Chapter 7 Meeting Nightcore

“I know we just met but can we kill that Reginald bastard?” - Cannibal Holocaust, leader of the Slaughterhouse Seven Six, known for being able to keep the alliteration after eating Reginald.

They saw her before they got there, well, Freddy did.

“You’re the other new kid right?” he called out

Aiden only saw a blur, the taller girl sitting on a yellow 2x2 block gradually moving towards them over the ravine.

When the tetrimino reached them, Alexis simply jumped off as the object disappeared. Grumbling to herself as she wrung the water from her hair, leaving a trail of puddles as she neared them.

“Fell in the moat?”

“Who’s he?” she cut in.

“Our tutor for today,” Aiden answered.

Freddy chuckled, “You fell in the moat.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this but I wished I stayed in the frozen irradiated wastelands,” Alexis grumbled as she walked past them.

Smirking as he followed behind her, Freddy said, “Don’t get too used to using your power, the Yard’s meant to train your physical skills.”

“I swear I will hurt whoever came up with that idea!” she ranted, “and wouldn’t brute powers have a far easier time?”

“That’s why we have-” Suddenly, a sound like a heavy, metallic stomp interrupted them, before it was followed by another heavy stomp, then another. Aiden stumbled as the ground itself shook in tandem with each stomp as if heavy machinery was slamming itself into the ground.

Freddy, almost completely unfazed, spoke, “Oh, Monger’s nearby.”

“Who’s-”

The stomps came closer until the ground broke in front of them. ‘No,’ Aiden thought, ‘not broken, opened.’

They watched as an absolutely massive figure stomped his way out of the underground tunnel. He was over two metres tall and his shoulders looked broader than Aiden’s entire wingspan. Hunchbacked and wearing a military dress uniform, every single inch of the man looked like it was formed out of concrete blocks. And he was so tall in fact Aiden couldn’t make out the details of his face other than a trimmed moustache, bald head and an eyepatch that covered his right eye.

“IS THIS YOUR SNOT-NOSED BAGGY PANTS WEARING MAGGOT COVERED PUDDLES OF VOMIT TIDE PUKE?” the man yelled as he held a small figure like a potato sack in front of them.

Freddy’s form snapped to a salute, “Sir yes, probably sir!”

Aiden noticed he was wearing a dark navy blue military uniform, his breast was decorated in what looked like numerous colourful ribbons. As the man walked another step forward, he noticed he walked with a limp on his right leg and every time it hit the ground they would hear and feel that loud metallic stomp.

“THIS SORRY EXCUSE OF A DISFIGURED LARVAE HAD THE AUDACITY TO BE ABSENT YESTERDAY!” Suppressing the urge to clutch his ear, Aiden felt like he just got a raver’s life worth of hearing damage with that one sentence.

“DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT TO DO LIEUTENANT?” he continued to yell, spittle flying out of his mouth.

“Yes, I do sir!”

“GOOD!” he yelled, once again grabbing that person by the scruff of her neck. “AND IF I CATCH YOU ABSENT, LATE OR STUCK IN THE YARD LIKE A CRAB IN A CRAB TRAP! THEN YOU BEST BE PREPARED TO GO HOME CRYING TO MOMMY LIKE THE PATHETIC MAGGOT YOU ARE!!”

The girl, Aiden only realised she was a girl now since the massive 6 ft 5 man had strangely taken up most of his attention, had her eyes closed and ears blocked.

“You’re supposed to say sir yes sir,” Freddy whispered.

“Siryessir?” a high pitched voice said.

The man let go of his grip, dropping her onto the ground like a sack of potatoes, “GOOD ENOUGH!”

And with that, he turned around, his footsteps shaking the ground as he descended back into the earth. The mechanical doors slamming behind him, seamlessly blending into the pavement. The stomps grew further and further away until eventually there wasn’t a sign he was ever there. Apparently back on the hunt for more latecomers to catch.

“That was?” Alexis hesitantly started.

“Your principal,” Freddy replied with a cheerful tone, “Principal General Wendell Richard Monger. The man who came up with the obstacle course for a schoolyard.”

Glancing at Alexis, his smirk widened, “You know, the guy who you said you would hurt just a minute ago?”

Aiden had never seen someone reconsider a decision that quickly in his life.

“Why is he so…” he began.

“Loud?”

“Among many other things I want to ask, yes.”

“Do bear with him on that, he lost his hearing in the middle east, back when there still was a middle of course.”

“Wasn’t that place completely overrun ninety years ago?” Alexis asked, “How old is he?”

“Dunno,” Freddy replied, moving forward to help the new girl up, “he’s been a cranky old bastard since I was in diapers. You alright?”

“YeahI’malright,” the girl spoke. Her voice sounded strange, high pitched and fast-paced like it was sped up with audio editing. She had a distinctively Asian appearance, black eyes and hair, with a purple streak running down the latter. Aiden noticed she wore a mask of some kind, black and metallic-looking, it covered the bridge of her nose to her chin, with a design like a smiling oni mouth. On her chin was a silver horizontal crescent moon, facing downwards so that it mirrored the smiling mouth design.

As she moved, he saw that she seemed to move slightly faster than anything he was used to. Getting back up in less than the blink of an eye. As she started patting her pants of dust, her hands moved like a blur and this time it wasn’t because of his myopia. Strangely, on the back of her right hand, there was a yellow symbol tattooed onto her hand but Aiden couldn’t make out what of.

“Well introduce yourselves kids.”

“HiI’mJun,” the new girl spoke first, almost cutting in on Freddy’s sentence.

“Aiden Bu.”

“Alexis,” she replied, “you’re a speedster?”

“Notjustthatbutrightnowyeah.”

“Can you talk slower?”

“Canyoutalkfaster?” Jun rebutted.

“Isurecan,” Freddy butted in with a smirk. Glancing towards the slow-speaking mortals, he said, “Had a speedster buddy a few years ago. Got used to it.”

“Nowcomeon,” he continued, “we’re late.”

Setting down a large empty jug in front of them, Freddy asked, “What do you all know about Gates and Hume Levels?”

There was a bit of silence as the three considered his question, “Gates are random openings to parallel dimensions, when they open they cause a lot of destruction and need an Awakened to close or it’ll keep growing,” Alexis replied. “Hume is just a measure of our ability isn’t it?”

Freddy clapped his hands, “You’re right in both cases, but that’s not the full picture. Any of you seen Reality Bleed before?”

Aiden nodded, as did Alexis.

They were in a Home Economics room, and from under the counter, Freddy took out a roll of glad wrap, ripping out a length and putting it inside the jug. “See, to understand why Reality Bleed occurs, you need to know how Hume works and how we measure ‘existence’.”

When he was done, the glad wrap was dividing the jug into two separate halves. Putting it by the sink, he turned on the tap and let the jug fill with water. “Everything in this reality has a Hume level. People, trees, rocks, air, everything. We know they have a Hume level because they exist by this reality’s rules. A Hume level is essentially just a measure of how real something is, the strength of any given portion of our reality. Any questions on that?”

None, it sounded confusing but they didn’t yet understand how it would relate to other things.

Freddy took out the jug, now filled to the brim in both halves with water. Taking out a pair of food dyes, he dyed one side blue, the other red. “Now imagine the blue water as our reality, each individual droplet of water a Hume. Normally, the Hume level is spread out equally, just like a liquid is, but sometimes an anomaly occurs.”

Closing the lid on the jug, Freddy made it a completely sealed space, then, he began closing two of his fingers together. The class watched in silence as water on the blue side seemed to… flow inwards until a speck of ice appeared.

“Say hello to life,” Freddy spoke, “No one remembers who first invented the way to measure Hume Levels, but we do know about three hundred years ago Edward Garcia measured that all manners of life had higher levels of Hume compared to the ambient average. For most creatures the difference was so small it was undetectable without major advances in Hume measurement, but good’ol Garcia noticed a trend, the more complex a creature was, the higher the average Hume level they had. Of course, even for humans, this slight increase was so low it would be considered negligible. Until,” he glanced around at all of them.

“He measured an Awakened, and found they were significantly higher than the ambient Hume level, and this Hume level only increased when they activated their ability.”

He twirled his fingers, spinning the small fragment of ice within the blue half of the jug. “See all powers work in the same fundamental way, we are that piece of ice.” It began streaking about inside the water, almost like a fish. “When we do our thing, we are solids in a world of liquids. When we use our power, our gimmick, we’re like a solid pushing aside the liquid that is reality. All Awakened are a type of reality bender, who can bend reality simply because we are more real.”

Freddy looked at his class, at the faces digesting information. It was more than most normal people ever learned. None of these three came from Geneline families, they were legitimately normal people.

He was almost nostalgic.

“How does this relate to Gates?” Aiden spoke up first.

“A very good question,” he smiled, “look at the glad wrap separating our two liquids.”

He moved the water so that the glad wrap would ripple, drawing their attention to it. “There is currently an unknown number of alternate realities, some think it’s infinite, some say it isn’t, just know that there are at least hundreds of alternate realities which are separated by that glad wrap. Those dimensions don’t use Hume, imagine they’re a different liquid altogether. Necrada has Mortem, Hell has Brim while we have Hume.”

Then the ice in the blue half stopped in its tracks, “Now what do you think happens, if we ram this ice shard into it?” And Freddy did so, tearing a hole in the glad wrap, allowing the red and blue water to flood into each other’s halves, to mix.

As the blue and red dyed water starting mixing to a purple, Freddy spoke, “What we understand as Reality Bleeds, occur when two different types of reality start mixing and produce something completely new. Taking aspects of both but being incompatible with anyone born from either.”

Then he froze the entire thing so that the mixing blue and red liquids stopped. Letting them think over what he just said.

Alexis began, “If that’s the case, wouldn’t that mean…”

“If that ice shard is an Awakened, does that mean that power usage causes Gates to open?” Aiden said.

“In a way, yes,” he said to all their shocked faces, “but the truth isn’t that simple. I made the ice shard large enough to be visible but even the strongest of us aren’t normally high enough to cause a Gate on their own.”

“But you know what it is, though,” he looked around at them, “think of everything I’ve said. If it is due to a high concentration of Hume that causes a Gate to open, what ways other than an Awakened can that glad wrap be torn?”

Aiden furrowed his brow at this, biting the nail of his thumb as he thought. But in the end, none of the three came up with anything, to Freddy’s slight disappointment.

“Want me to tell?”

Three heads nodded.

He chuckled, “Tell me, with the exception of one, where have all Gates opened?”

Slight confusion.

“On Earth,” Alexis replied.

Leaning back into his chair, Freddy spoke, “It is a little known fact, that before the first Gate outside of Earth’s atmosphere appeared, almost five hundred years ago, humanity had sent its first manned expedition to Mars.”

He glanced outside, towards the sky where the shattered moon lay, “The Gate that brought the Obsidian Moon opened eight days after they landed. Appearing in Mars’ orbit.”

Aiden was the first to realise.

“People,” he muttered, and soon realisation began to dawn on everyone else.

“Gates open where people are,” Aiden continued, voice low and deep in thought. “They’ve only opened up on Earth, the one exception coming from the time when people completely left Earth.”

Freddy gestured at the jug, where on the glad wrap, there was a tiny frosting of ice, something he was slowly freezing as they thought over the question. “Life has an innately higher than average Hume level, over time, that compounding concentration is what causes most Gates to open.”

He stood up, walking around the classroom as he spoke. “Allow me to speak more about Edward Garcia. Later on in his life, he ran an experiment, where he set up a room where all the Hume level inside was measured, and every wall fitted with a measurement device to account for all Hume that entered and exited.”

He stopped in the centre of the room, between all three of them. “And then he had a woman give birth in that room, taking measurements before and after she gave birth, and he discovered that there was a tiny bit of extra Hume that was unaccounted for, exactly the amount of the baby that was just born.”

“Here is where our liquid analogy starts to break a bit, matter as we understand it, cannot be made or destroyed by the normal means given to us by physics, but according to the Garcia Theory, Hume can be made just by creating new life.”

He glanced at the jug once again, “The Garcia Theory posits that life is constantly generating new Hume, thus the reason why Gates only appear where people are...” The glad wrap, now frosted over in a single spot, began to break and crumble, “...Is because the walls that separate realities are finite, as life proliferates infinitely we’ll strain against that wall until eventually, it breaks. And this is true for every single alternate reality.”

Freddy let the two colours mix for a few moments before he began to move the ice, “And this is why we’re the only things that can close Gates.”

Shards of ice gathered where that new hole was, each of them broke off a small part of itself before they gathered together and stuffed the hole, the water around it freezing to seal it off.

“The expressions of our powers are solids in a liquid realm. So we can sustain ourselves because we don’t diffuse and mix the same way the more malleable liquid reality does. Through the usage of our powers and the sacrifice of Hume levels, we can actually close a Gate. By solidifying that piece of broken reality, we seal away the Bleed.”

Suddenly, a phone rang once. Freddy took his own phone out, smiling slightly as he read the text message.

“Now, let me show you guys how an Awakened can actually do that.”