The teens froze, a skull looking back and forth between them. There was no way this was happening, Brad burned whoever was in the coffin away! He should have been ashes!

“Let the kids go.” the skeleton said, clutching their throats harder. The sharp bones dug in easily. Dalton and Brad both set the children down.

“S-Scott? Is…is that really you?” Connor asked in amazement.

“Who else would it be? It is my grave, right?” He looked around at his plot. “Really? Here? C’mon, I wanted to be further up the hill at least.” Now!

“Vbajh!” Brad threw a tiny explosion into the skeleton’s face and he and Dalton pulled free with his super speed. Scott drew himself up and stroked his jaw like a beard.

“Ah, pyromancy and velociomancy, huh? Not bad, but too sad that those skills pale in comparison to the greatest of them all…necromancy! Ha ha ha ha ha!” Scott threw his head back and laughed maniacally, his eyes shining even brighter as necrotic energy gathered in his palms, Riley cheering.

“G-Get us outta here!” Brad ordered, and Dalton grabbed him and chanted faster than he ever had, zooming off as fast as he could. Unfortunately, the direction they were facing carried them straight past Scott, so he only had to stick a shinbone out and…thud.

“Tsk tsk tsk.” he chided somehow, despite not having a tongue. “It seems power doesn’t equal brains.

“Dalton, you idiot.” Brad groaned, holding his head. He found himself hauled up by his lapels, and he was staring into the terrifying toxic emerald eyelights.

“You see, you picked a fight with my students, which means you picked a fight with me. Big. Mistake.” Despite his fear, Brad couldn’t help but remember something similar, not too long ago.

“Go! Go, Master Scott!” Riley shouted, clapping! Then it hit him.

“Oh. Oh god. S-Scott. It’s, it’s you.” he said, trying to back up. He met Dalton’s eyes, and the speedster nodded, petrified. Scott tilted his head.

“Huh? Should I…know you?” he asked.

“No…no…not again…” Brad moaned, trying to get away. However, Scott was now powered by magic, not his feeble former muscles, and Brad merely strained, unmoving, until Scott let go to snap his boney fingers.

“Oh, right! Now I remember! You two! You two were the dudes that tried to shake me down before school ended! Wow, small world.”

“They tried to beat us up for the Taboo we don’t have!” Connor called out.

“So I see. That’s bad, very bad. What else is bad?” he suddenly asked, whirling to his students.

“Drugs!” they answered in unison. He nodded.

“Good to see my wisdom isn’t wasted. Now.” He turned back to the cowering seniors like a jackal upon rabbits. “You guys’re pathetic. Seriously, you’re too old to be shaking down grade schoolers. Even worse, my apprentices.”

“We’re sorry! We’re sorry!” Dalton said, sobbing.

“We’ll do anything, just don’t hurt us!” Brad cried. Scott stood over them imposingly, grinning and cracking his knuckles.

“Anything, huh…?” he said slowly.

“Y-Yes!”

“Good. Kids, pack up here. I wanna make a couple stops before we go find Cross and Amber. It seems we have a ride. Right?” he said, towering over them. Brad nodded wordlessly.

“Sweet! We scored a ride!” Riley cawed.

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It would have been slower going, what with New York traffic, the panicking people, and the fact they didn’t have direct visual contact with their target. However, Cross had several advantages. One, the target was on foot. Two, they knew where he was headed, and…

“MOVE IT! MOVE!” she hollered, firing into the air, scattering the crowd. She took the turn hard, slamming and scraping against a Honda to keep speed.

Three. She had decided to forgo subtlety.

“N-Not so fast, please!” Leo said as she pulled onto the sidewalk to rush down a side street.

“Nope! We’re not losing him!” she barked. She caught a glimpse of a blonde haired young man duck down an alleyway. “There!” She spun the car around, and Leo, Vanessa, and Nigel hung on for dear life as she forced the car down the narrow alley, scraping against the buildings.

“Th-This is v-v-very unsafe!” Nigel said as he tried to hang onto the seat with his legs, his hands still cuffed behind his back. His resolve to stay in the despair of heartbreak was being challenged greatly by this crazy woman.

“Can it! We can’t let him get to Delacroix!” Cross shifted in her seat, aiming her gun out the window, too close to the wall but she didn’t care. If it was a choice being injured and shooting a running kid in the back or letting the world end, her choice was clear. She fired twice, but her aim was off thanks to the roughness of the road. “Damn it!”

Jason skidded on his sneakers down another street, and Cross lost more of the paintjob following. She put her foot to the floor, and despite his desperate efforts she was too determined to catch up. And it seemed his choice of escape routes was less than fortuitous, as the alley came to a dead end. He was cornered, panting in the headlights.

“Gotcha now.” Cross growled, slowly advancing the vehicle.

“You’ll never catch him. Just give up now.” Nigel said.

“You don’t get a vote.” Leo said, trying to open the door, but the street was too narrow. He noticed Jason smiling darkly.

“Good chase, love. But the game is over.” he said, his eyes shining violet. He held up his hand, and from the shadows of the alley came massive tentacled beasts with glowing red eyes, crawling with clawed elephantine legs along the ground and on the walls. They had the car boxed in, and Jason saluted as he mounted one and it moved up the building.

“Damn it! He’s getting away!” Cross said, scowling as the monster leapt over the rooftops towards Metatech.

“O-One thing at a time, Agent Cross!?” Vanessa shrieked, trying to shrink into her seat.

“I told you, the new world is coming. If that means we fall, so be it.” Nigel said, closing his eyes to accept his fate.

“Yeah, yeah.” Cross unloaded the rest of her clip through the windshield into the nearest creature. “You’re on, Agent Manning.” Leo slid through the window and stood up on the hood. He raised his hand. Though the blade had been taken from his hand back at the penthouse, he could never be truly parted from it. He called, and it appeared, shining and bright. The beasts hesitated, sensing the pure righteous fury burning from it, from Leo.

“Time to slay some monsters! Go, Detective!” Cross slammed reverse as the creatures attacked with gaping mouths and whipping tentacles. Leo’s sword flashed as he collapsed to a knee, slicing through them like a laser. Tentacles wrapped around his arm, but he remembered the training Mielios put him through and fell to his back, chopping through the rubbery appendages and looping them around the windshield frame, hanging on and twirling his sword around like a buzzsaw.

Cross pulled out of the alley, only to see hundreds of the monsters, attacking anything that moved.

“You see!?” Vanessa screamed at Nigel. “This is what’s happening with their plan! This is what they want! Can you tell me that this is part of a better world!?” Nigel swallowed, hard.

“Th-This is reprehensible, but…” He saw one of the monsters bite deeply into a fresh corpse’s shoulder, munching away. His breaths came in shallow huffs, stomach churning. “T-This isn’t right. J-Jason and Yun will be appropriately reprimanded, I’m, I’m sure.”

“Yeah, right. Delacroix used you, just like he’s using these things.” Leo growled; his sword arm was a blur whenever one came near them.

“That’s…but…th-that’s not…” he stuttered.

“That’s true, and deep down you know it.” Vanessa said sadly, putting a hand on his shoulder. He turned to her, then made a show of sneering and looking away. This…even if it was going to be bloody, this was…

He wiped his sweating head against the back of the seat. He blinked as he felt something pull away. As Cross shouted and drove, the monsters swarming and the centipede smashing towers in the distance, he saw his hair start to fall out in clumps.

“W-What’s going on?” he whimpered, watching the chaos unfurl.

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Not ten minutes after he had made his escape, Jason entered Delacroix’s office and knelt, presenting the Amulet of Puluhtu. The president took it with a dark, triumphant smile, mirrored on the faces of his underlings behind him. He turned to Fausto.

“We have it. Begin phase three.”

“Yes, sir!” The daemon saluted smartly, pulled out his cell phone, and hit send on a mass text.

All over the world, the leaders of the Society of the Third Eye cells gladly began to lead their groups in harmonious ritual prayer, the specially designed magic circles glowing with evil light.

“A’tumngooah, veenmnosis qu’atla hwesh xorphingam bah… a’tumngooah, veenmnosis qu’atla hwesh xorphingam bah… a’tumngooah, veenmnosis qu’atla hwesh xorphingam bah… a’tumngooah, veenmnosis qu’atla hwesh xorphingam bah…

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Clayton sighed as he pulled into the diveway and turned his car off. He just sat there in the seat for a moment, still feeling…unsatisfied, incomplete. Looking for something he was never going to find.

With a heave he opened the door and lumbered out. Though that feeling still weighed heavily on him, it was starting to fade, at least a little bit. He and the dumbass dork did used to fight a lot, but he never wanted to see the nerd dead. Or a freakin’ terrorist. He was family, after all.

Clay opened the door and headed inside. His folks had taken it hard of course, but his aunt had insisted they come spend the weekend in her house in the country, to try and get away from it all. He snorted as he saw the now empty lawn from the window; at least the media circus had given up. They’d moved on to the new flavor of the week, for the most part. He hoped they stayed away forever.

The house was dark, and he didn’t see much point in turning on the lights, when he was just going to his room. He was about to put his foot on the stairs when he noticed down the hall, the kitchen light was on. It was faint, but he could also hear a faint clinking. Immediately wary, he sank into his wrestling stance, but the clattering continued, seemingly unaware of his presence. He glanced around, and picked up the vase on the bookshelf, silently creeping to the kitchen. He saw the door to the fridge was open, and someone was muttering as they rummaged through it.

“-c’mon c’mon, why’s all this junk here? We don’t even use any of-ooh, cream cheese.” Clay didn’t parse the voice before he brought the vase down on whoever was behind the door. It shattered and the person in the fridge cried out in surprise. Then Clay’s brain caught up with his ears. It was a little deeper, sounded a little strange, but he had been hearing that voice for the last sixteen years.

“W-What? S-Scott?”

“Yikes! What the hell!?” Without thinking, Scott poked his head above the door, rubbing it. Clay saw a white skull with hellish glowing pupils rise up to menace him.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

They both screamed and pointed at each other, one meaty finger and one boney. Clay swore as he picked up a chair and raised it above his head, hoping it would be enough to break the bones of this monster. The skeleton, however, backed up with his hands in front of him.

“Whoa whoa whoa! Chill dude, chill!” he said, acutely aware he was even smaller compared to his brother now that he was missing his skin and muscles.

“What the hell!? The hell are you!” Clay screeched. “Are-are you Scott!?” The skeleton scraped his jaw.

“Well, yea-no, wait. Hm-hmm. Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” he said, nodding and grinning, then he realized. “Wait, they actually haven’t. Damn it, that was a perfect setup, too…” He began grumbling to himself, and there was no mistaking it. Clay let the chair fall, weak in the knees. He grabbed the bones by the shoulderblades.

“It-It’s you. It’s really you.” he choked out.

“Eh heh, yeah. Good to see ya, bro.” Scott said, scratching his skull. “I, uh, didn’t expect anyone to be home. Where’re Mom and Dad?”

“They’re at Aunt Brenda’s.” Clay said, taking a moment to look him over. He realized Scott was wet. “Why? How?” was all he could ask, unable to process anything more.

“Hmm, well, y’see…um…I’m kinda…a necromancer.” Scott said, going over many, many options in his mind, but at this juncture there was no point trying to deny the obvious. “I found the Necronomicon a while back, been raising the dead ever since. The reason I’m always holed up in my room and so tired during the day? This.” he said, sweeping up and down his body. “Gotta say, was not expecting this, but my flesh got burned off while I was coming back. Covered in soot and dirt, that’s why I had to use the shower. Oh, we’re not gonna have hot water for ten minutes, I scrubbed good.”

Clay just stared at his skeletal brother, mindlessly shaking his head. It took a moment before a response came to him.

“What? You-what? Necro-wha?”

“So eloquent.” Scott said, rolling his eyes. It was amazing how easily he could still do that gesture. “Walk and talk Clay, walk and talk. I don’t have a lot of time.”

“Are-do you only have a small time in this world to finish your business?” Clay asked. Scott opened his jaw to derisively correct him, but a thought occurred.

“You could say that, but it’s not due to any time limit on my part. I could be spooky forever, wouldn’t change a thing.” he said, going back to the fridge. He finally grabbed the half-eaten jar of pickles, and tossed the contents. “I needed a sturdy jar for some special reagents.” he explained, walking off and beckoning his brother to follow. “No, it’s cause the world is ending.”

“What!?” Clay cried in alarm.

“Which is why I gotta work fast. Oh, don’t look so socked, the apocalypse nearly happened twice now, I beat it back every time. With difficulty, mind you, but overcoming challenges such as these only cements my genius.” Scott said, his metatarsals clacking on the stairs.

“W-What? Twice? What?” Clay sputtered, flabbergasted. He couldn’t keep up with this. “Is...is that why you died? Why were you part of a terrorist attack, anyway?”

“What? Is that what they’re saying I did?” Scott said indignantly. “I have never committed terrorism! Except for the once, but that was really more of a foray into supervillainy!” he amended.

“H-Huh?” poor Clay said.

“Oh, you wouldn’t remember. I just had some vampires to deal with, it’s fine now.” he dismissed, waving it off. “Long story short, the world is a very large and very scary and dangerous place. But no, I assaulted Metatech Pharmaceuticals ‘cause they’re behind the Taboo production for nefarious purposes. AS one of the only magicians available, the government contacted me to basically be the party wizard and solve their problems. And as a necromancer, I’m not going to let a little thing like death get between me and getting paid.” he said determinedly, his pupils shining brighter.

“Wait. You’re trying to stop that drug that’s going around?” Clay asked. Scott nodded.

“Yup. Unfortunately, the company president’s got an evil god on their side. Now it’s time for some payback.” He opened his closet and started rummaging through his drawers, reaching into the crawlspace and dumping what looked like a box of slime into the pickle jar. It made a mewling noise, and he shook it vigorously, to Clay’s horror. “Yes.” Scott said, pulling on a pair of black jeans and belting them tightly. “Even if I don’t have anything to cover, and boy howdy does that upset me, I still feel better for having pants on, y’know?”

“Yeah.” Clay said. All in all, he thought he was adjusting rather well to this strange new reality. “So, I’m guessing it’s pointless to say none of this can be real.”

“By my beautiful boney butt, it be so.” Scott said, relieved he wouldn’t have to go through the whole spiel. He stuck his feet in his boots and threw on a black t-shirt.

“So…what are you doing, anyway?”

“What’s it look like? Getting dressed.” Scott said. “No one’ll take a skeleton seriously, and I don’t have pockets, very important for a wizard. You need the proper attire to suit the occasion, and while matching colors to my complexion is a little hard right now, black goes with everything.” He got out the black hoodie Amber gave him and put it on. It was strange; while he felt tactile and temperate sensations, they were very, very far away, and easily ignored. He reached into the closet and pulled out his long, sleeveless Necrysis coat. “Robes and capes are old-fashioned, and I’m a 21st-century necromancer. You get the same effect with an overcoat and hoodie, without looking out of place or ridiculous in bad lighting.” He slid it on and flung it back dramatically. He slipped on his leather gloves, and he finally felt ready. “The kids’ll be back from the lab any minute, where did we bury the dog again? Right, behind the lab in the woods…” he said absently, picking up his backpack and throwing magical ingredients and components into it.

“How do you know so much about fashion, anyway?” Clay asked, leering at him a little. Scott paused, and looked down at his necromancy outfit.

“…I guess I spend a lot of time around Amber. Y’just…pick things up, I suppose.” he said, and felt a pang in his chest when he thought of her. Soon.

“C’mon Master Scott!” came from outside, along with a car horn. Clay looked out to see two terrified teenager in a bright red convertible, with two children and a skeleton in the back seat. A disembodied hand jumped and waved in greeting on Bones’s head.

“That’s my ride. Stay safe Clay. I may not like you around all the time, but you’re an okay guy.” Scott said, bumping his shoulder and opening the window. “Remember, you can make a flamethrower from a lighter and hairspray. Might help.” He stuck a leg out.

“Wait! Where are you going?” Clay asked, stopping him.

“Like I said, a lot to do. People to see, places to be, scores to settle.” he said ominously, pulling his hood up. Clay shivered at the sight.

“Uh, bro…good luck.” he said, sincerely.

“Thanks.” Scott fell to the ground, then picked himself up and hopped in the car. “So! How’re we doing?” he asked the kids.

“We got everything you said you needed, Master!” Riley said perkily, saluting and holding two rather large pillowcases, one moving.

“And our friends weren’t any trouble, thanks to Bones here.” Connor grinned, patting the skeleton.

“Oh sure, yes. No problem, no problem whatsoever, no siree. Heh heh, can we go now?” Brad said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Dalton couldn’t even manage that, quaking in the passenger seat.

“But of course! We have much to do, and little time to do it in!” he chuckled.

“Eh, not exactly what I meant…”

“I know!” Scott boomed, throwing back his skull to laugh. “You.” He pointed a finger at Dalton, who nearly passed out.

“Y-Y-Yes? Sir!” he added quickly, and somehow Scott’s grin got wider.

“That’s what I like to hear. You are the key to my plan. You can increase or decrease the speed of nearly anything with your velociomancy, correct? Can you make this hunk of junk go faster?”

“Uh, yeah?” he said.

“Great. How fast can you make it?”

“H-How fast did you need it?” Dalton said nervously. Scott’s eyelights gleamed.

“Perfect.”

Then the world started to tear itself apart.