Night One (Constantina + Frank)

Constantina, Frank, wake up.

Constantina Hunt woke up in a bed. The room was silent, and the walls and bedsheets were grey. As she cautiously climbed out of the bed, Mr. Slick’s ominous orb appeared. In a fit of sudden rage, CH attacked the orb, but it nimbly evaded her.

“A little antsy this evening?” Mr. Slick teased, still dodging her blows.

“Why are you here?” she growled.

“I am Here to set you on your way to mastering your Element and Power.”

“Whatever!” Constantina clenched her fists. She had a history of violent mood swings, but this one was unique. A low rumble echoed through the room. Mr. Slick smiled as well as a faceless being can and disappeared. A section of the wall turned white to highlight a door, but CH paid it no heed. If she were to have looked up, she would have seen clouds forming on the ceiling from which lightning leapt with small claps of thunder. Even the humidity continued to escalate with her anger. But she did not look up. She stood there, stewing in her abrupt rage. A powerful wind toyed with CH’s hair as a light drizzle began to fall, but the rest of the storm calmed as she regained her senses. She walked through the door into a yellow room.

“Oh! Hello!” quoth a being much like Alecris. This one’s tentacles, however, ended in triangular pads, and it had a scar down the side of its head. Its voice had a pleasantly smooth and almost feminine air to it as it said, “My name is Eilar.”

“What are you doing here?” the girl grumbled again.

“I am, uh... I am here to train you...”

“To do what?” Thunder rumbled overhead.

“To do... that... it seems you have power over the weather. They call it Elementcommanding, I think...”

“So we’re done?”

“No. You have to learn to control it. Which will be hard to do...”

CH rolled her eyes. “OK. How do I control it, then?”

“Commanding abilities are the hardest to control as they are intensely emotional. You have to focus your emotions into a single, powerful effort and command the elements. It also requires�"”

CH turned her palms upwards and lightning came down all around the room.

“Can you land a bolt in your tendril pad?”

“This is stupid!” The rain picked up. CH was soaked, and Eilar was getting there.

“You will be there soon enough. I believe the next step is to walk through that door over there. I did not do so well in these trials, so I cannot help overmuch...”

CH strode past the creature and threw the door open. Nothing at all made sense in the room into which she stepped. The walls never stayed the same color. The size of the room positively could not remain constant. Even the shape of the room was continually changing. This, of course, angered CH. The inconsistent ceiling was quickly shrouded by pitch-black clouds. In a corner of the room was a bed that was every color of the spectrum at once. All the stimuli wore CH out, so she collapsed asleep on the bed.

⁂

Frank Hunter awoke in a bed. It was orange. So too was the rest of the room; everything was orange. Well, everything except for the weird guy in his room. This weird guy was Frank and it creeped Frank out a little. “Hello, Me-Who-Is-Waking-Up-Now. How’s it goin’?” the weird guy welcomed.

“Am I dreaming?”

“I think so. Either you are or I am. I mean, I just pulled some kind of timey-wimey hooey after being taught by some alien in the next room, so yeah.”

“What kind of timey-wimey hooey?”

“I woke up in that bed just like you did and talked to a future me just like you are. Did a few other time jumps too.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“Whatever feels natural. That’s what I’ve done and I’ve said exactly what past-future me said and did. Oh yeah! Something bad is about to happen. Don’t worry. I�" you’ll be all right. Just... whenever I ask what I was doing, tell me to walk forward. Everything will be OK.”

Future Frank walked to the wall and knocked on it a couple times. A door opened. There was an odd shift in pressure like when a plane takes off, and future Frank then turned around with a confused and slightly concerned expression.

“What was I doing?”

“Uh... just walk forward.”

Future Frank stepped forward through the door. Suddenly a loud, bright flash of energy annihilated him, making present Frank yell. Then a loud, abrasive voice called from the other side, “Come on through! It won’t blast you!”

Frank walked through the door and found an alien creature much like the others. This one also had circular pads at the ends of its tentacles, but dark marks resembling bruises covered it.

“Greetings!” Frank announced, performing a Vulcan salute.

The being replied with a series of curses and slurs that, when cleaned up, could be worded: “What are you doing with your hand? Some weird ’alien wave’ or something?”

“Woah! Calm down!” Frank had to try hard not to laugh. “It was a joke!”

“I already do not care much for your human jokes.” Anything this alien says, unless otherwise stated, can be assumed to be swear-filled ramblings.

“Human? So I guess you really are a legitimate, bona fide space alien? Huh. I don’t usually dream about aliens?”

“You’re not dreaming, simpleton! This is all real!”

“OK. Sure. Aren’t you supposed to teach me some sort of timey-wimey hooey?”

“It’s called Timebending, twit! And yes, I will! I shall first, however, explain to you the nomenclature of Powers. Each name consists�"”

“Oh dear goodness no. Just tell me how to do the timey thing.”

“Ugh! Fine! Whatever! Be an ignorant sloth for all I care!” This next part the alien said comically slowly. “Bending is a purely intellectual class of Powers that does not require emotions for use.”

“Bro,” Frank sighed, “speed it up. I’m not nine.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Nipper, I’m seventeen-hundred!”

“Right. Sure. How long do you creatures live for?”

“A really long blinking time! Now can we just get on with the training?”

“Fine by me.”

“So, as I said, you do not need emotions for this.”

“Yay...”

“Hush! You just need to think about the time to which you wish to go and go there.”

“Wait... how do I just ’go there’?”

“I don’t know! Why should I know? Just ’do the timey thing’!”

Frank rolled his eyes and tried to concentrate. He thought of when he was lying in bed. He thought of where the other him was. He focused vehemently on that point of spacetime. Then the jingle of his favorite fast-food restaurant popped into his head. He reminisced about the first time his mother took him there. Now that he thought about it, there was an odd guy there who looked rather like he did now.

Suddenly, he found himself at the restaurant. He sat in the spot where the weird guy was. He watched his mom order his favorite meal. His mind grew burdened with the possibility of reality being more complicated than he had learned thus far and decided it would be best to go to his bedside. He focused on the freaked-out feeling he had had and popped several minutes into the past and several years in the future.

He had the same conversation you read earlier. It was almost funny until he remembered that he was to be obliterated.

In just a few moments, I have to walk through this door! Well... I can shift forward in time... it feels natural. And whatever feels natural won’t cause a paradox. It’ll be all right.

Present-future Frank assured past-present Frank that everything would be OK. He walked up to the door, knocked on it like the past-future him did, and flung himself forward to the moment he left the alien.

“As cool as this is,” Frank said immediately, “I don’t like it. It’s way too complicated.”

“Is it?” the alien scoffed. “Here I was, thinking bending time and space without causing paradoxes was easy!”

“That too! What if I cause a paradox? Then, like, we’d all be stuck in a doomed timeline wherein we’d all die?”

“Of course not! You’d only be stalked by extradimensional beings that hunt temporal anomalies for food until the paradox is rectified.”

“Man! You gotta stop talking like that!”

“No I don’t.”

“Whatever! Just get me out of this dream prison!”

”You are not dreaming!!”

“I don’t care! How do I leave?”

“Through that door over there!”

“Thank you!” Frank stormed over to the admittedly obvious door and walked through it. He was by no means prepared for what he found.

Various stimuli in all directions bombarded him. Colors flashed, sounds blasted, and Frank wanted to scream. Amid all maddening chaos, he saw a bed. He clambered on top of it and shut out the pell-mell world until he finally fell asleep.

End Night One (Constantina + Frank)