May would scream as her damp eyes widened in confusion, her feet stumbling across each other as she fell into the creature’s grasp. It held her tight, but it didn’t squash her. It would raise her high above head, away from everyone else, and as she flailed, the place began to vibrate, then, it began to shake as her mental state deteriorated.

She saw the world spinning, felt her body melt, she couldn’t discern left from right nor up from down on the infinite plain of imagination, and the place didn’t take it well. It was a good thing that all who were present weren’t idiots though, even if intentions didn’t align. Kim would act first, knowing what to do, and what to expect from a florist.

“May! Your brother is here!” At the top of her lungs, with only herself to care about, Kim sought to save the girl.

Kim’s words seemed to pierce the heaviness the voice had trapped her in, and for a moment, her mind emptied to fill with only thoughts of seeing a familiar face, that of someone she wouldn’t see.

The path of destruction May was driving them all down came to a halt when the feelings of slight happiness she felt drowned out everything and gave the vehicle a flat tire.

The time she had left to them was time enough still, as it gave the small genius time to act. He’d engineer the cube into a weapon, a gun. He’d point it at the thing’s large head and eye with intentions to hesitate, but the assault rifle emptied itself into the monster all on its own.

It was over before it begun, Kim would soften May’s fall, as for Bob, he stood shaking, hands numb and mind blanker every second. The thing was monstrous, but who’s to say it wasn’t human somehow, how could they ever be sure, it looked human enough.

He stood there for a while before he dropped the weapon of his own creation, and looking at the thing with a hole through its skull, made him woozy. It was then that a pitch black hand with six fingers emerged from the ground, holding a white hydrangea.

He’d look at the flower, it was welcoming, and so he found himself calming down, and even feeling better. It wasn’t human, in fact, the monster told him it was more than that. He’d look the dead thing in the face, and as he blinked it seemed to change before his very eyes.

It gained a bouncing afro, brown with blonde streaks, as for the eyes, they were a nice lime green. The shape of its face was reduced as it gained soft features, and smooth caramel skin. The thing was dead, but somehow those unsaturated eyes turned to look at him.

It was a work of impossibility, but somehow the small man didn’t fall flat on his ass. It did foster a reaction though. He placed his hands below his gorgeous hair, and in one shaking motion, he pushed his hair back as he smiled with bloodshot eyes, hydration too little for tears.

His eyes were finally showing though, and they were a vibrant lime green, as for his skin, it was a beautiful caramel. It should have been a coincidence, and a stranger might have said so, but that would be a stranger from the past, the dark ages.

The debate raged firm before the winter of 4000, but in the end, designer babies were allowed, and so, over the centuries, they became the norm. To be blunt, the thing wore his mother’s face.

The veins on his forehead popped as he searched his well of knowledge, but only drew blank pages. He’d stop breathing altogether, his mouth moved, with both small and extravagant motions, but no words came, and neither did tears, nor self-harm.

He stood, emotions bouncing from one direction to the other, never settling, and so he smiled, frowned, feigned crying and laughed.

The personality Brody should have had was one of compassion though, a gentle giant if you would. As such, he walked over to the golden M4-16 and picked it up, at the same time the thing would emerge from the ground taking a hold of Bob.

Bob would feel his warped perception of space disappear as the large thing with a white dilated eye focused on him. He was sinking, drowning, and no matter how he screamed or resisted, no one would hear him, no one would come to his rescue.

Brody pointed the gun at the towering monster, but it’d place Bob between the burly man and its head. The one who claimed compassion, pulled the trigger still, a test of his knowledge, despite the obvious implications.

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The bullets fired could be seen, stranded still, inches away from Bob. They’d then spin, and as fast as they had been fired, that is as fast as they returned, putting holes in Brody as they passed through him.

They’d hit the ground on the other side of him, but as they bounced, they never returned to the ground. Gravity seemed to have been taking some time off. In fact, it was reversed, as even the giant quarter corpse started to lift off the ground. As for the implications of those actions, Bob fell limp with eyes wide open, blood streaming from them.

His ears would follow, along with his nose and mouth. He’d then begin to convulse in the thing’s hand, shaking violently as he choked on his own blood. His eyes would eventually roll back as everything he influenced went higher and higher.

Brody still had one trick up his sleeve before he’d be forced to reveal his trump card though. He lifted the rifle to the side of his face, looking at his own reflection, and even as his heartbeat increased and he began to sweat, he’d go through with it.

“…I’m going to need a little help here, I—” Unfortunately, the ground began to break away too, and so his words were lost to me in the commotion, how unfortunate.

He did reach the golden construct though, fortunately, and that’s what mattered. Brody would be pulled to the ground so fast he slammed into it breaking more of it away. As for the assault rifle in hand, it liquefied, growing in size until it was bigger than Brody himself.

It would become a large cylindrical void with various constructs surrounding its center, attached by wires, bolts, pipes and cables. The constructs in question were things like, I don’t know, maybe, miniaturized particle accelerators and nuclear reactors.

It had a trigger. And he’d pull it, and without delay or interruption, the golden void glowed to a white hot. The monster saw this, and everything it was toeing along would fall flat, the space in front of it however, it was notably warped, like a rain drop on a still lake.

The burly man who had somehow found confidence, still pulled the trigger yet again, figuratively speaking, as he actually let it go. It was more interesting that time though.

A white beam of light shot from the cannon, a third of an inch in diameter, and it went straight through Bob and the monster. Thus comes the interesting part still.

Tens of spires collapsed, as looking at them in relation to the beams trajectory, it erased a mountains worth of the things in a perfect circle. As for Bob, there wasn’t a scratch on him, the only blunder that remained was the dismembered hand of the monster that held him.

As for the rest of it, only the waist down remained. He’d fall, but Brody would catch him, preventing any further injuries. They were ‘safe’ once more. This didn’t stop Kim form being worried though, well really she was dumfounded.

“H—… How did you do that…? You… did you make peace…?” The woman let one hand off the semi-conscious May and gestured a claw, but she realized before doing anything brash, again.

“Well, kind of… It’s our job to protect them until then, so… of course it’d help me.” The giant gun that seemed to be too heavy to be held by the one hand he was using would shrink back into a small cube, but even smaller than before, half the size.

“I see…” Kim would smile as she looked at the shrunken cube. “Okay… so anyway… how did you do that…?” Her words were garnished by millions of tons of falling rock, almost, drowning out her voice.

“It’s complicated…” The man would take a seat, seeing as there was a minor hindrance to their journey, or two.

“Tell me…” Kim relaxed her hand from her awkward gesture, cradling May.

“Ahhh… particles exist right?” He awaited the woman’s response, raising his brows.

“She isn’t that uninformed… I know that much, I’m not an idiot…” She rolled her eyes.

“Debatable…” He mumbled the word before continuing his explanation. “Alright, so they exist in a super position because they simultaneously inhabit the Abstract and normal world at the same time, right, so they have no effect or mass, etcetera, but if observed, which is just an investment of psychic energy, then the waveform collapses and chooses a realm to inhabit… so I basically shot a stream of unstable particles and ignored them until they passed through Bob, then I focused on them and the waveform collapsed in this realm, making the particles gain mass and for an added bit of flavor, the particles were dark matter… So it annihilated everything it touched… simple right…?” The man actually smiled, filled with a warmth because he understood what he should have.

“I… I get it… I totally get it… so… how dangerous… was that exactly…?” Kim’s face crumpled as she tried and failed to wrap her head around the concept.

“I had a grace period of one billionth of a second… but if Bob’s implant was left to escalate to its logical conclusion under the ‘circumstances’ we wouldn’t have survived anyway, and my perception was obviously enhanced by the ‘thing’…” He caressed the cube.

“Okay… so, when exactly did you deal with dark matter… and why?” Kim’s head was starting to hurt.

“It… so there has to be a way for ‘them’ to dispose of ‘undesirable’ things without a trace… so they used dark matter, but the mechanisms required were delicate and dangerous, so it required constant maintenance.” He was still smiling, almost innocently.

“Do I want to know…?” Kim was having a rather painful headache.

“So this one time a body got stuck between—” His happiness was unconditional it seemed, but Kim didn’t care if he looked happy while saying such things, she wanted him to stop.

“I don’t want to know!” She already had a headache, she didn’t want a stomachache too.