Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Hello, everybody! My name is Ninten Calloway, and I live half a mile north of the small town of Podunk, which is honestly a pretty lame place compared to all the other places I’ve seen on my recent adventure, such as Merrysville, Spookane, Ellay, Youngto—Oh, sorry, I had better explain the whole “adventure” thing before I get lost describing everywhere I’ve traveled to.

Well, I think instead of briefly describing my journey, I should tell it to you, in bits and pieces at a time. So, get ready to hear the totally epic and definitely not boring story of how I beat up a floating doll, saved a girl from a cemetery, defeated thousands of vicious zoo animals, traveled to a magical realm, forgot a forgotten man, fought robots to retrieve a rocket for a nerd, returned a hat to a girl with magical abilities, drove in a tank, killed a dragon, learned how to teleport from a telepathic baby, fought aliens and millions of buffalo in a swamp, defeated an entire gang, climbed up a mountain with the gang leader, got saved by the previously mentioned nerd in a tank from a giant robot, found my great grandfather’s gravestone and learn a song from it, and finally destroyed the evilest force ever!

Okay, so maybe I exaggerated a few things about my journey above, but the majority of that is what actually happened. And, you’re about to hear a much more descriptive version of my life in a story that I am about to tell.

You already know I was born in Podunk. I have two little twin sisters, Mimmie and Minnie, who are identical besides their hair color—Mimmie has pink hair, Minnie has red hair. Both of their hair colors are naturally black, like mine, but there was a certain accident that happened a few years ago that changed that, and I’ll get into that later. I also have a mom and dad, but my dad isn’t even around most of the time, always busy with one work trip or another.

On the morning that changed my entire life, I had accidentally slept late, but I was immediately jerked out of my sleep by...an earthquake. I leapt out of bed and dove underneath my desk in the corner of my room, when I noticed that something was wrong. My lamp was unplugged and in the middle of the room, when it should have been next to my bed. More than that, the lamp was floating in midair.

Quite honestly, this should have been expected, but I certainly didn’t think something would happen inside my house; most everything happened closer to the cemetery or zoo. For the past few weeks, strange phenomena had been occurring all around Podunk—people becoming almost crazy and violent and not thinking straight, animals turning vicious and constantly leaping at me when I walked onto the path into town, zoo creatures gaining unusual strength and breaking down the fence to the zoo completely, and zombies roaming around the graveyard.

No one was sure why these things were happening, but the mayor assured the town that everything was going to be completely fine, multiple times, in fact, though he had stopped saying those things after some people in town actually started turning into zombies.

The most likely explanation was that it had something to do with my psychic powers, my abilities, or magic, or whatever else you want to call it. I’ve been able to use them since I was born—bend spoons, use telepathy on animals and other small creatures, make myself temporarily have a small shield, and heal minor wounds. These powers also changed my sisters’ hair color, and permanently, too. Technically, the powers are called PSI, short for psionics, and a subcategory for the more offensive ones are called PK, or psychokinesis.

All of my PSI was curative, defensive, or “other,” as labeled by my great grandfather, George, in his journal documenting psychic abilities and a few other various topics. George, according to my mother, had mysteriously disappeared one day with his wife, Maria, and when he returned, he barely talked to anyone, was rarely seen by the public, and buried himself in his studies. When Mom taught me about him, I had been intrigued by all of the mysteries of where he had been and how he knew about PSI, and how I had somehow gotten it. Because neither Mimmie nor Minnie, and certainly not Mom, had ever shown any signs of having the power. Anyways, PSI definitely could be the reason behind the strange happenings lately, and it was the best explanation for it all.

I bolted towards my closet, threw open the door, grabbed my trusty baseball bat and sent the lamp flying across the room. Pieces shattered everywhere, some hitting me and causing small scratches, but I mentally pictured them healing, and what could’ve been permanent scars faded away. The lamp was defeated, but the earthquake certainly wasn’t.

When I stepped out into the hallway, I could hear my sisters screaming for help inside of Mimmie’s room. They were hugging each other, huddled against the wall together as one of their dolls floated towards them slowly.

“Ninten, do something!” screeched Minnie as she trembled, whipping her head towards me to get my full attention, which she really didn’t need to, because she already had it. The doll zipped diagonally, left and right, getting closer to me every second. I swung at it with my bat, but the doll simply sped right at me and smashed against my arm—hard. There was probably no chance that I could ever hit this doll with simply a bat.

Closing my eyes, I began to focus all of my energy on the doll, centering my mind until everything around me seemed nearly overwhelming with power. Then I let it all release. Though I couldn’t see it, I could feel a wave of nighttime air crashing through the room, knocking the floating doll unconscious onto the floor.

Almost right after the doll was defeated, the earthquake stopped, nothing out of place, no sign that there had ever been anything wrong. All of a sudden, a melody began to play, repeating itself multiple times, until I tracked the sound back to the doll, which quickly became quiet. It was only four words long, with five simple yet rather memorable notes. Take a melody...

Why was the doll creating that tune? Could it have been my PSI? It seemed rather unlikely, considering that I had used my paralysis ability many times before, rendering the target unable to do anything more than breathe and blink. I didn’t remember reading anything about musical PSI in my grandfather’s journal, but now was as good a time to check as any. I hurried down the stairs and into the living room of my house, where my mother was soothing Mimmie and Minnie as they attempted to calm down.

“Oh, Ninten, why do you think this is happening to our house?” Mom asked worriedly, leaving my sisters to comfort themselves. She drowned me in a relieved hug. “I know strange things have been happening all over the town, but why our house, and why hasn’t it happened before now?”

“That’s what I want to try and find out,” I told her. “Have you seen George’s journal?”

My mother walked over to the bookshelf and grabbed the journal off the shelf, setting it into my outstretched palm. “Ninten, I know that this is more than a boy like you should be able to handle, especially at your age, but you’re right. You could be the only one to ever be able to find out what’s going on, and, whatever it is, it has to relate to your powers. I think that you need to go into town and talk to the mayor. Go explore town and do your best to fix whatever is wrong.”

I almost stumbled back in astonishment. Leave home? Venture into town for a long period, possibly out of Podunk, to find out more about the strange happenings and maybe discover the meaning of my abilities and why I have them. “Wait, mom, are you saying that you’re going to let me just...leave you here? Are you and Mimmie and Minnie going to be alright without me?”

By now, my sisters were each planted on one side of mom, both smiling encouragingly. Everybody in my family seemed perfectly fine with me leaving them, but was I? For all I knew, I wouldn’t even be leaving town if the phenomena was only here in Podunk, but it definitely could be spread throughout the entire country of Eagleland, and even across the world. But if I didn’t go and try and stop this, then things could get so much worse.

“Okay,” I said with a nod. “I think I’m ready.”

Mom made me promptly go to bed with a dinner of prime ribs, something she usually prepared for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, so apparently me leaving was a very special occasion. I watched the sunlight fade away and vanish from outside my window, and without a lamp, the room was engulfed in complete darkness, left alone with my thoughts, and those were racing with ideas, questions, and concerns for my journey ahead, however long that would soon prove to be.

The next morning, I dressed in a blue and yellow horizontal striped shirt with a red cap Dad had bought for me when I was just an infant, and a red scarf that came from around that same time. I waved goodbye to my family as I walked around the corner of trees, and then everything that I had known all my life, everything that was truly familiar, seemed to vanish.

After walking for a few minutes in silence, I approached the Lindgren household, where my childhood friend, Pippi Lindgred, resided. Surprisingly, her house was drastically smaller than my house, though I only have two more family members than her. Pippi was an only child, and we had been friends since she arrived at Podunk four years ago, in the late autumn. Mom had taken me over to greet the new neighbors, and Pippi and I immediately found we had a shared interest in exploring, despite the two year age gap between us.

Throughout that winter, and for every season until the beginning of last year, we had explored every inch of the woods north of the house, and we would always beg our mothers to take us to the zoo, where we ran around looking at all of the animals until it was dark, laughing and having fun.

And then, one day, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t seen Pippi in over a month—hadn’t been thinking about her or anything. We had somehow, at some time, drifted apart from each other, with both of us growing up and becoming less childish by the day. I didn’t go over to her house anymore, she never knocked on my door, we barely talked, and that was only to wave a short hello and goodbye when we passed each other in town, but we never made more than a minute or two of conversation, and, even then, there was a chill of awkwardness in the air that couldn’t be ignored.

As I passed Pippi’s house now, I focused my eyes straight ahead, not wanting to feel any sort of guilt of not talking to Pippi if she was on her front step where she normally was, simply by pretending to be distracted by my thoughts. What surprised me, however, was glancing over to see Mrs. Lindgren pacing nervously back and forth on the porch of the house. “Ninten!” she called out to me.

Stifling a small groan, I jogged across the unkempt lawn to her, desperately hoping that she wasn’t going to ask me to hang out with Pippi or anything. “Hi, Mrs. Lindgren, is something the matter?” I wondered. “Because I’m kind of on this mission right now, and—”

“Ninten, I need you to help me!” she exclaimed. “I haven’t seen Pippi in ages, and the mayor hasn’t been receiving anybody since people began turning into zombies a month ago! I know it’s a lot to ask of you, but would you mind looking for Pippi if you’re headed into town?”

“Um...” I bit my lip while pondering what to do. Obviously, Pippi was my friend, or at least she used to be, but wouldn’t taking this request cause me to get very sidetracked from what I was supposed to be doing? Well, then again, I didn’t really have an objective of what to do right now, only to figure out what was going on. Maybe Pippi could even give me some fellow explorer’s insight on her opinion. I snapped out of my thoughts to see Mrs. Lindgren staring at me for an answer, and I met her eyes. “Yeah, of course I can help look for Pippi.”

“Oh, thank you so much, Ninten,” she said, breathing a sigh of relief. “You truly are an exceptional boy, and I’ll be sure to pay you some other time for your efforts, even if you don’t find Pippi.”

“That’s really not necessary,” I started to say, but was cut off once again by the sound of the front door shutting, and I was standing alone on the porch. “Okay...” I mumbled to myself, heading out of the yard and back onto the path once again.

Now I really did have an objective for what I needed to do on my adventure, if you can even call it that, especially this early on. There’s going to be so much more action happening soon, I promise, but for now, I’d like to stay close to home.

Chapter Text

The familiar sight of Podunk rose up in the distance, tiny houses surrounded by newly sprouting bushes and flowers, taller structures such as the department store towering over them multiple stories higher, but still creating the intimate ambience of my hometown that I would always care for, undettered by the recent months of questions.

If you’re looking for something out of place just from sight, the streets and dirt paths were strangely empty, but that was, in all honesty, to be expected. I wouldn’t think anyone to be out and about, considering the times.

Near the center of the city was the mayor’s office, the exterior visibly just as abandoned and deserted as the rest of Podunk. Thankfully, though, the glass doors leading inside were unlocked, since I wouldn’t find it below the mayor to decide to announce to the town that they should lock all doors in order to better shield themselves from the impending threats clouding their minds with worry.

I climbed up the stairs without invitation—the main office and entryway where the secretary’s desk was located was unattended at the moment—and let myself right into the mayor’s workplace, where he sat along with his assistant of whom, I assumed, was the only soul brave enough to stick around while townsfolk were transforming into zombies left and right.

The mayor seemed rather startled at the sight of me, and even appeared to take two looks at me, making sure I wasn’t a stray zombie that would murder everybody in sight. “Ah...um, hello,” he said, nervously. “Can I help you?”

Nodding my head, I approached, and explained the situation as best I could, despite the little I actually knew from what Ms. Lidgren had told me.

Groaning, the mayor hid his head in his hands. “Why is it always the worst time possible when children go missing?” Sort of awkwardly, I stood just watching him think to himself nervously for a minute, puzzled why such an important man couldn’t just order the police force to go in search of Pippi as an easy solution to this whole problem.

About to offer the suggestion myself, I started to say, “Um, sir, I actually think tha—” when, interrupting me, the mayor stated this genius idea—”that’s it!” he exclaimed. “Ninten, you said your name was, yes, you seem like the kind of kid who would want to go on an adventure and save someone! How about it?”

The mayor’s pondering to ecstatic change in appearance was sudden, and maybe slightly undeserved at the same time, since he just wanted a kid like me to walk around the empty yet perilous streets of Podunk looking for some kid when I had a lot more important world-saving stuff to do. Well, actually, not really a “kid like me” since I’m probably the only person with psychic abilities in a three hundred mile radius of this town.

Without even that level of knowledge, the mayor seemed insistent that I be the one to search for Pippi.

“...Alright,” I eventually agreed, and while I closed the door to the office and began walking down the stairs, I could hear the mayor whispering to his assistant, “If that kid succeeds, me saving a missing kid will definitely win me the reelection next month!”

The search for Pippi began with me knocking on doors to see if the fearful citizens knew anything about her last whereabouts before she vanished, and continued that way futilely until I pretty much gave up on those efforts and just started wandering around, calling her name as I went.

In truth, I should have been trying harder, but I also didn’t think that dealing with the awkwardness of not really having a conversation with her for over a year would be too fun. She was totally justified to be angry with me for that, and then there was the possibility that she didn’t want to be saved. Gosh, why did friendships have to be such a challenging thing...?

I let out a deep sigh, and then coughed on my inhale, as I saw a deeply tanned, muddy zombie charging straight at me, arms out in front of it, an eyeball gouged out and hanging by a thread of skin. The disgusting creature's hair was a weird color of yellow, and it was spouting out in all sorts of directions.

” Dang it ...” I muttered, and then hurried towards the barreling zombie so that it couldn’t get as much of a jump on me. Reaching over my shoulder, I grabbed for where my trusty baseball bat should be, but felt only open air, and then I came to the horrible, startling realization that I had forgotten my only weapon at home. So now I was stuck in the middle of basically nowhere somewhere south of town surrounded by wilderness where apparently zombies lived, with only curative and defensive psychic powers that would eventually run out without me resting for awhile, and the mayor had specifically requested that I not rest and find Pippi as soon as possible.

Skidding on my toe before the zombie could reach me, I started darting away from it again, the only way to travel being south towards where I assumed the cemetery was located. If life didn’t have enough spite for me already, three more zombies joined the one in pursuit, along with a flock of bats, or whatever you’d call four of them.

This whole ordeal was like a cartoon in which the main character is running from an entire crowd that they just angered, and then inevitable ducks into a corner and the mob goes rushing by, though in my case, I ducked into the building in the cemetery where funerals were held and I knew I’d be safer than outside.

Walking into a cemetery, in retrospect, was probably not the wisest decision in my case, but that was the only civilized place that wasn’t in the direction of those zombies, so I was obligated to go here, anyways.

By civilized , I mean that there’s only one person who’s still here, and that’s the worker of the graveyard who makes sure that no vandals start disrespecting the tombs and keeps up the garden as best he can.

“Hey! What are you doing here?!” he shouted upon seeing me enter.

Another thing I should likely mention to you is the fact that when Pippi and I did adventure and run around the outskirts and forests of Podunk back past a year ago, we would inevitably go to the cemetery sometimes and run around screaming and pretending to be ghosts, disturbing not only the people in the funeral building, but also, apparently, the non-living bodies...and Pippi and I eventually got banned from being here, so, the fact that I was here now, looking like I had just been running around like in the old days, of course the gravekeeper thought I was up to something.

“Sorry, sir,” I said while still attempting to catch my breath. “I was just...running...from a bunch of zombies.” Then I cleared my throat and attempted to look more presentable. “Um, you didn’t happen to see Pippi around here, right, you know that girl I used to hang around with?”

Throwing up his hands, the man exclaimed, “Seen her! Of course I’ve seen her! That troublemaking girl came around yesterday at the crack of dawn, and woke me up, and then said that she wasn’t doing any harm by ‘ just playing ’ and that I should be quiet like ‘ old geezers ’ should!” Pippi did have a sharp tongue when I knew her. “ So, ” he continued, “the fact that you’re here now begs nothing but trouble for me, meaning that I’d highly appreciate it if you walked right out of this property and stayed out—”

—but he didn’t need to worry about me leaving. I was already doing that myself, filled with slightly more inspiration than I had before, because now I knew that Pippi was somewhere in the proximity of the graveyard, and since I knew this place better than the back of my hand, I had no doubt in the slightest that I could find her.

Oftentimes when we caused trouble here, Pippi and I had a high probability of being located in the back, older section of the cemetery, where the words were hardly legible on tombstones and the grass was much too overgrown, even with the daily care it received.

My memories of that include us climbing onto the largest statues and jumping down to smaller ones until we fell to the unkempt ground in laughter.

Sometimes we would even dig into the ground—though, we would always be sure to stay away from the graves as to avoid making contact with a literal dead body, and one day, we ended up finding a staircase leading down into the depths of the earth. Technically, no, it didn’t lead “into the depths of the earth,” but it certainly felt that way.

A room enveloped in shadows to the point that nothing could be seen when the trapdoor above was over the hole, where four empty caskets all laid, and had been, for an indeterminable amount of time. If Pippi had gone to the graveyard and seen all the zombies, she most definitely would have seeked refuge in our hiding place.

So that was where I looked.

The trapdoor was moved to the side slightly as if something or some one had recently descended into the darkness. As I made my way down the crumbing stairs with pure instinct whispering in my ear which steps were missing pieces that had fallen off over the years, I couldn’t help but worry that maybe something else was down here instead, and I was just approaching imminent death instead of an old friend.

“Pippi?” I whisper-yelled into the blackness, but there was no response.

That is, until I felt something sharp and disgusting sink into the skin of my forearm. A zombie .

I let out a high pitched shrill, and started kicking at the space where I’d been attacked not a moment earlier, not making contact with anything, when, all of the sudden there was a shout and grunting as something horrible made a squishing sound on the ground.

Something grabbed my hand and I felt myself being pulled into a run, and me and whatever it was hurried out of the chasm and under the light of the sun.

Pippi .

“Ninten?” she almost shouted in astonishment, and then narrowed her eyes. “What the heck are you doing here, come back to pretend to be friends with me?”

“What? No!” I replied, quickly using my psychic powers to seal and clean the wound from the zombie, Pippi’s eyes slightly widening at what I had just done but then narrowing back into glaring slits. “Seriously, that’s not what I’m trying to do, I swear! Your mom just wondered if I would tell the mayor about your disappearance, and then he ended up asking me to look for you instead of doing it himself, so I just started wandering around in search.”

Slightly less distrustful now, Pippi replied, “Alright, well, I’m found, and I was doing perfectly fine before you came, anyways. So let’s get out of this graveyard now.” She began walking at a quick pace towards the entrance of the graveyard and motioned annoyedly for me to follow, yet even as I did, I was surprised at the cold welcome I had received. Had our distancing of each really affected us way more than I originally supposed?

Amazing—the first conflict on my adventure happened to be a broken friendship with my old best friend, and she didn’t look especially eager to reconcile.

We began the walk back to town, but I felt just as cold and empty as the breeze blowing through the air.

"Okay, Pippi, hold up a moment," I said, repeating my words when she didn't immediately respond.

Pippi whirled around, looking positively furious. " What , Ninten?"

"I...I just want to know why you're so upset at me. I mean, I know the general reason, but, well, it wasn't just me who stopped knocking on your door—you did the same to me—so why is it my fault that we stopped being friends? Just ask yourself that."

She was quiet, studying the ground sharply for several moments. "That's not a bad point I guess, but, I don't know, I guess I sort of assumed that you didn't want anything to do with me after we started not hanging out anymore."

Sighing, I responded, "Well, honestly, I didn't even realize at first that we weren't seeing each other as much anymore, and it was only when I did comprehend that when I felt like talking to you again would be much too awkward for the both of us."

"So...what's the real reason you're here to rescue me, then? I'm sure that the mayor must've offered you some kind of cash reward or something to put yourself in danger to go look for me." The accusing tone had left her voice, making our conversation seem a lot less threatening.

I chuckled slightly. "No, I just went to the mayor after your mom requested that I do so, and then he just kind of pressured me into going to find you."

"Hmm, that sounds like the mayor, alright."

"Yeah, definitely."

"Hey, Ninten?"

"Yeah, Pippi?" I replied, looking at her expectantly.

"I'm sorry for being super offensive towards you after we made it out of the graveyard earlier—I was a little bit simply caught up in the moment, and, as I've described, I thought you were just there for some sort of reward or to make fun of me."

"Really, it's alright, and I probably did deserve at least a little bit of what you said for ignoring you for whatever amount of time it's been since we last hung out."

The two of us shared a quick side hug and then pulled away from each other, continuing the walk towards Podunk as leaves floated down from the brush all around us—the sun high in the sky and a cool breeze drifting through the air.

A feeling of relief and closure filled me as I sighed softly in content—after all, Pippi didn't hate me anymore, and we had reconnected in a way, even if it was sudden and slightly unintentional for me to wind up in the graveyard.

And, if facing a conflict as difficult as this was much easier than I thought it would be, then surely the rest of my adventure would be a piece of cake, right?

Right?

Well, you'll see, I suppose. Until next time!