Dr Archeville Posted October 24, 2010 Posted October 24, 2010 October 31st (Sunday) The Way It's Supposed To Be Think think think think. An explosion erupted from Edge's feet as the gas main underneath the street burst, waves of fire and flame bursting forth and incinerating the zombies around the Claremont trio in smoke and ash. Can't keep breaking the street forever, Mark thought a little desperately. I guess I can crush them one at a time if necessary. They'd teleported into the Fens, right in front of a heavily barricaded high school full of civilian refugees. Or even better, the bus! Flashes of black light came from Mark's hands, reaching out and grabbing the school bus, dropping it into the middle of the crowd of zombies and bouncing it back and forth like a bus. As the undead hordes growled and regrouped, a thought came to Mark. This isn't right. Wander was a wrecking machine with her blade, dispatching zombies almost faster than Mark could see, and just at the edge of his vision Midnight was doing something he couldn't quite follow with razor-edged bombs that tore through zombies like lightning strikes. The world shouldn't be like this. It was not a helpful thought under the circumstances, but as another zombie dragon (and where on Earth were THEY coming from?) swept in from above, it came to Mark again. Look at this! There are zombies everywhere, Wander is doing her scary killing machine thing, Midnight is...well, he's on edge about something besides the zombies, anyway! The light pole overhead came tumbling down on the front line of the horde, most of them exploding on contact with the power of electricity. (Mark hadn't done well in shop class.) My friends are upset, there's a flesh-eating horde on the loose...my dad is gone, my mom is upset all the time...the world isn't supposed to be like this! Unbidden, Mark thought about that false reflection of Freedom City his father had made. He reached back and hurled Erin at the zombie dragon overhead, the teen warrior appearing in a flash of black bubbles as she severed the great beast's head with a single swing of the blade he'd made for her. I bet this never happened there. I mean, people were really HAPPY! Was it so wrong if freedom was curtailed a little? There was a crash from beneath his feet, and the teen heroes gathered together again even as something began punching through the streets. Oh wow, an old-time subway car...full of zombie hobos. Aw, man! I'm almost sure this didn't happen there. Why should people have to trade THIS for getting freedom?As zombies exploded and split and squealed, Mark realized the mistake he'd been making. The same mistake Dad made too. You can't build a better world by turning back the clock to a time that's gone, even if you do think it was better. If you want to build a better world, you've got to go out and make it yourself. One step at a time. He blasted a wall of zombies, and they all had a moment's pause as silence fell and they realized this neighborhood was cleared out. The world shouldn't be like this. Monsters shouldn't be trying to scare and hurt people, thought Mark with a little nod. But you don't stop the bad guys by taking freedom away from everyone else. You stop the bad guys by...stopping the bad guys. You build a better world yourself, not by taking away the world people already have. And how do you do that? He looked at Erin, covered in zombie guts, and Trevor, catching his breath. You do it with your friends at your side, fighting for what's right. They'd had some differences between each other lately, but that was all forgotten in the heat of the moment. And we'll stop this, repair the city and help all the hurt people, fix things with my mom, and everything will be great! He realized Erin and Trevor were staring at him expectantly. "Oh, right. Yeah, we've still got twelve other neighborhoods to hit. Sorry, forgot. We're going now!" And in a flash of black, they were on the move again, and back into the fray. Maybe this world wasn't so bad after all.
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