Oooh look! Early writers enthusiasm; how long can I keep it up?


*Chapter 1: Threads*

It wasn't anywhere, it wasn't even nowhere. Time and space had little meaning here, this was often not the case, many entities that claimed to be outside of time still needed time to say it in after all. But here was different, it was nothing, but lead to everywhere, a split second of nothingness that could traverse the universe, and time too if conditions were right.

The entity stretched, if that could be used to describe something without a body in any respect. Likewise its purring to itself was little more than an emission of microwave radiaition. Nonetheless, it was pleased. They had arrived, everyone it had spent years years working out the small details, a little push here, an alteration there, now it could emerge, and it would be strong

* * *


Jazz struggled through the wreckage of the small town trying not to look at anything that would further disturb him, if that were possible. Whatever had happened here, it didn't deserve the title of 'riot' that he had been told would be awaiting him. It didn't even deserve the ttle of 'battle; this was far worse. He had been in plenty of fights, skirmishes, battles and even slaughters, but this was madness, perhaps atrocity was the word to be used here. Things like this were just not seen It was as if the entire town had gone homicidal at once; half of the squad that had arrived had stayed at the edge of the small settlement, too horrified to continue further. Most of the survivours had been captured, barely three dozen from a community of over four hundred, and each one had had to be sedated or beaten unconsious. Now all that was left was the wreckage, and the bodies. A lot of them were small, far too small to have ended like this.

Nobody had expected anything like this; Veldt as far as anyone knew was just a small collection of buildings along on of the many traveling paths that connected the various bigger communities; one among hundreds Then someone had called in the army, and then there was this. What should be done now, Jazz mused, would be to have the entire place burned to the ground and declared unholy. He sat down on the remains of a small truck. It had once been quite a respectable truck, before it had been blown up, looted and set on fire. Amongst the charred, twisted metal barely visible was the legend 'Langsam defensive equipemnt' Jazz sighed, for the first time in a long time, he had absolutely no idea what to do.


*Elsewhere...*

Schrock sat down heavily on the park bench. Geez, what a day; nothing but waiting, then standing in line, more waiting, customs, further waiting... And for what? It was cold and getting dark and here they were sitting outside of some hostel a million, no, no, lets see, 17.6 light years from home. He'd never felt more displaced than he did right now. Well at least nobody seemed to be paying them any attention; that was a good thing in Shrock's books. Even Erst wasn't being noticed, at least not more than usual. But everything was so, so different And there was too much to do, find proper accomodation for one, jobs for another, there were hardly any turtles here, and those that there were were hardly helpful, and for some reason he had the terrible feeling that life was out to get him.

His somewhat gloomy mood was interrupted by Erst's return. He was,as usual in a cheerful mood; it took a lot to upset Erst, he had some kind of antibodies to depression. If anything marked him as adopted it was that, Schrock's entire family had a definite if not exactly mean, then blue streak. He was humming, a tuneless cheerful melody that would sit in your head and annoy you the whole evening.

"Hey Schrock! Isn't this place great! I met these two really great rabbits and we went to this place called 'The Pink (-) Cat' and there was free food, well, not really meal food, but snacks there! Isn't that great?" Schrock considered this. Erst had a horrible habit of trying to fit in, even though he didn't, but his one success was an uncanny ability to make friends, if not very many of them. He watched his brother sit down and start polishing his shell. And now they were here so he could fit in someplace he belonged and everyone would be happy and there would be little pink birdies and butterflies and-

"Pink (-) Cat?" What kind of place is that? Erst looked up, his face a mask of recolection and eagerness 'Well, I don't really know, one of those party places, only the only people dancing were these girls on the stage, everyone else was just sitting there cheering. I think its some kind of theatre, like the travelling circus back home, but in one place!" Schrock tried to piece the scene together in his mind. "Ah, and um, these girls, not wearing anything right?" Erst gave him a look that Schrock had leanred meant 'Yes, why?' and he sighed. Typical Erst, nice guy, eager as anything, but there were some things he just didn't get, no matter how hard you hammered them into his head. "Look, rabbits view clothing different here; don;t ask me about it, but apparently nudity is both shocking and entertaining." He got another Look as Erst ran this through his mind. "But..but we're not wearing anything, nor are some of the rabbits here, even the king only wears bracelets-" Schrock snapped "Look! I don't make the rules OK? Rabbits are just plain nuts! Who knows why they do anything?"

Schrock watched his brother quietly walk back outside. He shouldn't have been so snappy, but (-)! This place, these people, this whole dam day was getting to him. Outside it started to rain gently. People hurried indoors to stay dry and mumbled about the lousy weather.

They may have been more grateful if they'd known the world would end in just under a week.