by T5 and The Eurostar
Just outside Chicago, "The City of Smiles," a lonely man staggered through the rain. The man once known as Karl looked up at the oncoming lights of a large truck. The lights felt like great javelins of pain that pierced his very being. He did not like it, and the truck made too much noise anyway.
The engine made a beautiful fireworks display across the sky as Karl snapped his fingers, and the whole truck spasmed and exploded. A smile was planted on his face for three seconds, and he said to himself, "Nice work, Karl. I think we will get along just nicely."
Elsewhere, in Nevada, the being known as Naecken managed to find the six noble souls and gather them together while their bodies slept.
"Don't worry," he said in a calming voice. "Nothing will harm your souls. I just need their extra energy. You will remember this as a peculiar dream."
He shaped their souls into a small, baseball-sized sphere, and took off into the night, walking across the sky.
Malvan-X Corporation, New Town, Mandelovia, Europe. Half an hour ago:
"Chief Bobowsky, we have located Karl Starr," said Agent Digigrrl to her boss, the security chief of Malvan-X Corporation. "The only problem is that what we have found is so absurd that I don't think we can trust this report."
"Where'd the report come from?" asked the tall man.
"The Chicago Police Department, Chief."
"I don't see why we shouldn't trust their files. What have you found?"
"Karl Starr was a meta accused of blowing up the heads of bystanders. He has committed suicide after some killing... and then he has risen up and walked away, right in front of the police!"
Just outside Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. Ten minutes ago:
Right in the middle of the highway, the man once known as Karl Starr walked straight east.
A voice in his head, hours ago, awoke him from death, ordering him to get revenge over a deadly being from another dimension, K'tl, a being that possessed Karl Starr, using him to commit horrible crimes. The voice ordered Karl to find a man once widely known, an Italian runner named Edulcore Cicciotto.
Now Karl Starr wanted to reach Italy to find Cicciotto, "The Eurostar," to warn him that K'tl had now found a new host, his old competitor Eduardo Frederico. His walk was made difficult by the many cars that went in the opposite direction. Many avoided him at the last moment, but even the ones that didn't manage that were no problem.
Because Karl Starr simply destroyed them.
Edulcore Cicciotto:
Mandelov-Air flight Mandelovia to Chicago, somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean. Now:
Half a day ago I awoke from my sleep half-buried in the sand. In front of me was a young man that I never saw before. Now that man is maybe the only one I can call "friend." He told me that he saw me from the air, while he was flying above the desert.
Flying? I asked, thinking I was standing in front of a meta of Alpha Class, like me. The truth was even more amazing. He claimed that he came from the future, and was able to transform parts of his body into animal parts. He showed me his transformation, and... well... let's just say I began trusting his claims of being from the future.
He said he had nowhere to go, so I told him to come with me. He accepted, and we both took flight. It was wondrous, flying like eagles over the perfectly circular desert of Mandelovia.
I told him what happened to me, and how the police of Mandelovia have tried to frame me for a murder I didn't commit. He replied that he actually saw a man near the Toyota when Lorena died.
"You saw him shooting at her head, right?" I said.
He replied: "No, he didn't fire anything. He pointed his index finger, and the head blew up!"
Another meta! I am into something bigger than I thought. Now everything I heard seems actually possible. Human cloning, genetic alteration, alien invasion...
"Do you want to come with me to America?" I asked Danny.
"Okay, I have nowhere else to go," he said, smiling.
I, too, don't know where to go. That old man at Malvan-X, he seemed a good person, after all. But if the Mandelovian Police are seeking me, I don't know if I can trust him. I have to go away. My life in Bologna... well, that's behind me, now. The world soon will think I'm dead, and maybe that's for the better. Poor Ottavia, we were coming along so well.
I know one thing. There is a child out there who has the same genetic characteristics as I. He is my son, so to speak, and he is in the hand of the men who tried to capture me. So, before I disappear from the men who want me, whether they be Mandelovian or American, I will rescue him. I swear it.
So, as I was saying, we took flight, he on vulture's wings, and me soaring in "ghostly" form, meaning I had altered my density to be lighter than air. Soon it become clear that we would never arrive in America all by ourselves, so we landed unnoticed at the Mandelovian International Airport. The first flight to the U.S. was directed to Chicago. There was no direct flight from Mandelovia to Thunder City.
In my ghost from, I stealthily swiped a flight ticket from a fat man in the bathroom. I can pass through walls when I am at low density. I also found a man looking enough like Danny and took his passport. I gave it and the plane ticket to Danny, and then I "entered" him. Still with a low density, I mean, I was able to stay in the same space he was occupying. It is difficult to explain, but, I have to admit, easy to do.
And now we are sitting in the same seat, looking outside the window to the sea of clouds under us. But there is a man, sitting two rows behind us, looking insistently at me, or, I should say, at Danny. And, oh God, I know him. It was the man who always arrived second behind me when I was a runner. The man who hates me most in the world. Eduardo Frederico.