hashtagafreakingghost

...I...can see why it's called The Land of Heat and Clockwork.

Yup, that's real lava. John got the Land of Wind and Shade, Rose got Light and Rain, and Jade got Frost and Frogs. You'd've liked the girls' planets, they were both really pretty. Rose's had clouds that basically rained light, there were rainbows and white sand everywhere. And I spent a lot of time on Jade's. It was all snowed over at first, but there were these trees--huge. Kind of the way you imagine the forest in Little Red Riding Hood, but instead of being small and scared in the dark it's just sort of majestic and serene and lonely. The trees were kind of dead 'cause it was winter, but they had this moss growing on them or something, and there were these star-shaped red flowers...and hummingbirds. Little purple hummingbirds. And the Aurora.

They sound...beautiful, Dave, really wonderful, but...

[...]

The Earth... Was it...?

...

Yeah, it. I mean, I wasn't there, but.

[He pauses again, silent.]

That's why I don't know about anything that happened from the second half of 2009 on, 'cause for us, it. Didn't. Happen, that is.

[Her breath catches audibly and for a moment, she's quiet.]

I'm so so sorry. I... I'm so sorry.

[After a moment, he sighs slowly.]

I dunno. Maybe I should feel worse about it than I do, but I was too young to really understand everything I missed out on. Like, I feel bad, don't get me wrong, that was a solid fuckton of people who didn't get a chance to get out like we did. But...

I didn't have a lot of time to dwell on it, back then, not with everything we had to do in the Incipisphere. And Bro did a good job making sure I had the chops to survive.

Edited (When you spell a made-up word wrong) 2016-02-26 00:04 (UTC)

Bu- but that's awful! I mean- for you, I- that you had to go through all of that, no matter how...prepared...

[She slows to a stop.]

...Wait. Your brother...trained you for the...the apocalypse?

[Because let's just call this what it is.]

Kind of? Well, yeah, I guess so. Sorry, this is one of those things I mentioned I'm not a hundred percent on. None of us ever figured out exactly how much our guardians knew about what was going on, and Bro was always pretty inscrutable anyway.

I would hope he didn't! If he knew about this, if all of your families knew about this and didn't tell you...! [She sighs.] Well, it would be horrible. To just...let you charge into this thing.

[There's a surprised beat of silence.]

Huh. Yeah, I guess that would be pretty fucked up.

[Looks like someone never even thought about that before.]

Well, John's dad probably didn't know much of anything. And Jade's grandpa was dead...I wonder if Rose's mom tried to tell her, and Rose just didn't listen. Or thought she was just, like, extra sozzled or something.

You...you're talking like you all only had one person looking after you... What about- oh, God, this is a horrible question, I'm sorry- what about your parents...?

[Dave breathes out and then sucks on his teeth for a second.]

Ummmmmmmmmm. Right, okay. This is where shit starts to get kind of weird, so...fair warning.

Bro was technically my gene daddy. And Rose's. And then her mom turned out also to have donated her DNA to our shared pool. And then John's dad isn't actually his dad at all, and Jade's grandpa was both of their dad, and John's nanna was. Well. You can probably figure it out.

...

This is where time travel starts figuring in.

[The shock and all that starts to fade into what right about now.]

And that's how...Rose is...your sis...ter......

...

Okay. O- Okay, uh. How- DNA, do you mean, you're... Is this some kind of mad scientist stuff?

Yeah, pretty much. Yup.

[...]

I'm not taking a dramatic pause or anything, I'm just working out the best way to explain this bullshit without sounding completely off the walls bonkers. But I'm starting to think that might be impossible. Okay, so after I got into the Medium but before Jade did, John managed to go from...Rose's planet, I think? To a laboratory in an asteroid belt circling all our planets. And there were some machines in there, and he mashed his hams into their buttons like a brainless moron in an ugly green lab coat, and what he ended up doing was making baby time paradox clones of our guardians and then mixing the two sets of DNA to make baby us.

...Maybe I should've drawn that, but it doesn't look any less insane on paper, believe me.

He... While he was already... clones of- but if they were- then what came first, or- oh my God, Dave, you're the freaking chicken or the egg dilemma!

Hey, I'm not. Us nonsensical recombinant offspring totally came second, it's our guardians who are fucked up and weird, I mean John literally birthed them out of themselves. That's what paradox clones are, apparently: clones that the universe pulls backwards in time to actually become the thing what they were cloned from.

But how did he mix the DNA for himself if he was already alive?! Who did it in the first place?!

[Her voice is actually hilariously- not shrill, but high and confused? It's great.]

Did- did John have a small, baby John crawling around him?! Isn't that supposed to make the universe explode or- or- or--!!

[Dave can't help it. He actually snickers a little.]

Why would the universe explode over a relatively simple time loop like that? Of course there was a baby John, how else would he get born. The baby usses went back in time, too, just not as far back as our parents so they'd be grown-ups when they got us.

[...Well.]

Or of a practically acceptable child-rearing age, anyway.

........

[Click. Here is Ashley, out in the wilderness, face lit by...what seems to be a campfire off-screen. Probably the Talonflame she's snuggled up to and leaning against is responsible for that, or Agatha, who's curled up on one side, with a hovering Togetic nearby. She has, in fact, her whole roster out, from the Espurr to the Stantler to the Shinx to an incredibly sleepy Munna balancing on her head.

...Boy that sure is a face. It's essentially just

]

I turned this on. Solely so. You could see. My face.

[Dave's PokéGear is set to match conversation format unless he chooses otherwise, so this time she can see him when he laughs again, voicelessly, through his nose.]

Okay, okay. It's really not that difficult a concept, though. Time travel only causes a paradox along the alpha timeline if it instigates a contradiction, right? Like if someone went back from the future to, I dunno, stop their parents from porking and conceiving them. It wouldn't work because from that future's point of view, the parents have obviously already boinked. But if our Marty McFly went back and either didn't affect things or put into motion events that were supposed to happen, then it's fine even if he goes back to a time where he already exists. You see? So John and Baby John can chill together because, from John the elder's point of view, they already did when he was Baby John.

Edited 2016-02-26 04:03 (UTC)

[She's positively pouting, which combined with her tear-stained face (still red from the cold) makes her look a good deal younger.]

I guess that makes sense...but then when did it start? It's just a loop, forever and ever? That's so confusing. Time travel sucks.

[He snorts before he can stop himself.]

Yeah, tell me about it. Try living, like, literal weeks of the same twenty-four hour period and then see how you feel about it.

~~[There's a "your story is one of many possibilities" comment to be made here, but that's getting a tad too meta]~~

Oh my... Did you do that? What the heck.

Yeah, uh. That was my thing, I guess. You know, video games. Ridiculous powers. That kind of deal.

I was the Marty McFly of our team, basically. The Knight of Time.

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