering her face and a yellow and green striped birthday hat on her head. Another head took the form of a little boy with no eyes and tears of blood streaming down his face. The next head was a man with a metal rabbit ear and yellow metal plates bulging out of the side of his face like boils. Two more took the form of distorted visages of grunts, one wrapped in black cloth and bloody bandages, with sunken, glowing red eyes, and the other with a face composed entirely of metal.
“Ho-lee shit,” Sanford blurted out.
“Alright, looks like it’s time for round two,” Deimos said while reloading his gun.
As Michael stood up, Sanford tossed him a pair of SMGs. “You’ll need ‘em,” he said.
Mike smiled. “Thanks, mate.”
The trio stood up and aimed their weapons at the towering mass of limbs and heads, completely undaunted. The massive alternate responded by letting out various siren screams before unleashing a flurry of attacks, uprooting the ground beneath them as it did so. The trio dodged and rolled out of the way all while shooting at the Alternate. Despite its towering size, they noticed that when they shot the heads, they were successful in damaging the entity, even making it unleash animal cries of pain.
“Not so tough now, are ya?!” Sanford taunted.
“It must be getting desperate!” Deimos said. “Hit the heads with everything you’ve got!”
“Don’t have to tell me twice!” Michael said while climbing up the arms, before unleashing a volley of SMG shots at the head that resembled his sister. The sister's head screeched as its flesh was torn to ribbons.
The head of his father looked down at Michael, and a hand emerged from the mass and swiped at him. Michael leaped out of the way and rolled across the arm he was running along, before breaking out into a breakdance moove while shooting the hands around him with his SMGs. When he reached the bottom of the arm, a plethora of legs suddenly swarmed him and coiled around him, attempting to crush him to death. Despite squeezing with the strength of ten elephants all stepping on the same point at once, Michael could feel two other presences helping him push back against the mass of arms, preventing them from crushing him and even slowly breaking their grip.
The arms finally opened when Deimos launched a grenade right at the head of Michael’s false mother. As it wiggled in place, stunned and in pain, the arms recoiled, moving to defend the head from further assault, but dropping Michael in the process. Both Michael and Deimos were assaulted by a flurry of legs extending out of the mass. Michael landed on his feet, while Deimos landed face-first next to him. They both then dodged out of the way as a foot bigger than him came crashing down. Just as the foot crashed down, the bomb that Deimos force-fed the head exploded, knocking that head off completely.
As this was happening, Sanford was swinging around with his hook, shooting volley after volley of bullets at the six heads in the center. Eventually, he managed to hook one in the eye, and while it wiggled in pain, Sanford kicked the heads of his two partners in the foreheads repeatedly. Eventually, Sanford was knocked away by the head that bore a slight likeness to his boss. He landed on a wiggling cluster of gigantic arms and legs. The wiggling made it difficult for him to get his footing as the head of his boss slithered towards him alongside many clawed hands. After some clever movements, narrowly avoiding strikes from the hands, Sanford managed to trick one of the hands into stabbing the head they were flanking initially.
After the head was stunned into immobility by the stab to the cranium, Sanford embedded his hook beneath the metal face of the giant head and pried it off. The tremendous slab of metal launched through the air. It impacted a cluster of hands behind it, saving Michael from them, before embedding itself into the street. Once Sanford exposed the bloody flesh behind the metal, he unloaded his SMG into it until it recoiled back into the center mass.
Once that head reached the center mass again, Michael and Deimos were already back up there, Deimos firing a grenade in between them all, while Michael threw an incendiary grenade at the head of his sister, finishing the job on her. The blast at the center of them also severely weakened the remaining four heads. The head of Sanford and Deimos’ partner tried sending claw swipes at Deimos, but a hook to the neck from Sanford left it distracted as the remaining three heads all began acting more defensively, using the arms and legs as shields instead of weapons.
After finishing off the head of the partner, Sanford smirked at the cowering Alternate. “You know, you aren’t so scary when you’re hiding from us like that, ya freak,” he said.
Michael dodged and parried a few punches and swipes, before shooting beneath the heads, all while Deimos tossed the last few bombs he and Sanford had with them into the center mass, all while Michael kept them distracted. Eventually, Deimos tossed the last one in and they all scattered, sliding down the mass of limbs while fighting their way through the Alternate’s attacks.
At this point in the battle, the Alternate was hyper-fixated on killing. It started ripping apart nearby houses and throwing cars around just so it could kill the three of them. It was so desperate to stop them that it couldn’t even pay attention to the imminent threat of the ten bombs in its center until it was too late.
When the bombs went off, it was like an earthquake had hit the town of Mandela. The explosion could be felt for miles, and it completely engulfed the screaming creature in flames as the shockwave shredded it to bits. Michael, Sanford, and Deimos all huddled behind the severed metal plate left behind by the Alternate as the bombs went off. When the dust settled, the neighborhood was in ruin. Although the Alternate’s body had managed to absorb most of the blast, all infrastructure that remained was unrecognizably damaged. However, as Michael, Sanford, and Deimos stepped out from behind the metal slab, it looked as though they were victorious. All that remained of the alternate was a blackened, limbless husk, with only a singular head remaining. The head of Michael’s father, screaming up at the sky.
“Huh, how fitting,” Michael mumbled.
“HELL YEAH! AND STAY DEAD!” Deimos cheered, with Sanford quick to join him in celebrating.
But, just as they were in the throws of their celebration, the Alternate’s head glanced down at the three of them, rage burning from its gaze.
“Oh, you’ve gotta be shitting me!” Sanford groaned.
“Deimos, I don’t suppose you have any more of those bombs?” Mike asked.
“Just used them all in that last explosion,” Deimos said.
The Alternate’s body rumbled ominously, preparing to get back up and fight once again… until a gentle breeze picked up, and little specks of red dust began to float through the air. The trio was unaware of the significance of it, but it was enough to make the Alternate’s gaze turn from one of rage to one of mortal terror. In a voice that was unlike any human voice, and one that was also unusually clear and consistent, it mumbled only three words.
“Gabriel… Help me…”
And then, the Alternate evaporated, leaving not a single trace of it behind.
“...We need to get out of this red dust,” Michael said, panicking slightly.
The trio rushed out of the path of the red dust, not wanting to find out what would happen to them if they stayed. They huddled up in a barely standing house, where who should they find, but the girl that Michael saved during his initial Alternate encounter? Michael was surprised, but happy to see her again and cautiously approached her.
“Hey, it’s you again. Are you alright?”
After recoiling for a moment, she finally spoke to him. “How did you do that?”
Michael raised an eyebrow. “Do what?”
“N-no one’s ever made an Alternate fight back against them before. They usually just talk us to death. Not to mention, no one’s ever hurt one before. How did you do that?”
Michael shrugged. “I think it tried to talk me to death, but I guess it didn’t work, so it resorted to plan B.”
The girl was unsure of what to make of this claim, or the person making it, or the people accompanying said person. But, for the time being, she refrained from asking further questions.
“Are you alright?” Michael asked. “That fight got pretty nasty. I wouldn’t be surprised if you ended up in the crossfire of it.”
She shook her head. “N-no, I’m fine. Thank you.”
As Michael and the girl got acquainted with each other, though, Sanford was looking out the window as more of that red dust came through the street, using a pair of binoculars to see if he could find the source. Then, he saw them.
“Hey, uh… fellas? You might wanna take a look at this!”
Deimos took the binoculars from Sanford to see what was happening. If he had eyes, they would have bulged out of his sockets, as he saw what looked to be a flock of bright red and dark brown pteranodons dispensing a thick, crimson fog from their wings, as they slowly approached from the east. After everyone had a turn viewing the incoming flock, they all collectively decided it would be best if they escaped while they still could.
“Hey, do you happen to have a car back at your house?” Michael asked the girl.
“Even if I did, that house was completely destroyed.”
“Well, shit. Now what?” Sanford asked.
“We’ll just jack one of the cars outside,” Deimos suggested. “There should be plenty.”
So, that’s what they chose to do. After searching for a suitable vehicle, they eventually found a car that not only was already open but even had the keys inside. Almost as if the driver just suddenly disappeared without a trace. However, since Michael and Sanford found two other cars that fit this description, that phenomenon seemed far more common than one would expect.
Deimos sat in the driver’s seat, with Sanford beside him, and Michael and the girl hopping into the back seat. The car skidded out of its parking spot and got onto the road as the flock of pteranodons swooped down, spreading the red dust wherever they went. As they approached, Alternates from all over the neighborhood began flooding out onto the streets in an attempt to escape the incoming flock, only to be swallowed up in red mist, or by the pteranodons themselves as they devoured them one by one.
As the car sped onwards, driving as far away as it could as fast as it could, they saw Alternates running alongside the car, before being swallowed up by the pteranodons. The girl in the back seat screamed and clutched Michael as those monsters continued to feast upon the creatures she feared the most. And it wasn’t just them. Normal civilians who were caught up in all of this were also made into the meals of these flying devils. Nothing and no one was safe.
Michael hoped that things would get better when they escaped the city, but instead, it only got worse. Just as they were reaching the county’s outer limits, approaching a mountain that overlooked Mandela County, the ground began to rumble violently, and they could hear earth-shaking crashes rhythmically approaching them. The same ones that Michael heard and felt while observing the city. Finally, while passing the mountain, they saw a foot. A massive, jet-black foot slammed down next to them, knocking boulders and rubble into the air.
“WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!?!” Michael and the girl screamed while Sanford veered out of the way of the incoming debris.
As they drove away quickly, they were all able to lay eyes upon a black mass of ungodly size marching towards the county, his teeth laid bare and his claws itching to rip into the flesh of a new opponent.
As the flock of Rodans feasted upon the alternates, their red dust swirling around the city, a colossal black mass formed in the center. The giant mass took on the form of one of their own, but a gigantic variation of them with a black aura swirling around him, giving him an ethereal appearance. Upon his formation, the giant Rodan unleashed a cry that invigorated all other Rodans in the area, his roar causing waves of heat to billow out of his mouth. However, before the smaller Rodans could continue on their path of destruction, they were stopped by the arrival of something unimaginably greater than all of them combined.
Godzilla, the unstoppable king of the monsters, marched into Mandela County, stomping on several Alternates in the process. He let out a single, intimidating growl, warning the birds not to pick a fight that they would never win. The pteranodons ignored his warning, and a tremendous flock emerged from the red mist. So many Rodans attacked all at once that they were able to completely engulf Godzilla from head to toe and begin pecking him repeatedly.
The pecks were completely and utterly useless at doing anything more than annoy the king, who responded with a pulse of energy that instantly incinerated the tiny Rodans, the mountain overlooking the county, and most of the county itself, while also dispersing a great deal of red dust.
The giant Rodan blocked the Nuclear Pulse with his wing, only for it to burn several holes through it regardless. It snarled and watched as Godzilla began advancing towards him. After healing from the damage, Rodan took to the skies and swooped down towards Godzilla, their clash sending a mighty shockwave across the land that could be felt for hundreds of miles. After breaking free from Godzilla's grip, Rodan slashed Godzilla across the face, causing sparks to fly and dulling his talons slightly, but not damaging Godzilla at all.
Rodan tried to fly back up but was quickly smacked to the ground with a rib-shattering tail swipe. As Rodan slid across the ground, Godzilla stomped towards him, but his vision was suddenly clouded by a multitude of Alternates all clambering around his face to try and share their forbidden knowledge with him. Godzilla, in response to their feeble attempts to scare him into self-harm, shoved them all into his mouth and fired his atomic breath while his mouth was closed. At the same time, Rodan got up and backed away while firing an orange heat ray out of his beak, while also increasing his production of the red dust.
Godzilla was unphased by the dust and the beam, retaliating with a blast of atomic breath that immediately blasted Rodan to smithereens. However, while watching the smoldering carcass of his former opponent burn away, Godzilla averted his gaze back to the red mist, as it began to coalesce together, forming into two new Rodans. One of them took to the skies just as he fired his Atomic Breath in his direction, while the other swooped by. He got behind Godzilla and attempted to suffocate him with his wings. Enraged by this attempted attack, Godzilla unleashed yet another nuclear pulse, which absolutely obliterated this Rodan.
The remaining Rodan flew just outside its range, but not out of the range of the Atomic Breath, which he was instead forced to dodge past twice while retaliating with his heat ray, which only managed to irritate Godzilla’s eyes. Rodan soared overhead, clouding the entire battlefield with red dust, which Godzilla managed to disperse with a single Nuclear Pulse.
However, when Godzilla’s vision was cleared, he found the entire county still engulfed in red dust, and he found himself surrounded on all sides by Rodans, each of which Godzilla could sense possessed far greater power than before. As each of the Rodans roared at him, Godzilla snarled with annoyance, before unleashing a roar that overpowered all others.
The Rodans all spread their wings and charged, unleashing beams, pecks, and slashes from their talons. They created hurricane-force winds and sonic booms with their beating wings and even combined their beams to amplify the power output. Yet despite all that, the king of the monsters remained unscathed by their simultaneous assault, ripping through them one after the other, crushing skulls and snapping beaks. The pecks and scratches only left the shavings of the attacks behind, like chalk on a chalkboard, and the heat beams did little more than cause him minor irritation. Godzilla then blasted Rodan after Rodan out of the sky with his Atomic Breath. Eventually, dozens of them all piled on top of him, scratching and pecking while trying to smother him with their wings. While this was happening, Alternates began crawling all over him, wanting him dead just as much as the Rodans did.
With fire in his eyes, Godzilla roared a deafening roar and unleashed a Nuclear Pulse that would finally end this farce. This particular blast was so intense in its strength that it annihilated the Rodans and the Alternates in one blast. In addition, the entire county was completely flattened, reduced to a smoldering wasteland, and the mountain that oversaw it was obliterated in a fiery cataclysm. Within the lava-filled crater that was once a mountainside county, Godzilla stood alone and victorious. The king marched away, all the red dust in the area subsiding with a sense of fear emanating from it.
As Godzilla marched away, the dreary clouds overlooking the city slowly parted, and a heavenly light reached down onto the wasteland. As the presence looked down on what remained of its messengers, it raised a fist in anger. Its beautiful creations had been sullied, and it would not stand for this.
Michael, Sanford, Deimos, and the girl they rescued from Mandela County all screamed as the ground quaked, the immense force of Godzilla’s Nuclear Pulse still felt even after they had already driven miles away from the battle. The girl hesitantly looked back and gasped, utterly shocked when she saw that the entire county was gone. Even the mountain overlooking it had been reduced to rocky mounds with lava flowing off of them. Never before could she have even imagined something that powerful, and looking at Michael, she could tell that she was not alone.
Though it was not a pleasant experience to look at Michael. His decaying flesh and ghostly eyes made him look like something right out of a horror story. And the smell… that rancid smell. He reeked of the putrid smell of rotting meat, the stale, vaguely metallic odor of dried blood, and some third pungent odor that she couldn’t quite identify, all barely concealed by several pounds of deodorant. But the worst part was that she didn’t want to think this of him. After he saved her life not once, but twice, she felt as though it would be cruel of her to judge him for his appearance and odor. She wanted to be able to look her hero in the eyes with gratitude, but she just couldn’t.
After Godzilla stomped out of their line of sight, Michael turned around and opened up his logbook, happy to see it unscathed by everything that happened. Though he did need to wipe a bit of black fluid off of him from when he bled on it. He pulled out his pen to write but stopped when he saw that the two kids within were already having a conversation while he wasn’t looking.
“You should talk to him,” the girl said in faded text.
“I don’t want to,” the boy responded through altered text.
“He misses you.”
“He hates me.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“He killed me.”
“He’s trying to make things better.”
“Would you forgive my dad if he tried to fix things?”
That was the last line in the exchange, and, in Michael’s eyes, was a step too far. He quickly began writing in direct response to the spirit in defense of Cassidy.
“Evan, you shouldn’t talk to her like that,” Michael wrote. “I won’t ask you to forgive me, but you shouldn’t bring up something like that to her!”
Evan did not reply. Michael groaned in frustration and continued writing.
“I’m sorry for what I did to you. There’s no excusing all the torment I put you through, let alone the bite. You didn’t deserve to be treated like that. But neither does Cassidy. If you have anger, direct it at me, not her.”
The mangled nerves in Michael’s hands suddenly began to fire up, like his hands were being repeatedly stung by bees. Michael managed to tough through the pain though, and managed to read the message Evan sent to him. The two pages he had open were rapidly being engulfed in the words “I HATE YOU” until they turned completely black.
“Okay… fair enough,” Mike said.
“What’s fair enough?” The girl asked.
Mike flipped the page as his attention was drawn towards her. “Oh nothing, just thinking out loud is all,” he said, not so much trying to avoid suspicion as he was trying to avoid a very long and tedious explanation of what just happened.
Eventually, the car stopped at a gas station out in the middle of the dry, barren wasteland. The station had the lights on inside, with a single grunt leaning against the counter, drumming his fingers on it while holding his head in his disembodied hand. The Grunt looked like Deimos stripped of all of his accessories, dressed in only a gray smock.
“This should be a good place to take a break,” Sanford said, stepping out of the car. “What say we try and get to know each other while we're here, since it looks like we're gonna be stuck together for a while.”
“Fine by me,” the girl said. “What about you two?”
“Sure thing,” Deimos said.
Michael silently nodded, then joined everyone else at the side of the car. While Sanford refilled the tank, the girl decided to introduce herself properly.
“My name is Sarah Heathcliff. I'm a member of the Bythorne Paranormal Society, though I mostly run the tech side of things.”
“Paranormal society, eh? So you're like ghost hunters, or something?” Deimos asked.
“Erm… in a sense. Our cases mostly revolve around Alternates, which has gotten us in a bit of trouble with the law.”
“Alternates?”
“That's what the thing you guys fought is called,” Sarah explained.
“I see.”
“So, Sarah, back there you said that the house I met you in wasn't yours,” Michael said. “So what were you doing there?”
“Like I told you before, I don't know how I got there,” Sarah explained. “I live in Bythorne country. I haven't been to that house since…” Sarah paused her statement and placed a hand over her mouth, as something that neither the grunts nor Michael could understand hit her like a sack of bricks. She clenched her eyes shut and bit back tears before continuing. “S-sorry… I was texting Adam, another member of the group, when all of a sudden, I just appeared in that house with no idea how I got there. After freaking out for a little while, I heard a noise downstairs, and rushed down to see you lying on the smashed couch, and I'm sure you know the rest.”
Mike nodded. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Sarah. I’m Michael Afton. I worked as a security guard at several places, and I’m pretty sure I’m unkillable.”
“Well, that’ll certainly come in handy!” Sanford said. “It almost feels greedy to ask, but you got anything else?”
“Yeah, I’m able to reattach severed body parts. I can also see and communicate with spirits thanks to the process that made me immortal.”
“Well, you’d make for a great asset for Sarah’s little ghost huntin’ club,” Sanford joked.
“Do you encounter a lot of spirits?” Sarah asked.
“Yes, actually. Mostly murdered children… in fact, almost exclusively murdered children.”
Everyone went silent at this revelation. Even Sanford and Deimos, who seemed to normally be pretty calm about this type of thing, were deeply disturbed by this.
“What the fuck?” Deimos said in a hushed tone.
“Yeah… to make a long story short, I’ve dedicated my afterlife(?) to hunting down a mass-child-murderer, because the police have been no help in stopping him,” Mike explained.
As Michael went into detail about what said killer did to his victims and the specifics of how he helps the kids recover mentally before helping them move on, Sarah found herself relating to his plight. She understood what it was like to have the police be aware of those in need, yet not doing anything to help despite that. Sarah clutched her sleeve as she recalled when she first appeared in that house, and in particular the room that she appeared in. She remembered the panic and confusion, but also the trauma she felt rush back to her when she stood in that unkempt room. The room her brother was trapped in. The room her brother died in. All because nobody came for him. It tore her apart just thinking about it, and in this moment of grief, she let out the sudden heave of someone who was about to break down crying.
Michael quickly ran to her side and held onto her shoulders as soon as he heard it. “What’s wrong Sarah?”
Sarah leaned against Michael on impulse and began to sob loudly, as the stress of everything that had happened finally came crashing down upon him. Michael closed his eyes and returned the embrace, speaking in a hushed tone to console her. Eventually, after a while, Sarah calmed down and released her grip on Michael.
“Th-thank you…” she said softly.
“Of course.”
However, soon after that, they heard someone at the station storefront barge out the front door. “HEY! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOIN’?!”
It was the grunt behind the counter, shotgun in hand. He was clearly furious at them, his posture straight with the gun pointed directly at them. Sarah raised her hands high in the air the moment she saw the gun aimed at her, while Deimos stared angrily at Sanford.
“You didn’t pay for the gas?!” Deimos snarled.
Sanford chuckled awkwardly. “Listen, I can explain!”
“Wait… I know you two! You’re those rebel shitheads!” The grunt said. He then chuckled with sinister intent and cocked his shotgun, “Ohh, I’m gonna be rollin’ in the dough once I’m done with you!”
“What’s he talking about?” Michael whispered.
“We’re wanted fugitives where we come from,” Deimos said, before unholstering his assault rifle and snapping the grenade launcher onto the bottom of it. “I’ll explain later.”
“Oh, you ain’t explainin’ nothing to that thing,” the grunt taunted. “Once I’m done, you two are gonna be six feet unde-”
The grunt’s face was quickly filled with leaking red holes, and he was knocked backwards. Smoke plumed out of the tip of Deimos’ gun, which he quickly blew out like a candle before approaching the body. Sarah cowered behind Michael as he snatched the shotgun from the grunt’s cold, lifeless hands, then approached the group.
“We should probably go,” he said.
“WHAT THE FUCK!?!” Sarah screamed.
“Hey hey hey, calm down!”
“CALM DOWN!?! YOU JUST KILLED THAT GUY!”
“He was about to kill us! What was I supposed to do?”
“WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST GIVE HIM THE MONEY FOR GAS!?!”
At this point, Sanford chimed in after filing the tank up fully. “Look, in case you weren’t listening, we’re wanted fugitives. More than that, we’re enemies of the goddamn state. Things wouldn’t have gone any differently if we paid up or not.”
“How exactly did you two become fugitives?” Michael asked.
Deimos sighed. “Long story short, totalitarian dictatorship that gains power through chaos, and we’re trying to stop them.”
While Sanford hopped into the front of the driver’s seat, Michael continued the conversation. “So… I take it we’re in that totalitarian dictatorship’s territory now?”
“Judging by the fact that we’re seeing other grunts, I’d say so.”
“So, are we not gonna address the fact that this guy is dead?” Sarah asked.
“Kid, we’ve had to do this shit for years. We’re used to it at this point.”
“Th-that’s horrible.”
Deimos shrugged and lit a cigarette. “That’s just the world we live in, kid.”
‘The world they live in…’ Michael pondered. His train of thought was interrupted however when Sanford honked the car’s horn.
“Get in, ya bozos!” Sanford shouted.
Deimos nodded. “Come on, you two. I’ll explain everything in the car.”
The two climbed into the back seat, wondering what they'd gotten themselves into.