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Chapter 14: White Collar

He could feel bad and mope around all he wanted some other time. Victor peeled himself off of the floor and took off in a sprint again, cursing the name of the gun store owner. He ran until he finally reached the autoshop again, where the mechanics looked as worn out as him.

Victor took a glance at their shoddy work and clicked his tongue. A Mustang ought to be treated better in his opinion but he didn’t care. The black tired installed were better than his old ones, and that’s all he needed.

Victor only offered the barest of byes to the men at the autoshop before taking off towards the pump. Again, many had his ideas and already were taking up the place, but Victor was persistent. He took into line and waited the whole hour in painful suspense. He couldn’t move, couldn’t concede his spot until the time was right.

And finally it came, he filled up the canisters and drove off quick as ever. The next location was perhaps the most important in his entire trip. Victor parked right in front of the Gilroy Gardens theme park. He walked inside, throwing money wherever he needed to and ran throughout the park searching.

If he’d played his cards right then…

Victor stopped, as a mascot walked in front of him. It was a walking piece of garlic with sunglasses on. He’d call it overly cheery now but a part of him wondered if that was due to the years of grime he’d suffered.

“Hey there, fella! What’s the rush!” Said the goofy creature. But even with the voice put on, Victor recognized the man underneath.

“Amadeus!” he shouted, hugging the man tightly. He kept that hug going even as people gathered around the place. Victor felt a pat on his back from costumed hands and heard an awkward chuckle.

“Well I like you too, buddy! But uh… how do you know my name? And who are you?” Amadeus asked while waving at the onlookers.

“We need to talk, Am. Can you get out of that suit first?” Victor told him.

“During work hours? No can do, sir!” Amadeus said with a flourish.

“What if I told you the children were in danger?” Victor asked with a straight face. All the exaggeration faded from the man’s movements and he only single word.

“How?”

Amadeus took his sweet time taking the costume off while Victor waited. Each second was an hour, and the ticking of the Timewalker’s Origin only made it sound longer.

When Amadeus came out, he was still the gap-toothed idiot Victor remembered. Though he’d forgotten how much they’d grown in the meantime. The Am he knew in the future kept his hair cut short and had smile marks coming in around his face. It made Victor touch his own face inadvertently in response.

“What did you mean by the kids? And seriously, who are you?” Amadeus asked, confused.

“You need to come with me. Something horrible is about to happen. We know each other, but I don’t have the time t-”

“Horrible like what? And you haven’t told me your name,” Amadeus said, more than a little suspicious.

“I’m Victor. We know each other in the future.”

“The future?”

He stopped himself from shouting. Victor opened his mouth to explain, but a scream cut him off.

A scream that was followed by the buzzing of wings he knew all too well. No…

The skies filled with Vintarics, ones that Victor knew all too well from his previous life. They blotted out the sun and dived down, and all Victor could do was clutch his hands. No powers, no weapons and nothing on his body to save him.

Dogs barked at the monsters but were snuffed out quickly. Men and women ran with their children and chaos erupted all across the park.

“What the…” Amadeus said in disbelief.

“Look carefully, Amadeus Levine. This is the ruin I was warning you about. Happy now?”

Amadeus looked shaken by the monsters. His body was frozen like a deer in headlights.

“I’ve got a car parked outside. We’ll take that!” Victor grabbed onto his shoulders, urging him.

“…Isabelle. I need to find her first. And maybe some of the others too, if I can!” Amadeus replied.

Isabelle? It had been years since he’d even thought of the woman. So much so that he’d forgotten her face entirely.

“Am, we don’t have time! Look around you, does it look like I can save everyone?” Victor asked.

“If you really do know me, please help me!” Amadeus begged. Victor grunted in anger. Couldn’t it have been simpler? He just wanted his best friend with him before he left. In that moment Victor wanted to leave even Amadeus behind. After all, his was the most important life there.

He could live out the ten years, come back with a different plan for them both. But something in the pleading of his friend’s voice stopped him. Amadeus had been the only thing to get him through the years of worry he spent in thought of his family.

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He’d stuck by despite everything Victor had ordered him to do. And that meant a debt was owed, unchained by time.

“Fine. But just Izzy,” Victor told him. He and Amadeus grabbed blades and a taser from the lost and found section of the employee offices and ran back out armed to the teeth.

The first Vintaric that came for them growled with spit in its mouth. It looked emaciated, so Victor ducked under its piercer and stabbed it right in the eye. Powers or no, he still had years of experience fighting the damn things.

Some of it might’ve been habits he’d have to unlearn before getting his strength back, but other knowledge persisted. A second one came from behind and Amadeus launched the taser. It distracted the Vintaric long enough for Victor to slit open its throat.

A short bloody path was carved through the park until Victor and Amadeus made it to the other end, where there was a group of survivors barricaded behind a few stands. Security guards stood inside with their guns up, shooting shots at the approaching Vintarics.

“Izzy’s in there, we have to help them!” Amadeus told him.

Of course she was. Victor looked around for anything he could use against the mindless bug monsters until he finally happened to glance at a speaker. That’ll do.

“Am, make a park announcement. It should buy us some time to spread the survivors around!” Victor told him.

Amadeus rushed away towards one of the speakers while Victor took to a corpse beside him. Sorry about this. But I’ll need it more than you ever could. He grabbed the gun off of the body and fired off a few shots at an approaching Vintaric. The bug went down but the sound of the bullet attracted more towards him.

Though the bugs were strong, they weren’t smart. He shot a few of them out of the air while the others landed beside him. He stabbed those before they could rush in. The bugs didn’t expect someone to be so callous, so the moment of panic served as his opening. Victor took more of them down until a small pile formed around him. He clicked his gun at another Vintaric, but found the clip empty.

He instinctively tried to materialize more ammo, only to come up short. Damn it to hell! He threw the gun in the monster’s face and stabbed his knife into its head. Annoyingly, it didn’t die, only took off into the air in a frenzied flight.

It left him a moment to breathe, where Victor looked around at the bodies around him and grunted once more. There was only a single Seed materialized on the ground, one that looked like a crystallized lightning bolt. Victor took it and scooped it into his jacket, because he knew who it was for.

At the same time, Victor heard something over the speaker, garbled and filled with static.

“Attention everyone! Please evacuate the parks immediately. There are dangerous monsters roaming the park as we speak. Stick to groups, hide inside buildings, and find whatever you can to defend yourselves!” Amadeus announced to the group.

He then got to playing an annoying tune over the speakers, one that pinched his ears. it was a Katy Pery song that took the bug’s attentions away from the park-goers.

Victor took that opportunity to rush over to the barricaded survivors, climbing over stalls that had suspiciously deep cuts in them. as if someone had taken a large cleaver and slashed into the defences.

Some of the people on the other side were injured, with gashes deeper than the ones outside. Others cowered and wept. Only a single one among them looked composed. Green blood tainted a white collar shirt and deep maroon tie. The Asian-american man looked up at Victor and glanced back down at the creature below him. Victor saw something glowing sink into the man’s skin for a split second before it disappeared.

“You, have you come to save us?” the man asked in a respectful tone.

“Y-yeah,” Victor replied hesitantly. He scanned over the crowd and winced at the sight he found. Isabelle was laid down on her back, a cut across her neck that had bled out only moments ago. How… it had only been hours into the Fall, so how could he have made it even worse than before?

“You there,” Victor asked the man who had absorbed a Seed.

“Yes?”

“You’ve taken in something into your body. Can you feel it?” Victor asked. Slowly, the man nodded.

“Good. Learn how to wield it, and quickly. We’re going to need to guide these people out of here,” Victor told him, climbing on top of the barricade.

“Listen to me! If you stay here, you’ll die, that’s a fact. Come along with me and I’ll take you out, then you can go wherever you please. But if you want to survive getting out of this park, you’ll have to stick close to me, understood?” He shouted out over the crowd. Some of the survivors remained catatonic, but they could be assisted. No one raised an objection to Victor, so he jumped down and towards the exit of the park.

“Good, then! Follow me!”

Steadily, the group began to follow Victor’s lead. The strong were on the outskirts while the weak and unwilling stayed inside the circular formation. They fashioned spears out of the dead Vintarics and their piercers, something Victor approved of.

When the bugs got close, those with ammo would fire to scare them off. When they’d land, the spears would poke at them till they left. And in the middle of it all, the Asian-american man that Victor had spoken to worked on his abilities. He couldn’t very well except him to get it in the scant few minutes they had, but it was a hope at least.

At last they made it to the entrance, but there were Vintarics still waiting for them. Even some of the Mariticide Hives members were there, with their mantis-like claws and triangular heads.

They were swarming around a small station beside the entrance, where Amadeus was.

“Am!” Victor shouted for him. the bugs were crushing the glass and squeezing past each other to get inside. But once they heard Victor’s screams, their eyes turned towards him and his group.

The bugs screamed and took to the air, leaving space between him and Amadeus.

“Take this!” Victor shouted for Amadeus. He threw the Crystallized Lightning right at Am’s face. Amadeus caught it with a confused look, until he grew transfixed with it.

Victor’s words worked, as he absorbed the Seed a moment later. Victor smiled, but that was quickly left once he realized a Vintaric was gunning for him. Victor raised his arms to brace against the tackle, but he needn’t have bothered.

He heard the sound of wind cutting and a Vintaric barely missing his body. Victor opened his eyes and looked at the corpse, finding the same slashes down its cracked open head. He glanced backwards, where the Asian-american man was standing panting.

But he couldn’t savour the victory for long. More of the Vintarics were coming down, and Victor had to do carve a path through them.

“We can’t leave unless we kill these monsters! If you’re angry, use it! If you’re scared, use it! We will not die here!” Victor shouted with a fist to the air. The others beside him followed suit, and Amadeus joined in as well.

The Vintarics flew down and tried to take people into the skies. Spears poked at them and slashes went flying towards their bodies. A few lightning bolts even fired off from Amadeus’ direction, bolstering the confidence of the people there.

Men screamed as they mauled the Vintarics, a few Seeds even popping from their corpses. And with every passing moment their victory became more assured.

When the last Vintaric fled from the scene, it flew away alone. The rest of its comrades were on the ground, dead or dying at the hands of green soaked soldiers. Victor was panting as well, but he was glad, because they’d finally made it out.