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It had been several hours since I'd gotten back from my trip to the Oni city.
Vigilante had allowed me to keep myself mentally and emotionally together throughout the experience. I put my superhero suit away on its mannequin. I'd have to wash it out later. I'd have to see about what I can do with that suit of Oni armor I acquired too. And about making this one more accessible the next time I want to go to the bathroom.
I hoped I have enough time.
…yeah right.
Um.
So, I had a very brown pants moment. I was tense and shaking. I don't think I could underestimate how importance the invention of the toilet is. It's not like people show it off like they do their kitchens. In spite of all that I've done sitting on the throne was probably the most productive moment I've had in two weeks. When I was done I took a quick shower and wished the hot water heater worked longer. But perhaps I was just imagining it.
Selling off most of my ingredients and reagents for a sorcerer-queens ransom in gold, jewels, Dragon Yarn, magic scrolls, and seeds for a fortune was the best thing I'd ever done. I don't regret it at all. Thankfully, I should be able to replace everything in a single shopping expedition through Chinatown, with the exception of those items provided by my perks, which should refill themselves in a little while.
After my shower I put a kettle on to boil some water, to calm my nerves.
While that was going I went back up to my room to go rooting around in my collection of science fiction books. There I found one particular collection of short stories.
The Golden Masterwork by Murray Leinster: Sideways In Time.
Originally published in 1934 in Astounding Fiction, it was the granddaddy of all Parallel universes in fiction, except of course the Persian tales of A Thousand and One Arabian Nights and H.G.Wells, upon which all fiction that came later patterned itself off of.
I went back to the store kitchen with my book, took the water off the stove and made myself a cup of tea.
I took a moment to read the story over again.
The tale describes an event wherein parts of the earth are replaced with the parts of the earth from other Realms. They were switched out at random, and sometimes the pieces came back only to disappear again.
When I was done I came to one inescapable conclusion: I couldn't do anything.
This disaster was not limited to one location, to one planet, or solar system. As the star had shown at the beginning of the month, that anything could be affected. This wasn't some monster that I could fight with a good right hook and a sword. Nor was it like a disease with a vector, or an outbreak of zombies.
There was no help I could give or receive.
Once I was done with my brown pants moment I went to the roof with my battery operated radio and doused the antenna with shadow magic to try and enhance the reception.
Then I listened to the news.
And listened some more.
And kept on listening some more.
I wasn't the only person having a brown pants moment.
The events of Washington's DC disappearing should have been front page news. It was like… finding out that Trade Towers had fallen, or to use a more recent example in this world that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. The entire city had turned quiet.
It was then that I found that an area just south of Gettysburg taking up a large portion of Maryland and portions out of both west Virginia and east Virginia had also been replaced by a territory from another Realm. In this one the south won the War of Separation and waved the Confederate Flag. The area replaced had its border just outside the area of Germantown.
To say that things were nuts were an understatement. Pretty much everyone was talking about the presidential line of succession.
In other news there was a whole fleet of Viking ships, each sixty feet long with a much of rowers and square sales and round shields, which had landed up in Massachusetts following the light from the Scituate Lighthouse. They'd then proceeded to loot, plunder, burn down houses, and kill, following the roads up through the area.
And that was just the start.
In the next hour a new News Bulletin screamed its way over the airwaves, that of the Kremlin disappearing in a similar fashion to Washington. Most people in this time of 1968 who read the newspaper and are interested in the cold war know that the word Kremlin means a fortress inside a city. There were a number of highways going into Central Moscow the same way there are highways going into Washington, complete with a highway circling around the city of leadership. The fortress had done them little good. It wasn't even in the center of the area that disappeared. More like on the edge of it.
If you thought that this was the sort of thing to set the world on fire, don't bother. The area had been replaced by an entire forest that was already on fire.
As in, several millions of acres of old growth trees on fire.
That then became a super fire when it was introduced to the cold and oxygen rich air without smoke, which kinda exploded.
Like a fuel air bomb.
Boommm…
People in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the other side of Poland heard the explosion.
So that was a bad thing.
As in, wholly shit everyone ready to go to war, over this kind of thing. The army was organizing itself, the submarines went down as deep as they could go, the fleet launched out of the docks by cutting ropes and running as fast as they could with what they had and put the highest guy on boat in charge, and the boats were aiming missiles. Not against the USA, but against everyone. The entire military structure was tearing itself apart due to a lack of leadership and stalling out. About the only reason that nobody was shooting the missiles off yet were that reports were still coming in from the area and everyone was confused about who should be in charge now. Not just theirs but ours too.
That happened about an hour before I got back to my shop and like everyone else I was waiting for the fleet to start launching nuclear missiles.
I turned off the radio.
Then I started to laugh, long and loud and clear.
Heh. I guess we could write off the Dissolution of the Soviet Union as a thing now. A pitty. I'd have liked to have seen that flag lowered. This was definitely going to be the closest we'll be getting to World War Three until the end of this millennium. This definitely topped the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 as a minor bump in the road now.
But seriously, fuck those guys.
From noon to late the news were flooded with occurrences of similar report.
For weeks items and letters from places that don't exist to be mailed to places that couldn't be found, written in variations of Latin and Roman and Chinese, were piled up in every post office in the world. Now these pranks were taken seriously and reported.
In certain areas, it was reported, the Mississippi river tried to flow upstream.
For no less than six hours but no more than twenty, groups of trees would wave their branches as if in the midst of a fearsome windstorm, and yet the sky was clear and the breeze was gentle.
And in New Orleans the fishes of the bayou swam in the air to escape predators, proceeded to 'drown' in the air that held them up, and float belly up some twelve feet above ground level.
Then as if to add insult to injury, nine hours after Moscow went missing and everything seemed to be getting under control, while everyone was fighting the most amazing blazing fires, the same area of Moscow was replaced by another bit of territory with a mile high wall of water.
I laughed harder.
Gods man, that's fucked up.
I'm laughing because it happened. But there were so many people caught up in the fallout that didn't deserve what happened to them that it sobered me up instantly. Nobody deserved that. The disaster isn't even over yet as the water flows outwards in every direction, then floods all the rivers to the sea. It's like the gods themselves have smite Soviet Russia. It's as bad as an atomic bomb. The damage is as widespread as possible. There's no hope of having any kind of social order near there. Everything near and far to the area is gone now.
Soviet Russia doesn't exist anymore.
Gods, that's fucked up. I know I said it once before but it bears repeating.
Even if the Justice League showed up in their satellite Watchtower right this minute there would be little they could do.
All those people are dead.
This was a universe-sized apocalypse. People with telescopes were reporting that the craters on the moon were changing locations.
By the time the sun had gone down I'd spent all my hard-earned cash buying at ruinous prices to fill up my cupboard with that I'd lost in my trading efforts. I hoped it would last a few weeks.
By the time Saturday came around hoping that one of the CYOAs that I'll get in the future will give me something to manage my sleep better or give more hours in the day because I was actually having a little trouble keeping track of everything happening in the world.
The news that came in on Sunday was the same brand of bad as it was yesterday.
Another phenomenon that appeared seemed insignificant compared to the destruction so far mentioned, was that of a great many objects that had fallen from heaven. While many were explained, the explanation was fantastic.
The items always fell straight down as if from a great height, and with not a thrower in site. Some of the items were as normal as walnuts or stones, sticks and bones, except where there was not a walnut tree to be found in a thousand miles. There were nails, screws, bolts, tools and spare change, pens, and pretty much every item you could think of.
A few police Martials were assigned to the case. While it had been a regular phenomenon in the past, with explanations ranging from an item thrown by explosives or a hurricane, there was no doubt that after May it had now become a regular enough occurrence that the weather bureau had to warn people that someone else's junk drawer was being unloaded on their heads.
I'd gone out this morning to buy a metal mining helmet. Not many were taking it seriously yet so I was able to get one and paint it blue. I was going to have to think about a spell against falling object to attach to it.
In terms of progress in gathering resources I was having fantastic results. I made more Shadow Resources Cubes. I used Shadow Step to visit different parts of the city to deposit my cubes to clean the place up.
The Shadow Resources Stones I'd dumped into the water were slowly migrating all over the bay and halfway up the rivers. The number of items lost along the highways when someone stops to change a tire is rather frightening. I don't know where the crap falling from the sky was coming from but I was now in a good position to collect. I'd gotten plenty of tools. I'd barely managed to change the parts out of my car back home and Vigilante had filled that in with a lot of knowledge and experience that would make me a decent backyard handyman. I was still a long way from making my next jetpack.
But at least I'd never run out of pens.
As for going out as a Hero, well I'm sad to say that that was not happening any time soon.
Nope.
There was no way I was leaving home.
As the territory that was being switched out seemed to be at least a few miles across, this way if the shop and I disappeared into another Ream I'd have all my stuff.
The risk of going outdoors was worse than being in the middle of the Zombie Appocalipse. If the land you're standing on gets switched out with a Ream where the planet is sunk under a mile of water you're screwed no matter what. I was working on a plan to survive just such an occurrence. And right now that means getting stuff.
I still hadn't created my Customized Weapon yet. I could hold off on that for use at any time. Mostly I was waiting to get a few more abilities. There was a very good change that whatever I decided to make would be overshadowed with another item later on and I didn't want to waste it this early in the game. Plus, in the current crisis, I couldn't think of a weapon or tool that I'd need that would do me any good.
I might not be here to save the world, but I might be able to rebuild it.
So for the next few days until Wednesday rolled around I decided to focus on expanding the basement underneath Uncle's shop using the same stone cutting techniques I'd pioneered with Gentle Shadow Magic. Research showed that it wouldn't be a problem as long as I didn't tell anyone. Starting from one corner I then proceeded to create a series of double-L shaped stairs that went the length and width of the shop leaving the middle area full of stone to support the structure overhead. The stairway down was very narrow, just a few inches wider than my shoulders and a bit over my head. Once I was deep enough underground I dug out a chamber into the hill behind the shop which was also bigger than the shop far above.
I thought about filling in the stairs with the stone I excavated out so there would be no way to get into my secret underground chamber, but ultimately decided not to. If an emergency presented itself you should always have an exit. Plus I might have guests that don't have teleportation available to them.
I'll have to get some doors.
The next hours were spent extracting garbage from the Shadow Realm and using Telekinesis to sort it all out. Most of the junk from underneath the water was totally useless and would all go to the scrap yard. To take up less space blades of shadows were used to cut it all up. Plastic and bottles had to be sorted. I decided to keep the bottles and see if I could etch patterns into the glass for novelties. I'm sure they'd be a nice addition to the shop. At the very least I could fill them with water.
Of course I did find some useful things. Jewelry that had been dropped on the ground, chain, rope, tools, coins that had fallen out of someone's pocket, and guns and knives that had been thrown into the sea. I needed to sort it all. In addition to that were the items I'd gotten from the Oni City.
The armor was quite the museum piece. It was well made. Reeesearch and Basic Magic allowed me to examine and figure out most of the magic used in its construction. There were spells against damage and rust and thrown objects like arrows. It all depended on blood too. I couldn't work the same magic because I wasn't an Oni. But I sure could figure out a lot of stuff. I filled up two whole notebooks with words and diagrams of what I found.
I was especially interested in the Oni Club. As long as I was tall, red, with big pyramids of metal affixed to the wood, the object was spelled to break bones without killing people. As in, your organs and parts will be intact, but it will be as if every bone struck had been surgically broken.
I'd never asked for medicine. If, after smashing your enemy down, you wanted him to live you'd have to have a good potion to fix those broken bones. Otherwise, it was a sure death.
The Young Justice universe didn't have potions that worked like that. Nor did the Jackie Chan Adventures universe have any special healing abilities beyond the Horse Talisman.
It didn't seem all that smart to go out without some kind of healing. I had my Cellular regeneration, but nothing for the people at all.
Of course weapons were of limited use to me now.
I wasn't sure what I needed.
So I waited for Wednesday.
Last edited: Sep 24, 2020
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