> After the war - A tie in to the end of the Parody war.
>
> Note to readers: This story is about Teresa. The events in this story come after the events in Attack of the Marshmallow Goldfish which isn’t finished yet, I’ll finish it someday.
> 
>
> The Parody War was unlike any other war. Or at least that’s what our history teacher told us when he made us study it in class, just before the argument started about whether or not it counted as history yet, that is. Maybe he was right. It certainly was on a bigger scale than any other war known to mankind. And it was scary.
> All we knew was that we had been lied to. And that an immensely powerful enemy was bringing his countless armies to destroy us. And that to try to fight was pointless. And that we where going to make a stand anyway.
> We all cheered at first of course. When the broadcasting by the Lair Legion exposed the truth and told us of the danger. Then again when the final decision was made and the forces of Earth were united against the enemy.
> It was only later that the fear began to creep in. That and the realisation. The Parody Master was unstoppable. Everyone knew that. And now he was going to crush us. We had been lied to by the governments we had trusted and now we were going to die.
> Then a miracle happened.
> Somehow, the heroes, the Lair Legion, managed to create a Celestian barrier around earth. We were saved. There were breakthroughs of course, the news were full of them. But we survived.
> The breakthroughs stopped when the blackouts started.
> If anyone were to make a list of all the things that made the Parody War different then the blackouts would be on there, probably pretty close to the top. Forget the rationing that happened back during the Second World War, this eclipsed that entirely. And everyone was affected. There were no exceptions no getting round it, though many people tried. You simply had to light candles - but only a few since prices rocketed - find some way of entertaining yourself that doesn’t involve plugging things in, and hope the electric came back on before the stuff in the fridge went off.
> Whenever the blackout wasn’t on, people were glued to the television. Even in schools, a portable telly was placed in each classroom and left on news channel at low volume so that everyone could stop everything to listen if any war related news came on. As almost all the news was war related the only time we really got that much learning done was during blackout, and even then it was severely unusual, at least by modern day standards, learning without any fancy SmartBoards or computer aids.
> In normal circumstances there would most likely be a great fuss as to how all this affected our education but this was war and the rules where different. People simply coped.
> The thankfully insignificant town I call home was attacked only once, it being as I just stated thankfully insignificant in the runnings of the Parody War, I can’t imagine what it must have been like to live somewhere like Paradopolis during such a dangerous time. Anyway, the main point of this is that despite being thankfully insignificant we were attacked. War affects everyone and the Avawarrior invasion was only another reminder of the threat of death that constantly hung over all our heads. It was a truly terrifying reminder though.
> For me at least the invasion started just after we’d been let out of school. We were quite happy, the day had been quite interesting, particularly the non-existent ICT lesson, and with the blackout on we had an excuse to light the candle stubs we had managed to get our hands on. It wasn’t dark but still…
> Of course, the blackout also meant the emergency sirens weren’t working.
> I was the first to spot them. They were a group of invaders who had slipped in during the time before the blackouts started and had managed to get lost. Eventually they found us. And school being on the outside of town guess who got attacked first?
> It was the prickling in the back of my neck that alerted me really, the unmistakeable warning that my more or less impossible to control power was taking form. I glanced quickly around to see what mayhem I had caused and saw a huge silvery snake tripping the front row of approaching Avawarriors before slipping off. If it wasn’t for that snake I would never have lived past that day. Sometimes my sort of power turns out very useful indeed.
> I recognised what the Avawarriors were immediately, of course. Barely a day went past without them broadcasting images of what the Parody Master’s troops looked like and sometimes they even showed jumpy videos of attacks on some unfortunate population centre. Suddenly we were that unfortunate population centre.
> Seeing them I reacted as any sane individual would.
> I screamed.
> For a second everyone just stared at me; then they followed my fearfully pointing finger and saw what I saw. Then everyone screamed.
> The experience of a lifetime of dealing with strange occurrences cut in. I grabbed my group of friends and started to run back towards the main school building. At least inside there are places to hide. Catching the drift of my suggested course of action everyone started to flee in panic. Not everyone got away fast enough.
> Inside I somehow got split up from everyone else. I ran blindly in terror. This was unlike anything I had ever faced before. I have not had what can be described as an uneventful lifetime, but until that day all the danger and strangeness was my own doing. In some basic way everything that happened originated from me and by some unspoken rule that meant there was always a way for me to fix it, if I worked it out fast enough. Never before had there been no way out.
> I was in more danger than just that though. An Avawarrior invasion is full of Potential; and my panic and racing pulse only worked to send my already hyperactive gift even further out of control, there was nothing I could do to stop it. And so I ran, fleeing from invading forces, leaving a trail of awoken Potential in my wake. And the Avawarriors followed.
> They were like nothing I had ever encountered before/ They really truly believed they were unstoppable. They just couldn’t conceive the idea that they could be stopped. So they set about destroying us at leisure, taking their time, and they planned to start with that fleeing girl who was showing some strange sort of not-quite-metahuman power signature. I was in trouble.
> Then the heroes crashed through the window.
> Afterwards the news was more than a bit confused about the whole thing. With the blackout no alarm was raised to cause the defenders of earth to come speeding to the rescue. Yet despite that something had shown up on their scanners. A sudden and seemingly uncontrolled power burst spiralling off into space. Of course, some new threat was suspected, nothing like this had ever been encountered before and who knew what it meant. It’s nice to be unique.
> Then came the bit that really confused the press. If this really was some new form of attack then why had it been defeated with such relative ease? Where had that mysterious power burst come from? Only I ever knew the answer. My powers saved my life twice that day.
> Not long after that reports started coming out about a leftover group of Avawarriors in China. We didn’t quite grasp the seriousness of this at first. Leftover invaders were discovered almost every day. Hadn’t we suffered such an occurrence?
> But unlike all the others, the China problem didn’t go away. Soon we started to hear about this Avatar. He’d been on the If You See Any Of These Sound The Alarm At Once broadcastings too. Now they said he was on Earth and slowly spreading his hold unstoppably.
> On the day the China invasion finally came to its end, news alerts came in almost immediately on the end of the last, sometimes even cutting the one before short to deliver updates on the situation. I won’t go into details; those are all in the history books anyway.
> All too quickly after that came the Battle of the Conceptual Plane.
> Afterwards it was said that there was a party in Paradopolis the night before the battle. That the whole city spilled onto the streets to join in the joyful, tearful last goodbye. We weren’t so lucky. We never got the chance to say goodbye.
> That day was an awful one. Everyone going about their everyday lives pretending that their friends and family weren’t fighting for their lives on some otherworldly plane of reality; that the fate of the Earth wasn’t being decided while they bought next Tuesdays lunch. For once the news reports where silent.
> Then came the call:
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> “People of Earth, we’re facing a crisis. The men and women we sent to fight the Parody Master are trapped now, stuck in another place in grave danger, facin’ certain doom if we can’t pull them back. They’re our sons and daughters who risked their lives for us, so now we have to risk our lives for them.â€Â
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> “I’m askin’ for volunteers to go across the dimensional gap, find one of our missing people, and bring him home. Every person can go out there just once, bring back just one of our lads. It’s dangerous as hell, with a risk you’ll be lost as well. But it has to be done.â€Â
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> “If you want to help, want to volunteer, then turn up at one of the locations flashing on the bottom of your screen. Wear what survival gear you can, take what medical supplies and weapons you can get your hands on. Someone at these locations will talk you through the rescue, help you make the dimensional jump, receive you when you get back with your passenger.â€Â
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> “This isn’t the victory we were hoping for today. We don’t know yet whether our forces achieved their objectives. We don’t know how many are lost. All we know is that they need our aid now. This is the moment when the human race shows whether we are worthy to survive. This is when we find out if we’re right to be proud of being human.â€Â
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> “This is the time when we learn that everybody has a chance to be a hero.â€Â
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> I was too young to go of course. But if I wasn’t I would have gone. Instead I just hung around the portal thinking of all the people I knew that had gone to fight in the battle, and others who I knew and had vanished into the dark to save them.
> All I could do was watch. Watch as some of the volunteers returned. Watch as some didn’t. Watch as those rescued were rushed off to receive emergency medical aid. Watch as some of them didn’t receive that aid quick enough.
> I learnt a lesson there. One that I can never forget. Death comes indiscriminately and nothing can be done to stop it. I can never forget that day.
> Things happened fast after that. We could no longer keep up with the ever spiralling events that we heard of only in confused reports. We no longer really wanted to. Then the Baroness Elizabeth von Zemo conquered the world. That got our attention.
> I can’t recall the events of the Baronesses brief reign too clearly. I spent the whole time ‘ill’ trying desperately to keep my uncontrollable power from taking effect. I knew this much though: The planet had somehow been taken into a virtual world. This meant that things where even more interconnected than usual. A small disturbance could cause big ripples. The whole thing was unstable enough anyway.
> Don’t ask me how I knew this. I just did. Anyway, the Baroness Zemo incident was one big headache anyway.
> No sooner were we out of that virtual world than we where back in it. The second time was easier though, maybe because I had the experience of the first time to draw from. It was a constant nagging in the back of my head, nothing more, I could go about my life this time. And life did look up for a while during that time.
> The blackouts that had got far more frequent and far longer as time wore on stopped. So did any attacks. If not for the constant preparations you could almost have forgotten we where at war.
> The calm was short lived however. Out of the blue news came that the Parody Master had kidnapped some friends of the Lair Legion, that the Lair Legion where angry about this. No-one knew what to expect.
> What happened was simple. The Lair Legion destroyed the Parody Master.
> O.K. maybe it was a tiny bit more complicated than that.
>
>
> After the Parody War was a party. It was made up of many, many smaller celebrations, all over Earth, all through the Parodyverse. We had fought and we had won. We had triumphed over the impossible. We had survived.
> You could feel the party in the air that glorious night, fizzing across reality with its joy and its victory. That night was maybe the best night ever in my life.
> There was a party the day after as well.
> It was a strange day, I’ll tell you that much. What do you do after a war? How do you pick up the shattered shards of ‘normal life’? After a war you can’t just forget it. What happened happened. You somehow have to start over.
> As a result I was glad to get out of school, finally away from that eeriness of sitting in a perfectly average classroom having a perfectly average lesson as if nothing ever happened to disrupt that. Doing your best to ignore the unfilled seats. I took the long route out of the building though, like I have always done ever since the attack. That just felt odd during peacetime though.
> When I got home though I almost thought I’d somehow ended up at the wrong place. Every decoration in the house was up and hurried preparations where being made, bustling about with busy activity.
> “Hey Teresa!†Yelled Matthew, “We’re having a party!â€Â
> “Yeah,†Echoed Millie, “a party.â€Â
> “But why?†I needed to know.
> “You work it out yourself Teresa.†my mother told me, pausing as she hurried past, “Today is the first day of peace after the war.â€Â
>
>
> The party was wonderful, I’ll tell you that much. Happy, happy people finally enjoying the freedom that they never fully appreciated before. Savouring the sweetness of life.
> I was more happy than anyone. With my eyes full Potential and joy, I laughed and jumped. I was a fool.
> Suddenly, I stopped cold, my joy evaporating in an instant. A familiar prickling ran across the back of my neck. I knew in an instant how stupid I’d been. My eyes fixed on the beautiful, happy Potential around me. I had missed one deadly trap. In my excitement I had allowed my gift free reign.
> And the black twisted thing that wanted me dead woke up.
> I have an enemy you see. I’ve never met them but they have gifts terrifyingly similar to mine. They use them to twist and corrupt Potential, they don’t particularly like me. So they had set a trap, just waiting for stupid, inexperienced me to spring it.
> The worst possible thing to happen took place.
> A great number of Avawarriors suddenly gatecrashed.
> There was a breakout at the Safe you see, and some of the escapees by near impossible chance where whisked away a dimensional anomaly, right into the living room.
> Oops.
> Fortunately they were so shocked by the unexpected teleport that people had time to run and scatter. I found myself in the back garden, alone.
> All the terror and fear of the Parody War came back a thousandfold. Not only was this situation completely out of my hands, it had been set to have the worst of all possible outcomes. And it was all my fault.
> Why, why, why, why? Why couldn’t I have thought? Why was I so caught up in my supposed safety to forget all caution? Why couldn’t I have just looked? The trap was so obvious now I knew of it. So obvious I had missed it. I was going to die and it was because I was stupid.
> I heard Matthew and Millie screaming. The Avawarriors had cornered Team Colour Clash hiding behind the sofa. I could see them through the open door. They where going to die. It was all my fault. They were my family.
> I yelled. Actually threw a rock.
> Now I was going to die.
> It seemed almost fair. It was all my fault.
> I ducked and ran as the warriors of the Parody Master approached. There were only solid walls around the garden. I was trapped.
> I found myself crouching in the bushes next to my scraggy corner. Almost by instinct I opened my ‘other eyes’ and reached out for all nearby Potential. That twisted knot born of hatred blocked me from waking them. Stopped me from saving myself.
> With the empty fascination of someone who is about to die examining the cause for their imminent death I turned my mind to instead reach for the Twisting.
> I reached out, and I found sadness. This thing had once been part of the bright shining Potential I knew so well, now it was an inky shadow of smoky blackness. Now it was lost.
> Slowly, I gently channelled my sparkling silver gift into this empty black thing. Blinking back tears I reminded it what it once was. With a small smile as the shadows gave way to dancing light I let the Twisting free.
> And the rules changed.
> I had made this mess. The Potential was mine. I could set it right.
> As my eyes flicked back open they focused on the single slash of colour in my muddy brown patch of the garden. Or more specifically they focused on the Potential attached to that particular daffodil.
> And I Awoke.
> My power is beautiful if you can only see it working. A glittering, multicolour, sparkling, thread of Potential suddenly is washed over by a pure, silvery, force, and it explodes like a firework, quickly melting into what it truly is, taking form. It makes me glad to be able to Awaken when I see that silvery force that is mine doing its work.
> The daffodil was tied in with a strand of potential I had felt before. The Avawarriors stumbled as a miniplane opened up around them, and the Realm of Spring didn’t like these intruders.
> By the time the opening to the miniplane was gone the Avawarriors were somewhat weaker than they had been before. I need to say thank you to Daffodil for that little favour. And I wasn’t finished yet.
> I almost laughed when I sensed the most opportune thread of Potential, hadn’t I always wished for my little corner to have more plants in it? Now I felt was time to do something about that. And deal with the Avawarriors too of course.
> And I Awoke.
> Green tendrils began to reach from the mud as countless plants erupted from the ground of my little plot. They didn’t like the Avawarriors either.
> And that gave me time for my next move.
> I didn’t even need to Awaken for this. I had already set loose this Potential months ago. It had saved me once already when it had alerted the heroes to my danger. Now I reached out to it across the star filled void of space.
> And I called it home.
> A spiralling rainbow light of pure energy coming back to earth generally does bad things to anyone at the point it hits. Unless they happen to be the person who Awoke that little bit of Potential in the first place of course.
> Suddenly the air was fizzing with built up energy as I knew what I was going to do.
> A lot of Potential had been released last night when the whole world had celebrated its freedom. Emotions of joy and of victory and of triumphing over the Parody Master and all those who followed him.
> And I Awoke.
> I took the moment to duck through an ivy covered crack in the wall that hadn’t been there a second ago, but had always had the potential of being, as the Potential I had just Awoken threw the Avawarriors into space.
>
>
> Afterwards I heard a brief exchange between the leader of the Lair Legion and his second in command when they tried to make sense of what had happened.
> “So let me get this straight.†Hatman began, “A group of Avawarriors end up here more or less by accident. Total disaster. No defence to even try and fight back. Nothing. Then a ‘localised miniplane’ opens up around them by complete chance, just before a bucket of fertilizer that was spilled in the garden two years ago has unexpected after-effects. And right after that a pure energy stream happens to ground itself right in the middle of them. Then planetwide emotional backwash becomes unstable at this particular point.â€Â
> “Um, yeah,â€Â
> “Was the Probability Dancer around by any chance?â€Â
> Smiling, I slipped away, wishing them both the best of Potential in a silver sparkle. Knowing that they could never guess what had really happened.
> Sometimes it’s good to have gifts like I have.
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>
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> Footnotes:
>
> In this chapter Teresa calls on a favour from a small personification of springtime called Daffodil who she settled a dispute for in The Trouble With Daffodils, the first story I wrote with her in. That’s not to say it was her first adventure.
>
> Other stories by me are at Rhiannons Stories.
>
> Also a fairly major part of this chapter was the Parody War. It’s in Untold Tales. If you’ve somehow been blind enough to miss that look here and here for the story.
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> Concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2006 reserved by Rhiannon Rose Watson. The right of Rhiannon Rose Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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