Interlude Nineteen: Walking Through the End of Time

Interlude Nineteen: Walking Through the End of Time

Ashen Specter… no, Rayon — he has trouble remembering that sometimes — is witnessing the end of the world.

He stands in the hallowed halls of the A Rank Council’s base of operations. This complex was constructed on Rayon’s orders and his famous Architect’s hands — the first and only blue sentinel to make the council. For so many years, this facility has been Rayon’s hidden lair, his Fortress of Solitude. And yet, he already thinks of this place as the old base.

Japan is where the end of the world will begin. In fact, it’s already starting. And if the A Rank Council isn’t there for the event, then they can’t really call themselves leaders. So, this might be the last time that Rayon stands within these sacred rooms that have cloaked and protected him and his friends for so many years. Unlike Nightsong, Rayon can’t teleport, although the speed at which he travels leaves nothing to be desired. Still, he simply can no longer spare the time to visit this place. He will be needed for what is to come.

Rayon stands in a large metal room filled with computers and windows looking out over a forgotten sea. In the center of the room is a massive circular table with the GDF logo emblazoned upon it — a table surrounded by empty chairs. The base was built on a forgotten island in the North Pacific, the very same island that Rayon washed up on after surviving a shipwreck so many years ago. This is the island where his familiar found him, out of everyone in the world, somehow having known that his perfect partner lay not in the city he was released in, but across the waves. This is where Rayon gained superpowers, and where his life changed forever.

He takes in a deep breath of crisp sea air that not even Felix’s air filters are able to entirely filter out. Although this was at Rayon’s own request. The smell reminds him of better times. Times when the A Rank Council was just a group of friends, a collection of powerful people with a dream to save the world. They’re Rayon’s family now. With his mother, father, and baby sister dead somewhere at the bottom of this frozen sea, they are the only family he has left.

Except, so many of Rayon’s new family members have died now, too. The others are scattered to the winds, dealing with various problems. Their deaths are part of why he has such hope for the Sentinel Revival program, and for that secret genius of a girl whom he named Daybreak. She offers hope on the horizon, however distant, of seeing those old friends once again.

Rayon wonders if Daybreak Seraph might eventually join his council as the second-ever blue sentinel to accomplish the feat. She still has some growing left to do before that day, but if it happens… he will welcome the one who learned to bring his dear friends back from the dead with open arms.

With a sigh, Rayon returns his attention to the massive holographic display of the globe hovering over the table and the bright red spot over central Japan. The nexus. If the convergence could be said to be two worlds colliding, then the nexus is the point at which that collision will take place. Despite years of effort, Rayon and his team have failed to determine exactly what that collision will look like.

Perhaps it will rock the world with the kind of energy that will sink Japan to the bottom of the ocean as a wave of energy spreads out to make the world anew. Will normal humans even survive the event? Will it be fast, or will it be slow? So many questions, and yet so few answers.

However, if the satellite projections over Japan have anything to say, then it seems a slow end of the world is the order of the day. And if that is the case, the things happening in Japan now will begin happening in the rest of the world in short order. Thus, if Rayon can save Japan, find a way to circumvent each new disaster brought on by the convergence, he might just be able to save everyone else, too. Maybe he can be the hero he so naïvely believed himself to be.

During his youth, Rayon was obsessed with superheroes. He loved the idea of secret lairs, and men and women in capes with flashy powers fighting to save the day. It was why he formed his own superhero team when the world still didn’t know what to make of sentinels; it was why he created all of this.

For so long, however, Rayon was unable to reconcile one fact about his dream of a world with heroes. In the comic books, the heroes almost always saved everyone. They protected the Earth, and yes, maybe one or two people might die tragically to make the story work, but the Earth itself and the dreams its people would live on.

When Rayon started all of this, he knew some of his friends might not make it home. They all accepted that. Yet, what he still can’t accept is the untold millions… no, perhaps more than a billion innocent deaths. He has so much power, and it never seems to be enough.

When did the end of countries just become a standard Tuesday? How many lives are being actively snuffed out at this very moment? How long until Rayon accepts that, whatever new world is to come, it isn’t one where humans belong?

Rayon named himself Ashen Specter when his fiancée, Clara, died in his arms, for he felt like a specter of a man. He’s still never found another sentinel like her and can’t help but wonder what she would say now. Would she have lost hope, as he is starting to? Or would she have burned bright as she always did? He will never know... her soul gem was crushed by the volcora that killed her. Even the Seraph’s project can’t return someone who is all the way dead.

“You seem sad, boss man,” Kyra says, appearing beside Rayon in the room.

Rayon blinks. Despite how many years they’ve worked together, he’s never been able to get used to her habit of just randomly appearing. How did she even know where he was standing to appear just beside him? Doesn’t matter…

“Just… saying goodbye,” Rayon tells her, waving to the empty room… to the table they all once sat around. Now, only empty seats surround that table, rather than smiling companions. He stole the idea for it from an old cartoon, and he never realized how much seeing it empty would break him.

How is he supposed to keep going? How is he supposed to keep sitting at that table without Clara? Without Winston, Sam, or Farah? How can he keep fighting to save a world when Isaiah and Evelyn aren’t bickering behind him?

Kyra rests a hand on Rayon’s shoulder. “We have most of their soul gems. I know it’s just been you, me, and Felix for a long time, but… we can see them again soon.”

Rayon swallows, but nods. “You are keeping an eye on that girl, right?”

“Dancer is,” Kyra responds. “We can do sentinel revivals without her, though. She figured out the process, but we can follow it.”

“When you have hope,” Rayon says, turning to meet Kyra’s eyes, “you never let it out of sight.”

For a moment, the two sentinels fall silent, looking at that empty table and remembering days gone past. The A Rank Council has gained new members over the years, but each one bears a heavy weight. It’s hard to look at that table and remember. Not just the moments of joy, but the arguments as well. As more of them failed to return home, more voices fell silent forever. Until just three original members sat around that table.

Kyra clears her throat. “We don’t have to abandon this place, you know. Even if we are moving our base into Shinara, it’s not too hard for me to pop in and check up on it from time to time.”

It’s true. At A Rank, Kyra can teleport anywhere in the world without too much ill effect from the distance. She can even bring others with her.

Rayon shakes his head. “No. We leave this place to the sea. The phantoms of the dead must rest eventually.”

Even with the promise of revival, A Rank sentinels don’t often die in a way that leaves their soul gem intact. The fact that Rayon has as many soul gems from his friends as he does is a miracle. In the higher reaches of power, it generally only takes one unblocked attack to rip an entire body to shreds with enough force that the soul gem within usually breaks as well.

For almost thirty minutes, Kyra and Rayon stand together in the main room of their old base. Neither speaks, and only the soft tap of Kyra’s tears occasionally dripping from her cheeks onto the floor offers any reprieve from the tomb-like silence of their old home. Rayon wishes that he could cry as well — the dead deserve tears. But his eyes remain dry. He hasn’t cried since he lost Clara, and he doesn’t think he will be able to start now.

After what feels like hours of silent grief, Kyra speaks up once more. “What do we do with this place, then?” she asks, her normal hardness now a broken façade.

Rayon takes a breath, giving his old home one last look.

“The same thing we will do if humanity dies out in the coming months,” he says, turning to Kyra with a grim expression. “We put the chairs on the tables, we turn out the lights, and we lock the doors when we leave.”

***

Rayon and Kyra arrive in Shinara in a near blinding flash of light, although the only ones to see it are a flock of gulls who fly away into the star-speckled night. Kyra releases Rayon’s arm when they arrive, stepping to the side to create a respectful distance between them.

The two sentinels appear near the clinic where they intend to revive their friends. With their old base abandoned, this place acts as the new hope for both their lives and their world.

The healers working here don’t yet know it, but the complex being built below their feet is meant for far more than just sentinel revival. Perhaps Rayon is old-fashioned, but he likes the idea of at least a little secrecy when it comes to the council. He can’t be sure, but he suspects that the hidden location of his previous base played a part in it never getting attacked, and he intends to do the same here. Sure, it isn’t a stretch to imagine that the A Rank Council is in the complex beneath the clinic, but a logical person would assume that they are headquartered in the massive GDF building. And why not? That building is built from the ground up to be defensible. All that needs to be done is to keep up the ruse that Kyra started, and ensure that everyone associates the councilors with GDF Headquarters instead of with what will eventually become one of many clinics built in Daybreak Seraph’s name.

For a moment, Rayon pauses to look over the city, perhaps one of the most beautiful he’s seen in his time. The way that girl’s mist glows and reflects off the skyscrapers at night is truly something to behold. It’s a constantly shifting mass of predominantly white, blue, and gold, but also containing every color of the rising sun. The effect leaves constantly glittering windows reflecting the majesty of the lights, like a city stuck in a permanent sunrise. The mere sight of it does much to engender hope in many new arrivals, and has allowed Shinara to rise up as the cultural capital of Japan in recent days rather than Tokyo.

As Rayon watches, the mist moves and winds throughout the city in great pathways and currents that branch off into smaller threads. The effect leaves the mists looking almost alive. Like a great beast, crouching over the city and defending those sheltering within. Combine the mist with the impossibly large tree nearby, and the Shinara looks positively mystical.

Rayon absently wonders just how much control Daybreak Seraph has over her Dawn Cloud. Is she controlling each whisp individually, or as seems more likely, just controlling parts of the mass? He will have to ask her in the days to come. She and the other points of power will become key assets.

“This is a decent place to relocate, at least,” Rayon says absently.

Kyra huffs, “I prefer Tokyo. Are you ready to see the facility?”

Rayon considers a moment before shaking his head. “No, I want to take a closer look around first. Meet me at the clinic in a few hours with Felix. I’ve been to this city a few times, but if this is going to be ground zero, I want to get the lay of the land.”

***

Rayon is practically invisible as he watches the people in the city move about, not because he’s actually invisible but because a cloud of ash is hard to differentiate from the mist cloaking the streets.

For a time, the leader of the sentinels simply allows himself to be taken by the mist currents as he flows around the city. Each thing he sees, however, makes him more certain that his nagging worry is correct. If this city is a representation of what awaits the Earth… then there is a lot of work to do.

From slums to understreets to skyway passages, Shinara is full to bursting. An entire country's worth of people is crowded into this city, and as more territory is lost, the more desperate the situation becomes. The luckiest of the newcomers find a real home with a solid roof, many Shinara natives having opened their doors to shelter the refugees. However, those lucky ones are few and far between. Most people are out on the streets, some with tiny tents, but most without. In fact, in just a few minutes of looking, Rayon has already seen several thousand people just lying on the unforgiving asphalt, dozens of whom don’t seem to be breathing.

Normally, such a scene would be haunting, but there is an air of… hopefulness with the people living out in the elements. They are sick, they are starving, and they have no bed in which to sleep. And yet, they are hopeful. While selfish people aren’t hard to find, there are a surprising number who choose to give rather than take.

There is a sort of logical sense to it. With Daybreak Seraph’s power imbuing the mist, healing euphoria falls like a slow rain of light upon the city. If each act of kindness triggers another activation, then this is by far the most frequent use of any ability that Rayon has ever seen.

Despite this logical exploitation of the magical effect over the city, Rayon still finds the selflessness confusing. Her name is on the lips of many who offer a hand to help. They praise her name, they praise her mists, and they praise her clinic. How strange that they should do this when the mist and clinic are still relatively new additions to the city. Sure, Daybreak Seraph has helped thousands each day, but this level of acclaim is certainly impressive.

Rayon files this information away. Perhaps it could become useful to him, or perhaps not. If it gets the people to share, take one another in, and help each other, then intentionally perpetuating it might be a decent idea. Yet, no matter how much they help one another… well, magic isn’t going to feed these people.

Felix actually tried using magic to hyper-accelerate the growth of crops once while trying to prevent starvation in Africa before the entire continent was lost. As it turned out, however, magically grown crops build up an unsustainable amount of mana toxicity in normal people, and the project was abandoned. The only ones it would be useful for, sentinels, don’t need as much food as the average person anyway. After a point, many higher-level sentinels can survive without food indefinitely. It’s uncomfortable, but very doable.

While Shinara isn’t completely out of food yet, Rayon can tell that things are starting to go from bad to worse. At the moment, the city is at a point where food prices are being massively hiked up. However, it won’t be long before stores struggle to keep their doors open at all. At that time, the only way to get food would be through the food stamps distributed by the GDF. Food stamps, which disproportionately favor sentinels, soldiers, essential personnel, and their families. When that happens, regular people will start to suffer the kind of slow, horrid starvation that can drive any man mad.

Rayon wonders whether this time of kindness will continue once people realize that the only way to get enough food to eat is to take someone else’s. Selflessness is great until your son or daughter is starving to death before your eyes, then it’s every man for himself. Rayon himself has killed to protect his new family. He knows that if circumstances were reversed and he saw Kyra, Felix, or anyone else on his council starving to death, he would take matters into his own hands. It’s hard to blame another man for making the same choice to protect those he loves.

No, the more he considers it, the more Rayon thinks that the best thing to do will be to prop up this time of selflessness for as long as possible. People want to swear by the Daybreak Seraph? To praise her name? Rayon can get behind that. He can push her into the spotlight. The sentinel that can revive the dead, the sentinel that can heal any wound, the last ray of hope in a dying world.

There are millions of people in Shinara, which means millions of hands to accomplish something great. If those hands are put to work rather than sitting around thinking about how bad things are getting, then perhaps things can just turn around. And if he doesn’t have food to motivate them… well, perhaps faith will do.

Having seen what he came to see, Rayon zips through the twirling mist of the city and back towards the clinic that will hide his new base. Major changes will need to be implemented rapidly if this city is to survive. Most importantly, he will need to meet with Daybreak Seraph once more. If he is going to make her into this city’s goddess, it will be a lot easier if he has her agreement first.

Faith in something greater is perhaps one of the strongest motivators men have. Maybe, if this city doesn’t fall to the Volcora onslaught, then it might just be enough.