Libertas Round 2.2 - An Awakening

Having clothes and a bed had never felt like such a luxury. After Hover had directed them to the Military Base and shown them to their rooms, Ethan had been more than relieved to find rows of worn-but-durable clothing stacked in a closet—boots of varied size in a nice line on the floor. Most of them were too big for him, but after some trial and error he had been able to slip on a baggy pair of cargo pants, some boots, and a jacket. Mouse seemed less enthusiastic. She sat on her bed and stared forlornly at her hands. The rags still drooped awkwardly across her thin frame.

“I just wanted to see if you were okay,” Ethan said from the doorway, looking over his shoulder at his own room across the door from hers. “Before I tried to get a bit of sleep.” Mouse looked timidly up at him through her hair, which was growing increasingly matted the more she played with it. The way she looked at him was unsettling. There was so much hope in her large eyes—like he had renewed some hope within her that there really was some big good left in her life. And although Ethan wanted to be a hero, he couldn’t lay any claim to the relief she might have been feeling. He had been just as helpless as she had been, if not more so, when Hover found them.

“Okay, yes. Good, yes,” she replied quietly. Ethan chewed his lip. His eyes sagged tiredly, and he rubbed one of them with his palm. “Why don’t you change?” he asked then, to break the silence. He wanted to sleep but it didn’t feel right to leave her. Not when their only conversation so far had been awkward and disjointed and full of undeserved gratitude. “Those—” Ethan struggled on the word “—clothes can’t be too comfortable. I know mine weren’t. Don’t you want to have more cover?”

Mouse didn’t seem to understand. She pulled mechanically at one of limp scraps of fabric and seemed confused. “Piece of home. Piece of Mouse,” she mumbled. Ethan immediately regretted asking. He thought about the way he had so eagerly shred the meager garment he had been left with from his home and shoved it aside to rot on the floor. But logically, he reminded himself, it was torn and bloody and did absolutely nothing to protect him from the elements. There was no reason to feel ashamed or nostalgic. “Right. I’m sorry.”

“These clothes for me,” she elaborated then, pointing at herself and then pointing straight at Ethan. “Those clothes for human.”

“I’m not a human,” Ethan said. It had been an automatic response—and the cool indifference in which he heard himself say it almost startled him. For all his surprise, however, Mouse was doubly shocked. “Ethan not human? Ethan look human.” She stood, crept closer as if to get a better look. Ethan was used to being examined, though. It hardly bothered him, even if he didn’t quite understand her apparent interest.

“I’m not,” he repeated. “Humans are born—I wasn’t. I was invented by humans. They designed me to look this way—you know, to be inconspicuous. I’m just a really good copy, I suppose you could say. Aren’t you a human, Mouse?” She grinned up at him toothily, excited and practically bouncing on the balls of her feet. “No! Like you! Only good copy! See? See?”

Before Ethan even had the chance to be excited by her words, Mouse transformed. Her arms and legs extended grotesquely, her body hunching and odd splotches of matted fur forming on her skin. The long brown hair she had hid behind thinned away. Her ears elongated and her eyes—her eyes were blank white pits that drilled into him. It wasn’t the white of a blind woman. It was the sterile white of the labs and the masks and the coats. A sudden dizziness washed through Ethan’s body, and he had to clutch the doorframe to stay standing.

“Ethan?” Her voice held an edge of worry—but it wasn’t so much for him as it was the panic of an animal, frightened for its own life. “Sorry,” he said quickly, eyes closed as he took in a steady breath. “I’m just really, really tired.”

“Not…me?”

Ethan opened his eyes and looked at her. She had shrunk back, away from him, her hollow gaze glued to the floor and so obviously hurt. She trembled, small and lonely and afraid. His face fell, once again regretting his actions (however involuntary this one had been). Mouse wasn’t going to hurt him. Despite her appearance, she was far from intimidating. “No,” he assured, “it’s not you. I promise. I’m…I’m not afraid of you, Mouse. You don’t have to be human to be a good person, and I can tell that you are. I really am just…I’m so tired. I can’t think straight.”

She smiled bashfully and nodded, though she didn’t raise her eyes to meet his. Ethan wasn’t sure if she noticed when he returned it. With a muttered promise to see her again after he’d gotten some sleep, Ethan retreated back to his own room—where his body shut down almost immediately after hitting the mattress and settled into a deep but troubled slumber that lasted for hours but felt like seconds.

And when he woke, it felt like dying. Ethan’s muscles had cramped and his head was heavy but unclear, as if it had been emptied out and replaced with dense, dense cotton. It took effort to stand and walk, and even then he had to do so with slow, labored movements. Mouse wasn’t in her room anymore—and for a second, he was at a loss for where he should go in the Base to find her or Hover, but the churning of his stomach told him that the kitchen would probably be a safe bet.

Despite himself, Ethan let out a quiet breath of a laugh at the sudden realization that he had never been quite so hungry that his stomach had growled. Back at the labs, his meals were scheduled and rationed so he would eat as much as he needed when his body needed it—not when he was satiated and not when he was ravenous. The thought ceased to be amusing the further he walked, and it dawned on Ethan exactly how strange that was. How pathetic. He hadn’t even been properly hungry before. He had lived his life as a lone variable in strictly controlled experiment, eating and sleeping and exercising and washing on command. Could he even really say he had lived then, at all?

Troubled, Ethan didn’t notice how absolutely desolate the part of the Base he had walked to had become until he nearly tripped over a piece of twisted metal that was ripped open from the floor. Face flushed, Ethan quickly sidestepped around it and began to pay more careful attention to his surroundings. The side of the building he had wandered into had become twisted and deformed—the tragic remnants of a war that had been left unfinished. He swallowed and began to turn around, sure that he had gone in the completely wrong direction from the kitchen—when his eyes landed on a torrent of dark blue curls that framed the profile of a shockingly pale girl.

“Um,” Ethan said. She turned to look at him. Her face carried no emotion—but it was so lovely. The loveliest face he had ever seen before. Abashed, the boy looked away, past her. There were others in the room, where the girl had been staring. But strangely, they didn’t move. Curious, Ethan hobbled forward. There was a strange energy to the room, thick and electric like the time energy he had used when saving Jeanne—but different, incomplete. Malfunctioning like a scratched record.

There were four of them: three woman and one man, who lay injured and with a face distorted in clear pain. One of the women was crouched over him, paused in her efforts to ease his suffering. The other two women were poised for battle—one sporting a large gun aimed at a foe she hadn’t had the opportunity to shoot. Her hair was dark and her face grim. The last one held his attention. She was dressed strangely, her hair similar in color to his own and pinned about her speckled face in stubborn curls. In one hand she held a pistol—but in the other—

“What is that?” Ethan stepped forward again, transfixed upon the swirling orb of light that flickered there, but a strong arm blocked his path.

“It is my duty to protect these survivors. Do not touch them.” The blue haired girl’s tone could have almost been taken as threatening if it hadn’t been so soft in its inflection. Ethan stared at her then all at once realized she wasn’t a girl at all. Not a human one, anyway. She was a robot, just like Hover, if more detailed and realistic in her face. “I am Halady. Are you the humanoid life form Ethan? Hoverbot informed me of your arrival while you slept.”

“I’m Ethan,” he confirmed, sputtered again, and tried to sidestep around her. “What is that? It feels like time energy but I’ve never…seen anything like it. I didn’t know it was scientifically possible to make time itself have a physical form.” Halady continued to block his path, but answered. She explained to him about the battle that had ended when the woman’s Time Materia (Halady said something about a spell, but Ethan brushed it off as slang) malfunctioned and froze them in place. Ethan hummed as he considered this. “So they’re stuck because of a distortion in the time energy.”

“Correct.”

He chewed his lip, imagined being frozen in time. He wondered if their consciousness was still active. If they could see Ethan and Halady talking right in front of them, but were incapable of breaking their bodies free. It sounded like torture. He thought about how he had stopped time to save Jeanne—and felt a subsequent confidence swell up in his chest, underneath the pain and the pressure. “I can fix it.”

“You must not approach the survivors. They are under my protection,” Halady said. Ethan’s face fell.

“But I can! I’m sure of it! I don’t know how but…if anyone can do it…when else are you going to find someone who can potentially control time energy? Isn’t it worth a shot, if it’ll save them?” She shook her head slowly in response to Ethan’s plea.

“Failure will result in the death of the human male. This goes against my direct function.”

Ethan tried to make himself look tall, strong, and far surer of himself than he actually felt. “And it goes against my direct function to let them stay like this! I’m a hero of time, you know.”

Halady had no response. Uncomfortable, Ethan backed away. She wasn’t going to be moved from her stance, but the more he looked from face to frozen face, the more Ethan felt determined to help them. The more it pained him to watch them suffer in silence, at the mercy of something that they couldn’t control—but he knew that he could. It would be a crime to walk away. It would be despicable.

The palpable energy began to dance around his fingers, and Ethan felt it intertwine with the measure of control he contained in his body like a lost lover. The light began to buzz inside of him and through his hands. “I understand, Halady,” he said, “it’s your job to keep them safe and if anything happened to them it would be on you. But whether you trust me or not—whether you even can—I have to try.”

Ethan surged forward with more strength than he should have had in his body but pushed past the screaming protest it flung against him. He pushed past Halady, too, as she grabbed at his borrowed jacket and tried to pull him away from the curly haired woman and her Time Materia. The girl was stronger than him, began to restrain him more efficiently than he could attempt to break away. His face distorted when a sudden shock of panic burst in his brain—and gave him the final push he needed to wrestle an arm free and extend—

and then extend a little more—

And feel time around him slow and warp to his will until it stopped completely. Just as it did, he pressed his hand against the orb to collide the two distortions in time.

The light exploded all at once in his brain—like bullets of white piercing his retinas. And then Ethan was bodiless: starlight being swallowed by the sun. He was a blip of consciousness amidst an endless sea of swirling timelines. Endless possible futures determined by endless possible decisions—and all the individuals contained within them. They played like silent movies without pictures. There was nothing to guide him and no logical means by which Ethan could find the broken loop he wanted. But that was fine. He just knew—or rather he felt it the way he might feel two warm hands taking his own and guiding him forward—and for no particular reason trusting that knowledge. Ethan didn’t (and couldn’t) have a mother. If he did however, he supposed that would be what it was like to have one: warm and pleasant and full of blind faith that she would show him the way.

And then it was there: the severed time stream, ripped almost entirely in two. Ethan extended his mental reach toward it and took hold of both ends—then dropped them again, shocked but exhilarated—when he heard his name. The voice who called it was far away and distorted, but Ethan recognized it immediately.

Paige? Ethan turned away from his target, toward the sound, and tried to move the legs he didn’t currently possess. Paige! Can you hear me?

Eth—where—can—are—Ethan, s—!

It was like trying to listen to static through an even thicker layer of static and discern the words. He had to get closer—needed to. Desperately. And reluctantly it gave way to his force of will, bending away and allowing him passage through the time streams that didn’t concern him. Ethan called for his sister again, but no inherent sense of knowing beckoned him to her. Instead, the same guiding hands shifted their warm embrace to hug around his ethereal shoulders. There was a silent plea in the feeling: words that were not spoken but simply sprouted inside his swirling let-me-get-to-Paige thoughts.

Not now, it said. Focus on the task at hand.

He didn’t want to. He didn’t know these people. He didn’t know this city. He didn’t know this world. And yet, even as he battled with the equal impulses to run farther and farther from his original goal to find the link to Paige and to give in to the gentle-yet-persistent nudging, Ethan already knew what he would decide. Because Paige was safe. He had heard her voice, however garbled, but the four trapped in the broken time stream could be stuck for an eternity if he didn’t help them. Ethan couldn’t abandon them. That wasn’t the heroic thing to do.

Okay. You’re right, he told his conscience—or whatever it was that had stopped him. This is my responsibility; I shouldn’t have faltered.

It was easier to get back to where he had started—running with the wind instead of against it. For the second time, Ethan extended his mind to grab the disjoined stream and snap it back together. He realized suddenly that he wasn’t sure where to even begin but some burrowed instinct encouraged him onward, his time bending ability trickling its way out from his core and through his not-hands. Little wisps of light flowed into the timeline, weaving together and mending the frayed edges at the tear—then all at once snapping them back together. It glowed happily.

There was a sudden sharp jolt like electricity and suddenly Ethan found himself back in his body, his hands hovering in space where the Time Materia had been wrenched away from him by the curly haired woman who held it. He had no time to smile, or laugh in exhilarated triumph, admire his success, or even get a single word in edgewise before Ethan learned a very powerful lesson: everything was scarier from the wrong end of the barrel of a gun. And the gun that was presently leveled at his nose was very, very large.

“Speak afore I blow yer mouth wide open,” the gun ordered harshly in an unfamiliar inflection. Ethan didn’t even remember throwing his hands in the air, but they wavered submissively at his ears as he did what he was told. In stumbling, frantic tones words tumbled from his slacked jaw—incomprehensible words of time-space and statistics and good intentions that Ethan didn’t think up so much as he vomited them straight from his voice box.

“Oi!” The curly haired woman had taken her eyes off of Ethan long enough to put a hand on the gun and point it away from him. This was met with a surly glare from the dark-haired woman who he hadn’t been able to see from behind her large weapon. “Lay off ‘em, Decker! Ey’s just a li’itle tot, ey is! What’tya tink yer doin, point’n that ting at ‘em like ‘ey’s gonna do us in. Gor!”

“The Warped just up ‘n vanish ‘n you—”

“It’s a trick, in’nit? But ey’s got a journal; ey’s one of us. ‘Sides…”

She gestured toward the journal on Ethan’s wrist, than slung her thumb back over her shoulder to gesture at the other two newly-freed survivors. Ethan’s gaze followed as Decker swore, dropped her gun, and rushed over. Her hands were squeezing the man on the floor’s gloved one tightly in an instant, her expression stone but eyes something akin to fear. The young woman with them—presumably a doctor—was tending to a gaping (and freely bleeding) wound across his middle more quickly than he could keep up with. Not that he had much time to try before the curly haired woman cleared her throat to demand his attention once more. “Now. Why don’t you tell me the story ‘ere, ey? One min’it I’m castin’ meself a spell to stop the Warped while Adi patches up Booker when oneuv the buggers charges me—a’nen poof! ‘Ere we is! Not a one Warped in sight!”

“Yeah, well.” Ethan glanced anxiously at the other three survivors—Decker, Adi, and Booker, she had called them. “Shouldn’t we help them? Before I explain, I mean. Is he going to be alright?”

Her generally-cheerful nature turned tense, but with a sad shrug relaxed again. “Adi’ll do ‘em up. Now that there’s time.” She smiled brightly. It was the sort of smile that could put you at ease and give you confidence no matter how poorly you were faring. Despite his reservations, it worked on Ethan as well. He smiled back, though it was by far more lackluster. “’Ere’s a good lad!” She put an arm around him and squeezed (he tried not to wince at the pressure the gesture put on his ribs), then steered him away from the blood pooling rapidly under the pallid man being stitched. To be quite honest, he was thankful for the distraction. Ethan had never seen so much human blood all at once. “You can call me Miss Chance.”

“I’m Ethan,” he mumbled in return. “I didn’t get here very long ago—Hover found me and another survivor and brought us here. I was just looking around when I saw that you were all stuck at a fixed point in time so I thought, since I can do that too, I might be able to troubleshoot the issue.” Despite himself, the corners of his mouth tugged upward a fraction higher. “And I did it. Halady thought that I’d just make it worse but…”

Ethan’s smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Miss Chance nearly tripped when he stopped, heels planted so firmly on the ground one would’ve thought he had suddenly turned to lead. He hadn’t even seen Halady—not since before he had entered the time vortex through the Materia. “If she wasn’t there,” he thought aloud, “time must have still been moving forward.” Ethan felt the color leave his face. He could have been in there for years, unchanged as his body remained frozen.

“What’s that? You lost me after—oi!”

Miss Chance yelled after him, but Ethan didn’t hear her as he bolted forward and around the corner, yelling for Halady and for Hover and for Mouse—for someone who could tell him what had happened while he had been gone. And for how long he had been gone. If there was still anyone left to tell him that was. “Halady!” He called for her again and again as he ran, his voice taking on a more desperate tenor with every cry that echoed down the halls of the base without reply. But then he turned a corner and collided directly into the familiar silver and blue form, so his body curled around hers like plaster to a mold—and then his momentum sent them sprawling.

Wordlessly, the robotic girl pushed Ethan off of her and regained her former stature. “Do you require assistance, humanoid life form Ethan?” His chest heaving, they boy stared up at her soft face. It took a moment for his thoughts to catch up to him, but when they did he sat up and grabbed for her hand in a panic.

“What happened?” He asked.

“You ran carelessly around the corner and disrupted my patrol of the—”

“No, no! I mean earlier! What happened when I entered the Time Materia when you tried to stop me! Where did you go?”

Halady was silent. The irises of her dark eyes rotated in their mechanical sockets and her face remained prettily impassive. “No record of such memory found.”

“What?” Ethan stared openly, trying to understand. “How can there be no record? I-It just happened. You were standing in the room with the frozen survivors and explained their situation to me. I told you about my powers and how I thought I could save the.”

“No record found,” Halady repeated curtly. “Hoverbot informed me of your presence in the sleeping quarters. Then I began my patrol to assess the status and stability of the frozen survivors.”

“You’re saying it never happened? At all?” Halady answered in the affirmative, but Ethan didn’t notice, too busy correcting himself. Maybe it wasn’t that it never happened—it simply hadn’t happened yet. And now it never would. The loud clamoring of boots against the steel floor of the Base sounded behind him, and Ethan turned to see Miss Chance coming to a stop at the sight of him. Breathing heavy, she put her hands on her hips as she frowned at him. It was the frown one gave to a child who deserved a slap on the wrist for breaking a rule. “What’s all this about, then? Gor, runnin’ offt like the devil’s after ye!”

Ethan only smiled—and this time, it was a smile full of sunshine and life and complete sincerity. “I did it!” He laughed merrily, his face flushing and his sides aching so badly it almost felt like the embrace of an old friend. And he laughed so hard that he couldn’t keep his eyes open. Tears stung at their corners, which he wiped away with renewed enthusiasm.

Without being completely conscious of what he was doing, Ethan stood, staggered forward to close the gap between them and throw his arms around the woman. “I did it,” he explained again, as if it made all the sense in the world, and turned his smile up to shine at Miss Chance’s bemused but perplexed face. “I went back!”