Ethan:
"Okay, what's the plan?" I asked. We were in front of the entrance of the zoo. "First? Surveillance. We pretend to be normal visitors and have fun," I answered. "Then we wait for the right moment to release all the animals."
"What about the animals that don't have San Diego as their natural habitat?" asked Kane. Man, the guy asked a lot of questions. Aidan, on the other hand, was just as grumpy and almost indifferent as I had imagined him to be.
"We can create all the portals, right?" "That's right, stupid question."
"And if someone tries to stop us, I'll pierce them with my lightning!" shouted Ghost, who was sitting on my shoulder and raised his hands enthusiastically... er, sleeves.
"You let that be," I said. "We can do it without deaths." "But that's boooring!" he protested and jumped off my shoulder. "Then I want to at least be able to move independently."
I just raised my eyebrows, but didn't say anything about it. "Okay, let's go in." "With portals or do we pay the entrance fee?" asked Aidan.
"With portals of course, we're not here to support that dump," I answered, leading the two a little away from the entrance gate and creating a portal with an orange vortex. Aidan and Kane jumped in, followed by Ghost and me.
I quickly closed the portal before one of the many visitors discovered it.
I looked around. The zoo had quite a few visitors! "Wow. Is the entrance fee that cheap?" Aidan pulled his jacket down a little so that the barrel of his silver pistol could not be seen.
I followed his example.
"Oh, look, Ethan, balloons!" Ghost shouted, pointing with his sleeve to one of the many stalls next to the enclosures. "What is this, a zoo or an amusement park...", I murmured. Okay, we'll get you some balloons, we're pretending to be normal visitors anyway."
"Yay!" For some reason, no one seemed to notice that Alexis was different. It was probably because the zoo was almost overcrowded. Why?
Did people really care so much about how they treated animals, the main thing was that they were entertained? Well, whatever.
I bought Ghost three completely overpriced balloons, and then the four of us looked around while sitting at a table. In front of us was the penguin enclosure. Kane nudged me. "Look, they offer fried crabs."
I looked in the direction he was pointing. "Yes, and?" "Look what enclosure the stall is connected to."
I narrowed my eyes. Indeed, it was a crab enclosure! A large pond and a sandy land area with large rocks. Just then, one of the sellers went out, grabbed one of the crabs with thick gloves, ran back to the stall and threw it into a pot, where probably very hot oil was bubbling away.
"Jesus fuck," it escaped me. "Exactly," Aidan agreed with me. "We have to release all the animals here as soon as possible, otherwise it will happen with many more crabs. Wait, where's Ghost?" I startled. Ghost's chair was empty!
In panic, I looked around, then I saw him in the penguin enclosure, just about to make friends with one of the penguins. "You want to fool me..." This child!
I created a small portal, reached in and got Ghost out again. "Are you serious? I let you out of my sight for five seconds and you sneak into a penguin enclosure—why the hell are you still holding the penguin?! Bring him back!"
"But we release all the animals anyway! Frosty is my new friend." Aidan laughed. "There's nothing you can do about it, Ethan, he gave it a name!"
I rolled my eyes. "Okay, fine. But we'll let him go to Antarctica as soon as we're done here!"
I let go of Ghost, who was happy and looked at the zoo closely. At least the area I was in. It looked like a mixture of a normal park and an amusement park. Narrow, asphalted paths, grass in between, stalls in the meadows or next to animal enclosures, in the distance I could also see a Ferris wheel as an attraction. It smelled of food, chlorine and…food. It was relatively loud. Baby crying was so incredibly annoying!
Babies, huh... how stupid people are. Know how unimportant we are and still give birth to some. Only to see how the universe of their children and grandchildren is destroyed by people. People like me.
"No, watch out!"
I shook my head energetically. No, I didn't have time for a flashback!
"He just ran away from me, it wasn't my fault!"
Shit! My breath became shallow, I had to distract myself somehow. "I'm going to look around and pretend to look for the toilet," I told the others. "Would you like one of us to come along?" Aidan asked me. "No, that's not necessary. But take good care of Ghost and the penguin."
Aidan:
We talked directly about Ethan as soon as he was gone. "What do you think of him?" "Really cool guy, but I have the feeling that he's hiding a lot from us." I nodded vigorously.
"That's exactly the feeling I have! Above all, that he has almost nothing against killing people. I mean, his justification with what comes after death sounds plausible... but he still killed our director."
Kane raised his eyebrows. "Do you mind?"
"Haha, no, I'm sure it's going to be really fun with him. But I'm just... curious. Hey Ghost, do you know anything about Ethan that we don't know yet?"
The magician tilted his head – or rather the hood – and thought for a moment. "He likes milkshakes. Ice milkshakes! Especially the ones with chocolate ice cream."
Kane and I exchanged an irritated look. He shrugged his shoulders. "At least something. Speaking of ice, it's late spring in the universe, I'm sweating like a hippopotamus. Shall we get some bullets?" "I don't mind. You, Ghost?"
"Yes, ice cream!" He took the penguin – who was a little smaller than him – by the fin and pulled him along. "Don't pull as hard, he can't float over the floor like you," I pointed out to him.
I bought myself and Kane one each, and Ghost two—I had no idea how much he could eat—balls.
His red eyes lit up when he saw the two ice cream scoops – lemon and raspberry. Then he got a confused 'facial expression', if I interpreted that correctly, and he said in his high-pitched, yet voice-cracked and nasal voice: "Pretty funny, I wanted to kill you a few hours ago and now you're buying me an ice cream."
"It's progress!" Kane laughed. "Until a few hours ago, we didn't know that you were still a little Ki—" Ghost glared at him. He patted him on the hood, and Ghost licked his ice cream contentedly.
Just went well again!
Ethane:
There! There was an employee, I thought. I walked past him inconspicuously while looking at the name of his company ID. Bartholomew Carter. Sounded like the name of a Shakespeare character.
Zoo director even! I bit my fist so as not to laugh out loud.
Haha, Bartholomew. No wonder he was so bitter now and had built a concentration camp for animals!
He had a long, white beard and glasses with small, round lenses, in short, he looked like the villain from a fantasy novel who wasn't even taken seriously by the heroes.
I had to somehow get his key or his card or whatever he was using that gave him access to all the enclosures!
I wanted to create a portal, but I didn't know where to reach. I decided to just shadow him until he needed a key or something.
Shit, he went to an area that was only accessible to employees!
I looked around, and there I saw an employee, a young man with a bucket, mop and dark blue overalls.
Okay, I had to be really fast now before one of the many visitors noticed my portals. I quickly raised my hand, created a portal, appeared behind the employee, pulled him into the portal and made sure that we ended up in a deserted corner of the zoo, where all the garbage containers were. I knocked him down before he could scream and took off his overalls. But a nasty surprise was waiting for me.
Haha, or rather, a little surprise.
"Wow, really?! You don't wear underwear underneath? Is that disgusting! Well, never mind..." But I didn't just leave him naked like that. To keep him from freezing, I covered him with a full garbage bag. Much too nice of me, I know.
Sighing, I put on my overalls and pulled the blue baseball cap, which was part of my work clothes, low over my face. Unfortunately, my revolver was no longer within reach. Well, we released some animals, hopefully no one had to be killed, but I felt safer when I could reach for a weapon directly.
I disappeared with the help of the employee card that I swiped through the slot – so the employees used cards here! – into the building while I was calling Aidan. We had exchanged numbers while Ghost was asleep.
"I'm in the employees' building." "Holy shit, how did you do that?" "Oh, that wasn't a big deal," I grinned and had to suppress laughing at my own joke.
"The zoo director went in there," I whispered into the phone. "I'm trying to get his card. With it, he has access to all enclosures." I heard footsteps in my direction. "Have to hang up, see you soon."
I greeted the other employee politely back while looking for the zoo director. There he was! Was on his way to his office? Looked like it.
There! He took out his card to gain access to his office. Suddenly, a deep voice sounded behind me. "Hey, boy, shouldn't you be working? There will be no break!"
I created a portal behind me, jumped in the back, and landed right in front of him. I whirled around and gave him a well-aimed blow to the larynx. I pushed his body out of the zoo director's field of vision if he would turn to us. But he didn't.
He was apparently used to such conversations. Quick, I needed a skill that would allow me to get his card! I concentrated... and to my surprise, bit by bit, something formed on my hand!
It took the form of a rectangle, and letters and numbers began to appear.
And in the end, I had... an identical copy of Bartholomew's – haha – ID card in hand! I still had no idea what the limits of my abilities were, but I was able to get used to it!
I ran out and took off my overalls. I jumped through a portal and gave it to the man to whom it belonged. He was still lying there unconscious.
"Hopefully you'll take Viagra," I muttered before jumping through a new portal to Aidan and Kane.
Aidan:
"Ah, you're back!" said Kane. "Do you want to? Bought you one if you felt like ice cream." "Nope!", Ethan answered. "We have no time to lose, let's go!" Ghost, who had heard this, didn't just eat the rest of his waffle, but stuffed it into his mist under the hood, about where the mouth actually belonged, and the ice cream cone simply dissolved.
"Awesome," I just commented.
"Okay, we'll start with the lion enclosure," Ethan said. "Follow me!" He created one of his orange portals and we jumped into it. After that, everything happened very quickly. He pulled the card through the slit and the barred gate opened. It took a few seconds for the lionesses and lions – had I just gendered animals?! – checked that they were now free, then everyone jumped wildly – no intended pun – towards the exit. Ethan raised his hand and they jumped one after the other into the portal that led into the African savannah.
We did the same with the cheetahs, it was a bit more difficult with the elephants, so he needed our help to create a huge portal.
And slowly, people began to take notice of us. Even employees. They pounced on us. "Hey! What the hell are you doing?"
Screams began to sound, and more and more visitors began to point their fingers at us and shout.
"Fuck, what are we going to do now? We still have at least thirty enclosures ahead of us!" I shouted. "Give me cover!" Ethan shouted and began to close his eyes.
A guy in blue overalls wanted to grab him, but with a kick in the stomach I pushed him backwards. Kane fought two zookeepers. If you could call it fighting at all, within a second, they were both unconscious on the ground.
Suddenly I was put in a headlock. But the employee's grip loosened immediately after a crackle and a cry of pain, and he fell to the ground.
"What, the lightning wasn't that strong!" said Ghost
Suddenly, Ethan ducked and performed a leg sweep. A bright green circle formed on the ground. Ethan put two fingers to his chin, closed his eyes, and jumped out of the circle. A green portal appeared on the ground.
"Jump in!", he instructed us and let himself fall. "Woohooo!", Ghost shouted and jumped from Kane's shoulder into the portal.
Kane and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders, and followed them.
"Wow, where are we?", Ghost asked incredulously. We went to the zoo... but there weren't any people to be seen. Only the animal enclosures with the animals in them were still available.
"Different dimension. I copied everything but left out the the visitors." "But... that doesn't make sense. The animals are still trapped in the original dimension, even if we release them here, right?"
"Not exactly. Let me explain it as understandably as possible. Each dimension depends on three things. Space, Time and Matter. I don't know all my abilities yet, but I know that I can make myself independent of these three things to a certain extent. Which means I can 'edit' dimensions however I want.
I copied the original dimension, but in such a way that time passes here, in the copy, just like in the original, everything is still in the same place as in the original, but the matter? I worked on them. Humans are nothing more than matter. Many cells lined up next to each other. So I just removed them here. But not the animals, and not the rest, which consists of matter, either.
When we're done, I have to put the changes from the space – that we released the animals – into the original dimension, and voilà."
"Uh, what about time?" I asked. "It passes just as it did in the original dimension." He smiled a little crookedly. "You didn't understand a word, did you?" "Uh...," Kane said. Somehow I understand it, but somehow also... not."
"It doesn't matter, the main thing is that it works!", Ethan said resolutely.
And indeed. One after the other, we released the animals. Lizards, wolves, bears, pandas, spiders (Ethan had let me do that, he hated spiders), and finally the penguins.
"I don't want to say goodbye to Frosty just yet!" Ghost whined. "After everything we've been through!" Ethan rolled his eyes. "Wow, ate an ice cream, so traumatic. Come on, he's gotta go home!"
Ghost sniffed and hugged his penguin. He hugged... even flowed back around it!
"Goodbye, Frosty. I hope you catch a lot more fish out there." Frosty waddled toward the portal, and when he was on the other side, he turned back to Ghost and lifted a fin before the portal closed.
"Let's GO, our first mission!" came from Ethan. That was the first time I'd seen him so hyped.
"We were actually just eating ice cream and freeing animals from a zoo," I said.
"It doesn't matter! We did it, didn't we?"
Ethan's right eye lit up bright green. He raised his hand and clenched his fist jerkily, and we found ourselves among people again. The animals were gone. It had worked.
He looked down at Ghost, who had his head bowed and was walking slowly after us. He was apparently still sad.
Ethan sighed and took Ghost by the 'hand'. He ran with him to a stall where there were stuffed animals to win and inconspicuously took a stuffed penguin down from the shelf. All employees were looking for the animals, haha. And the stalls were almost all empty.
He gave it to Ghost. That seemed to cheer him up a bit.
Ethan smiled with one corner of his mouth and lifted it up. Ghost sat on his shoulder, and the two of them ran towards the sunset. Haha, no, it would be nice if they ran towards the exit.
"They look like siblings, don't they?" Kane whispered to me. I had to grin. "Yep." After a few minutes we stood next to each other, until Kane broke the pleasant silence and said:
"We should have followed them, right?"
"Yepp!"
"We can be pretty stupid sometimes..."
And so we ran.
???
"He's struck again!" "Who?" the boss wanted to know, although he already suspected it. He gritted his teeth. "The Aeon Rift."
The boss slammed his fist on the table. "We must finally stop him! Before he messes up our whole system, or even worse... an interuniversal war! Bring it to me! Dead or alive!"
"But he's still a teenager." "A teenager who played with space and time to free animals from a zoo! No objection, I want him!"
Author's Note:
Phew! 2800 words. I was cooking xD I don't think I had as much fun with a story as this one for a long time. Even if it's ass complicated! If you didn't understand the science shit with space, time and matter, just write me in the reviews, I'll try to explain it a little more understandably.
silentfate