The sky was full of endless permutations of Miles battling Bright, each more dramatic than the last. The now unusually well-muscled nerd cleverly sneaking up on the gloating alien standing smugly over a distressingly pathetic looking Chase before pouncing, stabbing the parasite oppressor with the light ribbon it had thrown aside earlier and completely forgotten about.

“That’s not what it actually looked like, right?” Chase whined, pointing to the scene in question. Tom patted his shoulder consolingly.

“It means your ambush plan was going well, right? I mean, who expects an ambush from someone who looks that utterly defeated?”

“Tom, your consoling skills need work.”

“Sorry bro.”

“Well I for one am glad it worked out this way.” Miles with a mustache said, confidently stepping into space where he definitely hadn’t existed a moment ago. “I did tell you I’d like to exist one day, didn’t I?”

“You!” Chase pointed.

“Me!” Mustache-Miles agreed, pointing to himself.

“You rescued me earlier! How the - what the - answers please!”

“Sure, sure.” Mustache-Miles chuckled. “Time travel’s somehow always a bridge too far, even when you’ve all been living in looped time for weeks now.”

“Time travel.” Ellie’s voice was weak, clearly still recovering from whatever fear trial Bright had put her through, but trying to soldier on nonetheless. “You are from the future?”

“Eh,” Miles waggled his hand. “Not as such. Future, past, present, they’re all a bit wrapped up with each other. Bright and the rest of their kind see time one way, we see it another, and when I got tangled up with that, well, it ended up with some weird compromises.”

“Why don’t you start from the beginning?” Jess encouraged, cradling her injured arm and leaning her head back on Chase’s chest.

“I just said time doesn’t really - oh, you mean from your perspective. Sure. So as you can see,” He gestured to the sky. “I broke out of reliving Neil’s death over and over and really needed to vent some rage at having to go through that again. Lucky for me, there was a nice acceptable target just begging to get taken down a peg. Unfortunately Chase was a little occupied so I settled for the next best thing.”

“Fuck you, man.” Chase said without heat. “Weird time perspective has changed you.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Mustache-Miles winked. “Anyway, I knew my fists weren’t gonna do much and I wanted it to count, but luckily Bright was pretty distracted by torturing Chase. Managed to crawl over and snag the pen with the ribbon, got it to wrap around itself a little bit since I still don’t know how the hell you handled it the way you did, Jess.”

“Rhythmic gymnastics is a hell of a drug.” Jess tiredly responded.

“At any rate, I got it to the point where I wasn’t gonna accidentally hit myself before I got a few good stabs in as Bright was doing their final taunting session. Waited until they were fully focused on Chase, then went for it. The rest is all of history happening all at once.”

Kayla raised an eyebrow. “Really? That’s all you’re giving us?”

“Of course not!” Mustache-Miles laughed. “How unsatisfying would that be? No, lucky for me the weapon worked and penetrated Bright’s essence, bad news for me it ended up hitting me too after a few good stabs. Weird news for everyone, that kind of essence mixing basically ended up with me and Bright melding and mashing parts of ourselves together. It’s a whole mess, still trying to get a handle on everything.”

“So, what, you’re part Bright now?” Tom asked, scratching his head.

“You have to tell us if you’re feeling megalomaniacal. Friends don’t let friends try to conquer the world.” Chase added.

Mustache-Miles laughed again. “Nah, but it is complicated. We’re like roommates now or something, sharing a lot of the same essence. Bright’s still around somewhere, probably grappling with the human moral code I smashed into their head. Gonna take them a good long while to reconcile their past actions with that.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“It is hard to believe you are the same Miles that we knew. You are so different.” Ellie said sadly.

Miles gave her a sympathetic look. “Don’t get mopey on me, princess Ellie. This is the best option we had, and I even got to be the hero! Granted, it’s a weird as hell origin story that would make for a niche comic book at best, but with the right writer it could probably become a cult classic.”

“There’s the Miles we know.” Kayla rolled her eyes and punched his shoulder affectionately. “Hell of a glow up, both figuratively and literally.” She pointed to his tattoos, glowing with their own inner light now.

Miles smiled. “It’s a nice effect, right? Neil would have gone crazy for it.” He paused for a moment, his smile turning wistful. “That’s how I won, you know? How I came out the dominant personality when melding with Bright like that. They operate on conceptual cores, and real dedication to a single one gives you strength. I swore I’d never let fear rule me again, for Neil’s sake, and that was stronger than anything Bright could muster up.”

Chase gave him a halfhearted glare. “You are totally stealing all my protagonist energy.”

Mustache-Miles waved a hand dismissively. “Take it up with your insurance.”

The group laughed and settled into a companionable silence, watching the sky continue to populate with various permutations of Miles and Bright alternately fighting and fusing with each other. After a few minutes Miles stood abruptly, slapping his thighs.

“Right! As much as I want to just hang out for a while, it’s probably time to get you all home.”

“Home?” Ellie asked hopefully. “As in, back to Earth?”

Miles grinned. “Little thing like that barrier can’t stop me now. Especially because it’s at least half mine now.”

“What about everyone else back at the lab?” Tom asked.

Miles’s grin grew brittle. “I’m gonna do everything I can for those who got infected, but most don’t have much if any of their original personality left. They’re dead every way but physically.”

“All those people…” Kayla trailed off and fixed Miles with a stern look. “You keep Bright on a short leash from now on, you got me?”

Miles snapped off a salute. “Ma’am, yes ma’am!”

Kayla huffed out a halfhearted “too young to be a ma’am” before embracing Miles. He had a brief deer in the headlights look, but melted into the hug soon enough. “You take care of yourself now, too.” She added softly.

A round of handshakes, hugs, and fist bumps followed as the group bid farewell to Miles. Chase went last as he fixed the tattooed man with a gimlet eye and declared he was only loaning Miles his protagonist energy, and it better be returned with interest.

Miles grinned. “You got it, dude. We couldn’t have done any of this without you.”

Chase blushed. “Don’t get all sincere on me now, you’ll ruin it.”

“I’m gonna miss you. Keep that pocket watch close when you get back. Echo’s helping me out with Bright and the lab situation for now, but they’ll find their way back to you soon enough.” Chase nodded, relieved. He’d been wondering where Echo had ended up in all the chaos.

“Right!” Miles clapped his hands. “I have no idea what it’s gonna be like when you guys get back. Phenomenal cosmic power only goes so far. It’ll at least be close to April 14th, though. Gonna have to go through all those temporal charges…” He trailed off, mumbling, until Tom cleared his throat.

“Hm? Oh, yeah. Linear time. This is gonna feel a bit odd, like when we got sucked in here but hopefully a little better controlled.”

“I didn’t hear you complaining at the time.” Jess huffed.

“Then you weren’t listening, that first bit in here really sucked.” A chorus of nods met this statement of objective fact. “Alright, please keep all arms and legs inside the dimensional portal at all times. Thank you for choosing Butler’s portals, not just a pretentious term for doors anymore.”

In a flash of white light, the five of them were standing at the edge of a perfectly spherical, unnaturally gray crater. Even the layer of water standing in the bottom of it had had the color leached out of it, leaving the entire scene dull and monochrome and almost grainy, like poor quality security footage. Chase’s pondering of the crater was abruptly cut off by the distinctive sound of a rifle being brought to bear.

“Hands in the air! No sudden movements!” The shouts came from multiple sources, and the five students were quick to comply, Chase wincing as his wounded arm didn’t quite have the full range of motion.

“Guys.” He said. “Just let me do the talking.”

Tom gave him a sidelong glance. “No offense, dude, but that sounds like a terrible idea.”

“I’d like to live through today.” Kayla agreed.

“You have done more than enough already, Chase.” Ellie deflected diplomatically.

Jess fixed him with a serious look. “You promised to meet my mom. Don’t go getting yourself shot trying to get out of it.”

“Jeez, where’s the trust?” Chase grumbled. “Bet if I still had my protagonist energy you’d all be agreeing with me.”

As who he assumed to be the police or national guard approached and began to cuff them, Chase couldn’t resist asking just one question.

“Hey, what’s the date today?”

The man putting on his cuffs gave him an odd look, but ultimately shrugged.

“April 16th, why?”

Chase merely grinned in response. They’d made it. They were home, and it finally wasn't April 14th.