Chronoshock
The last two minutes were a blur that changed everything.
"We need an emergency evac now, damn it!"
"Lay down some suppressing fire, why-!
Bang. Bang. Chaingun fire everywhere. Everything around me was getting torn and ripped apart. The entire research facility was getting gutted into shreds and the Midnight Lance had absolutely no care about how much collateral damage was caused in this brutal ambush firefight. I felt like I was going deaf as I took cover behind a metallic storage cabinet while hammering, blasting, and violent thundering was surrounding us as everything was getting chewed apart. Obviously, those koldbloods wanted every last one of us animals dead.
My head was ringing and screaming as I tried to hunker down and cover my ears with my paws, dropping my D1 assault rifle and giving up my chance to return fire because it hurt so badly. And here I thought a featherhare's amplified hearing ability would have helped on this forsaken mission. Instead, here I was, trying to keep myself concealed as much as a white-furred winged rabbit could in a tiled room with a lot of metal tables, cabinets, and lab computers and equipment everywhere. If I had been outside in the snowy tundra, this would have been a heck of a lot easier as I could just bury myself anywhere in the snow. Not to mention this wouldn't have been nearly as loud. Instead, I was fifty feet away from the closest window and I really didn't think I could make the run without getting shot. Heck, I would have been lucky only to get hit with grazing fire after attempting that. So instead, as a metallic cabinet fell to pieces besides me, I decided my only chance at surviving was to play dead since I couldn't fight back anyway.
While my ears were ringing like a banshee was screaming into them, Sledgefist was dead. Surprised an crimodiak berserker like him went down but even those dark red, hulking bears can only take so much before kicking the can. Both sokie rookies, Baskin and Vas, were dead. Apparently the Midnight Lance sure didn't have any qualms about outright murdering two combatant monkeys only two weeks out of training. I was pretty sure Zip's wailing and screaming was a good indication that reckless headstrong kangamouse just got half of himself sprayed all over the floor. And then there was Clak. Clak, our misinformed kitty-cat squad leader who had been telling us the intel and mission details that HQ had spent three hours briefing us on was totally wrong. He was one pissed-off hazelcat when he realized how wrong everything had been. Was. Now he was lying on his back with his tongue hanging out and a big hole in his head.
Vortex Point was a deathtrap. Alpha team was killed, and now I was the only surviving member of Bravo. Wow, with Clak and Sledgefist dead, that actually made me the new squad leader. In fact, with both Alpha and Bravo teams dead, that made me the new commanding officer of the entire operation! Wow, what an honor. There sure aren't a whole lot of featherhares who ever get that opportunity. I wondered how long I'd get to enjoy that before I joined the rest of these poor souls. But for now, I had the privilege of getting to command all the remaining operatives. Me, myself, and I were definitely going to need rely on all my years of leadership experience for this one!
Only then did they stop firing. But the ringing and brain-stinging felt like it would go on forever.
"Nightkin, you there?" the radio crackled on, sounding like a gasp that I could barely hear. "Nightkin, what was that noise? What happened? What's your status!? Nightkin!?"
Sorry, HQ, Clak can't come to the phone right now. He's off meowing on a cloud with his newly acquired golden harp, kitty wings, and hula hoop halo. Some mission handler you are, Subcommander Vestin. Oh, go on, now try giving Sledgefist a call. Yeah, the same guy who had obvious doubts about this whole mission in the first place and you had to bribe to get him to agree to it. Funny, they say crimodiaks are as strong as they are dumb, but this guy knew the truth about this mission. We all thought it was a meaningful mission to "give hope another chance" and he thought it was suicide right from the start and he even broke a chair over the whole thing when he was overruled.
"Is anyone out there!?" HQ tried again. "Please respond!"
I did what I should have done three hours ago. I pulled the plug on my communicator headset. And just like that, I was on my own.
HQ would confirm it as a full-on "Status Black" and close the book on Operation White Splitter. They'd send messengers to our families back home about the great news and we would get to have our names etched out on the walls right next to thousands of other names that made it easy to just get lost in the list. No one would care to see my name "Raxo Winterpaw" on the wall when it was among thousands of others. "Oh, it was a noble sacrifice." "Oh, he died serving his country and all the people of Anironica, protecting our future." "What a brave and courageous featherhare he was." They were artificially fancy words that would just be forgotten about and I would just become an estimated casualty statistic.
HQ wouldn't send an evac for one operative. There was no way unless I was actually deemed "mission critical" and only because it was in their best interest to save me. Those carriers were way too expensive to risk an extraction. And there was nothing for over a hundred miles from here, so I'd be dead if I tried to escape on foot. I'd have to improvise flying a stolen Midnight Lance Aerohawk gunship and just the thought of that was hilarious. I'd be lucky if I even figured out where to put the ignition key in if I even got a hold of one.
That left me with one option. Continue the mission. All by myself. It was a joke.
For a minute, I thought it was actually completely impossible with Zip dead. He was the Prime Technical Operator and was the one expected to configure the Rift Channel Algorithms. I was supposed to be his supporting operator this whole mission. We had rehearsed the process dozens of times, but it was impossible for only one operator to do it by themselves.
There was, however, another way. HQ would be pissed I was even thinking about it, but, according to them right now, I was nothing but another dead bunny.
I actually had enough know-how on another way it could be done by hacking the system. To HQ, what I was considering was a "serious violation of protocol and standard procedure." My idea, as a more effective way to get things done and raise the finger to HQ for letting everyone die, was to employ Manascript. And my own personal Vexo Computer. Because at this point, if HQ was perfectly okay with me dying, than I was perfectly okay with crapping all over their protocols and standard procedures which had done nothing but sign us all up for expedited afterlife transition. What I was about to do was extremely unorthodox, but hell, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
"Area secure!" one of the Midnight Lance scouts had reported back to the other damned reptiles.
The rookie actually fell for it. In the wake of the carnage, I had been playing dead by making it look like Vas's blood was my blood and the heavy metal cabinet that had fallen over had crushed the lower half of my body when really there was a nice gap in the collapsed drawers I was able to stuff my bunny butt into. I wasn't even sure it would work but it was the only shot I had.
"Everyone out and check the perimeter!" another one shouted in a gruff voice. "I want the compound swept for ten turmarks around! There are probably others out there!"
Nah, just us poor and unfortunate, shot-up mammals. What, these psychotic cyborg lizard kooks actually believed Anironica thought this one through and dropped a whole platoon into this strike zone? Well, judging from the way those Midnight Lance punks headed out, they had to. It was the only reason why they rushed out without checking for vitals. But, then again, if this had been a diversion, there was a window of opportunity and if there was anything about koldbloods I knew for sure, they didn't leave a whole lot of things up to chance.
After they left, I got to thinking about how exactly I was going to use my Vexo and Manascript to hack into the Rift Channel. Anironica hated Manascript, but it was an effective practice that saved my cotton-tailed butt on numerous occasions. They disbelieved all cases where Manascript was the link between science and magic even though I had been working with it for years and tried to convince everyone it was definitely great to work with. But they were dumb and refused to train in it. They always felt using it was disobeying orders and most of the commanding officers thought it was some inane computer voodoo. I hated them for that, but it didn't even make the top ten list when it came to how I truly felt about them.
The original plan was Zip would reconfigure the Rift Channel using a Temper Line and we'd all time hop that way. Yep, time travel. Because fifteen years ago, a little event called the Whiteout Crisis turned the whole world into a nuclear winter wasteland and it effectively killed more than half the Anironica mammal population while giving koldbloods the ability to survive everywhere and pretty much gain the advantage in this endless war. At the current rate, it was estimated all of us Anironicans wouldn't survive the next ten years because of the weather while these damned koldbloods would multiply exponentially. The only way to fix it all was to undo what caused the event to happen in the first place. And now I was going to have to find a way to do that all by myself. So far, no one had been able to successfully time travel back to the past, yet. There was a record that one team, Razor Squad, had traveled back in time, but considering we were still in a nuclear winter wonderland, it was easy to see they didn't finish the job for whatever reason. Obviously since we weren't getting any younger here, everyone stopped waiting for them to do something.
A Temper Line for time travel by a Rift Channel was a very vanilla way of doing it but it was a two-person job and it wasn't like I could tell Zip to walk off the hearty bullet breakfast he just enjoyed. And I couldn't conjure up an imaginary friend that could help me open the channel and work the Temper Line computer that was sitting in a puddle of Zip's circuit and hardware-wrecking blood. Plus the firefight most likely had given it more than enough holes to hang earrings from. My plan was to use my mission-unauthorized Vexo and bypass security by locking everything and everyone out except for me and all the other 0% of koldbloods and Anironica black ops that knew and were allowed to use Manascript. I was so disobeying orders right now and it actually felt good. It would at least ensure I wasn't followed back into the past.
Once the kooks had left to go find and gun down that threatening, mission-critical Charlie squad that would ruin their days with their nonexistence, I had to squirm my way out and get back up on my hind legs.
Since it was safe to actually use my ears again, I tried to listen for anyone or anything, but it seemed like everyone had rushed out in hopes of killing more of us mammals. For now, I picked up my D1 assault rifle, although I imagined firing this thing just once was as bad as shooting myself in the head with it. Everyone would hear it and I'd be one dead bunny.
If Zip was right before and the Rift Channel was up ahead, then I didn't have that much more to go. Thankfully, being light in weight and being able to fly a bit from table to cabinet to chair kept it quiet as I made my way around the research labs. And to think as I looked at the holoboards and charts, I already had a good idea of what kind of nano and cybernetic technology they were working on. Still, what I had in tech skills, I was missing in combat skills. Truthfully, if anyone should have survived that last engagement, it should have been Clak. I had only survived off of pure luck at the moment and there was no telling when that would be running out.
Oddly enough, as I was making my way through the cold, metallic halls, I heard several shots in the distance, as if they were coming from outside. They sounded at least several turmarks away, which was well beyond hearing range for anyone besides a featherhare. No doubt whoever was shooting was a koldblood, but who were they shooting at? Or maybe it was someone else shooting at them? I didn't know who it was unless the Midnight Lance had more enemies out there. But I couldn't stop to care.
As long as it keeps them busy.
When I got to the chamber with the Rift Channel, I saw two huge metallic doors and I saw they had put a heck of an electronic lock on this thing. This whole thing was pretty much a computer in itself. Now here, Zip probably wouldn't have had too much trouble using traditional means, but I wasn't about to try that nonsense and waste time. Instead, I decided to bypass the lock with my Vexo and my Manascript, because I wasn't about to try and see if I could "prove" anything trying to do this the "legit" way. That would only prove idiocy.
Within a few seconds, I had managed to disrupt the coding for the lock, "magically" reprogram it using fast typing of Manascript, and soon enough, the large metallic doors slid open after I electronically reprogrammed and disengaged the lock. I took it as a good sign no alarms went off and I hadn't gone senile since I last tried something like this out in the field.
Once I stepped inside the huge, vault-like room, I was a bit taken back. Rift Channels were way bigger than I thought they'd be. The whole thing was a giant, circular silver portal. As the doors closed behind me, I couldn't help but look at it curiously. Could this thing really be reprogrammed to work as a time machine? I was actually a bit anxious, remembering that no one had successfully pulled off being able to change this crappy, bleak, and cold future.
Still, that's what we came for. That's what the entire team got killed for. Change the future. Stop the Whiteout Crisis. It got me thinking that I'd also go back in time and maybe stop them from getting killed in the first place. Hell, this was worth a shot and would clean up the mess that just happened, also.
As I approached the portal, Vexo in hand and ready to play master chef with this thing's coding, suddenly I felt a weird sensation in my head. It suddenly reminded me of how my ears were ringing before and I was wondering if this was a result of that, but no.
Not when I heard... a voice.
"Be careful. There's no turning back after this..."
I looked around, wondering if I was being stalked or something, but that didn't even sound like a noise but more like some kind of telepathic message. Or at least I hoped so, because the day a featherhare can't even trust their own ears, they've got a serious problem.
Still, as I approached the portal and prepared to hack into the computer, I couldn't help but laugh and think why would I WANT to come back to this? The world was nuked into a permanent winter wasteland and anything with warm blood, self included, kept wanting to hibernate and then never wake up. Oh, and let's not forget two whole teams of Anironica black ops dead because of this mission. Truly, this was a memory I just didn't want to let go. Mama, grab the camera! We can put this one in the scrapbook and decorate it with all kinds of bows and pretty flowers! You know, the days when flowers still existed?
I linked up the Vexo and prepared to hack the crap out of this thing and pretended I didn't hear that lame warning. There were some really complicated algorithms in this mess, but it was nothing my Manascript couldn't handle. And to think in the old days, they wrote magic in books and studied it for ages until they grew beards and had a serious Vitamin D deficiency. This was the new, high-tech way of doing it. And I loved it. And while others were good with guns, sneaking, or junk like that, this is what I was a wizard at.
Once I hacked my way into the portal, I set the time back twenty-five years. Ten years before the Whiteout Crisis events. That would give me enough time to track down the origin point for the attack and stop it so it never actually became a thing. If I pulled this off right, it would save the lives of millions. I doubted it would end the war between Anironicans and koldbloods, but it would at least prevent them from getting the severe upper hand and permanently mess up the world just so they could breed like a virus.
Soon enough, the portal opened with a bright, white light and then a swirling blue and black vortex opened in the portal. Twenty-five years. It was time to go back to when things were better. And rewrite what it had become.
I approached the portal, but once again, someone tried to warn me.
"Everything happens for a reason..."
"...you're going to regret doing this..."
"Buzz off and let me do my job," I muttered.
I then walked through the portal. I didn't know what to expect and whatever this voice was didn't exactly help with the encouragement. Heck, I could have screwed up the whole thing and walked my way out of existence. When I stepped it, I instantly felt like I was sucked in and suddenly everything was blurred into darkness. In those last moments, I thought I had totally screwed everything up.
I didn't bank on my flight being intercepted.
I quickly found out what exactly happened to Razor Squad. More importantly, I found out why they didn't exactly come home, share stories around the campfire, and write songs about it.
I found myself suddenly standing in some ancient circular stone chamber of some sorts. Glowing arcane symbols on the white stone walls, ancient architecture, strange monuments, and yet I recognized there was magic here. While the use of this kind of magic was incredibly old, it was along the same bloodline as Manascript. It was like an ancient city from probably thousands of years ago, but the stonework looked pretty fresh. It was bizarre, how could the ways of old be in a place made with old-style carvings yet look like it was finished just yesterday?
This was definitely not twenty-five years back into the past. This didn't even look like the same planet anymore. So either I screwed up the programming or someone screwed with my mission.
"I'm afraid I can't allow you to proceed any further..."
And it was that voice, only this time I heard it directly and it wasn't trying to break into my head. I looked around but I couldn't see anyone, but in a place just brimming with magic, I wasn't stupid and knew I needed to be ready for anything.
"Whoever you are," I spoke out, gripping my assault rifle, "don't underestimate me. Many have looked down on me just because I'm a featherhare but trust me, it's a big mistake if you do. There's no way I'm letting that lizard-infested nuclear winter happen. I don't know what you did but I not letting whoever you are stand in my way! Let me do my job and there won't be trouble."
I saw some flickers of movement and I stepped closer to take a better look. It was a small, fluttering thing like a moon moth, but when I got a closer look, I saw it was some kind of blue and indigo glowing butterfly instead. For a moment, I thought it was a totally unrelated thing until I realized it was this glowing blue and indigo butterfly that had been talking to me this entire time, both in person and screaming in my head back at the research lab.
"Time is like a river. It will always flow in one direction."
"...If you try to swim against it, it will only wear you down and force you to ride with its flow."
THIS is the thing that stopped me? What the hell. I came here to undo a nuclear winter disaster, not listen to some bug's philosophy.
"This ain't no river," I told the bug, realizing actually trying to shoot the thing with this gun might be somewhat tricky with it fluttering around all over the place. "That's my world, my country, my family, and my squad that are dead or dying out there! Who the hell are you to tell me no!?"
I just headed toward the exit. I wasn't going to listen to this thing. I didn't know where pray tell I was, but I'd figure some way out of it. There was still plenty I could do with just a Vexo and some knowhow.
"I have sensed your skill..." the glowing butterfly spoke to me. "You might have been a skilled and talented wizard in another age and another time. But perhaps... if it weren't for so much anger..."
I looked over my shoulder, but I kept on walking. But then, I sensed it trying to cast some kind of spell. I recognized the words, and they were spoken instead of scripted, but I knew what it was trying to do. It was trying to freeze time around me and lock me in a stasis. Hell no to that. I immediately Manascripted a coded barrier to lock it out, and suddenly the protective translucent wall formed a gray barrier between me and this bizarre magi butterfly. As expected, it blocked against the hocus pocus that bug was trying to churn out and caused its spell to just splatter against it.
"You want a fight, little bug?" I asked it, furrowing my brow in anticipation to retaliate. "That was a dumb thing for you to try."
"You say not to underestimate you because of your size," it tried to lecture me again, "and yet you make the same mistake."
And I didn't expect it to grow. And grow. It went from being just a tiny butterfly to suddenly taking on a giant form that swelled in size to what had to be almost five times the size of a crimodiak. I just watched and gawked as I saw whatever this thing was become a colossal monster that even a freaking crimodiak with a chaingun would have trouble fighting. What kind of freaking butterfly was this thing!?
I just chucked the D1 assault rifle aside. That thing was just going to slow me down as it would only shoot splinters compared to how huge whoever this thing was. I had no idea how I was supposed to fight this enormous colorful bug, but damn it, I was at least going to try to figure something out.
"Azurana, Chrono Custodian," the now freaking gigantic butterfly spoke to me in an oddly serene voice. "And you are Raxo. Raxo Winterpaw."
"This needs to happen!" I shouted at her, knowing I wasn't just going to be okay with everyone dying. "And I don't care who you are or how big you can get. You're not stopping me!"
I didn't care if she was some time janitor or whatever. And I didn't care if she knew old school magic or my name. She wasn't going to let me get out of here, so if she wanted to duke it out, then fine. I needed solutions. I didn't come all the way here just for a butterfly's philosophy.
Despite never seeing an old school wizard in action, I recognized the spells. Instead of programmed scripts, they were incantations. And I recognized this one as being an attempt to set the whole damned floor under my feet on fire. I quickly spread my wings and launched myself into the air by springing up on my hind legs, but as soon as I took flight, I knew flying was not going to be easy in here. I just barely caught enough air before the floor under me turned into an inferno that lit the room with light and filled it with a hell of a lot of heat.
"Good," she told me as the glow from the flames illuminated her beady-eyed butterfly face. "You're very spry and very capable. It seems maybe there is hope for the new age of wizards."
Wizard? Far from it. I barely got a chance to practice any of this crap because of how contraband it was. Hell, Vestin would have been all over my butt for even just owning the Vexo if he knew about it. As this Azurana began to cast another spell, I recognized the words and knew she was trying to conjure up a blizzard. Again, I had to settle with coding a magical barrier and put it between her and myself. It held up for a little while before the force of her spell broke right through it and then took a swing at me.
I was thrown against the wall and slid down to the floor, causing me to stumble. Again, I tried to code something into the Vexo to slow her down, but instead, all I got was the sudden shock of seeing her impale the Vexo computer with an icicle. The whole thing short-circuited and I just barely managed to toss it away before it popped in a miniature explosion and was reduced to nothing but twisted chunks of metal and busted circuit boards. And to top it all off, it even smelled bad.
Holy crap, I was just horrified. Without that thing, I was screwed. My entire career was toast without that. Not only could I not do Manascript without it, but now I couldn't hack a single freaking computer with that. That could easily mean I was stuck in whatever god-forsaken era this was. I didn't even know where this was, either.
Azurana loomed over me and I just tried to evade her sight. Thankfully, with her being so huge now, I was a lot more evasive compared to her and I could be a lot more nimble, but I had absolutely no way of fighting back. I was freaking helpless here.
She attacked with a thunderbolt spell, and as I flew upward, I just barely managed to dodge through the raging forks of blazing white lightning as I came within secmarks of getting fried. I came close to hitting the ceiling and had to U-turn my way back down, only to find out she had filled the air with some kind of pink pollen powder. Oh hell. I was breathing so fast that I couldn't help inhale heaps of that stuff, whatever it was. I had no choice but to land when I was becoming too dizzy and disoriented and if I didn't stop flying, I could have crashed and snapped my neck in this place. Heck, even after landing, I struggled to try and stay on my feet. And then to top off even that, I suddenly felt very light-headed and sleepy.
"Stop, just stop..." I told her, coughing and trying to stay away from her by just walking away. "I just don't want to die."
Bloody hell, the pinkish powder was everywhere in the air. It smelled like overly sweet sugar, but I knew what it was trying to do. It was some kind of sedative and the last thing I needed was to fall asleep right here. I probably wouldn't be waking up ever again after that.
"Even though you lost, you survived longer than most did," Azurana told me, shrinking down and returning to normal size. "But I cannot allow you to change the course of time. Many have tried to, but they have all failed. And with good reason."
"So there's no hope?" I asked her, just barely able to breathe. "Everyone got killed for nothing? What the hell, how can you possibly think that's perfectly okay?"
"As long as I am here, time will always move onward, not backward," Azurana continued. "And you need to understand that. Trying to turn back what has already advanced is like a butterfly that wants to go back to being a caterpillar."
"Things were better then," I told her, remembering how it used to be when I was really young. "My family was alive then! And my friends. And the real life I once had. What makes you think this is a beautiful future we ended up with? It sucks!"
And yet, it didn't seem to make her care. I swore, she was as cold as a stone. How could anyone not be bothered by what happened? The only ones who benefitted from that icy apocalypse were the koldbloods. So that was it, then? I just had to accept them winning everything? It would have been better to just go out in a blaze of glory.
"Listen to me," she urged, fluttering around. "There is something you need to understand, and it applies to all creatures. Not just us butterflies."
I couldn't imagine what, but I decided to listen anyway since trying to fight it out wasn't going to go over well especially after seeing how this resolved the first time. For a moment, it seemed like the drowsiness was fading off a bit and I wasn't going to flop asleep after all. I figured that was probably because she didn't exactly want me to drop and snooze right when she was trying to explain something. She probably decided to dispel most of it for now.
"Did you know that before a caterpillar can become a butterfly, it has to die?" Azurana told me, wondering if I knew this already. "But the beauty of it is that even after becoming a butterfly, it still remembers things it learned when it was a caterpillar."
"So what do you mean?" I asked, wondering where she was going with this.
"It's simple," she replied. "You have no reason to fear death beyond losing the opportunity to learn more about the world you're in. For what you learn here, you take into the next."
Was she serious? I wasn't really so convinced there was some kind of easy afterlife just waiting beyond this. I knew how some things were often too good to be true. And considering what I had dealt with in this life, I had every reason to be skeptical.
"So exactly what kind of afterlife are we talking about here?" I asked, wanting some kind of answer on that.
I definitely wasn't going to jump and start believing her on this one right off the bat.
"That's for you to find out in time," Azurana told me. "Until it is your time, learn what you can with the time and the life you have left, because I assure you, it will stay with you in the journey after this one. Fight, survive, and instead of trying to undo what has already transpired, let it strengthen you as you overcome it through your own actions. And this is the competition you face with everyone else in the world. You only have this once chance to learn whatever you can before you have to move on and leave this world behind. And some of those things you may not have another chance at learning."
It didn't give me too much of a lead on what to expect after I kicked the bucket as a featherhare, but I got what she was saying about everything else. Turning back time wasn't an option like I thought it was. And then... I suddenly figured it out.
"So that's it..." I told her, sighing. "Turning back time would actually wipe away the memories of what was learned. It would be impossible to change the future because... I would no longer no what's coming. No one would."
"Precisely," she nodded. "And as a result, very little, if even anything at all, would change as a result of turning back time. Ultimately the same things that took place twenty-five years ago would simply transpire again because what was learned since then would be gone."
There were still so many things that didn't add up, but it seemed like all I had really gained here was just knowing there was a sense of futility. But what did it all mean in the end? All those killed or dead simply moved on? I felt like she wasn't going to give me the answer when it came to what to expect after I died, but there was something else I wanted.
"If what you're saying is true, then just help me with something," I requested out of her. "I'll admit, I always had a passion for Manascripting. But I was always told to cast it aside and let it die with the ways of old. You've shown me this isn't something we can afford to lose, especially after even the koldbloods completely gave it up. And you know way more about magic... the real magic, than what I can do. Help me learn it. Teach me as much as I can learn until I can easily teach others. This is one of those things I know will help them survive and as you said, prepare them for whatever comes next."
I had good vibes coming from this. Maybe this trip would be more about what there was to gain from moving ahead instead of pulling behind.
"I thought you'd never ask..."
"...but deep inside I always knew you would."
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