Recess.
Chaos of the most egregious kind.
Rose McCarter was beset by an excruciating awareness of every nearby noise and movement, her mind akin to a tuning fork in a washing machine. Though the lack of an amplifying collar dulled her psychic senses, the sheer quantity of stimuli still served to give her a feeling not unlike a persistent migraine.
She wondered how Gold was able to thrive in this environment without going mad. The most likely answer is that he already had – stood upon a desk, showing off swordfighting moves with a broom to a crowd of enraptured onlookers. He was remarkably good at making himself the centre of social attention, performing daring stunts or regaling the other children with the tales of his squad’s deadly missions.
Navy was quite the opposite, sequestering himself off in a corner and either poring over the lesson materials or meditating. He was making his boundaries abundantly clear, yet it was to those brave few who dared to overstep them that he conceded the honour of making his acquaintance. Rose knew him well enough to know that he secretly appreciated it.
She wasn’t outright unsociable herself, but she found that most of her peers couldn’t provide any meaningful company. She and her siblings were different – a fact she had to be aware of if she hoped to obtain any semblance of a ‘normal’ life. Luckily, some of the other children apparently found said fact attractive rather than repulsive, which is how Rose and Lime obtained a few genuine friendships.
But where there are friends, there are also enemies. The last girl who tried to put bubblegum in Lime’s hair ended up with broken fingers – Rose made sure of it. As it then turned out, being a war hero and the daughter of a war hero allowed her a certain amount of sweep-under-the-rug privileges.
And that’s how everyone learned not to mess with the McCarters.
As Rose stared at her textbook with the intensity of someone who hopes to spontaneously develop the power of shooting lasers out of their eyes, she found herself missing Allister’s lectures. He was strict, but never unfair; demanding, but never beyond her capabilities. It was a bittersweet reminiscence, but remembering the plan she and the others had recently concocted made her smile once again.
Very soon, she wouldn’t need to reminisce any longer.
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Allister was alone.
He sat at an empty dinner table, the sole occupant of a house meant for a family, drinking tea with the vain hope that the four spoonfuls of sugar he had put into it would lift his mood by even a fraction. The grim silence occupying the Ford household was ironically disquieting – his mind was hard at work filling in the blanks with painful memories and eternal regrets.
With the crisis over, what little merit his existence still possessed had suddenly evaporated. He was a remnant of a bygone time, nothing more than a hollow echo that lingered out of sheer cowardice. He was not the kind of person they make medals for, he was not his brother in all the ways that would have mattered. He was not a hero – he was the villain of a story penned by his own hand.
And with the final chapter complete, the real heroes had no more use for him.
At least, that was what he thought until the seldom-used doorbell startled him with its two-note melody. Some indiscernible impulse compelled him to scramble out of his chair and rush for the entrance – a vain hope, perhaps, one he was already halfway through talking himself out of it by the time he opened the door. Yet what he saw on the other side was everything he could’ve ever dared to expect and so much more.
“Hi, Mr. Ford!”
It was the Stargazers– no, the McCarter siblings, clustered at the doorstep, looking up at him with expressions of longing and excitement. Navy was carrying a nondescript duffel bag with him, but this detail was the least of Allister’s concerns. He was completely and utterly stunned, wondering if this was some kind of hallucination, incapable of even opening his mouth and forming words. As the seconds of awkward silence dragged on, he was nowhere closer to actually doing something.
“Um, may we come in?” queried Rose, feeling somewhat anxious at this point.
“A-ah, of course, of course!” exclaimed the scientist with a shrill, slightly desperate tone, finally forced out of his stupor. “I, er, I wasn’t expecting guests! It’s a mess in here, I– It’s just such a surprise, you see!..”
Allister ushered them all in, silently hoping that whatever expression currently occupied his face could even remotely pass as a welcoming smile. He was most certainly no longer in control of it. The crucial question of why in the name of the crescent moon they were visiting him in the first place was relegated in favour of rushing for the kitchen in a hyperactive frenzy, preparing four cups of tea at the pace of someone trying to outrun a heart attack.
He felt he wasn’t quite far from it, anyway.
The next few minutes were a blur, at the end of which was an image Allister hardly could have imagined in his wildest dreams – the four children sat at his dinner table, sipping tea and gazing at him with intense curiosity. Their father was nowhere to be seen. This was their idea.
“So…” he began tentatively, then transitioned into the closest he could get to a diplomatically neutral tone. “If I may inquire, why have you decided to pay me a visit?”
“Well, I can think of a few reasons,” answered Rose, seemingly trying to steel herself for something. “For one, we… we’ve heard about what happened to your brother.”
The sting of memory was muted, like poking a needle through pure scar tissue. Still, he felt his cordial smile evaporating in favour of a more honest representation of his current mood.
“It must be really hard for you,” said Lime with empathy so pure it almost burned him.
“We thought it would be rather ungrateful to abandon you after everything you’ve done for us,” continued Navy.
“We just want you to know you’re not alone, y’know?” concluded Gold.
Allister was once again confounded. He simply could not understand how these children, with their happy and loving family, would desire the company of him. He was never their friend, he was never a parental figure. He was their Master, and nothing more. So why?..
“You’ve never talked about him before,” said Rose. “If you don’t mind… could you tell us what he was like?”
Though the scientist was reluctant to take another dive into his past, he couldn’t help but acquiesce to this innocent request. As he began reminiscing, the waters of memory turned out to be not quite as suffocating as before.
“Acacius was… well, he was brave, and valiant, and strong, but most of all he was so kind. He was always looking out for me, he always supported me, and he never let me feel like I was the lesser of us two. Really, he was everything I could ever ask for.”
The children listened attentively to Allister. As he recalled the image of his brother, a fond smile slowly formed on his face. Though his eyes wandered, they could see a certain glint of life returning to them.
“Still, I wanted to be more like him. I asked him to teach me swordsmanship, and he did.” A warm chuckle. “I still don’t know how he pulled that off. I suppose he was just a really good teacher… though it didn’t matter much in the end.”
Allister’s positive demeanour vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. He had strayed too deep.
“Ultimately, he was the soldier, and I was the scientist. That’s how it was meant to be. When the crisis began, he went to the frontline and I went to a laboratory. I was constantly worried about him, I wanted to do everything I possibly could to repay all that he’d done for me. But… it just wasn’t enough.
“We had working prototypes in a matter of months, we even began limited human testing, but I knew that it would be years before any of this tech would be safe and reliable enough for me to graft it onto my own brother. And yet… by some twisted turn of fate…”
The memories rolled like an avalanche, woven into a tale he couldn’t stop telling even as his voice began trembling.
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“I remember hearing the news. He had been wounded in combat. Mortally. They said he only had hours left to live. It was then that I made the biggest mistake of my life. I was desperate, I couldn’t accept the fact that everything I’d created was too little and too late, so I had him delivered to my lab, a-and I… I…” A choked sob. “I began to work.”
Visions of a terrible night came to him, almost as vivid as reality. They were horrifying enough to prevent him from crying.
“I don’t remember much of it, really, just images. I was in a daze. By the time I was finished, whatever I had on my operating table… it wasn’t my brother anymore. There was no intelligence or recognition in its eyes. It was a beast. But… but it listened. It obeyed me. I didn’t know what else to do, so I trained it, taught it to attack Sparkwielders, and had it deployed into combat. The results were… ‘excellent’.” The last word was said with disgust and derision.
He paused to glance at the children’s expressions, expecting them to be horrified. Instead, they were empathetic and solemn. There was no pity.
“The Meister-General wanted me to make more like it. And I tried to, I really did. But no matter what methods I used, not a single one of them was as effective as the Hawk. They were never quite as vicious, quite as persistent, quite as controllable. I still don’t know why. Maybe… maybe he was just special. H-he… he was always special.”
Allister fell silent, awaiting their response to this damnable confession. They needed to know the truth. They needed to know that he was an irredeemable monster, they needed to understand that he was not someone worth worrying about. If they knew what’s best for them, they would leave and never return. He did not deserve so much as a minute of their company.
But what happened next managed to utterly shatter his expectations yet again. The children stood up with indecipherable expressions on their faces, surrounded him, and hugged him. All four of them. At the same time.
“I-I… you… y-you shouldn’t–”
“Shush,” said Rose. “You have no idea how long we wanted to do this.”
Failing to find any semblance of logic or reason to the situation, the scientist resigned to it. Though it felt astoundingly selfish, he embraced them all back – as well as he could with only one pair of arms to spare, anyway.
“You’re not a bad person, Mr. Ford,” said Navy with the tone of someone who won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, “and we’ll tell you that every day until you understand it if we have to.”
“J-just… just call me Allister, will you?..” he managed to say even as a choking sensation formed in his throat.
“Okay,” they said in perfect unison.
And then he realized that he was crying.
Alas, this idyllic moment could not go on forever. The McCarters returned to their seats, allowing him some respite to process the chaotic storm of thoughts and emotions running through his mind. He wasn’t sure he managed to make any sense of it all, but he was in a surprisingly good mood nonetheless.
“I… I do very much appreciate you all coming here,” he finally said. “You’ll always be welcome in my home – it’s the least I can do.”
“There’s something else, though,” corrected Gold. “Do you still have your sword?”
This question, uttered so casually, almost forced Allister into another stupor.
“Er, yes?”
Without skipping a beat, Navy dumped his duffel bag onto the dinner table and unzipped it, revealing the Stargazers’ blades – all eight of them, no less.
“Could you please spar with us, Allister?” asked Rose with an innocent pleading tone. “You’re the only one we can ask.”
There was passion and anticipation in their eyes, all directed at him. It made him remember the day he first met them – bereft of hope, of happiness, of childhood joy and innocence. Seeing them as they are now, so full of life and excitement… as strange as it was, it made him feel proud of them.
“Very well,” he said with a playfully menacing smirk. “Let us see if you still remember all that I’ve taught you.”
In a way, they were still his disciples, and he was still their master.
And maybe that wasn’t so bad after all.
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It was a cold day, autumn bleeding into winter as the last leaves parted with their branches and joined the dry reddish-orange carpet that coated the ground. The Royal Park was all but ready for its annual long slumber. It was not particularly hospitable to visitors in this precarious interim, and even if there were any, they would hardly think to cast their gaze upwards and find two Sparkwielders sitting on a thick branch high upon a great oak tree.
Erika Kayleigh and Victor Heimdall had chosen this impromptu bench for several reasons – one, it gave a great overview of the entire Park; two, it conferred a sense of privacy; and three, it just seemed like a fun idea.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” asked Erika as she looked down onto the winding footpaths and quaint little meadows.
“Indeed,” replied Victor, though he wasn’t actually looking at any of that. “Erika… I feel that something is weighing on your mind. Is it work again?”
“Astute as always,” said the healer with a deflective tone. “It’s nothing I can’t handle. I’ve been a medic before the crisis, I can be a medic after it.”
“Are you sure?” he asked with a tone of such genuine worry that it made Erika squirm with awkwardness.
“I– I’d like to think so, at least. I’m fine, it’s just… it’s so hard to get people to trust me, sometimes. I’m trying as hard as I can, because I need to, because we’re all part of this… this big thing, and I feel responsible for it, but… but it’s so much to handle.”
“You truly are the kindest person I’ve ever met,” mused Victor as his hand found hers and held it with a gentle grip. “Don’t forget that you’re not alone. You don’t have to overexert yourself. Me and the others, we’ll always be here to support you. We’re all in this together.”
“Still… you have bigger problems, don’t you? I’m just a medic, and you’re the leader of an entire Sparkwielder community. Are my concerns really worth such attention?”
“Don’t belittle yourself, Erika. As much as I am responsible for all those people, I am responsible for you as well. That is my duty, and as difficult as it can be in these times, I bear it with pride. Besides, after what happened on that day… you will always be my highest priority.”
Erika finally met Victor’s gaze – it was overflowing with empathy and affection. She found herself smiling again. With a little sigh of relief, she leaned on the man’s shoulder.
“You always seem to know the right thing to say. Thanks.”
Her expression was peaceful and her eyes were closed – which worked well for Victor as he was trying to conceal the newfound blush on his face. And then she snuggled up even closer to him, which did not help.
After a few seconds of being about as rigid as the tree itself, he resigned to the flow of the moment and wrapped his arm around her. For warmth. Yes, certainly just for warmth. The fact that Sparkwielders could summon inner heat and were therefore immune to cold was not relevant whatsoever.
And then something in his mind went click and everything became clear.
“Erika?” he called with an almost-whisper.
“Yeah?” she asked, looking up at him curiously with her beautiful emerald green eyes, the two of them so close together they could feel each other’s breath and heartbeat.
“Can I kiss you?”
She chuckled, as if she has been awaiting that question for a long, long time.
“Sure.”
And so he did.
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“In the name of the Sun Goddess, Lord of all that is under Her scorching light, I order you to yield! If you accept Her dominion, your lives shall be spared!”
The booming voice of the Sparkwielder echoed across the smouldering ruins of what was once the capital city of the Garprian Republic. He was one of the Goddess’ elite retinue, granted a fraction of Her monstrous power to assert Her will over all those who would dare to disobey.
But the people of the Isle of Garpri were not willing to crack so easily, not even under the threat of a god manifest. They took up their rifles and fought against the invaders, fought against their own kin – brainwashed and indoctrinated into the Cult of the Sun – even as Her solar emissaries proved to be functionally invulnerable to all forms of damage.
But the Garprians were not alone.
A pair of cold ashen eyes watched from a vantage point, concealed to all but the most thorough of examinations. She waited for the emissary to become absorbed in his gloating, to let down his guard knowing that no weapon or projectile in the entirety of the Snake Isles could go through his shield, to lose himself in the fantasy of serving a true God to the point that he forgot a fundamental truth – Sparkwielders are not immortal.
Quickstep across the air, silent as a floating feather yet as quick as a bird of prey, weapon at the ready, and… strike. The Sparkwielder found himself pierced from behind by a blade of pure energy, blood gushing out of the wound where there should have been golden ichor. Then, with one practised motion, the sword sliced off his head. He would speak the Goddess’ words no more.
The resistance fighters peeked cautiously out of their hiding spots, finding a new levitating being where seconds ago there was another. This one bore no light, as if it were a regular human being held up by invisible strings. The sword wielded in her hand was grey and glimmered like true steel, only a slight fuzziness at the edges betraying its non-physical nature.
She vanished as suddenly as she had appeared, but they cheered nonetheless. They knew the Ghost would watch over them, giving them hope that the inhuman conquerors from the far north could be repelled.
As long as she lived, the fight would continue.