Chapter Text
My name is Cleo.
Breakfast with my sons isn’t normally a major highlight of the day. I’m in a hurry to get to work, they’re in a hurry to get to school. Family time is usually reserved for evenings, and breakfast is just a little bit of talking as we eat as fast as we can. But lately, it’s been… different. As with many aspects of my life, I guess.
Not that we talk more than usual. I wish we did, the way life is now. I want to spend as much time with them as I can.
Let me rewind.
One fateful night, my friends and I came across an alien fighter ship. The Empori inside, Scott Smajor, knew he was going to die, and in his dying moments, he gave us the power to morph into any animal we can touch. A necessary power to fight the Corrupted. I’ll leave it there; X could explain what happened in greater detail. I was… preoccupied.
Let’s go back even further, to breakfast just that morning.
“Bdubs, you saw the letter, right?”
“Uh-huh! Oh, Scar, dad’s coming, dad’s coming!”
Scar and Bdubs, my pride and joy. Hardworking boys with a bright future ahead, even in spite of their absent father. We had gotten a letter in the mail, a promise from their father. A promise that he would visit. I read the letter before they had woken up that morning; woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep. Reading through his words, it really didn’t seem like he wanted to make any real effort to reconnect with his children. I mean, seriously, playing catch? Isn’t that kind of cliché as an estranged family member bonding activity? And hadn’t Etho blown up the kids in a game of catch?
Wait. What?
A vision, clear as any memory, came in an instant. Explosives used as the ball in a game of catch, only blowing up when two were added. Scar and Bdubs’ father - Etho - watching as both of his sons perished from his idea of a family game. But that was okay for them, they could just respawn. They had plenty of time left.
I shook my head. Must be sleep deprivation, I thought. A simple product of being awake so early. But at breakfast… well, let’s just continue where Scar and Bdubs left off.
“Mom, aren’t you excited for dad to visit?” Scar asked.
“Etho’s not coming back with the milk anytime soon,” I responded.
Another vision. “Hi, Etho! If you’re going to be an absent father, could you be at least… absent?”
Why was I having these visions? Etho was a family friend and a fellow YouTuber. And he wasn’t the father of my boys. How was I going to explain what I said to-
“Well, mom?” Bdubs asked, as if I had not replied to Scar’s question. I had spoken aloud, hadn’t I? I was sure I had.
“Yeah, sure,” I replied lamely.
That night, when the alien spaceship landed, I had more visions. My friend Jimmy constantly being the first to die in battles to the death, a horrifying dragon residing in an alien dimension.
And beings that I had called the Watchers.