Chapter Text
The first thing I noticed when I came to was that I was lying down on the ground. Specifically, lying down outside. On asphalt. There was a small crowd gathered around me, looking on in horror, and that was the first clue something was amiss. Basking in the warmth of the road, I was hit with a sense of déjà vu. I had absolutely never been here before, and yet... No, it couldn't be.
The second clue was walking around me, inspecting me. From what I could see of them, every piece of the outfit concerned me: A tailored pink blazer over a black camisole; slacks with a very beautiful dazzle camouflage design painted on; platinum white hair that could generously be called ‘elven cyberpunk’ or, less generously, ‘wizard who recently invested in a hair dryer.’ There were no problems with the quality—I dare say it was the most fashionable thing I had ever seen—but I did take issue with how familiar it looked. I recognize that outfit. I know I recognize it because that’s what I’m wearing right now. It was impossible. They were one-of-a-kind pants forged by my own two hands, a second pair did not- could not exist. For someone to be wearing them at the same time as me, that meant…
I rolled onto my back to get a better look at the new arrival, and immediately regretted it. Pain coursed through my body and I belatedly realized I was resting on broken glass. I sat up and kept my head down, lest any glass in my hair decide to enter my face.
“Right. Let me guess, you’re me from the future?” I asked.
“Nope,” he- me? The other guy replied.
“From the past?”
“Doesn’t feel like it.”
“Shit, alternate timeline? Hell yeah.”
“Sorry to let you down, but no. I’m plain old you, circa now.” I spared a glance upward to see if he was joking, and got nothing. He continued: “You- I? We? We look like we just got thrown out of a window, but most of the damage that should have caused is absent. Only minor injuries, a few bruises and scrapes, and probably insignificant blood loss. In short, consistent with someone who has been rolling around in broken glass. Could you try to not do that anymore? I have to deal with these injuries too.”
“I’m hallucinating,” I concluded.
“Probably. Deal with that later, though, you’ve got more interesting things to worry about.” He pointed at two people who appeared to be moving in my direction. One wore red body armor, while the other had a black bodysuit patterned with blue circuitry. “How would you describe what they’re wearing?”
“Unusual. Are they actually moving?” I looked at the crowd surrounding me. “Is… anyone moving?”
“Could be slowed perception. Frozen time? Mannequin challenge? Never know until you get out of it. Let's get back to the outfits: ‘Unusual’ how? Elaborate.”
“What do you want me to say? Goofy? Out of place? Best described as non-standard workplace attire?”
“I was going to say they looked like costumes.”
A memory prickled in the back of my mind. “They kind of look like how I would imagine-”
“Assault and Battery. Yeah, my concern exactly. While you’ve been bathing in glass for an indeterminate amount of time, I’ve been thinking. The theory goes like this: You’re either dreaming, or something very strange has happened. If you’re dreaming, nothing matters anyway, so let’s ignore that for now.” He crouched down to meet my gaze. “If you’re not dreaming, we may have a problem.”
“Where-ever I am-”
“You know where you are.”
“Where-ever I am,” I repeated, “My arrival was very obvious. Christ, are they filming me?”
“Sure looks like it. Now I assume the two fine people coming to talk to you have good intentions, but let me ask you this: What happens to the guy who fell to Earth when the fuzz brings you in, starts poking and prodding you in the medical room, and all the while you're hopped up on painkillers?”
“Fuzz? Really?”
“I was going to say ‘feds,’ but I wanted to avoid sounding like a lunatic.”
“You already do,” I said.
“Shut it. Decision time: Would you prefer to get locked up in a hospital, or have some time to get your bearings without all those people breathing down your neck and waving shiny metal tools around?”
“I-”
“Rhetorical,” he interrupted. “Also, see the one girl in the crowd not gawking at you or holding a phone?”
I followed where he was looking, and spotted a brown-haired girl watching from the edge of the crowd of bystanders. “Sure, what-”
“Hey there, are you alright?” I was startled by a different voice coming from behind me. I looked up to see the man in red armor, and realized that my previous conversant was nowhere to be found. Oh my god, I am hallucinating.
“I’m fine!” The pain made my voice harsher than usual. “Yeah, I’m okay,” I added quietly.
“That’s good. There will also be an ambulance on the way,” another voice said. “We should really-”
“Hospital’s only three blocks away, I could carry you there if you’d like!” The first person laughed.
“No, that’s-” Weird. “-Okay, I can manage.” Who the hell offers to carry a stranger covered in blood?
“Assault, no. We need to get moving.”
I winced. Seeing the body armor was one thing, but the name cemented it. What are the odds of someone in a costume like that being referred to as ‘Assault’ and not being… Assault.
“I’m good, really. Thank you,” I said.
“Right then,” Assault gave me a thumbs-up, “Have a wonderful day, citizen!”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. While watching Assault and the blur of black-and-blue I hoped was not named ‘Battery’ leave to go about their day at inhuman speeds, I realized the bystanders were more interested in filming the cape duo than the guy who fell on the ground. My pride will never recover from this, but at least my anonymity survives another day.
Looking around, I found myself in a metropolitan area. Offices, cafés, apartments, and the occasional honey locust planted along the street, held hostage by a wrought iron fence. Classic. Seeing me stand up, and thus no longer concerned for my well-being, a car on the street honked for me to get the hell out of the way. Fine, I’ll move. Enjoy the glass-studded tires. Speaking of which, it was time to set out in search of medical supplies.
A quick check of my phone informed me it was 11:17 AM. Possibly, at least. It was 15 years off, yes, but the sun appeared to be in a roughly 11 o'clock-ish position. I again regarded the field of broken glass surrounding my resting spot, and frowned. There isn’t even a window nearby!
� � �
God bless the gas station supermarket, I thought to myself as I perused the aisles of the closest gas station. The one store you can enter covered in blood and shards of glass, and the cashier won’t bat an eye. It occurred to me that they may have batted an eye, actually, but they hadn’t called the cops; I was counting it as a win.
All I had on me was all I had on me, and it wasn't until very recently that I realized how concerning that statement was. I had the clothes on my back and a phone in one pocket. Also, in the other pocket, a tissue whose blood absorption properties were being stretched to the limit. Of course I kept a few essential legal documents on my phone, but that was for personal reference. They were useless ghosts in their digital form. Probably would have been useless in their physical form, too. They said the passport is valid within ten years of the date of issue. Not my fault they didn’t specify which way! No pen and paper, even! No food, no rolls of tape.
No medication…
Stressing about a lack of meds would only exacerbate the situation. Suppose that I remained my ever-punctual self right up until the day I arrived here, and that my phone was doing its job keeping track of time: My body had at least 20 hours until chemicals started to get out of balance and all hell broke loose. Fuck. It took years to get proper evaluations, too. I can’t wait for that again. It wasn't a problem I could solve in any estimable amount of time. Food was a problem I could solve and, as I was scouring the shelves for medical supplies, I intended to grab whatever the hell I wanted. The way things were going, I could survive maybe a week before physically or mentally falling apart. If there was ever a time to indulge in gas station sushi, it was now.
I wonder if my bank will allow a payment across dimensions…
“Gonna go with a ‘no’ on that one,” a familiar voice butted in. “Curses of modern electronic banking. You can’t even dodge the payments these days, since they have to verify you have the funds at the point of sale!”
“‘These days’?” I held back a laugh. There was nobody around me, but that was no reason to start giggling to myself while not actually talking to someone. “Pretty sure it’s been that way for decades.”
I continued making my way down the aisle, grabbing a few more calorie-dense options as they appeared. We can worry about health later.
“My next suggestion was writing a check, but-”
“I’m a college student, why in god’s name would I carry a checkbook with me?”
“Yes of course I, of all people, know that!” He groaned. “Excuse me for trying to brainstorm!”
I pushed open the door and walked outside. “Fine, fine, I’m sorry. Let’s just see if it works, alright? I walk up there, tap the phone; if it declines I give them a theatrical sigh, remove a few things, and bring it down to twenty; I hand them a bill, pray they don't notice it was minted in the future, smile, wave, leave.”
“Deciding what to keep at the counter? You think your dignity could handle that? You once bought a bag of pecans because you didn't notice they were there until checkout, and you were too embarrassed to go put them back. You don’t even eat pecans.”
“Fair point, but this is a big city, right? It’ll be different now. I can make a fool of myself in front of one shopkeeper and never see them again, no big deal. Let’s just-”
I stopped and looked back; we were halfway through the parking lot. “Did we-” I looked down at the bag of supplies I just lifted.
“Well, that solves that problem.”
“That doesn’t solve anything! I was trying to figure out if I can pay for things, and instead I just committed a felony.”
“Crime,” he corrected.
“Oh, good, just a crime! That makes everything better. People will kill you when you’re doing nothing wrong, how am I supposed to survive if I give them excuses?”
My friend stroked his chin in thought. “Actually, it might be okay. It’s, what, fifteen years in the past? Sure, New Hampshirites are always inventing new excuses to stab you, but the political climate isn’t as bad as it could be.”
“Buddy.”
“What?” he asked.
“Name the gangs in this city?”
He started listing on his fingers. “Sure, Empire Eighty-Eight…” He stopped. “Okay, point.”
“And!” I shouted, “If circumstances weren’t already bad enough, name the S-Class threats planning to destroy this city? The people who kill and maim just for fun? The people trying to explode the world for fun?”
“I think you’re double-counting with the last example.” I flipped him off. “Calm down, you still have one advantage.”
“My cosmically abysmal luck.”
He tapped his head. “We know what happens! It’s a classic: You’ve got foresight on your side, and plenty of people have succeeded with that, right?”
“You’re comparing this to Recoil? This is nothing like that! I don’t get a two decade grace period, I don’t have the physique to hold my own in a fight, and while you certainly fulfill the ‘smart-ass living in my head’ criteria, you are not a nigh-omniscient Thinker-Twenty!” I flicked my hand at him. “Go on, give me the master plan. What’s the stock market looking like tomorrow?”
“You’re not taking this very well.”
“I’m a normal human in what is quite possibly the worst setting for a normal human to live in, I’m taking this as well as anyone in my position would!”
He rested his chin on a hand, taking a moment to think. If I didn’t know better I would have thought he was trying to explode me with his mind. Christ, is that what people see when I do that? “Well, speaking of smart-ass Thinkers, that’s an option. Best thing to do right now is find someone who would believe your story. Tattletale and Armsy are the only two local lie-detectors, and one of them won’t blame an equipment malfunction if you start spouting nonsense that registers ‘true.’”
“No, we are not doing that. We show up there and I’m getting mauled by dogs before I can even get ‘Undersiders’ out of my mouth.”
“You think that you don’t like the suggestion. Fine, want me to show my work? Let’s run through the job offers available to someone with your experience, no legal documents, and no certifications or accreditations. First: Dockworker.”
“No.”
“Become a PRT grunt.”
“Fuck no.”
“Coil’s mercenary army.”
I gave him an unimpressed glare.
“Waiter at the Palanquin.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad, actually.”
“It’s as bad as any other service job, and angry customers might eviscerate you.”
“Okay, fair.” My eyes lit up. “Wait, I could be a dancer at the Palanquin!”
“Great idea, except you need a little more self-esteem, a lot more social skills, and the ability to not wilt like hydrangeas in an autoclave the instant people start looking at you. Also, you need to know how to dance.”
“Damn okay, you could have just said ‘no’ and left it at that.” I sighed. “Never mind, you’re right. Fuck, I really did decide before I even knew it, huh?”
He shrugged. “It happens.”
“Right then, at least I’m meeting people I generally know the motives of. Step one: Find Tattletale. Where are we headed, east-ish?”
“Yep.”
“That it?”
“It’s on the waterfront, that's all we know. What do you want from me?”
“That’s got to be like three miles of walking.”
“At most!” He gave me a grin. “At the moment, this place is giving me ‘south downtown’ vibes, meaning the hideout is more likely to be north of here than not. Just go due east ‘til you hit water, then take a nice stroll up the coast! We’ll run into it eventually.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“If you’re wrong, my good friend,” he waggled a finger, “We’ll get to enjoy the consequences together. So quit complaining, because it’s not like I’m going anywhere.”
“I have to do all the walking!” I argued, but he was no longer around to hear me. Jerk.