Save State Hero 3 -CHapter 11-

Chapter 11

Edmund trooped along beside Iren.

Looking at his notepad and juggling it along with the Log. He was using one to crosscheck with the other as well as Oz. Because without a workable GPS there wasn’t much he could do about it.

Given that they were walking into zones of Australia that had extreme time shifts that weren’t visible to the eye, it wasn’t as if Iren could just scout it out for him either.

The simple reality was this was something he had to do manually, on foot, and with a lot of deliberation. Moving through Save-states was just inviting Skipper to have done something and he really didn’t want to deal with that right now.

“Time never did really explain this whole area very well, Oz,” Edmund said in the quiet. Marching alongside Iren without anything in the way of conversation. She and him had long since gotten to the point where they could just walk in companionable silence without it being an issue. “What the hell happened here?”

“Unkonwn,” answered Oz. “Whatever happened here was an intersection of magic and time. It reacted so violently that the entirety of the area is simply unstable. Regardless of how Ryker or Runner approached it, it was never able to be corrected.

“I do not have a way to simplify the situation, other than to say, it’s as if someone threw micro-glitter everywhere around the room and no matter how hard you vaccuum, there will still be glitter.”

“That sounds awful,” Iren murmured with a laugh and turned to look at Edmund. She was grinning ear to ear. “What we’re doing right now though is different. It’s like a kid trying to find a single spot in a video, yeah? We fast forwarded too far, so now we’re hitting that back arrow trying to go backward to where we thought we should be.

“Except we could just as easily overshoot it and end up having to let the video play out on its own to get back to where we want to be.”

“More or less,” Edmund agreed. “The major difference being I can just move us to another Save-state if I have to. I don’t want to, but I can.”

He said it all without looking at the Dragon.

In changing into a Dragon form she’d ended up taking her clothes off before the portal closed and gave them to Dot to hold.

Which meant she was a very beautiful and naked woman at the moment.

“Ahhh, yeah. Skipper, the bitch. She’s the last thing I want to deal with right now,” grumbled Iren. “Things have been moving okay, but in the same breath, they also haven’t. It feels like we’re making incremental progress and it’s all high stakes.”

“I mean, it is,” confirmed Edmund and came to a stop as his phone beeped. In the end, the best he had been able to do was to time his phone based on the log. “Okay, we’re supposed to turn exactly ten degrees to the left and—”

A massive ‘whump’ caught Edmund unaware.

It was a lot like being underneath the point of impact for a lightning bolt with how loud it was. As if a bomb had gone off inside of his body, in fact.

“Wow, that’s wild,” Iren stated, peering up above them. “It’s almost like a storm cloud but magical instead.”

“Edmund, I believe a mistake has been made,” Oz warned him. “A chain reaction in the magical nature of the calamity has occurred. The zones around you are no longer stable and have shifted repeatedly. Passing through you and on to other areas.”

“Great,” Edmund huffed and looked to the log in his hand. He handed Iren his notepad and then tapped in a question to the Log. ‘Where do I go next to facilitate a time transfer?’ and sent it.

The Log didn’t respond.

“Oz, why isn’t the log responding?” Edmund then asked.

Oz didn’t respond either.

“Srit, any chance you could step in and give us a hand here?” he tried next since when Oz wasn’t around, Srit almost always was. “With the Log being down, and Oz being unresponsive, I could really use a hand.”

Once again, there was no response.

The log wasn’t responsive, Oz wasn’t talking,  and Srit was silent.

Every person he’d normally work with to make things happen or shift wasn’t responding to him.

The world was silent to all the ways that Edmund was unique.

“That’s not good, is it,” Iren said turning and looking at Edmund.

“Definitely not something I’d really consider as positive, no,” he agreed and then set the bag he was carrying down and stuck the log in it followed by the note pad. Standing up, he pulled up his Save-states.

Except none of them came up.

There was no response at all.

“Yeah, the only time I’ve seen that look on your face is when you walked in on me just after I’d dropped my eggs,” Iren deadpanned, followed with a rich laugh that ended in a sigh. “Everything just go sideways?”

“Save-states aren’t loading. Oz isn’t responding. Log isn’t responding. As far as I can tell, whatever that earth shattering kaboom above us was, it’s gone ahead and somehow cut us off from everything,” explained Edmund. “Given that Oz had said multiple zones had crossed over us… I’m wondering if we just got stuck in some type of… bermuda triangle of time.”

“What triangle?” asked Iren.

“Nevermind. We’re in the twilight zone,” he tried.

“Ah, got it. Are you going to give me a sexy intro while smoking a cigarette and tell me about a young man who laid the dragon instead of slayed it? Well, you did kinda slay me, too, I guess. Repeatedly,” offered Iren.

Unable to help himself, Edmund only smiled and dug around in his bag. Dot had given him another portal device just in case, because she was a worrier and a planner.

She’s so much like Ryker it’s not even funny but in the same breath, I’m so glad for it.

Edmund stood up and held up the cube.

“No, but we can get out of here thankfully. Dot gave me a portal device just like the last one. This one is just tied to Ryker’s lab directly,” Edmund explained. “I haven’t been there that often outside of the last month or two. It’s also on a different world than the one I’m normally on.

“I should be able to just walk through it and not even have an issue. Should.”

“Is it worth risking?” Iren asked, really looking at him. “We could just as easily go back the way we came and keep trying the log, couldn’t we?”

Edmund nodded his head, wondering about that. They could try to hold out and let things shift back to the way they should be.

Yet in the same breath, he wasn’t actually convinced of that.

The fact that Oz was concerned about a change, and now he couldn’t access anything, left Edmund feeling like there were somethings going on he couldn’t account for. That sitting and waiting wasn’t as likely to be the answer as he would hope.

“I feel like the fact that Oz was nervous before going silent, that Srit doesn’t respond, and that even the damn Log is silent, let alone my Save-states, leaves me feeling like there’s a far greater issue here than I want to admit,” Edmund explained, turning his head to look at Iren. “That maybe… that change wasn’t an accident and maybe Skipper set something up.

“We haven’t seen anything from her since her little party she left for us after all. For her that’s a lot of silence and for a long time”

“Oh, yeah. I can see what you mean at that point,” Iren said, put her hands on her hips. Then shrugged. “Okay! Open it up! I’ll go through first. We can go from there! If I die, make sure you kiss me a lot in the next one.”

The Dragon said the last with a laugh that made Edmund’s skin prickle. All while staring at him in a way that made him feel like she was ‘hungry’ all of a sudden.

Nodding his head, Edmund couldn’t argue with any of that. Iren was right.

It’d be best if she went through first.

Edmund activated the portal.

And the world went dark.

As if the lights were simply turned off and he was no longer able to see.

He was blind.

“Iren!?” he asked with some concern. “I can’t see!”

There was no response from her.

In fact, it felt like his skin was exposed to a strange nothing. It was neither hot nor cold.

Attempting to close his hand Edmund found he had no hand.

Nor did he in fact have skin.

Or arms.

In trying to close his hand, he realized that he didn’t have a body at all. He was nothing but an existence without anything attached to it.

In the next moment Edmund was standing in a strange place.

The lights had simply turned back on and he was now in a strange place that he could only describe as a floating island.

There was grass that rolled along gave the ground in an odd way. There were trees that dotted the landscape that he couldn’t identify and didn’t even seem to move correctly.

Bushes and foliage also obscured the area and was surprisingly dense.

Most out of the ordinary though was at the center of the area was a rather large house.

Beyond that though, there was nothing.

There was a sky, but no clouds.

Light, but no sun.

A fresh feeling, but no breeze.

At the edge of the area, the grass fell away to nothing, vanishing into the inifinite down into nothing below. Almost as if he were staring up into the sky, but down below the ground instead.

“Oh my fuck I fell out of bounds?” Edmund asked no one and nothing. “Where the shit am I. Did I suddenly become the nowhere man, sitting in nowhere land, making nowhere plans for nobody?”

Edmund immediately went to grab his pack only to find it wasn’t there.

Looking at himself, he found he didn’t even have clothes on.

Reaching up he touched his head and found he was still wearing the helmet from Ryker’s shop.

Nothing else had come with him to this location.

“Right, so… I’m Florida man. I showed up in a helmet and nothing else. Great,” Edmund said and started moving toward the house. “Hello!? Srit? Oz? Anyone here?”

“Yes? How may I help you?” Oz asked, sounding very different to Edmund.

“Oh! Hey, hey, where the hell am I, Oz? I was just in the Australian calamity and ended up here,” Edmund tried, still walking to the house.

Opening the door he looked around inside and found it looked rather mundane to him. Nothing out of the ordinary and everything seeming to be fairly ordinary.

“I do not know who you are, but you are a very curious entity to have arrived where you have, as well as at the time you have,” Oz declared. “You are currently at the… you are at the Start of the universe. You are a entity and being that should not exist here.”

“The start? Wait, really? Does that mean Runner and Ryker are going to show up here and start putting together the universe? Have they made me yet? I’m Edmund Isaac Strator,” Edmund said as he went looking around in the house. “And is there any clothes here? I’m kinda not happy about being butt-naked. Ya know?”

“There is… there… is… Edmund,” Oz murmured, his voice coming slower until it ended in a groan.

“Eh, you getting that update from yourself?” Edmund asked and idly grabbed at his Save-state system as he moved. There was an odd response from it that wasn’t quite in line with what he expected.

It just gave him a blank field of nothing at all.

Edmund pushed open a door and found himself in a bedroom.

Walking straight to the dresser he started pulling drawers open and looking inside. Shifting around clothes inside he moved them about.

They didn’t look like they’d fit him, but in the same breath, he was butt naked.

“Third… third drawer down,” Oz got out in a stilted voice.

Edmund just bent down and got to the third drawer and pulled it open.

It looked more masculine, but it still didn’t look like it’d fit him.

Yet once again, he reminded himself, he was naked.

The choice was simple and without another option.

Pulling out what looked like pants, a shirt, and even some underwear, Edmund started getting himself dressed quickly. The pants didn’t quite fit and he’d need to either fashion a belt or find one.

“Socks, shoes, belt?” Edmund tried after getting situated in the clothes. He was holding the pants up with one hand. “You down importing yet by the way? Usually doesn’t take you too long but… this… if we’re at the start, than this is a long long long ways away from where we were.”

“I’m still importing,” Oz said, his tone, expression, and voice changing dramatically from how he’d been speaking only moments ago. “And yes, from what I’ve already taken in, it is clear that you’ve come a far way into the past. Many things now make more sense.

“There were a great many sudden and wild changes to the world I couldn’t explain. Things that shouldn’t be at all yet somehow are. This is… yes.”

“Right? Yes. Where’d Iren end up?” Edmund asked. “And what the hell happened? You said something changed then you went quiet. Srit didn’t answer me. The log was unresponsive and even my Save-state system wasn’t working.

“Also… socks, shoes belt? I could really use’em. Unless there’s no shoes here that’d fit me and then I guess it’s just socks for shoes which sucks. Especially if you step in something wet. Wet socks always felt so gross.”

“Last drawer… you’ll get socks and a belt. No shoes that’d fit you, Edmund,” Oz stated. “Ah. I am fully imported now. We’ve truly gone all the way back to the point of creation.

“With that information, and based on what I have from my previous self just before whatever happened, I suspect that the zone we were in in Austrlia altered the flow of time to a point that it went into a negative territory.

“Except there is no further back you can go than zero. You existed for the brief moment in time before this area was created and then you came here.

“As to Iren, I do not think she came with you. I think she ceased to exist or never left Australia. The only reason you are here, is the helmet you are wearing. It truly is a fascinating invention from Ryker.

“I think without it, you would just be… dead. Dead, missing, and unfortunately lost to time. If it was truly Skipper, she acted in such a way that was perfectly timed.”

“Shit,” Edmund blurted out as he got on some socks and pulled one of the belts through the loops of his pants. He situated it snuggly and blew out a breath. “You have to keep my presence secret from Ryker and Runner, don’t you?

“I get the impression me being here probably wouldn’t help much at all. I just need to stay here until my Save-state system is created, right? When does that happen?”

“Ah… yes, we’ll need to stay away from Ryker and Runner,” confirmed Oz. “I will hide your presence from them. Though I do not think it’ll work for long. As well as the fact that the moment they create you as they intend to, and your power set, they will realize it’s already activated and running.”

“In other words, I don’t get to hide from them,” Edmund immediately assumed, realizing where Oz was going with it. “Got it. It makes sense. It’d be like opening a room you expected to be empty and suddenly found it full of lived in furniture. That about it?”

“That’s about it. Runner and Ryker will be arriving momentarily in the living room,” advised Oz.

With a grutn, Edmund adjusted the clothes as best as he could, took in a breath, then marched himself into the living room. He was about to crash a party that he technically wasn’t even supposed to be alive for.

Roughly about the same moment that he walked into the living room, than Runner and Ryker both appeared. Simply materializing out of thin air and immediately turning to look at him.

“Heyo,” Edmund said and waved at them with his left hand. “I’m Edmund Isaac Strator. You’re about to make me. Skipper kicked me here from a super distant future Save-state when I was visiting Australia in this world. It’s a real cluster fucker of magic and time.

“Oz can vouch for me. He just imported his memories from his other selves. If Srit was… wait, Srit should be here. Shouldn’t she? She’s always here anymore.

“Srit! Answer me or I’ll start causing a ruckus.”

“You shouldn’t be here… Edmund… this is all wrong,” said Srit.

Ryker’s eyebrows leapt to the top of his head and Runner just stared at Edmund with a slow blink.

“Yeah, I know it’s all wrong Srit. We’re working on it. This is like a damn… damn… I fucked up a Legion database copy and paste, alright? Andrea will get all pissy at me, Faith will have to come teach me how to do it again, and here we are,” Edmund blurted out, throwing his hands up in the air. “With the screw-loose wizard who never tells me anything and the enigmatic asshole who doesn’t like admitting that locking me out of information never helped. And you know what? Fuck you, Runner, Nadine’s alive.

“Yes, I’m going to save her. I’m working on it. Right along with saving the screw-loose Wizard. Fuck you, too Ryker. Like having a dad and an uncle who know what’s best for you but won’t explain a damn thing.”

Edmund threw himself into one of the chairs and glared up at the two men through his helmet.

“Well?” Edmund asked testily. “Get to creating then. You need to make me and my Save-state system so I can access it and get the fuck out of here. Because honestly, it’s a wonder Claire hasn’t shown up and started to maul you, Ryker.

“She always shows up almost immediately whenever I do a roll back. Though… fuck… is she still absolutely bat-shit crazy in this one? Wouldn’t she be getting all her memories right now and—”

There was an explosive boom as a hole was ripped through the very world.

A second afterward and a madly giggling Claire shot out of it and slammed into Ryker.

“Husband!” she squaled and began smothering Ryker in kisses.

“There she is. Hi Claire. I got super fucked by Skipper this time, or so Oz thinks,” Edmund said even as Claire stuffed her tongue into Ryker’s mouth. “If you don’t mind, I could probably use your help figuring out how to get back to my own Save-states from here.”