Monommy
Chapter 133: Divided
“Kai, could you run over to the street real quick and grab the Monommy Machine Kane threw away?” asked Cobb.
“Uh, yeah, sure,” said Kai before running off to grab it. He didn’t want to be exposed out in the open for any longer than he needed to, rightfully scared of the inherently dangerous nature of the changing world.
The screen was damaged from when Kane threw it, and from between the cracks, a deep red mucous oozed out.
Being careful not to let any get on his hands, Kai returned to the helicopter, where Erin and Tiffany were seated waiting for him to return.
Kai handed the broken MM to Cobb, who placed it in a fluorescent yellow plastic container donning the biohazard symbol, alongside a series of other warnings and danger signs, many of which Kai had never seen before, not even during his time on this version of Earth.
“Thanks for doing that. You didn’t get any of that goop on you, right?” asked Cobb.
“No,” said Kai, shaking his head.
“Hop in then, let’s get going.”
Kai sat down next to his Monommy partner Prismatmy, who was sat kicking her large crystal boots in the air above the helicopter’s floor.
“What’s up with that MM anyways?” Prismatmy inquired as Kai sat down. “It’s different from Kai’s.”
Kai pulled the small device out of his jacket pocket and stared at it, fiddling with the buttons and looking at Prismatmy’s guide entry. According to the guide, Prismatmy’s Drop was only to be available in the Lightspeed version of the game. Kai, having never played or even heard of Monommy prior to the emergence, barely understood what that meant. Where Kai was from, there were similar games with multiple versions, but nothing exactly like Monommy.
“It was one of Twin Star’s first attempts at understanding real world Monommy,” Cobb explained, “We thought that by exposing various Monommy merchandise to anomalous wavelengths, we’d be able to control the anomalies somehow. We never got anywhere with that experiment so we threw it out. Kane’s father was an accountant working at Site D. He must have brought it home with him to sell it or give it to his kid or god knows what. Probably thought it was a toy. Not that I could blame the guy, before the emergence it was just a toy.”
“From what I heard I doubt it was a gift,” said Kai, “Kane and I have shitty dads in common.”
“Kids like you remind me that I need to do everything I can to be a good parent. I know I haven’t been the last few years,” Cobb looked down.
“She appreciates you making the change, man,” Kai assured Cobb, patting him on the knee. “I am 22 years old by the way. Not a kid.”
“You’re a kid till you’re 39 and freaking out over turning 40,” said Cobb with a smirk.
“Speaking of dads, oh my god, that Glenn guy is like a cartoon,” Erin exclaimed, “Like I thought from what we were told that Ember was exaggerating but if anything she undersold his dadliness.”
Cobb chuckled. “He seems a good man. A bit eccentric.”
“A bit?!”
The conversation dwindled down as the flight went on, until everybody aboard the helicopter went completely silent, staring down at the ravaged world.
Destroyed and toppled buildings were almost a pleasant sight compared to the masses of pulsing flesh that permeated the very earth. Cracks in the ground framed rows upon rows of bloody, disfigured teeth the size of cars. Muscular, torn tendrils seemed to be growing out of any crevice one couldn’t see into. Some areas were ravaged by interspersed vacuum pockets, the victims of which were still suspended silently floating mere feet from the ground. What once would be marked off by warning signs and caution tape was now almost as common as a tree on a street corner.
Tiffany held tightly onto Magicimy’s hand. Although her head and body were up front with the pilot, Magicimy always kept a few hands free if Tiff needed them.
Tiffany was chosen for this mission specifically because of her partner Magicimy’s ability to see thirty seconds into the future. Usually Magicimy uses this ability to predict what someone is about to say as part of her magic shows, but on this helicopter, she was using it to warn the pilot about vacuum pockets in the sky.
If the helicopter were to enter a vacuum pocket, it wouldn’t be able to stay in flight, and surely crash. Cobb had been flying around with Tiffany and Magicimy for days at this point, and Tiffany was really sick of it.
Erin held the blue Hobgobmy on her lap while the red and green ones Hobgobmy sat between her feet. Erin always looked like an exhausted mother of three with her rambunctious Monommy partner.
“Red, stop kicking Green,” she groaned. The red Hobgobmy turned her head quickly and looked at Erin with an annoyed expression.
“You were kicking her, don’t pull that with me,” said Erin sternly. She had seen that look before. The red Hobgobmy rolled her eyes.
“I saw that.”
Kai looked over at Prismatmy, who was still sat patiently, her arms in her lap, looking out the window. He was thankful that his Monommy partner had only the one body, and a well behaved one at that.
“We’ll be there in about an hour,” said Cobb. “Before we land, you all need to get changed into these.”
Cobb pulled a bag out from under his seat. Kai and Erin understood the thought and got theirs out from under their seats as well.
“Radiation suits?!” Kai asked in a panic. “What the hell happened here?”
Cobb sighed. “Earlier today I received a report from another group that splintered off of Twin Star. Notably they refused to cooperate when I asked them to join our cause, now they want our help.”
A striking, horrifying thought struck the group’s minds as Cobb thought it.
“A nuke?”
“Please understand that I wouldn’t have approved the detonation of a nuclear warhead,” Cobb said quickly. “Although the idea’s been brought up a lot…”
“So this other Twin Star splinter nuked a city?” Erin asked, horrified at the very concept. As if the world wasn’t dangerous enough.
“I don’t even understand how, I had thought Caulfield decommissioned everything when the world’s governments handed over their resources to Twin Star. I guess she kept a personal stash,” said Cobb. “I wasn’t high ranked enough to be allowed to know, I suppose. When I discussed it with Lane he was just as shocked as me. Not even the project leads knew, I guess.”
“What’s a radiation suit for?” Prismatmy asked, tilting her head.
“Protecting the human body from radiation. It’s deadly stuff,” said Cobb, waving his hand in the air. “It’s invisible and in the air, but can kill.”
“What about us?” asked the blue Hobgobmy.
“There’s no research on the effects of radiation on Monommy. The four of you will stay behind with Tiffany, Magicimy, and the pilot,” said Cobb.
Prismatmy shook her head, “I’m going in too.”
“We’re tougher than that, we ain’t wimping out!” declared the blue Hobgobmy.
Once she had read their lips, the green Hobgobmy shouted, “Yeah!” The red Hobgobmy tightened her fist and punched her palm.
“You could die, we can’t let you go,” said Erin, “It’s too dangerous and radiation is not a pleasant way to die.”
“I don’t even want to go in there WITH a suit,” Kai remarked.
“We have to,” said Cobb. “There’s still survivors that need our help. The Monommy can come if they really want, but I advice that you turn back the moment the geiger counter starts to go off.”
Kai sighed, and got up to put on the suit. This was going to suck.
Cobb held the geiger counter up, keeping it in his vision at all times as the group emerged from the helicopter. It remained silent.
As they progressed onwards, Kai began to notice something peculiar.
“Haven’t seen any anomalies for a while,” he remarked. “Why is this place so normal?”
“I don’t know but the geiger counter still hasn’t ticked once,” said Cobb. “I’m beginning to think the coordinates we received were wrong.”
“Yeah, I figured there’d be less trees,” said Erin. “Considering the whole nuclear blast thing.”
“We’re almost at the exact coordinates I was given. This isn’t right,” said Cobb.
“Did we waste our time coming out here, or..?” asked Kai.
As if to answer him, they could suddenly hear rushed footsteps. Erin and Kai immediately got into defensive positions, and the Hobgobmy got on one another’s shoulders.
“Agent Cobb is that you?!” shouted a voice from afar. As the figure approached, Cobb began to recognize who it was.
“David?” asked Cobb, finally letting his arm holding the geiger counter drop to his side.
David ran up to the group, panting heavily. He collapsed to his knees and breathed heavily.
“What happened here, Dave?” asked Cobb.
“One… second… please…” said David between breaths.
“Who is this guy?” asked Kai.
“David Sprague, he was stationed at Site C,” Cobb explained. “We were on asset evaluation together.”
“Yeah,” said David as he caught his breath and got to his feet, “It’s been a while, Mason.”
“It has. You mind telling me what’s going on here? I got a call about one of the splinters firing a nuclear warhead to kill an anomaly. They gave coordinates for this spot.”
Kai opened his mouth to speak but Erin caught wind of the thought already and got ahead of him.
“Why aren’t you wearing any radiation protection?”
“I did hear about the nuke,” said David. “Horrible idea. It wasn’t us, but we did send a distress signal. Maybe something got mixed up.”
All of the humans had the same thought at that moment. Whoever made the report about the nuclear bomb must have had the distress signal go through their mind at the same time. It was becoming harder and harder to differentiate between one’s own thoughts and those from others’ minds. Pacted monomasters seemed to have better luck with keeping their minds closed off.
“I should probably form a pact if it’s possible, huh?” asked Cobb.
“It certainly helped me,” David replied.
“You have a Monommy partner now?” asked Cobb.
“Yeah,” said David, reaching into his coat’s inner pocket. He pulled out his wallet and out of it slid out a flat paper-like Monommy. Erin recognized it as Pagemy, and with her knowledge of Monommy spreading to the minds of Cobb and Kai, now they recognized her too.
“Hi!” said Pagemy with a smile.
“We’ve only been partnered for a few days now,” said David, tucking Pagemy back in to his wallet. “I keep her fragile body safe and she keeps my fragile mind safe, hahaha.”
“What was your distress signal about?” Cobb asked, growing impatient.
“We need to get to the base right now,” said David, suddenly taking on a more serious tone. “One of our men turned.”
“What do you mean turned?” asked Cobb.
“I’ll explain on the way,” said David, turning to walk back the way he came. The others followed him.
“So there’s no radiation?” asked Erin.
“Apparently the nuke was somewhere else, so yeah.”
“Our guys are held up back at the base,” David explained, “Some of us were able to escape to the higher floors, and I set out to find help. I sent out a distress signal with my radio and was so relieved when you responded, Cobb. I would’ve stayed and fought, but Pagemy hasn’t had the opportunity to teach me much in terms of magic.”
Kai took off the helmet of his radiation suit. No sense in limiting vision if there’s nothing it’s protecting from.
David continued, “One of our soldiers just started convulsing out of nowhere, screaming and thrashing around on the floor. We managed to get people away from him when he transformed, but…”
“Transformed?”
“Yeah… Like Caulfield. But this guy had zero contact with any anomalies. As you can see, there’s barely anything out here. I don’t know why it happened, but suddenly his back just… exploded. The only reason he stopped screaming is that his mouth sealed shut.”
David started looking around erratically.
“You okay man?” asked Kai.
David started breathing faster and faster. In between panicked breaths, he said, “I don’t want to go back. I don’t-“
Pagemy slipped out from his pocket and wrapped herself around David’s head, gently caressing him.
“It’ll be okay,” she said, “The story isn’t over. Now’s your turn to be the hero.”
David calmed down slightly and put on a determined face. “it’s just over that hill.”
A sense of dread filled their minds as they approached the entrance to the base. A faded and rusting Twin Star logo featured prominently on the dilapidated steel and concrete wall above the doors.
“I’m not familiar with this facility,” Cobb admitted.
“It was abandoned even before Monommy started showing up,” David explained. “I’m not sure what it was used for but it’s nothing like the facilities you and I are used to. No fancy tech or anything.”
“I see.”
Kai looked through the window, but the lights were off, and he couldn’t see anything.
“So… where is everybody?” asked Kai. He was starting to feel suspicious of the circumstances. Everyone could feel it.
“You’re right to feel suspicious,” said David. “Anything could have happened in the time it took to find you folks. When I left, the others who escaped with me were lying low, but that thing was fast and vicious… So be prepared in case it… found them. As soon as that door opens, be ready to fight.”
David pushed a few buttons on the panel next to the door, and the doors began to slowly open.
“Split up if you have to,” Erin instructed the Hobgobmy. “Blue, if you guys split up, I want you to run from any noise you hear. Red, don’t trust what you’re seeing, trust what you’re hearing. Green, stay by me.” The Hobgobmy, usually rowdy and excitable, were stoic and serious.
“You freeze, I’ll smash,” said Prismatmy, looking up at Kai.
“Yeah,” said Kai. He hoped he wouldn’t be asked once again how he casts ice magic when his partner can’t. Thankfully, it seemed nobody noticed or cared.
The doors were wide open, but the lights were still out, and nobody could see a thing past the small amount of light beaming in from the windows.
There was a sudden swift movement in the darkness, and Prismatmy fired a sharp crystal projectile from her claw cannon. It flew right past its target and smashed against the wall, illuminating the area for a split second. In that split second, Prismatmy and Kai could see the outlines of people, hunched over and scared.
“Are you okay?” Prismatmy asked.
“Ssssh!” shushed a voice from the darkness. “Talk quieter, it doesn’t know where we are.”
Suddenly, the lights flicked on.
The room was completely full of people, some in lab coats, others in full SWAT gear, a few were in regular civilian clothes.
“Is this the backup you went to get?” a man in the crowd asked. “A couple of Monommy and some kids? That man isn’t even armed.”
“I don’t see you using your gun, sir,” Cobb retorted.
“Bullets only do so much, this thing attacks faster than you can shoot,” said the man as he placed his rifle on the ground, then kicked it towards Cobb. “But by all means, be my guest. We can’t get to the others until that thing’s dead so take the gun and go kill it.”
“We came to help. We’ve dealt with Chaos-types before,” said Kai.
“We’ve been dealing with anomalies for years. Experience doesn’t help,” came a voice from the crowd.
“You just need a good plan of attack, and to be coordinated,” said the blue Hobgobmy, “That’s what works for us.”
Erin focused her thoughts. Everyone in the room, save for the Monommy, could hear Erin in their minds.
‘We can act as one. Even if it’s faster than we can shoot, it can’t attack us all at once. Reklauzolth made a huge mistake connecting our brains together like this. We can be more coordinated than any army’s ever been.’
Then another thought swept through the room.
‘That anomaly had dozens of tendrils on its wings. If it saw us all, it could easily impale every last one of us, all at once. That’s what happened when Johnson turned.’
“We split up,” said a woman in the crowd, “some of us went into the basement’s panic room and the rest of us came here. A few groups have already left, but we wanted to stay if there’s a chance we can help the others get out.”
“Yeah,” said the man, now without his rifle, “We were hoping we’d get a nice strike team or six so we can go down there and kill that thing before it finds a way into the panic room. But I see that’s not what we got.”
The man stood up, dusted off his pants, and walked right past Kai and the others, completely leaving the base.
“Coward,” Erin muttered under her breath.
“Better a coward than a dead man,” were the last words anyone heard from the man as he walked out of earshot.
“Anyone else leaving? Can’t say I blame you, but get it over with so we know what we’re working with here,” Cobb announced.
A few people got up and left, some ashamed, others just relieved to get away from the anomaly in the basement.
“The rest of you are down to fight this thing?” Kai asked, surprised at the group of mostly civilians and scientists.
A wave of a feeling of hopeful determination swept over the humans in the room, then the Monommy.
“Alright. Let’s figure out a plan.”
As the unarmed survivors worked together to quietly remove the barricade, those with weapons and the three monomasters aimed their sights at the door to the basement.
“You’re sure about this?” asked Cobb.
An overwhelming sense of clarity and purpose hit Cobb’s mind like a ton of bricks.
“We’re sure about this,” Cobb assured himself.
With the door open, the ad hoc strike team slowly descended the dark staircase, being as careful as possible not to make a sound so as to not alert the creature. Kai carried Prismatmy so her stone feet wouldn’t give them away. Whenever a member of the strike team would put their foot on a step that slightly creaked, all of their minds would synchronize, and the group would avoid the noise-making step.
Carefully, they exited the stairwell into the basement, but as they cracked open the door, they were surprised to see the lights on, with no sign of the anomaly.
Erin’s thoughts echoed, ‘Where is it?’
The team entered the white, sterile room, each set of eyes carefully looking in every corner. It looked like the interior of a corporate office space, but everything was white, with faded Twin Star logos on nearly every wall and surface.
The team slowly went from one room to the next, but still found no sign of the anomaly or the other survivors. Finally, when the entire basement had been cleared, Kai dropped Prismatmy on the floor and exclaimed, “Where the fuck is it?”
Instantly they all heard a voice in their head. A very familiar, unpleasantly loud voice that drowned out their own thoughts.
“OUR COLLECTIVE MIND IS NOT SEPARATE FROM US. ALLOW YOUR MIND TO BE TRANSPLANTED. BECOME OUR NEW NEURONS. CEASE. RESISTING.”
The entire strike team, save for Kai, David, and Erin, collapsed to the ground. Their pacts helped dampen Reklauzolth’s influence.
“Get up! We need you!” Kai shouted.
Cobb was on the ground, convulsing in pain. “My back… O-our back?”
Kai noticed the strike team were all hunched over and touching their backs, as if they’d pulled a muscle, or something much worse.
“That’s what happened to Johnson!” David yelled, his knees trembling. “Fuck this I’m out of here!”
Kai and Erin exchanged worried glances.
“They said there was only one anomaly, right?” asked Erin.
“Yes!” exclaimed Kai. He understood immediately.
Looking at the group of seven people on the floor, Kai put his hand on Prismatmy’s head. “Prismatmy, how many do you see?”
“Uuh there’s five people now, weren’t there six of them earlier?”
“Red, Green, Blue, each one of you grab someone and run! Go follow David!” Erin shouted.
“Prismatmy, you can carry two of them, right?” asked Kai.
“Yup. On it, boss,” said Prismatmy.
The four Monommy did as instructed and each grabbed someone off the floor to drag them to safety. Kai breathed a sigh of relief when the red Hobgobmy grabbed onto Cobb and dragged him away.
When the Monommy had left, only one of the men, a particularly pale man, was left convulsing on the floor.
“That’s our guy,” said Erin coldly. She manifested a large wooden club, easily the size of her leg, and swung it over her shoulder with ease.
Kai nodded, then used his magic to coat his forearms in ice, culminating in massive icy claws.
Without wasting a second, Kai and Erin leapt forward, swinging their club and claws at the convulsing man. Erin’s club smashed into the man’s skull, cracking it open, and Kai’s claws slashed through his chest with ease, splattering chilled blood over the white floor.
Then, the man laid there, completely motionless and silent.
Neither Kai nor Erin had noticed before, but now that they were closer, they could see that the man wasn’t just pale, he was white as a sheet of paper.
Kai looked closer at the body, then he saw it: the mouth was gone. Not torn off or damaged, just… gone. As if no mouth were ever there. Even stranger, there seemed to be some form of writing etching its way across the skin of the man, splitting open like they were once stitched up wounds. Kai didn’t recognize what the writing was.
“Erin you gotta take a look at-” as Kai turned his head, a blur went past his vision, and then he saw a pale figure staring back at him, its back burst open with massive clusters of tendrils that took the shape of wings. In those tendrils, Erin thrashed about, struggling to break free.
Kai immediately extended the ice claws and slashed at the creature’s tendrils. Right as he did so, the creature vanished, and Erin collapsed to the ground.
Erin gasped for air. Kai leaned down to help her up, but Erin screamed “behind you!”
Kai grabbed Erin and the two rolled out of the way of the creature’s tendril-wing just before it could slam into them. When they got to their feet, they saw the anomaly, crouched down in a squat. The man they attacked was nowhere to be seen, but Kai saw some distinctive wounds on the creature’s chest that he recognized as being from his ice claws.
The creature’s eyes were closed, cloaked in shadow. Kai and Erin prepared their weapons again, taking a defensive stance. The creature’s body sat motionless, only its chest rising and falling as it breathed. Its ‘wings’ flowed in the air, extending around the room silently, gently swaying like long hair underwater.
Just as Erin stepped forward to swing her club, the creature’s eyes snapped open, staring directly into Erin’s eyes. Erin felt a strange calmness wash over her, the fury of the fight instantly leaving her body.
Kai felt something change in Erin’s thoughts, and sprayed her face with an icy mist before once more extending his icicle claws and slashing at the creature’s tendrils.
The anomaly leapt to its feet and dashed backwards, causing Kai to miss. Before he could react, the entity’s tendrils had wrapped themselves around Kai’s limbs.
The stress returned to Erin’s heart and she responded with a swift swing of her club, smashing it across the monster’s head. A sickeningly satisfying crunch erupted from the impact, and the creature stumbled backwards, pulling Kai down to the ground as it did so.
Kai slashed his claws over the tendrils, breaking himself free. The tendrils fell to the ground, wiggling and convulsing grotesquely, like a lizard’s detached tail.
A muffled screech came from the creature as it rose to its feet once more, this time fully extending its legs. It was much taller than they initially thought. How could it have blended in so easily?
Erin and Kai watched in horror as the entity’s head cracked and squelched, restoring its form from the dent Erin inflicted.
In an instant, the tendrils were wrapped around Kai and Erin, constricting and squeezing tighter and tighter, the pain absolutely unbearable. Erin screamed as her knees gave in and snapped in the opposite direction. Kai yelled out in horror as his shoulder dislocated and fell limp, then again when the tendrils pointed their sharp tips into his leg. They sank in and impaled his leg at fourteen distinct points, emerging from the other side with blood and chunks of bone flying out in all directions.
The entity carefully aimed its gaze and its remaining tendrils at Erin and Kai’s heads to finish them off.
“There!” Erin managed to scream and point. The three Hobgobmy and Prismatmy had returned just in time! The Green and Blue Hobgobmy latched themselves onto the base of the entity’s tendril wings and began gnashing their sharp teeth to sever them. Prismatmy began firing crystal shot after crystal shot into the entity’s body at random points, only successfully hitting it a few times, but nonetheless leaving huge bloody holes in the creature’s body.
The anomaly released Erin, who collapsed to the ground. She kept her hand outstretched to aim at the creature so the Monommy would know where to strike.
Kai was slammed to the ground by the thrashing tendrils as the entity attempted to shake off the Hobgobmy. He took a deep breath and unleashed a blast of freezing air from his hands, then focused his mana as tightly as he could, continuing to lower the temperature in the creature’s tendrils until finally, they broke off as she shattered them with his good hand. Kai found himself wishing his magic worked on his body, as numbing the pain would be really nice right about now. Sadly, he could not.
The entity regrew its lost tendrils and immediately impaled two of the Hobgobmy, but Prismatmy has able to grab hold of the entity’s head with her claw. Prismatmy slammed the monster’s head into the ground repeatedly as the Hobgobmy pulled the tendrils out from their bodies and began to rapidly heal their gaping wounds.
The red Hobgobmy manifested her club and approached Prismatmy, then began repeatedly smashing the club into the entity’s head as Prismatmy held it down.
The creature seemed to be weakened, as it began to fall limp.
Erin and Kai noticed this and breathed a sigh of relief, but as soon as they did so, the entity rapidly thrust its claws into the red Hobgobmy and Prismatmy, pinning them to the ground. It began to repeatedly slam them into the ground in a similar fashion to how Prismatmy did to it a moment ago.
The other two Hobgobmy leapt forward to help their allies, but then the full force of the monster’s tendril wings slammed into them as well.
Tendrils weaved through the air, penetrating the bodies of Kai, Erin, Prismatmy, and all three Hobgobmy.
An impossibly loud, yet still muffled, screech erupted from the anomaly as thrust more and more of its pointed tendrils into the group.
Kai’s mind began to fade from the blood loss. Erin could sense this.
“Kai, no,” Erin called out.
Just as the two monomasters had accepted their fate, the explosive sound of rapid gunfire filled the room, and the creature collapsed to the ground, retracting its tendrils as it did so.
Kai had gone unconscious. Erin however turned to see the survivors had returned – armed to the teeth, and with the people from the panic room. They found them!
The creature rose to its feet and turned to the strike team. Erin could see the massive wound in its back was now riddled with bullet holes.
“Paper cutter!” yelled a small voice from the crowd. A tiny flash whipped through the air, striking through the entity’s throat, slashing it open wide. When it emerged from the other side, it instantly slowed down and gently floated to the ground like a sheet of paper. Then it floated upwards.
“Did I hit it?” asked Pagemy excitedly, while covered in blood.
“We got it,” said David, still shaking in fear, but proud of the contribution.
The creature held a hand up to its throat to stop the bleeding, but right as it did, another hail of bullets rained down on its torso.
Erin pointed at it again.
As the creature leapt towards the strike team, Prismatmy extended her crystal blade and rammed it through the creature’s back. The Hobgobmy leapt onto the monster’s shoulders and began bashing it with their clubs until the entity finally collapsed to the ground.
“Finish it off!” Erin called out. The survivors unloaded their rifles on the thing, completely eviscerating its body. This time, it wouldn’t get back up again.
Erin’s knees painfully snapped back to their natural positions. Once the pain in her legs had subsided, she rose to her feet, her wounds healing over thanks to her pact with the Hobgobmy.
The survivors surrounded Erin and Kai, tending to their wounds.
“I’ll be fine, Hobgobmy has a healing factor so I do too,” said Erin.
One of the men in the crowd ripped off his sleeve to act as impromptu gauze, trying his best to stop the bleeding in Kai’s leg. Two of the women in the group popped his shoulder back into place, but he stayed unconscious.
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” said Cobb, tossing a rifle to the side. “He… might not make it.”
Prismatmy pushed past the crowd to get to her human partner. She knelt down and gently lifted up his head.
“Kai, can you hear me? We did it! You’re okay!” she said, hoping upon hope that he would respond.
He didn’t.
Cobb held his fingers up to Kai’s neck.
“He has no pulse…” Cobb said as he looked down.
“But Prismatmy’s fine!” Erin shouted, “He’ll be okay because of their pact!”
Prismatmy looked down at Kai and crystal tears began to well up in her eyes. “Our pact isn’t like everyone else’s. We never felt each other’s feelings or pain. Something was always different about him.”
“Let’s get him some first aid,” said Cobb, lifting Kai’s body up over his shoulder. “C’mon people! We’re getting out of here!”
The survivors left the basement with Kai in tow. Suddenly, Kai’s eyes snapped open and he leapt out of Cobb’s arms.
“Kai’s okay!” Prismatmy exclaimed, wrapping her arms around Kai’s leg.
“I’ve survived worse,” said Kai, “Just needed a rest.”
“You had no pulse,” said Cobb.
“Oh, that. Don’t worry about that,” said Kai.
Erin took a deep relieving breath. “You’re so weird.”
“Yeah,” said Kai, “I’m full of surprises, haha.”
Kai looked back at the body of the anomaly that attacked them. It was already decaying. “I’m glad we took that thing out.”
Prismatmy pulled her head out from burying it in Kai’s leg, and just as she did, she saw one of the men in the group vanish into thin air.
“Uh, that guy just disappeared,” she said worriedly.
All eyes turned to the man where Prismatmy was pointing. His skin was turning paler by the moment, and the same text from before was starting to slash itself across the man’s forehead.
“He’s turning!” David screamed.
“Fuck this,” groaned Kai as he thrust both arms forward, unleashing a powerful blizzard of icy particles over the transforming man until he was completely encased in ice.
“Run!” Kai yelled. Everyone ran up the staircase and out of the facility as quickly as they could. Once he was sure he had bought enough time, Kai and Prismatmy joined the group in their escape to the field where the helicopter awaited them.
As they ran into the field, they could see Cobb’s helicopter in the distance, but to their surprise, a few more helicopters were beginning their descent to land.
“Managed to talk to the boys at the other splinter, the nuke guys,” Cobb shouted over the beating sound of the helicopter blades. “They managed to escape with some extra choppers, so we have enough to extract everybody now!”
“This is why you’re the best, Mason!” David exclaimed. He was incredibly relieved to be away from the base. Away from the anomaly.
Once everybody was safely aboard the helicopters, they began to take off. On the way home, most were silent, just relieved to be safe for the time being.
Cobb had taken his helicopter to another distress signal he had picked up, telling Kai and Erin to go back to Glenn’s, he’d catch up later.
The Hobgobmy were all asleep on various parts of Erin’s body, tuckered out from the action earlier. Erin was happy to have some quiet, at least as quiet as it can be in a helicopter.
Prismatmy laid her head on Kai’s lap, careful not to ruin the makeshift cast holding his leg together. Kai could feel it coming, but he didn’t have the heart to tell her. He was surprised it didn’t happen when he was bleeding out in the basement.
“You’re different,” said the woman sitting next to Erin. Erin was so tired and absent she hadn’t noticed anyone was sitting next to her, let alone Alexandra Stella, the creator of the Monommy franchise.
“You’re Alexandra Stella!” she exclaimed, dumbfounded.
“That’s me,” said Alexandra. She seemed almost ashamed to say it. She over at Kai. “You’re not like other monomasters, why is that?”
“Oh I’m sorry, have we met?” asked Kai. He didn’t know who she was. Suddenly, the knowledge of her flowed through him, and so did the feeling that he was rude to a famous person. No doubt the feeling of that came from the Monommy fan in the cabin, Erin. “Oh, sorry. I do know who you are.”
“Now you do,” Alexandra chuckled. “This brain connection thing is bizarre isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“So, why are you different?”
Strangely, the knowledge didn’t wash over anyone when Kai thought about his past.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” said Kai.
Kai had tried to tell Erin many times in the past that he wasn’t from here, but she never believed him.
“A lot of unbelievable stuff has happened in the last three years,” said Alexandra, looking out the window. “If whatever’s unique about you is something you can share, you should share it. You never know what might help us get out of this alive.”
“My situation is pretty unique, and not very useful,” said Kai. He hated this curse.
“I see.”
Alexandra pulled the charm off of her earring, and a Drop emerged to follow it. She held it on her lap and began to pet it.
“Alexandra Stella is a monomaster? That’s so cool!” Erin recognized the Drop, and she was impressed. “Who did you pact with?”
“Oh,” said Alexandra, “I’m not pacted. When Monommy first started showing up in the real world, I didn’t believe they were really Monommy. Part of me still isn’t sure.”
Prismatmy shot Alexandra a disapproving glare.
“I’ve been suspicious of real Monommy because it was me and my team who designed them. None of us were involved in making them real flesh and blood beings, so I figured someone else had,” she explained. “I’ve been told the explanation by these Twin Star bozos a few times and I still don’t get it. Maybe I’m not meant to. Something about wishing upon a star? It’s ridiculous, but I guess Monommy’s pretty ridiculous too. Anyways, I trust the Monommy that I’ve met since then. Even if they aren’t exactly what we made, they’re real in their own way. I’ve just been saving this Drop for the right moment to summon her.”
“Why didn’t you use it when the anomaly attacked?” Kai asked.
“You don’t know this Drop, do you?” she chuckled. “If I’d summoned her, it would have crushed everyone in the building.”
“That would be bad!” Kai admitted.
“I thought for a couple hours there that I’d be stuck in that panic room until I starved to death,” said Alexandra. “There’s something I’ve been keeping to myself because I was worried Twin Star would do something horrible with it like they did to Guardiamy. I thought I’d die having not told any monomasters about it. I’m glad that’s not the case.”
“We could still die, you should probably tell them now,” said Prismatmy bluntly.
“Right you are,” she chuckled. “The thing is, I’m not sure it’ll even work. But basically, there was a feature I was planning on implementing in Lightspeed and Darkmatter. A feature we called Omniburst.”
The helicopter finally arrived back at Glenn’s safehouse. Kai gave Prismatmy a big hug as their helicopter descended.
The other helicopters circled around the sky above Glenn’s safehouse, the people inside eager to get somewhere safe.
Marcus Lane called in via radio communications, and instructed the other helicopters to relocate the survivors to Site C, there wasn’t enough space for them in Glenn’s safehouse. Alysson had reported to Dr.Lane that Site C was deserted, and with the security access codes provided by Bytemy, the other Twin Star splinters could fashion a very safe base out of Site C. “It’s just as good at keeping things out as it was at keeping them in,” he assured them.
Kai pulled Prismatmy in tightly. This was a longer than usual hug, but Prismatmy enjoyed it.
“Thanks for being my friend, Pris,” said Kai as he hugged her tight.
Once the helicopter was on the ground, everyone was eager to get back into the safehouse.
The helicopter door opened and one by one, they exited the vehicle. Prismatmy was the last to get off, and when her feet hit the ground, she turned to offer Kai assistance getting out, but saw that he was gone. No trace of him remained.
Kai has warned Prismatmy that this would happen one day, suddenly, unexpectedly, and against his will. Prismatmy dropped to her knees and tiny crystals began to pour from her prismatic eyes, glittering as they bounced off the ground.
Erin and Alexandra entered the safehouse just in time to see Alysson perform the summoning ritual with the Bestiemy Drop. The Drop splashed upon her soul sync ring, there was a flash of light…. and the Drop reformed.
The summoning had failed.