The Pentastros festival was set to take place in Evergreen Park, the so-called heart of Sivigual Valley, right after sunset. And the last minute preparations had been exceedingly busy. The day had begun with a couple hundred volunteers, each determined to make the most of the ten hours they had before it officially began. Half of the group had been delegated to cooking the large mounds of food to be sold in the various wooden stands which had been constructed in the weeks prior. They had been given relatively lax instructions on what to make; all they were told to do was cook the foods that AEGIS disclosed as Pentastros favorites. Tempra loved Chicken Parmesan, Rose would devour anything made of chocolate, and Golem’s favorite was fried chicken. Their leader Damien Silvers however had neglected to give a concrete answer, stating that anything that their group had made would be quote “good enough”. They’d been instructed that after they were’d completed this task anything else that they cooked was free game. So the rest of their day was spent crafting personal and community favorites.
The other group of people were responsible for the more technical side of the event; setting up the stage for the various bands which would be rotating throughout the night and doing a final check in order to ensure the equipment for the entertainment booths were pristine. Today was supposed to be a celebration after all, it wouldn’t be acceptable if one of their stunts went wrong and Pentastros had another disaster added to their plate.
After she’d finished speaking with ‘Among the Crowd’, the band that would be opening the event, the head overseer, a tall blonde woman with her hair tied in a messy bun smiled as she checked her silver watch. Six o’clock exactly, they managed to finish prep with half an hour to spare. Taking in the last two weeks of hard work and dedication, she looked onward at the large stage that stood at the center of Evergreen Park; gazed at the dozen or so smaller ones meant for the elemental demonstrations that spread around the stage forming a loose ring with the food stands creating another larger ring outside of the last.
Only after checking herself over did she realize just how messy their preparations had been. Her light red button up shirt had been drenched in a mixture of sweat, grease, and tomato sauce. The origin of that mess was easy enough to remember. Half an hour ago she’d been in the kitchen of one the local Italian restaurants teaching some of the younger volunteers to make Chicken Parm, and as it usually was with kids, the process had left a disaster in its wake. The objects of her attention however, were the black splotches spattered across her jeans. She would have immediately ruled it out as some oil that she’d spilled on herself while helping with an exhibit. Afterall it was the most logical conclusion, but whenever she thought particularly hard about it, she found that she couldn’t recollect ever being around it.
Curiously she prodded the stain, poking at it with her index finger and doing her best to identify a possible match based on touch. Ordinarily she wouldn’t have done this, but there was something about it that seemed… interesting? Was that the proper word? Well anyway it definitely wasn’t oil, more so like glue, but that still didn’t fit. It had a thick glossy feel and sheen to it, but it stretched when she retracted her finger in a manner reminiscent of bubble gum, but quite normal bubble gum had some tact to it or roughness. This by comparison was far smoother, impossibly smooth like a raindrop. Was this liquid rubber? No, it definitely wasn’t.
“Alice, hey Alice are you there?” A voice asked behind her, breaking the substance fueled trace that she’d found herself in.
“W-What?” Alice managed to stutter out. Wheeling around to face the source of the question she saw a fairly small and pale woman rocking a brunette bob cut, golden hoop earrings, black leggings, and one of the shirts handed out to those who went to last year’s party. A basic t-shirt with two black lines segmenting the shirt into four equal parts rings a different color; the bottom was green decorated with illustrations of trees and flowers, one was grey with clocks, another brown with mountains, and the top was silver. The section read in big black letters spelled Thank You Pentastros. Just below that layer she wore a simple white name tag; a single word scribbled on it, Michelle.
“Oh Michelle. I’m sorry about that, I must have zoned out for a second”, she laughed awkwardly; embarrassed that the head overseer for last year’s festival had watched her pick at a spot on her jeans for who knows how long.
“Honey”, she said in her usually sickly sweet voice; a ghost of a southern accent becoming slightly more noticeable as she talked “Are you okay? I’ve been looking around, seeing how you’ve been bouncing from working with one group to another and another and another, and I really have to recommend that you don’t stretch yourself so thin. I remember this one time during last years Pentastro’s festival we had-
She’d only had a few encounters With Michelle Burkley, and they all devolved into this. Her telling some long winded story about an event that happened during the last festival; the one where she’d been in charge. Without paying attention she could probably guess what it was about, some minor inconvenience that had come about under her watch, she had been told about it, then gave a relatively simple solution. She could easily say that she liked the woman. She was friendly enough to anyone in her proximity, a good confidant, and secret keeper oddly enough, but with the amount of stories she told, one could easily think that she loved hearing herself talk. And what would be a better brag than saying that you were the one responsible for several successful citywide celebrations.
“And then I told Danielle, ‘really dearie, no need to freak out, they're just cupcakes. I’ll just-’”.
“Michelle”, She cut in, intent on stopping her before she really got going, ”I appreciate the advice, I really do. I’m going home so I can change into something cleaner and more appropriate for the party. So could you possibly watch things for me. All you have to do is talk to the bands and help them get signed in”.
“You can count on me. Now, get going cuz honestly honey you look like a mess”. She said pushing me in the direction of the parking lot.
Maybe she was right. Maybe she had been pushing herself too hard. She’d gone from stand to stand lending aid to anyone who seemed like they needed it, and because of that she hadn’t been able to take much of a break. A rumbling stomach reminded her that she even missed lunch. Packing those thoughts away, Alice decided that she would have plenty of time to deal with those thoughts tomorrow.
‘Right now my focus is on getting changed’, Alice thought while climbing into the driver’s seat of my car.
…
The festival had been in full swing by the time she made it back to the park. LED rope lights strewn across the tops of trees and lanterns that hung from tree branches provided the main source of light between the stands.The lighting was just bright enough that you could make out your surroundings and the people around you without being blinding. That way those who wanted to gaze at the Evergreen Park’s natural beauty could do so undistracted. Letting out a long sigh, Alice allowed a small genuine smile to escape her lips. Judging by the noises she’d heard during her patrol it seemed as though everyone was having fun.
Thunderous stomps and claps emanated throughout the northwest side of the park as the Rose exhibits taught the gathering crowd techniques coined by the heroine simply called ‘ The Seven Naturalistic Dances’. Behind them clusters of vines twisted and rocked; mimicking each wave, swing, and slide as the dancer’s moved through the steps. As they weren’t lucky enough to have Rose’s agrokinesis, controlling the vines became far more tedious than usual, but they managed to cope by connecting a series of thin wires to some off screen puppeteers.
Lights flashed and flared throughout the northeastern section of the park. The crowd exclaimed as they stood fixated in a ring around the front of Damien Silver’s stands. The source of the excitement being the wrist mounted launchers attached to two of the demonstrators. They were a pair of brothers named Robert and Jack Miller, who were more than ecstatic to perform in front of the crowd. Each one had a flamethrower attached to their right arm and a cryo gun attached to their right. They stood 6 feet away from each other and were in the midst of a pseudo fight. Robert fired off a volley of lightning fast jabs resulting in a barrage of fire and ice barreling towards his brother. Jack however read the attack and initiated a handless cartwheel to dodge the barrage before throwing a single drawn out punch, sending a thick stream of fire hurtling towards his attacker. Utilizing a last second roll, he successfully dodged the blast, and followed up with a burst of liquid nitrogen directed at the other man’s legs, who hopped over it. Upon landing however, he slipped on the liquid nitrogen beneath him and slammed onto the unforgiving ground. Jack ran in, using controlled bursts of flame to close the distance within an instant before slamming an open palm onto the man’s chest.
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“Looks like I won this time.” He teased, a large toothy smile present on his lips.
“Yeah I guess you did”. The other man, struggling to contain the equally large smile plastered on his face.
It had been interesting getting in touch with the volunteers. The Miller brothers had run a kickboxing gym in the downtown district of Sivilgual Valley. They were widely known throughout the city as incredible fighters and their gym had birthed multiple professionals. Even with that in mind we didn’t dare use actual liquid nitrogen, while in this case the possibility of human error was minute, it was still present. Instead, they attached miniature canisters of colored dust to their bodies and fed a wire through an opening in the container to a pressurized air cannon attached to their wrist. Upon closer inspection the staged nature of the tool would be obvious but in the heat of the moment very few would truly notice. The flamethrower had been real but the Miller brothers wore flame retardant gear, and the fires only extended 4 feet from their respective launchers. So there was no real risk of injury.
The southeastern side by comparison was much quieter, not due to a lack of entertainment, rather because the lines leading to Tempra’s exhibits were filled with mild conversation amidst the screaming. Her exhibit had been the most challenging out of the five. There was no real way they could mimic her chronokinetic abilities, so they employed a more modern solution. It was no secret that a Pentastros video game had been in the works a few months prior to the festival. With a lack of better ideas she’d gotten in touch with the developers and arranged for them to present a demo to the public. It had been a type of physics engine. A virtual reality experience where the player would be put into the shoes of each member of Pentastros.
Tempra was the only playable character and each player had a time limit of five minutes where they could interact with the digitized backgrounds before it was the next person in line's turn. In those five minutes they had the ability to fully manipulate Tempra’s chronokinesis and utilize it to fight the various enemies they encountered. Whether it be dramatically slowing down the bullets from a basic gunman or altering the age of their environment to defeat big named villains like Thorn.
The final exhibit had surprisingly been the easiest for them to plan and set up. Instead of struggling to create a form of entertainment based around his ability, she’d decided to go a different route. There were clear connotations associated with the name Golem; brushing the religious ones aside the name, the name invoked thoughts of a single-minded and loyal monster, a creature born from the soil to defend its master. And in doing so would destroy all those who would attempt to harm them.
Golem’s section of the park was located in the southwest and littered with small pseudo rage rooms. The rage rooms consisted of 12x12 foot portable wooden rooms. A few large lanterns hung from the ceiling corners illuminating the spaces. Throughout the room there were large stacks of cheap merchandise they’d purchased from… sketchier websites at a relatively cheap price; Pentastros glass plates, cups, clocks, off brand artwork, just close enough to the heroes and villains they modeled to be discernible, were sketched on thin glass panes, wood cut-outs of ex-villians etc. The walls held mallets of various sizes; tools to assist in the destruction. Granted, based on the violent nature of the attraction children wouldn’t be allowed in there, and even teenagers would need to go in with someone who was provable 18 or older, but even with those restrictions in mind she was confident that this would be one of the more entertaining attractions.
It had been a monstrous almost insurmountable obstacle that she’d brought before herself. The entire city had been invited here and they all entrusted their evening to her. She’d had to account for so many different interests, tastes, and opinions. Some people preferred music to tranquil serenity that Evergreen naturally offered and vice versa. So in the center of the park held bands which would be constantly switching out throughout the night offering different fans different genres (hip-hop, alt rock, pop, heavy metal, etc), and the park was so large that it wouldn’t be a massive issue for those who liked quiet. The menu had been as diverse as she could have made; asking around popular restaurants and smaller family locations if they could spare some time and cook some specials along with at least one item that would be safe for those who dealt with a more common food allergy. It had almost been too much, but as she walked around and looked at a group of children as they ran past her laughing and smiling all the way, she knew it had been worth it.
When all of this is over, when the party ends, and when cleanup is finished; she’d have a long drink. But in the meantime someone would need to make sure that the children didn’t-.
She heard a soft, barely audible thud on her left, then another on her right, and another. Was it raining? In the coming week she’d check the weather for today religiously, and no matter where she went it every meteorologist said that it would be a clear sky. She raised her head towards the sky and her confusion doubled. There wasn’t a cloud anywhere. Then was someone throwing something? No, it didn’t seem like it, there was no one in her immediate vicinity and the only people she’d seen for the last few minutes were those kids and by now they were gone.
“Okay then”, she thought out loud, ”Maybe whatever this is is just being carried by the wind and that sound was because it just landed”.
It was a lie.
Turning towards her right, she knelt to examine the source of the sudden noise and she felt her eyes widen slightly. It was in the shape of an inkblot like the overly cartoonish ones you saw whenever someone spilled a liquid on tv. It was black and gleamed with a near impossible shine. It couldn’t be. Experimentally, she stood up and prodded at the blot with the tip of her shoe, pulled back her foot and watched as the material stretched. It was.
“What’s going on?” She couldn’t help herself from asking the statement aloud.
This situation was so strange. Where did this stain come from? Why did such a strange substance seemingly out of nowhere, once one her person when she was sure that she hadn’t come into contact with anything that it could have sprang from and again when no stands were anywhere near her.
With no warning a large crash rang out from somewhere close to her location, interrupting her train of thought and nearly causing her to tumble to the ground. She’d barely managed to keep herself upright, and when she knew that her footing was stable she gazed up at the source of the disturbance and her eyes grew large. Four giant pillars of lights shot up into the sky, one red, one blue, one yellow, and one white. The bursts of color originated from a grove of trees that weren't that far away from her. Against the wishes of Alice’s better judgment she’d found herself running in the direction of the lights.
She ran past clusters of trees using her phone as a source of lighting as she moved, intent on discovering the source of her immediate confusion, but as she continued the peculiarities she noticed became more and more discernible. The evergreen trees that had been vivid and lush less than an hour ago when she’d made her way around the grove were now immensely damaged. Their bark had been seared black with smoke seeping off of it, and random chunks were missing from each tree. Sharp translucent shards penetrated various trees, and broken fragments littered the ground. Scorch marks stained the stone pathway, and the charred corpses of the resident wildlife were scattered across it. But, the strangest sight was the black “ink” had congealed and formed crude constructs such as pillars, spikes, etc.
It took three minutes of continuous running to find the source of the light. Three minutes of confusion and speculation before she’d arrived, running possible scenarios through her head; an elaborate prank? Maybe, it wasn’t an impossibility given the number of power holders in the city, but who would have the time to pull all of this off and not be immediately spotted given the amount of people present? Plus Aegis had listed Tempra as the most powerful chronokinetic in Silvigual, and it didn’t seem like even she could do this. Before she had any more time to dwell on the issue, Alice had arrived.
Alice found the only possible source of the lights lying within a ruined crater where a grouping of trees should have been. She felt her body tense up in horror as she realized what she was looking at and what the lights had actually been, felt her blood run colder and colder the longer she looked, and uttered a loud, horrified scream.