Memento Mori

This story starts the same as it will end - with a savior. Two boys whose fates were written in the stars for tragedy; two nobodies who loved each other, but only one with a life in the end. 

This is how it starts, and this is how it will end. Outcomes cannot change themselves, nor can you change them.

Chapter 1: Maxwell

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'Heroes' and 'villains' are stories. Stories people string together, page by page; the hero ending victorious in the end with the villain falling short. They all ended the same, and they were fun stories, but never were they real.

But, if there was a hero for Frelurg City, everyone you asked would have agreed it was Maxwell Hart.

Maxwell Hart was one of the best engineers in the world. Every invention he made helped the people and was made with the people in mind. He was like a public hero and the small city was lucky to have someone of his skill. He took the title humbly - everyone knew him; his blonde hair stood out out of a crowd, short but messy. The people loved him, and soon, he announced that people could bring things to him and he would make inventions from them with the help of his business partner, Tobias "Toby" Bryan.

And people saw this announcement. They didn't skip a beat to even think before Maxwell had tons upon tons of items outside of his doorstep, with grinning faces, waiting to see if their item could help be the next 'big thing.'

And Maxwell delivered. He and Toby brainstormed for days until they had a use for each and every item, they finished every one of them, and the people were joyous. Maxwell and Toby were happy, happy that they could make the people happy.  People called him 'the town's savior.'

But all saviors fall, one way or another.

One day, working with a weird stone a woman had found, Maxwell heard a loud knock and he answered it. A person stood in front of him. He was short. Maxwell could barely see the top of his head, and almost shut the door before looking down. When Maxwell looked, a vial was clutched carefully in the man's smooth, yet cracked hands.

"Is this the home of Maxwell Hart?" The voice was deep and gravely, not something you would expect from a man who looked like the human embodiment of a chinchilla.

Maxwell hesitated to answer. "Well, I don't really live here... but... yes, you could say that. I am Maxwell Hart, after all." He chuckled and the man that stood in front of him just nodded, not letting signs of emotion crease his face.

"Perfect. Are you... still taking item donations?" Maxwell nodded, and the man let out a sigh of relief, closing his eyes for a second.

"Yes, I am. Do you want to donate that vial?" Maxwell reached his hand out, but the man quickly turned away as a form of telling Maxwell that the vial was not for his hands.

"Not the vial. It's what's IN the vial."

"A-gas?"

"Close enough. In this vial is the essential chromosome that inherited the black plague, right here in front of you." Maxwell took a step back. There was no way he could trust this man, and the man wasn't lying; the thing that he brought was incredibly dangerous and risky to work with.

"Wha... where... how... how do you know?"

"Sources that do not concern yo Maxwell."

"That's... incredibly sketchy, to say the least."

"If you trust the people, you can trust me." Maxwell sighed and pinched the temple of his nose, thinking the offer over.

It took him a bit to think about everything, take every little outcome into consideration. "A-alright, fine. I... admire your certainty on the matter. I could probably reverse engineer it into something to cure diseases..." He said the last part more to himself than the man.

With the plans in hand, he brought the idea to Toby, who agreed to help him, though warned Maxwell that working with this could alter his mental state, or Toby's mental state; Toby knew the likeliness of it ending with both of their brains eroding together, side by side, was more likely than not.

They worked for months, every moment of every day. And at last they had finished it: The Ailment Aid.

The Ailment Aid was in the form of an arm; Toby and Maxwell both came to an agreement that Maxwell would wear the arm and go around to every hospital, and cured everyone and everything they had. Maxwell became more of a hero then he could handle; yet, somehow, the power could never go to his head;

It didn't have enough time to.

Because the plague began to get to him, began to take Maxwell's body as its own. It began to use it as a puppet, a pawn in its sick game of chess we call life. People noticed it. It was easy to notice.

First, Maxwell would have outbursts of anger; people thought, originally, it was lack of sleep. But they became more frequent, more prominent in his character. Flashes of purple would fill his eyes, sitting there, staying there; lingering, like a cough, or your great aunt at Thanksgiving.

Then it became more noticeable. Maxwell would walk the streets, his? body, not being able to handle the power the plague was giving him?, would erode at every second. Toby begged him to take off the arm, that it was terrible for him, but 'Maxwell' would refuse; Toby left his letter of resignation when 'Maxwell' punched Toby with sheer force. It left Toby's arm forever damaged.

Soon, 'Maxwell' would become hate-filled whenever people called him it Maxwell, and instead, told people his it's name was 'Beset.' Eventually, people just settled to call it 'Maxet,' and it was fine with that.

There's then something that all plagues do; they spread, like rumors, or like wildfires. Soon, it began to infect the people and the land they walked on. It didn't do what normal plagues do; it did worse. It turned them into husks of who they were before, but still the people infected were inside; watching them do things they never dared let their mind think about.

A wall was built, encapsulating the city, and they drove the plague-ridden people and Maxet out.

There's something funny about people; everyone wants the world to change in some way. Everyone has their own vision for how the world should be and usually, there are other people who agree with their vision. But few step up to make that happen. Usually, they wait for a hero.

A hero that, usually, never comes.

This is what happened to the people of Frelurg City. They all wanted the town to change, the world to change.

They're lucky they had people step up.

Light comes and goes when it needs to. And out of the darkness in the city's hopelessness came a saving light; four of Maxwell's closest friends. They formed a facility dedicated to finding a cure for the plague. They became a form of superhero-plague doctors and soon, other people joined. But no one forgot the founders: Jamie Oleman, The Cyan Mask. Susie Jacobs, The Scarlet Maiden. Wesley Crag, The Maroon Marauder. Icarus Elijah, The Red Talon.

And Toby.

Heroes versus the villain. How ironic. How original. 

It's a funny thing, heroes. Heroes save the day, heroes help people. Everyone thought Maxwell was the hero, which made them vulnerable for a villain the hero couldn't help save.

Chapter 2: The word "Was."

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Gabe Torrent's family was, by definition, the perfect family. The Torrent family was the family everyone wanted to be. The Torrent family was happy. 'Was' is a funny word. 'Was' doesn't have a lot of meanings you can use it in. 'Was' means 'formerly,' in this story especially. Sometimes, not everyone can have a happy ending. 

The word 'was' haunted Gabe in every choice he made, in every step he took, in every breath he dared to breathe. The words of the past seemed to be the only thing on his mind, not the words of a promising future.

Everyone knew Gabe's family was a family you saw in magazines, a family that you saw and thought, "Wow, how DO they manage that?" They seemed unreal, but they were breathing, they were real, they were alive.

Gabe's father, Emanuel Coach, was a teacher. He taught high school English, and he was 'the fun teacher.'

Gabe's mother, River Torrent, was a marine biologist. She had a love for stingrays and was fascinated by the sea.

Gabe's sister, Sammy Torrent, was fun-loving, nice, popular, and was close to Gabe.

And Gabe Torrent should have been one of these 'was' if he wasn't a coward, if he could have spoken any words in a single visceral moment. But he was alive, he was breathing, and now he was playing a not-so-fond memory that had been etched in his brain long ago, that the universe had decided to give to him. The story starts the same way it always did; a birthday.

Gabe had just turned five. To his family, birthdays were a large achievement. Birthdays were a day where people showed that they loved you, and cared for you, and would take time out of their day to do something that benefited you. Birthdays were special. Gabe had always thought so, at least.

Gabe's family decided to do a family barbecue; just him, his dad, his mom, and his sister. Gabe had always loved barbecues; he liked the taste of food fresh off the grill.

Yet somehow, in all light, a darkness spread. An invasion of the plague, the people that had been affected by Maxwell, somehow snuck their way through the city's wall, and somehow past the facility and its workers.

And, in all darkness, comes more.

Gabe could still hear the screaming. The fractiousness of his family hiding him. The tears, the frowns.

"I know you'll do so much to help the world." His mother had said this, smiling through tears, hiding him in a gap between bushes and wall. He couldn't understand at the time why his mom was smiling, smiling at a time like this. He wanted to say no, that he would help, but in the moment he couldn't seem to say any words. They were like a hard pill - it was on the tip of his tongue, but oh so hard to swallow. His mother repeated the same phrase she always did, but it had more of a meaning this time. "I love you."

She frantically left to help, to hide Sammy, to get her and his dad hidden. Gabe didn't get a chance to say anything back. He wanted to crawl out; he had heard stories of how dangerous the plagues were, yet he found his body chained into the filthy earth below his feet.

He heard screams. He heard so much that a child should never have to hear.  But he saw nothing through the gap.

Then, the screams stopped. The air stopped. Everything around him seemed to freeze.

He sat there for hours, frozen in time, until he heard something different than what he had been hearing for that day; a women's voice.

"Everyone in this neighborhood is gone. How did they slip under us that easily?"

He repeated the key word in his head. He tossed it around like a ball in his hands. Then it sunk in.

Everyone. His family.

Everyone but him.

He crawled out from the gap, tears stained his face as he looked upon the place he once called busy, a place he once called overcrowded. Somehow, the tears couldn't move down like they usually did. They felt how Gabe had felt in the gap; chains, chains that shackled his tears into the filthy skin where they sat. The women turned, and noticed him.

"Oh my god... you poor thing... I'm the Scarlet Maiden. Can you tell me your name?"

He told her. It was the only thing he could tell her; his mind was numb, he thought nothing as he stared out at the wrecked neighborhood of Umber Street.

"Gabe, huh? That's a nice name..."

Gabe now found this day, his birthday, a day of loss, not a day of life and flourishment. A day of things that could have been. Gabe now found barbecues bittersweet; the things that tasted good fresh off a grill now tasted of blood, and memories he wants to stop reliving over and over and over and-

And now he was here, at the facility who couldn't save his family. It was just him, alone in the universe. Everyone was there because it paid well, or because they were born into the facility. But he was there for a different reason.

Because his family wasn't dead. They were out there, husks of who they used to be. He could help them. 

He could help others.

He replayed the same line his mother told him, the line that had stuck with him when she died. "I know you'll do so much to help the world."

Over again. 

"I know you'll do so much to help the world." 

And again.

"I know you'll do so much to help the world." 

He could be who his mother wanted him to be. 

"I know you'll do so much to help the world." 

He could be who his mother believed him to be.

He approached his team, consisting of four members (including him), but he pushed past them. They called after him; they could tell that something dark had been lurking on his back like a predator, waiting to get its paws on its prey. He continued walking, walking to nowhere, but still it helped him and his thinking.

A voice cut the thick air he left behind him. It was a member of his team, the vice leader and his best friend, Dallas Prescott.

"Gabe? You okay?"

He sighed. He knew he couldn't avoid the question that would follow him, the question that the team would pry from his dry mouth as if it were teeth.

"I'm thinking about them again." Gabe stood now, looking at his hands. Hands that had blood, but blood he didn't spill. Dallas wrapped Gabe in a hug. Dallas had always let Gabe get his troubles out, and this time was no different. The tears that stained his face finally came down, down, as Dallas's hands danced up Gabe's back like hardened ballerinas. The dancing soon put Gabe into a hug.

"Gabe. I know it seems rough now, but I can tell you one thing. I think it may help you."

Gabe didn't say anything, he didn't dare look up; he never felt like people should see him as vulnerable as he was now. But Gabe and Dallas always had an unspoken language, and Dallas knew that Gabe was willing to listen to anything he had to say.  Dallas spoke to Gabe in a hushed whisper, and care wrapped around his voice. The words he spoke made Gabe look up. He had heard them spoken before, but it felt different this time.

"I know you'll do so much to help the world."