[STORY] Remains

Note that at some points italics got a beating. Thoughts may not be italics due this error.

Chapter One: Charred Remains

Two kids were standing in the hallway of Cardinal Middle. One, named Jack, had red hair and freckled skin, wearing a pitch black jacket and a pair of ragged jeans, holes in each knee. He was bargaining to the other boy next to him that had blue-dyed hair and a large hooded red coat.
“Hey, you got the money?” Jack asked.
“Nope, you really need that cash?”
“Yep. You don’t get it to me; you’ll get your first bit of lifelong freakin’ debt.” Jack scolded.
“Fine. I’ll get it to ya’ tomorrow.”
“You’d better.”
As the other kid walked away, Jack rolled his eyes. He whispered, “You’d better…”
The bell rang. He made his way to the buses outside. One of the kids out there with a large turquoise mohawk walked towards him. “Hey,” he said, “you got any?”
“Nope.”
“Why not, we’re buddies. Come on, it’s just some that I want.”
“I’m not being arrested again.”
“I’ll take the blame if you get caught, OK?”
“You said that last time.”
“I’ll do it this time!”
“Feed yourself to the sharks.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“What’re you gonna do? Poke me?”
“You had better shut up.”
“Or what? ‘Get a facial’?”
“Shut up!” He thrusted his fist towards Jack, but Jack ducked just in time to dodge it. “I’m hungry, so let’s make this quick!”
“Hey, how about you feed yourself with this!” Jack threw punches at the other kid’s mouth, hitting every single time. The kid started bleeding in his nose and mouth. He crawled to his feet.
“You are in so much trouble!” The kid managed out of his bloodied mouth. He ran away to the woods behind the school.
“He’ll be back. I’ll be ready.” Jack looked up to the sky. “To the bus, I guess.” He walked over to the bus loop, and boarded.
“Hey,” one of the front seat kids said, curiously, “what’s wrong with the kid that ran over there? He looked like he was bleeding.”
“Nothing.” Jack sat down at his assigned seat, at the very back. I’d rather not explain why he sat all the way back there. It’s a long story.

As Jack advanced away from the bus after being dropped off, he was stopped by a kid, looked to be thirteen. “What do you want? I already said I’m out!”
“Out of what?” The kid saw the expression on Jack’s face at the question. “Anyways, I have something you should look at. It’s important.”
“Whatever it is, I don’t care.” The kid handed Jack twenty dollars. “What do want me to look at?”
“Come here.” The kid ran to the bushes behind the house on the left. Everyone said that that house is cursed, someone died in there, stuff like that. It was pretty frightening. The boards on the walls were falling off, the paint coming off of the windows. “Hurry up!”
Jack walked to the bushes. “What is it? What do you want to show me?”
The kid brought out a blue and gray, glowing disk. It expanded, forming a saucer, plate size. Jack looked at the kid’s hand. No, he wasn’t holding it. It was floating. “It’s about time.” A voice said impatiently, out from the flying disk. “Do you have him?”
“I suspect.” The kid seemed unsure about whatever he was talking about.
“Hold on,” Jack interrupted, “who is ‘him’? What do you have?”
The voice seemed to make a low ‘ugh’. “You haven’t told him?”
“No.” The kid responded.
Jack wasn’t so sure if this was a regular kid, at all. Really, a mini flying saucer, floating in his hands? Having a conversation with a voice coming from it? “Hey, kid. What are you doing, and who is the one speaking threw the saucer?”
“I need to concentrate. I need to-”
The leaves rustled in the bushes behind them. I stepped out. I know it’s a little late for introductions, but it seemed like the right time. I wore an official uniform for the Phoenix BLER (Blood type E Recovery) underground company. It’s actually pretty comfortable, even though Uranium powered Titanium decorates the exterior. I have, though it is rare, bluish hair, and almost absolutely no scent. The scent part is one reason of why I was taken into the company. I was a spy. “Hey. What’s up, Harvey?” I asked.
“Kind of busy right now, Mark, recruiting, or possibly even finding Oxineon’s son.”
Yeah, my name was Mark. Mark Orion. “Oxineon, huh? That would be possible, but, the fathers of extinction and growth were killed years ago.”
“Animals have been going extinct and forests are growing. They have to be alive.” Harvey protested. His cousin was the son of one of the fathers of growth, a not quite, but slightly immortal branch of people that helps life grow. God still had major control, but he elected those guys and the fathers of extinction to take that chore off of his mind.
“Maybe. If God hasn’t decided to, eh, get rid of them, then yes, they’re alive. But I seriously doubt it. God’s got it more under control than he did just after Genesis.”
“I hope he’s still tired.” Harvey looked back down to the saucer.
“Get that boy, umm…Jack, to our facility immediately.”
“Yes, sir.” Harvey closed up the saucer, until it was small again, and placed it in his pocket. “So, Jack, you want an explanation?”
“Oh, definitely.”
“So, you are suspected to be a blood type-E son of Oxineon, God’s occasional right-hand man. We must take you to our base for immediately for DNA testing to confirm.”
“Uh…”
“Oh, just come with us!” I yelled out. Regular people really are dumb, can’t even understand that.
“Fine. If I’m not home by-”
“I know. Curfew for selling drugs. I get it. You’ll be home soon enough.”
“How did you know?”
“We’re not stalking or anything, but we kind of watch your every move.” I explained.
“What!? You-”
“Just, SHUT UP!” I threw a sphere onto the ground. We disappeared as soon as the sphere exploded on the surface.

We appeared inside of a large laboratory with a blast of smoke. One guard said, “Knock first!” Another said some ‘words’. I led our group to a small office in the corner of the lab. There was scientist inside with gray hair and a lab coat inside. “Please,” the scientist said, “sit down. Welcome to Phoenix Underground Labs.”

Chapter Two: Soaring Phoenix

“To try to exceed in providing service to our workers, we have an employee lounge you can go to if tired, on break, etcetera.”
“Well, that’s pretty neat. You didn’t have that when I was Phoenix scientist.” Harvey commented.
“You’re not a scientist any more?” I asked.
“No,”
“Then what are you now?”
“Senior Engineering Officer.”
“You look pretty junior to me.”
“Shut up.”
Now, if you’ve ever seen someone get so confused that their face looks like a hundred year old gum wrapper that was what Jack looked like. “What are you talking about? Are you like, government agents or something? And who’s Oxineon?”
The scientist looked as if he were going to strangle the kid. “Come on, follow me.”
The scientist led us to a long a narrow hallway, with an arching bridge in the middle that extended over a small river. Jack looked as if he’s never seen a place without much flaw. He pointed at the walls that were covered in gold leaf. He yelled, “Look at that!” to a small globe floating above the arched bridge. He was also very annoying.
“Would you just-… ah, nevermind. I’ve told my share of ‘shut up’s today.”
“I know he’s annoying Orion, but he’s never been here. Though it is a surprise he doesn’t know who Oxineon is.”
“He’s a Christian, but he has never known this version. It’s not a surprise, but he’d better figure it out before the deadline.” I replied. ‘The Deadline’ is when God is going to completely get rid of the fathers, but really, the purpose of Phoenix is to convince him that the fathers still have a duty, as guardians to Oxineon’s son. If God can see that son is still alive, then he’ll keep the fathers out there. “So, doc, what is there to see other than this?”
“This.” He pulled out a small remote, and pushed a button. Two walls separated, revealing a stone slab. It read,
1. THOU SHALT NOT HAUNT
2. NOT ALL WISHES SHALT BE GRANTED
3. SINS IN ANY FORM WILL NOT BE TOLERATED
“The rules of Heaven, a very important slab, though, I never knew why it’s not still up there.” The scientist pondered.
“They probably have twenty of those around every corner up in the golden city. They gave us a copy probably to just know what to expect.”
“We already know what to expect, Orion, especially you.”
Jack and Harvey looked at me. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“What is it? Have you met God or something?”
“Technically, yes.” I said. I’ll tell the story later. It was very…tragic.
We continued, outside of the lab. “This,” the scientist said out of excitement, “is Phoenix preservation facility. We store the greatest Phoenix captures and achievements here.”
I remember when I first saw this place. The round interior, the pitch black preservation rooms, the hygienic toilets. Maybe the toilets were a little much. I looked over at Jack. His face was looking as if he was going to scream. I grabbed his shoulder. “Hey, calm down. Once your DNA test is done, we’ll either assign you a preservation cylinder if the test is positive, or just let you go home.”
He looked more nervous.
“You’ll probably go home, though…” I sighed. When I was told the same thing, I sort of…cried. The test wasn’t positive, but they kept me anyways. I wanted to stay here. I have no regrets on that choice. “…probably.” I repeated.

As we entered the DNA test room, which was also pitch black with lighted floors, Jack, of all people, finally said that if the test was positive, he’d punch somebody if he was put in a cylinder, and that he wanted to stay. This kid is too much like me, I thought. I actually said the same exact thing.
The scientist got Jack into the ‘human testing tube’. He closed the lid on it, and pressed a green button. He mumbled something. It wasn’t English, I couldn’t make it out. The machine started rumbling as loud as your average Xbox 360. That was pretty loud.

After the microwave that the scientist had set for 10:00 went off, and we took of the top of the machine. Jack crawled out, like he’d never taken the test. “How’d I do?” He asked.
The scientist looked down at the results panel on his attached PDA. “No…this can’t be. How is this possible?” The scientist looked to the guard that was now entering the testing room. “I think we’ve found him!”
“Should I take him to his, ‘new home’ now, doc?”
“Yes. Oh, and do restrain him. He said he’d punch somebody if he went to the cylinder.”
I glared at the scientist. Since when did he act brutal? Restrain him? He’s never been like that.
“But,” the scientist continued, “bring him to the Soaring Phoenix cylinder. He deserves special treatment.”
After Jack was escorted out, Harvey looked at me. “How should you know what to expect especially?”
I looked back at him. “I’ve died before. I’ve seen Heaven.”
“But how are you here, now?”
“God had other plans for me.”
“What kind of plans?”
“Does saving the world sound like much?”

Chapter Three: Nothing but the Truth
(Chapter Beginning Inspiration from First Entry of Lucky Joe’s Anarchy)

July 17th, 1993
Phoenix Spy Facility Squad 34
Quebec, Canada
Mark Orion, Major; First Class

I was still in my Landmaster. All the others were completely up and running, but mine’s weapons and armor were disabled. I could still move, but that’s about it. At least my window was broken. I can still shoot my rifle out the window. Anyone in the right mind would give up now, but I was never in the right mind. I continued. Outside of my window, Quebec was all ice, no grass. We were up in the northern region, near the Canadian Shield. I guess we were supposed to expect this. Sometimes I wish I’d never gone on this mission. We still have to pass the Land of The Dead once we hit the middle of the Canadian Shield. It seems to be impossible, and to tell the truth, that’s what it seemed like to me.

We’ve reached the top of the Canadian Shield. We are about to head straight down to the Land of The Dead in about thirty minutes. I wish I could just jump out of my Landmaster right now, but what are the odds of surviving out in the middle of no where, one to seven million, maybe? The others are probably thinking the same thing. One on the trip has even committed suicide via self-destruct. I Remember that. The vibration in the ground, the blinding explosion, the blood. The blood…it was different. It wasn’t red. No, the explosion happened too fast for the blood to catch up. It was blue; it didn’t have enough time for the Oxygen w/ blood reaction that made it red.
I don’t believe anyone has made it this close to Hell before, literally. We were almost at the gates. The mortal world’s gate of Hell, and it was right down two miles south.

I’ll have to stop writing soon. We are about to enter the gates. They are…strange. They make me mad, just the presence, and it also makes me miserable looking at it. I’m lucky I already admitted my sins. I can tell why this place is so intensely bad now. We are twenty feet away…fifteen…ten…five. Pray for me.

-Mark Orion

Harvey looked up from the sheet of paper. “Was that you that wrote this, Mark?”
“How obvious is that, eh?”
“Didn’t you die in there?”
“No. I died somewhere else.”
“It said 1993. You have to have died. You’re thirteen.”
“I did die that year, that month, but not in Hell, no.”
“Then where did you die?”
“At the highest point of Mos-”
The scientist burst through the doors. “Come, quickly!”

We ran through the halls, all the way to the Preservation Facility. “Keep moving, it’s Jack, he’s…ah, you’ll see, but now, just keep running!”
We ran into Jack’s preservation room. There were plants, everywhere, growing at alarming rates. I ran up to his Cylinder. “Jack! I think he might not be the son of Oxineon. Oxineon is a father of extinction. Jack’s able to control growth. He’s a son of Vardroth.”

As we continued out of the room, I looked back. Why did they do this to him? He’s only a kid. I thought.
Harvey looked up at me as we got back to our room, painted in blue and black. “So,” he said, “do you feel sorry for Jack? I do.”
“Yeah. I can’t believe they did that to him. No-one that know or at least, used to know, was ever brutal enough to force somebody into a cylinder, demon or not.”
“Well, I don’t know about demons, but yeah, it’s a pitiful and lowering moment of Phoenix when people are put against their rights in this world. It’s like Dictatorship; all for one, none for all.”
“Like Hitler.” I smiled one of those, ‘haha’ smiles.
Harvey smiled back and chuckled. We always make Hitler jokes like that. No-one else knew about our little joke circle. It’s a me-him thing.

The next morning, breakfast was served. We all sat at the platinum colored table, exchanging jokes and faces. Every time me and Harvey made a Hitler joke, every WWII veteran sitting at the table glared at us. One of them had no eyes as a war injury, and that stare was the most muscle gripping stare EVER.
As the waiters/waitresses received the food, they carried it over to us. One of them snuck a bite out of a triple chocolate brownie. The person that received the brownie sneered at the waiter that snuck the bite. I looked at the doorway to the green cafeteria. I saw Jack walk into the room. It was usual that they’d let the cylinder people out for one meal a day. They were suspended life in the cylinders, so only one was really needed.
Jack sat right in front of us. “Hey,” I asked, “how’s Soaring Phoenix?”
Jack stared at his own feet. “Lonely. But I seem to like it there, nonetheless.”
“You’ve learned some words, I see. I’ve never heard you say nonetheless. Always ‘just as much’, or just ‘too’.”
He looked at me like I sounded like I thought he was dumb. His look changed. “It’s different in there. I can control growth while I’m inside.”
“It’s meant to increase your soul’s strength. Yours is unique, the growth strength. Mine is elemental. I can control water, earth, fire, and occasionally air. Sometimes even branching off to chemicals, wood, and lava.”
“That’s neat. What’s Harvey’s?”
“Knowledge.” I said without hesitation.
Jack’s stomach growled. “We had better eat before the timer runs out.”

After finishing breakfast, Jack was about to be taken to his cylinder when the scientist stopped the guards from taking him back. “It’s time to deliver. Ready him with armor.”
I knew what he meant. We were about to take Jack to the Golden Staircase, to show God that there is a child to the fathers. One problem, though; The Golden Staircase was located in the Amazon right now, and we only had two weeks.

Chapter Four: Fly High

We stood at the base of an F-15 Eagle.
“You expect us to fly this thing?!” Jack blurted.
The commander that had led us to ship grinned. He grinned so widely it was like a snarl. “No. But I do expect you to land it. You will go on Recon in the Amazon, and find the Golden Staircase. If you fail, the fathers will die.”
“Why can’t the fathers die? God will have it under control still.”
Everyone stared at him like he was retarded or something. Harvey walked up to him. “No. He might have control, but since we found the son of one, we must keep them alive. You know what it’d be like, never knowing your dad. It’s…Hell.” Harvey walked back away.
Jack stared at him. He had never heard ‘hell’ used so much. It was banned in his family to say it.
I looked at the F-15. Such sleekness, and I’d heard this type of plane was never shot down before. Bah, F-22, it was too…complicated. I’d always liked classics, and this was my golden trophy as of now.
The commander looked at me. “Mark, you first. You’re the most experienced in Phoenix.”
“Sir, yes sir.” I said, formally. I walked up to the cockpit, the shining metal, the gleaming bullet-proof glass. This is just about the most epic moment of my life. I like it. I thought to myself.
Jack replied in another blurting fashion, “Hey, military dude, what’s the Golden Staircase?”
“Hopeless!” The commander yelled. Everyone at Phoenix knew about the, G.S.
“Really, what is it?”
“It’s the staircase to Heaven.”
“Oh.” Jack seemed to be surprised. He had never heard of such a mythic thing being real. “Oh!” He said, and almost everyone near us stared. “I could almost swear I know that name from somewhere else. I still remember ‘the’ and ‘staircase’, and ‘heaven’, in one sentence that was mentioned way back.”
The commander walked forward. “Then you have met your father. He must’ve said that. Vardroth was often at the stairs.”
“Huh. I also remember the name Vardroth in my early memory.”
“How early?” I asked.
“Hmm…about eleven years ago.”
I looked back at the jet. “We can discuss this on the Eagle. Shall we?”

We looked down, Harvey, Jack, and me, all in synch. The ground was so far down, I thought I was gonna vomit. It felt like I was on the staircase of Heaven without rails, 20,000 feet up and no way back down except for either, A: Jumping, or B: Losing a foot from walking all the way back down. Only the options on the Jet were more like ‘bailing out’, or ‘landing in the Amazon jungle’.

Two hours into the flight, I could see trees. South America, finally, I thought. “Uh, pilot?”
“Yes, Orion?”
“How are we gonna be dropped off?”
“You’re not going to be dropped off, Mark and friends. I’ll transport to base and you land it.”
“What?” I said that a little late. We were flying over the Amazon, unaware of anywhere that could make a good landing spot for even a fly. The pilot bailed out, flying in his seat directly over the Jet, then disappeared in a flurry of blue particles. Come one, Mark. Think...I looked over to the right. All trees, no spots, I looked back over to my left. Still no spot to land on, I continued to search the jungle. No spots, not anywhere. What was I supposed to do?
Eureka.
The Jet always had a feeling to it that made me think that it was modified somewhere, that it was different. If I could find the modification, then it might help me land…
I walked my way to the cargo part of the plane, pushing the autopilot as I got out of the seat. I reached the room, and I smelled something back there, in one of the small crates. I remembered a smell like this. It was something that made wishes come true or something like that. Then I remembered something else, too. Heaven’s laws, the second one. 2. NOT ALL WISHES SHALT BE GRANTED. I felt like I was taking a big risk trying this, and it was something around the most risky I’ve ever done. I pulled the box open that had the smell, ripped out the contents, and found the source. It was a Heaven contact coin (HCC). It grants wishes, all announced right in front of Jehovah himself, the wishes are given.
I tossed the coin into the air, and a dazzling array of green sparks came to life in the plane. An image so powerful in history, it’s impossible to describe, came up in the sparks. It was God, waiting for whatever I had to tell him. But before I could speak, as if he was reading my mind (which he probably was), the Lord said, “So it shall be done.”
For a moment, nothing happened. But then, when I got doubtful of my wish, the Jet started to glow a bright green. It turned into a…um, monkey. A chimpanzee, to be precise. It was still the same interior, but by a lot, not the same exterior. The monkey-Jet fusion swung with grace through the trees, as if it were super-monkey. This proves God can really do anything.
Harvey looked up at me in disbelief. “Well, that’s a…creative wish…” He looked at me right in my eyes. “What you couldn’t finish saying back at the lab, about how you’d died. Can you finish?”
“Yeah, sure. I died at the top of Moscow, fighting off winged demons from Hell.”
“How’d you get there?”
“When I was scouting Hell, I came across the graveyard of origins (the graveyard that shows how and where people died when you step through their portal). I found my grave, and out of stupidity, I stepped into my portal. I was killed in my foretold death staging place.
“One of them impaled me with a razor sharp arm, and that was only one injury that caused my death fully.
“Another flew up to me and knocked me right off of the tower I was standing upon. I flew off at intense speed, and I thought that that was gonna be my death. But no, it wasn’t.
“The third one came up from under me caught me. I swear I caught him winking, like he was saving me. But then the second that knocked me down rushed up behind the third, and I hit the skull of the first one, knocking me out cold. The second, being the most brutal, knocked me miles away. So far, I think I was in Tunguska. The same one that knocked me so far came up and literally took a meteor out of the sky and planted it right on me. He gathered up the bits and pieces to hide it from the humans. They still caught the impact crater, though, and there’s the Tunguska Explosion for ya’.”
“Huh. That’s, very, uh…dramatic. I guess I can-” He was stopped, mid-speech. The monkey-Jet hit the ground with a bang.

awsome...

Great job, dude, and yay, we finally started posting on showoff threads.

Yay

Well, I suppose someone should make a writings list....

Don't look at me.

I already moderate the Art and Writings list on SE.

Midget, we're global mods.

HAWKEYE44 wrote:Midget, we're global mods.

*stares*
Aaaaand?

Nevermind

So, chapter five is 56% done.

Sorry, but I locked it. I'll never finish this. Visit the story "Quantum Recoil" to be up-to-date.