As Anisa walked past the phantoms, she began to feel as if she was one of them. Even as the surface of this world had been twisted, she could feel the ache in her heart from remembering what had come to pass the last time she was here. As she made her way into the familiar service road that she had driven him down so many times before, she felt no warmth. Nor did she feel any cold. As if she had stepped into a monochrome photo of what was. Stepping past the treeline and expecting the all too familiar clearing with the tall dry grass and the sycamore tree they had once found peace and solace under. As she did she saw nothing but upturned dirt and a lone stump. She stared for a moment, looking back the way she came as if confirming this was the same space. She walked through the soft soil, now tilled by the earthmoving vehicles she could see tucked away in the back of the clearing. As she approached the familiar stump, she could see the marks of repeated attempts to pull it free from the ground. Even the channels that had been dug trying to find the end of the roots of the ancient tree.

  And so there she sat, allowing herself to sink into this memory of Shawn’s. Allowing the sensation to slowly sink in. She muttered to herself, “So… you couldn’t get away from it. Me… Gena… even here…” She sighed and began walking down the road again. Much as she expected in a land made of memories, she wasn’t walking too much longer before she broke free from the wilderness and stepped into the edges of their old neighborhood. As she saw familiar Falos structures scattered around the place, she didn’t need someone else to fill in the gaps. The war that Shawn had started… the one he suffered for ten years without her… the one that he had spent all this time engineering and streamlining since he forced his way back… this is what started it. As she arrived to the same ice cream shop they used to go to as kids, the building replaced by a barracks that now rested in ruins, the shadows of fallen soldiers peeking out from beneath the stones.

  “Tore you down to bedrock… but I know who you are. I’ve seen you that low before. And so you went to do something about it.”

  As she thought about this, a glimmering star fell from the skies above. She watched as it’s crimson glow pierced the darkness and landed with a loud crash some distance away. Anisa felt her heart jump and with excitement she didn’t know she could feel, she rushed to go see who the newcomer was. When she saw some of the shadows go flying at full force into the local scenery, she watched Pandina step from the smoke. Anisa locked eyes with her and for a moment she was relieved. For a moment she could see that it was still Gina behind the wheel.

  That relief was short lived when the woman charged her and locked her chitinous claws around Anisa’s neck. She let out a low growl, “Why the hell are you here? You are supposed to be helping on Falos! Being a hero! We can handle this without you.”

  Anisa looked into her eyes and saw the same grief here that she had seen so long ago at Shawn’s grave. She waited. Waited for the grief to settle. For Gina to make a decision. As Gina threw her full force into one of the buildings, she felt the anger recede and a colder grief take it’s place. Anisa stood up from the rubble and said softly, “I did try to tell you that he wasn’t dead. It was you that took the first swing.”

  Gina huffed, “Yeah, because you always pull that-” she paused to punch a few more of the phantoms into the scenery, “That cold as ice act. I hate it. I don’t know why he cares so much about you. He doesn’t need a groupie.”

  Anisa walked past the phantoms as if proving by example that they aren’t dangerous and said firmly, “First of… ew. Second off, no. Thirdly and most importantly, he ‘gives a damn’ about me because when he lost everything I was the only one that didn’t make him feel small. I didn’t diminish him and I didn’t let him suffer alone.” Gina growled and Anisa could feel the attack coming but she knew better. She knew the exact speed, force, and technique that Gina was using and similar to her fight with Batta, she dodged around the strikes as if she wasn’t even there. Anisa was surprised given that she hadn’t even transformed to do this. Just knowing her own new limits. She continued her speech, “He loved you, so he couldn’t stand the idea of you giving him those eyes like he needed to be coddled. And no one else felt comfortable stepping past his defensive chill and just sitting in it with him. And why? Because it was the same shit he used to do for me. No judgment. No pity. Just loyalty.”

  She backflipped up to a nearby roof, Gina chasing her and continuing her assault, but the tears in her friend’s eyes were clear. She could feel her words hitting Gina’s deepest wounds. Eventually, Gina’s frustration won over her pain and she grabbed one of the greyscale cars and threw it hard enough to clear the horizon. She shouted, “Stop dodging and fight me! I’m stronger than you now! I can get you back for-”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Anisa sighed and began walking to her goal once more, ignoring Gina entirely, “We don’t know how long Shawn can hold on so if you want to help, come with me. We are headed to the city. I know exactly where he is.”

  Gina scoffed and growled before falling in line behind her, “Yeah, sure. Because you know him so much better than me. You spent a year with him when we were kids and I’ve just been spending the last six years working with him every day.”

  “Ten years.” Gina blinked with confusion but Anisa continued her correction. “I may have been a prisoner in my own body, but I was ‘working with him’ for ten years while he tried to save me. And if he has gone through all this, he is probably closer to the man I knew than who you have seen him become.”

  -----------

  He waited on the rooftop. He knew the day. He knew the hour. He practically knew it down to the second. He had already talked Katsi down. Gave her the emotional support she needed to get over her own love troubles. To not just have her heart played with like that but to be abandoned so publicly… But that was easy. Especially for a man who had seen it all, just like him.

  It was then that he saw him. His younger self, eyes dead and distant. The closest to the edge he had ever gotten. The day that talking Katsi off the edge gave him purpose. Gave his life meaning. He would be for others what he was forced to do without. He watched as the boy walked up to the railing before he stood up and said softly, “Hey, I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Think of all the trouble you would make for the street cleaners.” As his past self locked eyes with him, he saw a glimmer of recognition, but also something else. Still, he did what he knew he had to. “You want a shiny nickel for being so clever?” His time travel password… or at least for the side of him from the future.

  It was these words that seemed to harden the young boy’s expression even further. He asked gently, “Does… it get any easier? Do I ever become more than just-”

  Shawn cut the boy off, “Now don’t be such a downer. We become a hero. Fight evil just like the heroes we watch from the hill.” He laughed with his usual false bravado, “Single most badass hero in the cosmos. Bitch slapping black holes and defying physics like a champ.”

  He didn’t expect his younger self to see right through him, “You avoided my question. Does it get easier?” And it was that moment of doubt. That second of hesitation as he tried to process the complexity of the question that his younger self seemed to harden. “It gets worse doesn’t it?” Shawn couldn’t help but feel the weight of the billions of lives that he had ended, either directly or indirectly. The countless souls that pressed upon his own. “Do we have any friends? Do we have a family?” The boy began to cry, his voice becoming angry and desperate, “Gena!? Is she okay? Is she happy with us?”

  Every question drove into the deepest wound of the veteran. Even now… even in his darkest moment, all Shawn had wanted was a normal life. To claw something healthy out of the shitty hand he had been dealt. He tried to put a brave smile on his face as he said, “It… isn’t that simple, kid.”

  The younger man’s eyes went dark and he said firmly, “I think it is.” He could see his older self without the same layers of resolve and denial that Shawn had buried himself in just to survive… and by the time he realized the boy had made the stupid and selfish decision to tumble backwards over the railing, it was too late. He wasn’t fast enough. Not with this new body still adjusting to his power. Worse than that, the lapse of judgment… the hesitation… he couldn’t even step through time to solve it.

  And as he heard the cries from the street below, he knew that both his now and his past had been tainted by a terribly selfish choice. He wrote a note and reached through time to place it in the pocket of his younger self’s empty shell.

  Pulling out his flask, he took a drink for himself and then dumped some on the roof. “Dumbass… why did you go and do that?” Whether it was his current or his past, it didn’t matter anymore. And in that moment he decided that if he had already fucked up his grand plan then there was no reason to hold back and be subtle. He would only have one shot at this. Time to call in some favors and stop playing stupid games. It was time for him to give this everything he had.